Surprise!  I still like it.

People say that Windows 7 is like the Mac O/S 10.  Nope.  MacIntosh stands for Most Applications Crash, If Not The Operating System Hangs.  I can say that with an unbiased opinion as I have the unfortunate duty of working on many Macs at work.  They are, for the most part, junk.  Big ass boat anchors.  The Toronto District School Board recently voted to do away with all Macs for that reason.  They are just too expensive to support.

Windows 7 is now where its at.  It runs seamlessly, rarely (if ever) crashes, and looks good.  As for the latter part, that doesn’t bother me terribly as I keep the style down to a minimum due to the fact that I am a performance junkie.  The faster the better, and in that Windows 7 does not disappoint.

All of the programs that I have setup on my machine run flawlessly as well.  Microsoft Office 2007, Nero 7 (because v8 and up are just far too bulky and unnecessary for what I do), the Adobe Suite of products and all the various codecs I have installed all perform as they should.  Windows 7 also has a backwards compatibility mode for older products, yet I have not had to use that feature as of yet.  Colleagues of mine have, and they have not reported any known issues as of yet.

I’m sure Microsoft is breathing a heavy sigh of relief with respect to all of the positive reviews.  I do feel sorry for them because they catch a lot of shit.  Some of it, especially with respect to their business practices, is justified but much of it is not.  The company spends billions in research and development and to make a perfect product is pretty much near impossible.

With Windows 7 they took a different approach and offered up beta versions for free.  The received feedback from millions of users, including myself, on how things ran, bug reports, and how to improve things.  They took all of that feedback and what you see is the final product known as Windows 7 (ok…awkward sentencing here, but I’m just offering up a bit of praise).

I don’t really care about things like having Internet Explorer integrated or whatnot.  Some people do but it looks like you can remove it if you so desire.  There is no virus scanner but Microsoft has released one of the best ones that I have ever found.  For those needing a solid, free virus scanner, take a look at Microsoft Security Essentials.  I will post a review of it in the future.

So, to sum things up, Windows 7 is doing everything that I need it to, and it is very stable and crash proof.  I have been putting it through its paces for a couple of months now (even longer than that if you include the beta testing) and I am thrilled with it.  I highly recommend purchasing it, with the caveat that your machine has to have at the very minimum a core2duo processor and a couple of gigs of ram.