Can you hear me now? I didn’t think so.

I downloaded Internet Explorer 9 Beta yesterday. Today I discovered that when you open a site that you’ve pinned to the taskbar, you can’t display add-on toolbars, such as Roboform. I wanted to send you this information through the “Send feedback” option within IE9. But when I click that, I get this:

So I clicked the “Get” link, and it brought me to the Windows Live ID Sign-In Assistant 6.5 download page. I downloaded the setup file and ran it.

Oh, well. I tried.

Some things that caught my attention during the install and setup process:

• The upgrade advisor indicated I would have been OK doing an upgrade from XP to Windows 7, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. Still, it gave good and clear instructions about how to prepare for and what to expect after the upgrade.
• I was able to extend an existing partition and format the resulting larger partition all through a GUI in about 5 seconds, with appropriate warnings along the way. Nice!
• From boot-to-CD to Windows 7 desktop took less than 40 minutes.
• Tablet’s stylus and touch screen were recognized immediately, as was WLAN adapter. Sweet. Handwriting recognition in Windows 7 is excellent.
• Pop-up alert told me I needed antivirus software and took me directly to an Internet page showing multiple brands offering Windows-7-compatible software. I’m starting with the 60-day trial from Trend Micro.
• Remote desktop connection to a Vista Professional desktop: no problem whatsoever (although I did have to sign in as domain\user instead of just user).
• I live-docked the tablet and it froze. Not so nice. Had to hold the power button to get it to turn off. (This didn’t happen the next time I live-docked, and hasn’t happened since.)
• Roboform works fine on Windows 7. With a browser and Roboform, really, what else do you need? (One weird problem: sometimes when I Alt-Tab between IE8 windows, I get a User Access Control prompt and Roboform brings me to the identity settings screen. I can cancel and get out of it, though.)

Bottom line: When computers from Dell are available with Windows 7 preinstalled, that’s what my clients are going to start buying. Whether they’ll bother to upgrade any XP machines to Win7, I’m not sure.