Windows 7 what is all the hype?

[frogman]

Maybe the only people that will initially purchase 7 are those that have held off from going to Vista and are in need of a new PC.

Like me, I intend to obviously go for Windows 7 in that I need a new computer.

Like many have said, nobody likes too much change, but in my case it's necessary due to the age of my motherboard etc.

Hope this isn't a stupid question, but will files work that were made on 32bit systems work on 64bit? for instance mp3's and also some programs like Winrar.

Sorry if it is a stupid question but the 32 and 64 bit stuff has always confused me a little.

Edited October 22, 2009 by frogman

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

Hope this isn't a stupid question, but will files work that were made on 32bit systems work on 64bit? for instance mp3's and also some programs like Winrar.

Sorry if it is a stupid question but the 32 and 64 bit stuff has always confused me a little.

yes the same files systems are available in 64 as are in 32 bit versions.

[rculver9056]

I ran Vista for a long time, and never had any complaints.

I'd swear at the old PC sometimes when UAC kicked in, but just accepted it and never turned it off.

Swore I'd never go back to XP, and never did.

Then came the Windows 7 beta, and I love it. Swore I'll never go back to Vista, and I won't.

Some of the things took a bit of getting used to, but now I just love it, and find myself dragging windows to the top of the screen to maximize, or shaking them to minimize others.

Also use the split-window (where each window fills half of the screen) a lot too, especially when moving files around.

Really is a worthy update - Just like Vista was to XP.

Then only reason Vista got slated was because of the UAC - People totally missed the point of it, and some just turned it off, but like I said, I always left it on, and it just got a bit annoying when installing loads of stuff.

Well, there you go. Said my bit. Feel much better now. Get 7!!!

P.S - The only thing I don't like about Windows 7 is the name (Which by rights should be Windows 10 or something...) - Google for "Vista driver" and you'll gert relevent results, try "Windows 7 driver" and it'll match "Windows" and give loads of crap to sift through.

We need to find a nickname for this and promote LOL.

[ButchN]

I had Vista retail, more like OEM, from day one when it was available when I bought my laptop & had no issues.

I just got 7 yesterday & so far I dislike the way the task bar operates & how it is laid out, i.e., how now the icon open when you click them, how the desktop icon is all the way over to the far right & how when when you open a screen within a screen it it not maximized.

I dislike the lack of option on start/left mouse click.

I dislike the way explorer now works as in it now gives you a multitude of things to open, not just the drive like before & I see no way to change that.

Most of the Vista wallpapers which were cool are not there.

7 tells me I have a bad battery when Vista didn't, but I know its not true as my battery works great & it seems to actually take longer to boot & shut down.

And that's just what I've seen in not even 24 hours.

I hope it's all configurable & I've just not found how to do it yet.

[lost_packet]

Windows Seven is what Vista might have turned out to be if the MS coders hadn't been pressured to get Vista released under the increasingly-tight schedule which publicity about WOW demanded. I haven't had much experience with Vista, having being deterred by the generally negative publicity. High resource usage was one such sticking point. Win 7 uses only slightly more RAM on my system than XP, and if I were to go in there and start closing unneeded services like I've done in XP, I could probably get them almost on a par with each other.

For those of us using quite old but still speedy systems (my nVidia board needs nForce2 drivers - I could never manage to get all functions firing with Vista-Server 2008), the drivers issue was the decider. When I installed Win 7, most of the drivers were on the install DVD itself; I needed only to tweak an integrated 3Com LAN device for the entire package to be working. Nearly as impressive as an install of Ubuntu!

Currently I'm dual booting on this machine and as it recently had a fresh XP reinstall, won't be mainlining with 7 soon, but I find myself spending more and more time in the Windows Seven OS.

[awergh]

so far I dislike the way the task bar operates & how it is laid out

You can always change it back to how it was by going into taskbar properties the taskbar button options.

how now the icon open when you click them,

I fail to see the difference.

how the desktop icon is all the way over to the far right

if you really worried about the speed, it would be much better to use Win+D as it has been since 98 or Win+M and Win+Shift+M which has been available since 95

I dislike the lack of option on start/left mouse click.

Seems the same to me unless you mean right click, are you missing open all users?

I dislike the way explorer now works as in it now gives you a multitude of things to open, not just the drive like before & I see no way to change that.

