Continued Windows 7 Testing

So, yesterday, I installed the Windows 7 RC (Again, 64bit) onto my laptop (a Thinkpad T61p).

At first, drivers seemed to be a bit of a problem, as I couldn’t get the generic Nvidia driver to install on my laptop (Most vendors only allow their specific video drivers to be installed for some reason).  However, Windows Update had a working driver for me after a reboot.  The main thing I find myself missing in Windows on my laptop is multiple virtual desktops, which is made possible via http://www.codeplex.com/vdm.  While not as good as a native solution, it does get the job done.

My tablet works very well, once I install the Wacom driver, and I’ve been using Evernote to take notes in class.  Battery life is right at what it was in Ubuntu Jaunty, which isn’t horrible, but still less than I like (of course, I’m the one that bought a desktop replacement), and wireless configuration is much improved over XP (and a little better than Vista).  The new wifi interface is similar to NetworkManager’s UI, and native WPA support in Windows is certainly nice.

As soon as I booted a second copy of Windows on my network, Windows asked to connect to the other install (my desktop) to share files via “Homegroup.” Sadly, one sharing feature that I wanted was in Media Center, as I’d like to be able to play back MCE recordings over the network to my laptop.  While I was able to get this working, it didn’t allow access to my tuners from my laptop.

Another big thing in Windows 7 is the new RDP.  With RDP 7, Aero is possible over a decent connection.  It funs flawlessly when I’m on the same network as my computer, and only lags a little bit when connecting from school using a VPN.  However, as I understand it, all the rendering is being done client-side, so it’s not streaming video from the server or anything.

So far, the more I use W7, the more I like it, which for a Microsoft product is very odd.