I was lucky enough to get in the Office 2010 Technical Preview and have been able to play with Office 2010 for the past few months as well as log a few bugs.

Yesterday Office 2010 moved out of Technical Preview and into its first proper Beta version.

The beta version is available from TechNet and MDSN in both x64 and x86 versions.

I had the Office 2010 Technical Preview x64 running on a x64 Desktop and x86 version running on a laptop, there is no perceptible difference a typical user would notice between the two.

The technical preview had a few quirks but was a solid starting point so I am looking forward to checking out the latest beta.

Today is the public launch of Windows 7.

I have had access to the final version of Windows 7 since August and have clocked hundreds of hours of user testing.

I have tested both x64 and x86 and not once encountered any problem or crash.

As I said previously Windows 7 is just Windows Vista with all the annoying things taken out.

This is good because the fundamentals have all been well tested and have matured.

Windows 7 User Scenarios

1) New PC/Laptop: I say go for it, Windows 7 should run fine and you should have a great user experience.

2) Clean install on any PC/Laptop from the last couple of years: I say yes, the key here is the clean install. Backup then rub it out and start again.

3) In place upgrade from an earlier version of Windows. Maybe eventually, but I would wait for 3 or 4 months for a few million people to have tried it first. There are known problems (See below http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975253)

So Can Microsoft Be Trusted Again?

The technical fundamentals are all back in place (thanks to Steven Sinofsky) but their Marketing people are on talking complete rubbish.

Check out the video demonstration from the bbc article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8319083.stm

Leila Martin is showing Multi-Touch something that you need dedicated hardware for. I guarantee someone watching that video is going to assume Windows 7 will add touch to their computer.

The fact is 99.5% of us wont have Multi-Touch capable hardware for some considerable time. Dell did launch a Monitor the other day with this capability but the general public is still 5 years out on Touch.

Next she starts talking about “Taxonomy” an old Greek word for “order or arrangement” just because Windows search found her file. Taxonomy, I mean really.

Conclusion

So Microsoft has managed to recover from the disaster that was Windows Vista. They did the right thing by taking the Vista code base and polishing it.

In some ways Windows 7 is really only what Vista should have been. This means however we are at least 3 years away from any real advances from a Microsoft desktop operating system.

Microsoft have just published a  detailed post about Windows 7 and support for SSD storage technologies.

As a full time SSD owner/user (Laptop/Desktop) i am really pleased Windows 7 has some SSD specific considerations.

Once you go SSD you never want to go back.

The FAQ section covers

Will Windows 7 support Trim?
Will disk defragmentation be disabled by default on SSDs?
Will Superfetch be disabled on SSDs?
Is NTFS Compression of Files and Directories recommended on SSDs?
Does the Windows Search Indexer operate differently on SSDs?
Is Bitlocker’s encryption process optimized to work on SSDs?
Does Media Center do anything special when configured on SSDs?
Does Write Caching make sense on SSDs and does Windows 7 do anything special if an SSD supports write caching?
Do RAID configurations make sense with SSDs?
Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?
Are there any concerns regarding the Hibernate file and SSDs?
What Windows Experience Index changes were made to address SSD performance characteristics?

Windows 7 Engineering Blog Link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

My own blogs posts about SSD link: http://www.colindiponio.com/category/ssd-solid-state-drive/

My trusty Dell Latitude E4200 laptop was the next candidate for a Windows 7 RC install.

Nearly all the hardware was detected out of the box.

Tip: If you have unrecognised hardware do a Windows Update first.

In my case I had two items:-

1) A Base Device

2) The Finger Print Reader.

Doing a windows update fixed the base device and a quick visit to support.dell.com got me the Driver security package needed.

My E4200 only has 2gb of ram so I elected to install the Windows 7 RC 32bit version.

In contrast to my boot time experience on my Desktop PC running the x64 version of the RC the E4200 boots Windows 7 from a cold power on to hearing the Windows start sound in an impressive 19 seconds.

Issues

Out of the box the fn key screen brightness controls don’t work.

I also suspect the onboard fan will be on more due to the aero interface in Windows 7. This machine was previously running XP Pro.

The E4200’s CPU in my case the Intel 1.4ghz Dual CoreSU9400 800Mhz FSB does support hardware virtualisation but by default this is turned off in the bios.  You need to go into the bios and down to the Virtualisation Support section and enable it.

