Windows 7: Release Candidate 1 Preview

Internet Explorer 8 and the Rest

Rounding out our look at Windows 7’s applications, we have Internet Explorer 8. Recently released for both Vista and XP, IE8 is the latest salvo in the ongoing browser wars between Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, Google, and Opera. We’re not going to go too in-depth here since it’s not a Windows 7-only feature and we’ll be doing a proper review soon, but as the default Windows browser it’s best to quickly hit on the high points.

Microsoft has taken a lot of well-earned flak for the compatibility of previous versions of Internet Explorer. As far as rendering and adherence to web standards goes, IE has been off in its own little world. Microsoft has finally taken a number of steps to resolve that, making IE behave in a much more standards-compliant manner, even though it breaks sites designed for IE’s previously quirky behavior when those sites don’t explicitly ask for IE to use that behavior (i.e. compatibility mode). It’s still not the most compliant browser out there, but it’s a great deal improved from where it was.

Internet Explorer 8

Furthermore the rise of AJAX and other JavaScript-heavy application types has necessitated the need for better JavaScript performance in IE, with IE picking up a garbage collector for JavaScript along with a higher performing JavaScript interpreter. Also new in IE8 is a privacy mode (InPrivate), a new type of search feature Microsoft is calling Accelerators, and separate processes for each tab to keep malfunctioning tabs from bringing down the rest. We’ll have a full work-up of IE8 later this month to look at these features in-depth, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile when it comes time to talk about the rest of the applications, Windows 7 is unusually bare. Microsoft has finally gotten around to following through with their desire to decouple some of the standard Windows applications from the operating system itself, so that they can upgrade the applications separately from the OS. As a result, the following applications are no longer included in Windows as of Windows 7: Mail, Calendar, and Movie Maker.

Missing: Half the applications that should come with the OS

All of them have been spun-off into Microsoft’s Windows Live service (joining previously spun-off Messenger) as part of what Microsoft is calling the Windows Live Essentials pack. While there’s probably a good reason for doing it exactly this way (it’s hard to add features when you’re a convicted monopolist) it’s little consolation to the fact that it makes Windows 7 extremely confusing to use. An operating system without an email client or a calendaring application? What is this, 1995? And what about IE? It’s decoupled from the OS too, and yet it’s still included by default.

At least with Vista and its spun-off Messenger, Microsoft replaced Messenger with a link to the Windows Live website to download it. However with Windows 7 there’s absolutely no indication of where they went unless you start searching the help files. We’ll cut Microsoft some slack here since this is just a Release Candidate, but if this is how they intend to ship the final version (and it probably is) then there is likely to be a number of confused users once Windows 7 launches.

One Windows Live Essential install later, and we have Mail

One notable addition to Windows 7 is that Windows has finally gained some basic ISO disc image handling abilities. Unfortunately it’s not the ability to mount them as a virtual drive like Mac OS X can, but Windows 7 at least gets it half-right by getting the ability to burn them. The new Windows Disc Image Burner fulfills exactly this role, and is invoked by right-clicking on ISO files. It may not sound fancy, but with software increasingly being distributed on ISOs these days (including Windows 7 RC1 itself) it’s undoubtedly handy.

We can't mount them, but at least we can burn them

Last but not least, Disk Defragmenter has received an overhaul in looks and features in coming from Vista. With respect to looks, Microsoft hid the fragmentation status of a hard drive in Vista on the belief that users found it to be superfluous information, and they have restored that information for Windows 7 after receiving negative feedback in order to satiate the power users who wanted that missing information. With respect to features, Microsoft has given Disk Defragmenter the ability to move NTFS metadata files, which previously could not be moved and in some situations unnecessarily blocked the shrinking of partitions as a result. Disk Defragmenter is now also capable of recognizing SSDs, and will block the defragmentation of those disks since defragmenting is of no use due to wear-leveling algorithms.

The new Disk Defragmenter

After nearly a year-long build-up, Microsoft’s ongoing pre-launch campaign to woo computer users has come to a close, with the public launch of Microsoft’s latest and greatest desktop OS, Windows 7.

Windows 7 is being born in to a world of uncertainty, one Microsoft has never faced before to such a degree. Apple’s (and Mac OS X) market share is the highest it’s been in over a decade. Linux has finally gained however small a foothold in home computers through netbooks. And what was Microsoft’s next-gen operating system, Windows Vista, has taken enough backlash that it’s going to be in therapy for the rest of its life.

By no means are these troubled times for Microsoft, but never has victory been less assured.

