So I updated both my laptop and desktop from vista to windows 7. I gave myself a variety by choosing a fresh clean update on my laptop while my desktop upgrade and containing my previous files.
I'm being honest in this review and I do use Mac in my work and at school for sound class. At work I use all adobe and maya programs. Here's my confrig:
Laptop- (Lowend workstation)
Duo 2 Core
2GB of ram
100 GB HDD memory
Nvidia 9000m series (forgot the exact # but u get the idea)
Desktop- (Overkill highend workstation)
Core 17 3.07GHz
12GB of ram (muhahaha)
238 GB SSD memory
Nvidia quadro 3800FX
so with this variety, I'll give you my total experience in updating things. Starting with the laptop and giving it a clean install, I went through nearly 2hours of waiting. Simple and all I had to do was to click advance clean install and type in my serial. It restarts twice and suprisenlly, all my files were saved in a window.old folder. My programs which I expected are cleaned and erased. So even if you do a clean restart, your regular files are there. Please bkup anyways.
My desktop took me around 30mins, partly because I have an SSD. Other than that, everything is there just like you left it. It's like bug spraying your house and coming back the next week.
I'm starting to love the taskbar below. Yes it's like mac, but if you like the olddays, you have an option of having both the mac and windows version and that's what I picked. Your window bars can be expand and having shortcut programs as well. Just right click the taksbar and should be on the 2nd tab. It's pretty common sense. I do hate the control panel if you like to go to classic view. Though it's not a big deal. it's in alphebetical order.
Now for hardware and stress test. I use AutoCAD programs like maya and I have double monitors. Windows 7 fixed the program where it wanted to make a widescreen and fullscreen the same ratio because of maya. Also it fixed the flashing black screen when booting up maya so now it's normal. And no more random chaning ratio. As for stress test and trust me I did this out of randomness. Remember you have an illegal close of times when your program goes white and freezes the heck out of you. Well think of Mac. When one program stops working, it doesn't freezes you. You are able to go onto your desktop or open ctrl+alt+delete without freezing or waiting. If anybody is curious on how I manage to get an illegal close, I opened up Maya to run an infinate loop of Mel codes....
Anyways it really depends what kind of computer you have that'll boot up fast but I'l tell you this, windows 7 can handle stress softwares pretty well now and won't make you go crazy. Oh and I'm about to set up a wireless network so I have print from my laptop without using any wires. I love the new home networking and I can grab photos from my desktop and doing this from tokyo if I have to. The wireless connection is so much faster to aquire too; almost an instant.
To end it all it's a great jump and better for games if your a gamer and love the wireless connection and super great for CAD softwares like me. Windows 7 is more organizing power awerness. There's rlly no difference between Mac and PC to get things done. I mean I make EgoCity, PFRPG, and Maya stuffs and can do the same thing on a mac. It's how you use the brush cause ur computers are tools. If your good at Mac, great. It's your tool and you know it better than anyone else. So end the computer wars. If your a Vista who does Adobe, Maya, and heavy processing and duel screen, Windows 7 will fix. If your just playing games and word app and simple stuffs that doesn't need intense situations like 1GB of ram, stick with vista. If your an XP.... god damn our missing fast response time in win7. Even my laptop got quicker in the update. Anyways I better invest a macbook if I end up as a graphic artist. PC if I end up as a video game designer... THE WORLD HAS RANDOM RULES.
This review is thru my experience only. sorry for the long post cause win7 suprises me like a child.