Does Windows 7 deserve all the hype?

I feel like the only guy out here that hasn’t been blown away with Windows 7.

I went to a launch event the previous weekend in Madison, and none of the new features blew me away.  The addition of an API to access sensors, the new DirectX APIs, a Troubleshooting framework, library folders, homegroups… nothing is a Need or a Want for me.

First off, back to the launch event for a moment. It was to promote Windows 7.  I’ve been to previous Microsoft launch events and one way of promoting the software was to have giveaways of the new stuff.  There was not a single full-copy of Windows 7 to be seen at the event.  In fact, even in the raffle, they actually had a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate available (a poorly received and now old OS).  So it makes me wonder if they are pushing for this OS to get out there while the media is so kind to it, before the consumers can actually have a chance to complain about it.

I keep on reading reviews about people who say this is the best version of Windows ever.  Or, this is the most stable and most responsive windows ever.  I have not had the same experience.

I own a laptop from HP that came pre-installed with Vista.  I stuck with Vista and never had serious problems.  An issue with an anti-virus application that would cause file copies to error out every now and then was the most frustrating issue I can remember.  Other than that, I tolerated Vista just fine.  But since I had a free Windows 7 eval. copy that I downloaded months ago (build 7100), I decided to upgrade it since I had been wanting to get a clean OS on it again.  So that is my first Windows 7 install I used.

Another one of my machines that I have also needed an update.  I was getting frustrated with Vista’s Windows Media Center on my HTPC.  So, I thought it was worth a shot to see if Microsoft made any changes to WMC in Windows 7.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of changes to WMC.  It actually became more Zune-esque.  Not a big surprise.  Also, it supports more video codecs natively which made me happy that I didn’t have to immediately install a bunch of other 3rd party video apps. to actually use it.

But, as with new OS, there are hardware devices I have that don’t have Windows 7 drivers, I have strange crashes that I can’t determine the source of without digging really deep into the debug log files, and performance is nothing to write home about.

 

Current Issue List

• Windows 7 Media Center can not play some DivX encoded files.  It plays most of them, but there is a certain format the Media Center fails on a few minutes into the video.  It also does not play MKV files and that is often the preferred format of encoding for HD content.  So I still have to install a 3rd party application to deal with those.
  
• My HTPC will crash every couple days.  There are no messages in the Event Log from which I can gain insight into about what is happening.  I could try and do something with the .DMP files that are created.  But, I am not concerning myself with this since it only happens when I am not watching TV, so it’s low on my priority list to fix.  I am guessing it has to deal with devices in my machine and how they function in sleep mode.  I am crossing my fingers that an automatic driver upgrade will fix this someday.
  
• My laptop will lock up during playback of video over my HDMI output.  The WMP video just locks up.  This freezes my computer and forces a hard reboot.  This happened in Vista with older graphics drivers.  But, it went away with the newer driver.  Unfortunately, my laptop has a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 GPU in it, and there are no supported Windows 7 drivers yet.  Typically the laptop manufacturer would provide supported drivers for this card.  As of now, HP says it will not be providing Windows 7 support for the dv9334us laptops, so I may be S.O.L.
  
• Windows 7 takes too long to time out when searching for unavailable network locations.  I tried to connect to a remote computer over a router that was setup incorrectly.  My W7 machine took greater than 1 minute to time out.  I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but I was able to run over to another room in my house, attach to the router, and identify the problem before my W7 machine told me that it couldn’t find the remote computer.

 

There are other things that I am still working through, but I am not blown away.  And I am definitely not sure I will be switching over my other home computers. 

Windows 7 is nothing more than Windows Vista in sheep’s clothing.  It is not worth the hype and if you’re happy with your current OS, I don’t see any reason in upgrading right away.