Windows7How

How Windows 7 different from Vista

October 1, 2009

An important aspect to remember before looking at differences between Microsoft’s Vista and their latest OS is that Windows 7 is actually closer to an updated version of Vista, as in “Vista Release 2.” Even Gartner Group considers it a “polishing release” – much more than just a service pack, but less than a complete re-build of the Vista operating system.

So, we will start with some important similarities between the two OSes in order to help understand what is different. For instance, the version structure of Vista will still apply to Windows 7. The only major difference is that the “Vista Business” version will now be known as “Windows 7 Professional.” The rest of the structure remains the same – of course, changing “Vista” to “Windows 7.” Another similarity is found with the Microsoft Deployment Kit (MDK), which helps to deploy the operating system to PCs. This useful toolkit contains several help files and utilities to make that process much easier, and each OS is served by one. Also notable, applications that work on Vista will work on Windows 7 owing to the similarity of the kernel build. And, perhaps most importantly to any company or individual, the hardware requirements are close to identical as well; no need to go and purchase yet another upgrade to run Windows.

A very important difference is something anyone will notice who has used Windows XP and then migrated to Vista – Windows 7 is faster! You will get back the speed with which XP used to do things. Now, this is not to say that you will see speeds like you do with Linux text editors, but the speed is very noticeably faster than Vista in every area of the OS. It very possibly could be faster than XP, but we will have to wait for some benchmarking once the OS hits the open market.

Early reports are that it is very stable as well. Many people working on the beta and the Release Candidates have reported few if any ‘blue screen of death’ crashes thus far. Compared to earlier Microsoft beta programs, this is very encouraging news. If Windows 7 turns out to be more stable than even the well-made XP, it could become a large sales success for Microsoft – especially if the XP holdouts find it worthwhile to upgrade for better performance and compatibility.

The Windows 7 taskbar has also been simplified and streamlined. Since all applications will be on the taskbar, with icons changing visually to indicate the application is running, the quick-launch area is gone. It will also be easier to locate you last used documents by right-clicking on the appropriate app icon and choosing the document you wish to open. Again, this is a big change from the old days of sifting through a huge document list. It will be noticeably different from Vista, but it is organized much better and that should make using it smooth and intuitive.

A fully integrated search feature will also make finding documents and files much easier on your PC, the network or the Internet as all three now work together.

In the all-important security department, BitLocker is smarter and will also encrypt flash drives and external USB drives. The volume-encryption will create its own hidden partition so that the user does not have to do it themselves. This is a huge and very useful security feature which will work better now allowing administrators to relax just a bit more.

And, for the administrator, The Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is also improved and allows directory level back-ups as opposed to entire volumes as was the case with Vista. The AppLocker is more friendly and flexible. When dealing with the User Account Control (UAC), it has been improved but you still may find it a bit too strict. Microsoft has removed some of the ‘bloat-ware’ from Windows 7 by taking out Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, and many others which see little use. And, maybe your favorite, Group Policy settings have been added including the ability to set network-wide power management.

Overall, it appears that Windows 7 is what some of us expected to see in Vista – more stable, faster and easier to manage. It is not a perfect operating system by any means – but there is no perfect anything. Windows 7 still has the old-school ‘desktop’ which came to us long ago (first at Xerox and then in Windows 3.0), and it is still managed with several disparate administration tools – it could be called ‘clunky.’ However, given the improvements we have seen here, it may indeed be worth the upgrade. Perhaps, we could discover that Windows 7 is the best operating system from Microsoft to date. We will see…

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Tags: AppLocker, BitLocker, encrypt flash drives, external USB drives, Messenger, Microsoft Deployment Kit, movie maker, Photo Gallery, uac, User Account Control, windows 7 compatibility, Windows Recovery Environment