First of all, you need to know that Microsoft is a good client of mine. They didn’t ask me to do this review and I didn’t procure my copy of Windows through any special “secret” channels that are not available to just about anybody else. I also received no input or help in writing this review—but, of course, you are free to believe what you wish.

Windows 7 is clearly superior. Being so used to OSX’s interface, I find some of the user interface elements a little quirky. For example, I dislike Windows’ indeterminate progress bars—to me, a progress bar should indicate that, uh, some measurable progress is occurring. While I understand that some activities cannot be quantified precisely, I think that OSX’s spinner does a great job of indicating activity without causing user confusion by using a single interface element for two rather distinct purposes.

There are some other oddities here and there. Some of them are understandable—Windows is a much more complex environment than OSX because it needs to cater to a much wider array of users. Still, the networking setup is a complete mess for the average user. Setting up a network printer drove me completely insane until I finally gave up and simply entered its IP. Of course, only then did I discover that I had to download the driver for it and start the process all over again.

Despite these minor things—which, realistically, are unlikely to impact someone on a day-to-day basis—I actually like Windows 7. In fact, I like it a lot. The user interface is certainly more colourful than OSX—and I confess that I’m getting a little tired of the whole polished-metal look that I just can’t change. Consistency is great, but I think that, lately, Apple is pushing its design concepts a little too far. The fact that most people’s Windows desktop look like Jurassic Park meets Salvador Dali doesn’t mean that every person should conform to an absolute model just because Apple decides so (and I find this especially ironic given Apple’s whole “think different” shtick).

If moving from XP to Vista felt like getting shot through the neck with an arrow that has a gas bill attached to it, moving from XP to 7 feels like actually being the guy who shoots the arrow. The difference in the quality in everything from the user interface to the crispness of the font rendering is, to say the least, very stark. Windows 7 renders beautiful text—and renders it well, although it still lacks OSX’s attention to typographical detail (ligatures, anyone?) or its rich keyboard capabilities, which Microsoft insists on replacing with inline text replacements (which I hate for the simple reason that I know what symbols to use, and I don’t need the operating system to decide for me).

One thing that really struck me as a positive step: the operating system is a lot choosier when it comes to security. The one thing that really made me give up on Vista was its continuous insistence on notifying me when just about anything was about to take place. An application needs to open a port—do I want it to? An executable needs to run—do I agree? I made a change to the system registry—is that OK? I get less questions from my children! And don’t get me started about the auto-update mechanism… which is single-handedly responsible for more botched webcast recordings than I care to admit.

In Windows 7, all this silly business is gone. The OS still requires you to handle security notifications, but it does so using what seems to me like a more balanced approach—at the very least, it’s not nearly as annoying. Updates are also handled much more sensibly: Windows 7 notifies you less intrusively and doesn’t simply decide to reboot your machine in the middle of a webcast the way its ancestors like to.

It is somewhat difficult for me to give a fair overview of Windows 7′s performance for a number of reasons. First, I don’t really use performance-intensive applications—most of my work is done in such exciting environments as Word and Visio, which are hardly CPU sinks. Second, I run inside a virual machine, which probably skews my results. And third, my 4-year-old XP virtual machine probably suffers from a considerable amount of OS rot and is, therefore, slow for reasons other than the operating system’s performance (at least in terms of intrinsic CPU usage).

Nevertheless, Windows 7 seems to perform much better than its predecessor on the same hardware. This could be due to some optimization inside Parallels, but I can now run my VM with little—if any—performance degradation compared to my standard OSX applications, whereas XP was pretty much a single-tasking affair.

Speaking of OS rot for a moment, I really, really hope that Microsoft has found a way to fix it. It doesn’t seem to affect OSX as much, and it’s a leading cause of douse syndrome* worldwide. Preventing a system from becoming increasingly slow with time would greatly enhance the overall user experience and cut down on frustration.

I am not an expert in Windows development, but I do love Microsoft’s development tools—and setting up a PHP development environment is almost too easy.

