I take my Lenovo X61 every where; it is the work horse of my day. I have had no caustic argument against Windows Vista in general, but as a work tool I found Vista slow and cumbersome to use for network discovery projects and it sometimes has difficulty moving between various Wi-Fi environments.

I’ve been sitting on my copy of Windows 7 Release Candidate for a couple of months but had taken no action until this past weekend.  I have two larger clients that are planning network/server upgrades which will include workstations and I decided that I needed to claim a position regarding workstations. I had advised most clients not to upgrade to Windows Vista but with pending upgrades this is no longer a reasonable choice since Microsoft has stopped supporting Windows XP and vendors have finally stop shipping Windows XP.  I haven’t changed my position regarding Vista for the network but is Windows 7 going to be an adequate choice?

Friday before last, after making an image of my existing Windows Vista hard drive, I put in the Windows 7 DVD.  But before I started I found the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisory tool, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx, a quick and easy way to evaluate my system.  Please read the installation instructions since the Release Candidate is not a boot and install product.  The installation instructions for the Windows 7 page recommended that a clean install is the best method for installation.  I chose to upgrade the software because I didn’t want to spend the weekend installing and configuring all of my current applications, besides we had Mariner’s tickets for Sunday afternoon.

Although, Walter Mossberg states that his upgrade took about an hour, my upgrade was closer to 4 hrs and I initially found no problem with the process.  My only issue were the laptop drivers for the key board and the pointer: Windows and Lenovo have updated drivers but I didn’t gain control until I rolled back to using 2007 drivers. (Note:  there was no problem as long as I used the USB/wireless keyboard and mouse).

After the first week I’ve found that most of my applications appear to respond quicker in Win 7 than in Vista and moving to different Wi-Fi hotspots during the day has become less problematic.  As a matter of fact, the Lenovo wireless management software finally works the way it is supposed to work. I’ve attached Mossberg’s analysis which should give you a better orientation to Windows 7 from a non Microsoft point of view.  More later…

For Some, Move To Windows 7 Will Be Tough-Walt Mossberg

Hasta la Vista: The Many Versions of Windows 7-Walt Mossberg