Posted 03/07/2009 at 02:00:29pm

I was given a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop.  After replacing a defective keyboard, I contacted Dell about obtaining recovery discs for this machine.  Even after several calls to customer service and transferring ownership to myself, Dell refused to provide me recovery discs to bring this machine back to factory specs.  I then told Dell that the sun don't shine on their head when it comes to their customer support.  Anyway, that's my rant and on to a very successful Windows 7 story.  After the Dell fiasco, I decided to attempt to install Win 7 on this Dell laptop.  I have built many, many systems since my Windows 3.11 days and have come to EXPECT issues whenever you migrate to a new OS from MS.  My trepidation and apprehension were very much in-tuned to the much anticipated failure mode given several factors; i.e. This is an older laptop, it's a Beta release and it's Microsoft (previous track recordcomes into play here).  Much to my total amazement, Windows 7 loaded perfectly first time out, found everything as far as drivers, connections, etc. and has only provided me with a couple of minor issues.  One being, that when you shut the machine down, it does not save your desktop as you had configured it before shutting down the system, and the video card in the laptop won't run most of the screen savers available (for once, it's not an MS issue).  Ibuntu is very good, but if you're not a native Linux geek, you may be dazed and confused, or if you're not an OS X Macker hacker, Windows is about your only option.  I run multiple OSes on multiple PC's/laptops and have found Win 7 to be very stable, a lot faster than Vista (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions) and very easy to use once you get a good grasp on what's changed and where it's at.  It is very intuitive and, in my opinion, very easy to use.  After running Windows 7 for a couple of months now, I will be an early adopter when the final release is made.  Just my put, but I'm somewhat impressed that the ole MS is trying to get it right the first time.