Posted 05/15/2009 at 07:50:42pm

The article mention that Windows 7 will offer better imaging performance and this is true, but for this advantage to materialize for raw files supported through WIC codecs, it needs new versions of such codecs, expressely designed for Windows 7. Existing versions (except those from Ardfry), listed on the page that was referenced, are designed for Windows Vista will not provide any notable improvement on Win7.
Photographers also have another option for fast image culling and previewing on Windows 7, namely FastPictureViewer Professional, a lightweight, native 32 and 64-bit image viewer relying on the same raw codecs as those referred to in the article, and offering excellent DirectX-accelerated performance for quickly reviewing lots of pictures. It would not replace WLPG or Picasa, but rather complement them and other image organization software.