Thread: Any one running Win7 yet?

I have a test machine at work. It has trouble installingthings because they changes permissions, causing developers lots of headaches. It's also slow as he'll to load, more than a minute.

I was sooo close to grabbing an upgrade copy at Best Buy yesterday but opted against it because I was already upgrading my storage and I have a lot of gift giving in my near future (birthday and a baby shower between now and Xmas). I probably won't worry about it until Spring.

Judging by the pricing and upgrade decisions made by MS, and the absolutely huge surge of interest for Ubuntu, I'm guessing Win7 will have a tough time

There's no upgrade path from XP to 7
you have to buy a full priced copy of 7, and do a clean install
At the peak (trough?) of the recession, this seems bonkers, and I think the sheer cost is the driving force behind the interest in Linux

I must have seen half-a-dozen mainstream news sources comparing Win7 with Ubuntu in the last few days

Examples
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...indows7-review
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ts-user-nerve/

I don't think 7 will flop as hard as vista, but it certainly won't gain much traction either, if these early signs of discontent continue

Well I picked up a copy at lunch today, so we'll see if MS got there act together. Hope this all works out.

I'm reconsidering picking up the family pack, 3 licenses for $150. I only have two machines, but it's only $30 more than a single upgrade, and you can use it on XP or Vista (my netbook runs XP). I'm sure I can find a home for the final license

It's a very good system, it hardly has any incompatibility issues for the normal user, it runs much smoother than Vista, and it has a lot of neat security features. Overall, it's what Vista should've been.

I've been using it since beta myself, and I'm very very pleased.

Never the less, I suggest you use Ubuntu if you're not gonna be playing any games or use any programs that might have incompatibility issues. The gaming issue is all that is holding me back from going Ubuntu really.

Holy crap, $119? Its two major comptators are free and $29

I went ahead and grabbed the family pack. It took some tracking down, too--three stores were out. Hopefully I can get it loaded on my desktop tomorrow and the netbook by this weekend.

I got the "741" student discount of Windows 7 Professional x64 for thirty bucks. All Pro didn't have that Ultimate had was bitlocker and foreign languages, and I don't even have a TPM to use bitlocker so I thought it was a great ass deal. It showed up in my e-mail the day it came out, and after some headaches as to how to make it into a DVD to boot from, I put in a 1TB hard drive and installed it in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.

Simply put, Windows 7 is reams better than Windows XP. It's much more modern, useable, and boots up much quicker than XP did on this machine.

But you will need to clean install. This means you lose your programs and settings and have to start fresh. But I recommend this anyway. An in-place upgrade works as well as a diseased cat's balls. You have cobwebs and old code left over and it works shittier than before. A clean install is the way to go.

All I had to do was upgrade my WiFi card to something more modern so I could install a 64-bit driver. But otherwise, things went smoothly. I transferred iTunes, Opera, and Adobe Premiere in less than a week using another 1TB drive that was external. I highly recommend Windows 7 on your current PC as long as it's less than three years old and you know what you're doing when installing. If not, hold out until you buy a new PC.

And stick with it for a while, cause this might be the last good version of Windows before everything goes...ugh...cloud computing and thin client.

I've been running the RTM version of Windows 7 on my laptop for two months or so, and over all it's a good OS. The UAC can be a bit annoying (like if you want to extract a ziped programe directly to the programe files folder, or if you want to edit the .ini file of a programe), but works.
I've easily found the right drivers, and all my programes works. It mostly feels pretty fast, but it's acted slugish a few times. It works, though.

Originally Posted by Ynot

There's no upgrade path from XP to 7
you have to buy a full priced copy of 7, and do a clean install

It's true that you cannot directly upgrade from XP to windows 7, but if you have an XP cd you can still get the upgrade version.

Windows demonstrates the fundamental flaw with capitalism, quantity over quality. Both OSX and Ubuntu are far superior operating systems from a technical and UI standpoint, but Microsoft's monopolization of the market in the 90s means people got comfortable with Windows and getting someone to change is hard, even to something better and cheaper.

Lots of people say that one man can't direct a multinational company. The computer industry completely ignores that. Windows XP was the last OS that Bill Gates was CEO for, and it was pretty good. He left and then Vista and 7 came out.

I've been running windows 7 for about 2 months now. And my computer runs a hell of a lot better on this than it does on Vista.

And that is me comparing Windows Vista home basic to Windows 7 Ultimate.

So that means the biggest Windows 7 runs faster than the smallest Vista. And this computer is under the minimum requirements for it too.

Windows 7 is quite similar looking to vista, except the taskbar is a bit better. And a couple of other good features.

It's still stupid that there are multiple versions of Windows. An OS should come with everything you need.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Windows demonstrates the fundamental flaw with capitalism, quantity over quality. Both OSX and Ubuntu are far superior operating systems from a technical and UI standpoint, but Microsoft's monopolization of the market in the 90s means people got comfortable with Windows and getting someone to change is hard, even to something better and cheaper.

