How good is Windows 7?

There is a kind of Windows 7 fever sweeping the Web right now. Some observers are getting carried away:

As a person who performs almost every computing task on a Mac and tells anyone who will listen that at this point, the average consumer should be using a Mac instead of a Windows machine because of security and usability, I'm starting to prep myself for the single moment that I thought would never come: I'll be using a Windows 7 machine as my main computer and telling anyone who will listen that, believe it or not, using the latest Microsoft operating system really is worth it. [Don Reisinger]

I've spent a lot of time in Windows 7 these last few weeks, and in some ways I see what he means. It has a smoothness and elegance that is lacking in Vista, though it is there to some extent in Server 2008. But let's be clear: the popular view that Vista is rubbish and Windows 7 is great does not stand up to close analysis, for one simple reason. It is just not sufficiently different. Microsoft actually makes a positive of this characteristic, explaining how preserving the core architecture of Vista ensures good application and driver compatibility and therefore a smooth upgrade.

What about Windows 7 versus the Mac? I agree that Windows 7 is superficially more Mac-like; and more important, that the factors that made Vista such an unpleasant experience for some (not all) early adopters will not apply. I'm thinking of things like laptops that were underspecified, or had buggy drivers, or barely adequate graphics hardware, or that were weighed down with so much foistware that Windows would hardly run. However, other factors that make users prefer Macs will not have changed. There is the control Apple exerts over both hardware and software; its design excellence; the fact that Apple is less tolerant of legacy software, whereas Microsoft has Windows jump through hoops to keep it running,adding complexity and inconsistency; and there is the absence on the Mac of the culture of chaos that afflicts Windows. I'll leave aside religious arguments about Unix vs Windows, though it is a matter of record that OS X has to date proven far more secure, for whatever reason.

Let's ask some awkward questions. Will a substantial number of Windows 7 machines fall victim to viruses, worms, trojans and botnets? Almost certainly. Will Windows 7 from time to time flummox users with obscure errors like "the system could not find the file specified"? Almost certainly. Will some Windows 7 machines be built down to a price and be sold with obvious design flaws and insufficent attention to quality? Almost certainly. Will some vendors wreck the sweet install experience Microsoft has created by imposing their own clunky utilities and third-party trialware on top? Almost certainly. Will the Windows 7 event log become populated with perplexing entries like "The Workstation service terminated with the following error: The redirector is in use and cannot be unloaded." (plucked from my Windows 7 beta 1 laptop)? Almost certainly.

Let me add that I realise how smooth and reliable a well-managed Windows machine can be. Further, while I have had some frustrations with Vista it has always been stable for me and I have never wanted to go back to XP. Vista, then, is better than its reputation; Windows 7 is better than Vista but will have trouble living up to the proclamations made by its more enthusiastic admirers.