Windows 7

[Gower]

I've installed just about every flavour of Microsoft operating systems from original MSDOS to Windows 7 (excepting Vista) plus the odd Linux offering and 7 has to be the easiest and most straight foward clean install ever. After a quick look, I think it will suit me fine. It's also the first time I've used a new OS from day one. Must be getting adventurous in my dotage!

 

[StevieB]

Am I right in thinking its NOT recommended as an upgrade option from XP, but IS either from vista or as a clean install? The web demos look quite impressive, but as I do not need a new PC at the moment am just a casual observer rather than an interested buyer if the XP upgrade situation is not advisable.

Steve

 

[ste_5150]

You have to 'fresh install' from XP - the upgrade option is only useable from Vista, but apparently it's a very bad idea to use the upgrade option at all.

If you were thinking of 7, I hear the best way to do it is just go with a fresh install. There's an app that takes most of your settings and stuff and moves them over to 7, even when you do a fresh install, so it works out faster, easier and safer.

Supposedly it's a lot lighter as an OS too, so you can get a bit more out of the hardware, which is good.

I'm still hesitant to support any Windows version, but I have to admit I'm curious as it does sound quite well received.

 

[Gower]

StevieB, yes you must make a clean install if upgrading from XP. The beauty of it is that you backup all your data and bung in the 7 disk. You don't have to manually format the drive, Windows does it all for you. I didn't have to find even one device driver. Marvellous. So far, thumbs up.
Jim

 

[wizer]

After the last thread on Windows 7 and my scathing comments, I decided to give it another try. As Gower says, installation is a breeze and it dual booted with XP without a hitch. It picked up all my drivers without having to install any myself. I liked the fact that the finger print reader works natively within windows without third party intervention. Boot up is very quick and generally it looks like they have vastly improved on Vista. I gave it about a 3 week trial. The main reason I wanted to try it was to see if Adobe Premier would run any better. Sadly the opposite was true. Premier took and age to load and kept bombing out on me. It didn't like my virus software and I wasn't up for upgrading. What with that and my dislike of the bells and whistles, I kicked it into touch and went back to XP.

I do believe that with up to date, high spec hardware, it will be a worthy future upgrade.

 

[devonwoody]

I have XP, around 3 years, with a 300gb hard drive.

I f I did a clean install to 7, what happens to the 200gb on my harddrive, surely it would take ages to put that somewhere and then load it up. How do you do it? And how long?

 

[Argee]

I would go online and download the compatibility checker first. It might not be cost-effective to change, especially if all is well at the moment. My reliable but somewhat ancient scanner needs to be replaced (no surprise, really) and I knew that beforehand, thanks to the checker.

There is a facility - if you have an external drive - to run a utility that will transfer your files and settings, but with a single drive and a clean install, you'll need to back up all of your data. By that I mean stuff that you have saved or created, not the programmes themselves.

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate yesterday and it was the easiest, quickest and best software installation I've seen since I started computing (>20 years ago). It's definitely quicker to load and shutdown and I only had to download one driver it didn't cater for. Impressive, in the field of Microsoft products and Windows in particular.

Ray

 

[wizer]

DW, If your PC/Laptop is 3yrs old, it's not ready for windows 7. You need to upgrade your hardware if you want to upgrade your os.

 

[devonwoody]

DW, If your PC/Laptop is 3yrs old, it's not ready for windows 7. You need to upgrade your hardware if you want to upgrade your os.

I think you are right Wizer, I also cannot get XP to work with my Flight Unlimited 3 of 1995 genre. :wink:

 

[cutting42]

The main reason I wanted to try it was to see if Adobe Premier would run any better. Sadly the opposite was true. Premier took and age to load and kept bombing out on me. It didn't like my virus software and I wasn't up for upgrading. What with that and my dislike of the bells and whistles, I kicked it into touch and went back to XP.

I do believe that with up to date, high spec hardware, it will be a worthy future upgrade.

Hi Tom

Don't want to assume you have not done this but did you load all the CS4 Pro updates for premier, there are loads of them I believe to make Win 7 work.

I have a mate who is using Premier Pro CS4 on Win 7 64 with no issues but he does have 16gig of RAM. Wouldn't want you to try Win 7 without the best shot at getting it going as all the othere advantages seem well worth it. I will be upgrading everything I have to the correct h/w specs and migrating from XP to Win 7 since my play machine is working really well on 7.

 

[wizer]

No good point, I didn't check for patches or updates. To be honest my laptop is just not up to it. I'll wait 'til my hardware gets updated. My main point was that, as an operating system, it's 'ok'. Quite an improvement over Vista. I still think MS have a way to go with it and, like all OS's, it'll probably be worthy of gracing my laptop when the second service pack is released.

