Windows 7

[Gower]

Has anyone succumbed to the offers and ordered Windows 7 8-[. I stayed with XP after trying several Vista flavours (other peoples) but have been unable to resist the new job. My PC is getting slower and slower despite the usual ministrations so a Full Format and 7 is on the cards. Right or wrong?
Cheers,
Jim

 

[head clansman]

hi Gower

i had a new lappy for my 60th birthday in June from the gang , it has vista wish i still had xp for lots of reasons , let us all know how windows 7 go's . hc

 

[TonyW]

Only time will tell if this is a good decision

Like you (any many more) I have flirted with the buggy Vista but prefer XP.

Hopefully Windows 7 will have ironed out the Vista bugs (but probably created others). :roll:

My preference now after being an early adopter is to wait for at least the first service pack release before upgrading :lol:

Let us know how you get on

Cheers
Tony

 

[13eightyfour]

After using the beta, now the rc, I ordered win7 pro for £80 from ebuyer when the preorders first start.

Im still using the RC version, on every computer/lappy in my house!

If you havent actually used 7 yet then i highly recommend downloading the RC, It really is worlds away from vista when it was released. If you have a processor thats 64bit capable and 4gig+ of ram then install the 64bit version

Remember though that the pre orders are for Win 7 E the E standing for european apparently, This means that you will have to have a fresh install(no upgrade) and there will also be no web browser, so make sure youve got the install for your browser of choice on a flash drive.

 

[Davon]

The wife has vista on her laptop...c**p...

I have xp on my laptop and desktop and will be buying win7. I have a 250gig external hard drive which I am going to backup with before a clean install.

They say you can upgrade vista to win7...surely this means the c**p stays on your computer, or do you think win 7 has all fixes required for vista??? :?

Davon

 

[13eightyfour]

The wife has vista on her laptop...c**p...

I have xp on my laptop and desktop and will be buying win7. I have a 250gig external hard drive which I am going to backup with before a clean install.

They say you can upgrade vista to win7...surely this means the c**p stays on your computer, or do you think win 7 has all fixes required for vista??? :?

Davon

As far as i know the version that we get will not allow you to upgrade, and has to be installed as a fresh install. I dont know what happens if you buy a comp with vista now though, there was talk of offering upgrades to win7. Maybe oem versions allow upgrade installs?

Your also going to need a copy of 7 for each computer, glad i got mine cheap because it can work out a tad expensive :shock:

 

[Argee]

I've been running Windows 7 Ultimate since it became available as a release candidate. It seems a little faster than Vista Ultimate and is absolutely stable on my machine, although - to be fair - I've never had a moment's trouble with Vista either. I'm still running XP Home Premium on my Vaio Laptop, but that's now starting to feel a little clunky.

Ray

 

[RogerS]

It's interesting to compare and contrast the differences in approach to upgrades/new versions of the OS between Mac and PC. NB - That is not to say that one is better than the other.

Naming conventions

Mac. 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4. We're currently on 10.5 and the next generation (named Snow Leopard) will be out later this year.

Windows. Windows 95. Windows 2000. Windows XP. Vista. Windows 7.

Mac. When any new generation of the software comes out, we are given several alternatives. We can archive the old system (enabling us to return to it if the new instal goes t*ts up). This can subsequently be deleted at a later date if desired. We can do an upgrade of the existing system. Or we can do a clean instal of the new version.

Windows. This approach has been discussed above in other posts.

For system upgrades...

Mac 10.5.1 10.5.2 etc. We're currently on 10.5.8 and that is still backwards compatible for Macs that still use the original CPU set or the newer models based on Intel. The system upgrades (both new versions and upgrades) usually results in a snappier performance by the computer. I'm still using the same G4 chip based computer I bought about 8 years ago and have been through five major new versions of the OS and yet the machine still seems to run as fast as it did before.

Windows - long time since I used it or bought a PC but my sense is that newer versions of the OS require major enhancements and/or new system to work.

