Yes, Windows 7 is dull. Once that you become used to the look, some of which is extremely dull, Windows 7 is so boring to the point where you forget about it.

Wait before you jump on me. An operating system is not meant to be invasive or in your face. It is a platform on which the end user runs productive software or fun stuff. An operating system should work seamlessly in the background, and Windows 7 does that out of the box.

Where with XP or Vista, you could tussle with them while trying to hook up to a network etc, Windows 7 just gets on with it, assuming that there is good manufacturer support for the hardware.

I hooked up a cheap no name webcam of a few years vintage to my spare Windows 7 machine just to see how much it could screw up the OS, and it didn’t. The webcam actually works. It may not be able to use the utility which enabled a full screen view, but who would use it like that anyway?

Regrouping after errors is a breeze too. Windows System Restore, first seen in Windows ME was not good. It was just a process that one could use before finally succumbing to a complete re-install. XP was not much better either, and a repair install didn’t always do what it promised. Vista System Restore was the first version that I ever used where there was a 99% chance of success, but it was slow. Windows 7 System Restore is brilliant and fast. The trouble is that I no longer have a chance to nervously pace up and down or tear my hair out. 

The only challenge that I get these days is when somebody brings a broken Windows XP or 2000 system to me for fixing. Let’s face it, when we were screwing around with the ‘fun four’ system files in Win 3x/9x, we all hoped that there would come a day when we could power up the computer and it would just work, dammit. Well, that day is here, and as my grand-daughter says to me quite often, “what do we do now?”

If it wasn’t for the fact that I answer technical questions in the Microsoft Forums, I would not spend as much time in front of the computer as I do, purely because I don’t have to keep rectifying errors and performance issues.

Windows 7 is great but oh so dull. So, I give thanks to the MS Office ribbon which can sometimes keep me amused in a negative kind of way, and YouTube where I now have the time to look for historical videos of my homeland, times which I may have missed because I was too busy trying to get Windows to work.