Aug 13
Windows 7 - 9 out of 10
Windows 7 Rating 9/10
I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit on my home computer.I was previously running Vista Ultimate 32 bit.
Ultimate is a nice upgrade. Probably what Vista should have been in the first place.
The things I like:
- Fast startup
- Better Organized than Vista
- Good hardware support
- Excellent Network features - it found my router and wireless printer and even points me to their admin pages (Wow!)
- Driver Handling - This is FANTASTIC. If you have drivers from previous version of Windows, chances are Windows 7 can make them work. All my Vista drivers worked fine. Even if the driver install (notably those from ASUS) complained about the OS version, Windows 7 took over and installed them in some kind of compatibility mode.
The things I don't:
- The taskbar takes a bit to get used to. For instance, you pin programs to the task bar. So I pinned my gmail to the taskbar, but each time I clicked it, it opened a new version of gmail. The open versions went under chrome, which isnt bad, but I was used to seeing the Inbox number in the title in the taskbar to quickly check for new mail. I'm sure there's a setting some where to change this.
- Power management isn't quite right. (Sleep mode doesn't work right, possibly issue with motherboard and 64 bit OS. Then again the sleep mode on this ASUS board has never really worked right.).
- Cost.
Windows 7 is a worthy XP/Vista replacement. We MS users finally have a modern operating system we aren't embarrassed to use. At least 7 will shut up the Mac weanies for awhile (just kidding!).
As a side note, I installed 8 GB of memory, not because I had to but because I could. It was the most memory my microATX motherboard could handle. I highly recommend the upgrade with any 64 bit OS. With the price of memory so low, you'd be foolish not to upgrade. I paid $120 retail. Imagine that $120 for 8 GB of ram. Wow.
While a lot of MS technologies leave me disappointed, Windows 7 is a real gem. I recommend that you upgrade as soon as you can.
