Frankly, I never understood why people did not like Vista. I had not one, but at least three installations of Vista (A Media Center, laptop and a Gaming machine) and all three of them are still running with the first install (with the updates). Compare that to XP, each machine required a reinstall at least once every 6 months.

Windows 7 promises to be much better than Vista. At least in the first look.

For the test setup on Windows 2008 Server Hyper-V, I allocated 2048 Mb of Memory, standard 127 Gb VHD and an x64 Windows 7 Ultimate Install DVD. See for yourself how smooth the install process is (below). I’d let the pictures walk you through.

Before you go any further, please read the standard disclaimer¹.

Windows 7 Setup wizard kicking up	No waiting involved. Right to the Setup Wizard, Step 1	I like this already. No hitting repeated PgDn and F8, to the point!
I’m a little suspicious. Already at this stage? Upgrade should be disabled, I’m doing a clean install!!!	Whoa! No more questions? This has to be the shortest OS intallation quiz I’ve done. I’m sure one of these guys did a Linux install and sat answering 100 pages of questions and then decided to cut out all the crap!	The previous step took almost 12 minutes. I allocated just one processor to the VM, so maybe that has something to do with it.
Alright! More questions. You know what? I can answer more now coz at least I know Windows 7 works under Hyper-V.  Imagine some OSes would ask these when they can’t even probe my video card properly. Meh!	Oh come on, I never keep a password hint. Can we move on without it please?	I hope, in the interest of all the dumb people out there that Microsoft Windows 7 would, by default use recommended settings and skip this step.
About 15 minutes in! I like how I never have to tell Windows my timezone (or the time). My Powerbook still keeps sending me to Chinaland whenever I drain its battery.	Neat!	Nice! I just hope it doesn’t show me the boring Windows XP animations glorifying how Windows can make my life easier. I know!
Oh come on. Totally useless screen 1 (2 minutes)	Oh come on. More totally useless screen 2 (2 minutes)	Even more totally useless screen 3, more minutes
Sweet! The whole installation took just over 20 minutes. If I were to be installing on a native hardware, this would be much faster!	Quick check. Windows 7 would run even with 512 Mb of RAM. Me likey likey!	No classic view in Control Panel?
Can I get Aero in VM too ?	Now this is riduculous. Why should a Virtual machine know it is running virtual? What if I wanted to move a virtual to a physical machine? Or the other way around?  I definitely do not like this, foreboding to think I’d have to deal with reactivation every time I move machine around. Microsoft or not, this is not a good sign of things to come.	Well, yeah okay. Just like Microsoft. They have to move things around a little, just to show something new.
eh what?	The sound hardware isn’t detected in Window 7 under Hyper-V. Maybe, its just an RC thing.	That’s weird. No hardware driver seems missing  but where is my sound card?
Interesting but broken interface. Windows 7 RC just won’t recognize the Virtual Sound card.	I tried inserting the Hyper V integration disk	And it failed to run.
Windows Update after installation. Maybe my sound hardware would work!	I was hoping I could turn on Aero. Instead I see more awesome things. Now Windows has a MAC like interface to manage some cool effects and backgrounds. Neat stuff!	Oh I won’t
The sidebar is more inconspicuous now. The widgets just float. Not much new except memory usage is still surprisingly low.	MS Paint gets a small update. Office 2007 like toolbar now at the top. This should definitely ease things on Atom like small screens.	Finally! I won’t have to use third party wallpaper switchers. Windows 7 has this built in!
Interesting. Now if only I could get sound to work here!	Now there, gotomyPC.com  types won’t like this. I wonder how this is any different than Rdesktop or RDP over Web. Besides, I won’t really be able to use this, what with SSH tunnels and all.	Slick!
Funny, so far I haven’t seen UAC pop-up at all? They finally got it all figured out?	One more try, to get Aero to work. No chance!	Doh!, its not that my hardware is crap. Windows 7 did not run the Ratings. Bad Bad.
How well an OS installer is written can be  gauged from this one screen! Fabulous.	Something to experiment with later on.	There! UAC, first time and rightly so. The Journal writer was trying to install a printer driver! Well, shouldn’t all Microsoft software be exempt from tampering with the system :-)?
	Other than a few driver issues, the only red flag is that the OS is aware its running under Hyper-V. Not good for my comfort although some people may like this and it may go a long way in keeping checks on who does what. Maybe now IE can flag off running any Adobe Flash animations while running in virtual mode? Or, for that matter, stop those annoying “Install silverlight”, full screen animations?	The performance is certainly faster, no disk thrashing, installation is much more streamlined and with such a low memory footprint, one would wonder what took Microsoft so long. On the other hand, this comes from a person (me) who did not see any issues with Vista either, simply because I’m normally aware of what I’m doing, I know when & how to fix issues and I don’t go installing crap-ware on my computers.