baldysblog.co.uk

When running “Beta” software of any kind, the basic rule of thumb applies: Never run it on a PC that contains “mission critical” applications and data because sometimes and indeed the reason that beta testing is done, an unforeseen ‘event’ could wipe out or corrupt, your hard drive, destroy your data.

So I first installed it on an ‘older’ desktop which is more a back up resource to my main PCs than an actual ‘production’ one and of course copied off all the data on it first. As the install on that went well and the Operating System (Windows 7), runs sweetly even in 2Gb of RAM, I decided to become ‘brave’…

A Bit of Daring…

Although currently pretty tied to the house because of my Mother’s health situation, I still have a current laptop which is a Lenovo – ThinkPad. Whilst for any serious graphics work, give me a powerful desktop any time, if you are mobile and in the past as an IT contractor I was, then a laptop to ‘take your whole world’ with you from site to site, is a total ‘must have’.

The truth though is that in my present circumstances, it is a bit of a luxury and I just use it to run Microsoft Office and Outlook as the e-mail client which keeps my hand in and allows me to help people who have problems with those MS products. Apart from that, there are a handful of applications and utilities like Anti-Virus, Diskeeper, Corel PhotoPaint X2, a web editor plus letters and blog articles I’ve written so that a 120Gb hard drive is about half full.

As I have all the data backed up, the ThinkPad has a Dual Core processor, is running x64 Vista Business, has 4Gb of RAM and the Beta of Windows 7 will do an upgrade that retains all your settings and data….why not try it out ?

The Upgrade

I set the process running and pretty much left it to its own devices apart from a couple of screens like “Licence Acceptance”, but after that it just toddled off by itself. It did take a long time, exactly how long I couldn’t say because I was working on something else on another PC but a guess would be between 2 – 2.5 hours.

However, the important thing is not the time providing you don’t have to monitor it or keep making ‘choices’ every now and then and I didn’t have to with this Beta. What really counts is the quality of the finished job and in this regard with only one exception, it was probably the most perfect in-place upgrade I have seen in ages. All the applications, every preference setting and all the data were totally intact, a truly excellent job, my ‘new laptop’ runs like a dream and has picked up a bit of speed over Vista.

The one thing that it did which did not amuse me although I suspect that it will raise a chuckle at Microsoft HQ, is that it disabled my Firefox web browser so I had to un-install it. The reality is that it will go back on the PC simply because I prefer it to Internet Explorer but even if I didn’t, because I do web related stuff, I need all the main browsers installed on my PC to check for variations in how a web site looks in different ones.

The Next Variation

My first install was on a desktop that was running XPx64, this Beta version will not ‘upgrade’ XP, it will only upgrade Vista, I am sure that the production release one will. But whilst it wouldn’t upgrade XPx64, it didn’t do what I expected, format the C:\ drive and do a clean install. Instead it bundled the existing version of Windows into a folder called Windows.old and left the existing folder structure intact which is a little confusing.

This has got more complicated with the Vista upgrade, which bits are Vista, which are Windows 7 ? So the logical next thing must be a ‘virgin install’ so that all I see is ‘pure Windows 7′… Watch this space for the next instalment.

My View of Windows 7

The first thing is that this “beta” is less of a beta and far more of a ‘very close to production’ bit of software. Some years back when involved in IBM Lotus Notes, IBM had a system of publishing ‘betas’ but the final version was always called ‘Gold’. The Gold version was near as dammit and with very minor detail differences, the actual ‘production’ software. In that context, this is less a ‘public beta’ more a “Try before you buy Gold version’.

Is it a good product ? In my opinion, this is the first really good product I’ve seen from Microsoft since Windows 2000 (people forget that XP was a ‘pig’ when it first appeared), it seems genuinely to be both well considered and well written, it is lighter and quicker than either XP or Vista and deserves to succeed providing that they don’t mess with it too much before launch.

Pricing

I could not give a fart for the price that OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Acer etc, etc, pay MS for the software pre-loaded on their PCs, at the retail level it is irrelevant to the average consumer. It therefore follows that when I speak of price, I am focusing on retail and someone who wants to install Windows 7 on a PC they already own.

There is one thing that I always hit MS with on my feedback through any channel, the “UK Price”. Historically going back to NT4, a ‘brand new virgin build’ at retail cost around £220 including VAT which was ridiculously high and even more so today. It was always a ‘price point’ that made it highly profitable for ‘Pirates’ to be in the market to sell and highly attractive for a resentful public to buy from the Pirates.

With the “Student & Home” version of MS Office 2007 (but minus Outlook), that can be installed on up to 3 PCs under the same licence of less than £70, it looks like Microsoft has learned its lesson but, have they ? My guess is likely not.

If Microsoft has a clue and wants Windows 7 to dominate with very rapid uptake globally, they need to get the price right, they may need a different business model. They may need to start with a ‘download’ version rather than physical media, they may need to concentrate on selling to identifiable individuals rather than individual PCs on the basis of “x units” for a one off sum or an annual fee… Time for some new thinking.