Windows 7 Beta 32bit - informal Review

Let me start by saying that I am in no way a professional writer or reviewer of technology. I am merely an amatuer with ideas I need to get out. Consider this a formal disclaimer.

I have been waiting to get the Windows 7 Beta since the 7th, earlier this week. Following Engadget's CES coverage brought me to the "legal" release of the Beta this Friday. I was up at midnight Friday morning, to be one of the 2.5 million who would recieve a key. Unfortunately, the download and registration page did not open until near midday here (central US time). The servers crashed shortly after that. I stayed awake again well into Saturday morning to wait for the servers to come back up. Finally, at near midday today, I recieved my key and download.

I quickly rushed out to buy some DVD-Rs. That involved a trip to a nearby mall. Apparently a lot of people shop on Saturdays, go figure. That's why I shop online. Well that and price. But hey, $10 for a 25 pack of DVD-Rs isn't such a bad deal these days.

Burned it, swapped out a hard drive in my main desktop, and booted it up.

My main desktop is:

Phenom X4 9600BE @ 2.3Ghz
4GB DDR2 800
EVGA 9800GT 512MB
250GB 7200RPM IDE HD
Pioneer 20x IDE DVD+-RW
PCP&C 500W Silencer PSU
19" LCD @ 1440 x 900

Just for reference. My main OS is Windows Server 2008 retooled as a desktop OS running on a 320GB 7200RPM SATA HD, so that is the only difference.

Install
Went smoothly. Just as easy as Vista, but slightly faster. Reformatted the drive fully, so it was very simple. Took 25 minutes from first boot to full desktop. Instantly recognized all of my hardware, even my pesky PCI wireless card that NO operating system to date has installed by default. Installed my NVIDIA drivers via Windows Update. Nice.

First Boot
Fast, I was suprised. Looks like Vista, except for the neat boot up graphics and new taskbar, but more on that below.

Performance
For comparison, I've never run Vista on this specific pc, but I use Server 2008 every day. Since Server 2008 is already a stripped down version of Vista, I wouldn't expect to notice much of a difference. But for the sake of semi-professionalism, the number of processes at the moment (running 3 gadgets, three tabs in IE) is 37. That's right on par with Server 2008, which is 41 at boot. I've been using 7 for about two hours now, and I've been playing with everything. In total I've had nearly 30 seperate tabs spread across probably 9 windows in IE. Several Youtube pages have been opened, and Pandora and Hulu are currently open. I've run most of the applications included with the build. All of that, and I am using 33.34% of my RAM, which is exactly 1125MB (only 3326MB are available, this is the 32 bit build). My Experience Index is a 5.5

Processor: 7.1

Memory (RAM): 7.2

Graphics: 7.9

Gaming graphics: 5.9

Primary hard disk: 5.5

Obviously my slow IDE drive is hurting that score. It is still very snappy, with absolutely no hiccups or slowdowns. I can't say it's ultimately faster or slower, that'll have to wait until I can put it through its paces.

Form & Function
It's pretty like Vista. But now the aesthetics seem to serve a better purpose. Transparencies, for instance. The gadgets I have running include my Twitter feed, the weather, and a system monitor. The monitor and weather gadgets are on top of all windows, and 40% transparent. Works great. Like on OS X, except I don't have to hit a button to see them, they're just right there. And please, don't complain about me mentioning OS X. They are competing OS's, get over it. The new taskbar is also very visually appealing. Especially the peek function. I LOVE the peek function, and I've only had two hours to use it. Haven't quite gotten used to right clicking on the taskbar yet, but I'll get it eventually. It has great potential, I admit that very easily. I like the window docking. I'm using that right now actually to dock two IE windows. One with Hulu showing an episode of Family Guy (all of my media is on my other hard drive unfortunately) and the other with this window. Overall I'm very pleased with the new features and functionality.

Internet Explorer
I almost feel dirty for using Internet Explorer 8. Believe it or not, it's usable. Very usable. I've been a Chrome user since it was released because I liked the speed and intuitive way it worked. IE 8 is fast. Suprisingly fast. It hasn't crashed once. It hung once, but it was after I configured it for the first time and it tried to open 4 tabs at once. Only for 5 seconds or so, and it was while I was running the Experience Index tests. So far it has been very easy to use as well. I can right click on anything and search for it, or blog it, or translate it. It even has built in RSS feed support. It even automatically adds the feeds to the desktop gadget. I like that. It does seem to use a bit of RAM, but so does Chrome. So does Firefox actually, moreso than the others.

Accessories
Sadly, still no native Zune support. But my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone pops right up, just like in Server 2008. When I plug in my USB headset everything plays and records like it should, so that isn't different. Mice, keyboards, all good.

Yeah right about now I sound like a closet Microsoft fanboy. A zune? A WM 6.1 phone? MS undies? Perhaps. I guess it doesn't help that I also have a MSDN Academic Alliance account and a Dreamspark account? Oh, and the fact that I stayed up two days straight to get this Beta key.

I'm running out of things to review about it. I'll get some games on it as soon as possible to test for differences. Consider this my inaugural post, the last one was too short :P