Last night, I finally got my copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. I’ve been beta-testing it for a few months earlier, and was impressed with its stability and good looks. The installation process was, for the most part, painless. The only tricky part was upgrading the 32-bit Windows XP with 64-bit version of Win7. I had to move my data files off to an external drive, just in case Win7 may “accidentally” delete them. Turns out Win7 did a good job preserving my hard drives, so it was a smooth transition. I was up and running with Win7 in an hour, all of my hardware detected and good to go.
My experience with Microsoft Windows varied quite a bit. I could recall the milestones in my life when I deal with the operating system. It started off with Windows 3.1. I supported it professionally as a Toshiba laptop tech support person. It was still based on MS-DOS and buggy as hell – it would often crash! I wasn’t paid enough to support it. However, it taught me patience and perseverance, not to mention the experience for a career move.
Microsoft improved stability tremendously with Windows NT. But it was bloated and support from vendors was dicey. The drivers had to be tightly controlled to maintain a stable OS. With NT, it gave me the chance to dabble into high end PC parts (that required certifications) and running Windows Server’s applications such as Exchange, MS-SQL, and IIS.
When Windows XP came out, it was popular because it ran well on smaller systems and drivers were widely available from all vendors. It was the de-facto Windows setup for many. I stayed with XP for the longest time since 2001.
To digress a little bit, I have to mention Vista. I heard horrible things about it, so I stayed away from it. I finally played with it in 2008 when I build my latest PC. It has a pretty GUI that rivaled (copied?) Mac OS X. But it was like the NT days: too bloated. I had to bump up the RAM to 8GB for a more comfortable experience. Installing games like Half Life and Crysis were a chore, sometimes with unpredictable results.
So now, with Windows 7, I’m back to that comfortable spot with a Microsoft operating system. My current XP apps and games are working perfectly on it. Already it’s the best selling pre-order and gaining install base. Sites, like Lifehacker, dedicated posts on how to use it. On the Enterprise level, companies are gearing up to convert from XP directly to Win7.
I’ve never been so excited about Windows before, until Windows 7 is here. Start me up!
Oh, as a side note, there’s a reason why I skipped Windows 95: It sucked!
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It’s definitely a welcomed departure from Vista, which was remarkably bloated and buggy. I have some issues with 7 and my internet connection, which doesn’t seem to want to come on during startup. I have to manually go and connect the ethernet cord to my other LAN port for it to start working.
I think Windows XP Pro is still the most stable platform around. Hopefully Windows 7 proves to be better than Vista.
I myself am about to upgrade my Mac G4 to a 27 inch IMac. I have both PCs and Macs since I trade on the PC but do a lot of creative stuff on the Mac. Black Friday will provide a lot of good deals at the Mac store.