Nice hardware helps
I just realized that I bought my “new” Windows 7 machine way back in late January. The thing is amazing: 8GB RAM, i7 860 Quad Core CPU, 3.0Gbps RAID-1 SATA drives, etc. I recently went out and bought a 30 inch Samsung monitor so I could put the video card in 2560×1600 mode. The speed, video, stability, etc. of this machine are incredible!
The most amazing thing is the OS. I skipped Vista due to all of the bad press – coupled with the fact that XP mostly did everything I needed from a desktop OS. Mostly was the key part of that sentence. It really could not handle more than about 2GB of memory efficiently – and I had some leaky open-source apps that regularly gobbled that up since I rarely reboot…
Free Microsoft Software!
Additionally, Microsoft has tossed in some FREE apps that were not available under XP as part of their Windows Live Essentials program. The most significant of those apps (to me) is Movie Maker. I regularly edit and upload portions of my SCCA Club Racing videos using Movie Maker. It is simple and easy – which fits my video skill level really well. I am also in the process of adding in a TV Tuner card so I can really utilize the Windows Media Center software that came with my Windows 7 Ultimate version. That should make it even more interesting to connect to my Xbox-360 (which now gives my AppleTV a run for the money in renting movies from the Internet).
Windows 7 handles memory well
I now regularly run over 3GB of apps without any issues on the machine whatsoever. I have not added all the DB servers, app servers, etc. that I used to run on my various Windows desktops. That is because I never retire my old machines and they are still on the network somewhere. I finally have created what is mostly a desktop machine used as a desktop.
No question, Windows 7 is a really fantastic OS. It will continue to be my main machine to access all the servers running in my in my home data center.
