Windows 7 tips & tricks, and Media Center tuner drivers

I put Windows 7 Beta 1 on my home PC the other day (as a dual boot config with Vista x64) to see what it was like; I was very pleasantly surprised, with the exception of the fact that Media Center - much as it looks nicer - didn't work out of the box with my Hauppauge Nova-T USB 2 tuner box that I use to record stuff on Media Center.

I have to admit to not using MC as the primary telly. I know some who do, but it hasn't - yet - passed the "wife" test. So we have Sky HD in the main room for most TV, though I've sneaked an XBox in there with wireless connection to the home network, and it happily picks up stuff that the main PC records... sometimes unexpectedly.

Hats off to Hauppauge for their almost peerless support forums, and to "Mr X" for his enthusiastic sponsorship of the forums. There were posts late last week on their forums saying that the Nova-T tuner was blue-screening Windows 7; he said he'd try to get a driver up and running for download early this week, and sure enough it's there and all is now well.

Today, I took the plunge and installed Windows 7 on my Lenovo Thinkpad X61 work PC - so far, so good - everything works, everything works well...

I came across ex-pat Brit and now Seattle-ite, Tim Sneath's blog earlier today - it has some great tips for what Windows 7 beta is already doing for the end user experience. Reading the list might sound trivial, but reading it on a Win7 machine (which appears to run more smoothly and quicker than anyone might expect), it's hard to stop the smile spreading across the face...

If you're going to experiment with Win7, definitely check out Tim's blog. Some great tips & tricks up there already, and hopefully more to come.