Windows 7 Review

Windows 7 isn’t all that new any more, but I wanted to share my upgrade experience and some of my favorite things about Microsoft’s newest OS after having used it for the past couple of months.

The upgrade process

As I suspected, the hot topic surrounding Windows 7 upgrades was just how far one could go toward performing a clean install with upgrade media.  First to clear up a couple of technical terms. Upgrade media are the disks that Microsoft sells that allow you to install Windows 7, but only activate if you have a qualifying installation of a previous version of Windows. In contrast the Full version of windows by definition can be instlalled on a clean hard drive with no previous Windows install present. The other big thing is that Upgrade media costs less than the full version.

Here’s how my upgrade went. I removed my original 160 GB drive with XP on it, and installed a new 320 GB drive. After printing out the Windows 7 upgrade guide by WinSuperSite’s Paul Thurott,  I booted the system with the Windows 7 upgrade disk in the drive and followed the prompts to do a custom install.  The install went smoothly.  It’s a relatively quick install, but the question was, would it activate successfully once it phoned home to Redmond?  The answer was no. At least not initially.

Paul did a great job researching and experimenting with the upgrade media. His suggested next step after a failed activation was to do a “registery hack”.

Method #2: Registry hack
Note: This workaround is not supported by Microsoft but my understanding is that it has a 100 percent success rate.

The registry hack worked for me. Activation was successful after performing the steps outlined and re-booting my laptop.

On a side note, I have also upgraded my wife’s Vostro 1520 laptop. I ordered upgrade media from Dell (which they sent at no charge). They will only send an equivalent disk. In other words, since the Vostro came with Vista Home Premium 32 bit, they sent Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit. We decided we might want to upgrade the RAM in the future from 3GB to 4GB or more which really requires a 64bit OS. So I backed up and then did a custom install with MY 64 bit upgrade disk from Amazon. After entering the license key from the disk from Dell the activation went smoothly. I wanted to throw that in there in case anyone else is wondering about doing a similar upgrade.

Windows 7 Review

During the summer I got my first case of Mac fever. I read MacBook Pro reviews, watched videos and read message boards.  I made up my mind that I would get a MBP, but would wait at least a year. I think the best compliment for Windows 7 is that I no longer have Mac fever. Well . . . maybe a little! 🙂  Microsoft has really closed the gap. Despite the warnings by the aforementioned Mr. Thurott, I have come to really like the new task bar. I can see where it might confuse some people, but pinning programs and re-arranging icons is great.

I wrote about Libraries in Seven during my beta test and that remains my favorite feature I think. On the visual front, I like the semi-transparent task bar and window frames and the “slideshow” wallpaper that changes on set intervals. Speaking of wallpaper, I just downloaded some great wallpaper images from National Geographic. These are great if you like landscapes.

This is getting long so I’ll just mention a couple more things that have worked really well for me. One is networking. Windows 7 calls it Home Group.  It’s just easy. “It just works” is a phrase that Apple fans like to use. Well, so far Windows 7 “just works” for me. The other thing I use all the time is sleep-mode. That’s a simple thing, but XP would lock up coming out of sleep half the time so I never used it.  Now it’s like near instant boot-up out of sleep.

It really is time to move on from Windows XP.   Windows 7 is rock solid, clean looking and runs all my apps and hardware flawlessly. Way to go Microsoft!

Brett