Windows 7 gets a REAL test!
July 16, 2009 – 9:00 amSo a few weeks ago, I (Graham) went to London to visit Microsoft and listen to what they had to say about Windows 7 and I was impressed I have to say. Yes I was a fan already and contemplating putting it on my normal work laptop but hadn’t quite got the courage but after returning I decided to bite the bullet and have a go and it was a good decision!
Many/Most people at Microsoft are now running Windows 7 from what I can gather and they are running it successfully. I did an in-place upgrade (backed up first just in case!) and although it took much longer than the clean installs I had been used, to it worked and when I rebooted the system it was as if I was running my old Vista machine still, everything on the desktop was still there, programs were there and worked, networks working etc, etc. So I was very impressed with that!
As I am now running it on my machine we have been able to test much more software on it, so here is an updated list of what we know works..
- Microsoft Office 2007
- AVG Internet Security
- Spotify
- Firefox
- Quickbooks 2006 Pro
- Dreamweaver MX
- Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Canon IP5300 Printer
- Samsung ML-1210 Printer
- T-Mobile Mobile Broadband Adaptor and Software
- Skype
- Windows Home Server Connection
- Second Backup
And that is running on my Dell XPS M1330 laptop, see our review here on this to see the specification.
The improvements to the taskbar are fantastic, yes in many ways they are GUI changes but in all reality they help make the user more productive as well. The ability to drag a window to the left/right to align it on that half of the screen has proved valuable many times already and there is a keyboard shortcut! WinKey + left arrow for left of screen and right arrow for the right of screen. Brilliant!
Windows XP Mode is a great idea but we haven’t been able to test it yet, you need a machine with a CPU that is capable of hardware virtualization and in the office we don’t have one (yet!) so that is something we can’t test but we can see it could be of huge value! Basically it installs a virtual PC with XP on it and then you can run legacy applications/hardware through that which for small business customers is fantastic! Well worth looking into but make sure you’re good on the hardware front first!
I could write and write and write about all the features but check out the further reading below for topics I have discussed and those I think would be useful. The short of it is that I will be looking to roll this out to clients when it is released. When is that? 22nd October 2009!!
Further reading:
Windows 7 XP Mode – followthis.info/xpmode
Windows 7 Libraries – followthis.info/win7lib
Windows 7 What’s New – followthis.info/win7new
Get ready here comes Windows 7!
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Tags: 2009, 7, AVG, Canon, Compatibility, Conference, Dell XPS M1330, Dreamweaver, firefox, Home Server, Install, Libraries, microsoft, October 22nd, office, Photoshop, Quickbooks, Rest, Review, Run, Samsung, Second Backup, Skype, Spotify, Success, T-Mobile Broadband, Taskbar, vista, What's New, Windows, Windows 7, XP Mode
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