I installed Windows 7 Beta last week but finally have decided tonight that I need to uninstall it for various reasons. It's not because I dislike it but I was forced to after running into issues. It first started when I installed a virtual drive and I'm almost certain that it was the cause of the issue. The responsiveness of the Operating System just went down fast and everything was slow from that point on. Since my install was an upgrade (from Vista to Windows 7 Beta), the upgrade itself since it's only in beta might have been a bad idea. I strongly recommend the beta testers to do a dual boot or a fresh install of the OS since upgrading could cause conflict between current installations. And the fact that it's a fresh install means that you're not going to risk your files and PC setup once you have decided to downgrade. If you decided to upgrade, it means that you're stuck with it and a format/re-image may be the only way out.
Back to my installation. Since I upgraded Vista to Windows 7 Beta, re-formatting my drive and a fresh install was my way out (at least as far as I know). Fortunately, I created a separate partition for my current drive and created an image of my setup. The image that I have was named "062907" which obviously is the date when I created it. I specifically named it this way so I know the backup date :). Although the backup was dated almost 2 years ago, it has a fresh OS setup with my favorite applications installed. I used Bart PE to image my drive and to restore. The best part about imaging my drive is I don't have to worry about installing every piece of software and setup my environment to my liking. Before I created an image, I made sure that I have all the applications that I needed installed and the OS setup was tweaked already. The restoration process took only 1 hour and 40 minutes and it was practically painless because I can do something else during that period.and everything is ready when I come back.
As far as Windows 7 Beta is concern, in my opinion, on a high level is pretty identical to Vista. Well, technically it is tweaked version of Vista. The only improvements that I have noticed is the taskbar, which provides some sort of preview of the current windows. Productivity wise, sure. but purely unnecessary. Some people have mentioned that Windows 7 was faster than Vista which is true but the performance difference was very minimal (at least in my case). Whatever the case may be, I'm sticking with my old Vista because it works. If you'd ask me, Windows XP is still my favorite and the best Microsoft OS ever but that's debatable.
- Dennis