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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: Matt_H on November 21, 2009, 01:35:24 AM
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Had a very brief chance to play with Windows 7 for the first time last weekend. Here I am thinking that Microsoft has finally moved away from arbitrary names for their products ("ME", "XP", "Vista") and gone back to a nice, sensible naming scheme based on version numbers.
Not so! A quick glance at the "About Windows" entry in the help menu reveals that Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1, internally.
While it's true that Windows 7 is barely different from Vista, you'd think they would have at least bumped the internal version number.
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So Windows "7" has actually been surpassed by Windows Mobile 6.5..hehe..which eh isnt that good either. I had the HTC Imagio phone for about a week and returned it. the OS(Windows Mobile 6.5) is not quite there(yet). Mobile Explorer is very slow and always locked up. Not too mention the typical windows quirks etc. Great phone though but the OS should have been Android. MMM..dang I really want an Amiga OS powered phone.
I have not had a chance to seen or use Windows7, not really in a rush to do so..but Im sure I will at some point.
Rich
ny
Had a very brief chance to play with Windows 7 for the first time last weekend. Here I am thinking that Microsoft has finally moved away from arbitrary names for their products ("ME", "XP", "Vista") and gone back to a nice, sensible naming scheme based on version numbers.
Not so! A quick glance at the "About Windows" entry in the help menu reveals that Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1, internally.
While it's true that Windows 7 is barely different from Vista, you'd think they would have at least bumped the internal version number.
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Opera on WM6.5 is great, I've got the AT&T Fuze (HTC) and I'm pretty happy with it.
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I love my iPhone, it's what Amiga should be...
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_P1I-Or2ze18/SlyW4p2yaiI/AAAAAAAAC7Q/onJlu1uO1q4/s320/love+my+iphone.jpg)
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Agreed ..I almost typed that..in my post. Opera is great! Although lacking in Flash :-(.
I know Adobe is going to release mobile Flash..or have they already?? In the end the Imagio was just a bit too much phone for me. The HTC Droid is also a nice phone. I though about the iPhone but AT&Ts service is not that great where I live. Plus I think the "data" plans should be choice for the customer and available al a carte ..or as needed.
HTC makes some great phones. The 5.0mp camera on the Imagio is pretty good. The iphone should have a 5.0mp camera and the 3.0mp camera should be moved to the iPod Touch...
Rich
ny
Opera on WM6.5 is great, I've got the AT&T Fuze (HTC) and I'm pretty happy with it.
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I'm going to pick up a Droid phone tomorrow.. to replace my Palm Centro that I broke. lol.
Windows 7 is all right.. My son had Vista on his quad core system so I put Windows 7 on it and it runs great.
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You are assuming to much. They didn't bump the revision # up because of the following reason: Version 7.0 breaks many applications install programs. They decided not to revise up to 7.0 because so many poorly coded .net applications don't like the # 7.. I have all of this on video and can link to official comments about it (found on channel 9.msdn.com) should anyone doubt it..
Let's talk about the difference between Vista and Windows 7..
from the UK publication the Register:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/11/18/windows_7_heart/
as well as support for 256 cores and a bunch of other add ons..
How about virtual wifi add-ons to drivers.. making your wifi adapter now a router..
See:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090516/windows-7-native-virtual-wifi-technology-microsoft-research/
and
http://connectify.me/
How about directly using your GPU as a second co-processor built-in not requiring an API for the system to take advantage of it (like openCL on the Mac)..
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-directx-compute-gpgpu-windows,8349.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvDJzpBOieU
http://www.nvidia.com/object/directcompute.html
(VERY AMIGA ESQUE)
By the way I have a new droid phone (samsung moment) and love it..
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If you REALLY want to get technical about the numbers, After NT 4, NT 5 was sent out for beta testing, but it was too late in the cycle, and they pulled it. Windows 2000(was completely different then NT5) (should be Windows 6) and then ME (Windows 7 -Technical), then XP (Windows 8, but called 5.1), then Vista (Windows 9) and Finally "Windows 7" should be Windows 10 in my book, and thats not including all the "server" packages which are technically different.
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Amiga powered phone would be nice, I'll just have to settle for UAE on my Nokia N95 =)
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"Windows 7" should be Windows 10 in my book
They probably wanted to call it WinOS X :rolleyes:
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moto
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If you REALLY want to get technical about the numbers, After NT 4, NT 5 was sent out for beta testing, but it was too late in the cycle, and they pulled it. Windows 2000(was completely different then NT5) (should be Windows 6) and then ME (Windows 7 -Technical), then XP (Windows 8, but called 5.1), then Vista (Windows 9) and Finally "Windows 7" should be Windows 10 in my book, and thats not including all the "server" packages which are technically different.
Sure, if you want to replace each named release with a sequential number, that makes sense. But I'm talking about internal version numbering with the traditional version.revision numbering convention.
Windows 95 was obviously Windows 4.0 - prerelease hype even referred to it as such. 98 and ME - though marketed (and priced) as major releases - were not fundamentally different. Hence they have internal numbers in the 4.x range. Windows 2000 was a significant enough change to see the version number bumped to 5. XP was another incremental improvement, so its version is 5.1. Vista was a fairly substantial overhaul, so there's an internal bump to 6.0, while Windows 7 is apparently a minor improvement on that, to 6.1.
My point is that I thought Microsoft's marketing machine was once again making the internal match the external, but it seems that's not the case. Windows 7 is just another name, not a number of any internal significance.
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I must admit Windows 7 has been rather handy for me. I've been with it since the beta, now on RC. Consider this; My system uses 2 NVidia 7900GTO cards in an SLI setup with an AMD 4200 X2. Under Vista I'm limited to DX9 due to my cards. Under 7 I use DX11, the bits my GPU's can't do my CPU does instead. Now GFX cards are working at full steam but CPU (that rarely ran at more than 50%) is working harder too.
Fallout 3 never looked so good.
It's still a huge lump of bloat with far too much nannying but that's windows for you.
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@ DonnyEMU
I just reread your post. Incredible! It's a design flaw! They've really boxed themselves into a corner, haven't they?
From the Register article (http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/11/18/windows_7_heart/) you linked:
The problem is that the operating system is full of internal dependencies, and as Russinovich admitted: "We don't really understand those dependencies".
Hilarious!
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Sure, if you want to replace each named release with a sequential number, that makes sense. But I'm talking about internal version numbering with the traditional version.revision numbering convention.
Windows 95 was obviously Windows 4.0 - prerelease hype even referred to it as such. 98 and ME - though marketed (and priced) as major releases - were not fundamentally different. Hence they have internal numbers in the 4.x range. Windows 2000 was a significant enough change to see the version number bumped to 5. XP was another incremental improvement, so its version is 5.1. Vista was a fairly substantial overhaul, so there's an internal bump to 6.0, while Windows 7 is apparently a minor improvement on that, to 6.1.
My point is that I thought Microsoft's marketing machine was once again making the internal match the external, but it seems that's not the case. Windows 7 is just another name, not a number of any internal significance.
No argument here about that. I have been saying since the beta, that windows 7 is just Vista version 2.0 or "Vista Reloaded" (ME 3.0) :)
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Windows 7 have been great to me. I have no complaints so far. From the old Med SoundStudio program that I had back in like 2000 or so works great lol. But it does its purpose..... Do my school work and play music hah. :)
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No complaints here either. Although I did have to lose some 16 bit apps I had from the early 90s (due to the switch to 64 bit). I can still run those on my old XP laptop if needed.
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Have it; love it. The install was utterly painless (despite the best efforts of Digital River - you can google up that little disaster...but I digress), everything runs just fine on it, about the only thing I couldn't get working was my 12 year old USB camera (and come on, how long was that going to be usable - 800k pix, USB 1.1...time to upgrade).
WinUAE works just swimmingly! (there! On-topic! :P )
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My first experience with Windows 7 was horrible. I'm a techie, and someone asked me to install a driver for a printer, the old winxp driver wouldn't load... downloaded the 230MB installer, which crashed... ugh terrible and it's so sluggish too!
Thank goodness for Amigas and Macs!
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No argument here about that. I have been saying since the beta, that windows 7 is just Vista version 2.0 or "Vista Reloaded" (ME 3.0) :)
I'll probably be thinking of it as Vista SP2 for some time to come :)
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I haver Windows 7 pro, jeeez what a load of rubbish. My TV card dont work with, yes I installed the proper drivers for it even tried compability modes and nothing. Tried my Webcam proper drivers, no wont work with it, tried Amikit no good I had tor download .dll files for it to work.Tried my USB DVBT dongle for Freeview, no dont work, yes proper drivers for it. I tried all modes of compatability and still dont work on all things.
