Since I got my work MacBook Pro, I’ve been using my Windows XP laptop less and less. I went three weeks without even opening it, at one point. When I did finally open it again, XP took so long to boot I knew it was reinstall time. A part of my Windows experience for as long as I can remember is having to format my hard drive and starting over. Performance goes back to the good old days, when it’s nice and fast. No more weird program glitches. So rather than reinstall XP, I decided to forget Windows and just install Ubuntu. Ubuntu set up so easily it was shocking. Good times.
But I knew Windows 7 Beta was coming out soon so I held out 40 GB of unused space to install it. Aside from several false starts downloading it (resulting in a wasted 1.5 GB of bandwidth), I finally got it. I’ve downloaded so much today, I’m a little worried Comcast is going to shut me down. Installation went well — no hitches. It had to install updates and reboot before it detected my correct system settings, but after that, everything is good.
First thing I didn’t like is a generated password for a “home workgroup”. Please, give me the option to enter my own password. For the most part, the UI feels like XP. I haven’t used Vista for more than a few minutes at a time, so I can’t really compare to it. The default background is pretty drab, but since it’s a “Betta” fish, I appreciate the joke. The task bar is a little cleaner. Chrome installed with no problems. Internet Explorer turned me off immediately, but nothing new there.
The snipping tool that comes with it lets you take a variety of screenshots, including free form ones. That’s a new one for me. The games stuff seems bundled by providers. I have no idea who these providers might be, but I imagine that might be useful. Most online game providers ship their software with spyware, though, so I avoid them. Update: I mean providers beyond Microsoft, there are some default games that are fairly decent that come with it.
Windows free-form snip example.
Naturally, there are the standard complaints about not having virus scan installed and that Windows defender hasn’t been run. There’s a great big warning when you try to run something for the first time you downloaded off the net. Same as Mac there, no surprises. Also, after installing it, it overwrote the MBR (or however that works), so I no longer can boot from my Ubuntu installation if I want to. I’ll probably just reinstall Ubuntu since it’s so fast and easy and probably will be less of a headache than fooling with grub.
The biggest bonus to Windows 7 Beta is that I can run Chrome again. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. WordPress dashboard runs so much faster under Chrome than Firefox or Safari.
Reinstalled ubuntu and everything is golden.
The games included are all developed by Microsoft. The beta is entirely a Microsoft program. It sounds like you like it. I do too. Check out HomeGroup. It’s turned my home network into something really cool.
Sorry I meant the additional providers it mentions. Presumably that will be opened to other providers and more game options.
I’m still trying to get homegroup figured out. I can’t connect to it with my mac, and I can’t connect to my mac. Course I haven’t researched a solution to it yet, so it may be I’m missing something simple.
Agreed that Ubuntu is surprisingly easy to install.
I’ve heard good things about Windows 7 from folks at work – but I suspect they are Windows-fanboys. I dislike Macs, but I’m pretty far from a fanboy for any OS – especially Windows. Anyhow, interesting that your initial impression was at least somewhat positive. I think that is better than many folks’ impression of Vista… (my dad had nothing but problems with it on the first PC he got with it – I’m still on old school XP and specifically chose XP over Vista on the last PC we bought…)
Anyhow – I figured you would find this amusing (though I’m guessing you already saw it a couple of days ago): http://xkcd.com/528/
I ran into a few compatibility problems today, so I’m liking it a little less. UI is still nice (despite a weird flicker when I use a vertical scroll bar, but maybe that’s something the beta testing will iron out) and the boot speed is great. I’m not sure I like it enough to buy it. I’ll probably just reinstall XP when the beta runs out.