Wolfe's Den: Making Book On Windows 7Wolfe's Den: Making Book On Windows 7

The second notable issue with Windows 7 is more philosophical than immediate. However, this makes it no less important. While Windows 7 corrects the performance problems plaguing Vista, and in doing so appears to be lean and mean, in reality it's no less hefty, code-wise, than its predecessor. In plain English, this means that it's a bloated operating system. One can say that all modern OSes -- Apple's vaunted OS X included -- are bloated, and so in this regard Windows 7 is no different than its systems-software cousins. One would be correct. Nevertheless, Windows 7 is still bloated.

This is perfectly acceptable nowadays on the desktop, where modern hardware has driven the cost of CPU processing cycles down to practically nothing. It's even tolerable on laptops, where we all notice an OS-induced performance hit, but pretend that we don't because we've paid so darn much for our dual-core notebooks that we can't psychologically accept the reality that they're really no faster than a circa-1993 Windows 3.1 Compaq. (Also, fanboy protests to the contrary, Linux has never successfully overcome its dearth of laptop drivers, and has remained a notebook nonstarter.)

However, on Netbooks, I'm expecting that Windows 7 will be a no-go. Since the whole world is pretty much on a path towards bypassing laptops in favor of the downsized ultra-lights, we're going to have a big OS issue on our hands very soon. One solution would be Charlie Babcock's suggestion that Windows go open source. This would enable developers to spin lightweight SKUs, which could actually run a Netbook. Sadly, this is not likely to happen in our lifetimes.

Perhaps Linux will reclaim a serious place in client computing by becoming the preferred choice of Netbook users. For desktops and laptops, though, Windows 7 is coming, and it's a solid effort we should all welcome.

Windows 7 Pluses

Faster boot times;

Keeps (but improves) good-looking Vista user interface;

Fixes Vista flaws like slow search;

Tighter memory footprint.

Minuses

Poorer security than Vista (UAC issue);

Media device-centric (too consumery);

Doesn't rethink what an OS should be;

Still relatively bloated, so it misses the Netbooks boat.

Here's the image gallery I did showing some early screen shots released by Microsoft as well as a walk through my pre-beta install:

Some of this material originally appeared in slightly different form on information's Wolfe's Den blog.

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Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of information.com.