Win7

[Zeratul2k]

Boss told me to test-drive Win7 this morning, so I installed it on a virtual machine at work and have been playing with it since. So far so good, but I still haven't really pushed it (networking, messaging programs, appearance customization, things like that). Pros and cons time:

Pros:
- The new taskbar is a welcome change, it's easier on the eyes and more customizable than Vista's.
- Faster and less memory intensive than Vista, but still more than XP (expected, of course, but good nonetheless).
- No more "Are you sure?" confirmation messages, Vista's (arguably) biggest gripe (for me, at least). There are still a few, but it's the same kind of confirmation messages that have been around since WinXP SP2.

Cons:
- They kept the Vista "Start Menu" and I loathe it. They (M$) blamed software developers throwing everything without order in there, but this is actually a presentation problem. That Start Menu needs to go.
- Windows Live Messenger "auto-pins" on the taskbar (it stays there even if you try to send it to the tray) while other messengers (like Yahoo IM) go to the tray. This is contrary to what I was used to (all messengers on the tray, next to the clock) so it felt and looked weird.

I quickly countered the first "con" with a quick Launchy (http://www.launchy.net/) install and the second one by pinning Yahoo IM to the taskbar alongside Live Messenger, so it's actually been a good experience so far, no BSOD or anything like that. Of course after this comes the real test, installing it on a physical box. But that's next week, first I gotta write that review for my boss.

[Zeratul2k]

First lockup while trying to watch a flash video (youtube) in full screen. Had to manually reset since ctrl+alt+del didn't seem to work.

[Sakura]

Thanks for posting that, but lockups on VDM's are very common and in no way representative for the quality of W7.

[Zeratul2k]

Well, I installed Win7 on the boss' laptop... and it seems she broke it somehow during the weekend. It works perfectly... as long as you keep all network devices off. As long as you turn one on and connect to a network, it slows to a crawl, doesn't lets me open task manager and totally locks up after a few minutes of staggering. Can't seem to find anything similar on the net, so will try updating network drivers for now. More news on that later.