I’m now running Build 5057 on my primary machine and it is going extremely smooth.  I transferred about 20 GB of data a one go from one of my SAMBA servers to the Win7 machine without any of the issues I experienced on build 7001.  Truly I have had less trouble with the two Windows 7 Betas I have been running than with most final releases of Linux systems. It also “feels” noticeably faster and lighter than Vista, which with SP 2 RC installed is a pretty good OS.

Here’s a list of software I have installed and running on Build 5057 that seems to be running without a hitch:

• Office 2007 with all updates.
• WinSCP
• Putty
• Evernote Windows Client
• Windows Live Writer
• iTunes (its such a dog on Windows I don’t know that it can ever be said to run without a hitch, but is syncs my iPhone and I can connect to the store).
• Firefox 3.1 B3 (wow, beta on beta).
• Gimp 2.6.5.
• Google Talk Labs Edition
• Nod 32 AV.
• Notepad2 (as a full replacement for Notepad).

Here is the easiest way I have found to remove the watermark Windows Betas put on the desktop.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/01/06/remove-watermark-32-bit-and-64-bit-universal-patch-free-download-for-windows-7-vista-and-server-2008/

We I’m back to the Windows 7 Beta.  I think I solved the problem of the BSOD when downloading a large set of files (like 6.3GB of mp3 files) from my Linux file server.  I built an entirely new server (as in loaded new server software on an existing box)  and copied the files from the main server to the new server.  Downloading from the new server to Windows 7 caused a BSOD.

I flattened the new server, reinstalled Linux and samba then loaded the mp3’s on the server from another source then downloaded to Windows 7.  That went without a hitch.  As a result I conclude that the problem was in the files on the server, not with Windows 7.  However this still concerns me.  Tonight I’m going to run fsck on the Linux server and then delete and restore the mp3s. 

But back to Win 7, I’m running it on my main production laptop now.  I haven’t quite gone all the way and installed iTunes and made it the machine I back my iPod to.  But if all goes well for the next couple of days I’ll consider that as well.  Just because I know you’re dying to see it, here’s a screenshot of my Win 7 Desktop.

I’m really starting to like the way the new task bar works, especially since I found out how to turn on the Quick Links bar so I can add locations.  I still don’t know about libraries, so I’m ignoring them for now.