I found a good read through on gizmodo for quick info and links on installing windows 7. http://gizmodo.com/524188...0-things-you-need-to-know - I suggest checking it out before installing.

It gives you the link to the microsoft download page. It also covers shrinking volumes in vista if you want to do a dual boot. While it was nice not to have to use a third party partitioning tool, vista barely lets you shrink the current active volume for making anything new of useful size. Even though I had 190 gigs free, it would only allow me to reclaim 24 gigs. Since the recommended disk space for Windows 7 is 16 gigs, you might want to use something else if you cant get enough space. Ive used qtparted in the past from a knoppix live cd with good success. Ive seen recommendations for Gparted as well but ive never used it. I went ahead just used the 24 gigs Vista was willing to give me for now since I'm really just evaluating anyways. Once the drive space was free, i selected it and set it as a simple volume with no drive letter and no format. i wasnt sure if this was the to go, but it proved to be correct in future steps.

Once the download was finished, I burned the iso to a disc and rebooted the computer from the dvd drive. No problems at all - the setup started right up.

If you want to dual boot, you need to choose a custom install so you can point to the empty partition you created.

The first step after answering a few setup questions was copying files. it checked this off immediately and then went to expanding files. The dvd drive was cranking but the hard drive activity was minimal. The expanding files step seemed to run for about 15 minutes before it started showing any percentage of expansion complete. Once it started giving feedback however, it was done in about ten minutes...so if you think your install froze on expanding files...sweat it out it should start to respond again.

The machine restarted a few times and then asked me the usual time zone stuff and the product key. i hope you wrote yours down.

The dual boot set up fine and both vista and windows 7 were on the menu.

My initial startup went well. The wireless network hardware was detected with no problem and i was able to jump on the internet and get some basic stuff installed with no problem. Tortoise-SVN 64 bit installed quick and easy and i was able to do a repo checkout via a putty ssh tunnel. Tortoise and Vista never got along that great compared with XP (the states of checkout directories were always in question as to what their icons were reporting) so hopefully 7 is a little more cooperative.

Firefox installed and runs fine. These are the basic things I need to be useful with an operating system and as of yet they work making this, at least for me, a successful release candidate.

I will continue to be skeptical in my reporting of Windows 7 but if you want my initial impression...its effing fast and smooth.

Submit Post