Played with the Windows 7 beta again last night (I put ear plugs in so the fan noise didn’t get to me).  What can I say, either Microsoft are pulling a fast one and this is a fake version of Windows designed to run really quick, or it’s actually pretty good.  I installed Firefox and OpenOffice on the the machine yesterday and both are quick and responsive.  OO starts pretty smartly and dragging windows around is pretty quick (not very scientific, but let’s be honest, the way I use a machine these days I’m all about how responsive the UI is).

The access protection stuff doesn’t really get in my way, there’s a couple of dialogs to click on when installing stuff (‘do you want App_01 to make changes to your system?’) but otherwise it’s pretty seamless.

I don’t like the file dialogs.  I’m a big fan of files and directories, and I much prefer just seeing a real representative list of what the structure looks like, rather than all the ‘fake’ entries, but I guess that’s because I’m a command-line geek at heart and that as things develop that view is going to go away entirely (it’s not really necessary any more I guess).

File sharing works fine, I picked ‘work’ as the network location, popped the machine into a workgroup and I can happily drag files off my XP machine, haven’t tried the other way around yet.

I tried the Kaperskey trial anti-virus thing this time instead of AVG, and the installer is very annoying with about 14 features I didn’t like the sound of so I turned off.  Otherwise it installed and seems fine.

I’ll probably not post anything else about Windows 7 – as far as I care these days it works fine for me.  I used to demand a lot more from the OS and spend a lot of time configuring and tweaking, but these days I’ve turned into much more of a casual OS user.  As long as I can browse, install apps and manage photo’s I’ll be fine.  Actually, I might try and get Lord of the Rings online installed and running just to see how it copes since I guess games are the other thing I do, if I make any progress or fall foul with that I’ll let you know.  Otherwise, I’m confident that when I have to upgrade from XP, Windows 7 looks like it’ll be fine.

Of course, I don’t intent to get rid of my Linux VM’s, I can’t give up my command line just yet.