My good old PC is slowly self-destructing these days. First the graphics card blew up. I managed to find a very cheap replacement Geforce 6800GT 256mb. Then my DVD drive went bust. I found a ridiculously cheap replacement. Then one of my raid sata connectors fell apart. I know, I know! All this strongly suggests that I should buy myself a new PC, doesn't it?Anyway I decided to get something useful out of this situation, and built a temporary solution out of the mess. My 10.000 rpm stripe raid was disabled (only one connector left, and not Windows 7 compatible anyway) and I started using an IDE disk as my new boot drive. Then I installed Windows 7 on that disk to check out if Microsoft had done it right this time. The installation went very smooth and didn't take long.I then spent some 24 hours fighting this and that, Drivers and programs installation obviously took quite some time but went quite easy. Trying to recover as many backup data from my old setup as possible. I found out that it was very useful to have an old replacement XP machine in the basement. I was introduced to the MozBackup program that helped me restore my Thunderbird email program. I found out that IIS 7 is one hell of a damn bit different than what you find in XP. I fought a hell of a lot of security bullshit in Windows 7 for a few minutes until I disabled the lame ass UAC completely. I also had some database issues connecting my local Website and a few applications to a local SQL Server 2008. It all had to do with security, so prepare for some fights in that area! All my old external devices run perfectly, including: phone, scanner, camera, network drives and HP printer. Bottomline is: after a few days everything is running fine and there is no major issues left. Pretty impressive I'd say! I'm not really sure if I prefer the new interface to the XP interface, but maybe I will when I get used to it. One thing is certain: Windows 7 is A LOT better than Vista. Boot and shut down time is fine and generally everything is fairly logical and easy to use. My old P4 3.2ghz PC is not quite fast enough. Sometimes the menus are a bit slow and it could certainly use a bit more processor power, but it is no major problem and it is acceptable for most purposes. I will now spend the next few months or so, deciding on a new replacement PC while I get to know Windows 7 a lot better. I'm happy to conclude that Windows 7 is everything Vista wasn't. :-D
Content Type: Tech Comment
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Updated: 2009-09-21 20:08
Created: 2009-09-20 17:35
