Playing with Windows 7 Beta

Those of you who know me (which, as far as I know, are all my 3 readers :-)), should know by now that I am a geek who likes to play with the newest and shiniest operating systems. No, I didn't try to run Apple's OS X on my computer, though I had thought about it in the past. I decided to come back to Microsoft, who had just released the beta version of the newest 7, available for download here.
What can I say about it so far?
First of all I would like to mention that my veteran laptop, which has been the playground for so many versions of operating systems (Windows XP SP1, SP2, SP3, Kubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10, and the KDE version of OpenSuse 11). It is almost 5 years old, and as such it has 1.5 GHZ CPU, only 750 MB of RAM, and an old ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 video adapter. The latter two specifications are much less than the minimum required to run 7. Nonetheless, the setup procedure went quite smoothly. I am happy to say that, finally, this Windows is probably the fastest, and simplest, version of Windows to install. Everything take about 20 minutes and you're done. Unfortunately, unlike Linux, the distribution does not come with extra packages like an Office suite, antivirus, and other useful packages. Still, for Windows it's pretty nice, and it's free (after all you are a Beta tester) to use until September.

After the installation has ended (it took two reboots in the installation process, plus two other reboots for updates after the installation, which is stupid, because the entire system was ready for download only a day ago) the system loaded up. The GUI looks nice and slick. Very similar to the Vista one, only with the new taskbar showing only icons and not window's names. The Aero glass could not load on my machine, because my video adapter is not capable of doing it. Still, most of the features work, and it can run Gadgets. I tried the CPU/Memory gadget and it showed a surprisingly low CPU and memory usage. Surprising, because the 750MB on my machine are less than the required 1 GB and the memory used was in the range of 50%-75%.
The system was fast to respond on this archaic machine as well. I would say that it was almost as quick as a fresh installation of Windows XP if only I could remember how a new installation of Windows XP runs on that machine.

As far as drivers are concerned I had two problems. One was solved by the automatic driver update that Windows 7 ran on the computer. The other one was with my video adapter. This card has not been supported for Vista by the manufacturer, and Microsoft added a Vista driver capable of running Aero by themselves. This driver, once installed on my computer, has caused the display to flicker without end, and I had to roll-back to a default VGA driver, which lowers the display resolution. Finally, I have decided to try my old XP driver from the package that had come with my laptop when I had purchased it, and voila, it works. So it doesn't support Aero, but it still enables me 1280x800 resolution. I think that it caused the CPU usage to rise, but I haven't had time to check that out.

In conclusion, so far the system have shown a relative stability and agility that are impressive for a beta version running on hardware that is not intended to run it. I think that Microsoft has finally come up with a good version of Vista. As always, it's Service Pack 2 that does the work.
I am not sure if I will keep it or not, and anyway the Beta expires in the summer, so a new operating system will be required, or I will dump this old laptop. However, if you have the time and the proper machine to spare (Microsoft strongly advice against using 7 on the primary machine) I suggest you give it a try.