I felt proper let down by this, come on MS you can do better than this cant you? My opinion is I went back to XP no problems every thing works fine. BTW, I tried both 32bit and 64bit as I have a dual core 64bit CPU, the 64bit version seems worse. Both Win 7 are legal before any one says ahhhh they must be pirated.
My system BTW is:-
AMD Athlon Dualcore 64 bit 4600+ at 2.4ghz, Nvidia 8400 PCI-E, 4bg DDR2 ram at 800mhz.
Mike.
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@ swift240
Seen this (http://dotnet.org.za/codingsanity/archive/2007/12/14/review-windows-xp.aspx) before? :)
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hah, remember Microsoft can do no wrong(so if the 20th iteration of their OS is called 7) then it is cause we can't count like they do! LMAO
Overall, due to the rise in popularity of Linux (more so than Mac even if apple wants to take the credit) Microsoft has gotten better at what they do.
The main problem is cause MS does bend over backwards to stay backwards compatible - they will actually write code to be app specific compatible - they ultimately hurt what they can do.
I wish they'd release a new OS not compatible but with awesome features and just sell it cheap for x86 architecture and let it grow while just being status quo with current stuff - oh but wait - thats linux...
nevermind,
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Pan1k: There is no difference in drivers between Vista and Windows 7.. The installer program these drivers get installed with (from your printer maker not Microsoft) is probably the thing at issue. If you right click on all the executable install files in the installer package and select properties and select properties and then hit the compatibility tab and select windows XP or Vista (check out which the lowest common denominator that the driver selects) you should be able to get it working... I had this problem with HP myself until I ran the installer in "Vista" mode..
The problem you are no doubt having here is some files expecting certain version numbers. If you still have issues you can send me an email here and I'd be glad to help you get this all installed and working..
swift240: I think I can tell you what the problem is with your TV card driver right now.. You bought the wrong version Windows 7 for your upgrade.
XP Pro for instance was like Vista Business and Windows 7 pro..
XP Media Center/XPHome = Vista Home Premium with Media Center = Windows 7 Home Premium
The reason your TV card is not working is that while Vista Business and Win 7 pro are the "business" versions they don't contain Media Center editions which have the right CODECs installed to support your TV Card (Specifically MPEG-2).. Nor does the "business" editions include media center for obvious reasons either..
There are several ways around this.. 1) Your TV card manufacturer pays the fee to the org that controls MPEG (it's not a public standard) or you buy Vista Ultimate which contains the codec (because that edition they paid the fee for) 2) You downgrade (LOL) to Windows 7 Home Premium or any edition with Media Center that gives you that CODEC..
A driver isn't the same as a codec.. You could also download the free open source Shark007 codecs for windows 7 and see if that works for you..
XP Pro didn't include DVD or MPEG support.. Only XP media center edition did..
So why is there a Windows 7 Pro version anyway? The difference between home and pro is you can connect to a "Microsoft server network" and be part of that network as a client (not just through FTP).. Home users normally don't need this capability. It's mostly people who "telecommute" or VPN..
I would also just comment to the Mac folks here (yes I have a mac mini x86 and love the Mac. I have some exceptions with Snow Leopard though and consider it their "Vista Release"..
Something to know too if you buy retail Windows 7 or with a machine, all major printer makers are supporting the OS on day one unlike the Vista release where it took some manufacturers over a year..
If you are curious about support for all the devices windows seven has drivers for directly in the box (and online via windows update)..
Check out this website.. It will let you search for a driver..
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Default.aspx?type=Hardware
They now list everything Windows 7 is compatible with both hardware and software (tested) and what drivers attained certification etc.
So you never have to wonder if your 3rd party is providing or going to provide support anymore you just look on the list..
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My first experience with Windows 7 was horrible. I'm a techie, and someone asked me to install a driver for a printer, the old winxp driver wouldn't load... downloaded the 230MB installer, which crashed... ugh terrible and it's so sluggish too!
Thank goodness for Amigas and Macs!
Snow Leopard driver for my old Canon was 246MB (latest update is now 275MB!!!)! Indeed, thank goodness for Macs. :roflmao:
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I wish they'd release a new OS not compatible but with awesome features
They missed a huge opportunity going 64-bit. IMHO the 64-bit OS should have been new and lean, with all the old 32-bit (and 16-bit!) compatibility baggage relegated to tasks running as seamless virtual machines, e.g. "XP mode" as standard on all versions of Win7 and this being the only way to run 32-bit or earlier apps.
