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Once G2S came back from its repairs, I decided to trash the Vista Ultimate installation and switch over to Windows 7 as a primary OS. That was roughly two weeks ago. As with my tests of the beta in Virtualbox and on the older nx8220, I’ve been extremely impressed. I chose to go the whole hog and installed the 64-bit operating system, wondering how much trouble I’d experience when having to add drivers.

Thankfully, all the important stuff works. The ASUS notebook does include a variety of non-standard devices, but the Windows 7 installation didn’t seem to fuss about those too much, getting the installation done in record time. If there’s anything to be pleased about, it’s the comparison of how labouriously things got going under Vista and how quickly similar tasks run on Windows 7. It’s snappy and whereas I’d wait forever for the system to be usable from boot in Vista, Windows 7 has the necessary stuff at the ready in a fraction of the time. Shutdowns, too, are much faster.

The user experience is very similar to Vista, with some changes that are easy to get used to. First off, I always change the look and function of the Start menu to classic view. In 7, this is no longer an option. What I don’t like about the non-classic Start menu is the arrangement of items – I’m pedantic and like program items in specific categories, so I always created my own menu items and grouped the relevant applications according to my preference. But since my Mac came along, I’ve become very accustomed to the Finder and a minimal set of icons on a launch tray.

The endresult is a huge benefit and time saving: I simply use the search bar in the Start menu to quickly find what I want. The most-often used programs are retained in the primary Start menu and easy to launch with a single click. No more having to worry about how messy the menu structure further down becomes…

The taskbar has been improved quite nicely, providing a launch tray for my favourite applications and providing immediate visual clues as to open windows and running programs. Activated applications are indicated by a border around the taskbar icon; multiple borders for multiple instances. Clicking on the icon presents a selection of window titles, making task switching very effective and much simplified. A right-click on an icon presents recently-used files if applicable, another great timesaver that may be used to locate an oft-used file.

The notification area has changed slightly, though it still works in the traditional way. Icons for volume, battery and network are colourless and boring. The Action Centre indicates the presence of updates and the like in a rather unobtrusive fashion. I’m no big fan of the compact taskbar, preferring to extend whatever content needs to be displayed across the screen. The inclusion of the smallish Show desktop button at the rightmost edge of the taskbar is more sensible than the large icon XP and Vista were burdened with.

Selecting and moving a window back and forth has the effect of minimizing all other open windows except for the one select – an easy way to clear a cluttered desktop and focus on a single application. Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it, dragging it to either the leftmost or rightmost side of the screen tiles the window neatly. These simply UI improvements show how much one can do when using the mouse and benefits the user greatly during various tasks involving multiple data sources and references.

As I mentioned, the installation of the OS is a painless procedure. I allowed 7 to complete whatever it required to do, then set out installing whatever 64-bit drivers I could find to augment functionality. All 64-bit Vista drivers I had installed and loaded, except for the Ethernet chipset. I chose the 32-bit equivalent and had a functional hard-wired network connection. Interestingly, 7 had detected and installed the WLAN driver by itself. There are a few devices that have no driver loaded, most notably the TV tuner card. Since I don’t use that, I dispensed with downloading and installing a Vista driver for it.

I had very little trouble installing much-needed applications. Office 2007 installs and functions as advertised. The Nokia PC Suite could not be coaxed into installing until I switched its compatability mode to Vista. The E90‘s drivers were found only after a reboot. That facet of running Windows unfortunately still holds true: when something doesn’t work, reboot and try again.

The only utility I cannot get working is the free PDF printer driver provided in CutePDF. No amount of tweaking UAC settings has any effect, nor does the setting of a compatability mode. After I shut off UAC and went through the necessary reboot to confirm my intent, I was no longer able to launch my desktop gadgets. A quick search revealed a 2 second registry tweak to resolve the problem, though a functioning CutePDF still eludes me.

It’s been a while since I took the chance of basing my daily computing platform on a beta version of an OS. When the OS in question is one produced by Microsoft, I normally thing twice, but in this case the changeover has been an absolute pleasure. As much as I tried to like Vista, it constantly underperformed and caused endless aggravation. Windows 7 hasn’t crashed a single time and has performed well above my expectations. The tweaks to the UI and its usability enhancements are worthwhile. The look and feel is familiar. Best of all, the OS is responsive and seems to make decent use of the hardware resources at its disposal.

I’m keen to see how Windows 7 will be priced when the final product is shipped at the end of the year. I consider the provision of cut-down versions in the final product lineup (no more than 2 concurrent applications can run in the Home Starter Edition, for example) absolutely ridiculous. Microsoft needs to focus on building a single, stable OS that can be everything to any user, regardless of technical savvy or regional location. My impressions of Windows 7 are very positive. As someone who loves the Mac and Linux I have to say Well done, Microsoft!