Category Archives: windows 7

microsoft, security, windows, windows 7

Have Windows OEM vendors learnt anything from Apple?

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I’ve just set up a new consumer Windows 7 PC – it was HP’s Compaq Presario CQ5231UK, not bad value at £399 (VAT included) with Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93 Ghz), 3GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit – yes, 64-bit Windows really is mainstream now – 500GB hard drive and NVIDIA G210 graphics.

For comparison, the cheapest current Apple Mac is the Mini at £499 – it’s not directly comparable since its neat compact size is worth a premium, but it is slightly less well specified with slower processor, 2GB RAM and 160GB drive. As for an iMac, this comes with a screen but costs more than twice as much as the HP Compaq.

A good deal then; but have Microsoft’s efforts to make Windows 7 “quieter” and less intrusive been wrecked by OEM vendors who cannot resist bundling deals with 3rd parties, otherwise known as crapware?

I draw your attention to my interview with Microsoft’s Bill Buxton last year, when I raised this point. He said:

Everybody in that food chain gets it now. Everybody’s motivated to fix it. Thinking about the holistic experience is much easier now than it was two years ago.

I was interested therefore to see what sort of experience HP delivers with one of its new home PCs. Unfortunately I forgot to keep a list, but I removed a number of add-ons that the user agreed were unwanted, including:

I also removed a diagnostics tool called PC-Doctor and an HP utility that stuck itself prominently on the desktop, HP Advisor Dock. It is possible that these tools might in some circumstances be useful, though I’m wary. I have no idea why HP has decided to supply its own Dock accessory after Microsoft’s efforts with the Windows 7 Taskbar.

We left in place an application called HP Games which is a branded version of WildTangent ORB and includes some free games.

The short answer is that the Windows ecosystem has not changed. The deal is that your cheap PC is subsidised by the trialware that comes with it. Another issue is OEM utilities – like HP’s Advisor Dock – which jar with the careful design Microsoft put into Windows 7 and offer overlapping functionality with what is built in.

In mitigation, Windows 7 runs so well on current hardware that even this budget PC offers snappy performance. I also had no difficulty removing the unwanted add-ons. The speed of setup – number of restarts – was much better than I recall from the last Toshiba laptop I set up.

Nevertheless, on the basis of this example there is still work to do if the experience of starting with a Windows PC is to come close to that offered by the Mac. Further, bundling anti-malware software that requires a subscription is actually a security risk, since a proportion of users will not renew and therefore end up without updates. I would be interested in other reports.

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security, windows, windows 7

Sophos Windows 7 anti-virus test tells us nothing we don’t already know

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Sophos is getting good publicity for its latest sales pitch virus test on Windows 7. This tells us:

We grabbed the next 10 unique samples that arrived in the SophosLabs feed to see how well the newer, more secure version of Windows and UAC held up. Unfortunately, despite Microsoft’s claims, Windows 7 disappointed just like earlier versions of Windows. The good news is that, of the freshest 10 samples that arrived, 2 would not operate correctly under Windows 7.

Unfortunately Chester Wisniewski from Sophos is vague about his methodology, though he does say that Windows 7 was set up in its default state and without anti-virus installed. The UAC setting was on its new default, which is less secure (and intrusive) than the default in Windows Vista.

My presumption is that he copied each virus to the machine and executed it – and was apparently disappointed (or more likely elated) to discover that 8 out of 10 examples infected the machine.

It might be more accurate to say that he infected the machine, when he copied the virus to it and executed it.

I am not sure what operating system would pass this test. What about a script, for example, that deleted all a user’s documents? UAC would not attempt to prevent that; users have the right do delete their own documents if they wish. Would that count as a failure?

Now, it may be that Wisniewski means that these executables successfully escalated their permissions. This means, for example, that they might have written to system locations which are meant to be protected unless the user passes the UAC prompt. That would count as some sort of failure – although Microsoft has never claimed that UAC will prevent it, particularly if the user is logged on with administrative rights.

If this were a serious study, we would be told what the results were if the user is logged on with standard user rights (Microsoft’s long-term goal), and what the results were if UAC is wound up to its highest level (which I recommend).

Even in that case, it would not surprise me if some of the malware succeeded in escalating its permissions and infecting system areas, though it would make a more interesting study. The better way to protect your machine is not to execute the malware in the first place. Unfortunately, social engineering means that even skilled users make mistakes; or sometimes a bug in the web browser enables a malicious web site to install malware (that would also be a more interesting study). Sometimes a user will even agree to elevate the malware’s rights – UAC cannot prevent that.

My point: the malware problem is too important to trivialise with this sort of headline-grabbing, meaningless test.

Nor do I believe the implicit message in Wisniewski’s post, that buying and installing Sophos will make a machine secure. Anti-virus software has by and large failed to protect us, though undoubtedly it will prevent some infections.

See also this earlier post about UAC and Windows security, which has links to some Microsoft statements about it.

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.net, adobe, silverlight, software development, windows, windows 7

WPF not Windows Forms gets the Windows 7 love

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Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie has a blog post today about what’s new in Windows Presentation Foundation 4, and one of the things he mentions is Windows 7 multitouch support – as also described in this walkthrough – and integration with the Windows 7 taskbar, jump lists, icon overlays and so on. Taskbar support is wrapped in the System.Windows.Shell namespace in PresentationFramework.dll.

This means that Microsoft is making it easy for .NET developers to support Windows 7 in WPF applications. However it is not extending the same love to developers using Windows Forms, the older GUI framework. That said, there is always the Windows API Code Pack which covers many Windows 7 features including the taskbar and jump lists, or you can do your own COM and native code interop. No doubt with a bit of effort all the features can be be integrated into a Windows Forms application.

Still, there’s no doubt that Microsoft is now steering us towards WPF rather than Windows Forms for new desktop development. About time, you may say, considering that WPF first arrived in 2006. While that’s true, there have been good reasons to be cautious about adoption. WPF apps use more resources than Windows Forms applications, require the .NET Framework 3.0 or higher, and for a long time were talked down even by Microsoft as unsuitable for line of business applications.

That tune has now changed, though when you consider the large numbers of existing Windows Forms applications, and the fact that developers contemplating radical revisions or new projects may well be looking at web or rich internet clients, WPF is still something of a hard sell.

On the other hand, the improvements Guthrie describes are significant, not only for Windows 7 features, but also key areas like cached composition for graphics, which can greatly improve performance, and a new text rendering API.

It’s also worth noting that Windows Forms was never a great framework. It wraps the old Windows GUI API which makes resizable layouts and scaling for different display resolutions difficult, as well as lacking all the multimedia and effects goodness in WPF. Another factor is that WPF is designer friendly, with its own Expression Blend design tool. Windows Forms has nothing like that.

WPF has a family connection to Silverlight, which was originally called WPF Everywhere. Microsoft’s idea is that we code in WPF for the desktop, and transition to Silverlight for applications that require broad reach. So far though, mass migration to WPF has not happened, and Silverlight has an independent life as a platform for browser-hosted .NET applications that work cross-platform. Developers have many other choices for broad reach applications, including HTML and JavaScript, Java, and Adobe Flash.

Is it possible that broad adoption for Windows 7 could see renewed interest in WPF and Windows development? I think it will happen to a limited degree, but will not really disrupt the underlying trend towards web and cross-platform.

cloud computing, microsoft, windows, windows 7, xbox

Microsoft quarterly results: server and tools shine, overall decline

Microsoft has reported its results for the quarter ending 30th Sept 2009. I’ve got into the habit of making a small table to help make sense of the figures:

Quarter ending Sept 30th 2009 vs quarter ending Sept 30th 2008, $millions

Segment Revenue % change Profit % change
Client (Windows) 2620 -38.8 1463 -52.17
Server and Tools 3434 0.50 1283 22.89
Online 490 –5.80 -480 -49.53
Business (Office) 4404 -11.1 2863 -11.37
Entertainment and devices 1891 -0.11 312 96.22

A quick glance tells you that Windows suffered a sharp decline, though Microsoft says this is because it has deferred $1.47 billion of Windows 7 upgrade revenue, and that adding this back would reduce the decline to 4% year on year.