Anyway, at least Win7 is leaner than Vista. Still bloated though - after a clean start up with only a few desktop gadgets loaded, it's still using just over 1Gb RAM to do nothing!!
- Ali
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I found that sometimes just manually pointing to the XP driver's .inf file is all it takes if the installer b0rks under w7 or Vista.
Graphics drivers being the main exception.
Still wouldn't pay for it and at least Vista was pretty.....win7 is like an annoyingly dumb AND ugly person to date!! lol
Funny thing is for low end hardware XP wipes the floor with both....and does 99.9999% of what people do on their PCs :)
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after a clean start up with only a few desktop gadgets loaded, it's still using just over 1Gb RAM to do nothing!!
I've got a machine here with 1.5gb of RAM running Windows 7, after a bootup it shows only 36% or so of RAM in use. I'm running the Enterprise edition, maybe there's a difference?
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I don't think enterprise has anything to do with it. Windows 7 like Vista before it is a very Memory hungry OS. The more memory you have the more it uses. You can reduce this footprinte by disabling all of the services that you don't plan on using. I think someone said somewhere you can get it down to about 750MB of memory usage if you really hack and slash your services. I cannot complain though as I have Win 7 Home Prem 64-bit and I haven't had any problems aside from an old USB scanner from 1998 or so. Even then I can attempt to install the xp drivers and go from there. Also the claims that the OS is slow or sluggish, that is easily remedied. All you have to do is disable some of the visual effects, such as window fade in and out and suddenly it will seem that much faster. Performance wise, it seems to run on par with my WinXP partition (although that needs to be reformatted and reinstalled in it's defense.) All in all, after the Vista fiasco Win7 is like a dream to use and work on. Oh, and from what I remember the version numbers you are all quoting and asking as to why it's called Windows 7 with a version number of 6.1 or whatnot. That version number from what I remember reading is based off of the revision of the NT Kernel. XP (and Win2000 as well) was based off of the NT5 kernel and Vista was NT Kernel version 6. Windows 7 is not a new revision of the kernel. It is an upgrade to the kernel in Windows 7 and Server 2008 or whatnot. Not much else to it. I will look and see if I can find those articles that talked about the OS Version and I will post links when I find them.
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RAM is cheap, you can get 4 gigs for well under US$100, what's the point of worrying about it? 1 TB hard disks are standard. I can go out and by a machine than will happily run WIndows 7 for less than half the price of a SAM...
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Actually I like 7 a lot. Been using it since May and have had no issues. Don't get me wrong nothing will ever take the place of my miggy(s) and her OS but since I can't stand Mac fanboys and the prices are outrageous for outdated H/W and the fact i have to work on windows for a living anyways i am glad they made a version more stable and able to utilize h/w better than Vista. Just my 2 cents.
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To be fair Win7 has some nice features but let's not forget it's still huge, full of nannying and hides options in obscure places, splatters DLLs all over your harddrive and eats resources. In short, it's still Windows. To the credit of Apple, at least they have been trying to trim the resource footprint of MacOS. MS could do with following suite.
I agree with the comment on 64bit being a missed chance for MS to go this direction. Let's face it, over 200Mb for a driver! That's insane.
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I have a small tool made with VB6 that I use at work. It is a really simple server that communicates with our product using UDP and breaks down the bytes received to show the value of each field. Nothing special, no voodoo tricks, even my grandmother could write that code...
I was at a costumer last month and he was using our tool in a Windows 7 Core 2 Notebook. I was amazed how slow it was running. It looked like a 486.
The same tool runs smoothly on my 900MHz EEE with XP (!), and I've never heard about nobody having similar problems with it. But this was the first test with Windows 7
Other software was running nice, even stuff that he made with .net. The only thing I could figure out is that Windows 7 have some problem with software made in VB6. Does anybody knows something about it ?
That makes me think twice about using Windows 7 :-(
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To the credit of Apple, at least they have been trying to trim the resource footprint of MacOS. MS could do with following suite.
