Few days ago I was in Malaysia MSDN conference which held in KLCC.
There’s nothing much about the conference besides getting a lot of latest Microsoft products updates from their experts and free stuffs like Windows 7 DVD, MSSQL 2008 cds, dummy books, t-shirt, stickers etc.
(There’s not picture in this entry as my camera is not quite ready at this moment)
To be summarized, below are the major points in coming future:
- The previous Microsoft Profession Certifications will expired on this March, new certification and exam will replace the old certification. If you’re going to be "MicroSofted", make sure you check this out: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/credential/default.mspx
- On the data center and server technology, You shouldn’t missed out how the Visualization technology to save energy, management time, learning curve/cost and money of course.
- The new development tools for developers like WPF TotSter, Silverlight, LinQ and so on.
- New cool toys like Windows 7, M.bluehoo.com, gogopin.com etc.
Ok enough for the quick updates. Here the reviews of Windows 7 running of 32bits laptops. I’ve installed Windows 7 in two laptops with this specifications:
Dell INSPIRON 5150 (5 years old):
Pentium 4 3.02GHz Hyper Threading. (32bits)
768MB of RAM
64MB Nvidia Graphic Card (Forgot the model)
Installed on 9GB second partition.
Dell INSPIRON 6400 (2 years old):
Centrino Core 2 Duo T5300 1.73GHz x 2 (32bits)
1GB of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 – 256MB
Installed on 15GB second partition.
Updated: My Laptop Performance Rating. 
Reviews:
On the installation, both laptops took me about 1.5hours to installed (excluding the pre-installation manual clean up) and about 1 hours to do follow-up featured Windows 7 Online updates.
Although Microsoft suggest 1GB of RAM on the installation, I found that it is more than enough if you’re not using integrated Graphic Card in your laptop (Shared Memory). However, I couldn’t find the update for the old 64MB Nvidia graphic card. For the new laptop, it consume above 50MB of RAM from your graphic card, one good thing is that it is very clever to auto adjust your system specification so that it will not overused your laptop processing power.
Another part I would like to emphasize is virtualization in Windows 7. Many people actually worry about the software compatibility as I do but I found that most of the software running in XP are as good as in Windows 7. In the MSDN demonstrations, you can even run the software that are 10 years ago. To know more about Virtualization and Windows 7 try watch this: http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/Virtualization-and-Windows-7/
However, you still need to do download some software and configuration is need to do virtualization. BUT, the simplest way of Virtualization: Install your Windows 7 in same machine but different partition, you then can run the programs installed in Windows XP and without changes/interfere with the Program setting/file in Windows XP. i.e. I can open Firefox, Media Player, files etc directly from the Windows XP partitions. You can even run programs from other machines is proper Virtualization Configuration is done!
On the networking speed, it has done a very good job and you no longer need to manually changed the hidden setting to ‘limit break’ the networking speed. Thus, even with same IE8 in Windows XP and 7 in same machine, I found that loading speed of IE8 in Windows 7 is 50% faster than in Windows XP!
On the security, it no longer like Windows Vista which has a lot of meaningless warning but still it manage to tighten up the security like vista. As I’m running in Windows 7 Ultimate, I doubt that Student/Home version will as flexible as Ultimate version. By the way, there are only 3 anti-virus companies which doing on going beta anti-virus programs for Windows 7: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/antivirus-partners/windows-7.aspx
However, basic security is provided which is the Windows Defender.
I’ll write more in short future. Overall, I’m quite satisfy with Windows 7 Ultimate.