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Has it been that long? It only feels like last week that I installed Windows 7. If there were real problems, I would more feel the time passing. That's not to say my full-time switch to Windows 7 has been trouble free. There are glitches galore, which should be expected from a beta.

This post is not intended to be a product review. It is more reactionary to Windows 7 Beta 1. How it feels to use. I will save a feature review until Microsoft issues the Release Candidate.

First the good: Performance hasn't degraded much after two months of use. Windows 7 Beta 1 is snappy and responsive. Multitasking is excellent. Overall memory consumption is consistently good. Some applications, particularly Firefox, hog memory; but the software did the same under Mac OS X. Wakeup from Sleep is speedy, but resume from Hibernation is painful waiting. I'm more productive and largely content with Windows 7 as it is right now.

Now for the bad: I'm less enthusiastic about the user interface than during my first two weeks using Windows 7. The new taskbar is hugely more efficient than its Vista predecessor or Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.6 (aka "Leopard"). But overall, I don't find using Windows 7 to be any better than Leopard. Performance is comparable, and that is good. Internet Explorer 8 behaves badly on three different test machines. I couldn't recommend the Windows 7 version, as it is, to anyone.

Windows 7 Artist Edition

I have been running Windows 7 on a personal laptop, also purchased on Jan. 9: Sony VAIO VGN-Z590, with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.1-inch LED backlit display with 1600 by 900 resolution, 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics, 3GB of DDR3 memory, 320GB hard drive, a DVD burner, a fingerprint reader, Wi-Fi and a Sprint 3G modem. I installed the 32-bit version, because the computer had 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium. That way I could test the upgrade without any 64-bit driver problems.