image I have been using Windows 7 for over a week now and am totally impressed.  I can’t believe the difference between it and VISTA.  I had been relatively happy with VISTA, but Win7 totally blows it away!

The biggest difference is the stability, it doesn’t slow down and go into circle mode very often, it seemed as though VISTA was in circle mode all the time.  The other thing is when I am scrolling down a document or my Google Read it doesn’t hitch up, it just scrolls smoothly.

Another thing that is surprising is that I have gone back to using IE8 as my primary browser, it just works now that I have Win7.  IE8 is working so much better than Firefox (which I have never really liked that much) right now, it hasn’t crashed, renders everything the way it is supposed to and quickly.  The biggest reason I don’t go completely back to IE is the ability of having Twitter in a sidebar that I can in Firefox, if Microsoft or there is an add-on that works well, I have a feeling I might be spending even more time in IE.  I was pleasantly surprised by this unexpected benefit of switching to IE, because I had been a very disappointed in IE8 prior to this – I guess the OS is making a difference. 

Installation while time consuming was easy on both my wife’s and my computers (I picked up the family pack license) One was a complete reinstall and the other was just an update, both went flawlessly.  This is the kind of thing that I want from an operating system, easy installation and intuitive to use AND best of all on the update, I didn’t loose any software or anything.

I had been thinking about going to a Mac as my next computer when I update next summer, but after using a Mac for the past month in school and comparing it to how Win7 works, I won’t be moving to Mac…I plan to stay with the PC.  It simply does what I want and works better for me than a Mac.  I guess the Mac vs PC commercials is becoming more about preferences than actual differences…?  To me and my Windows background everything you do on a Mac is backwards.

So Microsoft did a very good job on Win7, it had come to the point where they needed to do it right this time and in my opinion they did.  If they hadn’t Mac or Linux would have been more of an option than in the past for many people including myself. 

Now if they just would not force you to use some of their programs, if you didn’t want to it would be nice (I am not crazy about Media Center and haven’t ever used it), I might use Media Player because it works (I use many of the Windows Live applications), but I just don’t like being forced to have things on my computer because they are part of the operating system, that I have to buy and I don’t have the option to not have it.  Others might look at it as freebie software, I look at as being forced to have something on my computer that I may or may not want to use.

Good job Microsoft, I think you hit a home run with Win7

Disclosure Statement:  I have not received any sort of compensation as part of writing this review, it is simply my thoughts on something that I have started using.