Windows 7
 

Well with the Windows 7 Beta hopefully coming with the new year, is anyone looking forward to it? What do you hope come with the new download?

Re: Windows 7
 

not really. its a minor upgrade at best.
i'd rather stick with vista and not shell out the extra 200$ for a fancy new skin.

Re: Windows 7
 

I've had the chance to work a little with the PDC build of Windows 7 (build 6801), and even at that point, I have to say that it is quite a bit more than a minor upgrade. There have been overhauls to major parts of the code, both on the surface and under the hood. It's been a while, so I don't remember all the details, but I know that dual booting between Vista and Win7, I saw quite a few major differences. I was surprised that my old HP Laserjet 1100 did not have a driver out of the box, but it just appears that they tried to cut down on what was directly included, and made them available through download instead. I'm definitely going to try and get in on the beta once they start it, and will get a refresher at that point...

Re: Windows 7
 

As one of many that elected to skip Vista, I will be trying it.

Re: Windows 7
 

I still don't understand what people's problems with vista are. it really got the short end of the stick. there's nothing broken about the operating system as people seem to think, and i have seen few people get any actual problems with it.
it sure did a whole lot better than leopard did, but no one called them out on that.

i don't get it. :confused:

Re: Windows 7
 

i haven't had a single problem with vista aside from not being able to use a wireless router that was made in the pre-vista days :(

Re: Windows 7
 

IMHO When released it did not work with a lot of applications. I believe that Microsoft should of done more to address third party applications prior to release.

Re: Windows 7
 

Not just applications, but also drivers for hardware needed to be rewritten and were not available at the time of Vistas launch.

Re: Windows 7
 

Prior to Service Pack 1, there were many problems with compatibility with different programs, as well as a lack of driver support for what would be considered lower-end hardware. With Vista, the default security model had changed greatly, and for too long, Windows application developers had gotten used to the old style of Windows security (read: none), and so with Vista, Windows was now preventing those applications from doing things that they had been able to do in the past.

As far as drivers are concerned, a lot of the problems were actually caused by manufacturers of "budget" hardware, such as your no-name webcams and winmodems, to name just a few. Without proper Vista drivers, this hardware would simply not work, and for the majority of computer users, they don't understand the whole driver model, and are stuck at "device X worked in XP, why doesn't it work in Vista?" Many didn't see this as the fault of the device manufacturer, but rather that of Microsoft...after all, everything "just worked" on their $399 "starter" Dell or eMachines computer before they added Vista on.

Re: Windows 7
 

Or in some cases, still not available...
One example that I personally experienced -> http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/produ...html?ta bId=7

Re: Windows 7
 

And the hardware drivers that were available, especially the graphics drivers, were quite buggy and would cause the OS to crash often.

Re: Windows 7
 

I've been lucky, and all of my stuff was compatible, but I've heard the horror stories ...

All in all I've found Vista to be a decent, stable OS thats not (completely) deserving of its 'incompatibility' reputation.


Oh, and BTW Nate, I just noticed your signature ... look me up at BAE ;)

Re: Windows 7
 

I'm with you on this one... once you get vista fine tuned to where you like it (i.e. set up security and defaults) it is not as bad as the reviews have been saying it was. I personally refused to install XP on my Vista computer, but i see where it had its problems when it was a new release. At least it was a bigger hit than Windows ME...(I invested in that one too...didnt do anything spectacular though!)

Mainly i think people were not ready for such a dramatic change as Vista was.

Re: Windows 7
 

So skipping every other Microsoft OS release is the way to go
98 OK , ME Bad , XP OK, Vista Bad :eek:

Re: Windows 7
 

I'll be the one checking all the volunteers in...trainer for the system and running it at BAE...

Re: Windows 7
 

well personally i was ecstatic when i switched from dos to 3.1 then to 95

so really it was

3.1: good [for the time]
95: good
98: good
me: extremely bad
NT: ok
2k: good
xp: good
vista: annoyingly bad [at least to me]
7: sounds great [especially since its going to be more enterprise geared]

just my 2 cents

Re: Windows 7
 

I got vista for my home computer (the family computer), used it for a day, and never used it again. I RAN (really fast) to the Apple Store. Maybe Microsoft will redeem itself... or at least I hope so.

With the NXE for Xbox, the Zune 3.0 (i think), they seem to be on track for another fantastic release.

Re: Windows 7
 

Zune 3.1 was worse, i was part of the huge group of people who's first gen 30g zune froze today :(

for those of you who are oblivious to this, read this
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/12/31/z...res/index.html

Re: Windows 7
 

I was never a big fan of the Zune, one of my friends has one and lives by it. I am more of an iPod type person...

In that report it mentioned a possible Y2K like meltdown- If that does end up happing then were all screwed... But hey MS could just fix that "small bug" with a SP update hahaha

Re: Windows 7
 

lol, well i used to be an ipod person but ended up having 3 break on me [between 1 and 5 months if getting a new one] so i got the zune when it came out and it only stopped working now because of the software update. life time just seems a lot longer i got over 2 years out of it before any problems.

Re: Windows 7
 

I'm still on Windows 5....and I have some music players that don't know (or care) what day it is....

So, I guess news of Windows 7 is kinda irrelevant.

Re: Windows 7
 

Windows 7 has potential, assuming M$ doesn't FUBAR this one like they did Vista. It's not the stability of Vista that got me, it was the ugly bloated theme that sucked down a HUGE portion of your power.

So assuming Windows 7 is decent, there's only ONE of my machine's that I'd run it on, that being my CAD machine. For portability I need 100% uptime, and I have had NO windows machine give me that. For my server, I'm still sticking to Linux.

Here's hoping M$ doesn't biff this one too.

Re: Windows 7
 

I guess im lucky then because my iPod Touch has lasted me almost a year with no problems, and my nano before that lasted about 2 years... maybe you just have bad Apple luck....

Back on topic here: I think that MS should try to get on the Unix train, i mean everything runs Unix except them. They should also try some Linux-Like graphic system, that seems not to take up much power..

Re: Windows 7
 

correct me if you think i am wrong here, but...

The problem with Microsoft, is that they make software, and nothing else.(with the exception of input devices and other devices) So when they make software, and it doesn't work with a lot of hardware, it is "there" fault.

where as apple Makes there Hardware and software, so they have most of the compatibility bugs worked out before the public uses it.

Re: Windows 7
 

You're dead on. Another issue is the size of M$. Once you hit that many employees, your company becomes bloated. Too many chefs in the kitchen will spoil the soup, ya'dig?

Re: Windows 7
 

Well it can work with good management,(Google can seem to do it)

Really i think after 34 years Microsoft needs an overhaul, or a new managing team, because right now, they are on a downward spiral.(in my mind)

Re: Windows 7
 

Kinda, some of their stuff (huge xbox fan and it didn't work properly till after 3 years?) is good. But if you think about they are such large company and how many different types of computers are there. Each one needs their own drivers and not everyone is patient. I am not backing up microsoft for their terrible new platform but I think they know how bad their operating system is. Plus the thing with macs is that they don't have all these companies manufacturing different computers. Mac has their own line of unix comps. I returned my xbox 10 times, but still love it because of all the dang support for it aka games (HALO 3 and GEARS OF WAR 2). I can't use CAD or my other special programs on mac or linux without running some kind of emulator. So i guess we have to put up with microsoft and the alpha released seemed decent for windows 7.

-RC

Re: Windows 7
 

Personally, I'm more interested in what's *not* coming with it. I like the idea of the slimmed down application bundle, etc. I've always felt that the Windows product line should focus more on the core system. Especially with the level of internet connectivity that is the norm in recent years, it'd be extremely easy to make such add-ons install-on-demand. Such a system has been working for Linux for years and years. Apt-get is by far my favorite reason for using Linux.

Re: Windows 7
 

Let me throw this out there...currently on Newegg, they have a total of 496 AMD & Intel motherboards available(not counting anything only listed under combo or server motherboards.) With this large of a potential install base for Windows, can we reasonably expect Microsoft to be able to test on every potential hardware configuration to ensure compatability, or can we say that they are doing their part by releasing documentation that tells the various hardware manufacturers "this is how you make your hardware work with Windows"? If the hardware companies are given this info, and then choose not to do anything with it, where should the blame really fall?

As far as Apple is concerned, I think the argument can be made that they are more in the CE (consumer electronics) business than the computer business. Apple's focus is on a system where everything "just works," and they are able to accomplish this by having a very small "supported" hardware base, and simply not letting their software not work on anything else, just as, for example, you could not take your iPod OS and install it on your Zune(I realize the hardware isn't as similar in that example, but I think it makes the point). Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with this approach, I just believe that because of it, MS and Apple can be considered to be targeting different markets.

Re: Windows 7
 

I recently acquired a copy of Windows 7 Build 7000, and i must say i am extremely impressed. I installed it on my HP TX2000 tablet, which originally came pre-installed with Vista.

[Off Topic]
From the moment i first booted the laptop from the factory it ran slowly. Even after i uninstalled all the "junk-wear" that came pre-installed it still ran relatively slowly, and would often lock-up for minuets or just freeze completely. I had many BSOD's all with different causes, which made troubleshooting impossible. The boot up was slow, sometimes it would be 10 minutes before i could use it. I tried to improve performance by turning off most of the visual features and tweaked it as much as i could, but to little improvement.