Windows 7 uses a great deal less hard drive space (gigabytes less, I believe) and RAM than Windows Vista did. My 1GB RAM, 40gb HD subnotebook Fujitsu which shipped with Vista runs MUCH better with Windows 7, and has way more free hard drive space.
over 200Mb for a driver! That's insane.
This is the vendor's fault for packaging them poorly with added "support software" and unnecessary junk ("order new cartridge!" reminders, etc.) The driver itself probably isn't more than 1mb. HP is great at making you download way more than necessary from what I've seen.
..and to the discredit of Apple, they've just disowned millions of non-Intel Apple machines with their newest OS release, while Windows 7 runs fine on my 5 year old laptop. I imagine orphaning all that hardware will go a long way to shrink the size of their OS!
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Drivers are now a non-issue with Windows 7 thanks to Windows 7's online compatiblity center. It provides a search engine and every driver ever made for Vista and Windows 7. If your hardware is supported it now shows up on the list. If the manufacturer of the driver (NOT Microsoft, but the 3rd party who made it!) also got the driver certified with Microsoft it's listed. There are literally thousands of devices listed.
Microsoft and the 3rd party hardware makers will have every driver for every device listed there from now on and where to get it. So you don't have to go looking around for it. It will also point out the 3rd party companies who you bought from who didn't get their drivers tested and certified (which costs them virtually nothing through Microsoft to do)
if you are curious about support for all the devices windows seven has drivers for directly in the box (and online via windows update) just go there and give it a search). It will also help you get support if your hardware company isn't supporting Vista/Win7..
It's great to see this and it gets updated everytime a new driver is tested and put out on Windows Update..
Check out this website.. It will let you search for a driver..
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Default.aspx?type=Hardware
They now list everything Windows 7 is compatible with both hardware and software (tested) and what drivers attained certification etc.
So you never have to wonder if your 3rd party is providing or going to provide support anymore you just look on the list..
If you search for a driver that isn't there it both a) gets you help to find the driver b) notifies Microsoft that a customer is looking for something they can't find so Microsoft can bug the hardware maker about it (if they are in business, if there were enough sold to warrant driver support from them or someone else)
If you are still missing a driver you can go here and suggest a driver too..
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Feedback/Default.aspx?feedbacktype=suggest
Same if you are having a compatibility issue..
As for someone's comments about 200 meg for a driver being insane.. I agree, companies are using it as a marketing opportunity (like HP to sell printers and ink and supplies). Most drivers alone can be downloaded off of Windows update and are just the drivers alone.. If you buy a printer today there is usually a scanner driver and a fax driver and all sorts of marketing. Mac 3rd party hardware seems to be doing this more these days as well due to lack of advertising by Apple that their third party prouducts work on Mac..
On Windows, most drivers that are Windows "certified" are either in the win7 box (with no big download), provided on a DVD when you buy it new, and available just the driver on windows/microsoft update and are a QUICK download.
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To be fair Win7 has some nice features but let's not forget it's still huge, full of nannying and hides options in obscure places, splatters DLLs all over your harddrive and eats resources. In short, it's still Windows. To the credit of Apple, at least they have been trying to trim the resource footprint of MacOS.
Since when? Snow Leopard uses more RAM and just as much disk as Leopard did (mainly because they removed PPC compatibility, not some magic diet they put the OS on), which used more resources than Tiger, which used more than Panther, etc.
Your description sounds like any modern OS be it Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. They are all getting bigger, using more memory, and have many more features that take more disk space.
I agree with the comment on 64bit being a missed chance for MS to go this direction. Let's face it, over 200Mb for a driver! That's insane.
64bit has nothing to do with driver size. Microsoft has offered a desktop 64bit operating system since 2003 (XP x64) so things are fairly well sorted by now. Of course, in the beginning there were application and driver issues just like Snow Leopard is having now. See my post about my Snow Leopard 250MB+ driver update for my old Canon inkjet. The HP driver pack is over 300MB now!!! Thanks Apple. :lol:
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Windows 7 is best.Because it has better features then the other.And Windows 7 is a vast improvement from Vista as it takes up much less ram and has other optimizations such as fast booting times. I recommend Windows 7, and if you really don't want vista and don't want to wait for the final version of Windows 7, you can download a copy of the Release Candidate from the Microsoft website for free and use it up till June of 2010. I am working with the Release Candidate right now and so far I have absolutely no complaints, considering Im a heavy computer use with advanced software.
