I am already using Windows 7 RC as my primary OS. It's so much faster than XP and the UI improvements are fabulous. Vista was just a beta version of Windows 7, or another Windows ME. XP lasted me almost 10 years and I figure 7 will do the same.
Faster than XP? Can you please elaborate on this? I'm a long time Windows internals geek although haven't seen a windows PC in a long while, so I'm genuinely curious.
I haven't benchmarked it, but subjectively speaking, the boot time is greatly improved, applications launch faster, and file operations are speedier, with the exception of opening an image in Windows Photo Viewer, which for some reason takes 2-3 seconds.
A lot of the perceived speed comes from barely-noticeable tweaks to the UI. Win7 does benchmark a bit faster than Vista, but it really is the UI (window response/refresh times, etc) that makes a world of difference.
I've similarly upgraded a Win XP laptop to Windows 7 RC, and it is noticeably snappier. This led me to pre-order an upgrade copy during the half-off sale, which is something I'd otherwise never recommend. However, given my surprisingly good experience with the beta and the release candidate, I was very much convinced to make the move to Win 7 ASAP.
Same here. I've been using the RC for months as my primary OS. Build 7000 had a few stability problems for me, but I think those were driver related issues. The latest RC has been rock solid for me.
The multiple monitor support has been flawless for me, even with out of the box drivers. Throwing windows around between 3 monitors with "Start+Shift+(left/right)" really speeds up my productivity when programming.
Integrated desktop search is a huge win: fast and accurate. The new taskbar is a big improvement in managing multiple windows, especially when you have 3-4 powershell or cmd windows open. Mouseover the taskbar icon, and you see previews of all your open windows.
The UI is also very responsive and snappy. Bootup times are in th 20 second range for me. That's on a dual core, 10,000rpm HDD with 4GB ram. The only upgrade I made to my hardware when I installed Win7 was a faster HDD and I replaced my 8 year old pci video card that I used for the 3rd monitor.
All in all a big win, and if you're a BizSpark member, you can get unlimited licenses for your startup for $100, paid after 3 years.
Likewise. I dualbooted my laptop during the BETA, but as soon as RC came out and I knew it would be a stable and was supported by updates (as opposed to needing to reinstall a new release every few weeks) I moved entirely to 7. Since then I've done the same to other PCs in my house as well as my girlfriends notebook which ran Vista like a sloth but now excels under 7.
Yea I agree. Windows 7 is solid. Now that I've gotten used to the new task bar, I love it way more than OS X. I get overwhelmed on my Mac because my windows are all over the place and I can never find the one I am looking for. Windows 7 fixes that and almost makes workspaces outdated.