Note that even with the deferral, Windows is highly profitable.

The star here is server and tools, growing in the downturn and delivering strongly increased profits. I doubt tools counts for much of this; I’m guessing it reflects the positive reception for Server 2008.

Online is as dismal as ever. Clearly the Live properties are still not performing. Presuming Azure is in this category, it’s possible that this will start to turn this round; that is more likely I guess than an improvement in the fortunes of existing products such as Bing.

Office strikes me as pretty good bearing in mind the weak economy and that Microsoft is now talking about Office 2010. Entertainment and devices ticking along but nothing special.

I’m guessing Windows 7 will deliver Microsoft a great next quarter no matter what; but when if ever will it be profitable online?

Disclaimer: I am not a financial analyst, and hold no shares in companies about which I write. Please do not misconstrue this as investment advice; I know nothing about the subject.

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microsoft, windows 7

A year of writing about Windows 7

I’ve written quite a bit about Windows 7 over the last 12 months. Some of it is practical how-to stuff, some review, some comment. I started trying to round it all up then realised there is too much, believe it or not what follows is not complete.

Why so much? The reason is the level of interest. Although Microsoft is the company we love to hate, many of us use its stuff day-in, day-out and want to track what it is up to.

Windows 7 early promise- Passes the Vista test October 28 2008 in The Register

Windows 7 may be less than a year away 29 October 2008 good prophecy on ITJOBLOG

Windows 7 preview, October 30 2008 in The Guardian. “this release promises to be one users will actually enjoy.”

Should you wait for Windows 7 before buying a new PC? 8 Jan 2009 “Yes, you should – even though the suggestion will dismay PC manufacturers and retailers who would prefer that you buy something now to help their sales.”

How good is Windows 7? I argue that, well, it is still Windows. On ITJOBLOG

First Windows 7 beta puts fresh face on Vista The Register 8 Jan 2009

Apple Dock vs Windows 7 taskbar 12 January 2009

Review of Beta 1 in The Guardian, 15 Jan 2009

New in Windows 7 RC- Windows XP Mode, Remote Media Streaming 25 April 2009

Windows 7’s XP Mode — Virtually worth the effort The Register 1 May 2009

Windows 7 XP Mode dialogs confuse virtual with real 4 May 2009

Windows 7- why you should keep User Account Control at the highest level 5 May 2009 still good advice

Review of RC1 in The Guardian 7 May 2009

One thing that is not better in Windows 7- Movie Maker 12 May 2009 Live Movie Maker is now much improved but some still miss the Vista one

EU responds to questions on Microsoft’s plans for Windows 7 25 June 2009 my dialog with the EU on browser bundling

Microsoft’s limited Windows 7 offer a lesson in how to annoy customers- 23 July 2009 bet there are folk wishing they’d snapped up Microsoft’s £49.99 offer back in July

Microsoft’s new EU Windows 7 proposal – will IE now be the default- 24 July 2009. We’ve not yet seen this for real.

Windows 7: the challenge for developers July 27 2009. On ITJOBLOG

No more Windows E – Europe will get full Windows 7 plus upgrade editions 1st August 2009 sighs of relief all round

In-place upgrade adventures with Windows 7 8 August 2009 – the in-place upgrades worked so well I’ve left them alone since

Windows 7 tip- use Group by to merge and manage library views 10 August 2009, could be helpful for those puzzling over this strange UI

It got boring saying nice things all the time so

Hands on Windows 7 multi-touch – will Apple get this right before Microsoft- August 17 2009

Getting picky about the Windows 7 Taskbar – real-world flaws- 21 Aug 2009. Ed Bott disagreed!

