So, recently I had a hard drive go out (thanks Seagate), which left me the option to either reinstall Vista, or just install Windows 7. Well, not a real tough choice as any Vista user will tell you. I figured Windows 7 had good reviews, and really, it just couldn't be worse than Vista. I put in a fresh new drive, and let the install go. Keep in mind, my machine is a quad 64 bit processor, so it is a little beefy, and I have 3 monitors hooked up (foreshadow...). After 20 minutes of the windows 7 install, with me really having no interaction with the install, the computer rebooted and the screen was just black. Personally I thought since it has only been 20 minutes, the install must just be getting ready to start. However the screens stayed black, though on one of the screens I could see the mouse cursor. I tried rebooting and the same thing.
Welp, I of course went to google (sorry Bing) and did a search. It turns out that even in the beta version, people with multiple monitors connected had problems. The solution? Well, just disconnect all but one monitor. Once I did that, the machine booted to Windows 7. I couldn't believe it, the install was done in only 20 minutes. About a half hour of windows updates, and all my monitors were connected back up and working. To be honest, the monitor setup was so much easier than Vista.
My personaly opinion on Windows 7 thus far is, it really is much better than Vista, though I have some getting used to certain things.
1. The task bar is nice. My problem is I am accustomed to the task bar having all my apps spread out along the bottom for easy navigation for me. Now they are all within one icon on the task bar. This is nice to a point, but will take some time getting used to. The cool thing about this though, is when you click on the icon, you can see previews of what is on the screen. If you mouseover the preview, Windows 7 brings it to the foreground temporarily, and quickly for you to preview. Amazing how fast this works. The other nice thing is you can close windows from the listing as well.
2. MSN Messenger kept loading, and I couldn't see any way to turn it off. Turns out you have to press "alt" key to have the menu appear. Not sure why Microsoft would do that as it is a little silly, but I guess that is what MS is known for.
3. Same as Vista, but I could not edit and save the hosts file, unless I open up notepad in administrator mode (type notepad in the search box, right click it in the list, and run as administrator).
4. The pop up boxes everytime I want to install something gets annoying. Though, to be honest, I do not install stuff all too often. But since this was a new build and I had to get all my software on there, it did get in the way. No where near as annoying as Vista though. There is a feature to make it so it doesn't grey out the entire screen when prompting you, which I of course did. It would really be nice if they found a way to not ask me if I double click an application to run. I think the assumption should be if I double click a setup file, then I really want to run it, no need to pop up asking me.
5. All my apps loaded and ran just fine. I have had no incompatibilities with drivers or programs (yet...). This includes Visual Studio.net, sql server 2008, Adobe Photoshop CS, etc.
6. File copying is MUCH faster than Vista. I don't know how Microsoft screwed up file copying in Vista, but it seems to be fixed in Windows 7. I haven't tried copying to a USB drive, which used to be dreadfully slow with my Vista machines, but am hoping that has been taken care of as well.
7. The licensing is hard to understand. From what I understand, you can upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, only if Vista is installed AND activated. Now, the problem here is, my hard drive crashed. Why would I want to reinstall the piece of junk Vista first instead of doing a fresh install? Secondly, some people will have to call to have Vista activated again. So, instead of a 20 minute install, I would have had to reinstall Vista (which takes a good hour), then call and speak to someone I can barely understand and read an insanely long key, which he can't understand, then he reads back a long key that I can't understand, then I would be able to install Windows 7. Not a very smart approach. Secondly, Windows XP users can not upgrade to Windows 7 from what I understand. I think this is a poor policy, especially since the reason most people didn't upgrade was because Vista was a poor choice. I think XP users should be able to buy the upgrade version, and do a fresh install with it.
Though I think Windows 7 is a much better operating system than Vista, I still think Microsoft has a long way to go to understanind its users. It may want to try to listen a little closer and treat them with respect, instead of force (i.e. forcing users to buy full version instead of upgrades). But, as we have seen with Vista, Zune, Windows Mobile (which is really bad), Microsoft is definately not going to listen to users anytime soon! I do recommend the upgrade to Windows 7 though, as I think most users will really like it, even XP users.
Thus far I have been very happy with Windows 7. We'll see how it holds up over time now.