My first impressions on Windows 7

I decided to build a virtual machine inside of VM fusion 2.0 to give Windows 7 a shot to see how it performed. My tests are not scientific or complete, but after struggling with Vista and all of its shortcomings I felt like I had a good feel for any improvements.

The ISO image was around 2.5 gig and the install was quick and simple. I did not try an upgrade yet from Vista or XP but just did a fresh install. It was all GUI based with very simple prompts and little user interaction. The whole process took about 20 minutes to install which is pretty good considering what it took to do an upgrade to Vista before.

Once inside the OS, you can quickly tell just how fast the boot process and responsiveness have been improved over Vista. The interface is quick and responsive, even with 1 gig of RAM assigned to the VM. There are still elements of Vista that are there, including the User Access Control and some of the menu's will look familiar. I do enjoy the Mac-like task bar that is all icon based. Networking was quick and easy, with Mac-like prompts and easy to understand verbage. Internet Explorer 8 was snappy as well for a beta release. Installation of software (I installed AVG 8 free) was easy and quick with no issues.

Overall, I am pleased to see that Microsoft has taken the problems of Vista and really listened to what people want. Sure, they have stolen quite a few things from Mac OSX but it is obvious that the war for the desktop is still on. Windows 7 is a huge improvement over Vista and I will personally recommend to clients that this is something they will want to move on when it is finally released. As new beta's are released, I will be giving them a shot as well to see what might have changed.