Seven to Get a Second Shot?

Yes, I know I've been railing against Windows Seven and declaring it unfit for my own use, but in the meantime I've been doing lots of reading. LOTS. It seems that this new Windows OS may have some architectural enhancements I was unaware of when I made my high-minded pronouncements, stuff like better utilization of multicore CPUs, actually useful security for antivirus and malware, supercharged network file transfer speeds, and probably more I can't think to gush about right now.

This is not to say I was wrong in my previous analyses regarding Seven's lack of killer features over the venerable and not-so-long-in-the-tooth XP, but it is an admission that I was ignorant of some of the less obvious improvements that have been engineered. That, and I got a FREE COPY at a Microsoft event a while back and have decided that it's just too difficult to leave the darned thing sitting on the shelf and keeping dust off the floor.

My plan revolves around using W7 as the main OS and then virtualize XP if (and when) I encounter a must-have application that has problems working correctly in the new environment. Whereas XP64 would allow me to install an unsigned device driver, W7 "don't play that game" in an effort to preserve system integrity and stability. And that's OK, but for the record, I've not had any problems in XP64 using unsigned drivers. In fact, XP64 has been working sterlingly for six months now, with no bluescreens AT ALL, and that's running 24-7 (no pun intended) as my main workstation.

I am intrigued by web discussions of W7's better affinity management on systems using multicore CPUs, the Intel Core I-series, in particular. My current workstation uses the Core I7-920 on an MSI X58 motherboard with 6GB tri-channel DDR3 RAM, and I'm very interested in testing the ability to get ALL the horsepower I paid for when I do things like transcode video, compress and uncompress files, and do serious multitasking with office productivity apps as well as multimedia processing and web-based browsing, downloading and whatever else I want to do.

As I prepare for this next bare metal clean install, I am assembling the latest drivers and application versions, as well as planning the best way to set it all up. The idea will be to setup W7 (likely Home Premium x64) and tweak it and tune it, then install VirtualBox and XP Pro (x86 this time) to do those (hopefully few) things W7 will refuse to accommodate. I am wary of the reach that DRM has made into MS operating systems, as well as the sheer volume of services that run by default at every boot. My intention is to minimize those services (the Black Viper is your friend) in an effort to maximize performance and eliminate third party controls on my computer.

So for now, the Strelecki Labs are in planning phase, assembling all the good stuff needed to make a clean install successful, as well as taking stock of these last 180 days (give or take) of using XP64. I'll keep you posted as I move ahead.

As always, thanks for reading!