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Microsoft will attempt to reboot itself this week with the launch of Windows 7, its new operating system for personal computers.The software giant is counting on Thursday’s launch to reignite its growth and rescue its image as a leading technology innovator after its failure with Windows Vista, launched in 2007 to much criticism.

Analysts estimate that just one fifth of the world’s 1.2 billion computers use Vista. About four fifths use Windows XP, introduced eight years ago, or even older Windows operating systems.

The impact of the Windows 7 launch will be felt far beyond the company’s Washington state headquarters as, it is hoped, it will drive growth for hardware, software and IT service companies worldwide.

PC manufacturers like Hewlett Packard and Dell are hoping for a big boost in sales of new machines with Windows 7 in the run-up to Christmas and research analysts say that the launch will have an immediate impact on PC unit growth.

“Recent OS releases have not been a growth driver in the PC market. However, the timing of Windows 7 is favourable for the industry due to expected economic improvements and an overdue hardware replacement cycle,” Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said. “We anticipate renewed interest in hardware upgrades from consumers and small business during the holiday season.”

Larger business and corporate customers are expected to take their time before upgrading. “In the corporate market Windows 7 adoption is not expected to ramp up until late 2010,” she said.

Gartner estimates that migration costs could be between $1,035 (£633) to $1,930 (£1,180) for a user to move from Windows XP to Windows 7, and $339 to $510 from Windows Vista. Large corporations can expect to spend millions of pounds upgrading.

The analysts IDC predict that around 177 million copies of the operating system will be in place by the end of 2010, 50 million of which will be in Europe. The firm estimates that products and services surrounding Windows 7 will generate $320 billion (£195 billion).

The IDC research shows that by the end of 2010 more than 7 million people worldwide in the IT industry and at IT-using organisations will be working with Windows 7 — or 19 per cent of the global IT workforce.

PC makers, among Microsoft’s most important partners, are busy talking up the prospects for Windows 7 as they need the boost it will give their sales.

Michael Dell, the founder and chief executive of Dell Computers, told a gathering of technology industry luminaries in Silicon Valley last week that he was expecting a “powerful refresh cycle”.

The combination of Windows 7 and the latest processing chips and productivity software meant that “you will love your PC again,” he said.

Reviews of early releases of the system have been favourable and Microsoft and its partners are due to launch a multi-million pound global advertising blitz.

According to Credit Suisse, 58 per cent of corporate customers were either dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with Vista. With Windows 7, which has been available in pre-release versions for several months, only 21 per cent are dissatisfied and none extremely dissatisfied.

Microsoft needs a hit to revitalise itself. The company has been accused of settling into staid middle age as it manages the mountains of cash and established customer relationships from its lucrative Windows and Office software franchises.

But the company suffered its first drop in annual revenue in the fiscal year to the end of June: a decline of 3 per cent, including a 17 per cent drop in the fourth quarter. Its share price, down 30 per cent since the beginning of 2008, has also been less than dynamic.

The company has lined up a blizzard of innovations to go with its new operating system. In a “year of product launches unlike any other in Microsoft history” there have already been revamps of the Windows Server software, a new range of the Zune HD MP3 players and a new Windows Mobile operating system for mobile phones.

In the coming months there will be launches for its Internet Explorer web browser, Xbox Live and the Bing search engine. This week should also see Microsoft burst into retailing with the opening of two stores in the US — a strategy perfected by Apple in recent years.

Steve Ballmer, the company’s chief executive, has been unchartisteristically reticent in his predictions for the new operating system, mindful, perhaps, of how high praise for Vista quickly sounded hollow after its launch in 2006.

Happily for Windows 7, the world’s appetite for personal computers is edging up again after the recession. PC shipments had fallen during the first six months of the year but last week analysts at IDC said that shipments from July through September rose 2 per cent from the same period last year.

IDC said that such growth ahead of the launch of Windows 7 boded well for the fourth quarter and next year.

The following steps will walk you through the process of installing Windows 7 on a fresh computer.
Installing Windows 7 is straightforward—if you’re doing a clean install, simply boot up your computer with the Windows 7 installation DVD inside the DVD drive and instruct your computer to boot from the DVD (you may need to press a key, such as F11 or F12, while the computer is starting to enter the boot selection screen). If you’re upgrading, simply boot into Windows Vista, insert the disc, and run the installer (if you are using Windows XP, see the previous post “Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7”).
When the installer has booted up, you will be greeted with the screen shown in Figure 1-2 (the upgrade screen is slightly different; you will have an option to check the compatibility of your system or start the installation). You will be asked to select the language to install, the time and currency format, and your keyboard type.

Figure 1-2. Installing Windows 7: the first step

With the selections made, you can now install Windows 7 by clicking the “Install now”
button (see Figure 1-3).

You will be asked to accept the license agreement. (If you are upgrading, you’ll first have the option to go online to get any updates to the installer first.) Check the licensing checkbox and continue.

Figure 1-3. Click the “Install now” button to start the Windows 7 installation process

On the next screen, you have a choice between upgrading your existing Windows or installing a fresh copy of Windows. If you are using Windows XP or earlier, the first option will not work for you—select the Custom (advanced) option (see Figure 1-4).

Figure 1-4. Two ways to install Windows 7—upgrade or fresh installation

You can upgrade from Windows Vista only if you run the installer from within Windows Vista. If you do a fresh boot using the Windows 7 installation disc, you will not be able to upgrade (you will be asked to rerun the installation from within Windows.

