Windows 7 Review

I am acting out my geek personality by installing the Windows 7 Release Candidate (32 bit, build 7100) on my Dell laptop

Pros:

• It installed over my current Vista, maintained old files just in case
• It installed in ~30 minutes without much intervention
• It is much cleaner than Vista, feels refined and cleaner
• Much improved taskbar - grouped task icons like Mac, reduced # of icons in system tray
• Adaptive display brightness, which dims the display if you haven't used your PC for a while
• I did not need to install any driver for my Dell laptop, the installer found everything
• Many new features that I need to try - What's New (shake window? wow)

Cons:

• expires in June 2010

Before:

• You need to get a product key from Microsoft for the R.C.
• 12 things you need to know before installing Windows 7 Release Candidate

After:

• Install AntiVirus, I used AVG Free Edition
• Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash, Vista Codec, the usual