Running V2 with W7

[Bruce Melton]

I have one the few million Windows 7 Beta versions installed on a margial P4 1.8 GHz, 768 mb, and it installed fine and other than pointing to drivers, the install was flawless. This, after a clean install of W7 and bringing old files from XP. I am not ready to spend $ for it yet, but it does work as well as XP with V7.5 and updater.
Just FYI

[joecar]

Bruce, thanks for the review... I was wondering how fast/slow W7 would be.

[mr.prick]

is W7 an "improved" version of Vista or completely new.

[Bruce Melton]

is W7 an "improved" version of Vista or completely new.

In my opinion it is a redo of Vista, slimmed down to lure us away from XP. It buries OE and defaults to Windows Live. I think those who bought Vista will like this better. Not as RAM hungry. Outlook with W7 is buggy, IMO.
At this point it is not compelling because, if you can do it with XP then it is slicker with W7, but not more capable. Time will tell?

[mr.prick]

:rant:
W7 = polished turd.
what a shame, XP IMO is very easy to navigate i`m not sure what the down side to XP was/is but it is light years ahead of Vista. IMO

i could not believe how slow Vista was on my Vaio ux280p,
the time it took to boot up was enough for me to go back to XP.
as for security, i don`t think MS should worry so much about the individual user.
that should be left to the individual.
don`t get me started on the whole driver compatibility thing.
:cussing:

[GMPX]

My main development PC is running XP. A clean XP install runs very nice. My laptop (new) is Vista and I do avoid using it when possible because of Vista. But we need to be running both OS's here for test purposes.
I'm not going to bother W7, I am sure M$ will just make it incompatible with Firefox and Thunderbird.

Cheers,
Ross

[ScarabEpic22]

I ran W7 in a Virtual PC before the public beta was released and it was slow (MS Virtual PC 2007 wouldnt let me change the graphics driver and a few other things so it was a dog). Now Ive got W7 and Vista Home Prem triple booting on my laptop (with Ubuntu) and it works almost flawlessly (only a few little annoyances but thats expected with a beta OS). Using W7 and FireFox 3 right now to post this up, only problems Ive had with W7 so far are some of my HP specific software doesnt work 100% but thats expected. Even the little quick launch buttons that change color for different statuses work perfectly.

IMO W7 is what Vista was promised to be and is 3 years late but its just as solid as Vista has been for me (no BSODs, only had to cut power off a few times in 16+mo of using Vista, both regular and SP1). Comparing W7 and Vista (all 64 bit of course) back to back with the same programs, W7 uses about 980mb RAM at idle while Vista sits more at 1350-1400mb. And W7 seems to open programs faster, not sure what MS did for that. Im a fan of the new taskbar and the streamlined status icon area, finally can turn things off easily. Plus being able to compare stuff by throwing the windows to the edges of the screen is a duh move, why hasnt this been around since XP? Drivers were a piece of cake, just had to install the latest nVidia drivers for my card and I havent bothered to turn any of the animations for visualizations off in W7 like I have in Vista because it actually works.

And for reference my system specs are these:

HP dv7-1175nr
Core 2 Duo T5800 (2ghz, 2mb L2 cache, 800mhz fsb) [wish it was my old T7300 but oh well]
4GB DDR2
nVidia GeForce 9600m GT 512mb powering the 17" 1440x900 laptop screen
320GB HDD (seperate partitions for W7 and Vista)
Blu-Ray ROM with DL DVD+-RW
Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN
Factory installed Vista Home Premium x64
Ubuntu installed via Wubi on Vista partition
Windows 7 beta b7000 installed on seperate partition

[Bruce Melton]

MS is in the difficult position of trying to lure folks away from what has become their long running, best product-XP. They tried that trick with Vista and we know how that went.

[ScarabEpic22]

MS is in an interesting position of trying to lure folks away from what has become their long running best product-XP. They tried that trick with Vista and we know how that went.

No kidding, everyone is so content using Win XP especially now that SP3 is out. Personally havent used SP3 that much as I got my laptop for school with Vista Ultimate right before SP3 was released. But after putting W7 through the loops, Ive had some interesting issues with it that Ive reported back to MS, if they can get them fixed W7 will be a welcomed change from Vista.

[Bruce Melton]

I gave up yesterday.
I have two HDs with caddies for the test laptop and I reverted back to the XP load. Too many bugs to use the W7 as primary. V2 is fine, but the XP based applications like Outlook are not happy and I guess it is not in MS's interest to work out the compatability issues.
I 'll try again in a few weeks to see if there are significasnt updates.
Maybe I'm just too old school?

[Stealth97]

My main development PC is running XP. A clean XP install runs very nice. My laptop (new) is Vista and I do avoid using it when possible because of Vista. But we need to be running both OS's here for test purposes.
I'm not going to bother W7, I am sure M$ will just make it incompatible with Firefox and Thunderbird.

Cheers,
Ross

Agreed fully.

My main PC is now Ubuntu Linux powered and working flawlessly (a few issues aside like sound card volume low, fixed with correct driver, etc.). I will never buy another copy of Windows until Microsoft changes their business model. Sucking hundreds of dollars from my pocket bi-yearly for something of no added value really boils my fucking skin.

Do I have to go back and buy a new engine from GM because they made a new one? No, my old tree-fiddy runs just fine and it'll stay that way. But with Winblows, MS just makes it outdated and things stop working for it over time.

I'll spend weeks figuring out how to Linux my own machine, or better yet, I'd ditch the computer age and go back to the abacus before I EVER give MicroSoft $1 more of mine). I don't need a computer, I just like them, but I am beginning to hate Windows. MS is doing a good job of alienating us, as we see how many people are migrating to Linux (slowly, as it takes brainpower, but people are doing it)

I fully support EFI Live Linux. Do I think EFI Live Linux should be given free to EFI Live customers? No. We should pay for it. Time costs money and development costs time. We want, we pay. We don't pay, we don't get.

Do I care if EFI Live ever runs on Windows 7? Not at this point in time. By the time I care about that, I'm sure EFI Live will run on Linux and Windows 8 by then anyway so why bother with another stopgap. I see the point of your business decision and stand behind you 100%.

[ScarabEpic22]

To report back Im having a few issues with Windows 7 crashing after resuming from sleep and my wireless card not working when this happens. Working on the latest drivers for this now so just have to play around and see I guess.

I understand completely where you are coming from with Linux, I dabbled in Lindows a few years back (Debian base with a customized KDE shell) but now Im trying to spend some time in Ubuntu as its very fast and stable on my laptop. Cant tell if its faster opening programs/apps but its slower than W7 beta booting (still faster than Vista though). However Ive barely used it in the last 2 weeks as Im trying to push Windows 7 so MS doesnt release another OS that has major issues...

And Im from Seattle, so Ive never actually paid full price for a copy of Windows/Office/games/etc as I have close friends who work for Microsoft (or used to). I probably shouldnt say how cheap Windows/Office is sold for online publically but let me say it is very very reasonable. Definitely makes building your own PC much cheaper than buying a prebuilt system.