Man am I glad I went onto torrents a few weeks ago and grabbed the ISO for the W7 beta, almost makes the $120 I wasted on Vista Home Premium in a Panic worth it!

But Before you read this, I’m going to make an OSX plug: There is a new portable technology out there called EFT (Extensable Firmware Tech) that allows you to run OSX on ANY PC build! So seriously, after reading this, check out this link before you start planning on renewing your subscription to the Windows Colossus.

First and foremost, this OS is w/o doubt a nice improvement over XP. The sad and depressing (and all too typical of Microsoft) thing is that it took ALMOST TEN YEARS and Billions of dollars to accomplish. This is a pathetic failure, and although this OS is usable, ie not like Vista, it is a sad day in the history of this company that they are only now just barely beginning to approach the shadow of competition with apple’s awesome port of BSD Unix (OSX).

W7 64B has clean support for non-64B programs, very well done. So far, very very little will not run on this machine. I have recently taken a shining to Aptana Studio, which doesn’t seem to work right (yet), but other than that, I have plenty of other IDE’s I use and enjoy, so this certainly doesn’t hold me up. There are two folders, one for X86, and one for 64Bit. So far, the only 64B install I have is Photoshop, and honestly, I dont see a huge improvement in speed over 32B. But I think having an OS that takes advantage of hardware that’s been available for years can’t hurt, and the boys at redmond seem to be finally getting the memory and resource thing figured out; I have encountered far less hangups on this machine in the time I’ve been using W7.

One thing I really like about W7 is the windowing system. Here’s a nice shot of the neat rollover previews you now get when your shortcut icons have an active item or items open:

This also works well with multiple folders open as well:

Even cooler, rolling over the rollover previews shows you a quick view of the window w/o having to go into it! On a sidenote, I’ve been told Vista Does this already, but it’s either not available in home premium, or I just never enabled it, etc. W7 came out of the box like this, although I do have ultimate.

Another feature I really like is libraries, which allow you to keep track of directories or groups of directories and files, which I use quite a bit for projects. Let’s say you have your code files, your legal documents, spreadsheets, etc, all in distinct places, but want quick views by project to those files. Libraries helps you get that done very easy by adding library folders with references to each top level directory or file you want to have in that particular group. Good stuff.

For drivers, I haven’t really had any trouble with any devices I’ve installed, and you’re talking about a whizzbang tecchie Uubernerd with serious gadgetItis, so that’s saying something If you’re holding back on XP b/c of this, I would say jump right in, the waters fine; however, some older programs and hardware might have a little trouble.

All in all, honestly I do feel W7 is worth the purchase this coming fall, however, I would really love to check out OSX w/o having to get locked into a Steve Jobs nightmare box I can’t tweak the hardware on! (yes i know about the G5, i dont have 3 grand or whatever ridiculous amount they charge to get a PC-like box, lame!)

If you haven’t upgraded from XP yet b/c of the bad Vista news, I would say 7 is the one for you. If you already have Vista like my sorry arse, and feel ripped off like I do, download Release Candidate 7 and enjoy it free for a year!