Windows 7 BETA gets local thumbs up

Selwyn De Erneste trades under his own name and provides local IT support and communication services.

He told CRN that he has faced a lot of problems with the “infamous and resource hungry Vista”.

“These problems are similar to those problems faced with Windows ME,” he said.

“All of the systems I have been supplying to my clients have been installed with or downgraded to XP.”

According to De Erneste he downloaded Windows 7 last week and installed it on a laptop which he is testing.

“So far I have found windows 7 to be quicker and more stable than Vista,” he claimed.

“The operating performance has been comparable to XP, maybe even a little better.”

However he feels Microsoft has to have an upgrade option from XP.

“With the number of users who have held back from Vista, most will probably wait until there systems need to be replaced if they can’t upgrade directly from XP to Win 7,” he said.

“Windows 7 does appear to be a great OS with a vast improvement over Vista, but Microsoft needs to enable users to upgrade from earlier systems in the same way they could when XP and 2000 were released.”

CRN reader, Luke J. Stephens - customer service consultant at IBM said he has loaded Windows 7 onto his father’s workstation and his laptop.

“Tunning noticeably faster than Windows Vista and equivalent to Windows XP if not faster which is one hell of an improvement.

“The effects, graphics wise and functionality is improved, nothing feels like it has been reduced from XP or Vista's functionality and the response of these features is great.”

However all drivers were found on install and the Windows 7 Update feature works more in his favour letting him customise easily.

Stephens said he got his father to do an upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 - all was well for a little while - now he is getting a blue screen of death (BSOAD) a fair bit.

He told CRN he had done some research and it appears to be a driver issue or an anti-virus program incompatible with Windows 7.

“That's fine, they're not generic programs they are meant to be built accustomed to the operating system so there are some workarounds on the net so all should be fine,” he said.

“I think it’s to be expected to having BSOAD's at this point in development as it’s the testing phase for Microsoft.

“I'd rather have these problems now than on release day!”

Stephens claimed the reason the performance is so good in Windows 7 is that the account team is not in control of the programmers deadlines.

“Windows Vista was only released due to the account team, the engineers knew it was not ready and said so in some news reports but yet it was still released and all the bugs fixed after release,” he said.

“This time feels different, the team have released a public beta of an operating system, has that ever been done in Microsoft's books before?

“Having this OS out to so many people for free is one hell of a testing tool, any issues that people have will actually be looked at and updates made readily available and implemented before release.”

Stephens said he liked that because it meant he won’t have to wait for a year for a service pack to fix bugs that should have been fixed in testing phase.

“Well done to Microsoft I say, Windows 7 is the best OS to date that I have used for sure and it won't be the last as every OS update/upgrade is building on the strengths of the past operating systems,” he said.

“I do hope the Open Source community give Microsoft a run for its money at some stage as they have the community power to develop faster than Microsoft but have not quite got how to harness that power yet.

“When the day comes competition will be very interesting.”

However Paul Van Middlesworth, owner of IT service provider, The Computer Factory in San Marcos California, questioned Microsoft’s intention of only allowing upgrades of Windows 7, from Vista.

According to Van Middlesworth, his company builds their own brand of PC and services all makes.

“Since Vista's release we have built nearly 1000 PC workstations,” he said.
“Only one that actually booted to Vista although we have sold several downgrade rights systems.”

He felt Microsoft was trying to boost Vista sales by letting it be known that XP cannot be directly upgraded to W7.

“We are under the impression that 32 bit Vista (probably 80 percent of what's out there) also cannot be directly upgraded to 64 bit W7 (anticipated to be 80 percent of W7 sales),” he said.

“We are having difficulty confirming this info.

“If true MS should be warning everyone that unless they buy a system with 64 bit Vista they will be unable to UG to 64 bit W7 and if this is true it is a really big deal.”