Adventures in Windows Land Part 2 - The Install

The initial install of Windows 7 beta went pretty quickly, and the whole thing was without incident. There was very little for me to input beyond the type of install I wanted. Having done more than my fair share of installs with previous versions of Windows, I expected it to take a lot longer. Windows 7 first impressed me by identifying my TV and configuring it as a secondary display device before it had even finished installing itself. Every previous version of Windows I've used has had to be told there was another monitor attached, and this one picked up a TV. I like that quite a bit; it reminds me a bit of BeOS, an alternative operating system I used to use years ago.

All in all, I would say the install took maybe half an hour. Possibly up to 40 minutes, but no more than that. That, of course, is before you get to all the post-install work that needs to be done on a clean computer - installing apps, setting it up the way you want it, etc. I'll begin to get into that in part 3.

Adventures in Windows Land Part 1 - The Beginning

Welcome to my first real blog post! Just a quick introduction; my name is Gord McLeod, and I've been a writer for years. I've had some minor fiction publications (short stories in now-defunct magazines,) and have had a game instruction manual published as well. This is my corner of the web to rant, rave, and pontificate about things that interest me, which will likely be very heavily biased towards science fiction movies and TV, video games, and news on science/technology/archaeology/anthropology. I'm just going to dive right in tonight with my first post on today's experiments running Windows 7. Windows Vista has been crashing a lot on me lately. Two years with barely a hiccup and suddenly it's very difficult to play Fallout 3 for more than maybe an hour or so without the computer locking hard on me.

I know, many people will be thinking, "What, Vista, crashing? Say it ain't so!" But it's true, it was extremely stable for me for years. Others have had their bad experiences, I had my good one, at least until recently.

This is where Windows 7 comes in. Just yesterday, Microsoft released the public beta of Windows 7. I've always been prone to living on the bleeding edge, and even beta versions of Windows aren't too bloody for me. I put it on a blank DVD this morning and went to work installing it.