Review: Windows 7 Ultimate

Having been a long time XP user and then upgrading to a painful Vista experience, I was interested in Windows 7.  To my surprise, the latest version of Windows has been a great improvement, though with some continued annoyances.

No review would be absolutely complete without a little context.   As a consultant, I’m constantly traveling and use a laptop exclusively.  By trade, I am also a developer and run virtual machines frequently.  As a result, I use a laptop that is a relatively new Dell Lattitude E6500, equipped with a 250 Gb hard drive and 4 Gb of RAM.  Since I have a newer machine, I’m running the x64 version of Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (I didn’t wait for the GA version).

Overall, my experiences have been positive.  Windows 7 hangs less frequently than Vista.  On those few occasions that Windows has hung, I was able to recover without rebooting – often by simply logging out and back on (a trait Windows 7 seems to share with my iMac).  I also very rarely reboot my laptop and use the hibernate function regularly.  Finally, performance has been good; my laptop seems to run faster on Windows 7 than it did on Vista, though startup times tend to be about the same.

One of the most important metrics I monitor regularly is memory usage. Windows 7 seems to consume far less RAM than Vista (which was the x86 Business version).  According to the CPU/Memory gadget, my RAM usage was generally 50% or higher with Vista (it was never under 50% and often in the 70 to 80% range).  Running Windows 7, my memory usage has been about 30%, peaking at about 60% with loads of applications running.  As it happens, I’m writing this blog article with Windows Live Writer, with IE 8, Visual Studio 2008 and Outlook all running in the background; my memory usage is 52%. 

Here is a list of a few other positive changes I’ve noticed since upgrading:

1. With Vista and XP, the task bar listed large icon buttons for all running programs.  If you have, for example, more than one session of IE, it was difficult to figure out which button on the task bar corresponded to the session you wanted (sometimes it listed multiple IE buttons or a single button with a number indicating the number of sessions).  With Windows 7, a preview is provided when you roll over the button on the task bar. 
   
   
   
2. When you right-click on task bar elements (either in a toolbar or with a running program), you get frequently accessed functions or files associated with that application.  This is terrific when trying to find a previously opened web page without opening IE or opening a document through Word without opening Word.  Below is the context menu for LiveWriter.   Microsoft calls this functionality “Jump Lists.”
   
   
   
3. You can start InPrivate browsing with IE 8 without having to first load IE through the IE jump list.  Just right click on the IE icon and choose InPrivate Browsing from the menu.
   
    
   
4. The desktop context menu provides more options directly without having to dig through the control panel.  This feature is particularly helpful when trying to change resolution (which I do frequently for presentations), adding gadgets or getting to other personalization functions (which Vista provided as well).
   
   
   
5. The Print Management console has improved managing print devices on your computer.  You can view all printers, queues and access common functions in a much more rational way.
   
   
6. Wireless networking connections and some portions of the management are much more convenient.  I’m still not comfortable with the “dumbing down” of some of the management features, but this one is pretty nice.
   
   
   

There are, however, some areas where Windows continues to be a source of frustration:

1. The User Account Control component is still a pain.  When making relatively minor changes, I’m prompted to confirm.  I totally understand the need for the feature, but it’s not clear to me that the implementation, even in Windows 7 (though improved from Vista), is the solution.
2. I still can’t find what I’m looking for in the control panel.  This was the same criticism I had with Vista; the new layout and organization is no more clear than the XP version.  The difference, unfortunately, is that I got used to the XP organization.  I was specifically looking for the BlueTooth devices listing and couldn’t find it.  I’m sure it’s in the “Network Devices” section somewhere, but where?
3. The upgrade process, for me, did not work.  I did upgrade from Vista Business x86 to Windows 7 Ultimate x64.  I suppose the change between 32 and 64 bit would be one explanation, but it seems as if the upgrade should be possible if you boot from the DVD.  At the very least, Microsoft should be able to carry over the OS settings even if they’re not able to preserve the application settings.
4. I’m struggling to understand the premium put on the Ultimate edition.  I get the nice themes, the games that are completely uninteresting and the ability to operate in 35 languages.  What else?  Not really sure what the extra money buys me.
5. I still don’t get why a business would want to play, pause and/or record live TV on their company laptops.  Isn’t that what Windows Media Center was all about during the XP era?  Doesn’t this functionality take up space and create more opportunities for bugs and vulnerabilities?  I understand why the home version and Ultimate might include this functionality, but why Professional?
6. I really liked the Quick Launch toolbar and being able to create a task-bar centric collection of frequently used applications.  Unfortunately, in Windows 7, the Quick Launch is no longer part of the standard configuration.  To make matters worse, I had to search forums to figure out how to get the Quick Launch back. 
7. Microsoft makes a point of highlighting Aero Shake, which enables someone to click on a Window, shake your mouse and have all other open windows minimize.  O.K….  not sure about this one.  Using my laptop’s touchpad mouse, this feature is kind of a pain and I’m not sure I see it as all that useful.  I’d prefer the disk space and memory back that’s eaten up by the shake.

