Windows 7

Well I had my old drive that I cloned a few months ago just lying there so I was bored one Saturday morning so I tried to install Windows 7 to have a play. I wanted to upgrade my old drive but you have to be running Windows to do the upgrade and I had experimented with that Windows installation so much it didn't boot any more. Oh well clean install. Probably better...

Well..um..I like it. I still think the PC will still be running Linux more than any other OS and the Mac I still prefer the look and feel of but Windows 7 is pretty good.

It installed easily and the only two glitches were Cisco VPN (turn on Vista level in the compatibility) and Kaspersky beta AV blue screened (kl1.sys I think it was.) I'm running my favorite Avira Antivir now. That and MalwareBytes get my vote for the best in protection. I found a rouge process on the machine a while back and they were the only two that picked it up. Anyway I digress..

The new default interface is nice. Quite Mac like but still familiar to someone who has used Windows for years. The action center consolidates things nicely to keep things under control.

My old Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines ran fine with no compatibility settings needed. All the Steam games ran fine. I got 60 frames on the Half Life Coast test which is quite an improvement from when it was tested with Vista. It just doesn't feel slow and busy like Vista.

It's running Chrome now. My life partner Putty just did it's thing.

I guess the true test though will be what holes the bad people find in it once it becomes widespread.

Hopefully if I can install the release one over the Beta when it's out...

This doesn't happen often but I think you've got it about right Microsoft. Please don't bloat it...

BTW one small change I had to make to get it to talk to the Mac and other Samba boxes was in the Local Security Policy (in Administrative tools) you need to change Local Policies : Security Options then the Keys that start Network security: Minimum session security for NTLM SSP based (including secure RPC) clients and server to be a bit more tolerant. Turn off the 128 bit and tuen on NTLMv2. Not as secure but I'm only using it on my LAN and it has two firewalls (not including windows) between it and the Internet.