When my laptop died just over a year and a half ago, I made a plan: when I built my desktop I would use Linux until the new version of Windows came out (and I had saved up for it). But since I liked Ubuntu so much, I felt no need to do the whole dual-booting thing.

But given the recent-ish changes in Ubuntu (which I wasn’t exactly a fan of) plus the fact that I wanted to play games properly¹ on my computer (which was why I built it so souped up in the first place!) I decided to give in and get Windows 7.

The install process went very smoothly and so far I really like what I am seeing. It’s taking a while to get used to things since I’ve never used 7 before (I went XP to several Ubuntu releases to 7) but it’s quite intuitive, for me anyway. It’s very nice to have programs back that I gave up when I stuck with Linux, although of course the trade-off is that I have lost programs that I grew to love on Linux.

But the big upside is I no longer have to whip out my netbook whenever I need to do something like download ebooks from the library or get files from the external harddrive. That got annoying real fast.

I haven’t made the decision of whether to dual-boot Ubuntu back onto Epic Comp. I’ll give Windows 7 a few more days just on its own to force me to get used to it and then decide. I’ve been iffy on Ubuntu ever since Natty/Oneiric went off in its new direction so I’m really going to give it a good hard think.

In the meantime, Windows users, would you like to educate me on some of your favourite programs/7 features and addons? It’s been a long time since I’ve looked for new Windows programs.

1. Seriously. I skipped and jumped and juddered my way through the first two acts of Dead Island via Wine and that was enough to break me [↩]