Do you mean that you don't like it opening in Libraries by default.

Most of the Vista wallpapers which were cool are not there.

That hardly something to complain about really, you can always go get them.

[Insomneac]

When Windows 7 was first available, I dual-booted with XP.

Within 30 minutes of using Windows 7, I knew I'd never be going back to XP.

The argument that people don't like change doesn't wash. When the change is an improvement, people will happily change.

[CoffeeFiend]

The argument that people don't like change doesn't wash. When the change is an improvement, people will happily change.

So basically everything new isn't an improvement? Because, there's always a lot of people asking how to get their old menus, old navigation, old start menu, old task bar, old search and all that stuff back (old deployment methods, old apps, old everything)

Yes, there has always been, and there will always be a small but vocal minority that doesn't like change and tries to fight it instead of embracing it (learning something new requires some effort/time, and often changing your ways, even if it's for the best). Regardless of that, everybody else is moving forward. It's only going to make it harder for them in the end.

[Maleko]

When Windows 7 was first available, I dual-booted with XP.

Within 30 minutes of using Windows 7, I knew I'd never be going back to XP.

Ditto.

When I tried 7, straight away I loved it.

I hated Vista with a passion, sluggish, buggy, horrible to use.

People say, well your PC may not have been "up to spec", well I'm now running 7 64bit on the same PC I tried Vista 64bit on (I tried Vista several times, only to hate it more each time), and it runs smooth as XP, but with all the shine Windows now has. I now use 7 at home and at work, both of which run 7 smooth as ever.

All you have to do is look how many people love 7 and how well it has taken off to show how hated Vista truely was. I don't think it has anything to do with "specs".

[smkdjnt]

When Windows 7 was first available, I dual-booted with XP.

Within 30 minutes of using Windows 7, I knew I'd never be going back to XP.

The argument that people don't like change doesn't wash. When the change is an improvement, people will happily change.

I used to have a dual boot of Vista Ultimate x64 and Xp SP3. As soon as I replaced Vista with Win7 Ultimate x64, I knew that finally I would have an OS that could handle the High Def side of my computing as well as the basics such as decent gaming. Vista was a total resource hog on my laptop as well and Win7 is a complete improvment on that front. I am getting rid of XP and Vista and migrating everything into Win7 Ultimate. I happily wiped vista and in fact i am installing the windows98 UBCD 2008 on that same drive so that i can natively run all of my ancient dos games on it. Who would have thought that win98 could run on a dual core or quad core with 8gbs of ram? I also managed to get flash 10 and directx 10 on win98 too..

Thanks to the people on msfn.org!

[vinifera]

i dont like the fact, that win7 constantly uses above 30% MB RAM in idle (in my case it was 450 to 500 MB),

even when i disabled superfetch and indexing, nothing changed the eating of it

i used 5 different "memory recovers" from which, 1 i know is quality since i used it even in days of win98

and memory eating even went higher after trying to recover RAM

i don't wish to go into endless debate: empty ram VS full ram usage is better

but fact stays if both vista and 7 were not so heavy for god knows what reason...

it wouldn't need pre-caching nor such hogging

same goes for DWM, it supposedly uses GPU but look the miracle, when i had whole full glass enabled

on RTM versions (both Home prem and Ultimate), DWM jumped from 10 to 20% of CPU usage

i mean cmon ! - i know emulators of glass (with blur) that were made for XP and they use 1 to 3 % of CPU

and THEY dont have their own Composition Engine !

what about SxS ?, this bullcrap service or call it whatever you want... should HAVE backed up

ONLY system files, and NOT of every little app that is installed

i agree that win7 is nice and more secure, but it is certanly NOT a step forward.

the bad image of Vista allowed them to continue with same approach but only changed appearance

and there you go, its not 30% fat milk in white box but 25% fat milk in white box with blue stripes

the excuse RAM is cheap, OS should use FULL power of newest Hardware parts does NOT

approve the way how they made OS work and use it

i think most of you would agree that OS requirement/its usage should be minimum

and rest left for Apps to use

Edited November 5, 2009 by vinifera

[cluberti]

i don't wish to go into endless debate: empty ram VS full ram usage is better

Then you shouldn't be using Vista or Win7 if the precaching and lazy free bothers you, as this is what the OS does. I'll never understand the need to have "free" memory when the OS already handles moving around free and standby pages even under load, but to each his or her own.

