[djgustashaw]

Quote:

You realize that turning Superfetch and Indexing off is a noticable performance hit rather than boost? And why turn off UAC? The only time it ever triggers for me is when installing or uninstalling programs. Congratulations - you just turned off all the usability and security benefits of Vista. Break it a bit more and you might have a Mac.

Quote:

Doesn't sound like you have any experience to me, at least not since a within a month of its 2006 release. I've been using Vista for well over a year now; my technically inexperienced family (mother, brother, sister) have been using it for 6 months, and none of us have encountered any of the problems you describe. There's not "multiple prompts" - there's a single prompt, and it only occurs when making system changes. How often do you change settings that require a UAC prompt or install/uninstall programs? I'm lucky to see 3-4 prompts a month. Vista is not bloated, nor is it buggy. It's running just fine on my Athlon XP/1GB RAM machine, and I haven't had a single system crash in my time using it.

Relax, bro. No need for the cutting remarks over something as frivolous as someone's preference or experience with an operating system.

 

[Zodduska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KGB /img/forum/go_quote.gif So it is still available? Gotta give it a try.

Yeah: Download the Windows 7 Beta I believe it will be freely available until the 24th. The public beta liscences will expire July 1st 2009 though so make sure you back up anything you might need.

 

[SolidSnake3]

or just dual boot 7 with vista/xp/whatever you are using right now. This way you can mess around in 7 all you want and still use your main os to store important files and other things you will need later. If you dual boot than you can just delete the windows 7 partition when the beta is over and your back to normal nice and simple.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

I've been too happy with Vista x64 to bother with a new beta OS, at this point. Two machines, 12GB RAM, six months, and no crashes later, Vista x64 is the best version of windows yet, IMO.

 

[Braver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodduska /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yeah: Download the Windows 7 Beta I believe it will be freely available until the 24th. The public beta liscences will expire July 1st 2009 though so make sure you back up anything you might need.

That would be August 1st.

 

[wonderwall]

So how exactly does one do a dual-boot anyway? I vaguely recall having Win2k and XP on the same machine many years ago but I can't remember for the life of me how I did it.

From what I've seen of it in action, Win7 really looks like my cup of tea. =)

 

[Braver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wonderwall /img/forum/go_quote.gif So how exactly does one do a dual-boot anyway?

You need to have an empty partition and install Win7 there. So if you run Vista, under control panel/administrative tools/computer management/storage select a partition, shrink it by about 20GB, make a new partition in that free space. Then pop in the Win7 dvd and install to that partition, it should recognize your old windows and add it to the boot menu. It will also make Win7 the default boot option, but you can change that under system/advanced system settings.

 

[wonderwall]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Braver /img/forum/go_quote.gif You need to have an empty partition and install Win7 there. So if you run Vista, under control panel/administrative tools/computer management/storage select a partition, shrink it by about 20GB, make a new partition in that free space. Then pop in the Win7 dvd and install to that partition, it should recognize your old windows and add it to the boot menu. It will also make Win7 the default boot option, but you can change that under system/advanced system settings.

This has to be done on the master drive, not an external or some such, correct? And partitioning will not damage files on the drive in question? I just might give this puppy a spin.

 

[Braver]

I would not advice running an OS from an external drive, but you could add a new internal disk in your system. It can be done, but performance would be bad and I'm not sure how the system would boot if the external drive is removed.

'Shrinking' a partition with the tool in Vista, or using a third party application to do the same, should be very safe.

But it is wise to make a backup just in case. You never know, and it is still beta. Also be sure to download the MP3-issue patch before you start Windows Media Player as it could damage your MP3s.

 

[Zodduska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Braver /img/forum/go_quote.gif That would be August 1st.

Thats what it was supposed to be, but type "winver" in the windows 7 search box to check your own.

 

[grawk]

I stuck it on a partition on my macbook. It's cute. They did a nice refresh of the leopard interface

while keeping it sufficiently windows-like.

 

[Carmantom]

I'm still looking for a key. anyone point to where they are?

 

[grawk]

Welcome to Windows 7

Click on the download link and it'll give you a key.

 

[mrarroyo]

I do not how but I am runnig Windows 7 on my home computer. How do I get back to the "regular" Windows? Thanks.

 

[Arainach]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrarroyo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do not how but I am runnig Windows 7 on my home computer. How do I get back to the "regular" Windows? Thanks.

If you didn't know that in advance, you probably shouldn't have installed Win7. You'll need to find the install discs for your previous version of Windows and reinstall that version, formatting the drive as you do.

As for my impressions:

Plain and simple, I love it. A lot of that is in the subtle things that just work.

Example: Our Campus Wi-Fi appears as unsecured, but once you sign in you have to go to a browser and enter your username/password in the form to log in. In previous OSes, they would connect to the network but everything would fail until you logged in. Win7 found the network, connected to it, and gave me a prompt for "additional login information may be required; click here to open your browser".

I found startup/shutdown times to be improved over Vista by maybe 10-15%. Hibernation is still slower on my laptop than I'd prefer, but that's probably mostly due to a slow hard drive.

I'm torn on the Internet Explorer 8 build. It has a LOT of nice features - for instance, each of your tabs appears as a separate selectable window in the thumbnails off the taskbar, and the quicksearch menu does pictures when searching things like Google or eBay. But it seems decidedly unstable, and I still wish it had a plugin API so that a decent ad blocker could be written for it. I'm no big fan of Firefox 3 (I find it to be slow, unstable, and crap), but I can't switch to another browser without support for both mouse gestures and ad blocking (insert Opera plug here; I'll try it eventually).

The new Window Management features (being able to move the windows to the edges to take up half the screen, up to maximize, etc.) are quite nice. They may not be huge timesavers, but they just make things feel better.

The UI in general feels a lot more polished. Many effects that were static before (highlighting of preview windows, start button state transitions, etc.) are animated now, and while power users may argue that that's no more functional, there's something to be said for elegance as well.

The underlying changes are excellent - some more polish has gone into the new Network layer, and a variety of important kernel changes such as finally getting rid of the scheduler spinlock. Some of the new user functionality like HomeGroup look promising, but I haven't tried them.

And then of course there's the most visible change - the new taskbar. The unification of quicklaunch and the application tray gives a single place to access an application instead of confusing the user by having apps spread across a pile of places. Aggressive grouping of windows saves space. And the peek functionality when hovering over a thumbnail or the show desktop function is more useful than I'd have ever imagined. Past that, there's a lot of subtle tweaks - like how the tray near the clock now extends upward instead of left, instead of taking up horizontal space.

On the whole, I find 7 to just feel more polished and intuitive, and I'm a big fan.