Boxing Windows 7

I had the opportunity to download Windows 7 Ultimate this weekend and install it on my Mac. You might not be aware that Microsoft is offering to let you try Windows 7 for an entire year for free; the Release Candidate is about as close to the real thing as we're going to get until October and won't expire until June 1, 2010.

At first I was disappointed to find that Parallels 3 doesn't support Windows 7 (and I'm not upgrading to version 4 yet), but I decided to take a look at Sun's VirtualBox. Lo and behold, it's compatible with WIndows 7;—and it's free!

Less than 45 minutes after downloading W7 I was up and running. First order of business was to download and install AVG, a free antivirus, but other than that I have no plans to use W7 except to support clients. Now that I can run XP, Vista, and Windows 7 on my Mac, it's time to clean up the old Dell and get it ready to give away to a relative.

(And, no, there's no sense to be made of "7"—it's not the seventh release of the OS, and you can't get to 7 without leaving out versions 1, 2, and ME. Which, of course, we'd all rather forget. But then you'd have to forget Vista, too.)