Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 9.10 – Getting Started with Windows

(Note: this is Part 6 of an on-going series.)

The Windows Vista 7 User Interface

My first look at Windows 7 made me wonder what all the talk about the “fresh new interface” was about. In many ways, it looks and feels identical to Vista. Now as far as I’m concerned, that’s not a bad thing. It’s all the rage to bash Vista and its numerous failings, but I was actually pretty happy with it. At any rate, Vista is alive and well in Windows 7. For example, the format of the Start menu is unchanged, the Aero window decorators look identical, and the Control Panel is more of the same.  My system’s boot-up time is definitely faster, though that’s always the case with a fresh install of Windows. Right now it takes about 35 seconds to arrive from a powered-off computer to a desktop ready for action, which is definitely acceptable, if still not ideal. It will be interesting to see if it’s still under 40 seconds a few months down the road when the registry has been weighed down with applications coming and going. (Just when are they going to get rid of the registry, anyway? I understand that Microsoft seriously considered replacing it during the development of both Longhorn and Windows 7, but sadly, the registry abides.)

The New Taskbar

The first obvious departure from the Vista user interface is the taskbar, that lovely menu along the bottom of the screen that houses the Start button and displays the list of currently running programs. When I saw a few early screenshots of the Windows 7 beta, I was surprised to see that the taskbar was no longer using horizontal text, as had been the case in every version since Windows 95. Running programs are now shown simply with an icon with no accompanying text. Could this finally be the Windows taskbar that can dwell comfortably on the left or right side of the screen? The answer is… yes! Hallelujah!

An unfortunate convention of user interface design – both in applications and Windows itself – has been for menu bars to chew up lots of vertical space, which is the same space you really want to maximize when viewing multiple pages of text. (You know, during those rare times on a computer when you’re surfing the web or reading/writing a document.) This has become less of an issue now that 19″ and larger monitors are the norm, but thanks to the widescreen aspect ratio, there’s still far more space left-to-right than up-to-down. And if you’re using a smaller laptop or netbook with a 12″ or smaller screen, you want to save all the vertical space you can. All this is to say, of course, that I immediately moved the Windows 7 taskbar to the left side of the screen and breathed a sigh of relief. That alone pretty much convinced me that the upgrade was worth it.

But of course, there’s always a downside. Now that the taskbar relies on icons instead of text, it takes two steps rather than one to find a specific window when you have, for example, more than one Word document open. You must hover the mouse over the Word icon, which displays snapshots of all the Word documents currently open, and then you select the one you want. Also, I’m still not used to the fact that clicking on the icon of an already running program doesn’t open another instance of that program. To do that, you must hold Shift and click, or in some cases, right click on the icon and choose to open new. I’m sure this will eventually become second nature, and I’m willing to accept a few small sacrifices for the sake of a vertical taskbar.

Task Switching with ALT+TAB

The ALT+TAB feature is one way of getting around the limitations of the taskbar, and has long been a favorite shortcut. In Windows 7, pushing ALT+TAB and holding down ALT shows all of the currently open windows. Keep pushing TAB to cycle through until it highlights the window you want, or just click on it. Ubuntu does almost the same thing, with an added bonus: as you cycle through windows, the currently selected window is brought to the forefront, while other windows are shown as darkened outlines in the background.

Starting to Search (or Searching to Start?)

With Windows 7, I’ve finally gotten into the habit of using the search feature on the Start menu as opposed to digging around for programs through several layers of menus. Even in Vista, I was still keeping with the basic Windows 95 paradigm of re-arranging all my programs into a few main folders (e.g. Apps, Games, Internet, Utilities, etc.).  Now I don’t bother because it’s just a lot faster nowadays to hit the Windows key, type in what I want (e.g. iTunes) and push enter. This seems to work 9 times out of 10, and for that other time, at least you can filter the list and choose from a handful of options. I find myself missing this feature in Ubuntu, which is still using the older “you-want-a-program, find-it-yourself” paradigm.

Visual Effects

Windows 7 certainly looks good out of the box. Aero is enabled by default, so all the transparency and other goodies work right away. Microsoft has always had a an easier time of creating (and for the most part, adhering to) interface standards for its own programs and third-party applications. This allows Windows to present a unified and consistent user experience. While GNOME and Ubuntu have made enormous strides in improving uniformity and compatibility between applications (ugh, I just remembered the days when you couldn’t even copy and paste between separate programs in Linux because there was no universally standard clipboard), there are still instances in Ubuntu when various programs don’t adhere to design conventions and aren’t as predictable and homogeneous as they could be. Whether that’s a bad thing or not is certainly a matter of personal taste, but I tend to prefer the consistency and polish of a Windows desktop.

Audio/Video Playback

Playing audio CDs, MP3 files, and DVD movies in Windows 7 was hassle free. I’ve never been crazy about the interface of Windows Media Player, but it gets the job done. To be honest, I would have been flabbergasted had there been any problems. It’s a shame that the same can’t be said for Ubuntu, due to unfortunate and all-too-frequent audio/video driver and codec hassles. A lot of people try switching to Linux, but when something basic like audio doesn’t work, most people won’t spend large amounts of much time trying to fix problems before deciding to go back to something that just works. Apple probably has the biggest advantage in this area thanks to its overarching control over the hardware and software that comprise a Mac, but in the PC world, multimedia is still a Windows forte.

First Impressions

The user experience of Windows 7 is, in many ways, just an updated take on Vista. And that’s alright, because Vista was already pretty decent. I give Ubuntu props for its a superior ALT+TAB feature and virtual desktops, but the Windows taskbar and start menu are superior to Ubuntu’s, and that ends up being where I spend the majority of my time interacting with an operating system. Windows wins this round because it still has just a bit more polish and trouble-free interaction with basic audio and video playback. Ubuntu is rapidly catching up, and if this contest was between Windows and Linux Mint, there might have been a different outcome.

In the next installment, I run into a few things that Linux just can’t do as well as Windows.