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Windows 7 is best.Because it has better features then the other.And Windows 7 is a vast improvement from Vista as it takes up much less ram and has other optimizations such as fast booting times. I recommend Windows 7, and if you really don't want vista and don't want to wait for the final version of Windows 7, you can download a copy of the Release Candidate from the Microsoft website for free and use it up till June of 2010. I am working with the Release Candidate right now and so far I have absolutely no complaints, considering Im a heavy computer use with advanced software.
Uh, the "final" version of Windows 7 was released months ago - there's no wait for it whatsoever.
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I've tried Windows 7 and.... now on my PC i have Ubuntu 9.10 and i will NEVER come back......
All the best
Carlo
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I have to laugh at quite a few of the posts made in this thread.
First of all, the version number. Who here hasn't learnt already that version numbering is pretty arbitrary everywhere? Some developers use it to show that they've reached a certain milestone, others never get to version 1 because they kind of see that as reaching perfection, others use it partly to show when a batch of security patches have been released, the list of different uses goes on. The only silly thing about the version number is, if it's true, that MS didn't put it up to 7.0 because of (potential?) compatibility issues. Personally I think Win7 is v6.1 because it is a patched-up version of Vista, however the OP's comment about it being "barely different" - I bet 9 out of 10 people who upgraded from Vista (usually because of performance issues) to it would disagree with you. There's an enormous performance difference.
Next, "OMG Win7 is crap because I installed an XP driver which didn't work, then I installed another one which didn't work". At the end of the day, every OS has its foibles, and to me, being familiar with Windows, it seems like you're saying "the A1200 SUCKS!!!111 because I couldn't install my 16-bit 3.1 ROMs into the 32-bit sockets it just wouldn't work!". You can hardly say an OS sucks because of a third party's drivers. If you would like to argue things that way, let's rate AmigaOS as highly as the Microsoft Basic software that got released with Workbench 1.x shall we? As for the large driver download which still didn't work, it could even be that you had a corrupted download (more likely just a crap driver, but hey).
Next, memory usage. I haven't seen a new PC with Win7 that has less than 2GB RAM (which I regard to be ideal for Win7). From what I've seen, a new install of Win7 (I've done a few already for customers), settles out at using about 600MB RAM, perhaps 800MB for the 64-bit version. That's leaving 1.2GB RAM for you to use. As far as I'm concerned, if an OS wants to use the resources available for any sort of operation, I don't mind as long as when I want it to do something, it is ready to do it quickly and responsively. IMO, Win7 is pretty good at doing that, whereas I think this was Vista's achilles heel (even with indexing switched off, which made little difference, the OS always seemed to be accessing the disk). I would be surprised if anyone can give an example of a modern, up-to-date OS for the average uses of a computer that doesn't have a similar resource footprint to Windows 7.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Windows fanboy, I think there are plenty of things that suck about Windows 7 especially. I think it's just about an adequate replacement for Windows XP (which I regard to the be the pinnacle of Microsoft's achievements) which will keep Microsoft afloat while it gets its development model in order, which went drastically wrong with Vista.
One of the points in this thread that I agree with is about the 64-bit version. I think 32-bit Vista shouldn't have happened, let alone 32-bit Win7. Backwards compatibility is to a certain extent a good thing, but Microsoft is pushing it way too far.
If you want to laugh at pointless releases, then surely Microsoft Office is a better target? Although there are plenty of pieces of software out there that simply bump up the version number because they made some trifling aesthetic change.
HP drivers - normally you can download a 'basic' driver, which does all the basics, the package is about a tenth of the size of the full-feature driver, and doesn't slow your machine up. I use that quite often (though I normally recommend Epson), and introduce customers to other methods of scanning in stuff.
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I don't like windows at all... However i can say 7 is what everybody expected from vista... which is pure crap. But 7 works fairly nice, and has real improvements compared to XP, runs more or less at the same speed, and has some nice features. So it's OK.
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I have to laugh at quite a few of the posts made in this thread.
I would be surprised if anyone can give an example of a modern, up-to-date OS for the average uses of a computer that doesn't have a similar resource footprint to Windows 7.
Well my ubuntu 9.04 laptop boots up in 22 seconds and is using about 250 Mb ram. Vista on the same machine takes 4 minutes and 30 seconds before it reduces the hard drive access enough to let it have enough resources to give me control of my mouse pointer. And its uses over 1 gig of ram. '7' I'm told boots faster and uses less ram than Vista. But I'll run down our City Mall butt naked if it beats Ubuntu. Now THAT would be surprising.