Unfortunately, Windows Vista started life as a technical misfit, something even we didn’t fully comprehend until later. It ate too much virtual address space, it copied files slowly, and it ran poorly on the lowest of the low-end computers of the time. Microsoft fixed many of these problems by the time SP1 hit, but by then it was too late. Vista went from a technical misfit to a social misfit, with no hope of immediate redemption.

So Windows 7 is being launched with some gargantuan tasks on its shoulders, few of them technical. First and foremost, it needs to reverse Vista’s (and by extension, Microsoft’s) bad image among existing Windows users, in order to get them off of the old and insecure Windows XP. Then it needs to help stem the continuing flow of Windows users to Mac OS X, which has continued to grow over the years. And finally, it still needs to innovate enough so that Windows doesn’t end up stagnant, and ideally sell a few copies to Vista users while it’s at it.

It’s a large order, one that as we’ll see Microsoft won’t completely deliver on, but they’re going to get fairly close to.

In the meantime, we’re left a launch that has been a very long time coming. Between the public beta, the public RC, and Win7 having been finalized 3 months ago, virtually anyone that wanted Win7 has had the opportunity to try it. Anyone could get the release version by the middle of August through TechNet, MSDN, Action Pack, or any other of a number of sources that Microsoft released Win7 to well ahead of the public launch. The real launch was 3 months ago, so the public launch is almost a technicality.

And with that said, let’s get started with our final look at Windows 7.

window desktop

Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04

Back in the early part of 2008 we decided that we wanted to take a fresh look at Linux on the desktop. To do so we would start with a “switcher” article, giving us the chance to start anew and talk about some important topics while gauging the usability of Linux.

That article was supposed to take a month. As I have been continuously reminded, it has been more than a month. So oft delayed but never forgotten, we have finally finished our look at Ubuntu 8.04, and we hope it has been worth the wait.

There are many places I could have started this article, but the best place to start is why this article exists at all. Obviously some consideration comes from the fact that this is my job, but I have been wanting to seriously try a Linux distribution for quite some time. The fact that so much time has transpired between the last desktop Linux article here at AnandTech and my desire to try Linux makes for an excellent opportunity to give it a shot and do something about our Linux coverage at the same time.

After I threw this idea at Anand, the immediate question was what distribution of Linux should we use. As Linux is just an operating system kernel, and more colloquially it is the combination of the Linux kernel and the GNU toolset (hence the less common name GNU/Linux), this leaves a wide variation of actual distributions out there. Each distribution is its own combination of GNU/Linux, applications, window managers, and more, to get a complete operating system.

Since our target was a desktop distribution with a focus on home usage (rather than being exclusively enterprise focused) the decision was Ubuntu, which has established a strong track record of being easy to install, easy to use, and well supported by its user community. The Linux community has a reputation of being hard to get into for new users, particularly when it comes to getting useful help that doesn’t involve being told to read some esoteric manual (the RTFA mindset), and this is something I wanted to avoid. Ubuntu also has a reputation for not relying on the CLI (Command-Line Interface) as much as some other distributions, which is another element I was shooting for – I may like the CLI, but only when it easily allows me to do a task faster. Otherwise I’d like to avoid the CLI when a GUI is a better way to go about things.

I should add that while we were fishing for suggestions for the first Linux distro to take a look at, we got alot of suggestions for PCLinuxOS. On any given day I don’t get a lot of email, so I’m still not sure what that was about. Regardless, while the decision was to use Ubuntu, it wasn’t made in absence of considering any other distributions. Depending on the reception of this article, we may take a look at other distros.

But with that said, this article serves two purposes for us. It’s first and foremost a review of Ubuntu 8.04. And with 9.04 being out, I’m sure many of you are wondering why we’re reviewing anything other than the latest version of Ubuntu. The short answer is that Ubuntu subscribes to the “publish early, publish often” mantra of development, which means there are many versions, not all of which are necessarily big changes. 8.04 is a Long Term Support release; it’s the most comparable kind of release to a Windows or Mac OS X release. This doesn’t mean 9.04 is not important (which is why we’ll get to it in Part 2), but we wanted to start with a stable release, regardless of age. We’ll talk more about this when we discuss support.

The other purpose for this article is that it’s also our baseline “introduction to Linux” article. Many components of desktop distributions do not vary wildly for the most part, so much of what we talk about here is going to be applicable in future Linux articles. Linux isn’t Ubuntu, but matters of security, some of the applications, and certain performance elements are going to apply to more than just Ubuntu.