It was just released in January 2009 as a beta operating system. A beta means that it is in the testing phase. Microsoft has opened it up so that people can try it. The audience is usually hardware and software developers so that they can make sure that their existing products work on it, and any future products that they develop will work.
I have been a beta tester for Microsoft for years and I downloaded this operating system yesterday and I installed it on an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T43 laptop. The installation was easy and it completed in under 30 minutes.
After starting Windows for the first time it provided a list of hardware items that it did not find drivers for. A driver is what allows a hardware component such as a printer, sound card, etc., to talk to the computer to make them work together.
Here is what the computer could not find on my computer: wireless adapter, sound card, fingerprint reader, modem, and power management tools.
I went to the laptop manufacture’s site and I download Vista drivers for all of these hardware components. The Vista driver fixed the sound card and modem. I had to use XP drivers for the wireless adapter, fingerprint reader and power management.
So, right now all of the internal hardware components work. I have not tried installing a printer at the time that I am writing this.
What I have learned so far is that it takes a long time for the operating system to start and get to the logon screen. I would say a little over three minutes. At this point the first problem appeared. Usually on other operating systems the fingerprint screen is the first screen to appear. This is where you can have the computer scan your fingerprint so that you do not have to enter in a password.
The problem that I encountered is that the first screen that comes up is the login / password screen. I manually put in the password and press the Enter key. When the computer completes starting and you see the desktop then the fingerprint screen appears and you have to scan your fingerprint. Granted the Vista driver did not work and I had to use an XP driver, so I will wait and see if a Windows 7 driver appears.
The next thing that I did was go to Windows update and had the computer go out and look for updated patches and drivers. It found a more up-to-date network driver, sound and video. I installed these items and everything still worked.
When I initially installed the operating system a window opened and asked if I was doing an upgrade or a complete install. I clicked on complete install. A warning message opened and it said that it was going to copy all existing files and folders into a folder called windows.old. I clicked OK and it proceeded to install.
I would have thought that Windows 7 would have reformatted the hard drive, which is what I wanted, but I was never given the option.
After the installation I looked at the folders and only a couple of them were transferred over: Windows, documents and settings and program files. All of the other folders I had remained on the Windows 7 side. To me, it should have moved everything, or given me the option to delete all data, which is what was implied on the original installation screen. So, I manually deleted all of the other folders including windows.old since I did not need it.
Once Windows 7 was loaded and the desktop was there I was able to move around quickly. I started Internet Explorer and it was Internet Explorer 8.0. Again, I was able to go to sites quickly.
One thing that I noticed immediately is that when I had multiple windows open, and I put my mouse over them a small miniature version of the window was displayed. I was able to click on the window and I went directly to the screen. For example, I had four Internet Explorer windows open, but only one icon on the taskbar on the bottom of the screen. When I place my mouse over the one icon, all four windows were displayed as miniature windows on the bottom of the screen.
That is all I had time for yesterday. Because of the driver issues it took me 1.5 hours to install Windows 7. I will play around with it more this week and install some software on it. I will let you know what I find out.
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