I will need to install Virtual XP mode to make sure virtualisation is fully working.

However before you get too excited first check that your CPU supports Virtualisation. You can get advice about this on the link below.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/configure-bios.aspx

Moving on…

For users of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate you can download Virtual PC 2007 and a fully licensed XP Virtual machine.

Virtual PC is nothing new, the bundling of the Free licensed XP Virtual Machine is and well as the interoperability between the host and guest operating system. Drag and drop and application sharing.

In English in Windows 7 I can use software installed in my Windows XP Virtual machine but outside of the virtual machine itself.

Step1) Download and install the files you need.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Step2) Log into your Virtual machine.

From within the environment you have a fully working Windows XP Virtual machine you can run in a Window or full screen.

Step3) Install Applications in your Virtual Machine.

In this example I chose to install an older  legacy version of Firefox 2.0.

Step4) If I wanted to run the virtual Firefox 2.0 in my Windows 7 environment I would need to shutdown my Virtual XP. Then in in Windows 7 you click on Start > All Programs > Windows Virtual PC > Virtual Windows XP Applications. The installed applications will be shown here.

When you select an application this then starts the Virtual Machine in the background and your application will run seamlessly on top of Windows 7.

Tip: To access some of the default Virtual XP Windows applications for example IE6 from outside your Virtual machine right lick on Start (in the Virtual Machine) Choose Explore with all users, make a shortcut to IE6  and it will appear in the Windows 7 start menu and IE6 will run on top of Windows 7.

Problems

The only problem I had was when I tried to install Microsoft Office 2000 in my Virtual XP. I got a Windows Protection error that would not allow the install to continue.

Observations

Sometimes the loading of the Virtual XP can be slow but this pretty much delivers what it sets out to do and this kind of approach will allow Microsoft to ditch some of the legacy support holding them back.

Only time will tell how useful and practical this turns out to be, as of today I remote desktop to real Windows XP PC for legacy applications. In theory Virtual XP Mode would allow me using only 1 PC.

Earlier this morning Microsoft went live with the Window 7 public beta of Windows 7 RC Build 7100.

It is available on the link below in either a:

32Bit 2.36GB Download or 64Bit 3.05GB Download.

I would imagine this is going to be the most popular public Beta trial in history so the link below may get swamped.

I still wouldn’t recommend any Beta software to people not confident in installing Operating Systems and drivers etc.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Machine: Dell XPS 420, E8400 CPU, 8gb Ram Intel X-25-M SSD.

Bios Time: This is the amount of time in seconds spend in the Machines Bios prior to loading the Operating System.

I finally got around to taking some boot speed times as I was pretty sure this was slower than I was expecting.

Back in February 2009 I did some quick tests on the Windows 7 Build 7000 x86 version. I  compared it to  XP and Vista. The post bios boot speeds were considerably quicker at 13.43 seconds.

Sadly I no longer have the machine I used to benchmark back in Feb so I cant do a like for like but my current machine had the same CPU and same SSD hard disk (Intel X-25-m).

I know comparing x86 Build 7000 to x64 Build 7100 isn’t a fare comparison especially as the machines are different.  I am however curious why the extra 26 seconds.

Shims can’t slow it down this much or at least I hope not.

I can see a Windows 7-7100 x86 re-format on this rig in the near future just so i can do a proper comparison.

On a Desktop PC I can live with longer boot time but not on a Laptop for instance.

Once the OS has loaded there aren’t any performance issues I can detect as a user.

I shall update this post in the future.

Update: 05/05/2009

I did a reformat and a full comparison x86 to x64 7100 boot times on the same hardware. I found that the boot times were near identical.

I then did a 32bit build 7000 to 32bit build 7100 and found the 7000 build to be 21% faster booting around 11 seconds faster. Any other discrepancies are down to the differences in the machines I used to benchmark.

I installed Build 7000 on 3 or 4 machines. I found it fine for an early Beta and when I did encounter problems I wasn’t too bothered.

Skip forward a couple of months and I have started with a clean install of the Windows 7 Release candidate Build 7100.

My test machine is a Dell XPS 420 running an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0Ghz) with 8gig of Ram as my intention is go x64 only any legacy applications can be run in XP Mode (more later on that).

Install

The installation took about 20 mins and 100% of my Dell hardware was detected correctly.

The Windows 7 RC is time limited but Microsoft have been generous enough to allow 13 months grace period prior to the expiration of the Beta on June 1st 2010.

