Windows 7 opinion?

raulst80 · Post by **raulst80** » Apr 26, 2010 10:49

hello, what do you think about windows 7?worth trying it? thanks!

vdecampo · Post by **vdecampo** » Apr 26, 2010 11:18

Better than VISTA by leaps and bounds IMO.

-Vince

jevans4949 · Post by **jevans4949** » Apr 26, 2010 12:29

Generally better to buy new releases of Windows with a new machine. Firstly because your old hardware may be inadequate (or drivers unavailable), secondly because the retail package is typically overpriced.

On the positive side, the general impression I get is that it's better than Vista.

Also, I've seen some indications that it's difficult to upgrade from XP.

McLovin · Post by **McLovin** » Apr 26, 2010 20:50

Windows 7 is leaps and bounds better/stable than Vista. Very happy happy that I upgraded.

phishguy · Post by **phishguy** » Apr 26, 2010 20:56

My son got a new PC with Vista that had an offer for a free upgrade to Windows 7. He likes the 7 version much better than Vista. He did run into some games that wouldn't work. However, on his own, and without any help, he installed XP as a virtual OS. He was then able to play the games. I thought that it was pretty amazing that my 12 year old son was able to do that on his own. He's going to know more than me pretty soon.

My computer is still running XP because it an old piece of $%#@.

Dinosaur · Post by **Dinosaur** » Apr 26, 2010 21:54

Hi all

I am still running XP, but was wondering if anyone struck any problems compiling applications, or running say FBEdit in debug on Windows 7 ?

Regards

kazmo · Post by **kazmo** » Apr 29, 2010 14:00

jevans4949 wrote: Also, I've seen some indications that it's difficult to upgrade from XP.

My 2 pennies worth is that win7 is pretty good. One caveat there is that I'm running it on a shiny new computer with loads more memory than 32 bit winXP can address. 8 gig in the new box....got tired of my ancient P4 with 512mb of PC133 memory. (Ack!)

Caveat#2 - The new box is a 64 bit machine. 16 bit install programs will not run on a 64 bit machine, except maybe in a virtual machine(didn't try that). So it is worth examining your applications before jumping into a migration. A lot of folks whine about their apps not running in vista/win7, but it may really be about the 16bit/64bit hurdle rather than the OS. Note: I didn't try any 16 bit stand-alone programs, only installers....hmmmm. Good question.

caveat#3 - Unless buying a new machine, or you need a particular app that will only run on vista/win7, it may be worth considering maxing out the memory for winXP rather than an OS upgrade on an older box. I found out that a late model P4 with 3gig of ram and a modest graphics card screamed when compared to my old P4 with only 512mb.

If you can afford the upgrade, the old box will probably make a good Linux sandbox. The 512mb P4 is now an Ubuntu test box. It served well for eight years, and continues to trudge along despite being several generations obsolete.

marcov · Post by **marcov** » Apr 29, 2010 14:07

Personally IMHO W7 is pretty much Vista with nicer default backgrounds. I don't see much difference

As for the speed difference, I never was able to duplicate that. It seems marginally faster to show the desktop, but also shows spinning circle before you can do anything longer.

McLovin · Post by **McLovin** » Apr 29, 2010 14:30

marcov, I agree totally that Win7 is really only an improved Vista. On my machine the stability is much improved over Vista and it doesn't seem as "sluggish". Maybe I just want to believe that Win7 is better and I have convinced myself of that because Vista was horrible on my machine. I have to say though that my everyday Win7 experience does seem more enjoyable than Vista - it's not as frustrating. Win7 is not the holy grail of operating systems but at least it looks like MS has learned a few lessons regarding the Vista fail.

kazmo · Post by **kazmo** » Apr 29, 2010 14:34

marcov wrote:Personally IMHO W7 is pretty much Vista with nicer default backgrounds. I don't see much difference

As for the speed difference, I never was able to duplicate that. It seems marginally faster to show the desktop, but also shows spinning circle before you can do anything longer.

Can't compare to Vista, I went from XP to win7. Any speed differences I see I assume are due to hardware improvements, but the new box/OS are faster to boot than the old XP install.

FWIW - I was happy to continue plodding along with winXP, but the new OS was bundled with the hardware. Figured it was time to migrate, since the threat of XP support being terminated is foreseeable.