So out of frustration I emailed HP and requested the XP drivers for the laptop, I explained that vista was not performing how i wanted it to and that I had purchased a copy of XP Tablet 2005 and wished to install it instead. And within 1/2 a day I received a reply with a link to the ftp site for the laptop which contained all the xp drivers. So i proceed to partition my hard drive to maintain the vista OS and installed XP on the new partition. After i had installed all the drivers and such it ran very well. Xp booted in seconds not minutes and i rarely had lookups. However as i used it more i kept having issues with the drivers from HP. Even though they were correct and up-to-date, i kept getting reoccurring BSOD's all driver related. But i took it with the territory and put up with them.
[/Off Topic]

So when i got the chance to install the alpha release of Windows 7, i installed it over my old vista partition. What amazed me the most during the install was how fast it was. From the start of the installer to to its finish took around 10 minuets, not accounting for time spent traversing through the dialog boxes. Further still was that during the installation the installer popped up asking which wireless network to connect to, so that it could retrieve the latest updates from Microsoft, without asking me for the wi-fi driver before hand. Something i had only seen in Linux installations. After the installation completed i only needed to install the video driver, the tablet driver, and the finger print reader software, to get full functionality, better still was that all the drivers were just the vista drivers already available from HP's site.

After i had everything set up my overall impression is that Windows 7 huge step up from vista and light years ahead of XP. Its amazing, i retained all of the vista features and visuals yet maintain better performance than XP. While the boot is still a little slower than XP, once its booted everything runs so well. Programs start much faster, with more reliability. Not to mention that i have been running it straight for 4 days now without a single hang-up, freeze, or error message, even after i installed Inventor 09 and Adobe CS4, ect. I really looking forward to the release of Windows 7, and without a doubt this will be the best Windows yet.

Re: Windows 7
 

The people that I know that have Vista running well have all reformatted and reinstalled Vista. Then Vista runs well.

Re: Windows 7
 

Is windows 7 coming out for "public release" anytime soon?

Re: Windows 7
 

That could be the case but i didn't have a standalone copy of vista to install, only the recovery partition built into the laptop. But i did have XP Tablet so i defaulted to that. Given the option again, even with the quirky drivers, i would still go back to XP.

Re: Windows 7
 

I think I read unofficially that it was later in 2009 but I cant seem to find the article to back that up.

Re: Windows 7
 

I think the biggest problem was hardware and resources and the masses were trying to run this vista on machines that could barely run XP and it didn't do so well, myself included, when I got my new Asus F3 series laptop all my Vista issues went away.

The other negative was the licence, for some who like to build an rebuild systems and change parts and re-install it was a problem.

So far I have heard nothing but good things about windows 7, I want to get a copy of it when it comes out in Beta, anyone know how to get on the list?

There is somone in my weather newsgroup on yahogroups, (wxscan), jason L who has the alpha release but he won't share nor tell how to get it but apparently it comes out in beta in January. I want one!

m

Re: Windows 7
 

You hit the nail on the head in that post, problem is alot of "consumers" don't understand why their computer won't work and can't think beyond pressing the on button, they just complain that MS put out a bad product. VISTA runs fine if you have the resources yet people with entry level machines are screaming that vista is no good.

I'm also thinking that MS should perhaps have different versions of their next OS and those being consumer, business, technical, the technical version would allow us to tweak and do what we want and the consumer version quite simpler to protect end users from themselves and be more for the people, the Mac type users who just want their system to work with as little tweaking and customizing as possible.

m

Re: Windows 7
 

You have nailed why Apple is recognized as having a more reliable operating system. If OS X were required to run on even HALF of the hardware that Windows supports I think we would find that Windows is actually a better made operating system.

Vista is a nice operating system provided you have the drivers and the hardware to run it.

In my opinion, Windows 7 needs to be stable, needs to trim down on the hardware (hard drive space especially), and it needs to get rid of UAC. Meet those requirements and I think we might have a winner. I would personally like to see their new file system that was promised for Vista.

Just to keep things open, I am a Mac user who only uses XP for Cad.

And I have to agree with Craig, for rock solid uptime very few things can beat linux. My Ubuntu box has an uptime of nearly 60 days and that was only because of a power outage.

Re: Windows 7
 

Stability: Check - During my short time with the 6801 build, the only real problems I had were with applications flat out not liking the new OS - didn't really expect anything different there, since it was still in Alpha at the time.
Hardware: Don't remember for sure, but supposedly things have been trimmed at least so that Aero can run on machines that it was previously not able to. Also, the default "clean install" sets up a separate "System" partition, which (theoretically) makes sure you can at least still boot to a console if your Windows partition gets FUBAR'd.
UAC: I actually agree with what they are trying to do with UAC, and they made the settings much more flexible with Win7. Rather than the simple UAC On/Off option that you had with Vista, there's actually about 5 different levels of UAC that you can choose from - basically from Off to "Protect me from Myself" and everything in between.
New File System(WinFS): It's my understanding that WinFS has been all but abandoned by MS, but some of the work on it is being rolled into future versions of SQL Server(since WinFS was SQL based anyway)...so, it's my guess that you'll never see it as an actual part of the OS, but it may make an appearance as an add-on for those who might need it. I actually played around with the Beta they released a while back, and honestly was not that impressed...the idea is nice, but could be implemented just as easily by allowing tags on files to categorize them. You see a little bit of this in Vista, where your default "Documents", "Pictures", "Music", etc folders in the user directories are not folders at all, but rather what I would call "meta-folders" (I think Win7 calls them "collections"), where you can specify multiple locations, that get combined into one for easier access. The physical folders still exist, of course, but you don't see them unless you go looking when you go to open or save a file. I used this to my advantage while I was using Win7, linking my music(stored on an external HDD) to show up in the "Music" metafolder, without having to use up the extra HDD space on my internal drive.

