Oh My God, I Actually Like Windows 7 (So Far)

steve-ballmer-ces-001Those who think I continually bash Microsoft products for no reason, like to label me an Apple fanboy. But as I’ve said time and time again, I’m more than willing to give any product or service a shot, I just have one requirement: It has to be good.

For the past several years that just hasn’t been the case with most of the Microsoft products I’ve used (the Xbox being one exception), and I’ve had no problem saying as much. But get ready, I think I’ve found one I like — and it’s a big one: Windows 7.

While I haven’t used it enough to give a hands-down seal of approval, compared to several other Microsoft software offerings I’ve tried the past five years, Windows 7 looks great. Do I like it more than OS X? No, but I’ve been using that daily for the past several years, it’s probably unreasonable for me to pick Windows 7 over it after two days of usage.

I plan on writing something up for VentureBeat about my usage of Windows 7, but basically I like it because it looks fairly nice (thanks to yes, borrowing some elements from OS X), runs smoothly (especially for a beta) and is fast — even on the machine I have it on which is nearly 3 years old. I did get a Blue Screen of Death at one point due to a display driver, but I’ll be a nice guy and blame the lack of support for Windows 7 beta in Boot Camp (I’m running it on my iMac).

I honestly would not mind using Windows 7 on a daily basis, which is something I haven’t been able to say about a Microsoft OS since when the early days of Windows XP, before I discovered OS X. Of course, my favorite program for Windows 7 is Chrome, made by Google — IE 8 is fast, but still sucks at displaying CSS elements correctly.

But there you go, I like Windows 7, it seems like a solid effort by Microsoft. Will I switch? I highly doubt it, but I may just buy a cheap netbook that runs it when it’s available later this year — which I have to believe it will be this year given how stable it seems right now.

You see how easy I am to impress? Just made a solid product, that’s all I’ve ever asked.

Post by MG Siegler on 01/15/09
Comments
  • Chrome is delicious, but flash plugins crash Chrome all the time. Hopefully Windows 7 will help alleviate this issue.
  • Win 7 so rocks: At last they managed to pull it off and make something worth making. - Which was their saving grace after Vista.

    - But why Chrome? Firefox rox...Or even Safari. - But using Chrome with 7 is tantamount to using a Rolls Royce to pull a Reliant Robin.

    P.S. 'Love the pic of Steve Ballmer doing the funky chicken. :-)
  • kellypatrickrobinson
    You're dead to me.

    -kpr

    Only kidding, of course. I've always felt like my feelings for Microsoft were love-hate, because I love software, but have had to hate their products. I'd like to enjoy a Microsoft product, but it will take more than an extreme makeover for me to appreciate the OS. I'll also need to see a compelling new architecture, a hot stack of development tools, and a browser that renders more than it leaks.
  • You're dead to me.
  • Daniel
    I'm an XP Fan, Vista Hater, and now a Windows 7 admirer. I've only been using the trial for about 4 days, but so far, I like it quite a bit. It doesn't carry that disgusting aura that Vista seemed to radiate, and beyond driver issues, I haven't run into any compatibility problems so far.

    But even those devices whose drivers refused to install ran perfectly thanks to Windows 7. I downloaded my NIC drivers using the NIC with no drivers, at 2 MBps. I ran the installation for my video card at 1920x1080 resolution, on the video card with no drivers.

    So far, it seems to be a rock solid product that doesn't sacrifice usability for the sake of worthless, distracting aero effects, and it's not chewing through my system resources like an obese kid in a candy store shortly after being released from fat camp.

    Let's hope it's really this good. :)
  • Michael Fivez
    I have used xp a long time and I tought it was prety good. We have a vista in the house too but it really sucks. The specs of the vista PC are way better than the xp one (like 4 gig RAM vs 500 mb Ram), but the xp worked waaay better.
    I just don't get why it has to take 1 min waving with the mouse to get the pc (vista) out of sleep mode. And if you stop moving the mouse after 20 sec the pc just gets stuck :P.
    My friend borrowed me some windows 7 cd's (burned), so I tought I could try it out.
    And it works really smoot on my 500 mb RAM, 4 year old computer. I even get official updates even if the version is cracked.
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