I managed to get a pre-beta copy of Windows 7 installed on my Acer Extensa laptop this past weekend. I became interested in Windows 7 after hearing all the news of how it is supposed to pretty much be just like Windows Vista, only with the speed of XP (or something like that). While this is only a prebeta, I was able to install it on the laptop with little problems. For the record, the laptop has a 1.86ghz Pentium Dual Core CPU running on a 533 mhz bus, 3gb of 533mhz DDR2 RAM, a 250gb 5200rpm hard drive (with four partitions), and integrated Intel x3100 graphics.
I have to say, that even though its a beta version of Windows 7, the thing installed quickly. When Microsoft says that you can install Windows 7 within 10 minutes, believe them. On this laptop, the complete install took less than 20 minutes on battery power. Using the AC adapter, Windows Vista takes the better part of an hour to get itself running on the laptop.
The big thing I am concerned about is boot time. It takes Windows Vista 58 seconds to reach the login screen, and once I log in it takes at least thirty seconds to load the gadget bar (or whatever its called), as well as my virus scanner, chat clients, etc before I can actually start working.
After reading so many articles about Windows 7 boost in performance, I was excited to see how long the same scenario would take with Windows 7 (compared to Vista). The result? It takes Windows 7 53 seconds to reach the login screen. So only a five second difference, right? Wrong. Once I enter my password, Windows 7 presents me with my desktop, ready to work within 10 seconds. This includes loading the Windows gadgets, and my startup programs. In this aspect, I am very excited because hopefully by the time Windows 7 ships the difference will be even greater.
Performance wise, I really can't call Windows 7 any faster than Vista; my laptop handles Vista extremely well (besides the long boot time). Vista is indeed bloated, but the computers being sold today are a lot better than those available when Vista was introduced, and thus can easily handle the bloat. This Extensa came with three gigabytes of memory; less than a year ago when I purchased an Inspiron 1525 and I found Vista to be very sluggish, but that was mainly due to the fact that the laptop only had one gigabyte of memory. This laptop (the Acer Extensa 7620) is by no means a 'fancy machine'; it was purchased for less than $600 (less than what I had spent for the Inspiron).
Other than the boot time, I can't really judge Windows 7 at this point (because it is not even in beta form at this point). The new Superbar sounds very exciting on paper, but its current form is pretty disappointing. I am not a fan at all of the new "ribbon" thing they have going in Paint and WordPad, but am very excited that they added a lot of nice conversion tools in the Calculator application.
