I’ve just migrated from the Windows 7 RC1 to the full retail install of Windows 7. I like it.

For years I’ve treated Windows as a necessary evil for playing PC games. Outside of that scope, I’d much rather run Linux or BSD. Windows XP was the first time I actually enjoyed a Microsoft OS, at least in regards to the user interface (with a lot of tweaking after install, those defaults = ewww).

For the past year of running Beta and RC1, my PC has loved Windows 7. Running in 64bit is probably a big factor on the speed. It’s been downright zippy, even though I don’t have gobs of RAM (2 gigs). That’s really surprised me considering the hideous performance experiences I had with Vista. I’ve even been able to cleanly install some older software that Vista didn’t like at all. It’s also been very stable.

Games have been especially smooth and I don’t think I’ve ever had such few crashes. Not a single blue screen throughout the year, and I’m a serious power user of my PC (it’s never off or sleeping).

The DirectX10 games I’ve run haven’t really impressed me visually, but my DX9 games have run well. Dare I say it: marginally better than on Windows XP. My PC is well past the threshold for speed though, I’d still recommend XP for slower PCs. Just for reference, here’s my current hardware:

Processor: Intel E8400 Dual-Core @ 3Ghz.
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 260 (EVGA with 896Megs of DDR3 videoRAM).
Motherboard: ASUS P5K SE.
RAM: 2 Gigs of DDR2 (weakest point of my PC but honestly not bad).
HD: 1 Terabyte (Seagate @ 10k RPM).
Sound: SoundBlaster X-Fi “XtremeGamer”.

I’ve still got my big caveats with Windows. I loathe the Registry. I get frustrated at the barriers to clean Backups. I find Network file-sharing messy and problematic. And I dislike the control Microsoft tries to leverage on my own desktop, but I guess that could be worse (Apple). Overall, Windows 7 so far has been the best experience I’ve had with a Microsoft OS.

Of course, if I could run all of my PC games smoothly in Linux, I would switch desktops in a heartbeat.