Re: Windows 7
 

Thanks Nate, maybe instead of WinFS they will focus on reading/writing to other file systems. I am also glad that they added levels of UAC, protecting people from themselves is nice in a world where grandma doesn't know that sudo rm -R / is a bad idea.

Re: Windows 7
 

How did those who have beta copies get them? I have an MS account (and in fact, a beta of Server 2008). But I cannot find a download page.

Re: Windows 7
 

from Microsoft, in big red letters: "If you are inquiring about being a beta tester for Windows 7, be advised that they are not accepting new participants at this time. Please do not submit a Feedback item to request participation in any programs.

Please visit the Connection Directory for all programs that are available to participate in."

http://beta.microsoft.com/Connect

Re: Windows 7
 

As long as I can get it with my MSDN Subscription, I'll definitly be trying it. However, I'm not too thrilled about the "Super Bar", it look like Microsoft's version of Apple's Dock, and I never liked it at all.

@Bsteckler
Microsoft was giving them out to some special people, or people that attened thier presentations and stuff. I think we'll be getting it once they announce it at CES in about a week, since that is when the official beta is supposed to begin.

~DtD

Re: Windows 7
 

being a gamer i dispised vista with a passion when it first came out with all of its problems espically in the driver department... since SP1 they have fixed a lot and it has gotten progressivly better...

with windows 7 it is using the same kernel base as vista which means it should be a seemless transfer for developers creating software + drivers...

i still use XP to this day... its not broken so why change over??? if windows 7 isn't broken to the gaming community i will switch over...

Re: Windows 7
 

@Bsteckler: It is VERY possible to "beta test" Windows 7 without being on the official registry. Due to forum rules, I urge people to not discuss the method here. If there is true interest in learning this, PM me and I'll tell you a great method to get sued.

With early software, it's best to not play games with piracy.

That being said, I've got a friend on the beta list and I get to try Windows 7 next week! Woohoo!

Re: Windows 7
 

You do know that you can turn Aero off, and run the 'classic' theme just like xp.. invest in some ram, i'm running a 2.5 year old thinkpad with an old ati x1300 video card and it runs great with 2 gigs of ram...

Re: Windows 7
 

Agreed, our team laptop runs Vista but BARELY met the requirements so we just turned all the fluff off, went all the way back to windows 98 look and feel.

Re: Windows 7
 

also, i was using Win7 build 6956(the one that leaked from the Chinese Conference) for about a month. And i just installed the 7000 build (beta1)
Runs like a dream, all the drivers installed perfectly. CS4, matlab, office and a few others all installed just fine. (If interested in how to get it, just use the googles ;) )

Re: Windows 7
 

I am going to wait until I can get the beta legally from the MS site but it's amazing the good reviews of this OS so far and just how badly people want it, thats a good sign that MS might have come up with a winner after all the bad press they got on vista. I can't wait to get mine :)

Re: Windows 7
 

Grandma would have to hit "y" about 10,000 times for that to really work. I think she'd figure out something was up by then. You need an "f" flag for it to delete everything without asking. And that's for Posix systems anyway. :p

I'm an avid Linux user because Windows has always proved to crash for me. I know it's because my line of home computers running Windows have always "met" the hardware requirements, and not exceeded them substantially, but it kind of says something when you need a $400 computer in order to boot up. All the Windows machines I use are usually slow, also, because of all of the non-Microsoft hardware installed on them that's always running in the background and taking up resources. Personally, I just don't like the fact that it runs generally slowly unless you have a gaming-scale computer.

That being said, when Vista had just come out, I was working with a guy to set up one of the laptops his company had just bought (that day, right out of the package) that had been pre-configured for a wireless internet cafe. We're both computer nerds. It took 5 minutes for the computer to boot up, and another 20 for the two of us to figure out where Vista had hidden the WiFi card control to turn it on (the button on the computer didn't do it). I would just like the next version to organize things a little better (either pre-Vista style or just logically placed under the labels that happen to pertain to their contents). Then when we turned it off, it idled for 10 minutes (no hard drive activity, any "active" processes contained somewhere within RAM and the CPU) before the power actually shut off. So, better resource management might also help.

One of my friends has a fairly adequate laptop for running Vista, and it ran acceptably, but the only problem is it went through about a 4 amp-hour battery in about 45 minutes because everything was always running. He switched to Ubuntu and the battery started lasting him about 3 hours at a time. Power management could be better handled. Even if it's for a desktop, there's no reason to waste that much power.

Another thing that's peeved me in general about all the Windows OS's is that when you're logging in, you have to wait a bit before you can do anything. Now, this is a no brainer and to be expected on any operating system, but the system should not spend all of its resources loading MSN messenger when you've just clicked on Firefox. Some kind of real-time engine would be a very nice addition to the kernel. And if this would require new drivers for everything, that might be an issue they should work on too, standardization of the kernel protocols. You can use an Ubuntu realtime kernel in a Fedora Zen installation with no problems if you add the right files in. You don't have to reinstall anything. And then it'll update correctly the next time there's a new version. So it is possible, and it would make their fan base a lot wider because of the improved and consistent support.