PHP on Windows still feels a bit weird to me, but I see why Microsoft is so excited about it: it does work pretty damn well. This in itself may not be enough to make a switch—but it should be enough to make you take a second look at the environment around you, even when it is not directly connected to your development environment.

For example, while I am not sure that the TCO of a Linux-based web environment is higher than Windows’ like Microsoft claims, I am pretty sure that the TCO of MySQL doesn’t scale nearly as well as that of Microsoft SQL Server. If you take a good hard look at SQL Server Express, which is free to download and use, you will find that it is actually quite powerful—maybe limited in some respects (such as database size and RAM usage) compared to MySQL, but certainly much more powerful in terms of capabilities.

When you look into scaling, however, my experience is that MSSQL does a much better job with items like clustering and transactional replication (which you really need for e-commerce systems). Yes, it’s expensive—$5,000 a CPU is not something that you can easily ignore—but the money you spend in licensing (a one-time expense) is likely to be matched by a reduced need for expertise (which is an ongoing expense). Having a Windows installation on hand to maintain your familiarity with these technology is something that you shouldn’t, in my opinion, simply ignore because you don’t like Microsoft.

Why, I already have! I use OSX as my main operating system because my mind seems to work better in a UNIX-like environment. This is not to say, however, that Windows is an intrinsically better or worse operating system—it’s just different. Apple’s OS works “better” because it is tightly integrated with its hardware—which is great if the hardware that Apple offers does what you need it to do. Still, Windows 7 has the potential to give this paradigm a run for its money if it finally delivers on the promise to improve stability and compatibility with third-party hardware by forcing such third parties to produce less crappy code for their drivers. My big beefs with Windows have always been needless complexity, flakiness and rot. Windows 7 does seem to address at least two of them, so we’re definitely on the right path.

I have used Windows to a certain extent for years, and a shiny new copy of Windows 7 is already on my to-buy list when the OS becomes generally available. From that point of view, the improvements between XP/Vista and 7 are more than enough reason for me to pony up the extra money and make the switch. In fact, where XP used to annoy me and Vista drove me right up the wall all the way to the ceiling, Windows 7 seems to be very pleasant to use—at least this far.

One thing that Microsoft could have handled better is the upgrade path to Windows 7. I understand that Windows serves a number of different markets, but there are way too many options. To me, this means that the majority of end users will rely on the advice of salespeople at their local computer store to make a decision that will, most likely, be not the right one for them. Besides, this is exactly the kind of things the us Mac users like to make fun of (Snow Leper’s upgrade path? “Put the damn disk into the drive”). As it stands, even I have no idea which version to buy—I just can’t be bothered to find out.

The other aspect that needs help, if you allow me a short rant, is Microsoft’s advertising. The Microsoft marketing people I have had the opportunity to work with (all outside of the OS group, I believe) have all been really good, pretty open to trying new things and, generally, really attuned to the market they want to reach—witness the amazing inroads that Microsoft has made in the PHP space. This makes Microsoft’s pie-in-the-sky, big-picture ads difficult to understand, the whole Mac-envy “I am a PC” campaign sad and the Windows 7 launch parties outright creepy.

Apple’s ads work because they present people with something that they can immediately relate with: the guy who needs to write a presentation for tomorrow doesn’t need to know that his computer can help him create a multi-billion business by tracing imaginary chalk lines in the air, or compose the next number one hit single, or even magically change the weather. He needs to know that he can get his freaking presentation done by the deadline—and possibly without it looking like someone vomited on the screen.

Apple’s ads are about simplicity—I mean, how much simpler can you get than two guys (neither particularly attractive or forcefully cool) against a white backdrop? “It just works” is not a gimmick—it’s a promise. Of course, Apple doesn’t actually keep the promise, because nothing ever “just works.” But at its core, this promise communicates simplicity, which to almost everyone means “you can get your job done without losing your mind.” And the thing is, as far as I’ve been able to see, that in Windows 7 things are simple and really do work well—certainly as well as I have ever seen them working on Windows. Why, oh why, can’t Microsoft just stick to a message that’s so… simple?

* Douse syndrome (n): the irresistible urge to douse your office in gasoline and set fire to it.