Windows 7- Microsoft’s three missed opportunities The Register 25 Aug 2009

Hope for old PCs with Windows 7 26 Aug 2009 about surprisingly good results on old PCs

and the inevitable Windows 7 vs Mac comparison

Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard – The Poison taste test The Register 2nd September – the fun bit about this one is in the comments

Windows 95 to Windows 7- How Microsoft lost its vision The Register 22 October – I argue that Microsoft has gotten conservative with Windows, some of the comments misunderstand but at least it sparked a discussion

A Year with Windows 7 – my launch day piece. Today. Although I’ve cooled towards some ideas, like the hiding of notification icons, my overall feeling about the OS hasn’t changed radically over the year. I’m not sure if that is good or bad, but at least it is consistent.

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microsoft, windows 7

A year with Windows 7

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It’s nearly a year since Microsoft unveiled Windows 7 at PDC 2008 – to be precise it was 26th October 2008 when I attended the pre-briefing a tried it out for myself on a loaned laptop. I’ve been using it since on numerous PCs, and used little else – well, aside from the Mac and a little Ubuntu – since it went gold in July. What’s my long-term view?

Well, the pre-brief was impressive, and guided by Steven Sinofsky the team has delivered what it promised. I guess Microsoft should do this sort of thing in its sleep; but the fact that it did not do for Vista, and that other departments such as that for Windows Mobile seem to move with glacial pace, makes the achievement impressive. Even the suggestion that Windows 7 would work fine on older hardware has proven true. I’ve installed it on a seven-year old Pentium 4 and it is perfectly usable; I never dared to put Vista on that machine.

So it works, but do I like it? Generally, yes. The souped-up taskbar is now where I usually launch applications. I don’t bother putting icons on the desktop as they are usually hidden behind applications. I like Aero Peek. I think the Jump List and ability to have controls in thumbnail preview windows will be neat features when more applications come out that properly utilise them. Most important, Windows 7 hasn’t got in my way and most of the time I don’t think about it – which is as it should be.

I’m delighted with Libraries. I find them very useful. They enable me to think less about where a document is stored; it’s something that the user should not have to worry about at all. The UI for grouping and merging is not quite right and will trip up some users; but libraries work, which is what I care about more.

I have a few quibbles. The light shading applied to taskbar icons when the applications is running is too subtle; I’d like some more obvious indication. The taskbar behaves badly when full, as I’ve noted before, and the “small icon” option is terrible.

I think the decision to hide notification icons by default is a bad one. It is detrimental to usability, especially for apps that rely on that icon as the normal point of interaction. I don’t think it will help that much with making Windows “quieter”, as vendors will find other means to intrude if they insist on doing so.

I’ve noticed that the upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 makes Office invisible. I’ve had users complain that they cannot find their email because of this. It is purely a matter of moving icons back onto the taskbar or top-level Start menu, but this could be better.

These are minor gripes. My main further complaint is that by Windows 7 Microsoft really should be further along with creating an advanced client operating system in the Internet era. The main reason I reckon is the technical problems and loss of confidence that ensued after the original plans for Longhorn fell apart, and I’ve written further about this in a piece to be published shortly. Another factor is time wasted on semi-failures like Tablet PC; much was right about it, but it took Apple and the iPhone to show us how a touch (not stylus) UI should work.

I still think Windows 7 deserves to be a huge success, just as I did twelve months ago.

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microsoft, security, software, windows, windows 7

Hands On with Microsoft Security Essentials – terrible name, but product looks good

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Microsoft has released its free Security Essentials software, antivirus and antispyware protection aimed at home users. It runs on XP 32-bit, or Vista or Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit, the only technical restriction being that Windows must validate as “genuine”.  Businesses are meant to use Forefront Client Security, though “home-based small businesses” are specifically permitted in the license agreement. I installed it on my Windows 7 64-bit desktop PC.