One thing that amazed me when I got to Linux was the lack of a need for defragmenting the drive. The main Linux partition is setup to always rearrange the files when you're planting them so that the drive is not fragmented, therefore removing the need to do it manually and decreasing required access time. WinFS may not be such a bad idea, as it would remove this problem. Not to mention that their current default, NTFS, has enough complexities to it that there are MULTIPLE open-source tools installed by default on Ubuntu devoted ONLY to diagnosing and fixing NTFS drives. Maybe they could adopt the operating system that was being developed several years ago that would never need to expand its filetable because it would take the energy required to vaporize the earth's oceans to write a one to every bit the filesystem could hold. I believe it was called znfs, or something similar, but it might be could to move to a standardized multi-platform FS.

And if I understand correctly what you're talking about with the UAC levels, it sounds like they're finally doing something about the fact that there are very few manual controls for Windows, and most major problems are fixed by backing up and reinstalling. That's one of the reasons I use Linux, if there's a problem, it gives you a precise error about the issue, usually how to fix it, or a resource to find out how, and then you run a command and it's over with. The Windows commands are generally somewhere along the lines of, "There was an error. It was either because 'foo.dll' is not a Windows file or has been corrupted." They could put a little more trust in their users, or at least the computer repair people who need specific errors to fix the problem.

If what people on this thread are saying about Win7 is true, then MS has taken a huge jump forward from their several backward steps 2 years ago, and I applaud them. I will probably stick with Linux because it better supports the things I do and is quick on old hardware (typing this on a 2003 laptop with a 1.2 GHz processor and 256 MB RAM with 3 other windows and 6 tabs open), but it would be really nice for me to not have someone e-mailing me every couple of days going, "My computer broke, can you help me?"

Re: Windows 7
 

People bag on Vista because of a technical term called...the bandwagon effect. They hear it sucks from others or from reviews and then they blindly concur that it sucks, and in doing so, join the band wagon. I've been using Vista for almost a year now on my Vaio laptop, never had a problem with drivers or software. I will admit Vista does require a lot of processing power for all the fancy gadgets and effects, and so lower end computers that people get for cheap will probably leave them waiting on it. Changing the settings to just what you need and upgrading the ram are good ways to speed it up. On a 2.4ghz Intel dualcore with 4 gb of ram, startup time < 20 seconds and I can run all CAD programs I need to and other programs without a hitch. Connected to all my old devices that were pre Vista and even pre XP old. I do plan on getting a Mac laptop though just for the aesthetic qualities, I must admit they are quite sexy. But I do plan to continue running MS desktops because I can build them and I don't need to spend an arm and leg to upgrade the ram.

Re: Windows 7
 

From my experience, the people who thought vista were ok were the ones who bought a whole new computer from a vendor.

The people who disliked vista were the enthusiasts and system builders that like choosing their own components, and the ones who upgraded their operating system without changing components.

Group one generally didn't have many problems since vendors like dell tested everything and made sure all the drivers worked. Group two had an absolute nightmare because so many components simply didn't work. That's what people liked about xp - it simply worked with nearly everything.

Most folks don't remember though that XP didn't work that way when it started out!

Re: Windows 7
 

I have another question and I have nearly crashed google a few times researching this one out but still don't have a 100% answer yet.

My current laptop is an Asus F3 series, Vista ultimate, 4G ram, Core@duo 2.20Ghz, runs vista fine, I work in news and severe weather so I don't run too many programs, we have radio scanner programming software like Arc996 by butel.nl, some other small programs like Grlevel3 Grlevelx.com and CrossFTP basic which is very important as that how I get video out to one of the TV stations, also run virtualdub for capture and probably sony vegas soon so nothing too major...yet.

I am holding off though on upgrading to 64 bit Vista because even though 32 bit older programs will work the drivers must be digitally signed and there appears to be no easy work around, guess the only way is to upgrade and find out but I don't have as much free time to play as I would like :(

I am also toying with the idea since I don't have a permanent desktop about retiring this latop to the desk as that way I would also have a permanent always on ftp machine here and getting the Asus G50Vt-A2 as my new mobile laptop, I am trying not to keep looking at the Canadacomputers.com website but it's on for a really good price right now.

This 32 bit vs 64 bit digitally signed driver issue has me still very unsure of what to do.

mark

Re: Windows 7 - Update
 

Not one to normally bump a thread like this, but aparrently Microsoft is releasing a free public Beta 1 of Windows 7 on Friday. Check out this site for more info...
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...leId=9125 278

Re: Windows 7
 

I used a nifty trick to force direct x10 on XP... and anyways if win7 has better 64 bit support (which vista was already quite impressive) I will definitely pay it a look.

