Windows 7U -- Did Bill Finally Get it Right?

[ekpolk]

Well, I gotta say it -- I'm shocked. I'm in the process of changing jobs -- sort of. Leaving a "full time" firm, and going half-time at the Public Defender's and half-time at my own office. A long story, but just what's right for me.
Anyway, my former senior partner wanted me to pay as much for the Dell M4300 the firm had bought me almost two years ago, as [much] I could pay for a good new Dell at BB. This thing, which should have been a screamer based upon its paper specs, was never quite right (2.5gHz dual core processor, 4GB RAM, good graphics, etc.). Despite its pedigree, it suffered from almost constant processor bog down, and presented me with an average of two BSODs (blue screen of death) per day. Only but for the grace of God did I not suffer a BSOD when trying to finish a critical document on a minutes-left deadline. As I'm sure y'all can appreciate, I was not excited about shelling out $500 for this crash-o-matic mess. . .

So, I told him, "thanks, but no thanks." And I'm spending the weekend stripping my licensed software from the crasher, and rebuilding my installation on a new Dell I grabbed in a hurry at BestBuy (yeah, I know, but I needed it FAST).

This machine is my first experience with an OS past XP-Pro (I skipped, wisely I suspect, the Vista experience). I got the new machine (an Inspiron) with Win-7-Ultimate (so I can run my old invested-in software, and do other languages as necessary).

I'm AMAZED at how W7U runs. Its' fast with everything, so far does not slow down no matter how badly I provoke it (out of morbid curiosity, I've tried...), and in almost two days, zero BSODs. Even with seventeen programs open at the same time, dang, everything works as if it's the only program open.

Maybe, just maybe, Gates and company finally got their poo together before putting a product on the market. What say you all about your W7 experiences?

 

[wavinwayne]

I have W7 Starter on my daughter's netbook, and it is great, IMO. I have no complaints.

Since you mentioned you skipped Vista, I thought I'd mention....I use Vista on my home and office PCs, and it is NOT the dog that the critics claim. I have no problems with Vista.

 

[rick9009]

Bought an HP dv6 laptop in the summer so I received a free upgrade to Win 7. The laptop with Vista took 3 min to boot up to the desktop and another 2 min before I could do anything once there. Now with Win 7 it takes 2 min to boot up to the desktop and once there I can start working immediately. I also had few driver issues with Vista that I do not have with Win 7.

Vista = Garbage

 

[ThirdeYe]

I'm hesitant to upgrade because I'm concerned about its compatibility with my games... I know I lost a lot of compatibility with older games of mine when I upgraded to Windows XP and that upset me.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: wavinwayne
I have W7 Starter on my daughter's netbook, and it is great, IMO. I have no complaints.

Since you mentioned you skipped Vista, I thought I'd mention....I use Vista on my home and office PCs, and it is NOT the dog that the critics claim. I have no problems with Vista.


Wayne:

Up front, I will clarify and admit that I have nearly zero experience with Vista, in any of its incarnations. That said, our last computer guy (as opposed to our current one) was very credible and capable (he kept all my schtuff running...), Vista was a problem waiting to happen. OTOH, I know of many just like you who seem to have had no problems with Vista. Strange. All I can say is that I'd hope a major new OS had virtually no detractors. While I have zero doubt that what you're reporting is accurate, I also have seen enough situations with others that I do not have confidence in Vista. For now, however, anyway, I'm very pleased with what I'm seeing from W7U. That said, time will tell...

 

[beast3300]

W7 is great. I've been up for 30 days straight on W7U x64.

 

[SLCraig]

I am in the process of going to an i7 with DDR3 etc.. I'm going to be putting 7HP on it. I'm convinced its going to be good enough for a power user/gamer such as myself.

I'm excited actually!

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: ThirdeYe
I'm hesitant to upgrade because I'm concerned about its compatibility with my games... I know I lost a lot of compatibility with older games of mine when I upgraded to Windows XP and that upset me.


