Windows 7 RC1 Hands-On: Nothing New to See Here?

When I first reviewed the public beta of Windows 7 a few months ago, I was blown away not only by its attractive UI but by just how snappy the operating system was. Where Vista seems hopelessly addicted to background activities that just sit there spinning the hard drive and eating up precious system resources for no apparent reason, its successor is pleasantly quiet. Since I wrote our review, I’ve been using Windows 7 as my primary operating system both at home, where I have the 64-bit version installed, and at work where I use the standard 32-bit.  I can say with some authority that, though Windows 7 build 7000 is considered a beta, it’s actually the most stable operating system I’ve ever used. So when our PR rep at Microsoft e-mailed me a few days ago to tell me that he had stuck a Windows 7 RC1 disc in the mail for me, I couldn’t wait to get it and install it. Unfortunately for journalists (but perhaps fortunately for users), not much has changed in the feature set and user interface since January’s beta release. At first glance, the only way we could tell that we were in a newer version of Windows 7 was by looking at the lower right-hand corner of the screen where the words “Evaluation Copy. Build 7100″ have replaced “Evaluation Copy. Build 7000.”  Otherwise, the desktop hasn’t changed. Microsoft claims that performance and stability should be much better in RC1 than in Beta build 7000. We’ve yet to run benchmarks, but I doubt I’ll notice much difference in stability; the Windows 7 beta only crashed on me a handful of times in 3 months of daily use. Microsoft’s press kit pointed us to some very subtle blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em features and interface changes that occurred between the beta and RC1 versions of Windows 7. The most noteworthy of these features are:

• Remote media streaming: You can get remote access to music and videos that live on your home computer via a Windows Live ID and Windows Media Player. You have to set up a Windows Live ID that’s linked to your Windows login to try this out. This takes some effort to set up and we haven’t tried it yet, but we’ll report back when we do.
• Full IE8: While XP and Vista users have been able to download the final version of IE8 for several weeks now, Windows 7 Beta users have been left in the cold with an early beta of IE8 that can’t be upgraded. RC1 fixes this problem by having a release version of IE8 preinstalled. The beta version of IE8 that came with Windows 7 Beta was the one program I hated to use in that operating system, because it was painfully slow and would constantly lock up. I can tell already that the version of IE bundled with RC1 is much more stable.
• XP Mode: Windows 7 users will be able to download a virtual machine that runs a licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 in a window. This benefit is more for IT people that need to support XP, or businesses that use software that is incompatible with Windows 7. As Ed Bott points out, there’s nothing new about running a virtual machine with Windows XP in it, but what is useful is that you don’t need to buy a new XP license to do so.
• Alt+Tab Peek: When hitting Alt+Tab to switch among windows, only the highlighted window shows as you’re cycling through your options. This is a cool-looking but minor feature that’s an extension of the “peek” function that occurs when you hover over the right end of the taskbar and was introduced in Windows 7 Beta.

• Parent folder stays visible in address bar: If you had a long folder name and a small explorer window in Windows 7 Beta, you might not see a button for its parent folder. However, in RC1 the parent folder is always visible in the address bar. The screens below indicate the difference. The Windows 7 Beta version, with the parent folder button removed because of a long folder name, is first.

Windows is also losing a key feature, one which I used and liked a lot in the beta version. Bluetooth audio drivers were built-in to the beta, meaning you didn’t have to monkey around with annoying third-party drivers and utilities just to play music through your wireless speakers or headset. I have a Sony stereo bookshelf system that accepts Bluetooth connections and in a couple of clicks I was up and running; with RC1, it looks like I’m going to have to go searching for my Bluetooth dongle manufacturer’s utility and hope it works and doesn’t eat up too much memory. I have no idea why Microsoft dropped the built-in driver, unless there were licensing issues. Those are the primary new features that really stuck out to me in terms of user interface and functionality, but we’ll be benchmarking a system with Windows 7 RC1 over the next few days and will report back the performance results.