Giz Explains: Why Windows 7 Will Smash Vista

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30 Oct 2008 (yest

                               
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Giz Explains: Why Windows 7 Will Smash Vistafrom Gizmodo: Top by matt buchanan

                               
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  Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been, what we hoped it would be. The Batman Begins to Vista's Batman and Robin. While superficially both are kinda the same (Batman!), there's a completelydifferent thought process at work. Our walkthrough and videos showedyou how the new user experience is something to be excited about; nowwe want to show you what it is under the hood that enables the whollyhypeworthy experience to be all it can be. And why Windows 7 willtotally smash Vista's kidneys.
Microsoft is cheerfully explicitabout 7 killing Vista. At PDC, the head of Windows performance GabrielAul laid it out simply in a presentation entitled "Raising the Bar":

• If an application or device runs on Vista, it should run on Win 7.
• If a system runs Windows Vista, should run Windows 7 even faster.
• Notebooks should get better battery life in Windows 7.
• Windows 7 will be more reliable than Vista SP1 from Day 1.

Yep, not only does it have a more usable UIthanks to snazzy elements like peek through, a whole new taskbar andjust common sense simplifications, Microsoft admirably pulls an Applehere—its next release of Windows will run even faster than the previousone, an unprecedented feat for Microsoft.
That's because it's awhole lot smarter about taking care of what's going on in thebackground while you're gaping at some new UI element that's bothpretty and useful. For instance, Vista's window memory manager devotesthe same amount of RAM to every window you have open: No matter howmany windows are open, it acts like every one of them is visible andfull screen size, even if you had them minimized or in the background.This ate up a ton of resources, especially if you're like us and leavea billion windows open. Windows 7's window memory manager doesn't do that—only the visible windows use video resources now. That means you can actually run Windows 7 with 1GB of RAM—unlike Vista, where having anything less than 2GB is totally retardiculous.

                               
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Windows7 is also way more brainy when it comes to crashy apps and errors, in acouple different ways. Probably the most impressive sounding—thoughwe'll have to see how well it works in real life—is application crash resiliency.If an app crashes more than once, Windows 7 learns how it should runthe app to avoid that particular train wreck. Also, error reports areactually useful: The Problem Steps Recorder watcheswhat you do to trip an error—if you can repeat it after turning on therecorder, that is—and it generates a useful, detailed error report in alanguage that actually resembles English! And 7 just plain practicessafer sex—device drivers are sandboxed, so nastinessfrom one cruddy set won't infect another. Having learned its lesson,Microsoft is working with hardware makers to deliver all updated drivers through Windows Update instead of, say, Samsung's byzantine excuse of a website.
Noneof Windows 7's awesomeness matters, though, if all that rock is toomuch for your notebook's battery to handle. Vista's power managementwas definitely better than XP's, and Windows 7's is remarkably betterstill. Part of it is just that whole smarter background management,which for battery life does things like dial down the processor moreoften, use less juice to play a standard def DVD, automatically turnoff your Ethernet adapter, common sense stuff like that. But it doesn'tjust do all this fancy energy-saving jujitsu behind your back (thoughit can). Windows 7 is capable of delivering a battery efficiency report that breaks down in detail what's chomping on your battery—power-slurping hardware, vampire-y processes, the works.
Allof this reflects a new mindset about the overall user experience thatseems like it just got left on Vista's cutting room floor, for whateverreason. Vista was just going through the motions of a new OS. IfMicrosoft actually delivers on what they've shown and are promising forWindows 7—and all signs seem to point that way—it'll actually have theheart and soul of one, even if it's wearing the same brand of clothes.
Somethingyou still wanna know? Send any questions about Windex, Billy G orspending G's to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subjectline.