A new Toshiba laptop has become a permanent fixture on the home network here and, as it is new, it came pre-installed with Windows 7. It has the new quad core i3 Intel processor, 4g of DDR2, and it pushes Windows 7 64-bit around very nicely indeed.

This has freed up an aging ECS L7VMM desktop machine running 2gb RAM and XP Pro. Initially, I had thoughts about installing Windows 7 onto this one, but I couldn’t get it to boot from the Windows 7 DVD. So I decided to install my original retail Vista Ultimate. At first, all went well, but during the updates install, there were a few wild minutes where I was wishing that I hadn’t started the venture.

Twenty fours hours later, the machine has stabilized and is running better than I thought that it would, taking into consideration that the ECS L7 really is bottom of the bucket stuff. There is no Vista support for the ATI Radeon 9250, but the integrated network card is holding its own. Windows update has just informed me that Service Pack 2 is ready for installation, so I will see what happens next. It can only get better from here.

So long, Windows XP. You were great in your day but have, by comparison, become something of an incalcitrant child. I knew you well but it is time to for you to go.