Windows 7: The State of the Beta
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Ever since Microsoft started to share early versions of Windows 7 with the world last October, the response has been, for the most part, pretty darn enthusiastic. At least when it comes to folks who blog, write for magazines, and otherwise have soapboxes to speak from. But vast quantities of civilian Windows users–including quite a few Technologizer community members–downloaded and installed the Windows 7 beta during the time it was available. I wanted to give more of these savvy laypeople a chance to share their experiences and impressions. So a couple of weeks ago, we launched a survey (using PollDaddy’s excellent service) to let them speak out. And the results are in.
In the end, they aren’t startling: Most of our survey respondents like what they’ve seen of Windows 7 so far. They reported surprisingly few technical problems considering it’s a beta, and most of them liked most of the OS’s new and improved features. Really liked them, in many cases
Background/disclaimers: A little over 200 people took the survey. We didn’t screen them or capture demographic info. You might argue that folks who are interested enough in Windows 7 to go through the trouble of installing it now would be more predisposed to like it than the teeming masses who won’t give it any thought until it ships. You might also point out that it’s possible that the beta makes a better impression than the final version will, once it’s installed on shipping PCs and in some cases larded up with unnecessaryware . You may well be right. But that’s okay: The goal of this survey is to see what people who have actually used the OS in its first public form think. And hey, once Windows 7 does ship, we can field another survey. Probably will, in fact.
The report that follows is divided into four parts; here are links to all of them in case you feel like skipping ahead…
Part one: The Basics: Usage, Setup, Glitches
Part two: Feature-by-Feature Feedback
Part three: Windows 7 vs. the Competition
Part four: The Bottom Line and Verbatim Feedback
The Basics: Usage, Setup, Glitches
Most respondents told us they’d banged away at the Windows 7 beta enough to get a good sense of its pros and cons–87 percent said they’d used it extensively or a fair amount:
Even shipping operating systems have been known to fail to install on a surprising percentage of PCs. But for a beta, Windows 7 installed on most respondents’ computers without much hassle. Actually, 90 percent of respondents said they had no trouble installing it at all. Eight percent said they encountered a non-serious issue, and two percent had to deal with a severe setup issue.
Once the OS was on the computer, the most common problems folks found by far were missing drivers and apps that wouldn’t run–reported by 23 and 22 percent of respondents, respectively. Thirteen percent reported features that didn’t work as expected or crashes/blue screens. All other issues appeared to be rare–including poor performance. (94 percent of respondents were apparently satisfied by how fast the Windows 7 beta ran.)
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Windows 7 Looks Interesting Says:
March 12th, 2009 at 2:17 pm[…] now, today, I came across a poll from 200 users of the Beta. Take a look at what they put together and tell me you’re not interested. That […]
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Interesting Reading… - The Blogs at HowStuffWorks Says:
March 12th, 2009 at 9:04 pm[…] Windows 7: The State of the Beta – “Ever since Microsoft started to share early versions of Windows 7 with the world last October, the response has been, for the most part, pretty darn enthusiastic. At least when it comes to folks who blog, write for magazines, and otherwise have soapboxes to speak from. But vast quantities of civilian Windows users–including quite a few Technologizer community members–downloaded and installed the Windows 7 beta during the time it was available. I wanted to give more of these savvy laypeople a chance to share their experiences and impressions. So a couple of weeks ago, we launched a survey (using PollDaddy’s excellent service) to let them speak out. And the results are in…” […]
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Linkpost | 3.13.2009 Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 4:54 am[…] Windows 7: The State of the Beta – Technologizer surveyed 200 people who are using the Win7 beta. For the most part, they liked […]
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The State of Windows 7 Satisfaction | Technologizer Says:
November 30th, 2009 at 12:41 am[…] So to riff on Ronald Reagan’s famous question from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, Are Windows users better off than they were a few weeks ago, back in the Vista era? We decided to ask the Technologizer community, a group of tech enthusiasts with a high propensity to acquire new operating systems quickly and push them to their limits. Starting on November 16th, we surveyed our readers (and Twitter followers) about their experiences with Windows 7. Our goal: to do a reality check on the mostly favorable initial reviews of the new OS (as well as our own survey of largely enthusiastic Windows 7 beta testers back in March). […]
March 12th, 2009 at 3:10 am
“Price is going to be a major consideration with Windows 7. Microsoft is shedding jobs, outsourcing, and contributing to a falling economy. At the same time, they still think their software is worth premium prices. Vista proves that this is not true. The price needs to be more reasonable, or I will continue switching my household computers to Macs. There is NO reason for Windows 7 to cost any more than OSX. In fact, it should cost less.”
