64 bit?
Going into this, I was convinced that the laptop was up to running a 64-bit OS, so I fancied giving that a go. The Windows 7 Beta x64 iso duly downloaded and burned to a DVD, I put the disk in the (newly-wiped) drive, and had a go.
The installation process itself is little different from installing Vista. Upon getting into the OS proper, it was lacking only for drivers for two components. Checking the hardware IDs revealed these to be Ricoh devices, so bound to be the card reader. Dell had a suitable driver pack, so I nabbed that and it worked a treat.
The real problems began when I wanted to install the Samsung Easy Display Manager.
This innocuously-named utility has been the source of major irritation to me in the past, so I spent a long time before installing trying to determine whether I had any other options. Whilst people running Linux do appear to (sometimes) have a solution in hand, that was no good for me in Windows. My only option was to get EDM (if you don't mind the abbreviation - it'll save me some typing) on there.
Sadly, after buggering about with that for a while, I had a load of error messages and zero success.
Everything else worked quite nicely though!
Battery life must suffer badly from the lack of backlight control though...I definitely want that.
32 bit?
Given how much I liked the general ambience of the Windows 7 experience, I thought I'd give the 32 bit version a go instead. Another 2.4 GB of download later (did I mention that my computer went into standby the first time I tried to download the x64 version? Damn good job O2 doesn't have a cap!), I had another DVD to try...
Again, the install runs without a hitch (clean install). This time every component has a suitable driver right away. By the way, I should note that Windows 7 is perfectly capable of acknowledging the action of volume adjustment keys, but most other stuff has no function at this point.
Fingers crossed...and EDM 2.2.10.1 installs smoothly, first time! Now all the overlay graphics appear, but the backlight control still doesn't work. I'm not surprised, but I am ever the optimist, so I had a go with the newer WDDM 1.1 drivers dated 20th Jan. They also were ineffective in conjunction with EDM.
Having been round the houses with this before, I knew that driver 7.15.10.1409 would work with EDM (verified this in x86 Vista before deleting it all, notes below)...Whatcha know, they also work in Windows 7! Result: all key functionality restored.
Some new behaviour that I don't think I remember from before is that the brightness appears to be limited when running on battery, versus that which is possible when plugged into the mains. The screen also auto-dims when the AC is removed...is that new, too?
Overall Impressions
Windows 7 boots very fast
The new window management tricks (half-screen etc) very handy
New taskbar will take some getting used to, but does seem like something that'd be second nature over time, and save a lot of hassle - peeking at another window and quickly returning to the first one in particular should be a neat solution to the pain of shuffling windows around
Also - it seems to accept AVG 8 Free edition, so no worries about a trial expiring.
And a bit of 'photographic' evidence:
On EDM vs Intel
EDM v2.1.2.3, v.2.1.3.2 or v2.2.10.1 all worked fine with intel IGP driver 7.15.10.1283.
Don't think EDM 2.1.2.3 used to work with 7.15.10.1409, but EDM 2.2.10.1 does.
7.15.10.1537, 7.15.10.1591 and 7.15.10.1608 don't work with EDM 2.2.10.1 (or vice-versa!).
Comparing the plain '1283 driver from Intel versus the Samsung-provided one on a file-by-file basis demonstrates that they are identical. I assume therefore that all the work must be done by EDM to get the backlight control working.
However, it seems that EDM talks to the Intel driver in order to set the backlight correctly (since it needs the right version) - and this interdependence appears to need updating for each new Intel driver release (?)
Closing remarks
Samsung:
64 bit EDM at some point please, and get it talking to newer Intel drivers asap! (You may ask why newer drivers? I find the older releases don't have great IQ for DVDs - certainly poor versus my nVidia 8800GTS - and I want to try some new drivers one day...)
Microsoft:
Looks good, thanks for this chance to swap Vista out of my laptop, this OS just seems a whole lot more usable. The thing that really wound me up about Vista was that the configuration option I was looking for never seemed to be in the place I was looking, instead it took a few minutes' work to find it. Now, that time has been reduced - much better.
The general usability improvements look likely to mean that my main PC will be going straight from XP to Windows 7 when it gets released...
Samsung Q45 owners:
In order to install Windows 7 - firstly, pick the 32-bit version, and download Easy Display Manager 2.2.10.1 from a different (newer) laptop's download centre (try here), and use Google to pick up the Intel 7.14.10.1409 driver for Vista (try here).
