I haven't tried windows 7 yet, and I don't really care anymore

Earlier this year, when Microsoft announced that it would make Windows 7 beta available for testing I was quite excited. I had hated Vista, as soon as I came into direct contact with it and my newly acquired notebook came into the very broadly defined "Vista Capable" set of computers in which you could install the system, but could not use the new interface. The idea of trying out Windows 7 was appealing as it was promised as being a version that would makeup for all negative points of vista.

So I spent a while downloading the DVD image, burned it into a DVD and started the install process. That was when I found out that you can't install Windows Vista side-by-side with XP. You need a freshly formatted partition. Okay, I had started the move to my MacBook as my main computer but I wasn't really prepared to just kill off my Windows notebook. I had some work software and persona items such as photos, documents which I was still using on it and I didn't really want to have to reinstall everything on the notebook. So, I decided that testing Windows 7 wasn't so important after all. I could wait for the final version to do it all at once.

Well, now Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing and should be out in its final version in October and according to Walt Mossberg's recent article, on The Wall Stree Journal, if you are running XP you still need to reformat the hard disk to install it. Well... In light of that, guess what? I've figured out that I have no desire to run Windows 7 on my notebook.

I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing, no particular feature, that I'm looking forward to having or using, in Windows 7. I'm not saying that I won't use it, which was definitly the case with Vista, and I might end up getting a new Windows notebook for my Web development later this year. In that case I'll even make sure to wait until I can get it with Windows 7, instead of Vista, but I can really say that I'm not particularly looking forward to it.

Considering that I have been a heavy user of all versions of Windows up to XP (including the server ones), it is an interesting sign of just how far off Microsoft has managed to drive my interest, that I am more keen to try out the next release of Ubuntu than I am to try out Windows 7. Perhaps even more astounding is that I can actually install Ubuntu side by side my Windows XP, to do this, but I have to remove it to try out Windows 7.