Still looking for a job and Windows 7 Build 7057

Huh,

I just sat down to do this, and I get a call from an IT company for an interview. w00t! I've been job hunting for almost 7 weeks now. It's frustrating but doable... and at the same time, and I know this may sound weird but, it's actually kind of exciting. I finally am in a position to choose my own destiny as far as the rest of my career. It's a mix of awesome and anxiety.

Windows 7 has been on my radar for the better part of 6 months. I ran a pre-beta for a couple of weeks, then went back to Vista. Then I installed the 64 bit Beta (build 7000) and used it for 5 weeks. I also installed the beta 2 months ago on my wife's Asus eeePC 1000HA. Two days ago when I upgraded to 64 bit Build 5048. Release Candidate 1 (RC1) also known as build 7057 (rumored) has been out for a few days as well, but I held off due to reports that 7057 was slower than 5048. But how to be sure? I upgraded my wife's netbook with build 7057 and she has had little to no issues. I'm pretty happy with Windows 7. I'm not going to get all emotional like a lot of posts you might read about an Operating System. There are a lot of people who talk about OS's like they are the make or break technology of the univers and they either SUCK or ROCK, there is no inbetween.

Windows 7 is made of ROCK. It's pretty solid/stable, much more stable than Vista was at this stage (however let me point out, 7 is built on the same tech that's been refined with Vista). I still like Vista and I'm excited where Microsoft is going with their operating system with 7.

Well, to the juice of this post, this morning while I was perusing Dice.com and my email account, I looked up at my Home Theatre Personal Computer (HTPC) and thought, hmmm, I wonder what the Windows 7 Media Center is like. Ten minutes later I was installing 7. The install went well, with the exception of some fine re-configuration with my Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) (I have a 690G based motherboard, and AMD/ATI doesn't have beta or official Windows 7 drivers for it yet.). But after installing ATI Windows 7 Beta Drivers, and the install failing to install the display driver (unsupported, and I was aware of this), it did install the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) and with that application I was able to complete the display install (I needed the image expand/shrink option to expand the display to fill my TV's screen). Onto Media Center, it's really clean and simple, yet improved and awesome.

First the negatives:

-no official MKV, MP4 support in Media Center. Yes, MP4's are supported in Media Player but not Media Center. Confused? I am. A simple registry change fixes this, however, so no big deal.

Next the positives:

-The clean interface. If you own a Zune, the fonts and layout is very similar. I like the fact that MS is making an across the board effort to implement a common theme with their products. I think they need to bring this to the XBOX 360, but saldy, I don't see that happening until at least the next generation XBOX. But, MS has been surprisingly supportive of their Zune line, updating ALL of their Zune products and not just the latest generation (APPLE), so it's not out of the question.

-The Movie Library. Adding folders to the Movies Library merges all the movies into one place. It doesn't move them but it's seemless. For instance, I have movies from 3 different folders getting pulled into the Movies library, but when you select Movies from the main menu, you just see all the movies, no folders.

-The Pictures/Videos Library. Not so much for the Pictures part, but for thost that want to open a specific folder, the Videos Library allows you to add folders containing video files and then see the specific folders when you select Videos from the main menu. For example, when I select Videos, I see all the individual folders I added, like Sports, Music (Videos), Television (Shows), Animation (Cartoons), Children (Kids TV Shows).

And the rest:

-I didn't check to see if h264/x264 is supported out of the box, like Microsoft has been touting, but, when I do, I will report back. Instead, I installed the Shark007 codec pack, which is linked here on the site. I highly recommend it in it's current form.

This is really scratching the surface. There are more indepth reviews, but those were main points that stuck out to me so far. Windows 7 is shaping up to be a great OS, and while there is a lot of time between now and launch, I'm feeling confident this will be a milestone in Microsoft's legacy.