Windows 7 vs XP

[johnridley]

I put XP on my new machine, Saturday and Sunday as an experiment.

The install took three tries. The first time, I told it to install on the 80GB fresh partition that I created by wiping out the Win 7 partition. For some reason, the XP installer decided that it would be a great idea to make the second, existing partition the system partition, and that it would be swell if it was called drive L:. And you can't change the drive letter on system partitions.
The only way to stop it doing that that I could find was to copy the data from that drive somewhere else, unplug the other drives, kill ALL the partitions on that drive and then install to the one and only partition.

Anyway, I'm torn now on which version to go with in the long run. I feel MUCH more at home on XP, I can navigate without thinking about it, but it feels a little clunky. I think Windows 7 must use the graphics card's acceleration functions when rendering the desktop, because it feels much more smooth.

If only there was a way to get back to the proper Windows Explorer I would be back on 7 in a second.

Comments

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that it's faster because it's skinnier. I think it's just as likely that it knows how to take full advantage of several GB of RAM, a 4 core CPU and a decent graphics card to make the system feel faster.

In any case, it doesn't much matter why it's faster, but it is faster.