With the Mac, we really only get these upgrades every so often. We do get minor security upgrades along the way. But then we are also given the option to upgrade using what's called a Combo (similar maybe to Windows Service packs?) where all the minor upgrades have been amalgamated. We do have upgrade problems from time to time but usually these go away if the Combo is applied.

Windows - not too sure what it's like now but still have a sense that there are/were an awful lot of continual upgrades requiring attention.

As I said - not intended to be a 'Mine is Bigger/better than yours competition'.

 

[kityuser]

Lets face it software engineers have a problem....... if they do their job well future earning potential is reduced, i.e. if they write a PERFECT OS then nobody would ever buy an OS ever again. It could be updated endlessly and new features added seamlessly.

In reality, they want to earn money. So every so often we are all made to believe that we "need" to upgrade our software......

In reality Mac OS 10.4/5 won't stop working and I`m sure XP and Vista will give years of service........ irrespective of the 10.6 or MS windoz 7 release. Why people insist on upgrading when they have no problems with current software is beyond me.

If XP is starting to feel clunky, then find out why.........

In an ideal world, OS patches would make your machine run faster, i.e. better code optimisation over time of the kernel..... maybe they were rushed to get it out when the OS was released.
This RARELY happens....... why?
I have "heard" that mac OSX can be faster on old hardware, i.e. if your mac had tiger (10.4) and you upgrade to leopard (10.5) and (this is the important bit) you only enable the SAME FEATURES from the previous OS update, then apparently you can notice a kernel optimisation speed increase.

chances are people update, turn on all the fancy new features, have an OS that looks lovely and runs slower than the previous one on the same hardware.

As has been stated many times, I struggle to understand why "some" people go out and buy a new machine to run windoz x+1 , turn on all the fancy features and end up with a fancy end-user experience that is the same speed as the one on their old computer.
and burns many more KWatts!

From what I read and have heard windows 7 is supposed to be what Vista was intended to be.

My experience of linux kernel updates are un-remarkable and I only tend to update if I suffer a specific problem.

I`m interested to hear what people think they will gain from the new windows 7.
Mac 10.6 is going to support open CL, whereby GPU hardware is opened up to general purpose CPU tasks, hopefully an end-user will enjoy faster video encoding sped-up other multi-threading tasks...........

Lets take for example Mrs KU, she browses the web, emails and types the odd word doc or excel spreadsheet. What will windoz 7 offer her in terms of a better end-user experience on the same hardware she has now?

Steve

ps no M$ or Apple bashing intended.

 

[Argee]

If XP is starting to feel clunky, then find out why.........

I don't need to find anything out - the GUI on 7 is just that bit more slick, hence the older XP GUI feels clunky by comparison.

ps no M$ or Apple bashing intended.

If you'd written App£e as well, that may have been more credible!

Ray.

 

[kityuser]

If XP is starting to feel clunky, then find out why.........

I don't need to find anything out - the GUI on 7 is just that bit more slick, hence the older XP GUI feels clunky by comparison.

ps no M$ or Apple bashing intended.

If you'd written App£e as well, that may have been more credible!

Ray.

gottya, I inferred that your XP had somehow got bogged down (maybe by some spywhere/malware).
by "slick" I take it you mean eye-candy rather than functionality (?)

App£e App|e App1e App\e 8)


Just to be completely fair, its worth noting that windoz has had the facility to utilise GPU processing power (via DX 10 I believe or is it 11) for games for quite some time now. And possibly I believe for transcoding in programmes like Nero movie-bodger-thingy..............


Steve

 

[Argee]

It certainly loads and shuts down faster and has less clicks now to perform some operations. Has a more polished feel to it somehow, but that's purely subjective.

Ray

 

[yo_chuci]

ubuntu ftw

(with the xp overlay for peeps scared of changed lol)

 

[TonyW]

It certainly loads and shuts down faster and has less clicks now to perform some operations. Has a more polished feel to it somehow, but that's purely subjective.

