Windows 7: Vista Rehashed — Missing the Mark
While the initial response of Windows 7 seems to have been positive from beta users, I have personally found it really no better than Windows Vista. In fact, most of the touted improvements really aren’t there. Here is a basic review of Windows 7 as compared to Vista.
Not much improved
Windows 7 has not really improved enough over Windows Vista. It’s no wonder why Microsoft was able to shove this one out the door so rapidly. Effectively, Microsoft gave Vista a slight UI facelift, added a couple of tweaks here and there and then pushed the product to the shelves. In fact, I’m really wondering why it took as long as it did with so little improvement. The same issues that exist in Vista still exist in Windows 7. Namely, these include limited driver support, application compatibility and enhanced security that gets in the way. I’ll discuss these issues below.
Driver Compatibility
When Vista was released, one of the main issues was driver support. This issue is exactly the same with Windows 7. For example, I have a Dell Studio XPS system running Vista 64 Home Premium edition. It’s running 64 bit because I have 12GB of memory and that won’t work on 32 bit Vista (or Win 7). Dell has had months to ready drivers for this brand new system (purchased July 2009). Yet, Dell does not offer any drivers on their support site for this hardware. Yes, they did support an upgrade disc, but that’s about it. Dell expects you to accept the drivers that come with Windows 7 rather than obtaining the proper and updated drivers. Worse, Windows 7 driver support is still very bare. I wouldn’t expect to see full driver support for Win 7 until at least this time 2010 (possibly longer depending on adoption rate).
Note that 64 bit Windows requires 64 bit drivers. Windows 7 cannot load or use 32 bit drivers under the 64 bit edition. So, if you need to use 32 bit drivers, you should use the 32 bit version. Of course, that means you are limited to 4GB of memory. So, if you have older printer drivers that do not support 64 bit edition, you will have to hope that Windows 7 has a driver or be prepared to throw the printer out and buy something new. This also follows with devices like Dlink’s Skype phone adapter.
You may be able to get around some of these issues using Sun’s Virtualbox or MS’s Virtual PC and loading 32 bit XP under a virtual environment. Note, however, that not all devices offer passthrough to the virtual machine, so you may not be able to run those older devices requiring 32 bit drivers. You may be able to get this working under Win 7 Ultimate’s XP mode.
Overall, driver support is rated 1.5 stars out of 5: poor
Application Compatibility
As with Vista, Windows 7 fails in this area still. Frankly, because Windows 7 is effective Vista with a face lift, all of the same compatibility problems still exist in Windows 7. So, don’t expect your old XP apps to run properly under Windows 7 in many cases. This is especially true of apps that also tie to hardware devices that require drivers.
Worse, I have some 3D apps that work fine on Vista, but do not work at all under Windows 7. This indicates to me that Microsoft has further broken application compatibility between Vista and Windows 7. So, be prepared to lose some apps that may have worked under Vista.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars: fair
Enhanced Security – User Access Controls (UAC)
Security of your operating system and data is a big priority and is understood. Any level of security has to straddle a fine line between securing the system and not getting in the way of using the system. Frankly, UAC is a complete and utter failure. This system is so in-your-face about security that it is a turn off. Combine this with its constant verbose ‘Are you really sure’ messaging, people will soon ignore the messages just to get the work done. Basically, this system is likened to ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’. If you make every alert important and nothing ever happens, people stop listening. Will UAC stop a system from being infected? Probably not. People will still run apps they shouldn’t run.
Beyond UAC, Windows 7 changed nothing over Vista. Windows 7’s UAC appears identical to Vista for all intents and purposes. Frankly, it’s still so much of a hassle that I still turn it off.
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars: in-the-way
Other problems
Other than the above, not much else has changed. All of the main usability problems that were introduced in Vista are still in Windows 7. For example, when you open file requesters, they tend to default to large icons. I prefer ALL of my file lists (whether a file requester or a Windows explorer window) to be in list formatted with the columns Name, Size and Date Modified. Both Vista and Windows 7 default to Name, Tags, Rating and Date. Sometimes it even adds Date Taken. I have no intention of rating or tagging every file on my filesystem. For files in a photos folder or a music folder, yes. Definitely not every file on the filesystem, so these columns are completely inappropriate for 98% of the filesystem. Yet, the headers are there each time a new file requester opens. Why?
