I’ve been enjoying XP for many years now, but with the release of Win7 I finally decided to upgrade. I generally wait for service pack one before doing so, but the online reviews were talking about how stable Win 7 betas had been so I decided to take a chance, besides we all know Win7 is really Vista SP2 with some other stuff thrown in.
Once my copy arrived on Oct 23, I installed it. My ONLY problem was I was trying to do a clean install with upgrade media and it wouldnt accept my product key. I had found several sites that detailed how to do a clean install with the upgrade media, but all of them forgot to mention to NOT enter the prod key during install, just hit next. Otherwise, I had zero problems installing, it was very quick, and I was stunned to find I needed to install zero drivers afterward. Yes, this is the first microsoft operating system I’ve ever installed that I didnt need to scramble all over the internet finding this or that to get everything working properly. It even properly identified and added drivers for my logitech keyboard and laser mouse AND my video card, very nice. This was all when installing the 64bit version no less.
Now as for the new media center, wow, it can finally play a DVD. Matter of fact, every video file I’ve thrown at it, its played without an problem. Ususally I get the connecting to codec server then an error message that a proper playback codec can’t be found. It’s nice when things just work.
Now this part could just be new OS induced mind games, but things do feel faster overall on the same hardware I had before, though I did upgrade the hard drive and add an additional 4 gigs of ram. I just have to say thanks to Microsoft, you’ve made my computer smoother and easier to use. I’m very pleased with Windows 7!