Trying Windows 7 RC on for size
By TAN KIT HOONG
PETALING JAYA: In our ongoing tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate, we’ve been installing the operating system on various types of computers to see how it installs and to judge how well it runs.
We started at the small end of the scale, the netbook. But first, a quick reminder — Asus Eee PCs with 4GB of SSD storage will not be able to install Windows 7 RC. The operating system requires at least 16GB of free space, although the actual installation size is 7GB to 9GB.
We have a 10in-screen Eee PC with 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of SDRAM, Intel GMA950 graphics processor and 160GB hard disk drive in the office so that became our guinea pig.
Windows 7 RC took to this machine like a duck to water. In fact, the installation went completely without a hitch and the operating system even installed the drivers for every component in the Eee PC, including the ElanTech touchpad.
What surprised us was how really, really well Windows 7 RC ran on the device despite the relatively basic specifications of the Asus. Also, the machine’s Aero transparent interface worked like a charm on the Microsoft operating system.
Even more surprising was that we could run a 720p Windows Media Video file, open several Internet Explorer windows, and yet still be able to use the Flip3D (Windows key + TAB) to view all the open windows (and the video still running flawlessly) as Flip3D icons.
Overall, we had a very pleasant experience running Windows 7 RC on what we see is a typical netbook.
Going bigger
We next installed Windows 7 RC on a desktop PC that’s powered by an AMD Athlon 64 2.2GHz processor and has 1GB RAM, as well as a built-in ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics chip.
Here we ran into a problem initially because this version of the operating system does not have the drivers built-in for this relatively old and finicky graphics chip.
We did a Windows Update and Windows 7 RC found the needed driver; we were soon up and running.
Strangely, the operating system didn’t seem to be running as speedily on this machine as it did on the netbook. This could possibly due to the different graphics chip in each computer. We’ll be looking further into this.
Cool, this is
One of the things we like in Windows 7 RC is its Libraries feature. Libraries appears in the Internet Explorer window and is a sort of smart folder which you can configure yourself.
What Libraries does is provide a shortcut based on certain criteria that you set. For example, if you set the criteria as looking for videos, the link in Libraries will list all your videos no matter where they are located on the hard disk.
Windows 7 RC comes preconfigured with a number of Libraries folders — such as Videos, Music and Documents.
The one unfortunate thing is that we couldn’t seem to add folders stored on removable hard drives to the Libraries folders.
Nevertheless, Libraries is a useful tool to have, especially if you have files stored all over your hard disk.
That’s all for now. Keep watching this space for more on our Windows 7 RC experiences.
Related article: Windows 7 RC — First impressions (May 7, 2009, News) http://tinyurl.com/c3du5x
By TAN KIT HOONG
PETALING JAYA: In our ongoing tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate, we’ve been installing the operating system on various types of computers to see how it installs and to judge how well it runs.
We started at the small end of the scale, the netbook. But first, a quick reminder — Asus Eee PCs with 4GB of SSD storage will not be able to install Windows 7 RC. The operating system requires at least 16GB of free space, although the actual installation size is 7GB to 9GB.
We have a 10in-screen Eee PC with 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of SDRAM, Intel GMA950 graphics processor and 160GB hard disk drive in the office so that became our guinea pig.
Windows 7 RC took to this machine like a duck to water. In fact, the installation went completely without a hitch and the operating system even installed the drivers for every component in the Eee PC, including the ElanTech touchpad.
What surprised us was how really, really well Windows 7 RC ran on the device despite the relatively basic specifications of the Asus. Also, the machine’s Aero transparent interface worked like a charm on the Microsoft operating system.
Even more surprising was that we could run a 720p Windows Media Video file, open several Internet Explorer windows, and yet still be able to use the Flip3D (Windows key + TAB) to view all the open windows (and the video still running flawlessly) as Flip3D icons.
Overall, we had a very pleasant experience running Windows 7 RC on what we see is a typical netbook.
Going bigger
We next installed Windows 7 RC on a desktop PC that’s powered by an AMD Athlon 64 2.2GHz processor and has 1GB RAM, as well as a built-in ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics chip.
Here we ran into a problem initially because this version of the operating system does not have the drivers built-in for this relatively old and finicky graphics chip.
We did a Windows Update and Windows 7 RC found the needed driver; we were soon up and running.
Strangely, the operating system didn’t seem to be running as speedily on this machine as it did on the netbook. This could possibly due to the different graphics chip in each computer. We’ll be looking further into this.
Cool, this is
One of the things we like in Windows 7 RC is its Libraries feature. Libraries appears in the Internet Explorer window and is a sort of smart folder which you can configure yourself.
What Libraries does is provide a shortcut based on certain criteria that you set. For example, if you set the criteria as looking for videos, the link in Libraries will list all your videos no matter where they are located on the hard disk.
Windows 7 RC comes preconfigured with a number of Libraries folders — such as Videos, Music and Documents.
The one unfortunate thing is that we couldn’t seem to add folders stored on removable hard drives to the Libraries folders.
Nevertheless, Libraries is a useful tool to have, especially if you have files stored all over your hard disk.
That’s all for now. Keep watching this space for more on our Windows 7 RC experiences.
Related article: Windows 7 RC — First impressions (May 7, 2009, News) http://tinyurl.com/c3du5x
Note: Wanted to try Windows 7 but can't download, maybe Microsoft's server busy, try later maybe next week when it's not so busy. _ WongSF
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