I started my career working in Linux and continue to do so. I recently bought a laptop with Windows 7. I like windows 7 for bringing back the performance which was lost in Vista.

I am so much used to writing code in vim and using shell for doing all development that I felt I need to look around for making windows 7 my development box.

You might argue I should use cygwin, I wanted to use native applications.

Search is ON

Command Shell:

I looked around for possible shell for windows. Windows comes packaged with cmd.exe and powershell. Powershell seemed like it will fit the bill for my requirement. My major requirement is to run python, vim, mercurial and any other software needed for development.

Editor:

I have been using vim for past 7 years and could not think of using any other editor for development. I searched whether I can get vim for windows. There are multiple versions available for Windows and found vim for win32 console, just what I wanted (http://www.vim.org/download.php#pc).

Add the editor to the PATH.

If you use some other editor, I am sure it would have been ported.

Other utilities:

Other unix utilities like grep, awk, sed, less, tee, tar and more are used in day to day work. I thought basic development environment will be complete only after I have those in my laptop. Fortunately, most everything is ported to windows and is available @ gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. If you are lazy to download packages one by one, there is another project in sourceforge which takes care of automating the download process (http://getgnuwin32.sourceforge.net/). All you need to do is download one package, extract it and run download.bat and install.bat found. Voila, all command line utilities are in your system. Check readme file for further information.

Thanks to everyone who worked on porting these software to windows, I have a workable environment in windows!

I am not claiming that this setup can replace a development environment setup on linux. This setup helps me do what i wanted to do. I feel at home if i use shell thats all .

Release Candidate (RC) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 are available for everyone to download.

You can download the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 RC from Customer Preview Program site or install through Windows Update using Windows Update Experience Kit.

If you have the SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Beta installed, you will need to uninstall that first before installing the RC.

You can also check out the SP2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 RC notable changes here.

The Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Program

Microsoft issued a draft of the Windows 7 Technical Guarantee Program to their OEM partners on December 10, giving them exactly one month to provide their feedback before Microsoft finalizes the program details. We managed to obtain a copy of the draft, which tentatively refers to the program as the “Windows 7 Upgrade Program”. Let’s take a look at the key points outlined in the draft.

• End users must purchase a new PC that is pre-installed with an eligible Windows Vista Operating System (OS), during the program eligibility window.
• The PC must have a valid Certificate of Authenticity (COA) attached.
• The only Windows Vista® versions eligible for the program are :
  1. Windows Vista® Home Premium
  2. Windows Vista® Business
  3. Windows Vista® Ultimate

  * Microsoft Windows Vista® Home Basic, Windows Vista® Starter Edition, and Windows® XP (all editions) are not qualifying products under the program.

• The Program does not support multiple upgrades for medium, large, or enterprise customers. Customers that want to upgrade multiple PCs should use the appropriate Microsoft Volume Licensing program.  Seewww.microsoft.com/licensing for more details.
• The following are the only valid upgrade paths under the program :
  1. Windows Vista® Home Premium -> Windows® 7 Home Premium
  2. Windows Vista® Business -> Windows® 7 Professional
  3. Windows Vista® Ultimate -> Windows® 7 Ultimate

Do note that this is an optional program, so not all OEMs may choose to participate. OEMs that choose to participate in this upgrade program will have the freedom to determine how to best provide qualifying end users with the details.

more here

ZDNet has compared three Microsoft Windows siblings namely Windows XP, Vista and to be released Young kind on the block Windows 7 (Beta build) and has released the results. The results are interesting and favors Windows 7. It is interesting to see Windows 7 outperform even Windows XP with 1GB memory. The comparison does not cover systems with lesser memory where XP would run happily but its not known how windows 7 will perform, Its not worth comparing Vista in low memory system as it is known to trash a lot on low memory system.

Overall Rank is

1. Window 7 (Beta build)
2. Windows XP
3. Windows Vista

They have covered lots of areas like

1. Install OS – Time it takes to install the OS
2. Boot up – Average boot time to usable desktop
3. Shut down – Average shut down time
4. Move 100MB files – Move 100MB of JPEG files from one hard drive to another
5. Move 2.5GB files – Move 2.5GB of mixed size files (ranging from 1MB to 100MB) from one hard drive to another
6. Network transfer 100MB files – Move 100MB of JPEG files from test machine to NAS device
7. Network transfer 2.5GB files – Move 2.5GB of mixed size files (ranging from 1MB to 100MB) from test machine to NAS device
8. and more …

more here

What we have here is one set of data points for one particular system, but I think that the results are very promising. The fact that Windows 7 comes out top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed. The boot time and PCMark Vantage results are particularly good.

more here