I’ve installed on 3 different machines; 2 desktops and a laptop. I typically will use these machines for MS Office 2007 work, some Visual Studio development work, email, blogging and some game playing. My son helps me test. I noticed, on the 2 desktops, a bit of strange behavior after initial install. My one desktop was locked after running all night and I had to reboot, although this could have been a driver issue – I have updated the video and sound drivers and haven’t had an issue since.
Overall, I feel that this is a pretty clean build. The product has been stable since the early beta I received at PDC last year, but this seems very polished and feature rich. I have liked the revamped toolbar right from the first time I saw it.
I am running the 64 bit version exclusively since I don’t have any applications that run only on 32 bit, and I am very impressed by Windows 7 performance on my laptop. Although my laptop is Vista compatible (128 Mb Video card, and AMD dual core processor) it is a fairly low-end Gateway. In spite of the mediocre hardware, it is very snappy and responsive for most basic apps. I also do some video editing and will be testing the Live Movie Maker beta quite a bit in the coming months.
If the revamped task bar is my favorite new feature, my second favorite has to be the homegroup networking feature. You basically connect to a homegroup one time, sharing music, photos, printers, etc. all in one step. Easier than Vista and much, much easier than XP.
Overall, I’m still impressed with Windows 7. I think this is a great step forward.
Mostly Film Photography (GotFilm.org) 