Firstly, a little background.

For the last 5+ years I’ve used Windows XP, never been bothered to try Vista (especially after it mostly received negative feedback). But I have never felt the need to upgrade; even now, I didn’t particularly feel the need to upgrade to Windows 7 RC, but I actually wanted to after reading so much positive feedback. See what word of mouth can do?

Looking a bit deeper, these are my tech specs:

• Intel Core 2 CPU 1.86ghz
• Memory/RAM: 2.0GB
• GeForce 8600 GT

As you can see, my specs are fairly dated. And when I got the original parts 2-3 years ago it was an affordable machine.

The installation was extremely smooth and it took very little time to install (considerably less time than Windows XP would take to install).

Windows 7 automatically installed drivers for and configured most of my hardware, such as onboard network, etc. Nvidia drivers showed up in the Windows updates section, so I installed them.

Problems encountered so far:

• Was completely unable to detect/install my ancient soundcard (Sound Blaster Live, or something of the sort), so I reverted to onboard audio.
• Diablo 2 didn’t work at first, but give it a while and it starts working (phew!)
• Extremely annoying “glitch”: when saving files from Photoshop to the desktop it will often give me a permissions error, I just have to keep trying and it eventually works… (most likely fixable but I am a little dim)

So far I’ve been able to install every essential program that I was using on Windows XP and haven’t had (m)any problems. My list of essential programs:

• Filezilla
• Firefox
• Chrome
• Opera
• Photoshop + Illustrator
• uTorrent
• Digsby + MSN Live
• Winamp
• NOD32
• Spybot S&D (I wouldn’t completely recommend it though)
• VLC Media Player (although the WMP that comes with 7 is very nice and works just fine)
• Steam
• iTunes (I’m not completely sure if iTunes was quite this dodgy with XP)

There is probably more to the list, but that’s enough for now.

Overall, my first impressions were very good. It’s particularly easy to use for me because it’s still very similar to XP (just a lot shinier, aesthetically and functionality-wise).

If it is affordable at release I will most likely be buying the Home Premium version.

Lastly, I’ve never been a fan of this aero style (and you can still use a 2000-esque theme), but it is really growing on me. I’ve just always wondered what does the glass effect, the drop shadows, the blurs, etc. add to the functionality? That’s the main thing I look for I guess, and this new “superbar” thingy is really, really nice.

Another thing I guess I should have mentioned: Windows 7 is extremely fast. So far it seems faster than XP. With XP I would have to reinstall Windows every 6 or so months to keep it running smoothly, so hopefully the same doesn’t happen to 7.

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