Since I installed Windows 7 I’ve been loading in a bunch of apps. Some run the same as they did in XP with no noticeable improvement in speed or stability, while others appear to run much better. Here’s a few:

Mozilla Firefox

Since the introduction of version 3, the best way I can describe FF is that it "bottoms out" on XP too often.

Even with something as simple as launching the browser "cold" after system startup, it would pause for seemingly no reason. And bear in mind I use only use three add-ons that don’t tax the browser whatsoever.

And then there’s the FF’s memory-munching tendencies. On XP, the longer the browser is open, the more you see this.

On Windows 7, these issues are gone. It starts fast with the same add-ons and I can keep it open as long as I want.

OpenOffice Writer

This is a a beast-sized app and takes a while to get going on XP. And once running I would periodically see screen drawing issues where things would not land in proper places, forcing me to maximize/restore to reset it.

OO Writer still takes a bit to launch on 7 but is notably faster. And I don’t encounter any of those wonky screen draw issues either.

QuickTime

If you said, "I hate QuickTime", I can totally understand why. On XP this app has never run right. The only time people run and install QuickTime is so they can play MOV files.

Windows Media Player does have native support to play MOV files in 7, so you don’t have to install it now. But I need it because I have a Pro license for additional export abilities to other formats.

QuickTime in Windows 7 runs a whole lot better in every way. It launches better, the menus look more proper and is more stable all around.

Skype

Whenever I used Skype in XP it was a crapshoot as to whether it would work correctly or not. Most of the time it would work without complaint, but other times certain features just wouldn’t work whereas you had to restart the app over and over again.

To note, with this particular app there are only two types of experiences concerning running it on XP. It will either run fine without complaint or it will be problematic routinely. I was of the latter.

Skype in 7 breathed in a whole new life to this app. Now I can say it runs fine without complaint.

Other apps?

Out of the apps I’ve installed so far, there hasn’t been any instance where it ran worse than I did on XP. If there were, I definitely would have mentioned it, no question.

Lastly, I want to note two things:

Windows 7 will not make a bad program suddenly wonderful. If an app was written with haphazardly written code, has memory leaks and so on, 7 obviously won’t magically fix that.

Windows is well known for having strong legacy support. But if your app is ancient and didn’t work on XP, it won’t work in Windows 7 either.

Usually I’m not akin to using beta software but Microsoft has a whole bunch of "Live" branded stuff at ideas.live.com so I figured I’d check it out.

I first tested some of the software on my laptop which happens to be a 1.5GHz Celeron M with 1GB of RAM. Way too slow; I had to revert back to the current-gen Live products because the slowness was agonizing.

On my big box (1.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM) the Live beta software runs a whole lot better, and in fact I’m using Windows Live Writer beta to publish this article.

Here’s my quickie reviews of Writer, Mail and Messenger beta.

Before I get into the reviews, I noticed something during the install.

Microsoft, there is NO EXCUSE FOR THIS. None. Shame, shame.

Anyway..

Windows Live Writer Beta

Verdict: Good.

This is better than the current version. No question. The image editing capability that’s in the Technical Preview version (such as "Crop", "Tilt" and so on) is in this. Very cool.

In addition the interface is a whole lot cleaner.

Windows Live Mail Beta

Verdict: Bad.

Those nice little icons at the top indicating what did what are completely gone. It’s nothing but "text buttons" now. Looks like Netscape 1.0. BAD. Usability goes down a huge notch just from that alone.

Switching back to "Default color" does not work.

The calendar is nice and all that, but the software gets "confused" when you try to switch back and forth between mail and the calendar.

Buggy. Not good.

Windows Live Messenger

Verdict: Good.

Notable improvements can be seen immediately. The new mail indicator is much more visible (very nice), the "What’s New" at the bottom allows you to scroll thru your Contacts updates (very cool), the overall look is far cleaner and doesn’t look "toy" like as the current version does.

This is probably the best product of all the betas. If you use Windows Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger), yes you will like this. A lot.

Will I continue to use these?

Not in the beta versions, no. I will wait until the full versions are released.

To note: When you uninstall the betas, it does not revert back to the previous versions of the software. You have to go back to get.live.com and re-download them.

And no, your mail will not disappear. When you reinstall the previous version of mail, your mail store will still be there (mine was).

I don’t like Google Docs. I don’t like Microsoft Office Live either. But I do like OpenOffice. A lot. Wondering if there was any means of using the OO suite online, I did some searching and found that yes, there is a way. It’s done thru Ulteo’s web site.

After signing up for a free account with Ulteo you’re greeted with this:

Ulteo is actually a lot more than just OpenOffice, but being that’s what I was interested in I clicked the Start now! button for OO.

On the next screen you get this:

You choose the app in the OO suite you’d like to launch. I wanted Writer (the OO word processing app), so I waited a few seconds for the Java load to complete and clicked the green Launch OpenOffice.org NOW! button.

Once inside, yes this is a real true-blue OO Writer app – 100% Java loaded. This is not a web page thing pretending to be an online document editor.

Said honestly this is cool. My only complaint is that the Java is a bit wonky at times, however this is a true Writer app. Considering how large it is it loads up quick.

For those wondering, yes you can store stuff online via this site. They offer a free 1GB of space to anyone who has an account. For docs and so on that’s not bad.

You might want to try this for yourself – especially if you wanted to see OpenOffice in action without actually installing it.