PC Tonic

Today is my 7th day on Windows 7 RC, after making a complete switch from Vista. I said this Monday that I would stick with the RC until the final version rolls out. Five days later I’m still saying the same thing – 7 is much smoother and snappier than Vista, and there’s no reason for me to go back. Moreover the striking resemblance to Vista means I haven’t missed practically ANY feature of the older Windows. I won’t write anything more about the goodies, about which you must’ve heard enough to last a lifetime.

With all the hype, the fact remains that this is pretty much still a pre-version release and can’t be expected to be flawless. This post is about the issues that I’ve faced with the RC these seven days. These baddies could certainly do with some tuning before Windows 7 is out.

• The Task Scheduler is one heck of a headache.

Yes, hardly anyone uses it including me, but that’s no reason for something to be horribly buggy. Error messages pop up the moment I open it, and haunt me throughout. Tasks can still be created, but it’s a nightmare to find and modify them. The Task Scheduler has been acting up the very moment I tried it, so there’s no question of me doing anything. Of course, those horrendously useless “Test updates…” could have broken something…

• Start menu search needs to be faster.

The search bar introduced in Vista’s Start menu was one of the best things that has happened to Windows. It’s still there in 7 and displays results from more places (like the Control Panel). It’s significantly slower than Vista’s search as well.  Sometimes it simply hangs up and won’t read whatever I’m throwing at it. And it never learns that I want Paint.NET ahead of Paint when I’m typing “p-a-i…”, if you get what I mean.

• Sleep mode can be suicidal.

I hate to shutdown my laptop, as it takes long to start all over again. But waiting for a couple of seconds more is far better than getting the BSOD, which is what I’ve got on three different occasions after putting the laptop to sleep.

• User inside the desktop; desktop inside the user.

Open Windows Explorer in 7 and you’ll find a “Desktop” option under Favorites in the sidebar. Click on it and you’ll find your user folder inside it. Enter the folder and, voila, there’s another Desktop folder right there! Both the “Desktop” s are completely different, and this can confuse the hell out of people. Explorer’s overall UI is great, but these anomalies should be stamped out.

• Redundancy is far from gone.

Microsoft stripped Windows 7 off some components like Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, etc., and now provides them for free as the Windows Live suite. This measure did cut down on some of the bloat, not all. In Windows 7, you can open an image file with Windows Photo Viewer OR Windows Media Player (yes, version 12 can handle images) OR Windows Media Center OR Paint. And neither of these is good at organising your photos, so you’ll have to get Live Photo Gallery for that, which can also play videos like Media Player or Media Center. Confusing, right? One app for each job would be so much better.

• Windows Live Writer drops one useful feature in Windows 7.

Live Writer is my primary blogging tool and I love everything about it. However it has got at least one feature missing in 7 – you can no longer insert pictures from the web through their URLs. I used this feature a lot, and naturally I’m missing it now. This is quite related to Windows 7, because the same version of Live Writer has the feature in Vista and XP.

• OK, there’s no point 7.

Save the above quirks, 7 has been really working like a charm for me. The serious ones (points 1,2,3) will almost certainly be ironed out in due time, while I can be hopeful for the others.

What’s your view on the latest and to-be-the-best Windows OS? Let’s hear in the comments.