Just got off the phone with AT&T tech support and really couldn’t be happier with the service I got.  Very cordial and helpful, and didn’t feel like so many other tech support people that are stuck on their script.  Anyway, looks like I need a new router, so I get to research that today.  Those of you that know me know how I love that.  If you have a suggesation leave it in the comments.  Needs to be gigabit, and wireless (might as well be wireless-n i suppose).

Got a new computer yesterday.  It’s this HP 2133 it’s super sweet!  was gonna go for the Eeepc, but htis one was being closed out at school (linux isn’t so hot with most of the kids), so it was too good a deal to pass up, $200.00.  The only bummer was that the linux installation was corrupted and I had to reinstall, but it’s sweet now.  Has a 1.2 Ghz processor 1GB ram and a 120GB HDD.  As long as you pay a little attention to not slamming it, it runs great!  Almost surprisingly so.  Unfortunately the wireless network at school can’t be accessed by linux (at least not by mere mortals) so it’ll probably end up with either XP or maybe the windows 7 beta, as a “net”book is a little less useful without the “net” part.  More later.

I recently installed the windows 7 beta on one of my laptops.  I used the 32 bit version and installed it on a dell d610 latitude.  The dell is sporting a 1.86GHz pentium M processer, integrated graphics, 1GB of ram and an 80GB HDD. I did a fresh install, as I’ve heard issues about “upgrading”

The install is BY FAR the smoothest of any OS install I’ve ever done.  I was also SUPER impressed that all told it took about 15 minutes… Seriously 15 minutes!  The only thing that complicated the install in any way was that my wireless card driver wasn’t installed, but when I plugged in my Ethernet cable to get the driver I was pleasantly surprised to see Windows 7 was way ahead of me.  As well as automatically getting the driver, it had detected 4 other hardware drivers it needed.  After it finished I had all the drivers i needed.

Windows 7 Homegroups are new as well, they’ve been discussed other places more thoroughly than I care to hear, I’ll just say that it works, and it’s really cool.

So long story short, the windows 7 beta runs great on a dell D610, I mean really well.  Now it doesn’t do all the lame animated crap, but I don’t go in for that crap anyway.  The important stuff, like opening an app, or moving a window around, the normal stuff, it does great… no lag… This is amazing  given it’s seriously low end configuration especially the 1GB of ram that is exactly the minimum required.  I am seriously looking forward to running it on something with some hardware overhead.

For the longest time I loved how every new version of OS X made my mac run better, not slower (that was about 2002-2005, NOT NOW).  I think Microsoft has done that here.  While I find vista stable and usable, it’s not exactly light and breezy.  I run serious workstation apps on my production machine (SQL Server, Visual Studio, Sony Vegas, Adobe CS4, etc.) so I’m not going to risk running the beta now, but for the first time ever I plan on buying the new OS when it comes out.  My only hope is that MS will make some sort of Whole Home ( like 4 licenses all together) license available like OS X does.

TimNation is go.

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