Windows 7 RC on my laptop

So this week I will talk about my experience with Windows 7 RC that I just loaded on my laptop.

Before we start, all software and hardware names are owned by their respective companies. This is just information about my experience. I claim no ownership or legal rights over any software or hardware mentioned in here. I own my laptop though. Also here are my laptop specs so you get an idea about how it handles resources.

Proc: Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83Ghz
RAM: 2GB DDR2 667Mhz
Video: ATI Mobility X1400
Audio: Sigmatel

and that’s all that matters anyways.

Windows 7 Ultimate RC.
Got the 349010 numbered 7100 build and used my beta key which works on the RC to install. Install was very similar to the Vista install with just a few quick screens and it was doing the rest by itself. As usual I don’t like the partitioning scheme suggested by most operating systems and so I created my own. After that it was pretty standard single reboot, ask for visual reset and we’re off to the desktop. It detected my wireless card which is an Intel 3945 right off and connected to the internet. Soon after it downloaded the video and audio drivers automatically. The Ricoh card reader drivers weren’t automatically installed for some reason, but on updating the unknown devices from the device manager they immediately installed themselves. The only driver I manually installed was the Synaptics touch pad driver, and not because it wouldn’t work without it, but because I wanted to disable tap to click which really annoys me.

Getting some essentials.
Even though IE 8 is fantastic and fast, it still lacks the addon library boasted by Firefox so I started out with Firefox. Then I went to get the .NET framework 1.1 should any older app need it. Then I installed winrar and daemon-tools. After that I installed the flash player, java runtime environment and Silverlight to make browsing the web better. Then I installed an antivirus. I chose to go with avast because they have served me well in the past with a low footprint and good blocking.

Media.
Windows media player has been improved quite a bit in usability, even though it still seems to lack an enqueue feature. For playing all kinds of media files I get k-lite mega codec pack which basically plays everything ever. I also get the latest divx since it seems to be clearer than the one in the pack. Then I installed the quicktime alt that installs the free codec but without the quicktime player. If anything else is needed I might install the vlc player which has a rather basic player but is the end all in playing stuff.

Other apps.
Office 2007, GIMP, instant messengers like skype, digsby and so on seem to work out of the box without any troubles at all. logmein installed fine and allows remote access to the computer. The only application that refused to install was windows live mesh which ironically is a live product. The memory usage is spectacular. Even with a bunch of apps I rarely breach 1GB which even puts the XP performance on the machine to shame. Kudos to MSFT on building a optimized OS.

So far I have solid stability and a very smooth machine. Vista did not really run very well on my laptop even with aero disabled. I had lag and boot times were horrible. Not to mention gaming was a no-no. I have enabled aero and there seems to be no lag. On the whole the system is quite fluid. I will install warcraft eventually to see how that works. Till then, goodbye and try it out. It rocks.

(Also before anyone concludes that I hate Vista, I don't. I think it is an excellent and stable OS. It just has high requirements that my desktop fulfills entirely. xD.)