I've been using an HP Touchscreen with Windows 7 on it for a few weeks now and wanted to post some early feedback about usage as compared to XP and Vista.
Headline: Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.
This really isn't meant to be a compliment. Windows 7 gets a great deal right what Vista got wrong but it doesn't bring enough new things to the table to be considered a breakaway success. It feels like a service pack release.
Example 1: User Account Control. No user I have ever talked to has asked for User Account Control. Never. Its not a user requested feature. People hated it in Vista and they will hate it (maybe a bit less) in Windows 7. Its one of the first things I turned off. My opinion of User Account Control is that it is a very backhanded way to try and secure an operating system with holes all over the place. Security by annoying your customers is never a plausible way to go. Software developers please for the love of everything holy pay attention here. If you buy into the NetPromoter theory and you want real customer advocates, then don't ever develop a feature that your customers didn't ask you for. Fix the real problem not the symptom. It is very easy to see through this feature as a small grasp to fix other underlying issues with security.
Example 2: Multi-tasking is easier and harder. I am the type of user that has 50+ documents, applications, etc. open on my computer at any one time. I work best this way as I have a ton of competing priorities all going on at once and it allows me to see what I still need to work on to get things done. Combine this with the old XP quick launch bar with 20+ shortcuts and 3 monitors and I am a information working machine. Windows 7 (and Vista to some extent) have taken away some features like the Quick Launch toolbar and replaced them with grouping and other bizarre concepts on the taskbar. In terms of multi-tasking being better I do like the window preview as you mouse over a taskbar icon and IE8's handy feature to show you all tabs is interesting. The IE8 thing would be even better if it worked in Chrome and Firefox too. I've long ago left the world of living in one browser and anyone who works on a consumer website has too. The harder part here comes from the "pin an application to the taskbar" feature. This seems like the alternative to the quicklaunch bar but you are forced to use keyboard shortcuts if you want multiple versions of the app at once and the button links are huge. My 20 XP shortcuts would take 5 times the real estate on Windows 7 to show them all and then I couldn't just click on Excel three times to get three instances of Excel open. Once you open an app it disappers from the taskbar and is replaced by the running version. How is that easier to use?
Example 3: More polish than features. Using Windows 7 is not a painful experience and the performance is definitely better than Vista. The best way I can describe the new UI pieces is that it appears to have more polish now that before. While I like Apple's concept of interface design (on the iPhone), I don't think it gets you a hall pass on functionality. Most of the stuff I have noticed when using Windows 7 has been "lipstick" features instead of actual user benefitting feature sets. Maybe I'm wrong on this one and will change my mind. Regardless I'm not complaining about using a better looking OS just that I might trade some eye candy for more usefull stuff. I'd love to see what dropped off the backlog to get all the aero stuff done...
I've known many software developers from the Windows team over the years and I have a decent scense for the complexity involved in developing an OS. I'm waiting for the new OS to come. This is a service pack to Vista built on the old 2000/XP codebase. The 2000/XP codebase has been around for decades and I just don't think its worth keeping anymore. Start from scratch, design only for 64 bit, whatever makes it easier to innovate. Your competitors are already there.
-Kris