Ray, I would be interested to know just how long you have been running Windows 7 and do you think that the faster loading and shutdown may be due to a fresh(er) install - XP runs very well after fresh install but can get bogged down over time as more apps are loaded etc. It could be of course that Windows 7 is just that much better (here's hoping :lol: )

Cheers
Tony

 

[13eightyfour]

Just to be completely fair, its worth noting that windoz has had the facility to utilise GPU processing power (via DX 10 I believe or is it 11) for games for quite some time now. And possibly I believe for transcoding in programmes like Nero movie-bodger-thingy..............


Steve

Vista and 7 have DX10 support, windows XP doesnt, its only DX9.(DX11's on the way)

Granted i havent played any game that uses DX10, but seeing as i have a gpu that supports it, i might aswell have the facility to use it when it is more widely used

I like both mac OS and windows tbh. I just hate the massive price premiums you pay for apple hardware, I have considered building a hackingtosh so i have the best of both worlds.

Thats not an anti apple speech, both systems have there merits.

 

[Argee]

Ray, I would be interested to know just how long you have been running Windows 7 and do you think that the faster loading and shutdown may be due to a fresh(er) install

Since April 22nd, according to the folder properties. I dual-boot and run it off another hard drive, as a direct comparison, hopefully. I take your point about the fresh(er) install, but I've loaded everything I'm running on Vista, otherwise I couldn't compare.

The Vista (SP2) runs on a mirror RAID, about the fastest loading system I've tried. Windows 7 is on a single drive so, if anything, it's on a slightly slower physical set-up. I run a (32-bit) quad-core 2.50GHz processor with 4GB of fast RAM, so I suppose it should go fairly well anyway. I've had no hardware problems, BTW.

Why did I do it - because I could. Doesn't mean I'll buy it, but I'd say at this point it's a better than 50% chance that I will. HTH

Ray

 

[gasmansteve]

Hi folks
Its Ubuntu for me. Recently tried this excellent OS and have to say its the dogs whatsits. My old Athlon 1.2G desktop flys now, from switching on to wireless online 45 secs, switching off 15 secs, not sure if they are fast times nowadays but for my desktop it is.I have it dual boot with windows XP but havent needed XP yet.
Steve

 

[tekno.mage]

Can't say I agree that Mac OS upgrades always result in faster performance on older hardware. The point upgrades (ie 10.4.9 - 10.4.11) often do, the massive major upgrade from Mac OS9 to Mac OSX 10 certainly did not for a many older G4 machines. I have an early dual-processor G5 PowerMac and I'm sticking with OSX 10.4 having read of performance and other issues with early releases of 10.5 and having no real need to upgrade except for any future bug fix releases for 10.4. My system works, is fast and very stable - why change something that isn't broken?

My previous experience with a variety fo earlier version sof Windows (Versions 3.0 - Millenium) was extremely variable. Most upgrades caused *massive* problems and required hardware to be upgraded to cope properly with the new o/s. Exceptions to that statement were Versions 3.0 - 3.11 and Windows 95 - Windows 98. The main problem I always had with any version of Windows was lack of stability - the requirement to periodically do a clean re-install as speed and stability reduced over time really irritated me.

Anyhow - good luck with your Windows 7 upgrade - I hope it all goes smoothly.

tekno.mage

 

[13eightyfour]

I run a (32-bit) quad-core 2.50GHz processor with 4GB of fast RAM, so I suppose it should go fairly well anyway. I've had no hardware problems, BTW.
Ray

I thought all quad-cores were 64bit? unless its really old? the downside to that is that 32bit versions of windows cant access 4GB of ram think the max is about 3GB.

 

[CHJ]

I've just loaded W7 Home premium onto another box (3gh 1gig ram) and first impressions are that it is considerably faster responding than either xp or vista on the same platform, as Argee says just seems snappier and I don't think it's just because it's a clean installation as the others are routinely subjected to registry and redundant software cleans.