I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love Windows 7. Today I made the decision that I was going to install Windows 7 release candidate on my laptop seeing as its the worst performing computer in this house.

The release candidate is already available for download for TechNet and MSDN members, and will be available to the general public from the 5th May 2009 (PST) through until the end of July. The excellent thing about this release is that unlike the Beta, which starts expiring on July 1st 2009 and will be really dead by August 1st, the release candidate has a life span to June 2010 as reported by The Guardian recently.

Whats the minimum specifications for running Windows 7, well, a 1ghz processor, 1gb of ram among other things. This acer laptop which performs so poorly under Vista should be a slender athlete under Windows 7.

With all that said, I am planning on increasing the ram in the laptop to 4gb as the 1gb it has, is always at least 80% in use by Vista OS on its own and gets so hot sometimes I’m left with a laptop shaped pink spot on my legs, and it makes an excellent heating device in winter.

So why was I disposing of the linux partition? I couldn’t wait to have a little attempt at Windows 7 on the laptop, so I’m installing the original beta just to get a taste. I have no patience, but I do urge people to have some when the release candidate is available. I’m certain every every man and their dog and their fish will want to download it. But if you want a sneak peak at the asthetics, I suggest you go here.

I tried and failed to shake the shackles of the Bill Gates empire. I had my laptop dual booting Ubuntu and Windows Vista. Today is struck me that I never really use my Ubuntu partition, prefering the flexibility of having all my apps in Vista.

Its not easy to dispose of an unloved linux/ubuntu partition. Simply formating the partition from Vista leads down a nasty path with GRUBB not found, Error 22. I know, I went there. I had to reload Linux onto the 20gb partition and start again.

Once there, I found a nifty little app on the net, EasyBCD. Using that, you can put Vista back in charge of the booting process, eliminating the GRUBB.

Using the write MBR and reinstall vista bootloader, I was able to eliminate the GRUBB and put Vista back in charge. This had the effect of that familiar dual boot screen you get when you have two windows partitions sharing a computer, yet you can select Linux as well, with a few additional settings.

Once I put Vista back in charge, a reboot and yes, it was showing me the windows vista and linux partitions. Once in Vista, I deleted the linux partition and remove the linux entries from the EasyBCD, saved settings and rebooted.

Now my system reboots just like a factory vista install.

And whats the reason for all this extended nonsense? See my post tomorrow for more details.

Its been a wee while since I booted up into that particular OS, but I was thinking today, that yes, I would take the plunge, maybe on my laptop first, where I have rescue disks.

What would I like to see from Windows 7? I have searched for some specs to the different ‘flavours’ that might be on offer. As I have been taking the odd trip down the HTPC path, I want something with Media Centre. My laptop has this. I found it recently in Hamilton. My XP installation is XP Pro, which isn’t very media friendly and XP is sooo last decade, well, sooo 2002.

I also love what Microsoft have done with Office. You can install on up to 3 computers under the one license key. This is fantastic. It makes software that was out of my reach more appealing. We have 3 computers in our house. Imagine having to buy 3 licenses at $200 a pop? Ouch.

If I got Windows 7 on my laptop, would I keep the ubuntu partition? Hell no. The whole point of the Ubuntu partition is that sometimes its too painful to boot into Vista and if you want to find something quick, why not boot up into a bloat-free OS like Ubuntu? From what I have seen W7 has eliminated a lot of code behind its shiny facade.

And yes, then there is the facade, the user interface, the experience. I like vista because it is shiny, modern looking and the W7 experience goes further than before. Both systems make XP look tired, dated. Its the Susan Boyle of the computing world, it fell from the ugly tree, hit each branch on the way down, only to be bashed my the garden gnome with the ugly stick, but when its on song, its amazing.

I want to go 64bit too, I have 8gb of ram at my fingertips, yet my favourite game doesn’t opperate on 64bit systems. Maybe game makers need to sit up and take notice? Infact, when I have the 8gb in there, under 32bit XP, my game runs SLOWER than usual.

Well, thats something to chew on for today.