Windows 7: First Impressions
January 13th, 2009I have been running Windows 7 now for two full days. So far no BSOD. Impressive how Microsoft has finally released a Beta that is usable. Thank you…
Here are some of my first impressions while getting up and running on Win7:
- The install took about 20 minutes before I was able to start getting updates and putting it on the domain.
- Windows 7 had a driver for everything in my Latitude D630. Even had an updated driver for a few things via Windows Update.
- I expected this: Office 2007 installs perfectly and quickly.
- Our company lives off of CRM. Each client runs CRM for Outlook, which is a monster in itself. To get CRM 4.0 for Outlook to function, you have to cripple IE. Turn off IE’s Protected Mode to allow content to load in the IE pop-up windows from Outlook.
- 2003 Admin Tools installed flawlessly. I cannot live without these. My custom RDC MMC works great. This would be a deal breaker for me.
- Trend Micro is not ready for Windows 7. I did not expect that it was. Installed it on a test VM first, resulting in a BSOD every 2 min or so. I am currently running ClamWin 0.94.1 (big fan, BTW) without issue. The Windows Action Center does not recognize it as virus software, so I had to turn off messages reminding me I had no virus software running.
- Performance is good, I do not notice any slower speed than when I was running Vista. Boot-up time is great! 30 seconds to log-in screen.
- When replying to an email in Outlook 2007, the aero title bar has a bug. I loose the minimize, maximize and close buttons. This seems to be the only place it happens.
- Live window preview from taskbar! Video is actually watchable! Nice touch!
My Wish List:
- The new task bar is cool. Reminds me of an OSX dock. What would be nice is if there was a way to know weather a program is running or not. OSX puts a little triangle below the icon to show that the program is running. There really is no way to determine if it is running or not.
- A built in keyboard shortcut for the Snipping It tool. I fixed it by creating my own, but a quick and easy say, Windows Key + S would be sweet.
Here, you will like this Windows 7 comic from xkcd