I tried the Windows 7 beta a couple months ago. It didn’t work very well on my Sony Viao, but that’s because Sony requires you to use a lot of proprietary software to run their laptop, which is retarded.
I’m living on the bleeding edge here with Windows 7. It was easy to download off Microsoft’s website and install. Faster than the old windows XP install. I never upgraded to Vista since that was a joke. Win7 loads fast and shuts down even faster. The interface is nice and clean and nothing about it seems slow or painful. I tend to plow my way through user interfaces. That’s how I learned OS X. I clicked on everything and got a good lay of the land. I played with the settings and figured them out. So I did the same with Windows 7 and it passes that first test. I know where everything is. I can do some minimal customization with the desktop widgets and aero themes. I picked the 64-bit version of the OS since I run an AMD 64 processor and things run a lot faster than they did under WinXP 32-bit. A lot of the freeware software I use come in 64-bit flavors too.
There are some drivers that don’t work such as my Evoluent Vertical Mouse, but I think this is an issue where I’m running a 64-bit version of Windows. The drivers are janky to begin with. Under Windows XP those drivers installed but the certificate remained unsigned digitally and caused Windows to throw a warning.
Another issue I’m having is with my Cintiq tablet. I’m not sure if Wacom’s latest drivers are janky or if its Windows 7, so I need to go back and try the older Cintiq drives I have.
Things are, amazingly, going smooth, and it’s making my 3 year old desktop PC feel like a new machine again. I want to try some gaming under this new OS, but I just don’t do much PC gaming anymore.
Tags: Windows 7 RC 1
