Between Bag End & Orodruin

Well I bit the bullet tonight and installed the Windows 7 RC (64) tonight just to see if it looks even remotely like a reasonable upgrade to XP.

The installation was certainly the most uninteractive windows install I’ve experienced in all my windows installs going right back to Windows 2. But that said, it did pick up most of the hardware without any fuss. Networking worked, video picked up the dual head and monitors, speakers appeared to work. I installed the available Vista 64bit drivers for sound, network and chipset to see if they’d improve or break it. Seems to be running fine. Go figure!

I’ve not been a big fan of the “Vista” look, and Windows 7 certainly hasn’t lost that, but I suppose that’s to be expected. In many ways it’s just Vista SP2. However it does seem quite snappy, and after a bit of tweaking, I found a configuration that is tolerable.

Unfortunately I can’t find 64bit versions of most of my currently used programs, or most of my games. Still it’s interesting to watch them perform in the “compatability” mode I guess for such situations. The multitasking DOES actually appear to actually work much more “pre-emptively” than previous incarnations of the MS OS. Obvserving CPU usage, and memory usage almost has me convinced that this MS OS actually delivers on some of those long and tired promises. I actually DID find myself, multitasking under Windows as never before. I found no obvious struggles, at least at this stage, which I will admit was only a cursory workout for the moment. I’ve thrown on “Forged Alliance”, as this seems to be one of the most intersting CPU tests I can find in recent times, and so far, short of a crash when exiting, it did well. Others are yet to follow.

It MAY last the week out: more than I can say for most Linux Distros (bar SuSE) and XP64.