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Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7

Although Windows XP users cannot upgrade directly to Windows 7, Microsoft provides the Windows Easy Transfer utility, which allows you to easily transfer your computer’s settings and files to the new Windows 7.

To launch the Windows Easy Transfer utility, log in to Windows XP, insert the Windows 7 installation disc, and navigate to the \support\migwiz folder. Double-click migwiz.exe to launch the Windows Easy Transfer utility (see Figure 1-1). Follow the instructions on the screen to save the settings to another computer via a cable or network, or save them to a hard disk or USB drive. When Windows 7 has been installed, you can run the Windows Easy Transfer utility via Start?All Programs?Accessories?System Tools?Windows Easy Transfer. Follow the online instructions to copy the saved settings onto the new Windows 7 installation.

Windows 7 is Microsoft’s latest version of its Windows operating system. Unlike its predecessor, Vista, Windows 7 offers incremental upgrades and is aimed at ensuring maximum compatibility with applications and hardware already supported in Vista. As mentioned in the Preface, Microsoft’s key agenda regarding Windows 7 is to lure back many of the Windows XP users who skipped Vista. Windows 7 offers significant performance improvements over its predecessors—most notably Windows Vista and Windows XP. It is still based on the Vista kernel, but comes
with substantial performance improvements and a redesigned Windows shell, a new taskbar, and a less-annoying User Account Control (UAC) system.

There are also improvements in networking, in particular the introduction of a home network system known as HomeGroup. This chapter walks you through the different versions of Windows 7 available, followed by an overview of the installation process. We will then take a look at some of the new features in Windows 7 before we get into them in detail in subsequent
chapters.

Versions of Windows 7
With Windows Vista, Microsoft released multiple editions of its operating system with the intention of targeting different segments of its user base with different features at different price points. However, this approach wasn’t well received, as it confused the market; many users urged Microsoft to come up with one simple, all-encompassing version of the operating system.
With Windows 7, Microsoft still has many editions. However, Microsoft is expected to focus its marketing effort on just two editions—Home Premium and Professional— just as it did with Windows XP. Here is a list of the available editions, in ascending order, from least to most advanced:

Starter Edition
A lightweight edition for netbook computers. Netbooks are low-powered computers specifically designed for lightweight tasks such as web browsing and emailing. In this edition, Windows 7 will lack more advanced features such as Media Center, Aero Glass, fast user switching, multiple-monitor support, DVD playback, and multitouch support. This edition is geared toward replacing Windows XP on inexpensive computers such as netbooks, a market that is currently dominated by Windows XP. This edition will likely be available only as a preinstallation by OEMs.

Home Basic
This edition is designated for emerging markets only; it is for customers who are looking for an inexpensive entry-level Windows experience (limited Aero support, no features such as Windows Media Center or multitouch support).

Home Premium

This edition is designed for home users and will include features like Media Center, multitouch support, the Aero Glass UI, and so on.

Professional
This edition is designed for home workers and small businesses, and will include features like advanced network backup and the Encrypting File System.
Enterprise
Includes everything that Professional includes and adds BitLocker protection. It will have the option to encrypt USB flash drives and external hard disks. It also includes DirectAccess, which allows remote workers to access a company network securely without using a VPN, and federated search.
Ultimate
Includes all the features available in Windows 7.

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Microsoft had dug itself a cool, deep, dark hole with Windows Vista. Users demanding that Redmond extend the life of Windows XP wasn’t exactly something they could be proud of, either. Bombarded by complaints and negative press even after the first service pack was released, the bar had been set high for Vista’s successor: Windows 7.

Luckily for Microsoft, Windows 7 is more than just spin. It’s stable, smooth, and highly polished, introducing new graphical features, a new taskbar that can compete handily with the Mac OS X dock, and device management and security enhancements that make it both easier to use and safer. Importantly, it won’t require the hardware upgrades that Vista demanded, partially because the hardware has caught up, and partially because Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Windows 7 accessible to as many people as possible.

It’s important to note that the public testing process for Windows 7 involved one limited-availability beta and one release candidate, and constituted what some have called the largest shareware trial period ever. As buggy and irritating as Vista was, Windows 7 isn’t. Instead, it’s the successor to Windows XP that Microsoft wishes Vista had been, and finally places it on competitive footing with other major operating systems like OS X and Linux.

Microsoft is offering six versions of Windows 7: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, OEM, and Enterprise. The three versions that Redmond will be promoting most heavily are Home Premium, Professional, and Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, although Starter will also be available to consumers.

Windows 7 will support both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The bare minimum requirements for the 32-bit include a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB available hard-disk space, and a DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver. 64-bit systems will require at least a 1 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, 20 GB of free space on your hard drive, and a DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver. A touch-screen monitor is required to take advantage of the native touch features. Do note that some users have claimed to have limited success running the Windows 7 beta with less than 1 GB of RAM, but that’s not recommended.

Installation
Microsoft is offering several paths to install Windows 7. People can buy a new computer with the operating system already installed, upgrade from Windows XP or Vista, or do a clean install on a computer the user already owns. The clean installation took us about 30 minutes, but that will vary depending on your computer.

The upgrade procedure is different depending on whether you’re running Windows XP or Windows Vista. Vista users merely need to back up their data before choosing the Upgrade option from the install disc. Both XP Home and XP Pro users will have to back up their data, then choose Custom from the install disc. Custom will have the same effect as a clean install, although it’ll save your old data in a folder called Windows.old. Once you choose Custom, you’ll need to select the partition of your hard drive that contains Windows XP, and then follow the instructions to enter your product key and allow the computer to reboot as needed.

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