Windows 7

I'm ready to move on to Windows 7. Most of the reports and experiences that I've read have been very positive. In fact I don't recall anything negative that I've heard about Windows 7 that would impact me.

My main desktop machine is running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. The reason that I selected this OS as a desktop operating system was because (1) I wanted to be developing on the same machine that my apps were being targeted for and (2) I wanted to use Hyper-V. This was a mistake. IIS7 comes on all modern Microsoft operating systems now and it turns out that as a desktop machine Hyper-V works particularly badly because it virtualizes the video card and really impacts performance of everything you're working on.

On top of this Windows Server 2008 makes it painfully difficult to install run of the mill applications that you would frequently use on your desktop such as the Zune Desktop and Windows Media Player. Granted, Server 2008 was not designed to run these apps, that's what Vista and Windows 7 are for. I now understand my folly.

I now have a dilemma. Do I keep my powerful Server 2008 machine and turn it into a "remote into" machine for running and testing applications or do I convert it to Windows 7? Using it as a remote into only machine means that I can re-enable Hyper-V however it also means that I'll have an expensive and powerful machine sitting on my home network that's hardly being used anymore.

My biggest problem with all of this is the amount of time it takes to setup a new machine but I think that while typing this I've come up with a solution. I'll buy a cheaper piece of hardware and use my Windows Home Server's image of the Server 2008 machine and restore that to the new hardware. I'll then install Windows 7 on my main power machine. This will also give me a chance to test the recoverability of a system from WHS without risk.