The two major ones are
Losing Sleep (If you load all your daily-used applications and use it like a production OS)
Whenever my windows 7 laptop goes into sleep or hibernation, when it tries to wake up, you get BSOD. On a bare minimum Windows 7, you won't get this.
Unlocking the hidden features of Windows 7
www.withinwindows.com shares that there are hidden features in the M3 build that is not available to people who are not under Microsoft's payroll. Workaround are given to unlock those features, and they work. However, don't do it on a machine that is shared by various people. The unlock steps I believe changes the permission of explorer.exe. On my wife's laptop, after I unlock the feature using my account (domain admin), and I log in using her account (normal user) you will get a blank gray desktop. Basically, normal user account do not have rights to run explorer.exe. Changing the permission does restore the desktop, but not to full functionality.
Minor stuff
Other minor issues do happen, especially when you are installing drivers and applications. Most of them can be solved by running the installation in Vista RTM compatibility mode.
EndPoint Protection won't install properly too. You need to manually install life update first, before installing EndPoint protection. Even then, proactive thread protection is not enabled initially. Just antivirus. After running it for a few days, Endpoint protection will return to normal operations.
And that product is, Windows 7 M3 Build! In fact, I am so happy with the performance of this build that I have actually killed all instances of Vista on my home network! (Ok, I only had one Vista which my wife uses on her laptop, since I deployed Windows 2008 on all the machines I use because of HyperV).
There are a lot of things I like in Windows 7. The most important one is performance! Anyway, I'm going to list down all the points I like and dislike.
Performance
Performance increases by a lot. In fact, I'm taken by surprise by the performance this M3 build delivers, even in pre-beta stage, though I suspect performance is optimised because it is planned to be released in PDC.
One of the pain points I absolute hated in Vista is the windows explorer. On my T42, which is a 1.7ghz mobile processor (doubt it is even a duo core), just a simple clicking on a local folder (not even network), takes more than a minute to display the content. It absolutely makes Vista unusable. Put in Windows 7 on that laptop kills this problem. Now I'm just waiting to see if my wife still complains that the laptop is slow.
Graphics is damn smooth too. Especially when I just drag my mouse across the unlocked taskbar, and watch the preview window slide smoothly from one window to another.
Task bar
I had mix feeling about the new taskbar though. I'm still trying to get used to the new interface, and I wonder if the grouping actually gives a better user experience to the end user. I for one sometimes uses different IE windows to group researches I am doing concurrently together. But with the new taskbar, it is a bit more difficult to find the window I want, since I cannot just ungroup IE windows.
But I like the new "pin menu", for lack of knowledge of the official term.
This is what I get when I click on the up arrow besides the IE Icon on the taskbar. Notice the history and the feed section? In fact, I didn't even click on any feeds when I was browsing, IE picked them up itself.
This is what I get when I click on the up arrow besides the media player. The smaller icon compared to the IE one, means that I have pin Media Player to the taskbar, but didn't start any instance of it. From the Pin menu, I can now play my favorite playlist without starting media player first, or play all the music in the library. So now I don't need to click so many times, nor do I need to wait for media player to start. I just select what I need media player to do, and continue to work with media player loading and playing.
Even some older applications that was not build for windows 7 can take advantage of this. The above is a screenshot of snapit editor, showing all the recent screenshots I have taken. Now I wish Live Messenger can pin all my favorite contacts here, instead of @ the main window.
Program opening the file
Another feature I like is the ability to tell which program is accessing a file when I tried to delete it. What happens is Windows 7 was not able to restore after a sleep or hibernate operation on my work laptop (but it is able to do so on my wife's one, which is not heavy loaded with applications). Colligo, which I used to synchronise my company's fileshare which is not accessible over Internet to my own SharePoint repository, complained about a corrupted database, and crash. The resolution to this is to delete the folder which Colligo used to store the files and other information.
Colligo wasn't running when I deleted the file. Windows explorer shows me this dialog.
Oh, so Outlook is accessing the file! Closed outlook, and I was able to delete the file. Just want to make sure Windows is not lying, I started Coligo, which recreated the file. Tried delete the file, and this is what I get.
Neat!
I'll continue with some points to take note of in my next blog post.