Windows 7
Well, I downloaded Windows 7 ealier today just to give it a test run and I must say that I am impressed so far. Setup was remarkably smooth and I've not had any issues. It also comes off as a little more perky when compared to Vista or even XP; reminiscent of Windows 2000. My test box (which I also development on) is a Dual Core 3.4GHz P4 with 1.5 GB of RAM so I deserve some if this perkiness. As with most programs I've tried, Chromium (Version 1.0.156.0) runs just fine.
I'll be posting some more in-depth technical musings on Windows 7 in the future i'm sure but for now I can only say that I like it. I also think if you haven't upgraded to Vista yet I would wait until you can upgrade to Windows 7. Treat Vista like most treated ME and pretend it didn't exist.
You can download Windows 7 Beta
here.
Comments
The install process was as smooth as glass. I had absolutely no complaints there. It did take a little longer than I had expected, but one can't complain.
The three reboots that were required after the installer seemed a bit much. I don't understand why all of the information couldn't have been collected after the first reboot, then just one more reboot into the new OS.
After I got to my desktop, I started by downloading Firefox 3, the ATI drivers for my video card (packed for Vista), and I grabbed Winzip and PuTTy from my other computer. I was pretty happy that the only driver I needed to find was one for the graphics so I could run in my preferred resolution: The sound and network were operational out of the box.
After I installed the ATI drivers, which was a horrible pain no thanks to Toshiba's packaging method, Windows needed to reboot. At this stage in the game, I don't understand why the OS needs to reboot because a new driver was installed. I have yet to come across a modern Linux distro that requires a reboot to reload a driver (or kernel module as the case may be). Anyhow, this is where the headache started (and didn't finish).
When Windows powered down, I decided to go ahead and remove my USB drive before the bootloader fired. After the bootloader kicked off though, it was straight to a blue screen. I didn't get a chance to see what the error was before it dumped the memory and powered down, but I was able to somewhat boot back up. The failure started after the GUI loaded.
Windows wanted to try to repair the OS right away, and only gave me the "Yes" and "Shutdown now" options. I decided to let it try to repair itself, but half an hour later it said it couldn't, and that my only option was to power down.
I tried to boot it up again after that, but got the same run-around, so I'm now reinstalling the factory software.
Conclusion: Windows 7 isn't ready, and it really hasn't solved anything.
http://www.willineedit.com
That goes to both of you geeks :P