Windows 7 is worth it

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Originally Posted By: heypete
Meh. The "Libraries" concept and the changes to the taskbar are, in my mind, quite obnoxious and irritating. That, and I dislike the "flatness" of the default Aero theme, as opposed to the more refined, polished look of Vista. Various other visual quirks (like the Start pearl having the Windows logo "flare" out instead of the background "lighting up" like it does in Vista) are minor, but nag at me.

The way the system groups related items in the taskbar is also irritating. Personally, I like the way Vista/XP do it -- separate buttons at the bottom, with the name of the program/document unless the taskbar is full, in which case the group things. Yes, I know the option can be changed, but even changing it to be more Vista/XP-like doesn't get it *quite* right.

Yes, there are a few improvements, particularly in UAC, perhaps a bit faster search speed, etc., but otherwise I don't see any major benefits of Windows 7 over, say, Vista SP2.

That, and the sleep/wake problems I've been having with 7 on my laptop that never exhibited them under Vista is also somewhat annoying. I made an image of my 7 system so I can restore it if needed and put Vista back on it. So far, no problems, and it's considerably more intuitive to use.

/I'm 27. Why do I sound like a curmudgeonly old man?




Most of the big benefits will require a quad-core CPU, and an SSD hard-drive. I.E. exactly what 99% of the people will never see in their lives.
 
Originally Posted By: firemachine69

Most of the big benefits will require a quad-core CPU, and an SSD hard-drive. I.E. exactly what 99% of the people will never see in their lives.


Was that you who said nobody needs 100 Mbit Ethernet, 100 GB drives were excessive, PCIe bus was overkill, and dual core processors were a waste?

In 10 years, I doubt that many laptop computers will use hard drives. Many desktop computers will use SSDs. And quad core processors will be the lower end.
 
Wasn't me, that's for sure.


No, manufacturers would lose their shirts if they had to go with SSD's. Unlike traditional platter drives, you cannot get reliability without money. Not much is gained on an SSD save for quick load times. Writing is actually SLOWER, as well, good luck telling the consumer you took out his 1TB drive for 60gb (roughly the same, price-wise). Quantity over quality for JoeQ average, I'm afraid.

I did CISCO, so I was advocation 1000Mbit stuff a long time ago.
wink.gif


Dual-core processors WERE a waste, up until a a few years ago when some mainstream games and software FINALLY started taking advantage of it.

I was a staunch advocate of PCI-Express back when it was still in the infancy stage. I knew dedicated slots were going to be a thing of the pass.
 
I installed Win7 on a Dell Latittude D810, 120GB WD ATA disk, 1GB RAM, 1.7PentiumM CPU. Runs great. Faster than the XP it replaced!

It's nice to install Windows and not have to have a disc with a boat-load of drivers...those drivers are all in the base Win7 install. Everything worked.

The D800 laptops...no video that works if you have the add-in video cards.
 
Originally Posted By: heypete
Meh. The "Libraries" concept and the changes to the taskbar are, in my mind, quite obnoxious and irritating.
/I'm 27. Why do I sound like a curmudgeonly old man?


I love Windows 7,but I have to say that I'm not happy about the libraries, favorites, My Documents, etc being inserted into every directory-related window, in fact it is a major turn-off. And so far, my reading says that not only is there no "one-touch" button to revert to a classic file display, but even the individual tweaking commands won't get you quite there either.
 
In my home, I have computers running the following OSs:

Windows XP (my netbook)
Windows Vista (desktop)
Windows 7 (daughter's netbook)
Mac OS X Snow Leopard (wife's Macbook)

Of those 4 OSs, the Mac is my favorite, and Windows 7 is a very close 2nd. If I could run iPhoto on Windows, W7 would be my favorite OS.

As a side note, I don't have any problems with the systems running XP and Vista.
 
Libraries: at first, I hated 'em.

Now I really like them for home users. It puts stuff automatically where it's supposed to go. For network (domain) users, no.

On a win7 box, try this:
--Have the entire My Documents folder structure available from the old machine (presumably XP) available to you.
--Copy all folders & files in that old My Documents folder, copy. Then Paste into the Libraries area. It will automatically put the "My Music" folder in the right place, same for pictures. I'm digging it. Everything will end up where it's supposed to be. nifty!
 
900mb while idling after boot? That sounds way too high for just the OS. My loads have been seeing 450-500MB or so after boot, at idle, with Sunbelt's Vipre loaded.
 
Originally Posted By: firemachine69
Wasn't me, that's for sure.


No, manufacturers would lose their shirts if they had to go with SSD's. Unlike traditional platter drives, you cannot get reliability without money. Not much is gained on an SSD save for quick load times. Writing is actually SLOWER, as well, good luck telling the consumer you took out his 1TB drive for 60gb (roughly the same, price-wise). Quantity over quality for JoeQ average, I'm afraid.

I did CISCO, so I was advocation 1000Mbit stuff a long time ago.
wink.gif


Dual-core processors WERE a waste, up until a a few years ago when some mainstream games and software FINALLY started taking advantage of it.

I was a staunch advocate of PCI-Express back when it was still in the infancy stage. I knew dedicated slots were going to be a thing of the pass.


SMP may have been a waste for most gaming, but as long as you were running an OS with an SMP kernel, there were benefits to multi-tasking performance.

IIRC, it was Q3 that was the first game with SMP support, and that was circa 2001. Almost a decade ago.
 
Thats funny. While I do have a quad, both my moms machine and my brothers laptop are dual core and they run perfectly fine with 7 Home Premium. IIRC, my moms machine gets a 6.9 on the processor. Athlon64 X2 6400+ (Windsor).
Heck my grandma has a Athlon 64 single at 2.4GHz with W7HP. Perfectly smooth and fast with the couple programs she runs.

Oh yeah, while no game uses my quad even hardly 50%; being able to leave firefox open, run a media player with my own playlist, a hardware monitor, and a ssh terminal WHILE playing the game gets me hot.
Writing isnt slower on an SSD, either. I get over 100MB/s write on my 64GB SSD.
 
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did the upgrade. PC only sees my router now after 5 minutes of *nothing*. have updated drivers etc etc. was a PITA.
 
Originally Posted By: Onmo'Eegusee
Code:
colton@Laura ~ $ free

total used free shared buffers cached

Mem: 2072780 1909764 163016 0 524 1076112

-/+ buffers/cache: 833128 1239652

Swap: 2104504 1312 2103192

Uses a lot less ram..oh, wait. :P


LOL. 1.1G is being used for disk cache which is a lot better than it doing nothing. :)

On an old P4 box in the office that's running an instance of drupal (apache+mysql+php) for an internal content management system:

[rewt ~]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2074360 851476 1222884 0 227484 511300
-/+ buffers/cache: 112692 1961668
Swap: 2104496 0 2104496



The machine had been up for 1400 days until I just rebooted it to upgrade it to CentOS 5.4.
 
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