The install foot print with Office 2007 SP2 installed is about 24gig (remember this includes an 8gb swap file due to the size of the ram being used.

In my case that 8gb swap file is probably overkill and a quarter of that or less would be sufficient. Ill tweak it later while looking at any SSD optimisations.

This foot print size would only be a problem for users of say a 32gb SSD drives. My install is running on an Intel X25-M which has a capacity of 80gig.

Performance

This test machine is pretty well specified and runs Windows 7 very smoothly. I am running Dual Monitor and the support for this is very straight forward and just works.

The boot speed seems slightly slower than i was expecting but this could be the x64 and 8gig of ram swap file.

Annoyances

Google Chrome doesn’t work out of the box so you have to get on the developer channel and use the Dev version. The only problem I have found is when you create a Gmail Application short cut you cannot close it by double clicking the top left.

Tip: I cant remember how well task bar jump lists were implemented in build 7000 but in 7100 they are really useful. All you need to do is right click over the taskbar icons to see the jump list (see Pic below for IE8 and Excel).

Over the next few days I will rack up some hours testing the robustness of this release.

It has been good to stop for a while and reflect a bit.

The things i like about tech blogging are numerous.

I love technology. I like talking and writing about it and in particular sharing knowledge.

I do appreciate the feedback (comments and e-mails) from the people who contact me.

Several people contacted me wondering if I was perchance trapped under something heavy and couldn’t get to a keyboard.

In reality I was waiting for something exciting to happen in technology…….

“I’ve just ordered a Dell Latitude D630 and know already I need to downgrade from Vista Business to XP Pro but everything I google on the matter is littered with conflicting information…seeing as you have done this would you be so kind as to give me a procedure? Treat me like I know nothing and we won’t go wrong!!”

Note: This process will require a re-format of your computer and you will need to ensure you backup any data first as all the existing data and software will be lost.

Pre requisites

1 x Dell Windows XP Pro CD and lots of time.

Step 1) Check that Dell Support Windows XP on your Hardware. For this specific user I know the answer is yes but not all Dell Models have Windows XP Support.

Go to www.support.dell.com then Drivers and Downloads and browse to your model.

From the Operating System dropdown box make sure there is a Windows XP option. Leave the Drivers Web Page open for the moment.

Step 2) Get to know your Dell Vista Hardware first. Find out what you will need.

You want to do this so there is no guess work about what other hardware you have inside your Dell.

Example: A Dell can ship will up to 5 different video cards.

So in Windows Vista click on the Start Menu and when you see Computer right click it and choose Properties.

Then from the left hand side choose the Device manager.

I always make a note of the Display Driver and Network adaptors and Sound (those expanded in the above picture).

Step 3) Download from www.support.dell.com the Windows XP Drivers you will need.

To keep yourself organised put each download into a Folder for easy access later.

Ideally you want to store these on a USB Key or burn a CD with them on.

Step 4) Backup any of your own Data from Windows Vista.

Step 5) Insert your Dell Windows XP Pro CD, turn on your computer and press F12 for boot options. Then Choose your CD/DVD Drive from the available boot options.

Tip: Make sure you don’t have any external hard disks or other peripherals connected. A mouse is ok.

The Windows XP Setup will take a few moments but eventually ask you what you want to do, choose the first option To Setup Windows.

The Windows XP Setup will now look for a version of Windows Installed and offer to Repair or Install a fresh copy. You want the fresh copy so press ESC.

On the existing Partition Screen you will see the various Partitions.

You want to Delete the largest partition and if you see a Dell Vista Recovery Partition you can also delete that. Leave the smallest FAT partitions alone.

Next you want to create a new partition in the un-partitioned space. Accept the size which should be the maximum available. Format the partition NTFS (Quick) after which the Windows XP Install files will be copied and the installation will continue.

Tip: The Win Supersite has a Step by Step guide with pictures of this procedure.
Link: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

Step 6) Once Windows XP is loaded you will need to install the Dell Drivers in the correct order.

1:System Software
2:Chipset
3:Video Adaptor
4:Network Card
5:Audio
6:Modem
7:Wireless
8:Input things like touch pad
9:Bluetooth
10:PMCIA/Smart Card

Tip: Dell now have their own “Driver install order” document which is more detailed that the one above. Link: Here

You should now be ready to connect to the internet and visit www.windowsupdate.com for the latest updates to windows.