Win7 impression ??

[RRHODY]

Based on no scientific evidence, here’s an impression, for what its worth:

Have an X60 type 1706 with 2G Ram previously running WinXP Pro. Upgraded to Win7 Home Premium. Could discern no appreciable differences in speed of initial loading or the functions of the apps. Made no hardware changes.
Upgraded to Win7 Pro and it seems to boot faster and load apps much faster. Also, internal working of Windows (Explorer, Device Manager Scan, etc.) seems faster too.
There’s probably some reasonable explanation, but I’m not bright enough to know.
BTW, I was lukewarm to Win7 Home on my T42p and S10e as well as with the X60, but Win7 Pro has me warming up; still not enough though to load seven on my main desk unit running XP Pro.

[ashleys]

Long time NT4/W2K user who was running XP Pro until last weekend on my T30.
Upgraded my RAM from 768Mb to 2GB. Installed a WD Scorpio 250GB drive and did an upgrade install of Windows 7 Professional on the machine. I knew the graphics would be basic but I only really wanted to test drive Windows 7 Professional before I installed it on my main machine which is my XP desktop.
The T30 has now only been used as a hot spare/backup for some years now.

Impressions so far,
Booting is much faster than XP, notwithstanding the extra hardware I've thrown at it.
I can just about get the same NT4/W2K look and feel on the desktop.
All fancy graphics turned off and/or unavailable which suits me fine
Struggled initially with the Start Menu but getting used to it. I like the jump lists.
Control Panel navigation is still difficult but the Help & Search is good.
Performance generally is good. My differential copy/restore process is noticably quicker than before but
that is probably due to better filesystem caching with the extra RAM.
No problems with data copying of NTFS encrypted files between W7 and XP.
All major applications installed and working correctly, even some that are not the latest versions, most notably Office 2003.
Not yet convinced of the benefit of pinning items to the taskbar over the old Quick Launch method.
Event viewer is much slower but compared to XP they've significantly overhauled the interface and amount of data being shown.
Resource Monitor in Task Manager is useful.
Only noticeable sluggishness is when in Explorer and it's attempting to fill in the icons for certain file types.

Major usability problem for me is the loss of the Search Deskbar from WDS 4.0. In XP I could just type straight into the deskbar and get the hits up in a fly-away window. Now, at the very least I have to do Start -> Search

Anyway no showstoppers for me and pleasantly surprised with the system.

I shall continue testing and getting used to Windows 7 on the ThinkPad with the plan being to migrate my desktop once Service Pack 1 arrives.

[RRHODY]

Nice summary and seems to be about what I experienced. Like you, I'll wait to put win7 on my main machine; probably well after SP1 arrives.

[K0LO]

...Not yet convinced of the benefit of pinning items to the taskbar over the old Quick Launch method.

Right-click on a pinned taskbar item to see a jump list of most-used files/urls/etc?

...Major usability problem for me is the loss of the Search Deskbar from WDS 4.0. In XP I could just type straight into the deskbar and get the hits up in a fly-away window. Now, at the very least I have to do Start -> Search

Have you tried hitting the Enter key after typing a few letters of your search term? Win key + search term + Enter

Nice summary...

[ashleys]

Thanks for the Seach tip, I'll try and start using that.
Problem currently is constantly switching between multiple systems either at work or home and using different techniques on each.
I do like the jump lists from the pinned items and that is, for me, the only real benefit. My problem with the pinned items is the fact it appears to stack active items behind each other of the same type/category. I know you can click the icon to show the list but visually it's not obvious what you've got active.
I need to play around a bit more to get to grips with it.

One further point is libraries. Altough I have always organised my data into properly names directory/subdirectory structure and avoided the dreadful "My" prefixed naming convention, I have found libraries useful, especially the ability to search through a subdirectory structure. The only snag I found was with the default display attributes based on library type when the search results are shown. The library definition for documents will, by default, show the list by content. When you've numerous PDF's this slows down the displaying of the results list. Easy to change but slightly irritating.

[K0LO]

...My problem with the pinned items is the fact it appears to stack active items behind each other of the same type/category. I know you can click the icon to show the list but visually it's not obvious what you've got active...

This works much better when using the Aero graphics themes; the active items stand out clearly. I think you lose this if using the "Classic" display themes with Aero turned off. Perhaps using one of the other options for Taskbar button display (on the Taskbar Properties menu) would be better for you (Never combine, for example).

Personally I prefer the settings Use small icons and Always combine, hide labels together with the Aero themes. Their transparency effects make the active taskbar items more obvious visually, but if your T30 doesn't support graphics effects then obviously you can't do this.

I haven't warmed up to the Libraries feature yet...

[ashleys]

Spent some time over the weekend using Windows 7 as I would for my desktop machine.
I have come across one serious usability problem, related to Explorer window sizing.

On all previous versions that I've worked with, you could size and position an Explorer type window and it would be remembered. This was paritcularly useful for people like myself who for example, had shortcuts to different explorer views for partitioned drives and say Network Connections.
With Windows 7 it appears as if the attributes of the Explorer window is kept system wide. So once I've set a nice small oblong window for my Network Connections, all my other displays from Control Panel, Libraries and disk shortcuts all appear in a same small oblong type window.
It seems as if they're expecting people to operate with only one Explorer window open
Maybe they should have called this release One Window as opposed to Windows 7

Looking at the Help & Support it appears as if this behaviour is by design. This is BAD (Broken As Designed). Moreover, it is totally contrary to how all previous verisions of Windows have worked when you had Explorer settings indcating open in new window.

Personally, this will present a serious stumbling block for using Windows 7 on my main desktop machine.