So what’s up with Windows 7 — does it have many new features? How does it compare with Vista?

I put up the latest version — Build 7000 — in a VM on Hyper-V. I wrote about my first impressions of how Windows 7 affects the decision to migrate from Windows XP to Vista or wait. But what about Windows 7 on its own merits?

I’m actually writing this now on it. It didn’t blow up, it did work right away, and it seems highly functional with one processor core and 1GB of RAM . This is with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Chess Titans, Performance Monitor, calculator and IE open — I’m using about 75% of my allocated memory. Aside from the occasional spike, CPU is hovering in the single digits. So we’ll have to wait and see what people who run the various benchmarks come up with, but there’s some reason to believe Windows 7 may also be more like XP than Vista on the performance front. Of course, by the time you have this in your shop, the average desktop will be about as powerful as your entire data center was in 1990, but that’s another story. …

Reading the Microsoft site, there’s some eye candy features that I can’t seem to get working. But that may well be because my VM doesn’t have the video chops for that — it’s on a server with a very average video card. The “biggest” thing I can’t get to work is a new feature that allows you to put your mouse in the right corner of the taskbar that then turns your windows clear so you can see your desktop. I’m not actually sure why you’d want to do that, but since I can’t, I can’t figure out how silly it really is.

On the other hand, I can get the automatic half-window resizing feature to work: You drag any window to the right or left margin, hold it there, and it will resize to occupy half the screen. Useful for working in two windows at once, but hardly the stuff of mandatory upgrades.

In general, they’ve tried to keep the silliness quotient lower than Vista. Rather than Vista 2, this is more like Vista 0.5 — as far as the UI goes, closer to XP. The sidebar seems to be gone, although gadgets are still possible (now you can put them anywhere on the desktop). The taskbar has actually been improved to accommodate today’s multi-multitasking workforce — doing email while writing a report while IM’ing friends while answering Facebook messages while shopping online while updating a spreadsheet while buying movie tickets for a date tonight while downloading iTunes while watching YouTube while updating a spreadsheet. You can make the icons bigger if you want, and hovering over each one gives a little thumbnail and text description (“Windows 7-Microsoft Word”).

Of course, as always, Microsoft has added a widget or two that is supposed to be helpful but could just as easily be confusing, like the little file older icon on the taskbar that’s NOT a running app, but there to trigger a window of your “library”– seemingly another name for My Documents, except that the folders are actually virtual ones that aggregate like content (.docs in Documents, .mp3s in Music and so on) from anywhere on your hard drive. And you can enable a little widget called “Desktop” on the taskbar that has a fly-away menu with some of the more important stuff you might go to the left-hand Start menu for. But it’s not really complete, so which one do you go to? Hmm….

The hated User Account Control (UAC) is now controllable, not just on or off. By default, it no longer queries you every time you make a change to the machine. It just does it when a program does, and it doesn’t black out the screen, it just makes a transparent black window. You can turn both user-generated and externally generated triggers either on or off. OK, so maybe some users won’t freak out because their screen blacks out, but still – this is one of those features that no one knows what to do with. I’ve been running Vista since it was a beta and I’ve never said “No” to a UAC prompt. When would I? I guess if some hacker was dumb enough to give me a prompt that said “Hacker trying to wreck your machine.”

There are some things I need to investigate more: Is Remote Assistance just a new name for Remote Desktop Connection? Are there any hidden self-healing or managing features that weren’t apparent at first blush?

I’ve already gotten feedback from my first post that performance will be a concern for some of you, and I’m going to start researching that.

How many of you have kicked Windows 7 tires or assigned someone in IT to do that? What are your first impressions?

UPDATE I: I haven’t commented on development aspects of Windows 7, but Yuval Shavit has already started considering the Windows programmer’s perspective on Windows 7 at .NET Development.

OK, there’s no getting around it. This year is going to be the Year of Reading Endless Speculation and Lightly Informed Commentary About Windows 7. Feature Bingo, Shipping Date Roulette – you’re undoubtedly familiar with the pattern and patter around Microsoft OS releases. I confess, I felt professionally obliged to fire the beta up, and in my next post I’ll give you a quick review – hopefully saving you or your staff from wasting hours of time with a Windows 7 migration. But for now, let’s talk about the big question: Which version of Windows — XP, Vista or Windows 7 — are you going to standardize on when? How many migrations do you want to make in the next year?

