New Windows: 7 may be Microsoft's lucky number

The latest version of Microsoft's Windows doesn't come with a ton of flashy new features -- though there are some -- but it does offer users something they haven't seen in some time: a leaner, faster, more efficient operating system that just might surprise you.

How much faster and more efficient?

Put it this way: I was planning to upgrade the guts of the PC in my home office, an aging 2.5 GHz dinosaur that still runs an old AGP video card from about 2004. Under Vista, it had grown clunky and creaky. The Start Menu flopped open slowly. Windows dragged across the desktop occasionally moved only in fits and starts and stops. It was just "time" for new hardware, I theorized.

On a whim, I decided to install Windows 7 on the box. Boy, am I glad I did.

It was as if I had already purchased new hardware. That's not to say you or I wouldn't benefit from a newer machine. The older your box, the more likely you are to run into hardware and driver compatibility issues. But you might be able to get by a little longer with Win 7.

The installation process itself went more smoothly and quickly than any Windows install I've ever done before. And when I was done, it pretty much "just worked." Oh, I had to track down a driver for an obscure audio chip on my PC's motherboard, but other than that, Windows 7 found everything in my box: The add-on USB card, the USB bluetooth module that had given me fits under both XP and Vista, and even the internal TV tuner I had installed, but never used, because Vista just didn't like it.

It all worked.

"Take that, Apple," I thought to myself -- right up until I remembered that I had also initially liked Vista and its shiny new Aero interface design. So I clicked and poked and prodded and installed software. Office. Photoshop. Some shareware utilities. But nothing seemed to slow it down.

A few weeks passed, then a month. And I was still completely taken by Windows 7 -- so much that I installed it into the Boot Camp partition of my MacBook Pro, where it really shined.

A few weeks later, I found myself in Microsoft's Southfield offices with technology specialist Dave Sawyer, who started a demo of Windows 7 by explaining how he was going to show it to me on a 4-year-old Dell laptop to emphasize the performance improvements. Newer, more powerful hardware is better, Sawyer said, but Win 7 can give a new lease on life to some older hardware.

"A lot of the time I get business clients who say, 'Yeah, I'm interested in Windows 7, but our hardware is so old,' " Sawyer said. "But we've made a lot of improvements." He estimates engineers have eked out about a 15 percent improvement in power and performance.

But how?

For starters, developers rebuilt the core of the operating system, tossing out legacy code and eliminating services and other things that were hogging resources and CPU cycles. Open up Windows' Task Manager on fresh installation of Windows XP and look to see how many processes are running. Sawyer said it's typically 50 to 55. Do the same on Vista and you'll see 70 to 75. On Windows 7? I have 39 processes running on that Boot Camp install. My home PC clocks in at just 34.

"You couple that with some of what happens when you get an OEM box new -- they add a lot of stuff you may or may not want -- and it can add up," Sawyer said. He knows someone who checked a new PC that, right out of the box, had 130 processes running. "That's one reason you're going to see this huge increase in performance. We don't start what you don't need."

Another key improvement comes in the Windows 7 graphics subsystem -- the code and guts that draw windows and move your mouse and create the pretty Aero-themed components. It was streamlined and optimized to be less CPU-intensive and to use less of your PCs memory. A chart on a Windows 7 development blog run by Microsoft shows the steady drag on the processor and memory as more windows are opened in Vista. The same tests of Win 7 show almost no increase in CPU or memory usage.

Developers also reduced the time it takes to boot up and shut down the operating system.

"That's why these older machines suddenly have new life," Sawyer said.

Indeed.

That's not to say there aren't also some new features and improved old ones in Windows 7 (aside from the obvious and already reported improvements to the Start Menu, and the very nice new taskbar with live thumbnails of your open windows, and the nifty slideshow-based desktop wallpapers). The latest upgrade is more evolutionary than revolutionary in the way that Windows 95 was.

Some of my favorite new features:

Media streaming. You can now use Windows Media Center to watch and record TV (if you have a TV tuner) and then push that content, as well as your music library, to other media-capable PCs and devices in your home. Recorded programming, as long as it doesn't have a broadcast flag prohibiting sharing, can also be recorded directly to DVD.

Better backup. The operating system now includes utilities for creating regular full back-ups of your entire system. This isn't a files-and-settings backup like with Apple's Time Machine, but a bit-for-bit image of your drive. If you go down, you run a restore disk, then select your image, and the whole thing comes back without having to re-install Windows. Subsequent back-ups are incremental -- the software only updates the existing disk image with files that are new or that have changed.

Task-based troubleshooter. That works. If you have an issue with Windows, the troubleshooter can help you resolve it by investigating your drivers and settings for you. My MacBook had trouble when I attached it to a DSL connection away from home. I opened the troubleshooter and let it go to work, fully expecting the usual shrug and "I dunno" message I'd always gotten from XP and Vista. Instead, it reported that it had fixed an issue with my IP address, then immediately loaded up the Web page I had tried unsuccessfully to visit.

Problem steps recorder. Think of it as screen-shots on steroids. If you have trouble with your PC and you need help, you can run the PSR. Click record, then do whatever it is you were attempting unsuccessfully to do. The app takes step-by-step grabs, embeds them into a portable HTML document, inserts information about your machine, settings and OS, then zips them up for e-mailing off to someone who might be able to help you figure it out.

Gadgets live where you want them. You no longer have to leave desktop widgets and gadgets in the 'Sidebar.' In fact, the Sidebar is gone, and gadgets live right on your desktop.

Bitlocker to Go. This is one that IT departments will love. Windows 7 can be set up so that it encrypts data written to those easily lost USB thumb drives, reducing the risk of leaking important company information. Win 7 can also be set in the Group Policies to enforce portable device encryption, refusing to write data to any external device that isn't encrypted.

Multiple language support. We're not talking about simple translation of the words on the screen. Windows 7 can completely alter the appearance of the operating system for other languages. Arabic, for example, is a right-to-left language. The Arabic language pack and theme move the Start Menu button to the lower right of the desktop and taskbar, allowing the entire experience to flow from right to left. The typography itself has even improved. Non-latin fonts like Arabic and Hindi have been created in multiple weights so they don't degrade or lose meaning. Windows supports 36 languages out of the box.

XP compatibility mode. If you really, really need to run something that's leftover from Windows XP and doesn't natively run in Windows 7, you can run it in XP mode. It is, literally, a fully capable, fully licensed version of Windows XP that runs as a virtual machine inside Windows 7. It even has USB support. That means you can use it to connect to and use things like printers and scanners for which Windows 7 drivers aren't yet available or aren't forthcoming.

"People get used to the idea that they could find support for a long list of software and devices with XP. But one of the things people don't consider when they talk about staying with XP is that XP was made eight years ago," Sawyer said. "There have been a lot of improvements since then. A lot of changes."

If Windows 7 has any Achilles heel, it's the matrix of versions, prices and upgrade paths that are sure to confuse and bedevil consumers and IT purchasers: Window 7 Home Premium ($160 for upgrade and $240 for full version), Windows 7 Professional ($200 and $300, respectively) and Windows 7 Ultimate ($260 and $400, respectively). As always, online deals might yield better prices. And keep in mind that Windows 7 will allow you to buy an inline upgrade from one version of Windows 7 to another if you find in the future that your needs change.

But here are two numbers you need to know now: 3 and $149.

Sawyer said Microsoft plans to offer a family pack of Windows Home Premium -- good for use on three machines in your home -- for just $149 (details to come at Microsoft's online store). The only way to get a better price is if you have or know a college student who can get the student discount of $29.

What are you waiting for? Your computer's not getting any younger. Yet.

tgromak@detnews.com