It’s no secret that I have been a big fan of Windows Vista and I don’t think it deserves the bad reputation it has earned.  That said, there was no way I was going to try running it on my Dell Mini9 with only 1GB of RAM.  However, in the couple of months I have had this machine the experience of using Windows XP has been painful for me.  XP is showing its age and it is time for it to be retired to Microsoft’s Operating System Hall of Fame. 

With all the positive reviews Windows 7 (aka Windows 6.1) has been getting, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I would be giving it a try.  I downloaded the Beta as soon as it was released and immediately installed it into a virtual machine at home and on an aging Dell GX240 at work.  It certainly seemed to be useable enough on those low resource platforms so running on my shiny Dell Mini9 shouldn’t be a problem.  Plenty of bloggers have written about their experiences and they seem to be almost universally positive, so what do I have to lose?

Well, I guess the first thing I have to lose is access to my system for awhile.  I’m not worried about the data because most of it is either stored in the cloud or on my file server at home.  My settings?  Well, I reload my OS enough that I’m not afraid of doing some manual work to get things back to the way I like.  Knowing the Beta will expire in August means I know up front that I’ll be looking at doing another reload after my vacation this year, unless Microsoft allows us to install the Release Candidate over the Beta when the time comes.

The technical steps of preparing a USB drive to host a bootable partition is documented in plenty of places on the Web already, so I won’t go through them here.  Basically, you need to get a primary partition formatted in FAT32 marked as Active and then copy the contents of the Windows 7 ISO onto the drive.  That’s where we pick up my experience:

17:58:  System is booting from USB key.  I missed the option to press ‘2’ so I got as far as the TrueCrypt password screen.  (Yes, I encrypt my laptops and USB keys.)  I hit ESC to go to the Boot Manager where I selected the USB device. 

18:10:  Hmm, I knew this USB key was cheap (Just $9.99 at Future Shop) but I didn’t think it would be THIS slow.  My machine is still sitting at the black TrueCrypt screen saying “Booting…”  As a test I pulled the key out of the Mini9 and nothing appeared to happen.  Maybe I should have removed TrueCrypt first?  Let’s try again.

18:12:  I reconfigured my BIOS so it boots from the USB device first and then from the harddrive.  Much better results as immediately I see the “Windows is loading files” screen.   Oh well, those wasted 14 minutes gave me time to type the introduction to this post.

18:13:  First Windows 7 setup screen appears.  Other than changing my Time/Currency format to English (Canada) I’ll take the defaults.

18:15:  Clicking on “Install Now”.  I see “Setup is Starting…”.  I have accepted the License Agreement without reading it, just like everyone does.  I also selected the Custom install option like every good techie should.

18:16:  Time to configure my partitions.  I’ll leave the 30MB OEM partition in place and select to install in the 14.3GB location.  (Disk 0, Partition 2)

18:17:  File copy has started.

18:19  File copy has completed.  System is now expanding the files.

18:21:  Files are 5% expanded.  I’m now reminding myself how much I hate the new Win7 Taskbar.  I remain determined to use Windows7 with its default settings as much as possible so I am getting the same experience the typical user would see.  I’m still not going to use IE though – Firefox all the way.  I’ll also be using Thunderbird for accessing my three GMail accounts – I tried Windows Live Mail when I first got the Mini9 and found it painfully slow when used with GMail.

18:24:  System shows the files are 24% expanded.  I finally break down and turn on Party Shuffle in iTunes on my Vista desktop.  First song is “Master Charge” by Albert Collins, a good blues tune.  I also sign onto Windows Live Messenger.  I must be getting bored.

18:31:  File expansion is at 50%.  iTunes has decided my next song should be “Roundabout” by Yes.

18:43:  The iTunes Genius has moved me on to “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers, one of the few songs in my library worthy of a 5-star rating.  Oh yeah, the Windows install?  95% expanded and counting.

18:47:  Files are 100% expanded.  That took 28 minutes or so.  On to the remaining stages of installation!

18:48:  Features are installed.  Now we’re Installing Updates…whoops, they are done and the system is restarting!  USB key has been removed so system will boot from the solid state drive.  (I still want to call it a hard drive though!)  The boring/tedious portion of Windows 7 setup is done in roughly 30 minutes – not too shabby.

18:50:  “Completing Installation…”  iTunes has moved on to “All Right Now” by Free, which is coincidentally how much I paid for my operating system.

