If this post works it will be something of a miracle, given the colossally amateurish mishmash that is my hacked-together blog code, but then I am rapidly beginning to expect miracles from Microsoft's highly surprising gem of an operating system, Windows 7. I have only had it running on my PC for 48 hours but already it is punching a large hole in my long-running (and, based upon extensive prior experience, thoroughly well-justified) assumption that everything with a Microsoft logo upon it is a bloated, bug-festooned software turd which will eat your hard drive, burn through your desk and surreptitiously sell your personal data to a Syrian mafioso named Faisal.

For one like myself who is used to daily byte-wrangling with recalcitrant machines over such simple tasks as "please, computer, print this small document" and "for the love of Uncle Charlie's red lacy suspenders, please, computer, fail for once to randomly delete irreplaceable photographs of my children", Windows 7 is simply a pleasure to work with. For example, it not only picked up the existence of my printer within seconds of it being turned on, but identified it correctly, downloaded the requisite drivers and management software, and changed the printer icon to look like the actual printer. In about 30 seconds. Without me having to click anything. For me, whose daily IT experience regularly includes the joy of such informative errors as "Win32 unspecified error", and "Microsoft Office has encountered a problem and needs to explode chunks of screen into your face", a system which not only correctly identifies problems but suggests options for fixing them and then goes off and fixes them for you is frankly flabbergasting. To take another example, I've provided one of its components with nothing but the name of this blog and the credentials for my blog host, and it's letting me write this on a perfect facsimile of the actual blog, complete with backdrops, images, the works. Sharing documents is a breeze. Streaming media to my telly is a breeze. The whole experience so far is practically seamless.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not so naive as to credit Microsoft with having thought of everything. There are bound to be niggles (I dislike the "ribbon" style of folder navigation, for example) and there is no doubt some enormous security black hole lurking in the bowels of the OS which will leap up and bite us all in the collective arse at some point, but for once I find myself in the disconcerting and unfamiliar position of quietly congratulating the Redmond boys on a job which, at least for now, appears to have been jolly well done.

I'm still using Firefox for web browsing, though. There is hope for me yet.