Well we're now in day 2 of the OS switch and all is great. I left my computer running overnight with a few programs open to see what would happen. The programs were:

• Adobe Photoshop
  
• Visual Studio 2008 (2 instances)
  
• Visual Studio 2005
  
• SQL Server Management Studio
  
• Firefox (with 8 tabs open)

I checked the memory usage before going to be, then when I got it it really hadn't changed all that much, letting me know that it releases resources much better than Vista ever did. My applications, such as Visual Studio, open so much faster than they ever did in Windows XP, so I'm still 100% happy with my decision to make the switch to Windows 7.

Now some major advantages to running Windows 7, at least from a developers standpoint. First, Windows 7 comes with the .Net Framework 3.5 w/ Service Pack 1 straight out of the box, one less thing to have to install and get up and ready to write some code. Visual Studio 2008 Professional acts as if it were designed for Windows 7, it's so fast and responsive, much better than it ever was with Vista (or even XP). With XP it would take almost a minute to get up and loaded, with Windows 7 it takes mere seconds, quite the improvement if you ask me. Nice thing, even thought I'm running Windows 7 with 3.5 SP1 installed, I can still compile and targer the 2.0 Framework for Windows 7.

I can, on a single OS, write a single application that will work for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. There are some nice libraries available for Windows 7 development as well, such as the Windows API Code Pack, which is a set of libraries which allows me to write Windows 7 application today, even though they're not in the Framework yet. It's definitely a nice addition to my coding library.

Another nice addition is that PowerShell is built right into Windows 7, no need to wonder if your machine is running it, PowerShell 2.0 is integrated into Windows 7. You can now use the PowerShell engine in your applications without having to install anything extra, a real nice addition if you ask me.

All in all, so far this is a good OS from Microsoft, it's fast, responsive and it even looks nice. Stay tuned for more entries on my switch to Windows 7 in the coming days for even more information on why making the switch is more than worth it.