Original Post at my personal blog, http://www.saithetechguy.com/

The release candidate for Windows 7 was leaked earlier this week, so I thought I would see how it was performing. Having been a long time Linux user, and knowing the performance issues with Vista, I wasn't expecting much.

After a surprisingly quick install, I powered up my laptop assuming I'd have to go and download all of the drivers for my hardware; mainly video, sound, and network card. Again, I was surprised when my Internet was actually working, and Windows 7 had set the default resolution to my monitors 1080p standard. So right from the get go Windows 7 had a quick install, no driver installs needed, and performance was on par with my Ubuntu 8.10 install in terms of speed. I decided to check out a few of the features unique to Windows 7 and see how the file-system stability was. 

Having a clean install, I decided to transfer over 100GB of data straight to the Windows 7 install drive, and received a few more surprises. First thing I noticed was the network file transfer speed was two times faster than in Ubuntu, with Windows 7 transferring 12MB/s and Ubuntu transferring 6.5MB/s. After the 100GB of data were transferred, I moved files around to different folders, installed applications, edited some files, played some games, and other usual actions to attempt and fragment the drive. When I analyzed the disk, I was shocked to see 1% fragmentation especially since Ubuntu with the same data had 2% fragmentation.

So aside from all of the great performance, Windows 7 also has some interesting features and effects. The desktop has some great themes to choose from, my favorite being Characters. This changes the wallpapers that will be cycled through, the system sounds, and the color of the taskbar and window boarders. The wallpaper changing by default every 30 minutes is fun, and the wallpapers in the Characters theme are really fantastic and stylish. Windows 7 also has an interesting feature called Aero Peek on-top of a redesigned taskbar which creates a very intuitive Desktop Manager.



I'm a huge fan of Compiz Fusion like any Linux user, and Aero Peek in combination with the redesigned taskbar really seem to work like a giant mix of Compiz Fusion features. Each application has it's own icon on the taskbar, and every window or tab unique to that application is manageable by hovering over the icon and checking out the previews. Here's where it gets interesting, because if you're like me and have multiple browser instances open with tabs in each, you can look through all of them easily with Aero Peek. Windows 7 also comes with some decently useful window docking points, for easy full-screen or half screen sizing. The half screen docking is useful when comparing two websites, or using one side for a research website and another for a word processor.

I am definitely impressed by how Windows 7 is performing, especially coming from Ubuntu. It's good to know that Microsoft will be giving away Windows 7 for free as an update to Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate users, as Windows 7 is essentially what Windows Vista should have been. My only gripe is the lack of multiple desktops, but when you get the hang of Aero Peek, every application seems to be it's own desktop which really improves your workflow.