My Windows 7 experience
Oct. 26th, 2009 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarkages[Is it me, or has Facebook been siphoning off 90% of LiveJournal activity? Things have been very slow in the vicinity of my Friends page.]
Last week was a rollercoaster for a variety of reasons, but one of them was Windows 7. I had ordered it, assuming that it would run on my Toshiba Tecra A9 laptop, about 1.5 years old (but sporting 2+-year-old technology), because it was "Vista-capable." (I ran XP.) Then, a day before 7 arrived, I ran the Upgrade Advisor. It didn't like my video card. Not at all. I ran to the Toshiba forums, where a kind soul indicated that the Upgrade Advisor was not always a credible source of advice. So: trust this guy's hunch, or get my money back? The box arrived, and, in my excitement,the decision practically made itself. (Mind you, I had been preparing for this day. All my data was backed up both as a disk image and as a regular backup, on two different disks, one of which was a remote network share. My serial numbers and installation packages were burned to CD, as were my documents and mail.)
Installation was problem-free, taking all of 30 minutes. But when the machine started up again, the dire predictions of Upgrade Advisor came true... no Aero. What I had was blisteringly fast, but there was no eye candy. I installled the latest and greatest NVIDIA video drivers, and tried to repair Aero. Mirabile visu, up it came!
7 is fast. It's faster than XP, although this could simply be due to "new system" gloss; we'll see what happens once the registry is crammed full of gunk. But it's remarkably pleasant to use, UAC is not too obtrusive, and, after a while, you forget that you're using a new operating system and just get your work done. Nominally, getting your work done is what it's all about. (Except for social networking, of course.)
Last week was a rollercoaster for a variety of reasons, but one of them was Windows 7. I had ordered it, assuming that it would run on my Toshiba Tecra A9 laptop, about 1.5 years old (but sporting 2+-year-old technology), because it was "Vista-capable." (I ran XP.) Then, a day before 7 arrived, I ran the Upgrade Advisor. It didn't like my video card. Not at all. I ran to the Toshiba forums, where a kind soul indicated that the Upgrade Advisor was not always a credible source of advice. So: trust this guy's hunch, or get my money back? The box arrived, and, in my excitement,the decision practically made itself. (Mind you, I had been preparing for this day. All my data was backed up both as a disk image and as a regular backup, on two different disks, one of which was a remote network share. My serial numbers and installation packages were burned to CD, as were my documents and mail.)
Installation was problem-free, taking all of 30 minutes. But when the machine started up again, the dire predictions of Upgrade Advisor came true... no Aero. What I had was blisteringly fast, but there was no eye candy. I installled the latest and greatest NVIDIA video drivers, and tried to repair Aero. Mirabile visu, up it came!
7 is fast. It's faster than XP, although this could simply be due to "new system" gloss; we'll see what happens once the registry is crammed full of gunk. But it's remarkably pleasant to use, UAC is not too obtrusive, and, after a while, you forget that you're using a new operating system and just get your work done. Nominally, getting your work done is what it's all about. (Except for social networking, of course.)
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Date: 2009-10-27 02:44 am (UTC)I am greatly relieved to hear that your video card was up to the challenge. May your subsequent adventures with Win7 be so fruitful.