When you’re constantly having to change the columns to show the data you need, that’s very inefficient and wasteful. Let me set it once and forget it. No, can’t do that. I have wasted a ton of time just rearranging these windows each and every time I open a new file requester. Please Microsoft, figure out a way to let us save our favorite columns and make it actually STICK.
In Windows explorer, this USED to work in XP. In Vista, and it also now appears Win 7, you could set up your preferred folder view and go into the options and ‘Make all folders like this one’. That works for a while. However, inexplicably the folders eventually revert back to their old column headers without any warning. So, changing this setting and saving it doesn’t work. Again, it’s another inefficient use of my time.
Time Wasters
On top of the above inefficiencies, Microsoft has decided to bury many functions down up to three layers deep to change system settings. For example, you used to be able to right-click ‘My Network Places’ and get right to the settings for the network adapters. Now, however, if you do this you get to a new UI interface that requires you to click one or two additional links to get to the configuration panel. In some cases, they’ve split features out into multiple separate windows to do the same thing that one panel used to do in XP. Again, this requires not only digging through multiple places, you now have to dig through multiple panels.
Windows 7 should have been redesigned in a major way. Instead, we get a rehash of Vista. The learning curve is still there. Nothing has been done to increase user efficiency in the UI. Overall, I’d give Windows 7 a 3 stars out of 5. Microsoft has a lot of work to get Windows 7 even close to the efficiency level of XP. They also need to address the lack of drivers, driver compatibility and application compatibility issues. Eventually, they won’t be issues once developers redesign their apps to work with Windows 7, but there are still lots of legacy apps that do not work.
Should you buy Windows 7?
That’s really the question of the year. If you are buying a new machine that comes with Windows 7 loaded, go for it. If you are running Windows XP, you might want to think twice. Windows 7 does not solve all of the XP compatibility problems. So, if you’re looking at upgrading an existing system, I would recommend against that. In fact, you can’t directly upgrade (see below). You will find that most of your apps may no longer work. So, be careful when thinking about an XP upgrade. Note that you can’t directly upgrade XP to Windows 7 anyway. Windows 7 will move Windows to Windows.old and then install a fresh copy of Windows 7. This means you will need to find all of your app discs and reinstall (assuming that that he apps are Windows 7 compatible). So, this is a real pain.
I would recommend that you buy a new hard drive and place it into your XP machine and install onto the new hard drive. Then set it up to dual boot. So, then you can boot into Windows 7 or XP depending on what you need. Dual booting is a hassle, but at least it retains your apps. You can even create a virtual environment out of your XP hard drive and run it under Virtualbox or Virtual PC in Windows 7. So, you might want to consider a virtual environment for your XP system for compatibility (assuming you aren’t running games). Note that virtual environments work great for Windows desktop apps. Games, on the other hand, don’t always work that well… so be careful with games as they may not work in a virtual environment.
In answer to this question, only upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista. Do not upgrade XP to Windows 7 as it’s a waste. Instead, buy a new hard drive and install Windows 7 fresh. Then, copy over your files from your XP hard drive that are important to you. Consider the age of XP, you probably need to buy a new hard drive anyway just strictly considering the hard drive’s age. Hard drives are only rated to last about 5 years reliably and XP is long older than 5 years since it was released.
[Update 2/11/2010] After upgrading several systems, I highly recommend against upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 using the upgrade process. The reason: while it appears to work, you may find the system somewhat strange during use. Some things won’t install and work properly. Basically, the system just doesn’t always work 100% after an upgrade. It seems that Windows 7 retains too many Vista files and settings and leaves the system in a slightly unstable state. A state that no amount of repair can fix. If you have Vista and want to upgrade, don’t. Instead, install a fresh copy of Windows 7 and reinstall all of your apps. Windows 7 doesn’t have to format your hard drive, so you won’t lose your data. However, you will need to find it all again after installing Windows 7 fresh. So, if you aren’t familiar with reattaching existing data to newly installed apps, you may need to enlist the help of the Geek Squad or someone who knows what they are doing.
Good luck.
Business Organization Fail: The failure of the sales pipeline
In my line of business, purchasing services is part of doing business. Unfortunately, many businesses fail at sufficiently managing this budding relationship properly. This time is a crucial in relationship building between the two companies. If the order process does not go smoothly, is delayed or is slow to process or complete, this can damage the relationship from the start. A lot of companies pride themselves on their actual services, but how many company’s pride themselves or tout their order entry and completion processes? Not many.