Installation was smooth, guided by a simple wizard with a castle logo:

The trickiest moment comes when the installer recommends that you “remove other antivirus and antispyware programs”:

I am glad that Microsoft is confronting this issue, since running multiple antivirus applications is terrible for performance. It does make the point that this free software will not be good for competitors at this end of the market. The other issue is that removing other security software will probably mean a reboot as well as passing one or more dialogs pleading with you to reconsider. Do this before running the installer.

Once done, Security Essentials – a terrible, unmemorable, tongue-twisting name – announces that your computer is at risk while it goes off and downloads updates:

When the update completes, it does a quick scan, which took around 30 minutes on my machine. I let this complete – nothing was found – and then had a poke around the tabs and settings.

The user interface is nicely designed and there isn’t much to see. Be default Security Essentials will scan your PC once a week on Sunday night. You can specify quick or full scans. The software also monitors all file activity looking for malware. I get the impression that Microsoft has tried to make Security Essentials as unobtrusive as possible, which is most welcome.

One thing that did annoy me is the settings for recommended actions:

In patronising style, Microsoft offers “Recommended action” as the default when malware is detected, but does not tell you what that action is. It is explained here – for severe or high alerts, it attempts to remove the malware, while for medium or low alerts it quarantines it. However, it does seem to ask first, which is important in the case of false positives.

I couldn’t find any way of setting the frequency of updates, which surprised me.

I gave Security Essentials an easy test by downloading eicar, a harmless file which for testing antivirus software. Security Essentials sprang into life:

I clicked Show details and got another red dialog offering to perform the recommended action, which was Remove. Another click, and it claimed to have done it, with the dialog turning a reassuring shade of green.

Is it any good? That’s a tough one. I don’t have high expectations of any security software based on scanning for known malware. Such software tends to fail when new viruses appear, as they do constantly. Another problem is that the bad guys can run the same security software as you, and design their malware to avoid its effects. In general, it is obvious that antivirus software has failed to prevent the spread of malware. I rate other things as more important, such as keeping systems up-to-date with patches and observing best practice concerning what you allow to execute. Unfortunately clever social engineering can often defeat good intentions.

Still, if you consider antivirus software a necessary evil, this one impresses by being nicely designed and mostly staying out of the way. If you are looking for the highest detection rates, you will have to wait for statistical analyses to be done. I am sure the commercial security companies will be quick to report on failures.

Personally I’m delighted that users can now get the Windows security center (Action Center in Windows 7) to stop bugging them without installing third-party software. Another advantage is that the software won’t stop updating when the user fails to subscribe or renew. Microsoft has plenty of incentive to get this one right, and to deliver something at least as good as the competition without slugging performance or annoying the user with advertisements and/or  constant exhortations to upgrade. I think it is worth a try.

apple, blogging, microsoft, twitter, windows, windows 7

10 Mac alternatives to Windows utilities

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I’ve been spending an extended time on the Mac in order to explore Snow Leopard. As far as possible, I’ve done all my work on the Mac since its release. The trial will be over soon … but in the meantime I’m sharing notes on some of the utilities I used for tasks I normally do on Windows, in no particular order.

1 Capturing screenshots

On Windows I press PrintScreen or Alt-PrintScreen (for the current window), then paste into an ancient copy of Paint Shop Pro 5.0 for trimming and re-sizing. No, it’s not PhotoShop, but it loads in a blink.

For the Mac I use Ctrl-Command-Shift-3 (whole screen) or Ctrl-Command-Shift-4 (selectable area) which adds a screenshot to the clipboard. Then I use the latest Preview, which has a File – New from Clipboard option. I love Preview – it has tools for further trimming and resizing, and when you save it shows the file size as you select different formats. Since I often want to minimise the size for a web page, it’s ideal.

2 Secure file transfer

I avoid FTP for security reasons, so on Windows I normally use WinSCP for secure file transfer.

On the Mac I use Fugu, and of the two I prefer it.

