I finally managed to get my greasy hands on a copy of Windows 7, all thanks to my fantastic school program. I installed it tonight after downloading it for hours at a time on my school’s network.

Installation

Installing Windows 7 could not be simpler. After 3 or 4 questions, it started installing itself. The whole thing took under 30 minutes with no incidents. After a quick and absolutely painless install, I was absolutely delighted to see all my hardware seemed to work right. I still tought there was a little too much stuff in the Start menu that should have been buried deeper. I don’t like seeing notepad and rarely used utilities in the same place, but that’s just me. Nonetheless, a flawless “two thumbs up” for the installation. I expected to have to find and download drivers, but it wasn’t the case. Nick is happy.

Update: Windows 7 erased my GRUB bootloader, which is a big no-no, but nothing new from from Microsoft. Some useful tutorials can be found on the internet to get this fixed.

First impressions

I gotta say I’m pleased to see a more responsive interface and the complete revamp of the taskbar is welcome. For once, it really feels like they put a lot of thinking into it. The new features will appeal both to newcomers and power users. It’s also good to see they’ve combined all of the warnings under a single icon in the notifications area. They’ve also changed the Windows selector in a very intelligent way. I love how the window buttons show all kinds of information. The only thing I would have to say is that the bar uses way too much screen space without justification. I don’t see why there is no way to make it thinner. It’s otherwise a very good step in the right direction.

A thing I’ve always hated about Windows is how retarded things are divided in the system. You always have to search for this or this panel. The new control panel, while much easier to read through, still doesn’t seem to fix that problem. There ARE some improvements in the division of tasks, but I’m still looking for something akin to the ridiculously simple Gnome preferences menu.

The new Windows Explorer didn’t improve much, sadly enough, but it’s not that bad. Microsoft’s engineers added a few subtle changes to get things done faster, but there’s no easy-to-use folder up button yet. Still a very useable application, but nothing to rave about.

The system itself feels much snappier, even on a laptop that played fine with Vista. I’m glad to finally see I don’t need a ridiculous amount of RAM and CPU when idle. That alone is a major selling point for me. It might just become the next gaming rig OS, skipping Vista for obvious reasons.

Conclusion

This time, we’ve got a winner! Windows 7 indeed looks like a fixed Windows Vista, and that’s how I like it. Many improvements were made to the interface to make it truly worth it, not to mention the improved performances. Don’t be shy, this time it’s worth it!

Never in the past would I have seen this coming. Back in the time when PS2 ports were all the rage, I could never have expected mice to be headache-inducing bundles of hate. I explain.

With my first laptop, I had bought a simple, wired logitech laser mouse. I had no budget for those awesome wireless mice and thus used my mighty 3-button mouse until I bought another laptop. Then, having mastered the art of saving tons of money with eBay, I got myself a wireless mouse. A MICROSOFT wireless mouse, mind you. It worked rather well, with some connectivity issues here and there, but nothing to go crazy about. I eventually broke it by my own fault and decided to upgrade to the all-too-awesome Microsoft Wireless Memory Mouse 8000. In a line: bluetooth and 2.4gHz wireless, 1GB memory on the dongle, charges on the dongle, 5 buttons. What a mistake.

First, I discovered you have to use IntelliPoint, the software that allows you to use your mouse. That’s right, you need nasty software for your mouse to work. IntelliPoint… doesn’t work that well. Scrolling wasn’t always working (that’s right, scrolling) and the mouse stopped working with the dongle. With only bluetooth left, my only choice was to use it, which wasn’t that much of a big deal. That’s until Windows Vista’s shitty bluetooth support charged in. The mouse would rarely – if ever – be recognized when I turned on my computer so I had to remove the device and repeat the pairing process every – goddamn – time. Charging didn’t work everytime neither, rendering the mouse absolutely worthless.

So, as soon as I lost my now-useless dongle, I tossed the mouse aside and bought myself the first mouse I had, from Logitech, thise time with artsy zebra stripes. The previous one is still serving my mother, 4 years later, and NEVER failed to connect. Mice is another thing I will stop buying from Microsoft, along with mobile devices, keyboards and software.