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The boys in Redmond finally seem to have figured things out. Maybe it just stopped raining all day, every day on the big giants campus up North, maybe not…probably not. The bottom line is, Windows 7, the successor to the clumpy, bloated, and obnoxious Vista that just seemed to never work, seems to do just the opposite – that is, it works.

Every major new OS release seems to bring its problems. Remember when XP came out with some major security flaws? By Service Pack 2, though, XP has been a solid machine (relatively, I’m still a Mac fanboy, and always will be as long as the fruity gang in Cupertino keeps producing sweet eye candy, fun apps, and great media-centric products). Vista, however, seemed to be in a category of its own.

It began as Longhorn, a development code-name for the project that became the “Vista” brand. The techie in me naturally scooped up a copy for shits and giggles, and the software was promising, but nowhere near complete. Two years into the development, we were still sitting on alpha releases. And we were still being promised an architecture overhaul in WinFS. Remember that? It was something along the lines of five million lines of code into the project, and some group of suits at Microsoft scrapped the project, wanting to start over. So we were stuck with NTFS. [Microsoft claims it to still be in development, but we'll reserve judgement for a few years, 'til we all forget about it.]

The problem is, Vista, then Longhorn, was being developed for WinFS, a more modern file format system. And it was gone. But with billions already dedicated to research and development, and a project already seriously behind schedule, things had to keep moving. And so became Vista, and that whole “Bringing Clarity to Your World” crap that Microsoft tried to swindle upon us.

Vista was a typical Microsoft release – any new tool or program released always sucks, version one. Remembers Windows Millennium Edition? What a joke. System Restore made its debut in Windows ME, but almost never worked. Vista was not immune. The new UI caught the eyes of millions, but when they bought it, it crippled everything. No widespread beta release, an RTM that was too close to public release, no drivers, and a resource hog.

And by hog, I mean a bafoon.

It was three months before the release of Vista when code changes stopped. The development team became a Service Pack team, moving straight to Service Pack 1, which came out an entire year later, while the “gold” master, went to OEM’s for distribution. An unfinished project. Five years after XP. Three years late. A mess from the get go.

So what’s so special about Windows 7? Well, if you’ve made it this far through the post, you’re in for a treat. Windows 7 is nothing new; in fact, its based in large part on the same underlying code structure of Vista. Windows 7 is Vista, but it works.

It’s done away with the absurdity that was User Access Control, account control, whatever the hell it was. It was annoying, and downright ridiculous. Windows 7 still asks you to confirm access to certain operations, but in far less intervals, while somehow, becoming more secure. You’re thinking, why didn’t they do this in the first place? Or you should be, I am…

Thanks in large part to the largest beta testing release in OS history, including millions of Beta 1 and 2 download product keys issued from Redmond itself, hardware manufacturers and OEM’s have had the code for over a year now. Drivers are sitting on servers, ready for those early adopters pings. I just ran the install on a two year old Dell laptop that was “running” Windows Vista Ultimate. No OEM discs, and only one driver needed – the graphics card. An easy search on NVIDIA’s sight yielded the solution, and Aero was working, like it always should have.

The install was easy. Made a USB stick bootable, loaded the OS onto it, plugged it in and off we went. It was nice to format Vista goodbye. And the install took less than 20 minutes. The final install boot completed, and Windows 7 was up and running. A much cleaner interface, a much snappier feel, and [insert Mac fanboys equivalent of enjoyment for using a Windows-based PC] came to fruition. Internet Explorer 8 loaded Mozilla’s website fast enough that I didn’t have to resort to a network or offline install of Firefox from an exe on another hard drive on the network, though I will be honest, that was the extent of my IE8 testing, and I have no further plans to dabble with it.

iTunes installed in a jiffy, Skype and AIM were a snap. The end result? Windows 7 does away with the disgust involved in using a PC, Vista style. Microsoft is starting to listen, and they’re starting to get it. And they’re taking a lot of cues from the Cupertino cult while they’re at it. But at this point, I think all that anyone will really care about is that Windows works again. It feels lighter-weight, emphasis on the feels, but that’s all that matters.

Don’t expect long lines at Best Buy or those new spiffy Microsoft Guru Bar retail stores (emphasis on sarcasm at the concept of these retail stores), but expect a better user experience – that you have to pay a couple hundred bucks to get. It’s what you get when you’ve got a monopolist tech firm in a capitalist nation.

Nerd Out.

[images courtesy of: Ballmer, Windows Backdrop, Microsoft Inspiration]