In Less Than three Hours Time

I'll be home and making my final preparations to install Windows 7 on my machine.

 

Today is the big release day, and thanks to Amazons online delivery tracker I know my copy is sitting at home waiting on me,

 

I'm really rather ridiculously excited by the prospect. It truly is absurd that something as basic as a computer Operating System has this effect on me, but I'm a geek, this is the sort of thing that gets us going!

 

Right now my computer exists in a dual-boot setup with both Windows XP Professional and Ubuntu installed on it. Tonight I intend to make sure I have everything backed up, format the whole lot and install Windows 7 64 bit.

 

A wee bit of a change from the past, but Windows 7 now includes both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the OS for a single purchase. I think this is a great idea as it gives people with 64 bit hardware the chance to try out a 64 bit OS, check the compatibility of all their favoured hardware and software, and if something critical doesn't work they can always reformat and install the 32 bit version. I think this also heralds 64 bit as becoming the new standard. 32 bit really is becoming rather dated, and the limit on RAM to <4GB will stifle future development eventually, so I reckon Microsoft are making a step in the right direction there.

 

If I do run into a program (and I'm thinking mainly of games here) that just won't work well enough on a 64 bit OS I have my full XP partition backed up as a disc image that I can restore pretty quickly if I really need it.

 

As for Ubuntu... I really don't know. My original plan long before Win7 was even available for pre-order was to maintain the Windows/Linux Dual boot but with 64 bit versions of each OS. Now I'm not sure if it's worth it. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is a steller peice of software, and the list of things I prefer in Ubuntu compared to Windows is vast, but I'm a gamer, and Ubuntu isn't a great platform for gaming, particularly not in terms of recent releases anyway. The truth is until software and hardware developers start treating Linux like a serious platform to be supported equally as well as Windows it'll be of limited use to me. It's great for basic stuff, but when it comes to gaming, or running my music hardware and software Linux is lagging behind.

 

So, the next post on One Scots Thoughts is likely to have been powered (at least in part, I have two half-written posts on the go :p) by Windows 7. I promise some impressions once I feel I've played with it enough to give them.

 

freedoms_stain, praying for a painless install, out.