 

[kityuser]

I`ve recently installed the beta ubuntu 9.10 , of the which the installer only requires 3 mouse clicks (if memory serves me).

now THATS an easy install.........

if windows 7 is what vista was supposed to be aren't M$ 3/4 years behind now?

good luck to all early adopters, more money in the business is always good as is innovation/competition

I hear for several mates that although advertised as being "netbook friendly", you should stay clear of windows 7 on anything with an atom in it or < 2Gigs of ram....

Steve

 

[ste_5150]

No good point, I didn't check for patches or updates. To be honest my laptop is just not up to it. I'll wait 'til my hardware gets updated. My main point was that, as an operating system, it's 'ok'. Quite an improvement over Vista. I still think MS have a way to go with it and, like all OS's, it'll probably be worthy of gracing my laptop when the second service pack is released.

I believe they're ditching the idea of service packs and just pushing regular fixes and updates, though they may package a bunch of fixes eventually for fresh 'SP1' installations to just push them all in one go. Which I guess sort of equates to a Service Pack.... :? Who knows what the thinking is there....

It seems I'm due to be tasked with installing 7 on SWMBO's laptop in a week or 2. I'm not keen on doing it, but she's been asking me to run a clean Vista install on there for a while (to be failr, it's running like a dog), and now 7 has been released she wants that. :roll:

To be honest though, I think I put my own foot in it... I mentioned that they've included 7 in the student discounts instead of just Office. And she's just started a midwifery degree. To be fair it is only £30, but still, that was schoolboy....

 

[Vormulac]

I installed Windows 7 last week after using XP very happily pretty much since it came out. I don't like the interface (the same as Vista from what I can tell), I find it very difficult to find what I want or to 'tweak' the system as I would normally with XP, but to be completely fair that's down to me having to learn a new system, I daresay a complete beginner would not have the same frustrations. Apart from that it is fast and stable and the only software issue I've had is that Outlook from my old Office XP suite doesn't work properly and I don't like the 'Fisher-Price' Windows Live Mail alternative. I'm thinking of going to the 64-bit version to make use of all the ram in my pc, I don't think that given my experience over the last week it would be worth me going back to XP.

 

[Neil]

I'm thinking of going to the 64-bit version to make use of all the ram in my pc

How much do you have? Its probably a good decision to opt for 64-bit anyway as the 32-bit emulation is very good, but I haven't seen much in 64-bit builds apart from big finite element packages etc. I'd be interested to hear what you are going to run on it. I have 64-bit Vista on my biggest W/S but all it runs is my own (computational fluid dynamics) software. I only have 4GB in it and up until now I haven't needed more than the 3GB limit for applications so I'm still using a 32-bit build of my code, but I'm starting to hit the ceiling so I'll have to port to 64-bit fairly soon.

Outlook 2000 works fine on my 32-bit Vista machine, by the way.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[wizer]

've never worked with 64bit operating systems. What are the benefits for the average end user?

 

[Vormulac]

Ooh - that's interesting, I still have my old Office 2000 disk kicking around somewhere, might be worth a look. I have 6Gb of ram in my pc, so only half is currently being used and as I do quite a lot of image manipulation I reckon it would be worth it - I doubt the games I play would benefit! :lol:
I have heard the 32-bit emulator is a superb piece of kit, I installed the XP emulator yesterday actually and it looked pretty good although I didn't have time to really stress it.

 

[Neil]

've never worked with 64bit operating systems. What are the benefits for the average end user?

I wouldn't say there were any at the moment, Tom! :lol: But as long as you are happy that your 32-bit apps will run OK then it might be worth going down that road just for future-proofing (if there is no price differential). It just depends what you are into - certainly for numerical analysis type stuff its the sensible option, and also for high-end 3D rendering. I guess so games will be needing the additional RAM before long as well, if they are not already? But for day-to-day stuff I can't see any advantage.

One of our sister companies decided to change overnight to 64-bit XP about 5 years ago. It was a crazy decision as they were only running 32-bit applications, half of which didn't work on the new machines! It took a while to sort out that mess... :evil:

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Dibs-h]

've never worked with 64bit operating systems. What are the benefits for the average end user?

Little to none - unless the apps you are using come in a 64 bit version.

 

[kityuser]

've never worked with 64bit operating systems. What are the benefits for the average end user?

Little to none - unless the apps you are using come in a 64 bit version.

memory useage, forget it the average user won't use above the 32 bit 4 gig limit.

BUT if your apps come in a 64 bit variety then running them 64 bit can have some benefits on a 64 bit processor (arithmetic for example) so... say large photo filters or video transcoding can be sped up by running 64bit app on a 64 bit processor... nothing to do with ram

This is NOT the same as running a 64 bit kernel....... which unless you truely want to address many TB of ram is pointless.......

64bit app on a 64 bit processor with a 32bit kernel is AOK......
64bit kernels are pretty pointless at present apart from bragging rights

Steve