Originally Posted By: Nick R
Originally Posted By: Artem
I upgraded my Sony Vaio from Vista to Windows 7 and absolutely hated it. Some parts were cool but i hated the way everything looked and left so i went back to Vista literally that same day. Maybe i'm just used to the simple way that Vista works.
Huh? Vista and 7 use the same basic "Aero" interface, only a lot more polished. I'f you'd used it longer, you would have noticed that it runs a lot faster than vista does too. 7 is easier to use than Vista is. The taskbar at the bottom? You can change that to look normal, or at least show the words. Right click, click properties, under "taskbar buttons" click and select "never combine".
I was wondering the same thing. After you change the task bar to display words instead of just the icons, there is not much difference in the interface.
Heck, if you're so inclined you can make Win 7 look very similar to XP. I just cannot fathom why someone would go back to Vista considering 7's speed and reliability. I've got Vista business on my desktop still and the only reason it's not upgraded to 7 is because I don't use it much and one of the handful I programs I use on it won't function in Windows 7.
Originally Posted By: bepperb
Clean install, definitely. If you turn off user account control I think most people would prefer Windows 7.
I wouldn't turn off UAC. 7's UAC is much less annoying than Vistas (as that was a chief complaint microsoft wanted to address when developing 7). If UAC annoys you, just set it to its lowest level without turning it off. That way the only time you get a prompt is when a program wants to make changes and you are free to make changes to the system yourself without being bothered.
You could run into problems later if you ever want to set up a limited user account and you've turned UAC off as you have to turn it back on to enable limited accounts. Problems in the form of file and installation permissions for some programs... at least that's how it was in Vista.
UAC was implemented and then reworked in 7 because of Micrsoft's security model. Programs that are "certified" to run on 7 (and Vista) should never need admin privileges when performing everyday tasks. That was the problem with XP. There were many programs that were written so that they required full admin privileges to function normally.
For example, on my machine there are only a few programs that require admin privledges to run properly and that is due to the nature of the data they access. Speccy (made by the same guys who make Ccleaner) needs admin rights. Ccleaner doesn't need admin rights to clean up your limited user account but does need to be elevated to admin (right click - run as admin) to clean up all temp data from the system folders and other accounts on the machine.
I'd recommend setting up a limited user account and using that over an admin account and only logging into the admin account when you need to make some changes. You don't even really need to do that as you can elevate any program to admin privledges or install programs on a limited account by supplying the admin password when prompted.
Limited accounts can help limit your vulnerability to malware. Additionally, if malware does get on the machine, using a limited account can (but not always) confine the damage mostly to the user account rather than system wide like using an admin account for everyday computing can.
