A while back I decided I wanted to try Windows 7 Beta, but since I had Windows Server 2008 installed already, I decided to try Windows Server 2008 R2 instead and just upgrade my existing installation.

So I did an upgrade on my work laptop, a HP Compaq 6910p. The upgrade went without any problems. I have been using the machine every day for about 6 weeks now, and not one bluescreen and I can't remember having any other problems either. The only "problem" I had, is after upgrading, I had to do the same hacks to get bluetooth working again as I did on Server 2008.

Conclusions:

I'm very happy with Windows Server 7 or 2008 R2. Things have only become better since Vista and Server 2008. I must say I don't notice any performance differences, but I hope they will come after a fresh install. I have been using the OS every day in my job as a programmer, and there has been no complications. I think this is the best OS I have ever used.

Often I have had problems logging in to remote desktops because the two user sessions Microsoft allows you to have are occupied. This is very annoying and until Windows Server 2008, you got no choice to log of the other users. There is however a smart little command line tool to do this.

To see logged in users, type: qwinsta /server:SERVERNAME
To log out an existing session, type: rwinsta /server:SERVERNAME SESSIONNAME

Here is an example from my machine:

C:\Users\gm>qwinsta /server:kraftwerk
 SESSIONNAME       USERNAME                 ID  STATE   TYPE        DEVICE
 services                                    0  Disc
 console                                     1  Conn
 rdp-tcp#0         gm                        2  Active  rdpwd
 rdp-tcp                                 65536  Listen

C:\Users\gm>rwinsta /server:kraftwerk rdp-tcp#0

This week I finally got around to install Windows Server 2008 on my laptop. I have a HP Compaq 6910p laptop, which is a good laptop with 64 bit dual core processor and 4 gb of RAM.

Since I have a 64-bit CPU and have been running Vista 64 for some time without any problems, I installed the 64 bit enterprise edition.

I followed the blogpost: Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS to get the OS configured. Which got me pretty far, but not all the way there.

For drivers I downloaded the Vista drivers from HP's support page. They worked good except for the bluetoouth driver. But apparently, Microsoft has decided that bluetooth is not for servers, so there is no support. Both my bluetooth mouse and keyboard works with the supplied dongle, but not with the built in device.

I also turned of Internet Explorer Enhanced Security, which is nice on a production server, but extremly annoying on your desktop. This is done in Server Manager - Security Information - Configure IE ESC.

I also use virtual pc's a bit and figured Hyper-V would be cool instead of Virtual PC or Virtual Server, but when I activated this, the sleep function on my laptop no longer worked. I did find a good hack for enabling sleep with Hyper-V. Works ok, but it's not 100% ideal solution.

The current version of Live Messenger would not install either, but the MSI-version of Messenger 8.1 would install. Apparantly you can also copy the installed files from a Vista machine to get newer versions running, but I haven't tried.

Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Firefox, Daemon tools all installed wihout any problems.

Final thoughts
All in all, I am very happy with my transition to Server 2008. It seems faster than Vista, and the fact that you have to turn all the bloat on instead of the opposite makes it great.

Update: I got bluetooth devices working using this blog post: Installing the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack on Windows Server 2008