3 Word processing

On Windows I use Microsoft Word. On the Mac I mainly use NeoOffice, which actually felt a bit nicer than its parent, OpenOffice. I also spent some time with Word 2008 (good for compatibility, but slow) and Apple’s Pages from iWork 09. One nice feature of Pages, for journalism, is the stats window that shows the word count as you type.

4 Web browsing

I used Safari, in order to get the most complete Apple experience. I’m getting to like the Top Sites feature, though it’s hardly essential, especially the way it shows at a glance which pages have changed.

5 Sound editing

On Windows I use Audacity. On the Mac I use … Audacity, though for some reason I found it slightly less smooth.

6 Playing FLAC

Apple is still stubbornly refusing to support FLAC in iTunes or Quicktime. My solution was Songbird, a great alternative, which supports FLAC straight out of the box, or rather download.

For converting to FLAC I used MacFLAC, though I found it less than robust. I missed dbPowerAmp (Windows).

7 Remote desktop

I find Remote Desktop invaluable for managing servers. On the Mac I used the official Remote Desktop client, which worked well though it falls slightly short of the Windows version (perhaps this is a policy!).

8 Twitter

I use Twhirl on both Mac and Windows, an Adobe AIR application. One oddity (getting picky): the font spacing is slightly better on Windows. In the word Blog, for example, there is too much space between the B and the l, but only on the Mac.

9 Email

I never thought I’d say I missed Outlook, but I did. The thing is, after much experimentation I’ve found a permutation that works really well on Windows: 64-bit Windows and Outlook 2007 SP2 in online mode (only for a desktop, of course).

On the Mac I use Mail, but I’ve found it less than satisfactory even though I run Exchange 2007 with all the required configuration.

10 Blog authoring

On Windows I use Live Writer, which is superb.

On the Mac I write posts (like this one) in the WordPress online editor. I don’t like it as much, but it does the job.

11 Bridge

Now this one is a problem :-). I find JackBridge ideal for those moments when I need a break from work. It won this year’s World Champion computer bridge contest.

The Mac is not so well served, but I have trialled Bridge Baron and found it not bad at all.

apple, microsoft, windows, windows 7

Apple Snow Leopard: why don’t we all use Macs?

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Last Friday I attended Apple’s press briefing for Snow Leopard, and I’ll be a Mac (mostly) for the next few days as I put OS 10.6 through its paces. For as long as I can remember, I’ve set up my desktop so that I can easily switch between Mac and Windows, so it is no great hardship.

Snow Leopard is a relatively low-key release, timed by accident or design to appear not long before Windows 7 makes its full public debut in October – though many IT professionals are already using the final build. In the unlikely event that you’ve missed the many reports, the headline new features are:

  • Many small refinements and speed improvements
  • Major applications re-written in 64-bit
  • Grand Central Dispatch – OS-level support for easier concurrent programming
  • OpenCL – standard means of using the GPU (graphics processing unit) for general processing, not just graphics
  • Exchange support in Mail, iCal and Address Book

The Exchange support is welcome, though unfortunately it is limited to Exchange 2007. It was already possible to access Exchange in Mail, though the older support (which still exists for pre-2007 Exchange) was based on IMAP, whereas the new support is based on Exchange web services and has richer features.

I use Exchange 2007, and found it easy to set up my account in Mail. Unfortunately I’m missing some Outlook features, such as the ability to choose a different Sender  address, and I’ve found it prone to a few mysterious pauses –  once it went into a sulk for over a minute when I marked a message as junk – but this might be a problem with Exchange web services rather than Mail, who knows? I also have some public folders which appear to be inaccessible from Mail or iCal. Then again – Entourage isn’t as flexible as Outlook either.

Still, I  expect the Exchange support will be good enough for many users, and this will make it easier to integrate Macs into Windows-based networks.

So, here’s a thought experiment. Let’s make an assumption:

  • Most people prefer the Mac operating system over Windows, and prefer the Mac hardware over most PC or laptop hardware.

