Windows 7 also delivers better performance in practice; our tests showed improvements over both XP and Vista SP2.
If you've been using the Windows 7 Release Candidate you'll be used to some of the performance improvements like the system not slowing down just because you have multiple windows open (this relies on the 1.1 version of the Windows Desktop Display Manager so you need WDDM 1.1 drivers – only Intel is dragging its feet putting these out).
However, the RTM code strips out the debug code and adds a number of performance tweaks; we noticed that restarting from hibernation was considerably improved, especially on older ultraportable notebooks with small, slow hard drives.
System requirements
The system requirements haven't changed from what Microsoft announced earlier in the year; a 1GHz processor, 1GB (for 32-bit) or 2GB (64-bit) RAM, support for DirectX 9 graphics devices with 128MB of memory and 16GB (32-bit) or 20GB (64-bit) of free disk space.
The pre-release versions of Windows 7 have all run happily on netbooks and the final RTM version is no different.
Windows 7 on a netbook
As you can see from our benchmarks, we compared XP and Windows 7 on the Atom-based Asus EEE S101, which boasts a fast flash drive; this has an exceptionally fast startup (measured to the point that Windows is responsive to input) and shutdown times (measured without applications open) and in all cases where tasks took long enough to measure, Windows 7 was measurably faster than XP.
On our long-term Windows 7 test machine, the Dell XPS M1330, Vista SP2 gave the release candidate code a run for its money but the RTM improved on all the RC times but one test (copying a 3GB folder to a network drive), it equalled or easily beat the Vista times (See benchmarks from the Dell).
Built-in applications like Paint, Media Player and Movie Maker are routinely faster than in Vista (often by up to a third) and Media Center is significantly more responsive than the Vista and Windows XP versions.
Battery life
Battery life doesn't get a significant boost on all upgraded systems compared to Vista; you can expect to see bigger improvements in battery life on new systems of comparable specification as OEMs tweak settings in the power policy. Delving into the details will probably help you squeeze more life out of upgraded models.
With the Asus EEE PC S101, our battery rundown test of wireless web browsing and streaming music and video continuously showed a welcome improvement, from 2 hours 50 minutes under XP to 3 hours 2 minutes with Windows 7 RTM. Even more welcome is that fact that the reported battery life is usually close to what you actually get.
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prospero
November 21st
1. I've got my Windows 7 Ultimate version from my work as an upgrade. According to the given information, this software could be installed from Windows XP 64 bit. So I entered the cd in the drive. First impression during installation was wow! But then after clicking install, I got the message that I couldn't perform an upgrade from XP64. So I selected the custom install. All went well. The software installed itself on my machine after I created a new partition and formatted it. You have to create a new partition cause Windows wants to add a small partition of 100mb for own purposes. Everything installed well and the machine restarted. Completing install... ... ... ... .. and then everything becomes quite silent. No messages, no activity. That's strange I thought. I performed the Microsoft compatability test and my machine should be 100% compatible with the software so what went wrong. Tried to install several times. Looked on the internet for a solution to find that many people experienced the same problem. I tried and tried again for more than 15 times to install during which everything not essentially necessary for the computer to run was taken out (cards) or turned of in the BIOS. Then I decided that I would get a new graphics card just to try if that was the problem the installation faulted. Well... it was not. I heared that some people restarted the computer and at the installation message that all went wrong and I had to reinstall from the beginning, they pressed shift and F-10 and typed explorer.exe from the commandline. With me the computer then started to do something but halted anyway somewhere during installation. Again, no error message what so ever to work with. Then I got an idea. I reinstalled (we're talking about the 32nd installation try-out now!) and waited patiently for the 'completing installation' to appear. Immediately at the beginning of this phase, I hit the shift and F10 buttons and typed 'explorer.exe' at the commandline. Two processes were now running. This helped. Don't ask me why, but the installation now went on up until I could create a user and the installation could finish as expected. Pfffffff. What a work. Two full days of trying to install a system on a relative young computer.
Then, next phase. Activating the software was not possible because... I had an upgrade but performed a clean install (as the software told me to do in earlier stages). I found a workaround on the www I could edit in the registry to get passed the registration issues. I did buy a legal version of the software and followed the correct steps during installation so I'm not doing anything wrong. Then I noticed my external harddrive on the IEEE 1394 port was not recognized. On the www I found this to be an old problem from the Vista times. Obviously Microsoft has not taken any steps to get rid of this issue while programming the Win 7 version.
Now at last playing a bit with a working installation I've found one of the first issues why the software installation jammed. My computer is able to work around a memory hole (you can turn this on or off in the BIOS) to make the best use of the memory available. Never before a problem on any of the 32bit or 64bit windows versions, or with linux installations. I've found that Windows 7 can't handle this and jams when this option is turned on in the BIOS of the computer. The new graphics card was not necessary.
All in all, compared to for instance the up to date Linux Ubunty 64 bit software installation which performes on excellent level and can be installed by a completely non computer guy, Microsoft Windows looks great, but is delivered with an installation a big guy like Microsoft should be very very ashamed off.
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