I had been very, very skeptical about all the hype and hoopla over Windows 7 that started late last year. Because that's just the way it works with MS operating systems, you hear nothing by good about them when they're in the beta and release candidate stages, then get ready for the cyclone of suck at launch.
I've played around with Windows 7 in both the beta and release candidate stages, but until release I had only loaded it in virtual machines. Last month, the hard drive in my laptop died, and I decided since I was going to have to reinstall Windows on the new one, I might as well load up the Windows 7 release candidate and see how it does on real, modern hardware. If I don't like it, I wipe it out and put XP back on.
Windows 7 installed in around 10 minutes. Upon it's first boot, it had drivers for just about all my stuff, including my wireless adapter. The graphics driver it had loaded was passable at best, so I went and "real" drivers from nVidia. Everything esle was found and usuable, even my fingerprint reader.
But the main reason I'm writing about this blog is to talk about 7's performance, both overall, and on the gaming front. Now, this laptop came with Vista, and I hated it. Performance was horribly sluggish, and I had enough after about 2 months and wiped it and put XP on, and never looked back. XP was better overall, but there were still some things that drove me nuts. From a cold boot to desktop, it was about 1 minute. Launching Firefox for the first time after boot took - no joke - around 30 seconds. Most of that is Firefox's memory hoggish coding, but still, it's something you don't see in the Linux or Mac versions quite as badly.
On Windows 7, I'm at a desktop in around 30 seconds or less. Firefox launches for the first time in 10. Games that have/had initially long loading screens like Spore & Mass Effect load unbelievably quick at this point. One game that surprised me the most was Fallout 3. It was generally very playable on this machine in XP, but the game slowed to a halt in the area around Rivet City with all the water. I had to turn all the details way down if I was going to go to the Jefferson memorial. Now, it's smooth as butter. I've never seen a new Windows operating system actually make an IMPROVEMENT in FPS on a game.
My next test is going to be Grand Theft Auto 4. Again, it was playable on this laptop, but only by sacrificing resolution and details so it looked about the same as the console versions. I'll post my findings when I'm done.
But things are looking good for Windows 7, I say. I've got my upgrade copy ordered. If it's this good in the pre-release states, I can only imagine what it will be like when it's "officially" supported.