I’ll admit it. I still run Windows on a few machines–mostly because I have software that needs it (like flight planning or my scanner tools). And it’s good on a notebook where drivers are tricky in Ubuntu at times.

But I’ve also been using Windows XP Professional on all my Windows boxes (one desktop, one laptop, and one HTPC) for a long time now. However, as of a couple days ago I’m running the Windows 7 Beta on my Thinkpad T61. And you know what?

I completely agree with the reviews I’ve seen. It’s good. I basically never touched Vista (since it was teh suck) but Windows 7 is snappy, easier to use, and the transition from XP isn’t that hard at all. Plus it has drivers for everything.

This definitely doesn’t feel like a beta at all. In fact, it reminds me of the Windows NT 4.0 beta days. I ran the beta as my desktop operating system for quite some time and loved it.

For a long time I believed that nothing produced by Microsoft would displace Windows XP Professional, but I’m really starting to think they’ve got a starting chance. And if it’s even a bit faster and leaner when the full release comes, that’s all the better.

I just hope there’s an in-place upgrade option for those of us using the beta. And I hope they’re smart about the pricing–especially if they really want to get folks off of XP.

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