Refreshment from the Tech department

Hello Folks,

It's been a while since I wrote stuff because of the installation process of a new HDD to my MacBook Pro. Been quite happy with the result so far. With the new Hitachi TravelStar 7k320 320 gb, 7200RPM 16MB cache memory practically I've got almost zero loading time. I fully boot OS X Leopard in less than 5 seconds, fully boot Windows Vista home premium sp1 in 7 seconds or less through my boot camp. With the spaces three times bigger than the original HDD (320GB vs 120GB) finally I had rooms to breath. To utilize that, I allocated 60GB for Windows Vista, the rest for my beloved OS X leopard with VmWare Fusion* installed. Time to experimenting with all the latest operating system currently available right now.

*For those who don't know, VmWare use for running Operating System in the virtualization environment; Virtualization itself means it executes application like it was in the real machine but actually its not.

First victim, Windows 7.

Although its still on the RC version( Release Candidate) this latest iteration of Windows post Bill Gates era already drawn a lot of praise from the IT community normally regarded as "Vista done right". With Vista barely improving through all the latest updates, public opinion regarding Windows Vista already sinking deep down in the negativity point.

I personally thought that Vista was a very good OS really a major improvement from Windows XP. From Direct X 10, new interface, bit locker encryption and mirror backup function to name some of the features. Its good IF you have the computing resources to run it. Indeed I couldn't agree more that Vista is really a resource hungry OS. I reckon minimum of 2GB of ram and core duo processor then Vista can run normally. With normal i meant light use such as using word processor. If you plan to use for HD video encoding or gaming, additional computing resources may needed.

Thus as a regular user of Windows especially XP and Vista I would like too see how well Windows 7 perform compare to the older Windows version. Lets begin!

For the testing purpose I will use MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 duo, 4GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM 320GB HDD 7200RPM. The VmWare is set to run only on 1 CPU with 1GB RAM HDD spaces 20 GB. Installation CD will be using PC Authority Windows 7 RC version free CD.

Installation

Straight forward as usual, Insert the CD while VmWare Automatically detects the content of the CD. As Windows 7 is not official yet, Vm detect it as Windows Vista installation CD which still fine just a matter of renaming it. From there the installation process given you the option to choose which version of Windows 7 would you like to install. Of course I'll go for the Ultimate version the most complete version of Windows 7.

Then normal protocol as usual while the file is being copied from the installation cd's to the HDD. Somehow the installation process resemble Windows Vista installation.


It took about 10 minutes to completely copied all the installation files which is quite fast then it proceeds to updates. I somehow likes the updates screen.

Finalizing the installation it welcome me with a quite unique welcome screen then into the home view. Easy breezy and fast!

Interface


As you can see the interface somehow Vista look-alike with the addition of taskbar positioned in the bottom of the screen next to the start icon which I'm pretty sure its look and work exactly the same like Dock from OS X. The ultimate version includes several themes to choose from. Great thing about that its not about changing the display, it also changes the sound; the music and some icon. There are some issues with my virtual machine setting though, I somehow couldn't run the aero function let alone test it due to graphic card problem. Will try to fix that later on.
The taskbar also provides a mean of notification by flashing the icon. Gadgets which firstly introduce in Vista has an improvement as well; they can be move anywhere you like across the screen where previously it is just only a static sidebar.

By right clicking the mouse in the icon on the taskbar, it reveals the information recently use for that particular icon. In my example I use windows media player to reveal the playlist I recently played.

New windows update interface now clearly defines what updates are important or just optional. It is also gave clearer explanation about what updates are we going to install.

Performance

I couldn't manage to officially benchmark the performance in comparison to Vista, however through the minimum setting I set on the virtual machine as I stated before; Windows 7 ran extremely well almost without hassle. Although running video while opening several different application at the same time produce a little bit lagging in the process. Overall the performance was good.

Important Features

• XP Mode

In simple manner, it virtualize/ simulate the legacy environment of Windows XP on Windows 7. It came as two parts add on and you can download it for free in the Microsoft website. This add on will provide us with fully legitimate XP service pack 3 to run as a virtual machine. However this add require us to have a processor's that support virtualisation and my core 2 duo processor is not on the list (how sad).

• Optional security

Remember UAC? (User Account Control) yes the borderline annoying security first introduce in Vista. On Vista you either disable it completely but risky or annoy you completely but more secure. This time around you can set the scale on how the UAC will be put into action.


Notes

That's about some of the new exciting features of Windows 7 that I found useful. Although there are a couple more or should I say heaps the limitation of hardware and computing resources due to the virtual machine environment and the OS release candidate version it can't be run properly and fully reviewed. For the latest and exciting news about Windows 7 I will update it here. Check out soon! -R-

At the very least, Windows 7 truly shows some promises and excitement compare to the previous iteration of Windows (Vista). The fact that Apple will release its latest iteration of OS X in September code name "Snow Leopard" truly will challenge the very existence of Microsoft OS as the industrial standard. Not only that, the growing usage of open source OS such as Linux base system and the latest Chrome OS from Google really push Microsoft to up their game in order to compete in the tough market. Community disappointed byWindows ME Microsoft answer it Windows XP, now Windows Vista really let us down will Windows 7 be the answer? or new history are on the making as Microsoft crumbles. -R-