grelmar - 6:18 am on May 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

I've been running 7 off and on for months in a virtualized environment, and I haven't had any problems so far.

As for performance, the benchmarking indicates it will actually run faster than XP, in spite of being bigger. It takes better advantage of multi-core processors and the leaps and bounds overall chip architecture has made since XP came out. DirectX 10 for graphics... Just a whole lot of code optimization to take advantage of the improvement in hardware that's happened in the nearly decade since XP came out.

They're also getting rid of some of the bloatware that has crept into windows over the years. Things that nobody really uses anyway like Windows Movie Maker.

The Kernel is bigger, as far as I can tell, but like I mentioned, this is more than offset by the hardware optimizations.

I wonder if it will run on a typical netbook; such as the many which won't manage Vista?

There's a couple of answers here.

Answer 1 is yes, it will run fine on a netbook. Haven't tried it myself, but people I trust who have tried it on netbooks say it runs as well as XP.

Answer 2 is yes, but it will be crippled. MS has said they're going to release a "Netbook Edition" of Windows 7. They realize that they can't charge the same OEM fee for netbooks and have the devices compete for market against Linux driven netbooks (and that's a pretty scary thought for MS to contemplate), so they're cooking up a special crippleware version of windows 7 that will, among other things, limit the OS to running a max of 3 apps at once.

A pretty dangerous choice, but they're painted into a corner. If they charge full price and deliver the full OS on netbooks, then they'll be crushed in the market by open source alternatives, solely based on price point. If they release the full OS, at a reduced price, on netbooks... Well, how can they justrify that to their business partners? "Our OS costs X in most cases, unless you install it on cheap hardware, in which case we'll only charge half as much." Can't you just see the gymnastics hardware makers will go through to justify the cheaper price?

Overall, if the production release of Windows 7 holds true to it's current form, it might even tempt me to go back on my pledge to never build/buy another Windows box. I dunno.

The only reason I keep a Windows system anymore is video games. And mostly, I'm too busy for video games lately, and when I have the time, casual flash games usually fill the void.

Oh, and the digital video one of my rockets captures is only comprehensible by Windows. Strange but true.