Microsoft recently stuck an ISO image of the Windows 7 Release Candidate on their website – a 2-and-some gigabyte DVD designed to get consumer feedback. Well, I’m not going to be loading it as a permanent OS (not when it’s supposed to expire at about the time Win 7 is supposed to hit shelves), so instead I’ll be testing it out through Microsoft’s other neat free piece of software: Virtual PC. (Because I’m too lazy to get Sun VirtualBox.)
The installation did take a while longer than expected – probably because it’s emulated and only has 512 MB allocated to it – but seems smooth so far, with no real hiccups and very few points at which the user needs to make decisions. Might be good for unattended installs, but rather troubling for those of us that like options (me, in other words).
One thing that did rather trouble me about the installer: it’s almost ridiculously vague at telling you when things are happening. The install process is separated into these five steps:
Copying Windows files
Expanding Windows files (The only portion of the installer to have a percentage)
Installing features
Installing updates
Completing installation
About the most you’ll get to tell how long the install will take is the bar graph along the bottom of the screen, which only seems to move when a step is completed.
After about ten minutes’ worth of installing and restarts, the system begins to boot with “Setup is preparing your computer for first use”, which is always a good sign, especially when it comes with a neat little animated throbber. Once that’s finished – it’s off to set up my user account and settings. I spend a few minutes digging out the product key Microsoft gave me on the website. It rather troubles me that the keyboard input is a little laggy – I assume at this point that it’s just because there are no video card drivers installed. (What video card does Virtual PC emulate?)
Another hiccup occurs in setting up the network. I specify that this is a computer on a home network, and it spends a few minutes attempting to make a connection. Seems a little longer than most other Windows – but again, it might just be the emulator. Then we get to watch Windows “finalize” its settings. Nope, sorry Windows, your settings will not be final until I’m through picking at them. =P
(I notice at this point that the RC is in fact for Windows 7 Ultimate – which might account for the performance issues. Maybe I can turn all that extra crap off as soon as it finishes rebooting.)The system spends a nigh absurd amount of time setting up personalized settings for themes, Windows itself, and Windows Media Player (which I would have liked to ask that the installer not load on my system by default – good ol’ MS up to their same old tricks). The window that claims it’s setting up my “personalized” settings disappears – a sign of life, perhaps? Yep, I called it – the taskbar appears, with the Recycle Bin on the desktop and everything that goes with it.
Naturally, the first thing I do with a Windows install is tweak the hell out of it, so I hop into the Control Panel, namely the Display Properties so I can turn off all the extra Aero stuff and make this thing actually run decently. So far, MS’s claims of Windows 7 being faster than Vista are a little doubtful.
The Display Properties seems to take MS’s usual stance of “accessibility over proper terminology” – the Adjust Resolution tab is simply a series of radio buttons that adjusts font and icon sizes. The “Change Appearance” tab is where you can actually change your screen resolution and video settings, evidently forcing a minimum of 32-bit color.
Not finding the special effect switches I’m looking for, I jump to the Performance control panel. This lets me detect my system’s “Windows Experience” rating. If my time testing the Vista RC is any indication, it will likely get 1.0 on everything. Surprisingly, the performance analyzer detects right away that I am running inside a virtual machine and outright refuses to give me any performance rating whatsoever. So I just jump to the “Visual Effects” options and tell it to adjust for Best Performance. Ah, much better.
The new appearance of Windows 7’s taskbar is at first frightening, displaying icons twice as large and not differentiating between Quick Launch buttons and taskbar buttons. Opening the Taskbar properties and telling it to use small icons resets the taskbar behavior to its Windows 98+ behavior, of taskbar buttons with text labels and quick launch buttons being considered separately. However, I can’t seem to figure out how to disable the Quick Launch toolbar itself (a source of frustration for me, because I tend to accidentally click on the Quick Launch buttons).
Interestingly, the default Quick Launch buttons – Internet Explorer (puke), Windows Explorer (ehh…), and Windows Media Player (ugh) – all expand into their own taskbar buttons when their respective programs are running. Strange. What if the user wants to open more than one Explorer window?
Changing one of these settings causes the User Account Control to pop up. I can see that becoming a severe annoyance, so I turn that off at earliest convenience.
Upon actually starting to use Windows 7 for real programs – like Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Internet Explorer (though the latter’s status as a “real” program is debatable) – I find that Solitaire suffers from severe performance issues, as does Minesweeper, and Internet Explorer fails to load a page stored on the hard drive without Windows considering it an unresponsive program and attempting to close it.
In honest conclusion, I believe that while Windows 7 might supposedly run smoother than Vista, it certainly remains unusably slow and unstable while running in a virtualized system. Not that this really proves anything, but I’m rather hesitant to load this up natively!