As I’m learning the ins and outs of Windows 7, I am forced into nostalgia. Anyone that’s ever used a Windows build is probably very familiar with the ‘time estimation’ for anything from downloads to file transfers. This familiarity stems from the comically incorrect information Windows decides to serve up whenever an estimation of time is required. I’ve seen it jump anywhere from 3 minutes to 6 hours and back to 3 minutes, for seemingly no reason at all…

Now, as I transfer all of my data from an old computer onto one running Windows 7, I am greeted once again by time estimates. Ah, but this time, Microsoft has been ever so cunning. As I’m transferring over 50 GB of data, which I know should take a little over 2 hours (ethernet tops out at 100MB/s but never quite gets there) Windows tells me “About an hour…”. I couldn’t help but laugh. For over an hour and some change, it told me “About an hour” and only THEN started accurately counting down the time left, which was over an hour. The good news is, for under an hour, the timer seemed accurate, so they may have fixed the problem that plagued every other windows… The bad news? Any files that will take over an hour to transfer, it flat-out ignores until there’s an hour left, so you will simply have NO idea how long you should wait. Granted, this is no different than the pendulum of estimation it used to be, but it hurts a little that it doesn’t even TRY to estimate anymore.