Windows 7 - What Do You Guys Think Of It?

[Atomnaya]

I have the RTM 64 Bit ultimate installed on my Dell XT2 since August. Smooth install from USB drive. Only grip are the drivers and the fact that occasionally when shutting down it needs to wait for an program to close. Other than that its very stable.

I've also got the Windows 7 Touch pack installed and its awesome!!! Only drawback is that the current drivers only enable two point of contacts (RC version had 6 points).

[R31Nismoid]

I have the RTM 64 Bit ultimate installed on my Dell XT2 since August. Smooth install from USB drive. Only grip are the drivers and the fact that occasionally when shutting down it needs to wait for an program to close. Other than that its very stable.

I've also got the Windows 7 Touch pack installed and its awesome!!! Only drawback is that the current drivers only enable two point of contacts (RC version had 6 points).

You can force shutdown after a set amount of time you know?

Once i tweak mine, i set the program shutdown to 3 seconds. So if the program aint shutdown within 3 seconds its just hard terminated

Saves a LOT of time when some applications take ages to close for whatever reason.

I had Vista setup this way, usualy shutdown in less than 10 seconds from clicking the button

[KR4-GTR]

LOL maybe ill try a reinstall instead of blasting it.

Even media center doesnt close properly - it says "media centre has stopped working" and errors out!

Interested to give it another shot giving the feedback about it has been positive!

[R31Nismoid]

I aint tried media centre yet - i will on my other PC though im going to convert... but that will take me at least 2-3 weeks to do as i need some spare HDD's to turn it into a server as well

[trance]

Windows 7 is only slightly different to vista in terms of usage, UI is a little different but once you pass the teething phase its quite nifty. have been using rtm since late july (for recovery disk developement), and can honestly say that for end user, it is a major stepup. most drivers are there from media install, and if they arent on the media install, windows update is on it asap.

[KR4-GTR]

I've emailed HP to see whats up with their website because when I go to download the drivers from them it just goes to a wireless assistant download page, it doesnt give the full list of available drivers as always!

Also, from Windows Update - the drivers are available but fail the install because they are not "digitally signed!" haha anyone know how to bypass this so i can install the ones for vista from HP? or should i just wait and hope that HP release the ones i require?

[R31Nismoid]

HP has always been shit for that kinda thing.

I was in Syd the other week, and my mate had me look @ his lappy to get it running right.

The HP website was possibly the worst i've had to use, i couldn't find the software/drivers i wanted etc. I ended up just googling other webpages to source from.

[BeEnAr]

I've had 7 running on the laptop for the past 2 weeks. No issues here and I didn't do a fresh install, just did an upgrade from Vista Business to 7 Ultimate (32bit).

One thing that is better than Vista is it's able to run on a lesser system. I had no problems running Vista but 7 runs so much better. I am running on a Lenovo R61 with 2GB Ram, and a lowly Intel Centrino Duo T7100 1.8GHz. Best thing about 32 bit in 7 is that there is no longer a 4GB limit on your RAM. I am using 2GB but have a 4GB USB Stick running as ready boost.

Have had no compatibility issues although when I did the upgrade (didn't want to have to back up the whole system then re-install everything) I did have to uninstall iTunes and my Canon SLR software but once finished have re-installed them and they are working fine.

There are lots of little niceties that are in 7 that have never been before, the ability to drag your taskbar open program tabs to anywhere on the bar itself (like tabs in IE and FF), when you have a whole heap of windows open and you want all but the one you're working on minimised just click the top of the window, hold, shake and all others will minimise. Little things like that make me happy.

We will be rolling this out at work in teh not to distant future, once we have tested stability with our core software.

Microsoft WIN for a change. Oh and the Mac is better comment... Enjoy your tarted up version of Linux lol

[Evil]

i've been running w7 64bit for a little and it flies... quick boot up time and even my old crappy games run on it...

[mad082]

shouldn't this be in the computer section?

oh and you are all nerds

[siddr20]

I downloaded the 64 bit version.. but now thinking i should just stick to what i got (xp) and linux..

Meh dont need any fancy features.. Maybe next year might upgrade to windows 7 when a few versions releases.

[910trx]

maybe you should have had your own windows 7 party

[bozodos]

meh I'll stick with winxp sp3 until they discontinue support for it, not into all the wanky GUI updates to make it look more like an iDevice.

real men use Linux Mandrake or DOS 6.22

[Chris_R33GTSt]

I have been running 7 since the first good RC from MSDN - at least 3-4 months and have found it to be nothing short of awesome. On my media server box, it seems to respond much faster then Server 2008 or even 2003 R2.

Mate while it is 'similar' to Vista, it is a new OS. Same as XP to Vista and past years.

Not everything is going to be the same.

