At the risk of starting another in office 'flame war' of PC vs Mac, I figured it was time to share my thoughts and experiences of Windows 7. Having owned a MacBook Pro with Tiger, Leopard and now Snow Leopard, for the last 3 years, I can confidently say I would not switch back to a Windows based computer for good again. Not because I am a Mac only 'fanboy', but given it is so easy to run Windows on a Mac now, it seems you can have be best of both.

I have recently installed Windows 7 on the Bootcamp partition of my MBP, and, all things considered, I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it. As much as there is a negative connotation when it comes to Windows Vista, it seems to me Microsoft have shaken off the demons of Vista, and made something that is definitely worthwhile. Installing on my bootcamp partition took all of about 30 minutes from scratch. Gone are the days of the dirty black white and blue DOS screens, the installer was spiced up enough that it even looked pretty. My primary reason for wanting Windows on my Mac was for wasting away weekends playing games. Windows 7 catered splendidly for this, and in some cases, ran some of my more 'taxing' software better than XP. I have had very few 'this program is not compatible with Windows 7' messages, and the few that I did get, I ignored and the programs ran smoothly anyway.

The interface is clean and polished, with a refurbished dock like start menu (OS X anyone?) which takes a bit of getting used to. There are a few cool desktop tricks for manipulating windows (try grabbing a window title bar when you have other windows open and giving it a shake with your mouse) that add a bit of eye candy to the desktop. I never really had much beef against Vista since I never really used it, but Windows 7 seems to be more stable, quick and easier to use (albeit it shares much of its base interface with Vista).

To go along with my Bootcamp version of Windows 7, I use VMWare Fusion 3 to use the same image for virtualizing my Bootcamp partition when in OS X. I find it almost seemless to run the two together, with VMWare Fusion having been redesigned, running Windows only apps does not seem so problematic anymore.

Snow Leopard isn't really a substantial upgrade for OS X as far as GUI goes, but converting the underpinnings of the kernel to 64bit and stripping out the old PowerPC architecture has certainly made a difference in performance. This coupled with a virtual install of Windows 7, I fail to see why people have such a hatred for one or the other. I have become so used to the Unix Terminal that I would be lost without it, but by the same token, running them concurrently leaves me to want for nothing (although, if I am completely honest, I could quite happily go without the Windows part!).

So if you are looking to share your Mac hardware with Windows, share it with 7. It is worth the effort, and even better, if you want it as a virtual OS, there is no question that it works well with Snow Leopard.

If you have a Windows desktop or laptop, I would recommend the upgrade to Windows 7, or better yet, buy a Mac and install both!