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

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Good to hear you're liking Win7!

Technically speaking, there isn't much difference between Win7 & Vista with SP2 BUT (a HUGE but) two things become obvious: the GUI changes make all the difference and the tuned disk drivers make identical PC's boot faster under Win7.

Ever since Win7 was released to businesses with contracts with MS (August 7th IIRC) I haven't installed XP on anything, it's been fully Win7.

The new version of Windows runs everything that we throw at it, especially considering how much of the software written that is "supported" in my environment was written for IE 5.5/6.0 and old Win32 apps. People thought I was nuts for "using a version of Windows w/o waiting for SP1". We were immediately reaping the benefits. Old Pentium 3.2Ghz machines run noticeably quicker with Win7 compared to XP. Vista wouldn't run much at all on these old machines. Win7 runs substantially better on new Core2Duo/Quads than than XP. The list goes on. HP Tablet PC's (tc4400)...yep, better with Win7 than XP.

Other than being forced to use XP due to some old stingy app, I find no reason to run it anymore. Even on Netbooks with 1GB RAM, Win7 does fine.

shifting gears...
My dad bought a PC the month that Vista came out, a 1.8Ghz E-something dual-core system, 1GB RAM. It was slow! It only got slower as time went on. Picked up 2GB of additional RAM...it ran a bit better, but still, 2 minute startup times for a machine with nothing on there other that Firefox? (I removed all the vendor-installed junkware).

Well, Win7 to the rescue. Swapped hard disks, installed Win7...BAM!..it felt like a new machine. It wasn't just WinRot we're talking about...He was amazed at how much better Win7 ran on this unit. He thought he would have had to buy another computer to "fix" his old one. Nope. Win7 was the "fix".
 
Count me in among the folks that never had any problems with Vista. I loaded it on my work machine the date it was released to enterprise customers (11/06) and have been running it since, with one PC refresh in 08. I'm a major Vista apologist in fact...

I do have the Win7 x64 release candidate loaded on my laptop, guess I'll have to figure out what I'll do after it expires.

I have Ubuntu on this laptop as well, dual booted with Win7, and Windows is much more reliable. My wireless connection [censored] out from time to time on Ubuntu, inexplicably, and this is not the only machine running Ubuntu that I have had this problem with. IMO the network stack in Ubuntu is not mature. Don't know about other Linux variants.
 
Yeah, I have not had a problem with W7. In fact I have hit 60 days uptime on pre-release W7U while I was away in Las Vegas. Its true no one was using it, but I forgot to close Firefox, which got bored and decided the memory looked tasty. I think it was over a GB used on a machine with 2GB by the time I got back. It was very slow. Once I killed FX, it was back to its old fast self.
Oh, if you need XP for something, and have W7 Pro, Ult, or Ent..
http://colt45.ws/misc/xpmode.jpg
As long your machine can do hardware virtualization you can get Microsoft Virtual PC and a full copy of XP Pro to run on it..for free.
Brons, its not likely it has to do with the network stack. Its probably more a problem with the wireless drivers. Few companies making these chips publish any sort of information on how their chips are driven, or even any driver for linux. So the open source versions are reverse engineered from the closed-source windows drivers. I have an Atheros N wireless card in my netbook and going from 2.6.31 to the early 2.6.32 kernel cause me to have similar problems to what you are describing.
 
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Win 7 Ultimate allows you to run 4 virtual copies of Win7 (or prior) legally on that computer. Nifty. Combine with virtual box (free) or the XPMode that Onmo metnions and life is good.

I find that using the Virtual Machines for browsing appliances is great as all junkware is isolated to the VM.

as Drew99GT often talks about doing this same thing with SandBoxie but it doesn't offer a 64-bit Windows installer yet.
 
Originally Posted By: 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?


WinFS never made it to production, in Vista OR 7. Both still use NTFS.
 
Originally Posted By: pcfxer
. . .
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.
. . .


I'm not an expert on what's happening inside the box, but whatever it is, I'm running the same assortment of software, on a marginally more capable Dell notebook, and it's screaming compared my plodding, crash-o-matic XP machine. Obviously, this is a two-machine experience I'm describing.
 
Originally Posted By: beast3300
W7 is great. I've been up for 30 days straight on W7U x64.


I have to laugh, I just visited a customer whose Solaris 9 was coming up on 730 days of uptime when I serviced the box. Thanks to DR, I configured out the board, added memory, and configured the board back in, keeping the uptime streak alive.

Thirty days is just getting started.
 
Originally Posted By: javacontour
Originally Posted By: beast3300
W7 is great. I've been up for 30 days straight on W7U x64.


I have to laugh, I just visited a customer whose Solaris 9 was coming up on 730 days of uptime when I serviced the box. Thanks to DR, I configured out the board, added memory, and configured the board back in, keeping the uptime streak alive.

Thirty days is just getting started.

Yes, obviously.
But thats not consumer level equipment (memory hot-swap) and it is likely in a DC or somewhere similar with UPS and backup generator.
The only way I was able to get over 30 days with my Linux machine here was to break down and buy an UPS. Now Im at 149 days.
 
