Things I need to know about Windows 7

[Wassercrats]

One of the things that made me buy Windows 7 Professional is XP mode. I have a Windows XP CD that might have worked in a dual boot (it says "for distribution with Gateway computers" and I'm not getting another Gateway), but I read a dual boot with XP and Windows 7 will cause the restore points and shadow copies to be deleted when booting XP. This is important information that found by accident in Microsoft Windows 7 Visual Quickstart Guide. Is there anything else that deletes restore points that I should know about? How about dual booting with Linux?

I also read some troubling things about Win 7 Pro's encryption features. Would I be able to encrypt files with Win 7 Pro and use Futurequest's file manager to upload them without them being decrypted? Later, if my computer crashes, would I be able to download them and decrypt them locally on a computer other than the one I uploaded them with, as long as I remember the password?

BTW, I'm not plugging Microsoft Windows 7 Visual Quickstart Guide. The author makes it sound like it's an undisputed fact that Firefox is better than IE, and worse, he says AV software that constantly runs is a scam. Oh, and I think he even says people should find some local geek to clean out the registry. I don't know of a single registry cleaner that I'd be comfortable running, and he wants to let any old geek run any old registry cleaner.

[Kevin]

I don't know much about the Windows portions of your questions but a Linux install will not mess with your Windows system any way other than what you tell it to do (which essentially means the Linux system can mount or remove the Windows system).

In fact Linux doesn't even need to be installed to work.

[oheso]

Sorry, Wassercrats. I've used Windows 7 and administered more than 300 Windows 7 computers (in two languages) for more than a year, and I don't know the answer to your questions. I have my laptop dual-boot Windows 7 with Fedora 15 and there's no trouble with that (apart from Fedora's "known issues" with laptop sleep). But that's a very different call from dual-booting between Windows versions. Haven't attempted that.

And I haven't tried Windows 7 encryption.