It is with great trepidation that I opened the little orange DVD box containing my disk of Windows 7. The disk was placed, as all Windows operating system disks, upside down to protect the data carrying portion. While I had already backed up all my files, I still felt worry as I placed the disk in the DVD player and pushed in the disk. Then I began installation. This took about an hour. Windows 7 evidently occupies about 3 Gig of hard-drive space. That seems awfully slim for an MS product. The machine had to restart several times. At various points, it seemed to have stalled. Then after all the tension, it restarted the last time and opened into windows.

At first glance, it seemed a changed machine. There are cool effects with the windows whereby you can see what's behind them (taken from linux but I don't complain about people mimicing good things). I first went for OpenOffice. Surely this MS operating system would have booted that freeware from my system. But no, it opened. OpenOffice continues to function just fine. I went through a checked my other freeware. GIMP, xterm, emacs, the list goes on. No issues found.

Alright, the free stuff you can just download again. Surely though, MS would find a way to ruin me with paid for software. It was time to go to itunes. Itunes, the essence of the enemy of Microsoft. The eternal thorn in their side. Itunes represents that internet dominance that MS could never get hold off. Certainly itunes would be destroyed. One double-click and I was thinking, here is where it will get me. Here is where I will curse Bill Gates' name. It opened. All my songs and videos were still there. Finally, I checked Steam. Would my Steam games remain? Would this computer, that I bought for gaming, have lost all the money I spent on games? No. They all work fine. Even my mods are still functioning fine. It even left Google Chrome alone.

This is not the Windows I know. It looks like the Windows I know, but it does not function like the Windows I know. It's suddenly being nice to me. It seems to respect my privacy and leaves my folders alone. It doesn't aggressively require me to use MS only software. Well, so far at least. I remain cautious, but at this point I can say, "well played, MS, well played."