I installed Windows 7 Beta 1 on a computer that was around the house.  The fastest install (with ONLY 3 reboots) I have ever seen when installing Windows, Ever! That only takes me about 30 minutes into this wild goose chase. During the install of Windows 7 I had my wifi usb adapter plugged in. (The USB WiFi adapter is a pre-release wireless N) After the install was finished I was going to go on the internet….. Funny thing was that well no wifi connection as it did not see any access points. I thought that was freakn’ hilarious as I had read that most of the drivers would be able to be installed on the computer right when you plugged it in. So after finding out that my driver was not listed I went and put in the driver cd. I should have known… it had the Windows XP driver, but not the Vista driver! So I had to go the to website of the company… which was not very helpful as they make you go through a lot of pages just to find which model number you have and then it leaves you at the product page wanting you to buy it. I checked back on the cd to figure out where to get the website for the Vista driver….. I love this part the website was covered up in the pdf file by a picture!!!! Yes a Picture so much that all I saw was: “… get the Windows Vista Driver” then on the next line “…the website is….” I can tell you where the website is! It is under the freakn’ picture!!! Thanks for the help Belkin! I went back to search the web for the driver finally I got to the Canadian website of belkin under much time wasted. I followed where it needed to go and I got faced with a different problem…. “What is your models Version # I understand that a router should have different version #’s but really how crappy do you have to get to get 2 different version #’s that would make you get up from the couch to go all the way across the room to get the version # which is tucked away somewhere that people would normally never figure out where to find it! The question is how many people would look on the back and see about 5 point font telling them the version #! I could barely see it and I am near-sighted! If you are going to put the model and version # on it make sure it is in a bigger font size so that you do not need a magnifying glass to see that typing. So after I found all that I downloaded the newest driver version 2.0.0.4. I put it on an SD Card. I then ejected the SD Card carried it over and put it on the computer attached to the TV. Copied that file off. Installed it and then got wireless working! 😛 By then I was pretty unhappy with Belkins’ website. I got downloading updates: 2 which were both optional 😛 one was the video card update and the other… well I cannot even remember what it was for.

Now it is time for the Windows 7 Anti-Competitive in Nature part. I opened IE8Beta2 and it prompted me to choose either express settings or customizable settings….. which do you think I picked. I did not want to search with Live Search. I do not want to Define with Encarta. I never want to blog with Live Spaces. Most of all I just want to use Google Mail instead of Windows Live Mail. Not that I have anything against Live mail as I do have an account and it does look really nice as the designers have finally figured out what we the customer wants. 🙂

I had decided to go to customize the preferences… Guess what! The Windows Live stuff is still recommened in every box that pops up afterward! it doesn’t want you to use google search. It doesn’t want you to use maps with google or yahoo. This started to just get plain Silly as all I could do was to keep myself from deleting the IE8 executable from the computer and not leave any marks on that nice computer.

After all that I have a nice working computer which is way faster then XP.

Ryan Orser.