Originally Posted By: javacontour
Originally Posted By: beast3300
W7 is great. I've been up for 30 days straight on W7U x64.


I have to laugh, I just visited a customer whose Solaris 9 was coming up on 730 days of uptime when I serviced the box. Thanks to DR, I configured out the board, added memory, and configured the board back in, keeping the uptime streak alive.

Thirty days is just getting started.


I have to laugh even harder. My "wonderful" workstation Dell M4300 generated on average about two BSODs (blue screens of death) per day, running my religiously updated copy of XP-Pro, guarded by constantly-on virus and intrusion protection. The most astonishing and pleasing thing about my new machine is the total lack of BSODs since I started it up. It's going on 48 hours now, and my mind is fully prepared for 4-5 crashes during such a time interval.

I suppose that just like people, all computers have their limits. It's just that until now, I was much more effective at finding that limit than Windows was in enduring my attempts to find the limit. At the end of the day, I have to say that I really don't care about Win-7's genetics -- it's the first version of Windows that I've seen since "going Windows" back in 1999, that actually works right and even well, right out of the box. Perhaps, in some sense, the Bill Gates and Microsoft experience of the last fifteen years is like a compressed version of American cars over the last 75 years. Finally, after an inexcusably long time, they're getting it right. . .
 
Originally Posted By: javacontour
Originally Posted By: beast3300
W7 is great. I've been up for 30 days straight on W7U x64.


I have to laugh, I just visited a customer whose Solaris 9 was coming up on 730 days of uptime when I serviced the box. Thanks to DR, I configured out the board, added memory, and configured the board back in, keeping the uptime streak alive.

Thirty days is just getting started.


You're comparing apples and oranges. No home user would willingly pay for a server with hot-swappable memory for their home usage. Those things are available in the Wintel world also, for a (much higher) price.

But while we're on the subject, my NetApp file server has been up for about 2.5 years. Not sure how many days exactly. It runs some sort of customized *nix in the head unit.
 
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lol I have a CentOS box that is prob 300 days in or so as well as an Ubuntu box that has cleared a year... Guess I'll be forced to reboot to add ram though. Linux ftw
10.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Brons2
Originally Posted By: javacontour
Originally Posted By: beast3300
W7 is great. I've been up for 30 days straight on W7U x64.


I have to laugh, I just visited a customer whose Solaris 9 was coming up on 730 days of uptime when I serviced the box. Thanks to DR, I configured out the board, added memory, and configured the board back in, keeping the uptime streak alive.

Thirty days is just getting started.


You're comparing apples and oranges. No home user would willingly pay for a server with hot-swappable memory for their home usage. Those things are available in the Wintel world also, for a (much higher) price.

But while we're on the subject, my NetApp file server has been up for about 2.5 years. Not sure how many days exactly. It runs some sort of customized *nix in the head unit.


That's just it. You can run Solaris on your PC hardware. We are talking OS's here, not custom hardware. So it was up, not because of the hardware, but because the OS is that stable.

I don't expect folks to swap out memory at home while the system is running. But put Solaris 10 on your PC, and it's likely it will stay up until the power fails or you want to upgrade something.

I running a couple of different builds of Solaris Nevada (Solaris 11) that are not yet ready for release, and they get 30+ days of uptime without drama. So I have to laugh that this is some sort of accomplishment.
 
I've been running Vista at home just over 2 years now. I can count on one hand the number of BSODs I've gotten. I've heard that XP or W7 run more efficiently, which I can't say for sure (I upgraded to Vista from ME... lucky me?), but I have no qualms about using Vista.
 
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
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 not sure I'd use an Inspiron as the main office workhorse. When I have to buy a Dell for our office (I'll give the user a brand choice), I usually go with an Optiplex (reluctantly). FWIW, Dell offers business customers a fast-track program with next day delivery.

But where it matters, or where I'm using it, I'll spring a couple extra dollars and go with a Lenovo ThinkCentre or TPad. Much better build in my opinion.

For many apps that we use in legal, we are still leaning towards XP, so order with Win 7 downgrade rights. Once the apps catch up, you can put the W7 on. As you're aware, industry-specific SW is VERY expensive. Otherwise, W7 is very good.

Tip: if you're a solo practice, take a look at Clio. TSlips and TMatters are gross overkill for you. Also get a cloud-based backup service if it's just one machine.
 
Oddly enough, the Inspiron series has worked very well for me. When in the office, I use an external, full-sized keyboard, so most of the concern over "build durability" is nearly mooted. This Inspiron, with Win7U is running so much faster an better than the "heavy duty" M4300 XP-Pro"workstation" workstation it replaced that it's not funny. And so far, though I've seriously tried, I simply can't provoke the thing to crash (knock on wood...).

I'm a criminal defense trial lawyer. I really don't need any potentially troublesome "legal boutique" software. I've run Client Profiles in the past, but I really don't need it now. I use WordPerfect 14, and have been using Outlook, and a few others. I'm considering changing scheduling software.

I do "cascading" backups to a "fleet" of several external HDDs. The only way (I hope) that I'm going to suffer a catastrophic data loss is if a nuclear bomb goes off nearby, and the EMP wipes all my drives at one time...

So far, so good with W7U!
 
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