I created these Windows Vista / Windows 7 user icons a little while ago, and thought I’d share them here. They’re nothing special – I basically just cropped them out of a wallpaper I found. But I figured it might save someone else the work. And they look pretty good. Enjoy!
I knew it! I knew that as soon as I finished my last post on some of the things I like (and dislike) about Windows 7, that I would forget something. And I’m sure this won’t be the last of the follow-up posts.
But as I popped open my laptop’s lid, and Windows 7 sprung to life, I realized I had forgotten to mention my experiences with how it runs on a portable. The RC is the first time I’ve run it on a laptop, and I was curious to see how it would work, since there had been a lot of discussion about changes in the OS geared towards laptops.
Vista was no slouch when it came to laptops. Well, decently-powered laptops anyway. It would go to sleep relatively quickly, and it would come back from sleep in a decent amount of time as well. This is already markedly better than XP, where putting the laptop to sleep was like spinning a roulette wheel: would it come back afterwards? Your bet is as good as mine.
Windows 7 makes the sleep process even faster, though, without losing any of the stability. It always amazes me when I open the laptop lid, and in an instant the Windows 7 login screen is there waiting. Having said that, though, I was disappointed to find one minor Vista bug still hanging around: even though the login screen appears, you can’t actually type your password for a few seconds afterward. Even though the cursor is blinking in the password field as if it can accept input, it just ignores you. I’ve always felt that could have better feedback to the user.
Another thing that I’ve heard mentioned is that Windows 7 improves the most-sacred of laptop specs: battery life. I was especially interested in this, since my laptop got about 3 hours in power saver mode under Vista — good, but not great. In my very unscientific day-to-day use, Windows 7 might be getting me half an hour extra. Maybe. It’s a hard thing to measure, but that seems to be my experience so far. Not bad, but nothing really to get worked up over.
I tend not to put my laptop into hibernate mode, so I don’t have any comments on that.
Another minor thing that I was surprised about: the Dell laptop I use has built in media buttons on the front, such as volume control and media playback. Without having to install any drivers, or configure anything, these buttons worked right after setup. It was a nice surprise, as I had almost resigned myself to not being able to use these buttons until Dell released updated drivers. And, of course, all Fn controls, such as changing screen brightness, work without issue. Nice!
So overall, it does seem like Windows 7 is more laptop-friendly, keeping with the theme that Windows 7 builds atop of what already made Vista great.
My original intention with this post was to write some in depth impressions of Windows 7. I’ve been using the RC for about a week now as the primary OS on my laptop. But as I got to writing it, I realized it would be better to summarize — there are plenty of other places to get detailed info if you want it.
So let me start off with the good news: I like Windows 7. But then, I liked Windows Vista too, so perhaps my impressions aren’t to be trusted. Still, there is a lot to like here, and it definitely builds on top of what made Vista great. But, it also works to correct what was wrong with Vista — which, in my opinion, was pretty much just sluggish performance.
On a lighter note, I wanted to briefly comment about yesterday’s revelation of Windows XP Mode in Windows 7.
All in all, I think this is a pretty nifty idea. It is essentially the same as “Classic Mode” that Apple had in OS X for the first few versions. I question the decision to make this a business-only feature, but I will admit that consumers can more readily move to newer software than a business can. I will be curious to see how this behaves in practice, and whether it is as elegant and useful a solution as it appears on the surface.
In other news, I am eagerly chomping at the bit to get my paws on the Windows 7 RC. I stopped using the beta a while ago, as I didn’t want to use a beta OS as a full time system. But depending on how the RC looks, I may try to make it my primary OS. Mostly because I want to see how some of the new window management / organization features work in day to day usage. And also just to see if it is worth the cost to upgrade from Vista. I have a feeling it will be, but there’s nothing like getting a new toy and trying out all the bells and whistles. ^^