If that is the case, why do we not all use Macs?  There’s a host of reasons which come to mind, starting with price. I looked at macwarehouse.co.uk and pcworld.co.uk, which are owned by the same group. The cheapest Mac I can find (Mac Mini + keyboard, mouse and display) is currently £536.96, vs £260.86 for a PC; and the cheapest laptop is £645.99 + VAT for a MacBook vs £216.52 for a cheapie PC laptop with Vista Basic. These differences are not small.

Note I am not saying that the Mac is poorer value; that is an entirely different argument.

A second big issue is application compatibility. Although there is no problem that cannot be solved with finding alternatives, or dual boot, or a virtual machine, it is all friction that impedes Mac acceptance.

Third, there is the greater manageability of Windows in a corporate environment based on Windows. This is a form of incumbent advantage, which is hard to break unless the incumbent messes up badly. Arguably Microsoft has messed up badly, though less in the business context than in the consumer context, and Windows 7 will pull back some lost ground.

The above leads me to believe that Snow Leopard is not likely to change the status quo significantly – understanding that the status quo is that Apple is gradually increasing its market share – even granting the assumption I made, which is somewhat controversial. On balance, I consider it more likely that Windows 7 will stem the flow towards Apple, though without a high degree of confidence.

More significant than either factor is the continuing migration towards the Internet. In this respect I’ve argued that Apple is like Microsoft. The Internet is a great leveller; it will reduce the friction of changing operating systems (helping Apple) but also make Apple’s UI advantage less noticeable (helping Windows/Linux/Google), and make it harder to sell expensive desktop software (Microsoft is the bigger loser here I think).

It’s fun to speculate; but I must add that so far Snow Leopard has been a pleasure to install and use. Technically, Apple hasn’t missed a beat with OS X since the first release, and that’s an impressive achievement.

microsoft, windows 7

Hope for old PCs with Windows 7

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Yesterday I installed Windows 7 Professional on an older PC – it dates from 2001 or possibly 2002, and has a Pentium 4 1.8Ghz on Intel’s 845 chipset. Only 768MB RAM is installed – generous for XP in those days, but below the 1GB minimum spec for Windows 7.

I thought I would try it anyway. It turned out that Windows 7 installed without complaint – I believe you have to go down to 512MB before setup actually protests – and I was impressed with how smooth the process was. There is a Creative Audigy soundcard installed; and after logging on for the first time, Windows automatically downloaded an update which got this working. Device Manager shows no errors other than a “PCI Input Device” which I suspect is the joystick port on the Creative soundcard. A cheap USB wireless card was recognized first time, and the add-on USB 2.0 card also works fine.

I am also impressed by the performance. I stuck on Office 2007, ran up Word and Excel with a couple of documents open, and looked in Resource Monitor:

This shows 274MB still available; at this level of use, the machine is not under any pressure.

It is not fair to make a direct comparison with XP since it had been installed for a while and would have built up a bit of cruft. However, Windows 7 is subjectively slightly faster, if anything, and you could not say that for Vista on the same machine.

I am not recommending that anyone runs Windows 7 on a below-spec machine, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

I’ve also been pleased with the in-place upgrade I did on my laptop, a 2006 Toshiba M400. This machine is much younger of course; though at three years old laptop batteries tend to die and sometimes it is hard to justify the cost of a replacement. This one is running so well that I have replaced the battery.

I am sure the industry is counting on Windows 7 to drive sales of new machines. There is another angle on this though, which is that old machines that were not much fun with Vista may be rejuvenated by a Windows 7 installation. Extending their life is good for the balance sheet as well as for the environment, so I am all in favour.

Yet another angle on this is that there is more incentive to go through the pain of reinstalling the operating system for Windows 7 than there was for Vista. I suspect this means that we will see rapid adoption, exceeding most expectations. For developers, that means it will pay to support Windows 7 features like the new taskbar sooner rather than later.

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