Since I got my first windows mobile device, I've been hating the license rules for the OS. Some years ago, I bought a danish QTek S200. Since I live in Denmark, it came with a danish OS.... I always hated danish operating systems.

I want to get the OS in english and install that (I'd even pay for it). Now that appeared to be a struggle. The danish OS had a higher version number than the english. The installer refused to do a "downgrade" to a lower version number. This appeared to me to be a way for HTC (QTEK), to prevent doing changes they wouldn't allow.

Those learnings is about 4 or 5 devices ago, and is still an issue to me. Whenever I get a new device, I prefer to buy a Danish one, since we have the special danish characters on the hardware keyboard (my current device is Touch Pro), but I don't want that crappy danish OS.

Beeing a little bit of a stubborn geek of nature, I needed to find out something about this. The keyword is Hard SPL. If you need to flash a device, with an OS that the vendor doesn't like, start googling for Hard SPL.

Just reinstalled my primary laptop with Windows 7 RC. To try out something new I decided to install the 64 bit version. The installation worked pretty smooth. About an hour after I started the install, I had a running laptop. No drivers needed or any stuff like that.

So far I only discovered two issues running the Windows 7 64 bit version. Cisco discontinued developing ther VPN client for 64 bit operating systems. Apparently they build a new client called "Cisco AnyConnect". The only bitch about this is, that you have to be a registered user to download the software. I never understood that thing with Cisco - a little bit of googling and you have the client.

Daemon tools cannot be installed yet, I hope Daemon up them selves for RTM - they seem really ignorant saying "we don't support beta os's" (Bastards). This especially annoys me, because all of the downloads from MSDN is provided as an iso. At least they can be unpacked with winrar, wich basically wants me to forget that Daemon tools exists.

The conclusion of my freshly installed RC as a primary machine is: Cool. The more I start using Windows 7, the more impressed I get. Microsoft has really done a great job on this one.

A couble of days ago, Windows 7 RC1 was released on MSDN. Since I was pretty amazed by Build 7000, I couldn't wait installing the RC1. Since I'm pretty much depending on my laptop being functional these days, I can't reinstall on the primary just yet. So I decided to try an upgrade from Build 7000. This does not seem to be possible, during the install it claims not to be able to upgrade the current operating system.

Since I really want to checkout the RC1, I decided to try to install it on my MacBook Air. I did not expect this to be without problems, but accually it went quite smooth, but with a few issues.

I have not yet found the golden solution to the issues, but I did a few workarounds, to accually beeing able to use the computer.

First thing I did after installing, was as usual to enroll the macbook into my domain. After a reboot I couldn't login. This is a funny thing about the MacBook Air. Apple got some idea on this machine, to spare away a few buttons. One of them is the delete button. One way to hit delete is to hit fn + backspace. This doesn't work with my new windows 7 installation. On the logon screen you can choose "Ease of access". One thing is to have an onscreen keyboard, wich gives you the delete button. What an irritating thing, but at least I can logon now.

When I got pass the logon screen I noticed, that the keyboard is accually very much fucked up. Buttons doesn't give you the expected keystrokes, when using some special characters. For example "$" is replaced with "<", "\" is hit byt "alt" + $ ... this is quite annoying, but I find it as a result of running a Microsoft operating system on a Mac. It wasn't that gr8 under XP either.  Maybe I'll find a solution for this some day.

When I first got my MacBook Air, it took me tons of time, to figure out, that right mouse click is two fingers on the touch pad, this doesn't work anymore. I hope that the issues regarding the keyboard and touchpad is, because Bootcamp isn't updated to support win7 yet.

Next finding was, that the sound doesn't work. Googling a bit I found the drivers for the soundcard. I can't provide a link for the drivers, but if you google for "Vista_R221.zip" you can find drivers for the realtek sound card, that works.

Daemon tools still doesn't work, but that's because they ignore the fact, that windows 7 is way further than an early beta.

Conclusion of this installation is, that Windows 7 RC1 seems even better than build 7000, but if you run it on a macbook air, you asked for trouble.... can't wait till next week-end, where I hopefully will have the time to install it on my Lenovo.

Update 20090715: Hahaha... the solution to my keyboard issues was so simple, that i totally looked in the wrong place. When trying to install Bootcamp under windows 7, I got some unkown error. This made me look towards googling, and was trying all kinda suff with Bootcamp update for Vista and blablabla.... Since I don't use the MacBook Air very much, I left it with these small issues, and decided to live with them for now.

But since it's vacation time, I got some spare time to deal, with these small things that bugs me. I realised, that the real issue was, that I couldn't install Bootcamp at all. Trying to run an update for Vista showed quite useless, since it is an update, and the initial Bootcamp never got in.

On the OsX disc 1 there's a library with bootcamp -> drivers -> apple. Run the AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe and AppleMultiTouchTrackPadInstaller.exe, and everything is solved. No issues left at all, just a smooth MacBook Air running Windows 7 RC without any problems.