Forgot to throw out the "godmode" utility in win7, an undocumented item that rounds up a lot of mis-placed admin functions into a single window. Just google "godmode"....

bfuller · Post by **bfuller** » Apr 29, 2010 23:48

I just bought one of those little Netbooks to take on travel. I bought an ASUS Eee PC 1001HA. The similar spec'd machines were available with XP or W7 (the reduced version) or Vista. I avoided Vista because of the bad reputation, but I really wanted the 6 cell battery for longer life.

Anyway, I did a number of side by side bootup (from cold) tests between the various XP and W7 machines. XP was marginally faster every time, so I chose XP. I must admit I was also put off by the reduced version of W7, and also wanted to be confident that my applications would run without hiccup whilst I was on travel----so XP it is.

I acknowledge that I bought a "previous generation" system, and that is usually unwise in computing. When I buy a new desktop, or serious laptop then I will most certainly go with the lastest operating system----but for the little traveller netbook it was convenience, reliability and price that were the driving factors. The 6 cell battery means my netbook lasts all day without recharge, literally---I am very pleased.

And I must admit, I was really surprised that XP did actually boot faster than W7 on all the netbooks I tried in the shops.

jevans4949 · Post by **jevans4949** » Apr 30, 2010 0:24

bfuller wrote:And I must admit, I was really surprised that XP did actually boot faster than W7 on all the netbooks I tried in the shops.

Hardly surprising, since every release of an operating system since the 1960's brings more bloat. The OS expands to soak up the extra speed and memory in the electronics. Just like Parkinson's law.

Dean.Hodgson · Post by **Dean.Hodgson** » May 06, 2010 1:42

After reading the posts here and others, I thought I'd upgrade my wife's PC from Vista to W7. We had purchased an ASUS laptop last Christmas which came with W7-64 installed. It seemed fine, very much like Vista with some cosmetic changes (examinging the Windows version numbers tells the reason: Vista is Win6.0 and W7 is really Win6.1!). My wife has been complaining about her own desktop PC being slow. It is only a year old, a 2Ghz Pentium ACER with 3GB of RAM. I thought it would be easy to upgrade to W7 but discovered NOT! W7 (both 32 and 64 bit versions) refused to simply upgrade. I got messages that they couldn't and I'd have to back up everything and to a clean installation and reintall all the apps. This completely put me off upgrading just because of the amount of work involved. Anyone know any reason why this might have happened?

My own PC is a 3yr old Gigabyte box with a 3.6Ghz CPU, a couple gig of ram and XP. Very reluctant to upgrade the OS. The machine is faster than my wife's newer one, too. I'm not too concerned that it takes longer to boot.

I also read that I could install XP as a virtual OS. No idea how to do that but it would be useful to know how!

I have run into the problem of 16-bit software not running on the 64-bit W7. I have a sophisticated app that over 2,000 schools here in Australia use which has many 16-bit DOS and Windows components still. It won't run in 64-bit W7 but works nicely on the 32-bit version. So I've started rewriting it using FreeBasic. Clearly Microsoft didn't want to continue supporting the old OS but couldn't they have included a seemless emulator? DOXBOX is ok but it isn't seemless as far as I can see.

subxero · Post by **subxero** » May 10, 2010 8:12

I'm a big fan of Windows 7. I never really minded Vista, but I feel that it was a necessary step. It did away with all sorts of cruft (and, sure, added some of its own) but I feel that Windows 7 really tidied up the whole system.

I've installed it on junker PCs with 512 MB or 1 GB of RAM with no real performance problems. I find that things are generally easier to do, as well. The Windows key + immediate search is great to get where I need to go, and quick.

I've had it installed on my machine for quite a while and have had no problems with it. The (very, very small) list of programs that will not run, I run in an XP virtual machine.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Intel Core i7-860 (2.8 GHz normally, 4.0 GHz when gaming; on air)
4 GB DDR3-1866 RAM
ATI Radeon 5850 (1 GB)
2 x cheap 400 GB Western Digital drives, plus a 320 GB drive I got for free.

It's a great system, but in all truth, I find that Windows 7 takes much better advantage of the system than XP would.

cha0s · Post by **cha0s** » May 10, 2010 9:03

Don't you know Microsoft only releases good operating system's every other release? ;) Don't buy MS again until 2015, hahaha.