Microsoft Windows 7 - First Look review

Is it worth the hassle of installing?

Reviewer: Stuart Miles
Review Date: 21 January 2009
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Price as reviewed: £Free
Latest price: compare

Our score

?/10

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Quick review

The good: Graphics, speed, easy install, features
The bad: Beta so not 100% foolproof
Verdict: It's a definite thumbs up if you're happy to take the risk in playing with Beta software

Comments

Just some information you might find useful. It does not need Vista pre-installed.

It installed on a clean VirtualBox VM without errors. :-)

The Host is XP based. Posted by Mr Greene, UK
I installed it on a Advent AIO 100 (Atom based) - lost SD card reader but kept WiFi !!
Also, although I've unticked 'start up noise' and set sound profile to none it still insists on playing a startup sound - VERY annoying.
Never really used VIsta so it's all new to me and a step backwards in many cases. Here's to XP (which is going back on the PC). Posted by Adrian, UK
Thanks Stuart - I shall wait for it to come out and then maybe get a new laptop. Very helpful review Posted by Wendy Plummer, England
Quote from Mr. Miles:
"Before you start the install you it's worth bearing in mind that you have to be running Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 installed."
Nonsense.
I installed this fresh, vanilla, no "bootcamp" - directly onto a Mac Pro 8-core and aside from one issue (I cannot find a decent driver for the Mac's ATI HD2600 video card) it performs superbly - significantly better than the old "Vista."
In the few weeks I have been using it (only on the Mac Pro) I have not had a single crash.
However, I still feel that Windows 2003 Server on the Mac Pro is rather more efficient for the work we do. (Data recovery / conversion / forensics.) Posted by Duncan Clarke, UK
Duncan, that's strange as everytime i tired to install it anyother way it wouldn't work Posted by stuartmiles, United Kingdom
suisidal one Posted by Mark , worcestershire