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Windows 7 through the eyes of a real person

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Alex in my team has been tweeting about Windows 7 a fair amount since she made the leap herself last week and reached out to a few people to also share their experiences of Windows 7. And up tweeted Richard who in his own words is:

I’m Northern and I’m Software Manager at MS VAR Bechtle Direct; helping drive sales and awareness of MS products across the portfolio. I’ve been there for almost 6 years and spend a lot of my time talking about Sharepoint and sharing the joys of licensing-that’s right, I actually enjoy Microsoft licensing J

I like checking out the latest Web 2.0 apps and once said SQL 2008 was “cool” so that plus my blogging and tweeting (@RichG_Bechtle) means I’m sometimes called “A Geek”, but I stand in my Wi-Fi detecting t-shirt and say “No. No I’m n...well maybe a bit actually”.

Rich_Gibbons

So get your cup of tea, get comfy and sit down to read all about Richard’s time with Windows 7:

Day 1:

Pre-Installation:

I’ve been watching all the goings-on with Windows 7 for months now-the first showing at the PDC, next WinHEC and then it being all over the InterTubes on the torrents. I was tempted to get it straight away but decided to wait for the official beta...and now it’s here-whoo hoo!

Right, I’ve downloaded the beta and now it’s decision time, what do I install it on and how? Ideally I’d install it on my laptop as I use that the most-but perhaps it’s best not to for that very reason! Also, I’m worried that potential driver issues will leave me sans trackpad which would be annoying, so onto the desktop it goes...but now comes the question of how. The options are:

· Dual Boot
· Virtual Machine
· Fresh Install

Dual booting with Vista and Windows 7 is my initial preference but Vista isn’t happy about partitioning my drive and, due to the fact it’s nearly midnight already, I can’t be bothered to look in to it any further J

Next I look at putting it in a virtual machine but despite my love for Hyper-V and server virtualization, I’m not a massive fan of it on the desktop. To me it just doesn’t feel right, almost like cheating somehow...it’s great if you need legacy apps but installing and testing an entire OS in a VM? I think not...so that leaves performing a fresh install...duhn duhn duhn!

I’d mentioned that I might do that at work and people were horrified, you could hear their hearts palpitating due to the stone stony silence that gripped the 15 or so feet surrounding my desk..”A fresh install...what, so just on top of Vista...on your main desktop?!” they asked...they laughed and scoffed and shook their heads and maybe they were right; but it’s now 00:45 and I want to get Windows 7 installed so “sod it”, on it goes over the top of my existing Vista instance!

Install:

In goes the disk, up comes the splash screen...let’s do an upgrade-that’ll keep all my files and what not-but unfortunately I can’t. It won’t let me “upgrade a staged build to a non-staged build” so it’s time to wipe over Vista. It reminds me that this will cause me to lose all my files and while I don’t believe it (see you soon Windows.old) it’s all backed up anyway, so no worries. I’d seen a few people say that the install was quick but that isn’t the case for me-it’s been going for an hour and the end doesn’t seem in sight really, so I’ll leave it running and catch some zed’s.

Up early(ier than usual) to finish the install before setting off to the office. Just need to choose my language and keyboard layout, set a machine name & password and I’m done...I’m now officially a Windows 7 beta tester J but playing about will have to wait until this evening...

……..Day 2 to follow tomorrow

 

The Windows 7 beta is only available until the 10th February to download, so get your copy now !

To get more information on Windows 7, check out the following resources:

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I was thinking of doing the very same Vista to 7 upgrade so will take your next few comments, try them myself and then claim all the credit as my colleagues laugh and scorn about using a beta on my main laptop ;-)

  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2009
    You just inspired me to take the plunge!  Here's my first diary entry: http://bwain-dump.blogspot.com/2009/02/windows-7-diary-install.html