So yesterday I made the decision to upgrade from Vista to Win7 (both Ultimate Editions). The upgrade went smoothly and took about 90 minutes. Only 3 reboots were required and so far no problems with any of the hardware or software I had installed.
The first thing you notice is the increase in speed. Everything runs significantly quicker. Photoshop CS4 loads in about 5 seconds. This is about 10-15 seconds faster. All the other CS4 applications are just as quick. Office products seem to load in less that 2 seconds. One caveat, I have a smoking fast new computer so your results may differ slightly, but these made me feel like I got my money's worth from Dell. To give you a hint, my system rating went from a 4 to a 5.9.
The taskbar is the primary change to the interface and it is taking me a few hours to get used to it. It has some great functionality. Related to the taskbar, the elimination of the sidebar irritates me because it was part of my workflow. The gadgets are still there, but you cannot interact with them using the [window key+spacebar] that I was accustomed to. That keyboard shortcut now invokes Aero Peek which almost seems pointless to me (still have an open mind).
IE8 - I am a fan of Internet Explorer and version 8 has some great improvements, but it is far from perfect. Actually no browser is the best because they all have features I use. I really wish IE would have put the spell checker in like other browsers. I also have Safari and Firefox installed.
Media Player 12 - huge improvements on the interface (IMHO). I haven't used it much, but I like what I see.
Libraries - This is a way to group like content regardless of location and I think this feature will be the most appreciated. Imagine working on a project that has files located on different drives or folders and now you can combine them into one virtual location. Awesome.
CONS - so far, other than the sidebar, I haven't found any. If you bought Vista Ultimate and use the limited number of Ultimate Extras you will be disappointed because they are gone. Some of the features are built into 7, but others have gone the way of the dodo.
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