I just installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 RC on a Shuttle xpc box. 64 bit. The first application I installed is Chrome. There is no need to add the in process plugin argument anymore to the chrome. It works just fine after the installation. This box is connected to my TV using HDMIvideo and SPDIF audio. I had Vista on it until now. Vista wouldn’t play DTS or Dolby Digital through the Denon AVI. Windows 7 played both right after the first boot. No driver installation nothing required. The display on the TV is much better than that was on Vista.

While reading the post on SSD performance in Windows 7, I realized that one of my experiments may have had some merit. But since it wasn’t really a true SSD and it wasn’t even Windows Vista, may be it didn’t do any good? It was a 1GB flash drive where I kept my page file when I had Windows XP running on my computer. After reading a lot of articles about flash drives and their performance, I decided to stop that practice. On Windows 7 now it is recommeded to use a real SSD for page file storage if you have one. 

I have installed Windows 7 RC on a really old and noisy PATA drive. Yesterday night I left the computer on and it was churning all night. I have disabled sleep because of motherboard incompatibility. By morning it was silent. I will leave it on tonight to see how it goes. The post says engineers have tried to minimize read and write. 

Unlike Vista, the Windows 7 beta performance did not degrade much over a period of time. Vista performance degraded on the same computer which has many hard drives and lots of applications installed. The CPU and memory were never the problem. Windows 7 experience index details gave me warning that under certain load the hard drive may cause slow performance even though the score is 5.3.

Completed the installation of Windows 7 RC. I started installation right from the Windows 7 Beta. Here is the image of RC installing from the beta. In my previous post I said I will be using imgburn to burn the image. I did not. After downloading, Windows 7 beta showed me its own burning option as default and I tried. Unlike my earlier experience, this time it burned and verified the disk correctly. Installation from that disk had no issues. Going forward I will use the built in burner for most purposes. I am not sure about the support for img type files. 

When I installed beta, I had to provide two drivers. One for the PCI IDE controller card so that Windows will recognize the PATA drive connected to it. This is an old drive where I am running the Windows 7. Another driver was provided for the Wireless N USB adaptor from Linksys. I am guessing that installaing from the beta might have helped in picking up those drivers. 

I have dual boot on this computer with other one being Windows Vista 32 bit. I had changed the boot order to default to Vista. After installation Windows 7 RC set it back to itself. No big deal. Since I am the only one to to use the Windows 7 boot, I need to set Vista as default OS. 

Connecting to wireless network was very easy. I do not have my router broadcasting the ID. I was glad to see an option to select hidden networks. As soon as I typed in the ID, Windows 7 showed me the correct encryption type. All I needed to do was to provide the password. 

The first thing got installed was flash player. Next is google Chrome. It still needs -in-process-plugins command line argument added to the properties. If you have pinned it to the taskbar, press shift and right click to get the menu that has peoperties. I use Chrome because it provides more real estate. Believe it or not, Microsoft sites and Silverlight applications run better under Chrome. But Chrome crashes on finance.google.com on my Windows 7 64bit. I use IE8 for that site. Ironic. Pandora didn’t work in Chrome. Have to check if this is a flash plugin issue.

Update on Pandora: Yes, it was a flash plugin issue. Pandora doesn’t seem to be checking for the plugin in Chrome. 

I noticed that my favorite font Consolas is part of Windows 7 now. Not sure if it was there in beta. To test the theme saving I changed all fonts to Segoe Script. To select multiple pictures for your theme slideshow, do not click on the picture but rather click on the check box that appear when you mouse over the picture. If you click any picture, all other selection will be removed. 

Internet Explorer 64bit is still not the default browser on Windows 7 64bit edition. I hope we all learn the lessons from 32bit to 64bit transition so that whenever 128bit becomes a necessity, we will have a smooth transition. 

I am still not impressed with the start button mouse over effect. The button is not that bad, I like it. The mouse over effect somehow doesn’t match the button. 

There are more desktop gadgets now. I wish I could resize the stocks gadget. I usually close it because it can show only handful on the box and then I need to scroll. Defeats the purpose of the gadget. The motto for gadgets should be no scrolling as much possible. 

Did we just loose a bunch of screen savers in the RC? The list is too small. I don’t remember how many I had. 

Saving the theme is pretty good. But whenever I make a change I want to overwrite my current them. But doesn’t seem to have an option. I save the unsaved theme using the same name and then right click the old one and delete. As soon as you click a theme, it gets selected and then you cannot delete it. You should click on another theme and then right click on the theme you want to delete to be able to delete it. 

In the beta version, I think snipping tool had the show selection ink option selected by default. This time by default it is unselected. What was the default format to save? JPEG? This time it showed PNG. 

I love the new logon screen background. 

Update on the shutdown issue: The problem is still there. After shutting down fan is still running. Pressing the power button did not start the computer which means that computer was not in a shutdown state. I pressed the power button for 5 seconds and the fan stopped and heard the hard drive spin stopping. 

Time start installing anti virus then all MSDN stuff.

Here is a link from Technet.

I am downloading the RC right now. 64bit. There is no upgrade option from beta. I will have to re-install all those MSDN software after installing the RC. Most MSDN developer tools worked without any issues in beta. I was even able to develop some Silverlight application using Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio.

Two things I am looking forward to are how my shutdown experience is and the Linksys USB wireless N adaptor working.

Shutdown was not working in beta. The ASUS P5B motherboard is to blame. I had a lot of commenters they have the same problem and their motherboard is ASUS P5B or even P5K series. I need to find out which motherboard maker had the least number of issues with Windows 7 beta. 

My Linksys USB adaptor (WUSB600N) wouldn’t get power at startup. I needed to unplug and plug the device to get it to work. Sometimes if there is no network activity, the device would shutown and wouldn’t wake unless I unplug and plug again. This may be an issue with the motherboard. But other USB devices are shutting down. 

Ok, the download is complete. Less than 30 minutes to download the 3GB file. Comcast connection is pretty good for downloading. I was playing the above video, listening to Pandora while downloading the file. I cannot complain above Comcast connection quality for most common tasks. The only thing a Comcast connection is not good is for playing online games. 

I will be burning the ISO file using imgburn, the best image burning software out there. I don’t use the Microsoft suggested tools. I have tried them all but this one is the easiest and most reliable. 

When I registered for download, the site showed a key. I wrote it down. Then it needed the download manager. So I accept and install download manager and Internet Explorer goes back to the download page and shows me a new key. I am thinking this would be the case with most users and there would be a lot of wasted keys. May be it doesn’t matter. But it exposes a limitation or a bug.

Do you know that a 32 bit Internet Explorer is the default in Windows XP 64 Bit Edition? Have you ever seen this?