My take on Windows 7

Bottom line: Overall Impressed

I wrote a more technical overview of this on another blog, but this on is geared more to the home user. I have excluded the techie speak and software references that will not pertain to the usual home user. If you want to read the more techie version, it is here.

This is less of a review and more of a documentation of my experience with Windows 7. As such I am not going to talk about the features in Windows 7; there are much better places to get that info. What I am going to do is share my experience with Windows 7 with the hope that it will assist others in making the decision on whether or not to use it.
I began using the final version of Windows 7 Enterprise the day after we received it in early August. I have been using it daily ever since. Ironically, that wasn’t the plan. I have two hard drives which allows me to install two separate operating systems and choose which one to use at start-up. I installed it on the hard drive that I had previously installed Vista (bleh) on with the idea that XP would continue to be my primary operating system, and I would boot into Windows 7 on occasion to test it out.

My Computer/Specs

Dell Optiplex 745:

• 3.4GHz Intel Pentium D Processor
• 4gb of RAM
• 2 250GB Hard Drives
• ATI X1550 Video Card (dual monitor)

Install

The computer is about 3 years old now, so it is no spring chicken in computer years. As I always do, I performed a clean install after re-formatting the hard drive. I caution home users to be careful when doing this. While it is in my opinion always the cleanest install possible, most computers these days have a restore partition that is used in order to restore to the factory settings, essentially making the computer look and behave as if you just took it out of the box and turned it on for the first time. If you aren’t familiar with this part of the hard drive or what software pre-installed on your computer allows access to it you will want to seriously consider whether you want to wipe the partition first. If done wrong it will cause you to lose access to the restore partition.

My first pleasant surprise occurred when I first booted into Windows 7. Everything worked. Usually when doing a fresh install from a Microsoft install CD/DVD (as opposed to a factory restore from data stored on the hard drive itself), you need to install drivers for at least sound, network, and video. On this install that wasn’t the case. They were all operational upon start-up. I didn’t need to download and install any drivers, which was good because Dell didn’t have any for Windows 7 posted yet. So far things were looking pretty good.

Software

I am happy to report that except for an intermittent boot issue with my MS wireless keyboard, to date I have not encountered a single issue with any of the software I have installed. I use MS Wireless Desktop Elite Keyboard and Mouse. While both have worked fairly well, I have on occasion lost connectivity while either the computer is locked, or after restart. When it occurs at restart I usually see a BIOS message that a keyboard error has occurred. On all occasions the issue has been remedied by simply unplugging the USB cable to the wireless receiver, and then plugging it back in.

Below is a list of software I have installed and successfully used in Windows 7:

• MS Office 2007
  • Word
  • Excel
  • Powerpoint
  • Outlook
  • Access
• MS Virtual PC
• MS Live Movie Maker
• MS Keyboard & Mouse
• 7-Zip (open source zip utility)
• Adobe Air Apps
  • Tweetdeck
  • Pandora Desktop
• Adobe CS4
  • Acrobat Pro 9
  • Dreamweaver
  • Fireworks
  • Photoshop
• Beyond Compare
• Dropbox
• iTunes 9
• KeePass
• KeePass2
• Logitech Webcam Software 12.0.1280.0000
• McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.7i
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5.3 thru 3.5.5
• Quicktime 7
• Roxio Creator Plus – Dell Edition 2.4.32a (OEM)
  • Interesting thing is that this is the software that was bundled by Dell in 2006. I reinstalled from the original disc and it works fine in Windows 7

• Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2162
• Yahoo! Messenger 10.0.0.1102-us

I have more software installed that I haven’t run yet… mostly pieces of the Adobe CS4, and I will update this list as I have experience with more software titles.  There is no list of software that I had issues with because I haven’t had any issues. I have yet to even look at Task Manager or Process Explorer in Windows 7.

Drivers

As I mentioned above, the install provided functional Microsoft drivers for all of the critical system elements. I am a firm believer in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” As such I haven’t looked for video or network drivers. I have installed the SoundMax driver from Dell’s website. I did that because the only issue I have encountered so far was with sound. On two occasions my system sound disappeared. I could still listen to iTunes music, but I couldn’t hear any system sounds, email notifications, etc. When I clicked on the sound icon in the system tray, it displayed and then hung. Eventually a “Not Responding” dialog appeared that gave me the option to force quit it, but I chose to restart instead. After restart all was well. The interesting thing is that this issue did not show up until well after a month of rock solid computing on Windows 7. I wonder if it was introduced in a Windows 7 patch or update that was installed, or related to some software I installed. The only thing I can think I installed near the time o the issue was Adobe CS4 which includes Sound Booth. In any case, a few weeks back I installed the SoundMax driver from Dell (they had a Windows 7 version finally) and I haven’t had any issues since. I’ll update this if the issue recurs.

Additionally I have successfully installed drivers for HP Laserjet 3800dn color printer and a Kyocera-Mita KM 3050 multifunction. I have been able to print to both devices with full functionality and no issues.

Conclusion

I didn’t say this upfront cause I didn’t want you to be influenced by it, but I am a Mac guy. That is my system of choice, but with that said and after reading this article I think it is obvious that I am not a Windows hater. I realize that each operating system has it’s place and which you use should depend more on your needs, your comfort level and your wallet. To each their own. With that out of the way I have to say I HATED Vista… it was so bad, and by bad I mean it was slooooow. I couldn’t do anything in Vista better or faster than I could in XP. With Windows 7 I expected that MS would fix the mess… and in my opinion they did. Windows 7 has actually been great to work with and better than XP. Some of the features make it more efficient for me to use… and it is very quick… even on my old computer. That’s a good thing because even though this was supposed to be my year for a computer refresh, the budget made sure I will be using this computer for at least another year. I can’t imagine how fast it will work on newer hardware.

Feel free to comment or ask questions.

Why Not?

I often say the answer to any question “Why?” is, “Why not?” Now that doesn’t hold true 100% of the time, but it does most often, try it!

With that said “Why Not?” is the reason I started this blog. I am a techie, and I want to provide the opportunity to share my knowledge with others that are less technical than myself.  Now I need to define techie a little bit, because believe it or not, like medicine, IT is very broad, however unlike medicine there is no common foundation for the field that all techies grow from. I know “techies” that can write code to update databases and create beautifully output reports, but don’t know how to migrate from one computer to another or partition a hard drive. IT ranges from people who can install OSes and software, to people designing network topography for business and government. While there are areas where people might technically be out of “IT”, such as computer science and network engineering, there is a little bit of IT in those areas as well.

With that said this blog is to help people with things that they may ask a tech neighbor to help them with if they had one. My IT experience is pretty broad, and in some areas deep as well.