Today is the public launch of Windows 7.

I have had access to the final version of Windows 7 since August and have clocked hundreds of hours of user testing.

I have tested both x64 and x86 and not once encountered any problem or crash.

As I said previously Windows 7 is just Windows Vista with all the annoying things taken out.

This is good because the fundamentals have all been well tested and have matured.

Windows 7 User Scenarios

1) New PC/Laptop: I say go for it, Windows 7 should run fine and you should have a great user experience.

2) Clean install on any PC/Laptop from the last couple of years: I say yes, the key here is the clean install. Backup then rub it out and start again.

3) In place upgrade from an earlier version of Windows. Maybe eventually, but I would wait for 3 or 4 months for a few million people to have tried it first. There are known problems (See below http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975253)

So Can Microsoft Be Trusted Again?

The technical fundamentals are all back in place (thanks to Steven Sinofsky) but their Marketing people are on talking complete rubbish.

Check out the video demonstration from the bbc article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8319083.stm

Leila Martin is showing Multi-Touch something that you need dedicated hardware for. I guarantee someone watching that video is going to assume Windows 7 will add touch to their computer.

The fact is 99.5% of us wont have Multi-Touch capable hardware for some considerable time. Dell did launch a Monitor the other day with this capability but the general public is still 5 years out on Touch.

Next she starts talking about “Taxonomy” an old Greek word for “order or arrangement” just because Windows search found her file. Taxonomy, I mean really.

Conclusion

So Microsoft has managed to recover from the disaster that was Windows Vista. They did the right thing by taking the Vista code base and polishing it.

In some ways Windows 7 is really only what Vista should have been. This means however we are at least 3 years away from any real advances from a Microsoft desktop operating system.

Microsoft have just published a  detailed post about Windows 7 and support for SSD storage technologies.

As a full time SSD owner/user (Laptop/Desktop) i am really pleased Windows 7 has some SSD specific considerations.

Once you go SSD you never want to go back.

The FAQ section covers

Will Windows 7 support Trim?
Will disk defragmentation be disabled by default on SSDs?
Will Superfetch be disabled on SSDs?
Is NTFS Compression of Files and Directories recommended on SSDs?
Does the Windows Search Indexer operate differently on SSDs?
Is Bitlocker’s encryption process optimized to work on SSDs?
Does Media Center do anything special when configured on SSDs?
Does Write Caching make sense on SSDs and does Windows 7 do anything special if an SSD supports write caching?
Do RAID configurations make sense with SSDs?
Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?
Are there any concerns regarding the Hibernate file and SSDs?
What Windows Experience Index changes were made to address SSD performance characteristics?

Windows 7 Engineering Blog Link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

My own blogs posts about SSD link: http://www.colindiponio.com/category/ssd-solid-state-drive/

My trusty Dell Latitude E4200 laptop was the next candidate for a Windows 7 RC install.

Nearly all the hardware was detected out of the box.

Tip: If you have unrecognised hardware do a Windows Update first.

In my case I had two items:-

1) A Base Device

2) The Finger Print Reader.

Doing a windows update fixed the base device and a quick visit to support.dell.com got me the Driver security package needed.

My E4200 only has 2gb of ram so I elected to install the Windows 7 RC 32bit version.

In contrast to my boot time experience on my Desktop PC running the x64 version of the RC the E4200 boots Windows 7 from a cold power on to hearing the Windows start sound in an impressive 19 seconds.

Issues

Out of the box the fn key screen brightness controls don’t work.

I also suspect the onboard fan will be on more due to the aero interface in Windows 7. This machine was previously running XP Pro.

The E4200’s CPU in my case the Intel 1.4ghz Dual CoreSU9400 800Mhz FSB does support hardware virtualisation but by default this is turned off in the bios.  You need to go into the bios and down to the Virtualisation Support section and enable it.

I will need to install Virtual XP mode to make sure virtualisation is fully working.

Something exciting about the Windows 7 Release Candidate is Virtual XP Mode.

However before you get too excited first check that your CPU supports Virtualisation. You can get advice about this on the link below.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/configure-bios.aspx

Moving on…

For users of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate you can download Virtual PC 2007 and a fully licensed XP Virtual machine.

Virtual PC is nothing new, the bundling of the Free licensed XP Virtual Machine is and well as the interoperability between the host and guest operating system. Drag and drop and application sharing.

In English in Windows 7 I can use software installed in my Windows XP Virtual machine but outside of the virtual machine itself.

Step1) Download and install the files you need.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Step2) Log into your Virtual machine.

From within the environment you have a fully working Windows XP Virtual machine you can run in a Window or full screen.

Step3) Install Applications in your Virtual Machine.

In this example I chose to install an older  legacy version of Firefox 2.0.

Step4) If I wanted to run the virtual Firefox 2.0 in my Windows 7 environment I would need to shutdown my Virtual XP. Then in in Windows 7 you click on Start > All Programs > Windows Virtual PC > Virtual Windows XP Applications. The installed applications will be shown here.

When you select an application this then starts the Virtual Machine in the background and your application will run seamlessly on top of Windows 7.

Tip: To access some of the default Virtual XP Windows applications for example IE6 from outside your Virtual machine right lick on Start (in the Virtual Machine) Choose Explore with all users, make a shortcut to IE6  and it will appear in the Windows 7 start menu and IE6 will run on top of Windows 7.

Problems

The only problem I had was when I tried to install Microsoft Office 2000 in my Virtual XP. I got a Windows Protection error that would not allow the install to continue.

Observations

Sometimes the loading of the Virtual XP can be slow but this pretty much delivers what it sets out to do and this kind of approach will allow Microsoft to ditch some of the legacy support holding them back.

Only time will tell how useful and practical this turns out to be, as of today I remote desktop to real Windows XP PC for legacy applications. In theory Virtual XP Mode would allow me using only 1 PC.

Earlier this morning Microsoft went live with the Window 7 public beta of Windows 7 RC Build 7100.

It is available on the link below in either a:

32Bit 2.36GB Download or 64Bit 3.05GB Download.

I would imagine this is going to be the most popular public Beta trial in history so the link below may get swamped.

I still wouldn’t recommend any Beta software to people not confident in installing Operating Systems and drivers etc.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx