The First Step...two at a time...

The ThinkPad X301 is simply an amazing machine - quiet (SSD hard drive and if there is a fan I haven't heard it), fast, solid, light, terrific keyboard and screen and all the touches that make a ThinkPad the best notebook PC on the market. If you are measuring for anything more than sheer specs, the ThinkPad trounces everything. The attention to detail in the design borders on obsessive, and the X301 is everything I wanted in a notebook: a great LED-backlit screen, a full-size keyboard with terrific feel, ~3 pounds, an optical (no I don't use it much, yes I want it anyway) and built like you could throw it at a brick wall and it would work (and pretty much it would).

So I took the leap of running Win7 on it out of the gate. I am running Win7 as my daily machine, with Notes, Office 2008, the VPN and all the other things I run standard. Everything works perfectly, though I've had to set several things to "compatibility mode" which is simple. I'm running and working fine.

What impresses me is how amazingly fast it all is: boot, resume from sleep, shut down, connecting, everything seems to just happen. I've had no lockups or blue screens at all.

I really like the new task bar - it is a far cry from the Vista Sidebar in terms of style and function. Connectivity seems a little limited and but is very simple, somtimes to the point of confusion if you want to do some advanced setup. There are many things (including Lenovo's Access Connections which will be available for Win7 I'm sure) to help on that in any case. Also, I'm guessing I'll look back at the new arrangement in Win7 and wonder why they didn't do it that way before.

I like the "preview" feature when you hover over icons on the task bar - really useful and inuitive. I could go on, but Gizmodo's writeup on Win7 covers the bases well.

I was early to Vista as well, and went back to XP, tired of all the battles I had to fight to run my PC. I tried again later with the same result. Couldn't solve the performance, the compatibility or the ease of use well enough to be worth it. And it ran like a pig.

Win7 is putting the "Win" back in "winner" - I expect Microsoft to be running downhill with consumer customers as well as enterprise looking for a way out of XP without having to do Vista.

Win7 appears to have it all, and it will be interesting to see how things play out. It won't be dull...