Like millions of others, I downloaded Windows 7 not on the first day it became available, but on the second day, because the huge demand brought down MSFT's servers and it was pulled early the first day.

I tried Vista soon after it was released. The three-click process of deleting a file from the start menu: first warning me of an attempt to delete a file, then asking for authorization to delete the file, then asking if I would like to delete the file, got me to turn off User Access Control. I like to organize the start menu for fast access and move or delete a hundred files, a 15 minute job that UAC turns into 45 minutes. At the time was no mechanism to kill the popup warning me that User Access Control had been disabled. That did it for me; after four hours of Vista I went back to XP and never tried it again. Vista was slow, a huge resource hog, and for what? Glitzy graphics I turn off on XP. I tried it on my most brawny computer, but I tend to use "thin and light" hardware most of the time, and I buy low-end video cards (spending the money on RAM instead), so Vista wouldn't even run on my favorite PCs.

So why W7? It is getting good reviews, about things I care about: speed and usability. And I agree, it is excellent.

MSFT has definitely improved a lot of things over XP.

• The installation process only takes input at the beginning and end, not in the middle as XP required.
• Search in the start menu, introduced in Vista, is very nice. To install printers, start typing "printer" and one of the entries that appears by the time you reach "pri" is "Add Printer". This is slower in one sense -- you have to reach for the keyboard rather than just use the mouse -- but my experience is that it is faster overall. The search finds documents, control panel items and start menu items.
• The taskbar is terrific.
  • When a program is off, clicking on the icon starts it.
  • When it is running, clicking on it brings it into focus if it is not, and minimizes it if it was in focus.
  • When multiple instances of the same program are running, clicking brings up pictures of the running programs (on my weakest machine, only text appears here); this is excellent with, say, multiple firefox windows, although a bit more challenging with multiple word documents. But then hover over one of those and it expands to be clearer.
  • It shows whether a program is running, and indeed how many instances of the program, at a glance. (Running programs are outlined and a stack if there are several.)
  The W7 taskbar out-Apples the Mac.
• Startup is dramatically improved, even over XP. The key thing is that many programs have a delayed startup so that the system reaches a usable state quickly; other things continue to load in the background. This could be a problem if the first thing you need is, say, system restore but overall it is terrific.
• Every program I use installed without problems except Cisco VPN. Cisco VPN overwrites a critical windows file, ndis.sys, and has other problems besides. There are a variety of potential fixes on the web and I reproduce one below; this works for me even with Cisco 5.0.03.0560, an earlier version than anyone else had reported success with.
• In particular, Mathematica, Avira antivirus, Firefox, Filezilla, PDF Xchange, PDF Creator, Faststone Image Viewer, Bulk rename utility, VLC, Spyware Blaster, Truecrypt and Vice-Versa all worked fine. Even Office 2007 works as well as it works with XP.
• W7 has kept most of the XP controls, like Administrative Tools, so Disk Management and Services still work the same. This is good news for controlling the behavior of the system. For example, I have the system recognize my USB flash and automatically install it with the drive letter U, which is available on every computer I use. (The computers differ on whether, say, a new drive comes in as D, E, F, etc., because I have CF cards for backup). By standardizing the drive letter, I can run a program automatically that refers to the drive (and synchronizes My Documents to the thumb drive). The procedure for setting the drive letter remains the same, using Disk Management. Similarly, most of the XP services remain (there are new ones too) and msconfig works the same.
• Driver installation seems substantially better than with XP.

In it's mania to be helpful, a couple of things have gotten worse.

• While connecting to wireless networks seems better, especially after waking up from sleep mode, I long for the old 'right click and choose repair' to fix a wayward connection. This has been replaced with a lengthy troubleshooting menu that usually -- but not always -- accomplishes the same thing in about four times the time. Consequently, instead of troubleshooting, I instead fire up Network Connections (more below) and turn off the modem, pause, and turn it back on again. You can get to network connections by first choosing "Open Network and Sharing Center" from Control Panel, then "Change Adapter Settings" on the left. (This is bad nomenclature, Microsoft!)
• The XP version of "network connections" is also missing, apparently since Vista. I used fixed IP addresses on my home network and it was an arduous process to figure out how -- and where -- to enter these. Moreover I couldn't turn off my wireless adapter, which is a serious problem if I want to use the PC flying. Also, a wireless uses a lot of power, making it desirable to turn it off when not in use. What I have done to work around this problem is create a shortcut to Network Connections, how to below.
• The "Clear the Desktop" icon is missing, but someone already has a work-around, see below.
• When a window is exposed but not in focus, clicking on it in XP brings it into focus. This doesn't always work for me in W7 and I am having difficulty figuring out when, because sometimes it does. It seems like a window can be in focus but not visible.
• When a USB drive is plugged in, you are asked if you want to continue or to scan it. I wish this could be disabled for specific drives. That is, I like the feature but I wish W7 would recognize that it has seen this drive before and just to fire up truecrypt, skipping asking me about this drive's autorun too. While User Access Control is less unpleasant, it still isn't very customizable and doesn't learn.

A new feature of W7 are "libraries," which are virtual folders, e.g. a library of music is a set of music files, no matter what folders they reside in. I haven't found a use for this feature but it doesn't get in the way, either.

