Windows 7 and SolidWorks

I previously had this machine set up as a dual boot, XP32 and Vista64, but it quickly became aparent to me that XP 32 was redundant except for the software that came with a voice recorder. I figured that wasn’t enough reason to keep the dual boot.

When Windows 7 installed, it took the old XP directory and renamed it. This caused some minor software installation problems on the Vista64 install. More due to sloppiness on my own part than anything to do with Windows 7 install quality. The install size for XP was about 17 GB, and for Windows 7 it is about 11 GB. That’s a good sign.

It seems to have messed with the computer’s time. The time was off by an odd number (like 2 hours 45 minutes). The time error carried over to the Vista side as well.

When Windows 7 installed, it automatically got a driver for my scanner, plus it automatically set up my dual monitor system, with appropriate resolution on each. The install took maybe 20 minutes, and required one reboot.

If you haven’t done a dual boot system before, it’s easy. It takes a little guts and some faith that you’re not just overwriting all of your hard work. With a system that already has a functioning OS, make sure you have a second hard drive. Not a second partition on a single drive, but a physically separate drive. When asked where you want to install the OS, point it to the second drive. When you boot the system, it will give you 30 seconds to choose between Windows 7 and Vista, or whatever your other OS is.

When you dual boot using a non-Apple computer, you don’t need additional software to make the dual boot happen. You just install to another drive, and Windows updates the boot file so you have the option of which OS to run at boot time.

It recognized my stuff fine, including all of my external drives (although it got them in the wrong order) but Google Chrome browser doesn’t seem to work… bummer. It installs with IE8, which I haven’t used yet. I started this blog post on the Vista side, and am finishing it on Win7.  Snagit installed without a snag… and works. It comes up by default with the Win7 continuation of the Vista Aero interface. I learned recently that turning off the Aero interface in Vista is responsible for a graphics glitch where the only part of the screen that will update is the little section behind the context bar after it disappears. So on this install, I’ll try to leave the shiny sh!t turned on.

It didn’t recognize my printer. It knew what my printer was (Oki 5150n color laser printer), but there was no driver to work… so maybe here we go again with hardware and drivers. It installed the microphone correctly, although it made it look like a generic device.

Accessing the SW site, the Flash player installed in about a second. Far better than the minute of messing around you have to do in other OSs.

Overall, Win7 is noticeably peppier than Vista or XP. Because it’s dual booted on my everyday work machine, I have a good idea of how fast this computer is on Vista, and this is a good bit faster. Very noticeably faster.

While I’m wating for SW to install, some impressions. I like the way the new Win Explorer is laid out better than Vista. I guess if you’ve used Vista you’re a bit softened up for this. Almost all of the Win7 press has been positive, and most of the users are saying good things. Of course that doesn’t usually influence me that much, I’m not seeing a lot here to dislike. The UAC does pop up and darken the screen so you can’t do anything other than deal with it, but I assume that like in Vista, it should be easy enough to configure. I understand it has a slider so you can tell it how much you can tolerate.

Surprisingly, Win7 installed without any gadgets turned on by default. I like that. It doesn’t crowd me or overwhelm me with stuff to deal with right away, but I have the option.

The Alt-Tab interface is different. It will hide each window except the window the Alt-Tab cursor is currently on. I like it. It makes it clearer and more obvious to find what you are looking for.

Getting a screen shot of that was a little tricky. It wouldn’t allow the PrntScn to work, so I had to trick it and use a timer.

It also has a nice trick where if you drag a window close to the top of the monitor, it will automatically expand it full screen, but dragging your mouse back down undoes it. That is nicely executed.

So, after all that, SW is installed. I was able to activate it. Not sure how that works with two activations from different OSs coming from the same computer, but it did work.

I did a Scooby test, and it came out to about 22.7 seconds, which is almost 2 seconds faster than the same machine in Vista. 2 seconds isn’t much, but it’s 10%. At least that’s 10% in the right direction, which is more than what we are used to with successive versions of SW or Windows. I’m listed in Anna’s spreadsheets so you can check my old results anyway. For reference, this machine is an XI,MTower, C2D E8600 3.16 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Quadro FX1700.

There does not appear to be a setting for classic mode on the Control Panel. And while I’m at it, it looks to have recognized the fx1700 video card, and even installed a driver for it (8.15.11.8171). Still, SolidWorks is running in Software OGL mode. It was difficult to find the information about the graphics card. It was quite buried on the screen resolution page, click Advanced settings. I didn’t find any other way to get to the graphics card.

Anyway, this is a quickie test, and things look positive at this point. I’m not going to use this regularly, mainly because of Google Chrome and my printer. I don’t have any need at this point to be so far over the bleeding edge that all of my functioning appendages are cut off. Its nice to know this is here if I want to check or verify something, its also nice to know I don’t have to use it yet.