I’ve been running Windows 7 RC on two of my home systems for about a week now.
System 1 is a Lenovo S10 Netbook with an N270 ATOM processor, 1 GB of RAM and an 80GB disk slice. (Dual-boots OpenSolaris B111; see this post for more about that.) The netbook is where I installed Windows 7 beta back in February.
System 2 is a self-built PC with a Q8400 quad-core Intel processor, 8 GB RAM, 1TB of disk, Nvidia 8800 GTX (with the G93 GPU) and a TrendNet Wireless N USB adapter. It was previously running Vista SP1 Ultimate x64 and was built around November 2008. (This system used to have a Linksys PCI Wireless N interface, but I had problems with it under Vista and Windows 7. It was solid under XP SP3, for whatever that’s worth.)
I did a Vista->W7 upgrade of System #2, and a clean install on System #1. The upgrade process was very smooth. I was a tiny bit frustrated by the upgrade advisor though. It was great that it pointed out incompatible Windows 7 software (daemon-tools) that I had on Vista, but it was annoying because it only identitfied one show-stopper at a time. So everytime I corrected an issue and restarted the upgrade I felt like I was gambling on whether I’d pass the upgrade advisor check. It would be better if the installer identified all of the potential conflicts on the same screen, so at least it’s clear that when those problems are resolved you can immediately start an upgrade. The upgrade itself took about an hour and when it was finished I was amazed that all of my old software was seemingly automagically reinstalled. I’ve had absolutely zero problems with the software and since Nvidia is on the ball with WQHL-certified Windows 7 video drivers, I was able to start several 3D gaming engines quickly. The Windows Experience Index on this system was rated at 5.9 (out of a possible 7.9) the lowest performing component being the hard drive.
With the netbook, I did a clean install on that system since Microsoft clearly expressed the desire that W7 Beta installs get fresh installations instead of in-place upgrades. This time, I installed Windows 7 32 bit using a 16GB USB stick, following the directions here. Since this was a clean install and from flash memory it took much less time than the DVD-based system #2 upgrade. After the upgrade was complete, the system tested out with a WEI score of 2.1, with the CPU being the weakest system component. I was a bit surprised the netbook scroed so low, because according to Microsoft guidelines, a system should have a minimum WEI of 3 to run Aero. The native Intel 945 graphics controller seems to do a fine job with Aero, however. The one area where sluggishness is especially noticable on the netbook is on websites under IE8 with a lot of fancy javascript (like Yahoo Mail, for example.) That isn’t really a Windows 7 issue, per se, but more a function of IE8′s rather slow Javascript engine. And although I have Firefox installed on both computers, I’ve been trying to be a good tester and use IE8 for my every day browsing.
Other impressions of W7: The desktop artwork themes that come “out of the box” are stunning. I have the landscape photo theme on System #2 and the “United States” photo theme on system #1. Both of them are really really “Oooh” factor type photos. I love that Gadgets are no longer forced along the side of display 1. I have dual LCD panels on system #2 and although you can undock gadgets in Vista, the sidebar app itself still has an overlay on the right side of display 1. Performance wise, I’ve noticed that system shutdown and start up are noticably faster than Vista – much more in line with XP. On system #2 I have a CPU/Memory gauge gadget running all the time and I’ve noticed that memory usage is 10-15% better and CPU usage, even during peak use is about 5-20% lower.
All in all? This is the best version of Windows I’ve used. Yep, even better than XP which looks really long-in-the-tooth compared to Aero. W7 looks amazing, functions well and so far has been very stable on all of my applications. I will definitely upgrade all of my PCs to W7 RTM once its available.
#1 by Dan - May 22nd, 2009 at 12:22
Nice write-up.
I hope Nvidia and MS keep up the good work. I was definately set back in Vista by the problem associate between the two at the time.
#2 by Keith Privette - May 26th, 2009 at 08:10
Thank you for documenting your process around upgrading. this will be very helpful to people thinking about doing it themselves. So the one computer you have is macked out with all the bells and whistles hey! How much does a computer like that run you? Do you have any insight on external hard drives or personal servers that work well with Windows 7 and hooking laptops and dvr’s to it to store all kinds of media?
#3 by Mark Allen - May 27th, 2009 at 23:55
I just posted about adding my HDHomerun to Windows 7.
As far as a computer that’s pretty buff, ExtremeTech just published their $800 computer and it pretty much meets or beats the specs on my system that cost hundreds more just 8 months ago.