i haz 7

[calebh]

so i finally upgraded my laptop to windows 7 now that the semester is over. upgrade was easy, if it did take a while. less time than reinstalling everything and setting up all my settings again, though. so that was nice. windows took care of updating pretty much everything for me. i did go and look for one specific driver (for the touchpad mouse thing), but more because i wanted to play with the sensitivity settings than because i needed to. microsoft's driver (or the one they found for it) worked well enough.

i'm a fan of the window tricks, like maximization and comparing windows and the shaking thingy. also being able to look behind windows to a minimized window just by hovering your mouse over it on the task bar. also love the new task bar. icons instead of those little tabs is a great idea, and jump lists are kind of nice, too.

it seems to run a little faster than vista and be a little more efficient with resources, though i haven't really tested it much yet... the system will be put through its paces again next semester, when i start up even more graphics-heavy architecture classes.

i've only had a few hours to play with it. but so far, i like it. the rearranged control panel makes a little more sense, but unfortunately, i was already used to vista's. lol

i'm not sure i like the new "libraries" system that replaced the single folder for my documents and everything. (did vista do that? i never noticed if it did..) i think that it would be nice for computers with multiple users, but not so much for just me and myself on the same computer.

anyone else have it installed? what are yall's thoughts on it?

[porange]

I love Win 7! I did have an initial issue with my video driver, but that's taken care of now. I like how it cleans up all the system tray icons... it's the little things.

[Biker Dash]

How does it compare to XP in gaming performance is one thing that I would like to know. If your a gamer, XP is the preferred choice currently, though I do hear good things about 7. From what I understand, RAM usage is about equal (definately much better than Vista) as well as speed. Also, how easy is it to tailor 7 to suit your preferences? Finally, I wonder how the 64 bit 7 handles 32 bit programs, I have heard mixed results in that dept with Vista. Considering that an i7 chip would be a waste with a 32 bit OpSys, and that a 32 bit OpSys can only read up to 4G of RAM, When I build my puter, I want the 64 bit version.

[porange]

I would argue that if you have a gaming system, the OS is the least of the things to have an impact on performance. RAM, Proc speed and your video card are what count, no matter what platform you're running. That said, compatibility with RAM, procs, and cards is probably best with XP, and not much worse with 7, but it will get better with time. Also, 64 bits is the way of the future so there's no reason not to got to 64 bit. I've had no trouble with 32 bit apps on my 64 bit, Win 7 machine. As far as personalizing, it's just as adaptable as XP is as far as system usage tweaking and stuff.

[Dodsfall]

We use XP for developing video games. We also have a few Macs in the sound studio.

Windows 7 has received pretty good reviews, but I haven't used it personally yet.

[4Raven]

I have 7 on my new computer...but cannot download Diablo, Diablo II and it is p*ssin' me off! Haven't been able to play it and my characters are probably dead by now!:mad:

Compatibility issue ... guess Diablo isn't developed to accept windows 7...

I still have difficulty navigating through that library stuff..and finding my new pics...but at least they were able to save all of my pics from my old computer onto the external harddrive and this new computer...as soon as I organize them I will save all of the old ones onto the external and burn copies on CDs plus I have them on Photobucket and embedded in emails

[chaindad]

I kind of like 7....it came with my new laptop.....a few of my older programs aren't compatible but I'm dealing with it....just glad its not Vista....lol

[calebh]

i don't know about games. i rarely pick up a game when it's new. i enjoy games, but i don't have the time to make any of them worth $50. i think TF2 is probably the most demanding game i've played on this computer. works fine.

i haven't run into any issues with compatibility that weren't also issues with vista. from what i can tell, 7 made it much easier to run and install 32 bit programs with a 64 bit OS.

the library thing is kind of confusing. makes it easy to find stuff, but once you start playing with folder organization, and where files actually are on the hard drive, good luck.

i think 7 has a few more options with the aero thing than vista did, so personalization is a little better, i think. not what you could get out of a linux system, but it's good enough.

[mtk1210]

I have no complaints - it's easy to use for my simple computer applications.

Google Chrome runs wonderfully fast on it. I should mention I don't use any ram-intensive programs on my home laptop, it's just for basic web use/multimedia.

[Biker Dash]

Well, With my new Drafting program, I anticipate needing a lot of RAM and Graphics processing in the future. One of my first projects I have in mind is designing some new parts for my bike.Other projects include designing new boards for one of my favorite online games, Combat Arms.Most of the things that I wish to do I should have no problems on my current computer. It's just when I get heavy into Finite Element Analasys and CGI that I am gonna want my new system. Still, I do plan on moving on to 7 at some point in the near future. I just need to make sure that ViaCAD is compatable with 7 (that should be no problem, and I suspect that v7 of ViaCAD will be fully 7 compliant.)

[calebh]

finally ran into an issue with it... a custom installer the architecture school built so all the students could use rhino on their personal laptops for free (when connected to the wifi, at least) was built specifically for XP and vista.

to get it to work completely bug free, i had to download the XP mode thingy from microsoft. and it works just fine, if a little slowly. you're basically running XP within 7. XP has it's own notifications, updates, etc. if you'll be using it a lot, you'll need anti-virus and all that stuff. the worst part, though, is that it never automatically kills the virtual machine, so it's left taking up resources until you ctrl+alt+del it. and that actually did slow down my system fairly significantly... you got to ask microsoft how difficult it would have been for vpc.exe to actually stop running and not have the problem... it seems like there had to be a simpler way to do compatibility mode... once the program is installed, it's easy to get to, at least (just from 7's start menu or desktop, but it's still basically running in XP.)

my first, and so far only, significant complaint. not too bad, for microsoft. lol