This actually made me LOL, I really did roll on the floor.

My wife sad she had to see what was “sooooo funny” guess what, she didn’t get it…

I’m currently using this one.

A few weeks ago I posted some wallpapers from the old Windows 7 beta. They were ripped from the previous 6801 beta that I had installed as a VM using Microsoft Virtual PC.

Well, this afternoon, I took the plunge and installed the new beta (7000) on my laptop. NOT as a VM either, as the machines primary OS.

Initial impressions are positive. In fact, after about 20 minutes I fell in love with it! It really does feel like a true progression away from Windows XP.

Sure, it feels a lot like ‘Vista with a facelift’. But its a functional facelift, with new features and tweaks that Windows has been crying out for since they announced the replacement for XP over 5 years ago.

Installation was a breeze. The whole thing took less than 30 minutes and my graphics, wifi and sound all worked without any manual installation.

Boot up time is snappy and the whole thing has an “almost finished” feel about it. Quite amazing considering the short amount of time it has been since they announced they would be canning Vista so soon after its birth.

I have been critical of Windows 7 in the past. Mainly because I really do like Vista and I hoped that Microsoft would try to steady the ship before re-working and re-releasing it under a new name. If anything, I felt bad for Vista. It’s release was a fanfare which soon turned into a flogging.

Using the new 7 beta you start to get the impression that the
developers really are working on something they are proud of.

And fingers crossed Microsoft may finally be listening and moving towards an OS which will be welcomed by the nerds and also the housewives.

Windows Startup Showdown: Windows 7 Beta Boasts Sub-30 Second Boot Time

LifeHacker just did some testing of the new Windows 7 beta to try and gauge its boot time response:

That all said, the numbers:

Operating System	Average time to reach desktop
Windows 7 Ultimate (Beta, Build 7000, 32-bit)	28 seconds
Windows 7 Ultimate (Preview, Build 6801, PDC edition, 32-bit)	32 seconds
Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit, SP1)	33 seconds
Windows XP Professional (SP3)	40 seconds

Here you can see that for the first time, Windows is offering a sub-30 second start time on pretty standard modern hardware, for the first time in at least a long time (if ever, I don’t have a copy of Windows 95 or 3.1 to test).

Now, 20-30 seconds is deemed “impressive” by anyone testing a Windows system. In fact, its decent for ANY OS.

The thing is, I’m not that impressed, let me explain.

Sit down for a moment and count to 20, in real time, use your watch to help.

Now do the same but count to 30. No distractions, just counting.

Trust me, it takes AGES. A 30 seconds boot sequence is just NOT good enough for a modern OS. If your TV or games console took that long to boot up you’d take it back!

If I were Microsoft I’d give up on the fast-boot-time boast. Its just not worth the backlash.