I have W7 running on three very different machines: A Lenovo X60t Thinkpad tablet, an IBM X31 Thinkpad laptop and a Fujitsu P1610 tablet. While both thinkpads have 2GB of RAM, the X31 is quite old technology. W7 runs just fine, and takes action to minimize glitzy graphics. Popups that are graphics on the X60 are text on the X31. This is very nice; clearly MSFT plans on people installing W7 on older hardware, which they did not do with Vista. W7 also ran quite well with just 1GB of RAM on the Fujitsu, including AERO effects, but I have since upgraded to 2GB. Installing w7 on the X60 doubled its speed, although probably by eliminating the Lenovo crapware that made the thing crawl. A fresh install of XP tablet might have done the same thing but they didn't provide a disk.

W7 did an excellent job identifying drivers for the hardware. With an XP SP3 install I still have to manually install a driver for ethernet or wireless to get Windows Update running, but W7 found both for the ancient X31. As a consequence I reached full functionality without installing any drivers myself, although of course I had to run Windows Update. On the other hand, the video driver isn't the right one and doesn't support sleep. I can't get the X31 video driver from Lenovo to install properly (it does under XP but not under W7 even if I run it in XP compatibility mode); so far I haven't managed to get the computer to sleep. Hibernation works without error and I am using that as the default action when I close the lid. This isn't perfect (slow to resume from hibernate) but to be fair, the people who install Linux on the X31 report the same problem.

MSFT is permitting activing three computers with the same activation key. I downloaded a couple extra keys just in case, since I have 11 computers running XP.

I despaired over Vista because at some point MSFT will quit supporting XP, which I've been quite happy with. I like my older hardware and I like using only one operating system. For the same reason that Southwest only uses one aircraft (pilots and mechanics trained on one aircraft, one set of spare parts, etc.) using one OS on my eleven computers minimizes my challenges in keeping it all running smoothly and problem-free. (See my XP guide.) MSFT tried to force users with several machine types to operate two distinct OS's (Vista for high end, XP for low end) but it appears W7 will even run on my weakest machine, at least with a RAM upgrade. (W7 barely runs with 768MB of RAM; looks like 1GB minimum is right. Better with 2GB, especially for machines lacking a separate video card.)

I initially put w7 on three computers. The two laptops work great; it is especially nice on the Lenovo Thinkpad X60t, but pretty nice on the Thinkpad X31 too. I also put it on my brawnest machine (3.5GHz, 4GB RAM, etc.). I had to put a new video card in to get it to work well at all (I had a cheap video card because this was an office machine) and it had driver problems with the card. It wouldn't run aero even with a pretty decent (512MB AGP 8X) Nvidia 6200 card, although the driver that Windows Update installed wouldn't install. The XP driver on the disc would install with no reported errors but wouldn't run aero. Still, I like W7 for my laptops and I like it pretty much overall. Go MSFT! Now put that team on Windows Mobile...

To create a shortcut to Network Connections, navigate to C:\Windows\System32, and then right-click on ncpa.cpl and select "Create shortcut." You'll be told you can't create a shortcut here (then why'd you ask?) would you like one on the desktop instead? Agree, then navigate to the desktop and cut and past this shortcut wherever you like. Then right-click and rename to, say, "Network Connections". Then from that location (since you probably won't want it on the desktop) you can drag it over the start circle, where it will pin a copy to the start menu.

I also put my network connections shortcut in the start menu programs list. This was a little klugy compared to XP (you can't edit in the folder, but have to edit in the start menu list itself) but straightforward enough. (I'm not sure why editing the items in the start menu fails. The options are present -- e.g. rename folders -- but they "can't be completed because it is open in another program." This seems like a W7 glitch.)

• Create a new folder anywhere you want, out of the way is good. You can give it any name; Desktop is a good choice.
• Now paste following code in Notepad and save as a file named "Show Desktop.scf" (including quotes!) in the new folder which you created in first step. The code is:

  [Shell]
  Command=2
  IconFile=explorer.exe,3
  [Taskbar]
  Command=ToggleDesktop

• Now right-click on taskbar and select "Toolbars -> New Toolbar...". It will open a Browse dialog box. Select the folder which you created in first step and click on "Select folder" button.
• It'll immediately add that folder to taskbar.
• Now right-click on taskbar and select "Lock the taskbar" to unlock it.
• You'll see a placeholder to drag the new toolbar.
• Right-click on the toolbar placeholder (a little to the left) and uncheck "Show Title" and "Show Text" options.
• If you want to increase the icon size, right-click on the toolbar placeholder and enable "View -> Large Icons" option.
• Now lock the taskbar again and you have the good ol' "Show Desktop" shortcut back in Windows 7, although on the right..

Here is the fix for installing Cisco VPN

• Open regedit, navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SQMClient\Windows\DisabledSessions and delete anything other than the default value.
• Run gpedit.msc and click Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Internet Communication Management > Internet Communication Settings and double click Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program. Tick enable and click on OK. (Note we are enabling "turn off", a peculiar linguistic construction.
• Install Cisco DNEupdate.
• Reboot
• Take ownership (right click on and this should appear on the menu if your login has administrative privileges) and delete ndis.sys (in c:\windows\system32\drivers).
• Take ownership and delete ndis.sys.mui (in c:\windows\system32\drivers\en-us).
• Install Cisco VPN Client 5.0.03.0560 or 5.0.04.0300.
• Reboot with the Windows 7 installation disk connected and boot from CD.
• Restart into the Windows 7 install when prompted, otherwise the OS will go into error recovery.
• Select your language, time & currency and click 'Next'.
• Click 'Repair your computer' at the bottom.
• Click 'Next >' to start the repairing the OS.
• The Startup Repair wizard kicks in and works its magic. How long it will take to repair WILL vary. Windows 7 will repair itself (should take a few seconds) and automatically reboot.
• Cisco VPN Client should work without any other tweaks.

  Preston McAfee, Jan 2009.