Review of Windows 7

Well, my four year old motherboard finally gave up the ghost. I think it was due to a loose plug on the power supply causing power surges and and abrupt power losses. This is not good for electronics. Since I currently have the money, and Windows 7 just came out, I took this as an opportunity to perform a major upgrade to my system. I purchased a:

• Gigiabyte M61PME-S2p Motherboard
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor (3ghz dual core)
• 2GB Kingston DDR2 PC6400
• A new 650W power supply
• A SIIG Ultra ATA 133 Expansion Card (this allows me to use all of my current drives)
• Windows 7 Professional System Builder 64 bit (cheaper than standard over the counter, just have to buy hardware at the time and allows me to upgrade to more memory later)

The Windows 7 install went very quickly and smoothly. I had a little trouble getting it to see the SATA drives, but I eventually found the answer to that. Also, the first Ultra ATA card I bought would not work with Windows 7, so I had to trade it in one the SIIG. Coming from Windows XP, I had to learn how to find the sharing and permissions for my drives. This system is not only my workstation, it is also my home’s file server. Sharing is not as simple or easy with Windows 7. I believe that this is a trade off for security.

I had only one piece of software that was not compatible with Windows 7, Norton Ghost 14.  Symantec says they will have a new version coming out soon with a discount for current owners of the software (apparently it is also incompatible with Vista). Considering I bought the software a couple of months agao, I do not find this acceptable. Luckily Win 7 comes with its own backup utility that seems to work really well.

Overall, I think this is a great improvemnt over Win XP and Vista. I just think it is going to take me a lttle while to get used to it and learn where everything is.