May 6, 2009

So I have been running Windows 7 Ultimate RC (release candidate) on my MacBook Pro since yesterday evening. I have received a couple of e-mails accusing me of being a blasphemous Mac boy. Where hath the “i” in “iMachias” gone?

Never fear, I can reboot into Mac OS X whenever I want. The problem is, I don’t really want to right now. And to tell you the truth, I find this a little surprising, but to be honest the computer geek in me is really liking this Release Candidate of Windows 7.

Here are a couple of observations from the past 24 hours:

1. Windows 7 is running faster than Mac OS X does.
2. My battery is lasting longer under Windows 7 than it does under Mac OS X.
3. I miss the ability to “print to PDF” for sharing documents electronically. Is there a way to do it in Windows that I’m missing? In OS X I can just “print to PDF”. I use this feature a lot, how do I do it Windows?
4. I like the theory behind “HomeGroup”. I simply type in a code on the computers in the house I want to be part of my network and I am instantly able to share Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music and more between each computer in my “HomeGroup”. Rumour has it that I can stream music from my home computer to my laptop at a remote location using “HomeGroup”, but I haven’t had a chance to try that yet.
5. I really like the changes to the Windows interface that was introduced in Windows Vista. The Aero-Glass look is excellent and to me, more polished looking than OS X. I also like the fact that I can change the theme of my desktop easily, including the sound and colour scheme. I am a sound guy at heart, so the ability to tweak it to my liking is very important to me. (Quick aside: the BEST computer startup sound EVER was never officially released. It was found on the release candidate of Windows Vista and sounds like this: click here to download. I use it whenever I can).

 

I am only just scratching the surface in my adventure with Windows 7 Release Candidate. After watching several videos from CNET and other sources (and easily able to do so in Windows, surprisingly), I have to say that I am enjoying this little adventure. I look forward to continuing to exploration.