By Sherwin Loh

Twenty-six minutes.

That was the time I took to do a clean install of Windows 7 on my self-assembled, three-year-old PC that was running Windows Vista.

Compare that to the over two hours it took to upgrade my home PC from Windows XP to Vista two years ago.

Yes, Microsoft has had time to correct the misses of Vista, which has been vilified as a clunky, resource-hungry operating system (OS).

Having used the early beta version of Windows 7 since October last year, my view is that the new OS has taken several steps forward - chiefly in interface and speed.

Speed soup-up

Windows 7 registers devices, say, an external hard drive, much faster than Vista and is optimised for file transfer as well.

Carting files out from Vista in preparation for the new OS installation took 70 minutes. In contrast, transferring the files back into the PC after Windows 7 was installed took only 45 minutes.

Performance perks

Operations-wise, my computer is chock-full of video files in different formats and using different codecs.

In Vista, I could not rely on Windows Media Player (WMP) to play most of them as the application could not recognise many of the codecs. The new WMP 12, however, handled my videos beautifully.

The new OS could also handle old software that would not run on Vista. An example: Nero Premium, a DVD archiving software which worked with XP but not Vista.

I took a chance and installed it on my Windows 7 PC and it worked like a charm.

Both the Vista and Windows 7 operating systems threw up pop-up warnings, which I mostly ignored, cautioning me about compatibility hiccups. With Windows 7, however, I have not had a DVD burn failure yet.

Interface interlace

The taskbar, which was previously split into the notification area, quick launch and taskbar, is now merged into one user-friendly display.

You can arrange icons in the new taskbar and hover over them to see all the opened windows of an application.

This is helpful with tabbed browsing as the new taskbar will reveal all the active tabs, even if only one Internet Explorer (IE) window is open.

Room for improvement

If I were chatting with five friends on Windows Live, the old Windows taskbar would have five chat-window tabs open and each would blink when a friend sends me a message.

Now that all windows under Windows Live appear as a single tab, it will blink no matter which of my five friends sends me a message. So I have to click on the tab and then select the correct window in which to chat.

Not only does that mean an extra step, I cannot simply glance at the taskbar to see which friend just sent me a message and if it requires my immediate attention.

Also, hovering the mouse over the browser icon to show active windows works only with IE - not for non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome.

One hopes that this is merely an oversight rather than a purposeful omission by Microsoft to ensure that the function works only with its own browser.

sherwinl@sph.com.sg

Sherwin attended Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in October last year where he received an early beta version of Windows 7. Since then, he has continually upgraded beta Windows 7 each time Microsoft puts out a new beta version for the public to try.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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