I have taken the evenings off from creating content to try and get my laptop work on the latest OS available from Microsoft! Windows 7.
Why you might ask… i was thinking it will be an interesting experiment and might return my confidence with the windows OS. so how was it?
I will start with the process.

In the first part i realized that the upgrade option is only available from Vista Ultimate SP1, So i had my Vista Enterprise in the drive and got my XP upgraded to the Vista Ultimate.
Right after that i updated the Vista to the latest patches and service packs and put the Windows 7.
Surprise. i get an error stating that you cannot upgrade the Vista Enterprise to the Windows 7 but only the Vista Ultimate is able to upgrade.
I decided to leave it and just make my Vista working with all the office software including the VPN client and the VMWare workstation.
And after a few hours i have left it as it.
I could not accept this situation and yesterday just decided to Google my situation. feeling like an idiot not doing this earlier the feeling was worsen after realizing my solution was to change a key in the registry from Enterprise to Ultimate, yes that makes you feel great doesn’t it.
Ok so i have made the change and all was working very very well. until i decided to do the windows update dance. and now my system is not willing to start at all.
For this reason i have not yet posted any real impressions from the Windows 7 and it seems that the VM with the Windows 7 i had was much more stable then my current configuration.
At this time i am making the final tries to make my PC boot correctly, these seem to go avail and my machine likes the BSOD more then working like it did earlier.
So i decided in the spirit of windows 2000 to do a repair of the install, reading some info on the net made me go to the system restore menu and try my luck. to say the truth i could not find the system restore link the way they described it on the forum so i decided to open the control panel and use the search capability, to my surprise it works really well and the 5th link was actually the one i needed.
After a few days i have been deleting drivers and trying to fight a BSOD of the 0x000008E kind i have decided to try and just install the windows on top of the existing one and see how that goes.
All the help i got from this post about restoring was not impacting the machine at all.
I have to say that recovery is not the walk in the park you would expect from the established windows after the time machine of the mac.
But that is probably the reason i am writing this post over my G5 and not my laptop, more probably so due to the 23″ screen.
So now i have a machine with nothing installed on it.
Its running nice but a bit useless.
As for the upgraded windows i have no idea what happened to the files but looking at program files most of it got deleted by the install apparently, It was a wise move to backup all prior to the install.
I have discovered after a short fright that the Cisco VPN was my problem.
As for the usability after a couple of days with the Windows 7 i have to say that windows team have done a nice job, they have also made the windows more like OSX. but with the change comes problems, to avid windows users the access to your information on the disks is a bit hidden and makes you click just more. for the home users the way information is ordered is very easy and intuitive.
For the look and feel of the system i can say it seems quicker then the Vista and less cluttered, not too many side bars or other items lurking on the .
The taskbar is better and reminds me of the OSX again joining the applications windows under one icon and popping a preview on top of it, i like it alot wspecially when using multiple windows of Acrobat.
Over all the system is better then the vista and seems to be intuitive, the similarities to OSX will probably keep users from upgrading if the software price will be right.
Update:
I have found a feature showdown of the OSX VS Windows 7 on lifehacker.com, it does make you think of how well constructed the task bar in 7 is.