13 October 2009

Windows 7 Dog Food Part I: Install and First Impressions

Posted by Connor under: Technology .

Since Windows 7 is right around the corner and since people have somehow been given the impression that I know stuff about technology and stuff, I had to go and install Windows 7 on my every-day work computer. Why expose myself to this potential productivity killing activity? I do it for you, my loyal readers. All two or three dozen of you. And it was one of the only computers in the office that will run it worth a damn. So, as they say in the software industry, I am eating my own dog food.

This was a straight upgrade from Vista SP1 to Windows 7. By this I mean, that I put the Windows 7 disk in my computer running Vista and ran the upgrade. It kept all my programs and files in place. This is the only direct upgrade path Microsoft supports. You cannot upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 without doing a clean install of the operating system. This will also then require re-loading any custom drivers (if there are Windows 7 drivers available yet) software and backing up and restoring all local files.

On the one hand as a consumer advocate, this totally sucks as Vista adoption has been pretty dismal. On the other hand, as a provider of technology consulting services all I can do is prostrate myself facing Redmond and give thanks to the Great Windfall Maker, St. Steve.

Here is the machine I ran the upgrade on:
Hewlett Packard dc7800c ultra-slim desktop
Intel Core2Duo E6550 2.6GHz (32-bit)
4 GB DDR2-6400 RAM (I upgraded from 2GB for $70.00)
Intel Q35 Chipset with Integrated Video and Sound

This machine is about a year and-a-half old and is not a rocket sled by any means. But it ran Vista fine, or as fine as Vista will run anyway. The upgrade is accomplished as I said above by inserting the Windows 7 disk and running the upgrade install. I ran the Upgrade Advisor first, and I highly recommend doing this as it will tell you if you have any programs or drivers that need to be removed, replaced or upgraded. I only had to remove the HP bundled security applications and they are not available in Windows 7 flavors yet.

The upgrade was silky-smooth and took about an hour and ten minutes during which the computer rebooted three times. Yesterday I got straight to work on it and it has not had a single problem. I participated in a web-based training and entered with a bit of trepidation that the client wouldn’t work. But it worked just fine.

I also have a VPN client from my primary firewall provider, FortiNet that absolutely would not install on this Vista box, no way no how, no version. I had been going round and round with their support team for more than a week and not getting anywhere. It installed and ran on Windows 7 with no issues whatsoever. My core applications, Office 2007 and Google Chrome have also been working without a hitch.

All in all, this has been a pretty seamless and painless transition so far. More later in the week as I get a bit more time under the hood. Here is a screen shot:

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