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I've seen Win7 boot in about 15 seconds. I'll get the camera!
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I find it funny that people are talking about a few gigabytes of hard disk space as a lot when a TB drive cost US Dollars 100 at most....
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Had a very brief chance to play with Windows 7 for the first time last weekend. Here I am thinking that Microsoft has finally moved away from arbitrary names for their products ("ME", "XP", "Vista") and gone back to a nice, sensible naming scheme based on version numbers.
Not so! A quick glance at the "About Windows" entry in the help menu reveals that Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1, internally.
While it's true that Windows 7 is barely different from Vista, you'd think they would have at least bumped the internal version number.
Kindly reconcile the version numbers of Kickstart, Workbench and Amiga OS and get back to me, slappy. ;)
With that said, yeah, I have tried to puzzle that one out to no avail. Hell the first version of WinNT (the start of the current Windows product line) began with...3.5. WTF??
(Also I really like 7, and the "barely" difference? Makes all the difference in the world...)
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Kindly reconcile the version numbers of Kickstart, Workbench and Amiga OS and get back to me, slappy. ;)
Haha, true! But those numbers never matched, nor were they ever intended to.
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I have to laugh at quite a few of the posts made in this thread.
First of all, the version number. Who here hasn't learnt already that version numbering is pretty arbitrary everywhere? Some developers use it to show that they've reached a certain milestone, others never get to version 1 because they kind of see that as reaching perfection, others use it partly to show when a batch of security patches have been released, the list of different uses goes on. The only silly thing about the version number is, if it's true, that MS didn't put it up to 7.0 because of (potential?) compatibility issues. Personally I think Win7 is v6.1 because it is a patched-up version of Vista
Absolutely it's a patched up Vista! So why didn't they just release it as Windows 6.1? Of course the naming is arbitrary, I just thought it was dumb/weird of them to make the fundamental marketing shift from the year-based release names they've been using since Windows 95, back to number-based release names like Windows 3.1, and not have internal and external version numbers match.
however the OP's comment about it being "barely different" - I bet 9 out of 10 people who upgraded from Vista (usually because of performance issues) to it would disagree with you. There's an enormous performance difference.
I don't doubt that there's a tremendous performance difference, not one bit. But will you agree that 7 isn't substantively different from Vista apart from the critical bug/performance fixes? The Vista-to-7 transition seems much more like the 95-to-98 transition (or 2000-to-XP transition) rather than the 3.1-to-95 transition (or even XP-to-Vista transition). That is to say, under-the-hood improvements and tweaks rather than a fundamentally changed user interaction experience.
EDIT: A reference point for my comments in this thread: Table of Windows versions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions). Note the internal version in the 4th column matches the external version until Windows 95.
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Well my ubuntu 9.04 laptop boots up in 22 seconds and is using about 250 Mb ram. Vista on the same machine takes 4 minutes and 30 seconds before it reduces the hard drive access enough to let it have enough resources to give me control of my mouse pointer. And its uses over 1 gig of ram. '7' I'm told boots faster and uses less ram than Vista.
But I'll run down our City Mall butt naked if it beats Ubuntu. Now THAT would be surprising.
Hi,
@stefcep
Been using Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 on a dual boot system. Windows 7 is approximately 3 seconds faster in booting after GRUB.
Have a nice run!!
Not really a Windows fanboy, but ya all should upgrade your pc's at least to a dual core, with a modern graphics card. The old 486's went out years ago, about the same time Commodore declared bankrupcy. To all you Apple Mac fanboys you should all upgrade to at least a 486, that way you would only be about 17 to 18 years behind the PC computers.
Windows 7 is nice, almost reminds me of the Amiga, only years advanced. Windows 7 is where the Amiga should of been.
smerf
smerf
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I have been using Windows 7 about a year now on Acer TM 5720. Its oK. BUT
Network speed is very slow ~1mb/s.
USB 2.0 devices slow 1.5 MB/s transfer (cruzer and others) - major problem in windows 7 world !
My Sandisk cruzer micro 32 GB, 2.0 USB memory stick takes forever to format and corrupts files copied to it.
1 mb copy speed !
