So yesterday Oct. 22 I made contact with my inner geek/masochist and bought the upgrade for Windows 7, as a present for my nice little Dell XPS Studio laptop. There is no real reason to do this, mind you; I use the Dell only occasionally given that I’m very much a Mac guy, and the Dell has been working well with Vista.
But I had tried the Release Candidate of Windows 7 on a different computer and it was just fine, so I figured I might as well find out if the Dell would be improved by the new operating system.
It installed without problems, although the process took quite a while. Unlike previous editions of Windows, I didn’t need to sit by the computer during the installation. (Version of Windows up through XP stopped dead in the middle of the installation to ask questions about networking, stuff that either should not have been asked or at least could have been asked at the beginning of the installation, rather than later.)
Overall the computer runs as well as it did. Startup time is still quite lengthy. I like the new wallpapers. I like being able to “pin” programs to the Taskbar; it makes placing a program on the Taskbar easy, just like doing that on the Mac.
In fact, most of the good stuff is good because it’s like the Mac.
However, I made an interesting discovery almost immediately. When connecting to a Macintosh on my home network, it is necessary to type in a user name and password for that other computer—presumably only once since the data will then be kept on file afterwards.
However, typing in my user name and password, and clicking “OK”, has an intriguing result.
It crashes the computer to the point of requiring a hard restart (i.e., holding down the power button until the computer is forced to turn off.)
And yet the Macintosh can see the Windows computer (and its data) just fine.
So within about ten minutes of installing Windows 7 I was already having to fiddle and mess with something to try to solve a problem.
I closed the lid of the Dell and it went promptly to sleep, as it should. This is good. I will let it remain asleep for a while now, maybe a few months.
May I suggest: http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/