Except to use a Mac, you need to buy a whole new machine. OSX + Machine is more costly than windows by itself.
And £100-£150 for an operating system is not premium prices. Premium pricing is like Photoshop, £1000+
March 12th, 2009 at 3:46 am
I assume the commenter was intending to replace hardware as it becomes obsolete, so the machine cost largely irrelevant here.
Don’t forget that this £100-£150 is an *upgrade* cost, not a purchase cost. Also, it is for an operating system, that merely enables you to use your computer – it should just work.
That Vista works so badly that many will feel the need to upgrade to remove the pain suggests that a lot of people will feel upset that they are being charged again for what they should have been provided with in the first place.
March 12th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Your charts would be much more readable if the “y” item order was always the same, and the “x” scale was constant.
You could then do graphical comparisons without having to read the axes each time.
March 12th, 2009 at 8:35 am
You can see the financial motivation for Microsoft to really hit a home run with Windows 7.
It will be tough to win me over from Fedora Core 10, but I remain open.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:17 am
ok so concider this – the beta was only available to technet subscribers (i am one – so no fan boy flames) most technet subscribers are Microsoft professionals the other bunch are the torrent crowd alot of which acquire unpaid for software and dont pay licence fees – picking up MS exploits on the way – these groups have only ever and will only ever (for the foreseable future) used MS operating systems
I would like to see a a real comprehensive usage comparison with a distribution like mint linux, which has proven to me to be a better out of the box experience than any microsoft OS – my client base is aged 8 to 70 years old and ranges from the technophobic to the professional – very single person (around 40) i have installed a modern linux distribution for has adopted it as the full time primary OS. for ease of use for functionality for cost effectiveness, stability and security being the primary focus for all.
open source needs fully independent representation with no political or financial agenda !
March 12th, 2009 at 10:54 am
first commenter:
“The price needs to be more reasonable, or I will continue switching my household computers to Macs”
huh? because Macs are so reasonably priced? wtf?
March 12th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
“huh? because Macs are so reasonably priced? wtf?”
Suggest you look in Technologizer’s archive for their series of articles comparing Mac and a range of PC vendor prices feature by feature …
March 12th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
pipertehc –
That is incorrect. The beta release was made available to anyone who wanted to download it from Microsoft.com, and was downloaded by over a million non-TechNet / non-MSDN users.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:20 am
The one drawback I’ve seen in Windows 7 is its readiness (or lack thereof) to address enterprise security concerns – the cost of upgrading to the 2008 R2 server in order to use DirectAccess could be prohibitive.
More discussion of Win 7’s enterprise-worthiness: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2230
More discussion of Win 7 security: http://vpnhaus.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/windows-7-ready-yet-for-enterprise-primetime/
June 9th, 2009 at 5:48 am
I’ve read on many blogs that the install process of win 7 would have been faster, but I didn’t really noticed any improvement on it; especially if compared to vista. It takes 35minutes on fast machines and 1hour in slow ones.
June 9th, 2009 at 6:17 am
Apple’s announcement yesterday that Snow Leopard will be available for $29 really puts the pressure on Microsoft. Both Windows 7 and OS X 10.6 are evolutionary releases, rather than revolutionary ones with a swathe of new features.
Should Microsoft price Windows upgrades higher than Apple’s rate, would that reflect a feeling that while most Mac users are pretty content with 10.5, many more PC users are less than happy with Vista, and so would pay a larger premium to upgrade?
December 18th, 2011 at 5:04 am
I've read on many blogs that the install process of win 7 would have been faster, but I didn't really noticed any improvement on it; especially if compared to vista. It takes 35minutes on fast machines and 1hour in slow ones.
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