On Friday I picked up Winows 7 Ultimate (for nowehere near full price; who would pay that much for an OS?) which seemed like a good chance to give Apple’s BootCamp a try. BootCamp, for the unaware, is a Mac OS X utility that makes it dead-simple to install and run Windows (XP, Vista, or 7) on an Intel-based Mac. The utility itself doesn’t actually do a whole lot. When you start it up there’s an option to print the installation and setup guide (probably not necessary if you’re familiar with partitioning HDD’s and installing Windows) and a handful of steps that walk you through partitioning your existing OS X installation and rebooting into the Windows install. Since I have a current-gen Macbook Pro I opted for the 64-bit version of Windows (both 32 and 64-bit versions come in the retail box) and decided to give it a 117GB of my 500GB drive to work with.

Once rebooted into the installation it’s Windows all over again. Seven’s installation process is a tiny step forward over Vista’s, with nicer graphics, simpler options, and a slight faster overall install time (your mileage may very, of course). Once installed I was presented with a pretty standard looking Windows desktop, sporting the larger taskbar/dock (or whatever they call it now) and little else. Ejecting the Windows 7 installation and popping in the OS X installation disk will autorun the BootCamp setup utility, which installs a bunch of drivers and software to enable Apple-specific hardware features (specialized function keys, built-in iSight camera’s, card-specific video drivers. etc.) to work in Windows. This install seemed to take quite awhile, but it did need to install quite a bit. After all was said and done 102GB free of the 117GB allotted, making this a trimmer Windows install than previous incarnations.

After a reboot Windows was primed and ready to go. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the MBP’s multi-touch trackpad regained some of it’s greatness (it supports one and two-finger gestures in Windows), though I do miss the more advanced gestures that invoke OS X’s Expose and navigate through photos, browser history, etc. Windows 7 itself is very slick; one thing Microsoft seems to have gotten’ right this time around is the polish. There are a ton of theme options, which include window skin colors, background sets, and even system sound effects. I loved themes back in the days of Window’s 98, and it’s good to see them take a more central stage for system customization after they were largely forgotten in Windows XP and Vista. By default there are six or seven Aero themes and a handful of basic themes (including some high-contrast options and the good-old 9x style “Windows Classic”), but you can easily download about thirty or fourty more from Microsoft’s site, including international themes (Japan, Brazil, Canada, etc.) and branded themes (Coca-Cola, Gears of War, Ferrarri, etc.). I’ve downloaded them all and will probably pillage the included wallpaper images for my OS X partition.

The new taskbar/dock thing is relatively nice. Icons seem to have their own hover color (yellow for folders, blue for Internet Explorer, orange for Windows Media Player) and a small light tracks the cursors movement over the icons. These are tiny details most people won’t notice in day-to-day use, but it helps with that feeling of a polished system. Progress indicators also appear in the taskbar/dock icons; curing the BootCamp driver install, for example, I was free to browse the web in Internet Explorer and could glance at the taskbar/dock icon to see how far along the progress was (the icon background slowly filled with green based on the progress). The new system icons are nice as well, but almost feel out of place next to the Vista icons. I don’t know why Microsoft can’t get a consistent set of icons for their OS, but I haven’t noticed any pre-XP icons at least.

Having used it for a bit, Windows 7 feels like what Vista should have been: a modern, polished upgrade to Windows XP. It’s a shame Microsoft is releasing it three years too late for full price, though; as a Vista user I couldn’t bring myself to pay $200+ for what is, deep down, a shine-job on Vista. It’s slick and polished and arrived three years too late. Nice job Microsoft.