18:53:  At this point in any OS installation/reload I start to get those nagging doubts:  “Did I really backup everything I needed?  That seemed too simple…”

18:55:  “White Room” by Cream.  Oh yeah, still sitting at the “Completing Installation” screen.  If it weren’t for the three periods cycling on and off I would think the system was hung.  I guess the tedious part of the install wasn’t quite done yet.  At least in the “old days” I would have the whirling sound of a HDD to let me know the system was actually doing something.  The silence of these new drives is really disconcerting.

18:57:  Screen just went black and then flashed back on.  Must been installing the video driver.  I’m now disconcerted that I used the word “disconcerting” in a blog post.

18:59:  After minutes of debating I decide “White Room” deserves a 4-star rating in my iTunes library.  Looks like another Yes song is next in the queue.  Oo, the screen on the Mini9 just got a lot brighter.  Still signs of life from my little friend.  We’re now into “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”

19:02:  Windows7 is rebooting.  “Setup will continue after your system restarts.”

19:03:  “Setup is preparing your computer for first use.”  I just had a flashback to Windows 95 and the “Getting ready to run Windows 95 for the first time” message.  Now we’re checking my video performance.  The LCD screen is much darker now than it was during the final stages of setup.  Time to set up a user account!

19:05:  I’m such a rebel – I’ve decided not to create a password to use with my account.  Knowing that I’ll be running TrueCrypt again before long I prefer to type in my TrueCrypt password at boot time and have the machine take me straight through to the desktop.

19:06:  Enter your product key.  Ah crap, I think I have it somewhere.  Time to look…

19:08:  I found a copy of my product key in a Notepad file stored on the same network share where I put the Win7 ISO file.  I’m so pleased with myself I dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back.  Time to get the install rolling again as I’m almost an hour in to the install process now.  (By the way, “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos is definitely a 5-star rating.)

19:10:  Yes, yes, use the recommended settings for Windows Updates.  Time Zone?  Did Microsoft move its headquarters?  Every Windows install I remember defaulted to the Pacific Time Zone but Windows7 starts off in Eastern Time. 

19:11:  Impressive!  Windows7 has detected my wireless network straight out of the box and is letting me connect to it before I even reach my Desktop.  Now that’s a nice touch!

19:12:  Impressed that I was able to type my WPA2 key in correctly with just one attempt on the small keyboard.  I’m now debating whether to load my desktop machine with Windows7 so I can really play with this “Home group” stuff.

19:14:  Cool, the Mini9 has detected that my Win7 VM has a Homegroup already configured.  Now if I could only remember the password I set on it when I installed the VM I would be set.

19:17:  Every Homegroup password I typed is wrong.  (Also a little disturbing that they appear in plaintext on the screen.)  Time to logon to my VM (creatively called “Beta” and see if I can find where to change it.)

19:19:  Using the Search function in Windows7 I was able to quickly locate the Homegroup applet in the Control Panel on my existing Win7 machine.  A quick password change (looks like I never set one the first time and the system created one for me which is why I couldn’t remember it!) and I’m ready to get back to the install.

19:21:  A little “Tush” from ZZ Top while Windows7 finalizes my settings and drops me on my new Desktop.

19:25:  I am at the Desktop and ready to rock!

And that’s it!  The default installation is taking up about 6.9GB of space on my hard drive.  The whole process could easily be done in under an hour if you are prepared with your product key and password(s) and you aren’t spending time typing about the whole experience. 

I may need to resort to compressing my drive again like it was under Windows XP.  I have a lot of mapping software that I use on this machine and that 16GB SSD is going to be tight.

Windows Update has already downloaded 15.1MB of updates to apply:  4 important and 2 optional.

The important updates are:

- Creative Technology Ltd. – Streaming Media and Broadcast – Integrated Webcam

- Update for Windows 7 Client Beta (KB961367)

- Update for Windows 7 Client Beta (KB962236)

- Definition Update for Windows Defender

The optional updates are:

- Intel Corporation driver update for Mobile Intel ® 945 Express Chipset Family (Prerelease WDDM 1.0 Driver)

- Realtek – Network – Realtek RTL8102E Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)

(It would appear that Win7 has better driver support in Beta than Vista had upon release.  That doesn’t surprise me considering Vista was a major change in the driver model from XP whereas Win7 is a minor update to Vista.  That should go a LONG way to improving the public’s perception of Windows 7 right out of the box.)

I’ll post more experiences as I go along.  Right now I have a lot of applications to install, only some of which I have tested on my other two Win7 machines.  Running compression on that drive is going to be a necessary evil – my XP machine was down to only 1GB free and that was compressed.  Dang.