windows 7
Windows 7 vs. VirtualBox
After I had downloaded the ISO, I created a new VM in VirtualBox with a dynamically growing max 20GB hard disk, 1GB RAM and 128MB video memory. I mounted the ISO as the virtual CD drive and fired up the VM. Installation went through quickly, the only lag it showed was probably caused by a lack of RAM – but of course, I still wanted to work on the host system, so 1 gig had to be enough. The system boots up quite fast, which is not really a relevant metric right now because there are absolutely no applications installed yet. Windows 7 comes with Internet Explorer 8 as the default. Solitaire has been redesigned. That’s all I’ve tested so far :-) The VirtualBox Guest Additions cannot be installed currently, because they are not yet updated in order to run on Windows 7. If I find some free time, I’ll try some apps on the sandbox system. So far, I’m quite happy that it runs out of the box inside the box!
Windows 7 Public Beta
Having had troubles with overloaded download servers (hint: bittorrent exists!), Microsoft has now managed to bring the Windows 7 Public Beta downloads back online. I’m grabbing the 32-bit version right now. Will try to run it in VirtualBox. Hang around for my first report!