I’ve installed Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 on my laptop. Why? Why not!

I didn’t steal it. Anyone can get it. Download it and get as many product keys as you’d like until July 2009. To my surprise, it’ll keep working until June 1, 2010. The only catch is that it’ll only run for two hours at a time after March 1, 2010.

So far, I’m not really impressed. It’s not bad, but it’s not very different than Vista. Oh sure the task bar has some nice changes, but by and large, Windows 7 is simply Vista with a slightly prettier face. I haven’t used it enough to judge the performance, but I’ve read it’s slightly better than Vista. I had no real problems with Vista either, as I had the hardware to run it well. The only issue I had with it was that it insisted on running the way it wanted and took quite a bit of effort to change certain aspects of its configuration. Otherwise it ran well and was fine. Meh.

I’m running Windows 7 RC1 on a Toshiba Satellite with an Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1.83 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM. It’s no gaming powerhouse, but it’s no netbook, either. I could use this OS comfortably. I question whether I’ll ever use Windows 7 thoroughly on my own hardware. Why? Because I much prefer the Mac. Windows XP in a virtual machine is enough windows for me.

If you want me to be excited about an operating system, give me some Snow Leopard.