Re: Windows 7
 

Vista runs smoother if you make the windows perfectly clear and disable recent items. Also if you run a defrag every other day and don't use more than 11.6% of memory it works like a dream ;). :p SO HA! (psssss.... my vista is no longer vista. I personally upgraded my drivers and my source code and MS no longer recognizes most of my Vista.):D :confused: :eek:

Re: Windows 7
 

I am currently downloading windows7 64 bit from this link and it's working

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...FRE_EN_DVD.ISO

The win 7 32 bit is a no go right now, too many people tried to download it an MS's servers exploded :)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/e.../dd353205.aspx

I placed a spare smoke alarm over my laptop and modem before I go to sleep tonight, downloading win7 64 x2 and uploading 5g's of news video at the same time, poor modem :)

m

Re: Windows 7
 

lol, I feel it, although I've never had to upload 5-gigs of anything! :yikes: My WRT54GL with DD-WRT has been serving me pretty darn well. It can take just about anything I can throw at it.

I'm downloading the win7 x64 right now, also. Capped at 2MB/s, averaging 800kb/s, with about 28% left to go. I still need a key, but at least we get 30-days to try it out. MS should've been prepared for this, but nooooo....

Re: Windows 7
 

...Its windows...and I'm a loyal follower of Macs, so nope:ahh:

Re: Windows 7
 

Well, I'm a Linux-junkie, and not much of a Windoze fan myself, but this is what Vista was supposed to be like, so I'm interested. Especially since the requirements have been lowered, less annoying pop-up notifications, etc.

Re: Windows 7
 

Any idea where we get the keys? I downloaded and installed win7 64 as a second OS this morning, install was super fast, 45 min and done but it won't connect to the internet with my cable modem no matter what I try so I still have to figure that out and it asks for a key and I m not sure were we are supposed to get the keys but then again I haven't had much time to read and I have to go back out on the road now.

Still want to get the 32 bit version as well and try it.

mark

Re: Windows 7
 

it's my understanding that MS temporarily stopped handing out product keys due to the overload on the 32 bit version on their servers. Once they bring that back online, you should be able to sign up for a key...

Re: Windows 7
 

I too, have not had many if any problems with Vista. I am majoring in Network Administration, so I work with Vista on many levels including networking them. No real problems here...I sometimes find it easier to find something because of the nice litte "start search" on the start menu. I am waiting for Windows 7, but I hear it is not going to be much different than Vista. I have seen some screen shots and had some details thrown at me. Sounds like its is just basically a version of Vista with ALL of the bugs worked out.

Re: Windows 7
 

You don't have to download the Beta if you have already, but go through the process here to grab your key(s):
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...-download.aspx

Re: Windows 7
 

a guy that used to be on my team downloaded the beta via torrent and he likes it, he said it had some cool stuff and he was going to use it instead of vista. he gave me a copy of the ISO but I haven't had a chance to get it working yet because vista won't allow me to adjust my partitions enough to get it installed

Re: Windows 7
 

I didnt touch my partitions at all, i just made a virtual machine in virtualbox (its free) it runs pretty well but would probably be faster if it was installed on my computer as opposed to a virtual machine.

Re: Windows 7
 

Were you using the partition manager in a window or in cmd? Because some times i can get things done in cmd that the normal wizards or programs don't let me do.... just a suggestion.

Re: Windows 7
 

Ok, so I just installed the beta and right now most of it works. By most I mean that the Internet fails. It seems that with my MSI Neos Platinum, the networking goes through an Nvidia nForce 3 that it doesn't work. Anybody know how to fix this? As far as I know, Nvidia has dropped support for nForce 3 even for Vista, so I can't find drivers or whatever to let me connect to the internet.

Re: Windows 7
 

It looks like I'll be trying out beta 7 after all...my son wants to play with it, so we're downloading it to insall on one of the spare P4s. We need to juggle memory to come up with 1GB for it, though.

27%....should be done downloading by morning....

Re: Windows 7
 

they where originaly going to cap the downloads at about 2.5 million, but they changed it and made it unlimited downloads for 2 full weeks!! woot this means i don't have to rush to get it downloaded

Re: Windows 7
 

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate Beta and can say for sure that i will not be going back to Vista or XP. This will be here as my regular day-to-day OS since everything works with it and it runs like XP on the machine that i'm using it with (Pentium D 3.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA 7350LE). This machine came with XP (With Vista Express Upgrade) and then i put vista on it and now Seven ... I will be staying here as MSFT did an awesome job on it!

**Note: If you have installed the beta I highly recommending changing the taskbar to the setting that says "Combine When Taskbar is Full". That is when you right-click and go to properties ... it is the option for "Taskbar Buttons"**

Re: Windows 7
 

Just setup today. Lemme say one thing here: I LOVE THE INSTALLATION!!!
It has a clean, easy-to-read progress bar, not as many pop-ups requesting info, and (my favorite part), you can START THE INSTALL from your current Microsoft OS. I realized that I didn't need a DVD to install it. You can choose a new partition, or upgrade. But you can only upgrade if you have Vista SP1+.

