So, yeah, it’s 3am and I should be asleep. But, I had work to do and while that was going I decided to scrap my desktop install and put Windows 7 on there instead. I really wasn’t to enthralled with 64-bit XP – it seemed just a bit out of sync with the computer. Some reading online confirmed that I was not alone in this suspicion.
So, my options were Vista x64, Ubuntu x64 or Windows 7 x64. I’ve used Vista. I find it unpleasant – too much eye candy, too many confirmations, controls and settings in illogical places. I’ve used Ubuntu, although not extensively, and I did consider doing a Linux install and running windows in a virtual machine. But, in reality, most of my computing time will probably be in Windows, and it doesn’t make sense to have my main PC be a virtual one. So, that left Windows 7.
I was on top of things a month or so ago when the beta download was avaialble, so I have a nice legit copy. Install took about an hour and I have used the computer for a total of about 5 minutes since. So, my initial impressions:
Likes:
- It’s snappy, silly things like fading out the screen when changing something as simple as the background color in XP are gone. Programs and menus are responsive (more so than Vista)
- Dual monitors were automatically configured on boot, something I could easily do myself, but no need.
- It’s clean, yeah, a shiny new interface, but much less of the Vista eye candy junk.
- It’s logical, at least to me, it seems that things are laid out closer to their XP locations.
- More settings in the control panel, where they logically belong. No more using the menu from your C: drive window to setup folder views for everything.
Dislikes:
- It still has the inherent mode where Windows will restart in 5 minutes if there are updates, regardless of what you have open. If you’re at the computer, you can stop this, but I’m often away for more than 5 minutes with useful things left open.
- The title bar on folders etc. takes up too much space. For no real reason.
- Not yet a fan of the path display – it’s Vista style rather than XP (xxx\xxx\xxx) style. What this means is that I can’t copy a path from the title bar. Maybe this is fixed with options.
So, initial impressions are that I’m a fan. I don’t like wasting too much processing power on nifty animations etc. I’d much rather have a nice responsive system than a bling-bling laggy system. Windows 7 seems to have delivered on that so far.
