I have now had Windows 7 Professional running for about 24 hours.
So far I have only experienced one major problem.
System Mechanic 9 hangs with Windows 7
Iolo Techologies’ System Mechanic 9.0.5 has hung three times. That is a bit disturbing.
I have used System Mechanic for at least 7 years, starting with ver. 6.x. I have it on two other PCs and use it at least four times a week. So it isn’t like I don’t know how to use it.
We reformatted and reinstalled Windows 7 yesterday afternoon. Downloaded System Mechanic again. It automatically detected, without any prompting, that I had entered a valid license key for it … from that machine, under Windows. So it just activated me for 5 months — which is how long the license was.
FireFox 3.5 hung ONCE. That was upsetting too.
That is about it.
Windows 7 seems fast. But, it is running on a fast machine. I haven’t seen CPU or memory usage go above 15% yet.
Networking with XP machines
Network detection could be MORE user friendly. It works, but mysteriously.
It automatically detected my XP machines. Yes, totally on its own. Second time around I didn’t even create a Home Network. But, it takes time and is intermittent.
But, I created shortcuts, per a right-click option, to three of the XP systems. Now, I can get to them, irrespective of network detection status by clicking on the shortcut. Kind of forcing a network connection. If you get Win 7, and need to network with XP, you really must do that.
Other isuues
I have two drives on this machine — as I have on most of my others. Two separate drives. C: & D:. W in 7 wasn’t real happy with that to begin with. But, that could have been how we set up the BIOS etc. So we did a quick reformat of both drives and reinstalled Win on drive C:.
So far so good. I am not using Win 7 on a regular basis yet. I will test it for at least a month, alongside my production XP system, before I will switch over. THAT IS ME.
I will keep you posted.
All the best. Cheers.
Anura Guruge
www.guruge.com