While I have some criticisms of Windows 7, I do like it better than Vista (an understatement).  Microsoft seems to have learned from some its past mistakes and developed a good operating system.  It remains to be seen whether the next version of Windows will be a home run for Microsoft, but it’s certainly better than the obvious disappointment Vista has been.

Issues with Virtual PC 2007 and Vista

I recently upgraded my primary laptop to Vista Ultimate.  Reluctantly I gave up the security of Windows XP and the comforts of a long-lived laptop build -- not that XP was my dream OS, but I had gotten used to its quirks and I knew what to expect.  That said, it was getting long in the tooth and Vista did have a certain allure.

After the upgrade (actually a reformat and a clean install), I installed Virtual PC 2007 SP1.  When I tried to start my primary development machine, I got the following error:  "The virtual machine [VPC NAME] can't be started because it is being used by another program, or marked as read-only...."  Once my mild stoke abated, I did what every good developer does... I Googled the error and found the following articles describing other experiences with the same (or similar issue):

• http://www.aspdeveloper.net/Virtual_PC/rn-739-41912_Cant_start_any_VM_under_my_rstricted_account_(it_used_to_work).aspx
• http://doubliewkay.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!6B6E578C36BB444C!445.entry
• http://blogs.msdn.com/tolong/archive/2007/07/31/having-problem-opening-vpc-in-vista.aspx

The trouble was that all of these articles focused on security changes in Vista: either the current user (me) doesn't have access to the files or 2) for whatever reason, VPC needed to run with elevated permissions (as an Administrator).  As it turns out, I did have to adjust permissions on the files.  There were some remnants of permissions left over from my XP machine.  Unfortunately, resetting the permissions didn't fix the problem. 

In looking through various settings, I noticed a curious attribute setting - the "read only" flag appeared to be set.  Unfortuately, unchecking the read-only flag on the folder where my virtual machine was stored seemed to have no effect.  Every time I clicked O.K., closed the properties page and reopened to check the setting, I was presented with exactly the same situation -- the read only flag appeared to be set.  This lead to another Google search and another wild goose chase, that allowed me to learn the read only attribute mysteriously getting set is something that a good many other folks are struggling with when using Vista.  And, in fact, I learned that the read only attribute is only settable at the file level, not at the folder level.  You can click on the check box next to read only flag all day long and nothing will happen to the folder -- it will, however, set the flag on the underlying files.   That said, the read only flag on the individual files was unchecked in my case.

To cut the chase, I had to drop to a command prompt and use the ATTRIB command (DOS old school).  I ran the following:

ATTRIB -R G:\*.* /S 

In this case, G: is the USB drive where my virtual machine is stored.  Once I ran this command, my virtual machine started right up.  Best part... it only took five hours, lots of Google searches and a VERY frustrating, non-productive call to Microsoft support (grist for another post).

From this experience I learned a few things:

1. MSDN incidents cannot be used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as the web site suggests (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/bb266240.aspx).  In fact, even though development is my business and not being able to write code, for me, is by definition "being down,"  Microsoft wanted to charge me $500 to open a "critical business" incident (apparently my MSDN incident can't be used for "production" problems...curious).  If I didn't want to go that route, I had to wait until tomorrow to speak with Virtual PC support.  Why?  Apparently after being transferred to various groups no less than five times, having the CSR tell me "my machine is updating and I can't generate a case number for you" and then being hung up on, the last CSR said I missed Virtual PC support by 7 minutes -- she couldn't transfer because I'd be rerouted back to the level one CSRs.  So much for support.
2. Google is awesome for finding answers to problems -- assuming you know what to search for.  Having done this a few times, I evening got anecdotal solutions that lead to a fix.
3. Vista is generally a good operating system -- admittedly my experience beyond this problem -- has been positive.  However, these "minor" security changes seemed to have caused great consternation.

Hopefully this post will prevent others from suffering my fate.