Windows 7 ? Time please ladies and gentleman?

February 7, 2009

If you?re not a TechNet or MSDN subscriber then time is running out (10th Feb!) to get your hands on the Windows 7 bits. If you?ve been procrastinating, now is the time! My personal reflections are that it?s a very positive experience. I?ve only been at MSFT a few years so the only other OS launch I?ve experienced is Vista. The main issues around ?dogfooding? that OS were related to lack of driver availability (surprise!) and the main effects I felt were issues with graphics drivers which was a bit of an issue as I was concentrating on WPF development? Anyhoo, none of that has been any issue this time around. I?m running 3 Win 7 x64 (Lenovo T61p laptop, Custom-build ?home? PC (AMD, ATI), Custom-build ?media center? PC (Intel, NVidia, Hauppage)) and 1 x86 (MSI Netbook) installations. The laptop was a managed install from work, but the others were from the regular beta download. The only minor fuss has been the Media Center: initial install didn?t find the NIC so I put a USB Netgear stick on it. NIC was identified fine via Windows Update. Final remaining issue has been not being able to get guide information into Media Center. (I think there?s an issue, but I?m something of a Media Center n00b so it might just be me.) Other than that, all graphics cards, card readers, and assorted USB peripherals have been fine with the exception of an ancient Logitech web cam that I don?t use but just happened to be plugged into the back of the Home PC and I?d forgotten about it. Microsoft LifeCam (the one I actually use) has been fine and in fairness I didn?t try to solve the Logitech issue. Do I like it? Yup. Do I love it? Yup. Fast with the ?right kind? of innovation around UX (and explorer, and media) to keep me happy. I?d recommend an install over reading any kind of review (good or bad). It?s all about whether it works for you.