Lee Ferree

It’s been a while since I’ve recommended a Windows upgrade to anyone. Most people are running Windows XP and it’s been great (for the most part). In good faith, I couldn’t push people to invest their time and money into Windows Vista. Even with the recent release of SP2 for Vista, the operating system still leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve spent the last couple years doing “down-grades” to Windows XP as a result.

I’ve been running the Windows 7 RTM since its release on TechNet, and I must say, I’m impressed. Not only does it work well on new hardware, but also legacy (Windows XP) hardware. Windows 7 is what Windows Vista “should have” been.

Here’s some reasons you should consider an upgrade to Windows 7 (as I’ve observed):

A while back I wrote about tweaking Windows 7 to gain better performance from your hardware. With the official Windows 7 release just a couple months away and the overwhelming popularity of low performance netbooks, I thought it’s a good time to update my list. The following list contains the services I’ve disabled in Windows 7. These tweaks work great for me, but your mileage may vary. Proceed with caution, as I’m in no way responsible for your computer “blowing up”!

The following list was compiled from Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit.

I’m posting this in hopes of helping others experiencing problems dual booting XP / Windows 7 partitions. Some symptoms may include .. Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt. \system32\ntoskrnl.exe. hal.dll Please re-install a copy of the above file. boot.ini missing

After all the fuss on Friday, Microsoft has now released Windows 7 Beta 1, and it is readily available to the public. If you’re using Internet Explorer, you’ll need to download the ActiveX plug-in that allows the Microsoft Downloader to download the 32 and 64-Bit versions of the new beta operating system.

I’ve only run the 32-Bit version, as I’ve had problems with the previous 64-Bit builds. Here I’ll share my results with what’s compatible, what’s not, what tweaks can be done to increase performance and some general eye candy. Enjoy!