Windows 7 RTM Review: Improvements But Security Issues Remain

These times reflect clean installs, but I found times for custom installs over old operating systems to be in the same ball park. On the other hand, an in-place upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista will take much more time – my two trials have taken between 45 minutes and an hour each.

It appears that some of the disparity between Windows 7 and Vista SP2 here is due to a bit of a cheat on Windows 7’s part when it comes to evaluating system performance during installation.

Vista takes several minutes to run a comprehensive system performance evaluation, while Windows 7 may look only at the video subsystem performance. To wit, Windows 7 won’t have a Windows Experience Index score (Microsoft’s tool to assess hardware performance) to present to users, whereas Vista will try to accumulate the score during the installation.

Most devices drivers are available

On both of my test systems, plus several others on which I have installed Windows 7 RTM (including Lenovo T60p and X61 laptops), driver availability for recent-model systems (3 years old or younger) was surprisingly good with just the installation media – and even better upon first connection online to Windows Update.

On all four systems mentioned above, the only device that could not obtain a driver in this manner was a wireless WAN card in one of the laptops.

However, the functioning of the drivers was still a little dicey in some cases. With the Lenovo X61, for example, the 64-bit Win7 video driver for the laptop’s Intel 965 chipset adapter technically worked, but only with a lot of tinkering – particularly with an external monitor attached to the laptop’s VGA connector. In this case, getting the external monitor to the maximum supported resolution required me to periodically re-adjust the monitor refresh rate.

I expect Windows 7’s driver support and performance to improve significantly before the operating system’s official mid-October launch. However, don’t expect legacy support for older devices to magically appear. If a vendor never created a driver that worked well with Vista, don’t expect one to show up for Windows 7.

Is Windows 7 more or less secure?

Windows 7 provides a number of new security options, yet, perversely, many users could potentially have worse base security with the new OS than they did with Vista.

The most compelling security features – application whitelisting and encryption of both full disks and removable drives – are not included with the Professional and Home Premium editions that many will use at work and at home. And, in concessions to user outcry, Microsoft in Windows 7 has scaled back some of the security that was first introduced with Vista.

User Account Controls, or UAC, was probably the most reviled feature of Windows Vista: Users had to become accustomed to acknowledging every system change made to the computer, including application installations, patch installations, and access to system tools such as Computer Management or the network adapter settings.