Been running for a quite a while on the RC of Win7 but it wasn't until last week that I finally completed my migration (email, productivity suites, vendor apps, etc). The specs for the laptop I use for work:
Dell Latitude D620
Intel Centrino Duo (1.8 GHz)
1 GB DDR RAM
Intel GMA vid card (shared mem)
Personally, I don't much like M$, especially since the release of Vista. ....well, let me rephrase that. Things can't really get worse than ME (which was a bug masquerading as an OS) so I guess I must give them some props. They've come a long way despite the fact that they've sometimes dropped some commitments. I mean, I'm sure we all heard that WinFS was on it's way...where's that gone :S...? ZFS would probably knock it out of the water anyway (provided Sun doesn't get bitten by that patent infringement fiasco) because it works so well. But I digress...let's move on to the grading.
Aesthetics: 8/10
- Had to give it an 8 because while Aero is pretty and all it doesn't give me the bouncy goodness such as what one would experience with...say...Compiz for Linux. However, I am pleased that it runs so well with limited resources :) Oh by the way, there are now desktop slideshows available within. I was hoping I could see some Dream/animated backgrounds but oh well...can't have it perfect.
Ease of Use & Utility: 7/10
- M$ has striven to make the interface as consistent as possible with that of Vista while introducing some new features. There seems to be a Snipper tool but I have yet to really see a use for that. The Control Panel (which I STILL think didn't need to be changed from that of XP) isn't so bad but still required a bit of digging before I could find what I wanted. The Wi-Fi radio is pretty nifty and convenient as well.
Stability: 8/10
- No BSODs just yet, thankfully enough. Sometimes when it's paging the system locks up and your windows might do some interesting antics (going transparent and switching without intervention) but that's about the limit of any kookiness observed. I should mention that this happens whenever I open Outlook -_-. Otherwise, it's a wiz at memory management is supersedes its predecessor many times over.
Compatibility: 9/10
- No issues thus far...except with FireFox 3.x which seems to crash fairly often--even with nothing but a few tabs open. I didn't even have to look for drivers in order to run it...it dealt with almost everything straight out of the box. I should say here that some of Dell's utility apps didn't work normally upon installation (eg Quickset's little visuals no longer appear) but those weren't show-stoppers. I guess it's just important to keep in mind that unless your PC/laptop is made to be compatible with a Win7 upgrade, it's likely that your vendor's preinstalled apps may act a bit funky.
Other Comments:
- It's pretty hard on my battery--I guess it's because my D620 isn't a "newer system" so I won't get the benefit of the power savings touted by M$. No skin off my back though, I'm perfectly content.
Overall Goodness: 8/10
- Not bad at all, I'd actually recommend this to any Windows user out there (especially those tortured by Vista).
And that's about it for the week in review. See y'all next time.
Josh.
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