IT shops have been much more resistant to upgrading from XP than any other version of Windows I can recall. Vista just didn’t excite many people, and relatively few shops planned mass migrations. Count me among those who think Vista was largely Microsoft’s fear and paranoia response to the then-yet-unreleased but highly rumored Mac OS X and its accompanying update of the modern GUI. Aero, transparent windows, etc. – it was all about the consumer glitz factor. Microsoft was clearly worried that Joe Cool would tell his friends, “Windows is so 20^th century. I’m going Mac.” As for businesses migrating to Vista, Microsoft seemed to take that for granted.

In interviews I participated in with head Windows dude Jim Allchin and other responsible parties in Redmond prior to the release, the mantra about why IT shops would love Vista was always “Security.” Namely, User Account Control and Network Access Protection (NAP). The first would protect against malicious code and the second against malicious people. The first was a nonstarter with end users and the second had to await Windows Server 2008. For all its potential to improve security, how many of you are willing to delegate your shrinking staffs to implement NAP? I’d be interested to hear from you on that.

So, in short, from most corporate perspectives, nothing much in Vista worth migrating for. Even for those who tend to upgrade when told to, a lot of old hardware wouldn’t work with Vista. And “upgrading” from XP was problematic, not only because of the hardware compatibility issue, but also because of Windows’ inability to nondestructively resize boot drives when necessary for upgrades, forcing complete re-installs. Not to mention some people found it noticeably slower.

So what’s Windows 7’s compelling new feature? Gee, there’s a new “Connect to a network projector” feature, but I’m just not that moved by it. I’m still looking – have you found any? On SearchCIO.com, Christina Torode reports that there are some nice-to-have Windows 7 features for business around security and networking, but I don’t know if I’d call them compelling.

As far as compulsion goes, Christina notes that many people are assuming they can run XP for years, but you may run into trouble with ISVs, or for that matter, peripheral vendors who won’t bother to write old drivers or driver install routines. The hardware incompatibility issue with Vista shouldn’t be as serious with Windows 7, since by the time it ships you probably will mostly have Win7-ready inventory. With some of the freak-out factors gone, it’ll just be mostly another migration.

It’s all so wearying somehow, this hype cycle of nonimproving improvements.

So what would be compelling? How about:

1. Can we get a bare-metal hypervisor for the desktop? There’s been a lot of buzz about “native VHD support” but not much detail. I’ll be trying to figure out how close that comes to allowing you to create and distribute installs and upgrades as simple VHD files, which would be a killer differentiator. However, I suspect VMware or Citrix or somebody will actually beat them to it and go all the way to bare metal with their solution.

2. Now that you have Windows Live SkySpaces, why don’t you figure out a way IT shops can rent space real cheap (or free with certain licenses) for end users to at least automatically back up their My Documents folders up there? Ninety-nine percent of IT shops do nothing about end-user backup, and really, how many end users save only important documents to the network? And so far, you can neither target Windows Live from the minimal backup app in Windows or copy more than a file at a time (you can’t copy an entire folder). Hey, Steve B. and the other paranoids up in Redmond, don’t you think that would help you in your self-proclaimed war with Google? I think at least it would help your corporate customers.

3. Instead of adding new mini-games to each version, can you recognize that more and more office workers have to work in sound and video? Yes, copy Apple and give them some reasonable basic sound and video editor program. And that would also appeal to consumers, who still seem to be whom you worry about most.

4. Lastly, can you finally put some of that 90% unused CPU capacity to work checking and healing the system? This has been on my list since 1995. What few efforts Microsoft has made in this arena seem pretty tokenistic to me.

OK, that’s my wish list. How about you? What would make you feel proud to recommend upgrading and ask for the budget for it? And absent that, how are you thinking about playing this? If upgraded to Vista, will you skip Win7? If you didn’t, how are you going to proceed going forward?