Im upgrading tomorrow, downloaded off technet the other day, but i haven't had time to do it all yet.

I know HEAPS of people using it in varying applications (like a dedicated media centre, normal Pc style stuff, video editing), all reports are it is fantastic

I am running on 2 systems:

Dell Latitude E6400 notebook (7 RTM)

P8400 Core 2 duo 2.26Ghz and 4GB RAM

ASUS A8NE-SLI Deluxe with Athlon 4000+ and 2GB (Server 2008 R2 which is the server build of 7)

PERC 5i Raid controller with 4 x 1TB drives in RAID5 and 4 x 73GB 10,000RPM SAS Drives in R10

And it runs like a freaking weapon on both. Of note the suspend and hibernate times on the notebook are excellent, way better than Vista and correctly configured, the CPU idles close to 0-1% so there is very little standby load which means awesome battery life. I am now getting about 5-7 hours on the E6400 with the extended battery and official Dell 7 Drivers.

Buy a Mac and you'll never look back!!

Unless you are a noob who wants a computing appliance that you pay a highly inflated price for, a 'Superior' computing device. Shit the OS is even based on BSD Unix which is free so they are ripping you off even more, charging for an open source OS.

I agree they are nice, especially for older relatives who may be scared of computers but I just like to call then GAY.

[TiTAN]

Unless you are a noob who wants a computing appliance that you pay a highly inflated price for, a 'Superior' computing device. Shit the OS is even based on BSD Unix which is free so they are ripping you off even more, charging for an open source OS.

I agree they are nice, especially for older relatives who may be scared of computers but I just like to call then GAY.

you are aware they only charge $30 for their OS right?

[KR4-GTR]

Update -

I formatted my drive completely and reinstalled windows 7 from scratch.

I let it install my available standard drivers - etc one by one through windows update only. including the ones i had issues with before - the modem and the audio. This fixed the problem!

After that, installed the remaining ones from the standard HP setup files from their website.

I found that media center was crashing as soon as i installed the nvidia video driver.

SO - I went to the nvidia website and downloaded their fresh install for my video card - and its now working sweet!

With MSN - I dont group my icons in the task bar, so it was still doing that weird 2 window thing. So again, just running it in compatibility mode for vista until the new version comes out! Now it works fine and shows up near my notification area as normal and runs in the background without having to have it open in the task bar.

Glad I gave it another go - looking forward to digging around to see what else is new.

Edited October 26, 2009 by KR4-GTR

[Chris_R33GTSt]

you are aware they only charge $30 for their OS right?

Crapple website

Granted, its $40 but how much extra do you pay for the hardware?

If you look at the SKU for any Retail PC, the OEM Windows licensing does not add much cost to the end product due to the scale of the purchasing (Like the Retravision effect).

You cannot install OSX on anything other than a MAC, not legally anyway so their SKU is biased towards the margin on the hardware which is MASSIVE.

For example, I called a large reputable Apple store to buy some spare parts for my Fiance's iBook (optical drive). I happen to know that the cost price of this part is around $30 (TSST slim DVD burner). So I call the service center to be told that they will not sell me spare parts. Now I get a little bit offended, I am an EMC ESF2 Certified Fiber Channel tech and have Microsoft, Commvault and vendor certifications coming out of the proverbial and do advanced hardware/software support for a large vendor supporting iSCSI, SAN, FC and High end quad socket server gear right?

They refused to sell me a DVD drive.

So I ask what the cost is if they fit it themselves.. ready for it? aprox $600. PLUS $250.00 PER HOUR to INSTALL THE F***ing thing.

Where is the professional courtesy in that I ask? oh sorry I am not apple certified. So I can provision storage in a Petabyte storage system and then build and administrate an infrastructure supporting 1000's of users, but am not able to replace a DVD drive in a ****** Laptop???

Get F**Ked what a bunch of wankers

Edited October 26, 2009 by Chris_R33GTSt

[TiTAN]

yes you could run 7 on the laptop. would i recommend running it with only 1gb of ram? no.

[fuzzy_scuz]

Windows 7 is wow, about time, everything Vista was supposed to be.

[R31Nismoid]

does windows 7 require a hardware upgrade as most machines did when vista was installed? when i purchased one of my laptops it came with vista, but was running so slowly i took it off and put Xp back on - considering a test of 7, but if its likely to chew up alot of RAM then ill probably steer away. i've only got 1gb ram (not sure why they bothered installing vista on this machine to begin with)

1GB Ram - nope.

I wouldn't attempt without 2GB.

Honestly, you could probably get it to run on 1GB, but you would have to disable a few services etc, and being it is a Laptop you kinda need all that stuff (printer spoolers, security etc etc).

For a home user i'd probably say OK. However if you using MS Office etc, 2GB minimum.

Should be a cheap upgrade for a Lappie, $100 tops