So now I'm triple-booting Win7-64, XP64, and Ubuntu64. I really, truly, honestly don't know where to start. Just if you read this, every positive thing that someone has said about this OS, is true. Even their claim of less UAC-related notifications.

Runs well on my laptop with an AMD64 1.6GHz dual core, 2gigs of RAM, and integrated mobile video card. In fact, if it wasn't for my crappy video, I'd have a 4.5 on the Windows Experience Index (currently it's 1.0).

I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't a big fan of MS, if at all, before tonight. Now, well, let's just say they have my vote. I've already vowed to legally purchase this OS, and have only pestered all of my friends about it.

And it's still in Beta....

Re: Windows 7
 

I've skimmed through all 5 pages. I'm very suprised. Nobody mentioned http://windows7news.com/

Re: Windows 7
 

A college student gets his first look at the new Windows. Hopefully I'll get a chance soon.


edit: it only took me about 15 minutes to crash it....I was doing a complicated task, trying to see what was on the C drive, using Windows Explorer. Used to be we could just type in "dir c:"

Re: Windows 7
 

So i downloaded it, struggled to get one of the first 2.5 million keys (before they stopped download capping), and installed it. I got it up and running and installed over Vista in about a half an hour on my computer. I must say, i really, really like the installation process.

Now into the actual experience. The bootup screen was kinda weird... the little glowy balls forming a windows logo was kind of awkward. Performance wise, it is much faster than Vista. heck, it may even be faster than XP, ive yet to run any formal tests. The ability to dock unopen programs in the taskbar is extremely useful, and so is the live preview function (hovering over the mini preview and watching the other windows fade is pretty cool). I dont see much use for the desktop preview function, but whatever. Window "slamming" is also a really nice feature... i hated it when i used to close a window after exerting a reasonable effort to maximize it.

As for compatibility, the 64 bit beta version of windows 7 is FAR more compatible with my computer/hardware than Vista ever was. In vista my wireless network card experienced intermittent dropped data and lagging, but in 7 there is nothing of the sort.


windows 7 is windows vista with all the bugs worked out. like they said, they finally listened to the users. I think they are marketing it as windows 7 to avoid the stigma that Vista had placed on it. with that said, i am never going back to XP or (god forbid) Vista


edit
Oh! i forgot to mention the libraries feature! i run a configuration with XP on one hard disk and se7en (upgraded from vista) on the other. The libraries basically allow you to define the "My Documents" scheme however you want- for instance my ONE my documents library links together all of the data from my XP system and my current se7en system. You can also add custom libraries (for instance "My Webserver", "My C++ Projects" etc). It is such a handy feature and im glad they finally added it.

Re: Windows 7
 

Remember, this is still an early Beta build, so the fact that it's nearly fully functional is amazing in-and-of itself. I'm pretty sure whatever made it crash will be worked out by "August".

You didn't hear? They raised the limit to "infinity". ;) There's an unlimited number of keys now, so tell anyone who's interested.

I had no audio in XP64, and it was pretty irritating. I also couldn't use an ethernet wire or my quick launch touch buttons.

Yeah, it certainly would not build the hype that it has, had it been marketed as "Vista SP3". And I'm also going to leave XP and Vista behind me. Heck, I might try to see if I can stick with this Beta OS until it releases. :D

Only issue I have right now is video, and that seems to be a majority of the compatibility problems with Windows 7. So my games are sort of just wasting HDD space, but that's fine, because it's FRC season.

Re: Windows 7
 

Are you really having trouble with video?

I can play all of my steam games (TF2 required a volume fix) flawlessly on se7en, but i am using a relatively new video card, so i guess se7en came with the drivers (radeon HD4850)

Re: Windows 7
 

Win7 did not automatically install a driver for the onboard sound on my old off-brand P4 system. I haven't tried to fix it yet....since I don't have a pair of speakers handy to use on it...but I probably will some time.

Youtube video works fine (in blissful silence) after installing firefox, flash player, noscript, and flashblock :)

Re: Windows 7
 

I'm using a built-in video card (laptop), Radeon X1250 I believe. Games worked in XP, but they go all screwy in Win7. TF2, L4D, some other RTS. I'm going to try a quick-fix later today to see if that does anything.

btw, my SteamID is 1up_dave ;)


EDIT: Yeah, the other thing I hate is IE8. Not really a fan of it. But then again, I never really liked IE, even on XP.

Re: Windows 7
 

Drivers maybe? For me, the problem in my ethernet connection is that Nvidia dropped support of it about 4 years ago. Maybe try downloading Vista drivers for it?

Oh by the way, it'll probably not run well because integrated takes your system RAM, and Windows 7 requires you to have 1 GB, so it might be a RAM problem, but then again, I don't know what your system specs are.

Re: Windows 7
 

No, I can handle it. http://chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpo...9&postcount=71

It's probably just a driver issue. It worked on Vista, and that takes heluva lot more system resources. Just like my fingerprint scanner just had a driver released today.

Re: Windows 7
 

Maybe we should show Microsoft the CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) and have them include that on Win7. That would solve all codec problems with video/audio.

