Well, after years of dealing with the absolute backwater OS that is Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (say that 20 times fast) I went ahead and installed Windows 7 on my PC. The last straw was trying to update my iPhone on XP x64 only to have it not recognize the phone in recovery mode and needing to hook it up to another computer to fix it… TWICE!!

Overall I can honestly say, well.. I am impressed. I have been trying to if not move over to, at least get a hold of a Mac for a little while now, mostly because I am sick of fighting with my operating system. Running XP x64 is like trying to love your chronically disobedient child. It never does what you want it to, usually loses things and often breaks things, but it’s such a major part of your life that you just put up with it and work with it to the best of your ability.

So why am I impressed? Well, right off the bat this is the first MS OS I’ve installed (going back to DOS 6.22) that I haven’t had a crippled OS right from the get go. Drivers, check (aside from my scanner which I had to download the Vista x64 drivers from Epson). Ability to play videos (including Divx/Xvid/MPEG4)? Check. Scanner app (after it was installed)? Check. Heck, even my AAC files from itunes are supported.

Overall there are some things I really love about it. Aero Peek is already a mandatory feature. Basically give a quick full sized peek to an open window without having to bring it to the front or minimize all other windows. The new “quick launch” bar (which it really isn’t) is the first ever quick launch bar in windows that I’ve ever used, or even cared to try. The new system tray is very much clutter free and easy on the eyes by default. UAC and application access to the firewall seems much more sane. And I don’t know if it’s new or not, but the theme setup is vastly improved over XP at least.

Heck, even this post is easy to make thanks to Windows Live Writer… I mean it’s not Windows 7 specific, but not needing to log into the web site and to just instead type this out like Word is very convenient.