This is by no means a full review of Windows 7. I was beta testing for a while, and now I have my hands on the RTM (
release to manufacturing). Naturally, I find a few more bugs in the release. They'll all be submitted soon via MS Connect.
First off, my install went smoothly. The hardware is around 1.5 years old with a new graphics card and hard drive. On first boot, my HomeGroup was found from my laptop running build 7100. Very impressive.
My raid array was found with no issues. I actually felt that I did not need to install any drivers to boost obvious performance. But being the nerd I am, I naturally hit the graphics driver first from Nvidia.
My only issues with tools like Nvidia's control panel are that Microsoft should be stepping up to the plate and integrating these kind of tools. It will be much easier for debugging when people are running raw drivers and no extra tools. I bet support staff would love that also. Bravo Nvidia for giving me an easy way to check my HDCP link!
Here is the kicker. I installed the Nvidia driver and it didn't require a reboot!?!?!?!??!! That shocked me something fierce.
Nothing really new here in the Performance control panel. Just higher numbers are possible.
Since Windows XP, I have always moved my personal documents to a separate HDD. It makes OS reinstalls a piece of cake. Things get a little more interesting by having setup. But I have all my data in a folder structure I've had in place for a while, so no biggie there for me.
MMmmm. Media Center.The main reason for this install. Nice marketing info there MS.... We continue...
I naturally go for the custom setup.
I'm not going to bore you with too many aimless screen shots. Here I am entering TV setup
For those familiar with TVPack and it's issues, you will love this. It is automatically installing PlayReady for you.
My CableCards are found (2x). Nothing new
Guide setup. Nothing new.
Display setup offers nothing new: just the same old confusion. If I select TV, I will fall victim to the interface "underzooming" to prepare for the
overscan that doesn't exist on my TV. I can go on for a while on this topic.
Here is the new guide. Nothing too new. Nice options for "right clicking" and being able to change channel info. This was first introduced in Vista's TV Pack
This is the new "Start" screen. It is organized a little better. Movies is something I plan on playing with more. I think there is a lot of wasted space on the today screen. I wouldn't mind seeing some things moved around. If I scroll all the way up to the top, I can only see one item. Huge space waste. Take a hint from the new home screen on Windows Mobile 6.5.
I tried searching for showings, but whoops! No guide to search from? But I just looked at the guide. Was it not downloaded all the way? I went down to the Media Center tray icon to see what info is available. Under TV Pack (and possibly non-TV Pack), I could see what percentage of the guide was downloaded.
At this point, since I couldn't do anything useful, I shut down. The next day I turned it on, came back a while later, and the search worked. I'd love to see some more robust error messages here with some user options to intervene.
Here I am setting up my series to record. Unfortunately, the search offers nothing new except in the program data.
But
in the screenshot listed above, there is a neat little window that
explains what tv show I searched for. Ohh... look at that. Why are
there HD and non-HD versions listed? This is due to my cable company
having duplicate channels. I will later have to go through and delete
these duplicate analog stations.
I would really appreciate a
built in tool, possibly automatic when the guide is getting setup, to
automatically swap and delete channels. Example: I want my channel 2 to
be HD
Also, this screen's 'tabs' at the top are confusing. The
screenshot above shows the default view. If I didn't see those arrows
hiding in the corner, I would have never known that there was
additional information available.
I had to fish around in the menus to find the options for series recording. A step back there. But the same options when I found them.
Bug: Here comes a bug. I wanted to search for "Law & Order". Searching for "Law" gets me where I need, but I decided to type "&" to refine my search results.
Boom, no results. I would qualify this as a bug. Without understanding how they're searching, I'll throw out a guess that & is jacking with their search parameters.
I decided to play with Internet TV again. After this step, I had multiple Internet TVs listed on the Start page. One listed as beta, one not.
Sweet Arrested Development! Wait.... I'm searching for series, but why am I getting individual seasons? I'd like to see all Arrested Development seasons listed under a single show name.
As I was getting ready to lay down and watch an episode of Arrested Development, I was met with "Acts". Not quite sure what I'm expected to do with them. They're all out of order anyway! I left, and have not returned yet to TV Series
What I really did enjoy was the Viral videos! This is such a great way to waste time. I did this until I fell asleep.
Bug: Every time I put in a USB flash drive or SD card, Windows pop up always shows up behind other windows. Rather annoying. Don't pop anything up if I can't use it. I'd rather go hunt through "computer" if I have to click extra times.
IE8- Someone needs to put their foot down and redo the version system. Here is my recommendation
IE6= IE6
IE6.1= IE7
IE6.2= IE8
So, IE6.2 is a good upgrade from 6.1. It adds a few new features, but overall gives me nothing too new.
Read more on what my thoughts are on IE8 .
Bug: Every time I restore or maximize Media Center, my cursor gets centered on the screen. This is rather annoying when my cursor goes flying across the screen and I have to hunt it down again.
Conclusion:
Very exciting. I love the new desktop experience. I skipped over many things like this because they've been covered in great detail by others
When I began writing this blog post, I wasn't expecting to finish with 3 bugs and a few annoying rants about issues. But unfortunately, that's how I roll.
This was written to specifically lay out my first RTM impressions, more to come soon!
Peter