Windows 7

Win7 Editions | Win7 Hardware | Customizing & Tweaking Win7
Win7 Security & Patches | My Personal Experience | Learning More

Windows 7 a Viable Upgrade Path From XP

An Improvement Over Vista

Windows 7 is an incremental upgrade from Vista (it is actually Windows 6.1), fixing many annoyances and adding or changing features.

Less demanding of hardware than Vista, Windows 7 is much easier to use with fewer security alerts interrupting your work. It is what Vista should have been, but also contains additional improvements.

Useful New Features

It adds some new features, of which Libraries and Jump lists are the most useful in improving productivity. It also ends Microsoft's practice of including a built-in email client and provides an easier secure method of sharing between computers using HomeGroup.

Windows 8 May Not Be a Viable Upgrade Path

Windows XP expires in April 2014 but I'm not convinced that Windows 8 provides the best upgrade path for computers without touch screens.

Windows “Blue”

Windows “Blue” (the code name for Windows 8.1) is reported to return the Start Button and allow users to boot straight to the desktop. However, until it ships, “anything can change.”

Citing unnamed ‘sources familiar with Microsoft's plans,’ Warren says Windows 8.1 will include a Start button — but ‘the button will act as a method to simply access the Start Screen, and will not include the traditional Start Menu.’ Yes, you read that correctly. If Warren's right, Microsoft is knocking itself out to put a Windows logo on the left edge of the taskbar. Click on the logo, and you get hurled into the Metro Start screen.
— InfoWorld

Microsoft's Windows 7 Support

Released October 22, 2009, Windows 7 has done much better than Vista, although Windows XP continues to be widely used. Windows 7 is reported to be available for purchase until October 2013 and computers pre-installed with Windows 7 until October 2014 (although Microsoft reports it as “to be determined” as of January 2013).

Windows 7's end of mainstream support is January 12, 2015 and end of extended support is January 14, 2020. Learn more about Microsoft's end-of-support date policies.

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Windows 7 Editions

There are four primary editions of Windows 7:

“Anytime” Upgrade

Microsoft offers an anytime upgrade but you'd be better to purchase the version you need to begin with because the upgrade costs more than if you purchased the version you need to start with.

“Starter” Has Limitations

Most hardware with Starter edition installed are incapable of upgrade so you'll want to be sure that you'll have no need to upgrade in the future and your requirements are very limited.

Windows 7 Starter edition can only run 3 processes at a time and forces you to search for many of the customizations that are quickly available in other editions.

Downgrade Rights

Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate versions can be downgraded to Windows Vista or XP, but it's up to the vendor if and how they want to implement that option. See Understanding Downgrade Rights for details.

Windows 7 Hardware

Installing Windows 7

Microsoft has instruction on how to Install, reinstall, or uninstall Windows but the following may be more useful if you're upgrading from Windows XP:

Can You Run Windows 7?

I don't usually recommend an upgrade of your current hardware to Windows 7 unless you are running a compatible Vista machine or a relatively powerful XP computer. I recently upgraded two XP machines (including my Lenovo T61 laptop), but not before ensuring the necessary Windows 7 drivers and software upgrades were available.

System Requirements

You'd best look at new hardware if you want to optimize your experience with Windows 7. See the general notes about Windows hardware requirements.

You can visit these sites for more information about Windows 7:

32- or 64-bit?

Windows 7 comes with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Learn more about the advantages and disadvantages on the Windows Resources page.

Other Installation Issues

There are also some documented issues with installation, particularly with upgrade versions (it appears they were not intended to be used for a clean install — something that will haunt you in future years. Go here for help:

No Built-in Email Client

Windows 7 has no built-in email client. Vista, the last version of Windows to have a built-in email client, came with Windows Mail. Windows XP came with Outlook Express, but that program is dangerous to use (part of Internet Explorer 6, it is not maintained and there were many security issues to begin with).

I'd strongly recommend moving to Mozilla Thunderbird or one of my other recommended email options. Details here….

What's New in Windows 7?

New features in Windows 7 include Libraries, Jump Lists, HomeGroup (works only with Windows 7 computers) and Snap. Explore all the new Windows 7 features on Microsoft's site.

Libraries

Libraries provide for the way we operate computers today — allowing you to pull similar content together from multiple sources.

Libraries are a Windows 7 feature that gives you a consolidated view of related files in one place. A Library doesn't contain files. Rather, a Library provides a single aggregated view of multiple folders and their contents.
— Microsoft TechNet

You add files to a Library by linking to them. New Libraries can be added by right-clicking in the Libraries bar and selecting New then Library.

Learn more about Libraries by visiting these resources:

Jump Lists

Jump lists give you quick access to your favorite content — on your computer and elsewhere.

If you use a program like CCleaner to remove temporary files, you may need to change the settings if you wish to retain jump lists. Otherwise, your jumplists will be removed each time you run CCleaner.

ReadyBoost

Some of the limitations of ReadyBoost (introduced with Vista) were removed in Windows 7. The benefits of ReadyBoost are minimal for most Windows 7 users and you need to ensure you're using a device that works with ReadyBoost. Those seeking performance would be better served by a SSD boot drive large enough to install Windows 7 on it (you can still use a regular drive for storage).

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Tweaking & Customizing Windows 7

Tweaking and customizing Windows involves changing the way Windows 7 does certain tasks or displays its content. Themes and other features are built into Windows 7, but there are other ways to make these changes.

