Ten Years Late: Windows 7

This week my desktop computer embarked on a new era: the Windows 7 era. After sticking with Windows XP for ten years, I finally purchased (yes, with real money) Windows 7 Home Premium. Ignoring Microsoft's awkwardly-vague OEM licencing rules, I bought a copy from NewEgg, along with another hard drive so as to keep my WinXP install intact. (Side note: I am sick of partitioning drives, so a new drive was a nice change of pace from my usual OS-juggling antics.)

During the installation process, I ran into one major issue: installing Windows on a dynamic disk is not a good idea, so I had to figure out how to switch one of my drives back to a basic, primary volume - hint: Google "DISKPART." Once the install process was started, however, it was amazingly quick to install with no intervention on my part until I was presented with a Windows desktop - this was a refreshingly non-Microsoft way of getting an OS installed, and it really shows how far Microsoft has come since the XP days.

My computer screams on Windoes 7. I am already familiar with the OS thanks to my laptop, but it is nice to be completely modern on my desktop.

One final side note: ATI/AMD users beware. If you are running Windows 7 with a "legacy" Radeon video card (anything pre-Radeon HD; an X1950 Pro in my case), the Catalyst Control Center provided with the legacy driver download is extremely limited in its functionality. In my case, I was unable to change GPU scaling for playing games on my widescreen monitor. The solution? Install the latest legacy drivers available for your card, but install CCC 8.12 or older (technically for Vista, but totally functional on Windows 7).

I will be back in a few months with an update on how well (or how poorly, I suppose) Windows 7 is working for me.

B3 out.