New Stable version of CyanogenMod 7.1: first impressions on HTC Hero

Yesterday a new stable version (7.1) of CyanogenMod was officially released for a long list of devices, including my ancient HTC Hero. Now, I'm not the kind of person that needs to have the latest version of everything the whole time, not at all ... in fact I'm typing this on a PC running Vista ... but as I was extremely happy with CM6.1, I was curious to find out how 7.1 would compare to that ... I dreaded the prospect of reinstalling everything again, so I decided to try and only wipe the Dalvik Cache, flash the new ROM and mount the ext3 partition on my SD-card again (using Link2SD) and indeed, everything seems to work fine.

I have only been running it since last night, so these are only first impressions ...
Overall I would say it does feel stable and apps are running well, I have not yet come across any problems or Forced Closes anywhere.
The main negative points so far seem to be:
- less storage space left: this ROM is bigger then 6.1; which is logical Gingerbread (the base for 7.1) takes up more room then Froyo (base for 6.1)
- more sluggish response from the Launcher (I had the same widgets and screen icons on my home screen and you can visibly see it takes longer to redraw those now); this is probably confirming what I had read before that the lack of speed of the HTC Hero, means that running Gingerbread on this device is stretching it at its limits ... I'll remove some of the widgets (to be honest, I don't really use that many of them, they just look nice) and see if I can live with the speed then ...
I was surprised however to see that in most apps (I don't play games on my Hero) I didn't notice any negative impact on speed (so far), which is really the main thing.
- battery drainage: this is always one of the more important topics ... on the 6.1 I had the impression this was improved compared to the stock 2.1 HTC Hero ROM, so much that I even retested the original battery, to find out it still couldn't handle my heavy duty usage and end up going back to my Chinese double capacity battery.
As I mentioned, I have only been using the ROM for a few hours last night, then recharged during the night and have been using it again since this morning, so it's way too soon for any definitive conclusions on this, but the 7.1 does seem to soak up more power ... if so, this might be another reason to go back to 6.1 (depending on how bad it is) ...


To conclude: it's too soon to judge the new CM7.1 for Hero, you can expect my feedback on that in a week or so ... it does work well, however I'm already having some concerns, mainly regarding speed impact (on this older device) and battery drain. For me having Gingerbread is not a must at all, Froyo is more than enough for me, so I might be downgrading again to CM6.1 as I have been really happy using that one! Anyway, still I send out a big thanks to all the people contributing  to CyanogenMod, not only do they create a superior ROM to what most company's provide, but also they keep the older devices alive, thanks for that and keep up the good work!


UPDATE: I had to stop testing CM7.1 as I encountered problems with the phone functionality ... yes, indeed this thing also needs to work properly as a phone (something we tend to forget sometimes) ... not sure if it's the ROM itself or only the radio used here or the fact that I only wiped the Dalvik cache when installing it ... anyway, I couldn't continue like this, I need my phone for work, so as we speak CM6.1 is being reinstalled now ... it was fun while it lasted, but as I mentioned earlier, there's nothing that Gingerbread offers that I need to have on this device, so I'm more than happy to go back to Froyo ...


UPDATE2: Ouch, this has been more complicated then I wanted it to be ... I got into a bootloop, only to find out later different versions of the Bootloader are used for CM 6.x and 7.x so you need to reflash that one first ... too late now, no recovery anymore, only HBOOT ...
Fortunately I keep all the original RUU files on my HD and you can extract the HEROIMG.ZIP from that (start the program and look for in in a temp folder, it's called ROM.zip), rename it and copy to SD and then flash back to stock ROM ... so that's where we are now, for now I'll just use it as such, when I have the time for it, I'll root it again and get the backup back up ... 
I do want to go back to CM 6.1 (Froyo) not to 2.1 ...