General Settings & Annoyances

Note: Annoyances.org has been down for maintenance for some time.

Removing Shortcuts

If you're like me, you find the "shortcut to" in the name of new shortcuts annoying because this adds extensively to the size of icon descriptions with little returned value. You can tell it's a shortcut by the little arrow placed on the icon.

Editing the Windows Registry directly is not recommended except for advanced users.

Use Shortcuts to Resources

Although many program settings save downloaded files to the desktop (because people can find them there) I discourage the use of the desktop as a storage place because it is cluttered enough as it is. Additionally, most folks don't know how to backup files on the desktop.

Instead, create appropriate folders in your My Documents folder (accessible via your “User's Files” folder) and create shortcuts on the desktop for those folders by dragging them to the desktop using the right mouse button and selecting “create shortcuts here” (the default action is to move the folder).

By creating a shortcut to the Downloads folder on the desktop, you can drag newly-downloaded files into the correct location for later retrieval.

Broadband and Networking Tweaks

Tweaking broadband and network settings is not recommended in Windows 7.

Windows Registry

Editing the Windows Registry directly is not recommended except for advanced users.

Changing the Look

Windows 7 is much easier to personalize than earlier versions of Windows. The Aero transparency introduced in Vista and multiple background, icon and other settings can make your desktop truly unique.

Install and Use Windows XP Mode in Windows 7

Using Windows XP Mode, you can run programs that were designed for Windows XP on computers running Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate editions.

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Windows 7 Security

Windows 7 security is better than XP's and the bitlocker drive encryption, encrypting file system and shadow copy introduced in Vista remain (not provided in all editions, although third-party versions are available). The User Account Control remains, but is more configurable (you can even turn it off) and therefore less annoying in Windows 7.

Windows Backup & Restore

Windows 7 has included an effective built-in backup and restore system to protect your data and to allow you to recover from a disaster quickly — provided you've taken advantage of these tools before the incident.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) offers new improvements to features and services in Windows 7, such as improved reliability when connecting to HDMI audio devices, printing using the XPS Viewer, and restoring previous folders in Windows Explorer after restarting.

Some folks had problems installing the service pack from a separate download, so your mileage may vary. I recommend letting Windows Update perform the task automatically.

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My Personal Experience with Windows 7

Testing Windows 7 Release Candidate

I first tried Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate — the pre-release (or testing) version — on a 3 GHz Celeron-based processor with only 512 MB of RAM (which I later upgraded to 2GB for improved performance).

The Windows Experience rating of 1.0 (see below) indicates that with a new add-in video card, the computer would perform reasonably well. Even though the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor indicated that the SiS 900-based internal network card was incompatible, it worked just fine.

The Windows Experience Rating for the Release Candidate Machine
Component: What's Rated: Experience Rating:
Processor: Calculations per second 3.9
Memory (RAM): Memory operations per second 3.9
Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero 1.9
Gaming graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance 1.0
Primary hard disk: Disk data transfer rate 5.9

Purchased Windows 7 Professional

As a result of this experience, I purchased a new Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E8400 (3.0 GHz) 64-bit computer with 4 GB RAM and running Windows 7 64-bit Professional edition.

Not being a gamer (those looking to wring the most out of their computer's performance), this machine was chosen to give a long service life for a reasonable investment. Photoshop CS4, which can use lots of RAM when working with larger images, is the most demanding program on my system.

The Windows Experience rating of 5.9 was limited by the hard drive (interesting, considering this was the strongest point in my RC1 test computer).

The Windows Experience Rating for my Windows 7 Computer
Component: What's Rated: Experience Rating:
Processor: Calculations per second 6.5
Memory (RAM): Memory operations per second 6.6
Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero 7.2
Gaming graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance 7.2
Primary hard disk: Disk data transfer rate 5.9

I initially experienced a number of issues with Windows 7:

These issues have since been resolved over time with a clean install, the installation of Service Pack 1 and the upgrade to HDMI monitor. The networking issue was resolved with the upgrade of my laptop to Windows 7.

Windows XP to 7 Upgrade

As noted earlier, I upgraded two Windows XP computers to Windows 7 Home Premium. My Levovo T61 laptop had been running Windows XP Pro and the desktop computer had been running Windows XP Home.

I found that both upgrades went relatively smoothly, having evaluated both using the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and doing a clean install of Windows XP on both before proceeding.

Windows 7 will install over XP and saves many of the settings and files in a Windows.old directory (in the Documents and Settings, Program Files and Windows folders) but you'll need to reinstall your programs. Upgrades of Vista doesn't require the reinstallation of programs (but your mileage may vary).

The Windows Experience Rating for my Lenovo T61 Laptop
Component: What's Rated: Experience Rating:
Processor: Calculations per second 5.1
Memory (RAM): Memory operations per second 5.1
Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero 3.4
Gaming graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance 3.1
Primary hard disk: Disk data transfer rate 5.7

As you can see, the performance on the laptop was significantly less than on my desktop, but considering the computer is using older technology designed for an operating system two generations older, it is not bad. Note that this was a significantly more powerful laptop than most folks would buy (aimed at mid-level management, not consumers).

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Learning More

Windows Basics

These pages give an overview of Windows, its versions history and expected life-cycle as well as concepts and terminology:

Other Current Windows Versions

The following related pages offer more information about other versions of Windows currently in use:

General Windows Information

The following related pages offer general information about Windows:

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www.russharvey.bc.ca/resources/windows7.html
Updated: May 10, 2013