Op-Ed: Microsoft regains its vision with Windows 7 Special

The following is part of DigitalJournal.com's series covering Microsoft's Windows 7 launch. Microsoft claims it listens to its users when designing a new operating system, but Vista had so many problems you have to wonder which planet they were living on. Windows 7, new this week, suggests Microsoft has been talking to users closer to home. The following is part of a series covering Microsoft's Windows 7 launch. You may also be interested in the new features in Windows 7: A check list, or this article on transitioning to Windows 7 using Acronis True Image Home Sometimes I feel sorry for Microsoft. Anyone with a long memory — in tech terms that means further back than two years ago — remembers a time when the most reviled Microsoft product was Windows XP. The consensus was that it was nothing but a series of security holes loosely tied together with binderhype. Linux and Apple fans gloated unpleasantly. But Vista, when it was released in 2007, quickly took over as the most-reviled operating system. Aside from being obviously bloated and carelessly put together, it was hard to pinpoint why people hated it so much; the only real consensus was, ironically, a feature called User Account Control (UAC), the very security feature Microsoft installed and made so annoying in an obvious effort to remind critics that Microsoft was listening to its customers and had fixed Windows’ vulnerabilities. As an odd result, there has been a gradual rehabilitation of the eight-year-old Windows XP operating system. People with short memories now remember it fondly, and forgot that they had been extremely wary of it when it was released eight years ago (“I won’t buy it until the first service pack is released,” was a common cry). Now, they are embracing XP, because they’re crazy about the new netbook computers built on the Intel Atom chip, which are not quite strong enough to handle Windows 7; the consumers are also rejecting similar netbooks loaded with Linux. Essentially, users are now behaving as though XP was always a superior product and that security had really never been an XP issue at all. That historical revisionism must have been a massive headache for Microsoft’s marketing gurus, and the sheer hypocrisy of public opinion is what makes me feel sorry for Microsoft. But then I think of the kind of relentless, Calvinist pressure Microsoft software puts on “productivity and hard work” instead of offering me more latitude to be creative, and the feeling of sympathy passes. Still, I wonder why so many people get so exercised about operating systems. All operating systems, from Windows to Linux to Mac OS, have been larded with applications that are not strictly necessary to running a machine, but should it be this way? Shouldn’t an operating system be as dull as dirt, merely a vehicle for the applications designed to run on it? As far as I can see, these frills have created a culture in which people judge operating systems by non-essential applications, and it’s high time we get rid of anything that encourages irrational fistfights over which operating system is “better,” which stole what from whom and which has better security. Approaching an operating system as a smorgasbord of fun applications resulted in a fight between Microsoft and the security folks at Symantec three years ago, which had Symantec objecting to Microsoft’s inclusion of its own antivirus software (Windows Live OneCare) with Vista: Symantec felt that security should be handled by a third party. It’s nice to have third-party security, but then again, should an operating system be vulnerable in the first place? In fact, Symantec’s still complaining, saying Microsoft's just-released Security Essentials software is “just stripped down OneCare." I doubt Vista will have a rebirth similar to the one experienced by XP, mostly because Windows 7 is what Vista should have been in the first place: a serious operating system that is more stable and secure than XP while still being refreshing to use. And I think enough people stuck with it during the Vista period that they will not have any sentimental feelings attached to it, the way people have no sentimentality for Microsoft Bob or Windows Me. Or perhaps they don’t even remember Bob or Me, which came (ahem) earlier than two years ago. What’s more, Windows 7 makes fewer demands on system resources than Vista; it’s leaner and boots and shuts down more quickly. I’ve heard conflicting reports on this; all I can say is that installing Windows 7 on top of Vista on my machine made it boot and shut down more quickly, and I have too many applications installed on my machine. To put the preference for operating systems into perspective, a study quoted recently by Toronto tech consultancy BrightPlanIT Inc. claims that that 93 per cent of corporate PCs are running Windows XP, 4 per cent are running 10-year-old Windows 2000 and only 3 per cent are running Vista. This despite the study’s finding that 88 per cent of corporate PCs are capable of running Windows 7, Microsoft’s newest desktop operating system. Aside from market perceptions and preferences, there are still hardware limitations. If you