All too often, you place an order for a service and the order does not complete as you expect. At first, you think this operation should be simple. However, when installation day and time passes without a peep, this leaves you wondering what happened. So, you call the sales and/or customer support line only to find out they don’t have a record of your order. Unfortunately, this is a sign of disorganization. A sign that this company fails to manage the order entry and order pipeline system properly. This is a company that should leave you with the question, “Do I really want to do business with them?” Rightly, you should be asking yourself that question. In some cases, however, this may be a cable company or some other company where you are over a barrel. Defacto monopolies exist in society and there’s little we as consumers can do about that. So, if you want that service, you must purchase it from that company or you don’t get it. But, even with all of that in mind, you should still ask the question, “Should I do business with this company?”
Disorganization is nearly always a sign of things to come. If there is this much disorganization surrounding the installation and the order process, that does leak into other parts of the business including the actual service itself. So, you may find your service affected in random ways throughout the life of the service. These problems may include, unintentional service disconnection, incorrect billing and invoicing including double billing and inaccurate billing to sporadic service quality and uninformed service outages and even installation issues resurfacing months or years later. Disorganization affects far too many businesses. Worse, most businesses don’t even recognize that they are affected, let alone do anything about it. Bigger businesses are more prone to disorganization than smaller companies, but business of all sizes can and are affected. With large companies, the departments and staff get more and more disconnected. As the departments get bigger and more disconnected, employees adopt a ‘not my job’ mentality and once something reaches the limit of their job description, they push it off their desk with no thought to the customer’s relationship. Once it’s pushed off their desk, they don’t really care what happens. This can leave holes that let customers’ orders fall through the crack and not be serviced.
With small businesses, disorganization happens from immature processes and/or constantly shifting priorities. Also with small businesses, these companies are usually understaffed and that leaves the employees overworked. So, instead of the service order falling into a black hole like a larger company, the order simply gets buried on the desk (or in email). This results in lack of order tracking. Effectively, big or small company, the problem is the same: a lost order.
Organizing: Documentation and Communication
Order taking doesn’t have to be a complex process. It does, however, need a process. In large companies, each department needs to be on the same page. So, that means sales, billing, customer support and technical support all need to use the same system to reference order numbers. Having multiple order tracking systems is ripe for failure in the order process. There’s nothing worse than need three or four reference numbers to discuss an order. Worse, though, is when you call and they can’t even look up any of the order numbers and they resort to company names, service addresses and phone numbers. Sometimes these don’t even work. When nothing works to look up your account, that indicates either an incompetent service representative or fractured systems. If you get a service rep who can’t seem to find your order, ask them for their name, thank them and call back. When you get a new representative ask them to look up your order or company. If they immediately find it, you should report the previous representative to their supervisor. Representatives can sometimes intentionally prevent finding the company to get you off the phone faster. These need to be reported.
Companies must recognize disorganization in order to fix it. Without recognizing this issue, the company cannot change their internal processes. The processes must be streamlined from start to finish. This is why many businesses adopt and use ISO 9000 standards certifications. These certifications, while rigorous and somewhat costly to obtain and somewhat costly and rigorous to maintain, ensure a high quality customer experience from start to finish. These certifications require that every department follow a blueprint each time they interact with customers. A set of steps that always lead the customer through the same experience. It sets quality standards from services and products and, again, it overall ensures a high quality customer experience.
Many larger companies require ISO certifications of their vendors. This certification process ensures there is a commitment of quality and a level of organization associated with a company’s service offerings. In other words, ISO certification immediately tells would-be buyers that they can expect a certain level of quality. ISO certifications require each employee to write their processes down of how to properly work through their daily jobs. Once these processes are documented, it’s easy to hand the documentation to new staff and have them follow these standards. Standards set by a company ensures that products and services are efficiently provided. Without any standards in place, this quickly leads to disorganization and haphazard and random methodologies in placing and managing the order process. Without standards and processes in place, a company cannot provide high quality services as easily or consistently.
Communication with prospects is key to an order’s success. If there is an issue with an order, there needs to be someone in the organization to manage these delays. Someone should be tasked with keeping track of orders and managing (by contacting the customer) when there is to be a delay or an unexpected issue that may prevent an order from completing properly. So, on top of the processes in place to make sure orders always take the same path, there needs to be a person to manage the order fully from start to finish. Additionally, systems need to be interlinked properly so that Sales, Customer Service and Billing can be on the same page at the same time. There is nothing worse than calling in and asking about the progress of an order only to find out the order was cancelled from lack of communication.
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
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