Windows 7 RC1 - A first impression

Poststructural Pub
1

So because MS have made the Windows 7 Release Candidate available for free and I just happen to have a little netbook that I’m happy to experiment with I went ahead and installed it last night.

For the last couple of months I’ve been running Fedora 10 on my Acer Aspire One w/1gb RAM. It’s been a pretty good learning experience for linux but one that was ultimately as unsatisfying as all my other attempts at living with linux. Everytime I wanted to do something it involved hours of editing config files, downloading new programs to sit between other programs or even entire kernel updates and manipulating terminal commands. I enjoy that kind of stuff but it was starting to wear me down. Even after all that my wifi indicator light still didn’t work.

So the install took up most of my evening, however the bulk of that was trying to resize the existing linux partition and keep the Fedora 10 install intact. In the end I gave up and nuked it from orbit.

Stuck the windows ISO on a USB stick and it installed with no issues.

First impressions so far - the wifi light works out of the box! Oh it’s also fast, quicker on my little 1.6Ghz Atom powered netbook with 1Gb RAM than Vista is on my dual core laptop with 2Gb RAM. Though I haven’t really taxed it yet, I’m sure it would struggle if I tried playing complex games or doing some hardcore image processing for example.

I’m really impressed. The RC is free to use until June 2010 when it will stop working, but if it keeps running like this there’s every chance I’ll buy a legit copy before then. It’s everything the Fedora 10 experience wasn’t, quick, easy, hassle free.

Anyone else trying it out?

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How does it handle digital “rights”? Vista was a headache for some basic copying, program installs and other basic functions. Also, my MP3 player that was recognized by OSX and XP never worked on vista. I can’t think of any function that it did better than XP. Does 7 have any new functions?

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I haven’t had much of a chance to fully put it to the test.

Probably be the weekend before I can really start sticking stuff on it. So far though I’ve installed Open Office, Audacity and Chrome and the UAC stuff has been a lot less intrusive and generally more sensible that it was under Vista (I got so irritated with it I turned it off on my Vista laptop).