I got the update to W7U. While I object to the idea that not ALL versions are reverse compatible, and this is a serious issue in my opinion, at least you CAN get a fully back-compatible version, which I did. This is one of the things that I find so neat about about W7U -- even ANCIENT software runs perfectly. For example, I use several different photo editing programs, depending upon what I'm trying to do. One of the best for basic tasks is my decade-old Dell "Image Expert" program, which to this day is one of the best for manipulating jpgs (no good if you shoot raw...). Anyway, my 2000 version of IE, meant really for Win95/98, runs fine on W7U. Pretty impressive, IMO.

 

[OVERKILL]

Vista and 7 are very close in underlying structure; Vista was a last minute fork of the project that eventually brought us 7, to bring a product to market.

Vista could have been turned INTO 7 with a Service Pack. Due to its reputation however, that will never happen.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: wavinwayne
Since you mentioned you skipped Vista, I thought I'd mention....I use Vista on my home and office PCs, and it is NOT the dog that the critics claim. I have no problems with Vista.

+1.

I've used Vista for over a year before I upgraded to W7, and I actually see very little difference between the two.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: wavinwayne
Since you mentioned you skipped Vista, I thought I'd mention....I use Vista on my home and office PCs, and it is NOT the dog that the critics claim. I have no problems with Vista.

+1.

I've used Vista for over a year before I upgraded to W7, and I actually see very little difference between the two.


Interesting. Again, I do not doubt what you're saying. In contrast, however, I sure do see a difference, a huge difference, between XP-Pro and W7U.

 

[ekpolk]

Aha -- at last I've finally found an anomaly in Win-7U. I have a favorite Logitech mouse that I use everywhere (I keep it in my brief case in it's own ZipLock freezer bag, along with its plug-in connector). Seems to mysteriously just "deactivate" in W7U with no discernable provocation. Pulling the USB receiver, and promptly sticking it back in seems to solve the problem.

Comments or suggestions???

 

[crinkles]

personally i found vista 64 bit better. W7 64 bit is now mostly sorted out; still takes 5 minutes after logging in to see my router, something which was instant with vista.

otherwise no discernible difference on my machine.

 

[pcfxer]

It's still Windows. There is nothing more exciting about it at all. If you have Vista, save your money. If you have XP and want something newer, then go to 7.

The file system was renamed and services wrapped around it so that they could rename it WinFS in Vista. Windows 7 is only slightly faster than Vista and at the end of the day is SLOWER than XP. Microsoft hasn't done anything exciting here folks. The boys at PC-BSD, DragonflyBSD are doing much more exciting things.

Oh wait, that will save everyone $100+ and we don't want that now do we?

 

[pcfxer]

Disable the powersaving for the device in Device Manager.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: pcfxer
Disable the powersaving for the device in Device Manager.


I don't see any powersaving option for the mouse. Anywhere else it might be? Ahh yes, it is Windows. . .

 

[greenaccord02]

I think you made a good decision going with this machine. W7 is looking very good so far. We're gearing up for a mass migration at work late this year. It'll be about 30K boxes moving from XP Pro.

 

[Pop_Rivit]

I have Windows 7 in all of my home computers with the exception of the little Dell that I dedicate to the MagicJack.

On my primary Windows 7 64 bit workstation it's not unusual to be dialed into a couple of different servers (VPN/RDP), be running a long query on a local SQL Server database, have Crystal Reports open working on a report, Visual Studio is usually open, Outlook is also always open and running in the background. I frequently have Access open doing data coversions.

On occasion when I have a client with SQL 2000 I'll also open a virtual machine virtual box and run SQL 2000 databases from it.

So far Windows 7 has taken everything I've thrown at it without a problem, and I never notice any speed issues.

 

[Scienceman]

I love w7.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: ekpolk
Originally Posted By: pcfxer
Disable the powersaving for the device in Device Manager.


I don't see any powersaving option for the mouse. Anywhere else it might be? Ahh yes, it is Windows. . .


Disregard this question. What I thought might actually be an annoyance (well, it was, briefly...) was just that the USB ports were defaulted to shut off after 30 min of inactivity, in both the plugged-in and battery-powered profiles. Fixed.

Wow -- Windows that works -- what a concept!

EDIT: Added cautionary note. For those who are heavily reliant upon external HDDs, as I am, I would strongly recommend examining this option in Win-7. It's possible to have data loss problems if the computer unexpectedly powers off the port to which that drive is plugged.