install Windows 7 in 32-bit mode, it will still access only 3.25 GB of live memory (RAM), a constraint imposed by the architecture of 32-bit systems that limits the cheapest and easiest way to speed up a computer. I’ve also heard some respectable evidence that people who installed 64-bit Vista have been quite happy with it (as I was, after I installed it on one of my machines), and installing Windows 7 in 64-bit mode could be the answer to the RAM limit (64-bit Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate can access a staggering 192 GB of RAM, more than any desktop PC I know can handle anyway). If you’re thinking of going that way, I’d recommend waiting a few more months until all the drivers you need become available in 64-bit versions. Windows 7 requires less processing power to run than Vista, it offers greater speed, and frees the processor to handle more multitasking. It has sexed up its taskbar just by simplifying it and offering a thumbnail preview when the cursor hovers over a taskbar icon. It soothes user complaints about backward compatibility by introducing a Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate editions, providing compatibility for legacy XP applications. It has upgraded its search capabilities using OpenSearch-based Federated Search, for exploring both local and network drives as well as Intranet storage. Although we’re still stuck with Windows Explorer, the new Libraries feature has taken a leaf from Google’s Picasa photo-editing software that offers the ability to organize content stored in different foilders and group everything in a single place. The User Account Control Settings can now be adjusted: Users can choose from Never Notify, Always Notify and two in-between options. I decided to install Windows 7 on top of Vista largely out of laziness: It would be a much faster way to get started and, besides, if I backed up the entire hard disk first, I could always perform a clean install later if anything went wrong. So I used a product called Acronis True Image Home, which produced a complete backup and is marketed specifically to people like me, who get the jitters about losing their data. The installation process was surprisingly easy, though not perfect. At some point, the install program was kind enough to notify me that a few applications that would not translate easily to Windows 7. Among them: Intellipoint and Intellitype, Microsoft’s own keyboard and mouse drivers, Apple’s iTunes and Catalyst, the advanced drivers that came with my ATI video card. It didn’t mention Kaspersky Antivirus (a superb AV system) and Copernic (still the best desktop search application), which refused to run under Windows 7, and it didn’t warn me that Microsoft Office would suffer a near-fatal stroke in the process. With Acronis running, I felt a lot more secure, and easily fixed the problem by reinstalling the keyboard and mouse drivers, removing the advanced ATI video-card software, and reinstalling Kaspersky, Copernic and iTunes. Still a little panicky over Microsoft Office 2007, I went to Office Tools and ran its diagnostic application, which fixed everything. The whole cleanup process took less than an hour. Windows 7 has some new features, most of which can be classified as “nifty” instead of revolutionary. Many involve the user interface, which was named Aero with the arrival of Vista. I used to dismiss such improvements as nothing more than eye candy, but have come to see them as necessary as refreshing as body re-designs on new cars. Consumers need some new design elements to feel we are truly up to date in an industry that puts a premium on feeling we are on the cutting edge: A purring modern engine hiding inside a 1950 Nash Rambler signals that the owner is out of touch, no matter how well the car runs. And as far as the other improvements are concerned, I get the feeling for the first time that Microsoft has indeed listened to its customers and delivered features that didn’t make me wonder who the hell Microsoft had been listening to in the first place. Under the hood, Windows 7 has clearly abandoned the endless stream of security warnings that in Vista had the cumulative effect of making users feel stupid. This got particularly bad when security warnings popped up when I was installing a Microsoft product and the operating system protested that it had been made by an “unknown publisher,” and gave me a stern lecture about the dangers of installing products from unknown software vendors. These warnings about Microsoft products weren’t very common, but they appeared often enough to make you wonder if Microsoft wasn’t just crying wolf to make me feel my machine was secure. Instead, the warnings are now fewer and further between, and are therefore easier to take seriously. What helps the overall good impression is that Windows 7 feels tight, smooth and efficient. It won’t surprise many Windows users, and it isn’t revolutionary enough to win many converts — and might even make potential buyers think it isn’t worth the money now that their systems are working reasonably well with Vista or even XP. But that would be a false economy. If you’re graduating from Vista, you will be relieved that your