same goes for DWM, it supposedly uses GPU but look the miracle, when i had whole full glass enabled on RTM versions (both Home prem and Ultimate), DWM jumped from 10 to 20% of CPU usage

We'd need to know a bit about the specs and such, but if you are using glass and the CPU jumps, that sounds like a driver issue considering the compositing engine in Win7 no longer needs duplication of memory or CPU cycles like it did in Vista, so are you using a WDDM 1.0 or 1.1 driver, and on which video card?

what about SxS ?, this bullcrap service or call it whatever you want... should HAVE backed up ONLY system files, and NOT of every little app that is installed

And again, even though Explorer and other file tools show the space as used, SxS is not actually taking up file space on disk (they're hard links, for almost all SxS files, not actual files themselves). I wish Microsoft would fix this, only because it would stop the complaints of SxS taking up space when it in fact is not.

i agree that win7 is nice and more secure, but it is certanly NOT a step forward.

the bad image of Vista allowed them to continue with same approach but only changed appearance

You are free to your opinion, but I would think most folks here would disagree with you on both of these statements, myself included.

[Maleko]

i agree that win7 is nice and more secure, but it is certanly NOT a step forward.

the bad image of Vista allowed them to continue with same approach but only changed appearance

You are free to your opinion, but I would think most folks here would disagree with you on both of these statements, myself included.

Defo, Vista WAS a step forward, even though I hated it (reasons already explained), Windows 7 was another step forward which made even more people move from XP.

Funny how people moan about specifications for an OS. When a new top spec game comes out, people are willing to go out and buy a new graphics card, more ram etc. Then when its an OS, people moan, saying it takes up to many resources etc...a new top spec OS WILL require more RAM etc than what your used to with XP or 2000. Move on, new programs require new specs.

[Pasha]

I guess everybody is just looking at the technical side of the story to which I can add only that Vista was a definite step, it had its bugs, they gone with time and it works just fine, didn't have any issues with it. Win7 is the same thing, just the next step, again have some issues, they will probably be gone with time. For sure every step requires new road, you need a hardware to run it but even that was not the biggest issue.

As I see it the bigest issue was ... the move itself. XP came out at a propper time, introduced a unified platform for work/corporation and for home users, in a year hardware was enough to run it and everybody was happy. Big companies moved to XP, spent a huge money, users at home have the same thing they used at work.

Now Vista - no way companies would spent money on the costly upgrade, not to mention hardware, just in couple of years from XP just because Microsoft want's this. Our bank had a Vista project, development was done and it is still on the shelf. Guess what we're doing? We are implementing XP. Users at home, no way, they want to have the same thing, they don't need all those whistles, they need Internet, e-mail and soliter.

Win 7? Will it be a corporate platform? Will it create the same hype as XP? Who knows, only time will tell. My prediction that it will "fail" same as Vista and technical part has nothing to do with it. I don't see huge companies moving towards Win 7 from XP and especially Vista without a reason and I don't see that reason now.

Conclusion - hype will cool down and we'll stay with the same XP for a long time you like it or not, the only way to move forward will be a move to 64 bits and probably that could happen with the next MS OS. For now - hail XP!

[cluberti]

Given that XP will be supported until 2014 (even if it isn't bugfix support), you may be right. Win7 does have a LOT of management and deployment benefits, is truly language-neutral, saves power, etc., but it does cost money and require Vista-era hardware (I'd say anything mid-range or better from mid-2006 to early 2007 and newer can run Vista or Win7 just fine). It will probably be determined at or around the next hardware cycle at most companies to determine if they want to milk XP for now, or move to Win7 and deal with the migration testing. Eventually they're going to have to decide if they're going to just run XP forever, or migrate off - and at that point, do they stick with Windows (version whatever at that point)? Move to Linux? Mac? Staying on XP will probably be difficult circa 2014 or later just given the lack of hardware that will actually have drivers written to work in that environment, not to mention any newer versions of apps if needed probably won't be XP certified at that point either (by 2014 we'll likely be well into Windows v8, with Windows v9 on the horizon, putting XP 3 versions behind and almost 14 years old).