Windows 7 – A Few Days In

I’ll start with the cons –

  1. IE crashes a lot. Also, it doesn’t work with some sites – in fact, editing in wordpress (the last released edition, not the current one) causes it to crash. It seems that IE8 isn’t ready for show time yet. 
  2. There aren’t enough apps taking advantage of the multi-touch – all the cool demo’ed apps like multi touch photo app and the maps app with photo touch aren’t in yet – they are going to be in the full release. Makes it a little difficult to enjoy multi-touch fully.
  3. The taskbar takes a little bit of getting used to – it’s a huge hit in my eyes – however, its new and a bit different from what we’re all used to.
  4. Some installers don’t install as they don’t find Vista or XP, and they don’t work in compatibility mode either. This is to be expected in a Beta version – however, it still sucks.

To be frank – there aren’t that many cons. I’m having a ton of fun with Windows 7. The pros –

  1. The new Taskbar aka SuperBar just rocks – jumplists, the preview mode, having just one integrated taskbar + launch bar. A lot of things about it are cool. It’s just a big hit and really saves a ton of time.  
  2. The multi-touch is really, really good. Sometimes when I want to close a window I just touch the screen instead of moving the mouse – and it does add a whole new dimension. 
  3. I was about to buy Dragon Naturally Speaking to test out voice recognition when I found that Microsoft includes Speech Recognition software that’s really cool. I can start Internet Explorer, navigate to Microsoft.com and close it all with voice commands. There’s a lot more and I’m going to test it out and let you guys know how good Speech recognition is
  4. The new libraries feature rocks. I can just add the 4-5 directories I use for music and they’re all in one place now. 
  5. It looks really good. Its actually better looking than Vista. 
  6. Its just very in tune with what I’d expect a new 2009 Operating system to be – better UI (such as the taskbar), jumps in technology (multi-touch) and runs fast. It runs faster than vista without a doubt, and boots up faster too. 
  7. Most of the programs I wanted to use installed and ran just fine – Last.fm, WinRAR, the Journal, and a lot more.

My feeling overall is that it’s going to be a big hit. I’d thought it’d be a bit tough to keep to my resolution of keeping Windows 7 as my main OS – however, I’ll actually have fun doing it. I haven’t had a blue screen of death + IE is the only application that has crashed on me. I’ve had Vista since the Beta and there is no comparison – the Windows 7 Beta is better than Windows Vista SP1. Even if you count out the coolness of multi-touch. Its just a really good OS.

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