It uses Windows drivers so 'im up to date' great help.
reinstall usb - no help
My Intel Graphics media accelerator driver is only 1.19 GB in size.
Its fast ish at 1.8 GHZ duel core - but overheats (common for laptops).
anyone know a high end laptop that dont overheat ?
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I don't doubt that there's a tremendous performance difference, not one bit. But will you agree that 7 isn't substantively different from Vista apart from the critical bug/performance fixes?
But then, having made Vista so different from XP it would have been commercially and technically suicidal to have another substantive shift at this stage. What they needed, and in fairness what they have done, is to consolidate and perfect the Vista base to a point where production environments could have confidence in adopting an up-to-date version of Windows again. Lots of businesses never upgraded from XP to Vista and this will have been a huge blow to Microsoft's expected revenues. To fix that Windows 7 had to show stability and consistency, not a whole raft of radical changes.
Regardless of what many people think, Microsoft have been at this game a long time and they have a decent grasp of what they are doing. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but never assume them to be stupid.
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I have been using Windows 7 about a year now on Acer TM 5720. Its oK. BUT
Network speed is very slow ~1mb/s.
USB 2.0 devices slow 1.5 MB/s transfer (cruzer and others) - major problem in windows 7 world !
My Sandisk cruzer micro 32 GB, 2.0 USB memory stick takes forever to format and corrupts files copied to it.
1 mb copy speed !
It uses Windows drivers so 'im up to date' great help.
reinstall usb - no help
My Intel Graphics media accelerator driver is only 1.19 GB in size.
Its fast ish at 1.8 GHZ duel core - but overheats (common for laptops).
anyone know a high end laptop that dont overheat ?
Sounds like you have a seriously broken installation, because the faults you describe aren't typical (except for the last - high end laptops overheat because they use components designed for desktops, where heat dispersion is easier. Use the laptop on flat surfaces where ventilation isn't obstructed, and if you're going to use it on your lap or on a bed, use one of those aluminium radiators underneath).
Incidentally, most people's problems with USB transfer speeds seems to be down to somehow using the wrong drivers.
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Had a very brief chance to play with Windows 7 for the first time last weekend. Here I am thinking that Microsoft has finally moved away from arbitrary names for their products ("ME", "XP", "Vista") and gone back to a nice, sensible naming scheme based on version numbers.
Not so! A quick glance at the "About Windows" entry in the help menu reveals that Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1, internally.
While it's true that Windows 7 is barely different from Vista, you'd think they would have at least bumped the internal version number.
I'm running Windows 7 on both my HTPC(Wife's computer) and my machine. I have to say, it's heads and tails above Vista in terms of function, stability and overall impression of speed.
I am no Windows fanboy but Windows 7 has all the makings of a stable robust operating system with cutesy eye candy. I personally don't care about the internal version number.
I'd rather be running AmigaOS 6.1 but hey, I'd rather be running Windows or Linux than that other fruity OS. Uh, oh - is it getting hot in here ;^)
-Nyle
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USB 2.0 devices slow 1.5 MB/s transfer (cruzer and others) - major problem in windows 7 world !
My Sandisk cruzer micro 32 GB, 2.0 USB memory stick takes forever to format and corrupts files copied to it.
1 mb copy speed !
It uses Windows drivers so 'im up to date' great help.
Format it with 64k cluster size. That sped mine up a bit.
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Hi,
@stefcep
Been using Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 on a dual boot system. Windows 7 is approximately 3 seconds faster in booting after GRUB.
How do you define boot time?. I define it when you have smooth control of your mouse pointer which for the average user is the most basic of requirements to get the computer do anything. Also my ubuntu system is fully loaded with third party software. and not just a bare OS. We've all had the experience where windows gets slower the more you install. What about RAM after you've booted? No way will Win 7 use about 250 mb. My clothes stay on.
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yes it should be called vista 2,i mean really it IS vista 2--cheers--
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I've been using XP forever. A few weeks ago I built a new pc. Core 2 quad (q8300), Radeon 5770, 4gb ddr3 memory and windows 7 64bit. It's a hell of a lot faster than my p4 2Ghz system with 512MB ram. VS2k8 and NetBeans IDE still runs like a dog on it, WTF?
Other than some UI changes, it's still windows as usual. Cool. All my sh*t still runs on it. Thats all I care about.
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You can't have Windows without "WIN!"
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Oh yeah, lots of money to be made with the Vista name.