Windows 7 seems a hot topic nowadays, so I installed its RC version. According to some articles, it is much lighter and responsive compared to Vista.

Testbed

The PC I used is Sony VGN-SZ430N, which came with pre-installed Vista Business.

I bought this one right after Vista was shipped (Jan 2007), it had been very 'difficult' laptop for me. Don't know the reason, but it does endless access to the HDD, and anything gets very slow. The CPU consumption is not much, but the constant access to the HDD makes the laptop almost unusable. There's something stupid was going on, such as defragging.

Installation

It took a few hours because I chose to upgrade from existing Vista, rather than a clean installation.

Impression

The upgrade was smooth and all the settings including user accounts are available right after the upgrade is done. The fingerprint recognition works without interruption. Oh, by the way, somebody (my friend?) may have changed a guest account's password. Well, that's not Windows 7...

Now, the responsiveness is quite amazing as rumors tell. After logging in, access to the HDD continues only for a moment, but once the boot sequence ends, it becomes quiet. Well, that's it is supposed to be. Thanks to that, the laptop is much faster and I even think "Is this laptop can be THAT fast?" I have a very good feeling about the speed of this OS now.

All the application installed on Vista are also available after the upgrade. I've turned on the Japanese input on Vista, and that setting is passed on to Windows 7, so it's available right from the beginning. The registry setting that swaps CTRL and CAPS key works too. (Why swap the 2 keys? Please ask me ...)

On the other hand, the Windows Explorer is still dumb as like Vista's. The speed is fast, but it changes the folder's look depending on the mood (well, the folder). The 'Library' feature lists all music and video files from anywhere the OS can access to, but you don't know where they are stored. It is hard to tell whether it's OK to delete because it's a duplicate, or you shouldn't delete because it's the original.

The challenge will come when the released version becomes available. According to the explanation, you'll need a clean install of Windows 7. You need to assume that all things will be lost unless there's the upgrade path from RC to released version. Also, because all the apps were preinstalled on Vista, to retain that, I need to recover the original condition (Vista + all apps) first, then upgrade to 7 again.