system now behaves more logically, treats you as an intelligent person and behaves a lot less erratically; if you’re graduating from XP, however, prepare to be blown away. You will no longer have to hunt for drivers and install them as you once had to; in unprecedented numbers hardware manufacturers have been bringing Windows 7 drivers to market well in advance of the launch of Windows 7, and so the installation experience should be a dream (except for ATI’s Catalyst video software suite, which I imagine will be coming out soon). Besides, Windows 7 is so sleek and modern-looking that it offers a true sense of freshness, and it has all the features you wanted in XP but never got. Windows 7 will run on some of the new netbook laptops; Microsoft never bothered to market Vista for the netbooks, in a silent acknowledgment that its product was bloated and unwieldy. The company says it will bring out a slightly tailored version of Windows 7 for netbooks based on a dual-core Intel Atom processor. But before you think I’m some sort of blind-faith evangelist, I have to report I have some problems with Windows 7. Although networking has been improved, it still isn’t as easy as it should be. Home networking has been around long enough for Microsoft to have made it easier for people who don't really know what they're doing. The HomeGroup concept of sharing files is a neat idea, but creating it as separate from the whole concept of networking is not a good idea. There are now, after all, three words to describe home networking: The home network itself, the Workgroup and now the HomeGroup. Each is different, yet part of the same thing and introducing a new concept like the HomeGroup will simply confuse people with minds already bent out of shape trying to string their computers together. The Control Panel has been redesigned, but still requires a lot of clicking before you find your way around, or before you get accustomed to the new design. The Device Stage, a way to organize your various peripheral devices, is now a very sophisticated affair, but it’s largely just another way of looking at items you once found in your Device Manager, and leads to much the same kind of head-scratching by newbies as Device Manager did (and still does). I’d also like to add Web addresses into folders, so Windows can see the Internet as an extension of the desktop, as Microsoft has been promising all these years. I tried to create a shortcut for a Web-based game in the Games folder. But I ended up with … something … in the folder that carries the right name but doesn’t have an icon, I can’t click on it to run, I can’t right-click on it to find out where it is, and I can’t even delete it. It sits there stupidly like an atheist in church. I’m not so crazy about Internet Explorer 8. I was at wit’s end with the version that installed with Vista, because it couldn’t handle the forms used by DigitalJournal.com, even in “compatibility mode.” That now works just fine, but IE still takes ages to load and open the home page. Moreover, for all the talk last year about Explorer 8 treating every call to the Internet as a separate process, I still can’t do anything else while waiting for a page to load. Instead, users can continue using Firefox, Opera, or Google Chrome. Would I recommend Windows 7? Yes, whole-heartedly. At least to all Windows users — I’m not suggesting users of Linux or Mac OS change. But I promise anyone running XP will have a transcendental experience, and users of Vista will heave a massive sigh of relief. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the best that should be said for an operating system. And I can say that without having to feel sorry for Microsoft.

Windows versions:

Windows 7 Starter: designed for small notebook PCs, it includes features such as jump lists, Pin, Snap and Windows Search, the same range of support for hardware and software, and all the improvements Microsoft put into ease of use. Windows 7 Home Premium: Includes more family-oriented computing, including a simplified way to make a home network and the ability to share all photos, videos and music., as well as watch, pause, rewind and record TV. Full $224.95; upgrade $129.95 (Cdn.) Windows 7 Professional: Geared for productivity, allowing you to run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode and recover data with automatic backups. It includes Domain Join, which eases connecting to company networks. It also includes the home-entertainment features of the two Home editions. Full $329.95; upgrade $249.95 Windows 7 Ultimate: This version contains everything Microsoft designed for this operating system, balancing the entertainment features of Home Premium with the business capabilities of Professional, including the ability to run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode. It also encrypts data with BitLocker and BitLocker To Go. It also works in 35 languages. Full $349.95; upgrade: $279.95. Tested on:

1. Gigabyte computer running AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core CPU in 32-bit mode. Includes ATI HD-4650 graphics.

2. Intel computer running Intel Pentium D 3.20 GHz in 64-bit mode. Includes ATI Radeon HD 4600 graphics.