windows 7, eh?

well after the fiasco that i've heard is called windows vista (i've never used it, and with any luck never will), microsoft is trying to redeem themselves somewhat with a new release of their windows operating system, called windows 7.

the windows 7 release-candidate was let loose about a month ago, and you can download and play around with it for free :) it's actually not that bad, as far as windows goes. based on my low expecations when it comes to windows, i'm mildly impressed.

in order to install win7 on my macbook, i had to play around with the partitions on my hard drive. having played with them a few months ago and screwing it up, i thought it best to back up all my things and do a clean reformat, repartition, reinstall of everything.

(my partition table got mussed up because i had played around with linux a little on my macbook, and it seems that apple's use of an efi partition table doesn't play as nice as it should with "normal" partition tables.)

my partitions looked something like this:

1. mac os x (30 gigs or so)
2. mac /Users filesystem for personal data and so on (200 gigs or so)
   
3. windows 7 (20 gigs)

i was surprised that mac os x didn't straigtforwardly support mounting a partition at boot time like i wanted (and like i have set up on all my linux machines, to separate my user data from the system files, making reinstalling a new/different os or distribution easy). i played around with it and read some forums that said it wasn't possible, but..i did it and it works like a beauty.

after reinstalling mac os x and restoring my backed up data, i started up boot camp assistant, which was 100% unhelpful, because it doesn't expect a customized partition setup like i have. so, i just put in the win7 dvd and booted up from it. having never installed windows on a mac i wasn't sure what to expect..i know installing windows xp when linux is already on the hard drive blew away your linux, but i had my stuff backed up in case win7 got any ideas...

the install process took a long time, and had to be restarted a couple of times. it just seemed to stop at 12% and not do anything, so after about the third reboot i decided to just let it do its thing for a while, and when i came back a few hours later it was at 98%.

so now i'm up and running in windows 7 on my macbook. beauty, right? well, i'm immediately turned off by the fact that the trackpad doesn't do right-click, even with the option selected in the bootcamp drivers configuration window. with the amount of right-clicking required in windows (surprisingly annoyingly much, by the way. i didn't notice it much until i used a mac for 6 months or so), the lack of it scared me away (windows was even more useless than usual to me). of course my fiancee irina promptly pointed out that i have this wireless mouse i never use (a logitech mx1000- very nice mouse by the way) because the macbook's trackpad is so sexy. i still didn't use my new windows 7 for a few weeks, regardless. i don't have much of a desk for putting a mouse on anyway, and who wants to leave the sexiness of mac os x for windows anyways?

well here i am again, i thought i'd give it another try for a while. i'm thinking about updating a project i did a few years ago involving some of microsoft's development tools, so i need somewhere to play with them anyways. my mx1000 is a laser mouse, so it works well even on my current desk (which is my bed). i just ran apple's software update tool, and there's a driver update for the trackpad that might fix the right-click issue and one or two others. we'll see how it goes when i reboot...

update: the driver update from apple fixed all the trackpad issues i had noticed. hurraah!