I do like to play it safe, so I attempted to run the Upgrade Advisor program to confirm that my laptop would do well with Windows 7. Due to a glitch with my Vista system, I was advised that the Windows Installer had failed and that I should contact my “support personnel” for assistance. Uh, that would be ME.

I figured I would be OK with my relatively recent machine, so I took the plunge. After awhile, I returned to find that the Windows 7 install had failed due to remnants of Kaspersky antivirus software that I was sure I had uninstalled at least a year ago. After several failed attempts to uninstall it (resulting in that same message to contact myself for help), I found that most antivirus software companies have removal tools – and Kaspersky was no exception. (Get their removal tool is here.) 

That did the trick. The rest of the install was smooth sailing, though it did take the better part of 6 hours to run since I chose the option to upgrade rather than wipe out my hard drive and perform a clean install. It was my hope that doing so would preserve the many licensed programs I had downloaded from Giveawayoftheday.com - but the track record here was a mixed bag. Some of the software does still work fine, but other programs have reverted to 30-day trials or require immediate purchase to be functional.

Most notable among these programs whose licenses did NOT survive the Windows 7 upgrade is Macrium Reflect, backup software I liked so much that I later bought licenses for two additional computers. Windows 7 Ultimate (along with other versions, including Pro) offers built-in backup software that can save files and a recovery image to a network drive, but I’m concerned that it states it won’t backup my installed programs – which would necessitate reinstalls should I ever need to restore from backup. No thanks. I’ll just shell out for another Macrium Reflect license.

Overall, my limited experience with Windows 7 is that it’s much zippier and programs seem to load much faster. My two-year-old machine now seems much quicker than I recall after spending a year on a newer, higher-powered primary laptop.

I’m not quite ready to upgrade our day-to-day work computers to Windows 7 (in part because our projects may require us to use Vista for at least another week or so), but now I am rather looking forward to it.

There are a few lingering issues that trip me up pretty much every day. If Windows 7 solves these, I’ll be very happy and even more productive:

1. Remember my windows and monitor setup. The one thing I’ve wanted from Windows for years is the ability to shut down or restart and have Windows remember every single open app and window placement. This includes Outlook messages, Web browser windows and tabs and even Notepad files. It seems like there should be a relatively easy way to write this information to disc and then restore it upon reboot. I work best with a lot of open windows that I then work through – sometimes over several days. When I have to restart my computer, it can take me 15 minutes to save and record all of the things I’m working on – and a crash or unexpected reboot can really wreck my day. The other part of this is monitor arrangement. I extend my desktop to the left, which is apparently backwards from what Microsoft expects. So everytime I disconnect and reconnect my laptop (say, to run to a meeting), I have to open and fix my monitor settings. I’d probably undock my laptop more if it wasn’t such a hassle to restore my extended desktop settings.
2. Bring back pinpoint text selection in Internet Explorer. I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime in the past year or so I found that selecting bits of text in Internet Explorer text windows (where I do a lot of writing, editing and posting these days) has been hit or miss. Mostly miss. Words that I want to set to STRONG get clipped right in the middle, words I’m cutting and pasting are truncated right down the middle, spaces and punctuation that I don’t want are selected, etc. I waste a lot of cumulative time correcting these little errors. It wasn’t always like this! I used to have more pinpoint control over text selection. Bring it back.
3. Be smarter about alerts and pop ups. I know Windows is programmed to inform me the instant that a meeting reminder is scheduled to pop up, or when it needs a password or to bring an alert to my attention, but please hold off while I’m typing vigorously into another window! Odds are that I’ll only be actively typing in short bursts, and you can check and wait a few seconds until I pause. Use the microwave popcorn rule: When there’s more than three seconds between bursts of typing, you can stop me. If you find you’re having to hold a particularly urgent alert for more than 30 seconds, go ahead and break in. At least I’ll know you tried to wait, and most of the time I won’t type an important sentence into a password box.

I’ll pick up Windows 7 soon after it comes out, but wondered if these sorts of things have been addressed. What about you, any Windows peeves that you’re hoping will finally get fixed this year?