Yesterday was install day for me: had upgraded almost all my machines to Windows 7 RTM. The experience was simply amazing. Here are some of the things that amazed me the most.
Setup experience
Now fully supported is installing from a USB key. I used a cheap 8GB USB stick but it can be done with any type above 4GB. For the instructions on making an USB install, look here. There's also a small tool available that does it for you here. Small note on the latter: it takes in my opinion longer to create the install with this tool. It did fail once also, the install files it extracted were corrupt, causing my install to fail.
Why would you install from a USB drive? It's faster (quite noticeable) and doesn't cost you a DVD.
Acer Aspire One loves Windows 7 too
About half a year ago, I bought an Acer Aspire One (160GB). Out-of-the-box, it had Windows XP installed, which ran fine... at least, I thought. The machine only had 1GB of RAM, so installing Windows Vista was out of the question. I used my USB install stick, plugged it in, the setup started... and less than 30 minutes later, Windows 7 was running on the small machine.
And how! This machine never went faster. It's amazing what extra performance I get from the low specs this machine has. It's fast, simple as that.
Conclusion: Windows 7 runs great on netbooks!
Up next, the old laptop with the old printer...
Everyone knows this kind of laptop. It's rather old (about 3-4 years), it still runs but it's slow. Of course, it has some old hardware attached to it. In my case, it was me (with my Windows 7 USB install stick again) against an Acer TravelMate 2420 (1GB of RAM) with a HP LaserJet 1018.
The machine had Vista installed, but it was slow. This was typically a machine that caused people to say that Vista was slow: the hardware specs simply weren't enough. Exactly the fact that many people installed Vista on too old hardware was a major component in all negative comments on Vista.
Now, Windows 7, let's try it, shall we? It took 32 minutes to install to desktop. Not bad! Then, I looked at how it worked, even with Office and anti-virus installed. This was my "Windows 7 WOW moment". The difference was amazing. (Note: the old install had nothing more than Office, FireFox and AV software, so no comment on "it was slow because of all what was on there").
My mother who often works on this machine said the machine never worked so fast. But she asked if I could install her printer (the HP LaserJet 1018) on there. I was like "Uh-Oh"... HP and new drivers, I wonder if it will work. In Vista, the printer "sometimes" worked.
So I plugged it in, Windows 7 tried installing it but failed :(. Seconds after, a message came that it found the driver. I was like "yeah, it's going to take me to www.hp.com or something". The message said: download the Vista driver and it'll be installed in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2. So I clicked, I immediately arrived on the correct page, I downloaded the driver and Windows 7 took it from there. It got the printer working flawlessly! Another WOW moment.
Conclusion
After a day of getting acquainted with the RTM bits, I can't help but being super enthusiastic. It's a truly great operating system, that will quickly help forget the negativity around Windows Vista (though I'm still convinced that many of those comments were untrue as well, it was cool to be negative on Vista...). It's here now (if you're MSDN/TechNet/Beta tester...) or in October for the general public. This will put Microsoft OS back where they belong and is a bad dream for competing operating systems.