As for drivers, that's a little harder since they're per device and not necessarily generic...

Re: Windows 7
 

I'm hoping they do. That would be a great help. It perplexes me why they haven't included free (beer and liberty) open-source codecs such as Ogg Vorbis with their OS.

Re: Windows 7
 

I installed it on two computers
1)My 2 year-old abit kn8 AMD X2 4200+ with 2gb of ram and an (old IDE) 40GB hdd
ATI Radeon x1300 (dual monitors)
Install took 20min
2)A Several year (more than 5) old Inspiron 600m with and intel centrino at 1.2GHZ 512MB ram and 120gb hdd
install took 32min

computer 1 looks amazing and proforms better than XP SP2, Very impressed:)
computer 2 is snappy but slightly less appealing(no dedicated graphics):(
needless to say i will be keeping my XP and Ubuntu installs on both computers until the final release of Windows 7.

Has anyone got labview to work with Windows 7? i have been getting some errors.

Re: Windows 7
 

I will try it out next chance I get and report back here. What are the errors you're getting?

Re: Windows 7
 

Considering that Windows 7 is still in beta, I wouldn't run Labview on it, mainly because neither Microsoft nor NI can be held accountable for errors, due to the fact that Labview isn't guaranteed to work on Win7 and Win7 is still early beta.

Re: Windows 7
 

True. They also state that this should not be used as a primary OS, and for good reason. But that's why there are adventurous geeks like us me. To be bold like that and try it out anyway.

Re: Windows 7
 

I get error #12 upon installer open (see win7.jpg)
I get error #12 upon the directory destination screen (see win7 2.jpg)

I dont know if i can install each product individually. I'll try that later.

Edit: the first installer is what seems to be causing the problems

Re: Windows 7
 

Yeah, I'm switching from XP Pro 32-bit completely over to Windows 7 64-bit Build 7000. The beta is good until July anyways. I've heard nothing but good things about it so far and how it's really stable with huge performance upgrades, making up where Vista was lacking. I'm just waiting for everything to finish backing up onto my 1TB storage drive at the moment.
The only problem I've heard of is if WMP detects any MP3's, it will cut off the first 3 seconds of all of them. There's a hotfix but it can't be applied before the damage is done.

Re: Windows 7
 

Nice feature.

Re: Windows 7
 

That seems to be the only flaw so far. It is a beta after all, and they're working on a fix right now. It'll definitely be resolved by release.

Re: Windows 7
 

Good job, now you tell me about this!!! :rolleyes:

At first I thought my MP3s were corrupt. Hopefully something can be done about it soon.

Re: Windows 7
 

Did you have any problems while installing Inventor. When i do it off of a DVD with all the install files on it, the installation gets all the way up to where it actually starts installing the software, then prompts me to insert disk 1 of 4. If i click ok, it just prompts me again, and if i click cancel, it cancels the whole install. The same DVD has been used to install Inventor on both vista and xp machines.

if i try to use the FIRSTbase FRC download tool it says that i don't have enough space (the file is 3.06gb and i have 139gb free). if i use the file that i downloaded in the browser, during the setup initialization it stops and tells me that it can't move a file (i don't remember what the file is and now the setup freezes before it gets to that point).

Re: Windows 7
 

Onething is really slow and it uses 1.25GB of my RAM and it takes 5 min to turn on. I just installed the beta i am actually using it right now it uses less then a gig of RAM and it takes about 2 min to start up. It also has windows powershell an advanced command line and scripting language. It is also much easier to navigate and use very user friend friendly.:) :D :cool:

Re: Windows 7
 

If u dont now what windows powershell is follow this link, http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...l/default.mspx

Re: Windows 7
 

Has anyone been able to get LabView running on Windows 7? I received the same error as someone mentioned before. I might play with it a bit since I'm not on the school's crippled internet anymore.

Re: Windows 7
 

i got that error in vista so is it 7?:eek:

Re: Windows 7
 

Hmm... not sure... I had LabView working on Vista, but my laptop didn't like Vista, and would randomly freeze up, so Vista didn't work for me. I'm back to using XP. No freezes, LabView runs, and all my games still work, so I'm sticking with it until I need to upgrade.

Re: Windows 7
 

The thing with vista is that it uses a lot of your cpu at one time. Ever want to scare yourself get the cpu gauge gadget and realize that 48% of your cpu is being used when nothing is open and your mouse isn't moving. So if you want to shell out a lot of money for a oct-proccesor vista's for you (there was a little bit of sarcasim with the oct-proccesor for those of you vista-simpathist).

Re: Windows 7
 

I can't read through all 8 pages (sorry)

Has anyone tried running the labview installer in xp or vista compatibility mode?



Also, does anyone know whats happening for me? If I'm running a 3d application (game) in windowed mode then click so that its out of focus, the sound for that 3d app stops (more like mute, but the mixer shows no mute icons for the app).

Re: Windows 7
 

Yeah, um, because we can hold them accountable for all the issues there are.... or not :).

Ever looked at the sheer number of services Labview runs upon installation, that are nearly always ON?