I don't know, the GUI in linux (I've used both KDE and Gnome) always felt much slower than the windows GUI to me. Even when on the same computer.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

It's still stupid that there are multiple versions of Windows. An OS should come with everything you need.

Yes, that is true.

Originally Posted by khh

I don't know, the GUI in linux (I've used both KDE and Gnome) always felt much slower than the windows GUI to me. Even when on the same computer.

Turn down the glitz. I'm not talking about the skinning engine, I think Ubuntu uses Compriz, which is terribly done and requires a mother of a graphics card. I'm talking about X by MIT. X is the gold standard in Window management.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Turn down the glitz. I'm not talking about the skinning engine, I think Ubuntu uses Compriz, which is terribly done and requires a mother of a graphics card. I'm talking about X by MIT. X is the gold standard in Window management.

I've never used Compriz or Beryl or any of those things. But X11 in itself is getting old, and it's not as snappy as it ought to be. That's my impression.

The last major revision of the X Window System protocol was 1987. 1987. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is fantastic. But it seems as if developers are throwing thing after thing on top of old code. X needs another major revision. X11R7.5 was a step in the correct direction with the removal of some of this old code. But for the most part, developers should undertake a re-write and moderniztion of X. It lacks a professional touch normally seen with corporate window systems such as the one used in OS X.

Originally Posted by mini0991

The last major revision of the X Window System protocol was 1987. 1987. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is fantastic. But it seems as if developers are throwing thing after thing on top of old code. X needs another major revision. X11R7.5 was a step in the correct direction with the removal of some of this old code. But for the most part, developers should undertake a re-write and moderniztion of X. It lacks a professional touch normally seen with corporate window systems such as the one used in OS X.

Sorry, but this is bollocks

X is a protocol, it's age is utterly irrelevant
The TCP/IP protocol spec was issued in 1982
do you want the networking protocol to be scrapped for something else?

The "protocol" of designing a car with foot operated levers, a gear stick and a big wheel for steering is hundreds of years old - you want a complete re-write of the operation of cars?

X is one of the most actively developed projects in the free software world, with significant contributions from Redhat, Intel, Nokia, HP, Sun and Motorola
In terms of code refactoring, you can't get much better than x.org

But saying that
What's wrong with old code anyway?
It's not organic, it doesn't go mouldy

Originally Posted by Ynot

X is a protocol, it's age is utterly irrelevant
The TCP/IP protocol spec was issued in 1982
do you want the networking protocol to be scrapped for something else?

Actually, yes. TCP cannot handle out of order packets, it simply disregards them and asks they'd be retransmitted, and it seems exessive to send a "packet received" packet for every single data packet. I remember hearing about drafts for more efficient networking protocols, but TCP is so widely supported that replacing it won't be easy.

Originally Posted by Ynot

The "protocol" of designing a car with foot operated levers, a gear stick and a big wheel for steering is hundreds of years old - you want a complete re-write of the operation of cars?

When automatic car guidance is a viable alternative, or if an efficient neuro-interface alternative is developed, then sure. New technology means new possibilities, and new possibilities means you need to rewrite the old standards. Also, it's quite possible that someone just have a better idea.

Originally Posted by khh

TCP cannot handle out of order packets.

yes it can
each packet has a sequence number, and the receiver will reorder packets based on that number, but anyway...

Originally Posted by Ynot

yes it can
each packet has a sequence number, and the receiver will reorder packets based on that number, but anyway...

Really? Hmm. I guess I was misinformed on that point, then.

Originally Posted by mini0991

The last major revision of the X Window System protocol was 1987. 1987. Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is fantastic. But it seems as if developers are throwing thing after thing on top of old code. X needs another major revision. X11R7.5 was a step in the correct direction with the removal of some of this old code. But for the most part, developers should undertake a re-write and moderniztion of X. It lacks a professional touch normally seen with corporate window systems such as the one used in OS X.

X uses modern code design, protocol for window handling hasn't changed much since the early 90s. Aqua is better integrated with everything, but that in itself causes problems. Aqua doesn't have network transparency, which is X's biggest asset.

The last major revision to UNIX was in 1982 and it's still the best OS out there by a wide margin. There have been minor revisions and lots of implementational upgrades (just like X,) but System V was the last major one.

Perhaps it's the implementation rather than the protocol that I should constructively criticise.

The implementation of X, used on Ubuntu for example, lacks professional touches. At times, when the system crashes or boots up, the title bar disappears off all the windows. Why does this happen? Also, there seems to be a lack of a de facto window manager. All these different window managers serve to just confuse. It's small things like that that need to be ironed out before Unix/Linux can become a true alternative to the more polished commercial Windows and OS X.

X does the window management, those other things are just decorators, big difference. And as for the title bar, again, that's the decorator, not X. Unless you work with the windows on a low level, people don't realize that the "Windows" on the screen, are not the only windows. Technically, almost everything is a window on all systems. Text inputs are windows, buttons are windows, choice boxes are windows... They all inherit the window base class.