The Windows Seven Thread

[Carcrazy]

I'm really considering installing this on this new Dell Inspiron (1525) I bought off my brother, since it only has Vista Home Basic, but I have cold feet about it - dell included some really decent apps with it. I'm also worried about the Dell MediaDirect (allows you to use your media w/o booting windows,) as it will probably not work right after the switch.

--EDIT--
Update went well, even moving up from Vista Basic to Win7 Ultimate on a Pentium Dual-Core. In fact, the only bad thing I see about it is the fact that now every time I come back to my Vista Home Premium desktop, I'm going to die a little inside.

That, and I must say I don't like the fact that they got rid of the Control Panel Classic View. I knew I would have to learn to deal with it eventually, and even tried to, but I could never figure my way around the new interface... =/

[Koenigsegg_Rox]

I got a quick glance of 7 on my mate's Aspire lappy. Looks pretty sweet, gonna get it tonight. Just one thing. How do you partition hard drives for an extra OS?

[Carcrazy]

If you don't have any open (non-formatted) space, you don't. You'd have to delete your current Windows installation, then when you go to re-install it, Partition the drive into two (or more) partions, install Vista (or another OS) on one, and Win7 on the other. It's not hard, it's just a headache to do if you don't want to lose data.

You could also just by a 30GB Hard Drive off ebay or something. It'd be alot easier.

Anywho, is it just me, or is it MUCH faster on low/mid-range computers?
(I.E. <2.0Ghz Dual-Core, 2Gb DDR2, integrated, etc.)

[Stereo]

Does it work with Steam games like HL2? My friend would really love that because Vista runs like crap on my laptop so I was thinking of getting win7 so we can actually play some Garry's Mod LAN.

[Koenigsegg_Rox]

If you don't have any open (non-formatted) space, you don't. You'd have to delete your current Windows installation, then when you go to re-install it, Partition the drive into two (or more) partions, install Vista (or another OS) on one, and Win7 on the other. It's not hard, it's just a headache to do if you don't want to lose data.

You could also just by a 30GB Hard Drive off ebay or something. It'd be alot easier.

Anywho, is it just me, or is it MUCH faster on low/mid-range computers?
(I.E. <2.0Ghz Dual-Core, 2Gb DDR2, integrated, etc.)

I found a tute to do it and I didn't lose anything. I now haz.....A Z DRIVE!!! muhahahahaha....ahem.

[Carcrazy]

I'm going to guess you used Windows to partition the drive?

Heh, I thought they removed that feature a while ago...

[Koenigsegg_Rox]

Indeed I did. Vista can actually do something half-decent for once...

[Bojan]

I don't know what everyone has against Vista, but after using it for about two weeks, I have to say it works REALLY well. So far I've only encountered one windows explorer window freeze (only for about 5 seconds and on a network folder). The smoothness of opening windows switching applications is something I've never seen on XP. You do need decent hardware for it though (running on a 8GB ram, quad core Intel Xeon with a 15k rpm disk drive and nvidia quadro).

As for Windows 7, you've noticed that the kernel version is 6.1. Microsoft said it's gonna stay there. And yes, Vista does have a kernel version of 6.0. I do agree with a nickname Fixta for it. It does work surprisingly well even on lower end systems (tried it in VM with only 1GB of ram). A friend uses it on his laptop and he's pretty pleased with it - has the fancy stuff that Vista has, but is more optimized and not so hungry for resources. I'm guessing it will have the majority switch over from XP.

[vellu]

I'm along the same lines. Been using Vista Business x64 for about a year now and have no issues with it. But then again I have good hardware underneath.

Windows 7 shows lots of promise, I've tested it on a variety of platforms (as it is a part of my job as a system administrator). It scales really well depending on what kind of hardware you are running it. Even works on small tablet laptops (about the same as XP did), but if you have lots of muscle (quad core, tons of memory) it can utilize it to the max aswell.

[korge]

Stability and usability of XP meets the features of Vista.

Nuf said.

[Stereo]

I'm along the same lines. Been using Vista Business x64 for about a year now and have no issues with it. But then again I have good hardware underneath.

OMFGWTFBBQ me too. Vista Business x64 ftw!

[Koenigsegg_Rox]

I have a few niggles with Vista but I'm sure it's just my own computer. The most obvious one is Vista SP1 which I'm sure I have already explained, but there's still the random IE pop-ups. I run 32-bit Home Premium which everyone seems to think is the best for some reason. What about Ultimate?

[XCROSSX]

The best Windows ever for sure. I got used to it fast. It looks nice, it's fast, I got 5-7 more frames in GTA IV and it starts almost as fast as Linux.

[Carcrazy]

Oh yeah, never updated this.

Microsoft Released the Windows 7 Release-Candidate to the open public on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009. Be sure to head by the Windows 7 Website to check it out!

[vellu]

Done, installed it on my mediacenter and so far works flawlessly. And even has some nice new media features, for example very little need for "aftermarket" video codecs. Only needed to install Matroska (for mkv support), everything else (divx/xvid/mpeg4) worked right out of the box even with the built-in WMP12.

[korge]

I have had W7 for about 2 weeks now. Installed the RC, installed my basic codec and driver package and Im good to go. EVERYTHING runs as good or better than it did on XP and it only takes my pc about 15 - 20 seconds to boot 0_0

I LOVE W7

The very sketchy ATI TV card even works flawlessly in W7 with the media center.

[Stereo]

This is going to be my next OS, no doubt.

[korge]

I thought you were a mac.

[prince1142003]

Windows 7 has been turning heads even in the Mac community.

I've tried it. It's amazing. It extends the battery life of my laptop by a full 1.5 hours. And a half minute boot-up? My only question is this: Why the hell did we get Vista?

But the pricing of Win7 worries me. I've heard that it's predicted to be higher than the comparable Vista editions. My PCs seriously need the upgrade, but being a poor college student, I don't know if I'll be able to afford it.

[Stereo]

I thought you were a mac.

It's called OSX86... Dual Booting. Mac on a PC. Get it?

[korge]

I've tried it. It's amazing. It extends the battery life of my laptop by a full 1.5 hours. And a half minute boot-up? My only question is this: Why the hell did we get Vista?

But the pricing of Win7 worries me. I've heard that it's predicted to be higher than the comparable Vista editions. My PCs seriously need the upgrade, but being a poor college student, I don't know if I'll be able to afford it.

Ive noticed it boots up very quickly as well.

Im getting W7 Ultimate with the MSDN subscription anyways, but I can totally sympathize with the flop that Vista was and the price range W7 will bring. Hopefully, there Will be an upgrade option or a discount for previous retail Vista versions.

OEM versions will probably go to hell.

[Stereo]

I hope they include upgrades because I don't wanna have to reinstall all my precious <3's

[Carcrazy]

If they actually did something with OEMs, I'd download it. Seriously, Windows is way over priced to be nothing but a contract and a piece of plastic.

[xHaZxMaTx]

So I just installed 7 RC on my Acer Aspire One netbook. Seems to be working fine, so far, which is far more than Vista could ever hope to claim, and it installed in about 25 minutes from a flash drive.

[Koenigsegg_Rox]

I'm still tossing up whether to get it, because I don't exactly have a "test PC" to work with. If I'm going to do it it's going to have to be on my lappy. Which, despite all the praise for the OS, I'm not sure if it's the best idea. But at least I have (most) of my stuff backed up onto my porty hard drive, so I might install it.