Windows 7 for Christmas ?

[Rik]

It would be nice, though...

[zappaDPJ]

If 7 fixes the problems that I have with Vista then I have little choice other than to buy it I guess. The alternatives would be XP PRO which in all honesty is getting a little long in the tooth and even though it does the job, on-going support is always going to be a worry. Moving away from Microsoft all together is not really an option because many of the applications I run simply don't run under other operating systems.

I don't have a problem with the way in which Vista works it's just that for me, it cuts my productivity by as much as an hour a day because it is just so abysmally coded. It also annoys me intensely that in spite of having very powerful hardware I have to turn all the bells and whistles off that makes Vista more attractive such as the Sidebar, Aero and all the badly written background utilities that cause the hard drive to churn away for hours at a time.

From what I've read 7 will go along way to fixing my gripes but having endured Vista for the best part of a year I feel entitled to get it as a free upgrade along with the moon on a stick  

[Sebby]

I must admit that I've found SP2 improves Vista significantly.

[talos]

I'm just getting to like Vista, then it does something stupid and I'm back where I started.

[Sebby]

Like what? I think the most stupid thing Microsoft did was set Vista to make a restore point as it boots up, which is why it's so slow for about half an hour.

[Simon]

Like what? I think the most stupid thing Microsoft did was set Vista to make a restore point as it boots up, which is why it's so slow for about half an hour.

Well, I'll be buggered, I didn't know that, and that explains a lot!   

[Steve]

It would be nice, though...

It should work as a guest OS with virtualbox  

[Sebby]

Well, I'll be buggered, I didn't know that, and that explains a lot!  

I only figured it out because I checked the Reliability and Performance Monitor to see why the hard drive was constantly going crazy, and I found it was writing to system restore. A quick Google revealed how to switch off this annoying and unnecessary function. Just that tweak alone improves Vista by about 10 times.

[Rik]

Go on, do share.

[Sebby]

The other big one is to either switch off or customise indexing. By default, it's set to index locations the most people wouldn't want/need.

[Rik]

Indexing has always struck me as a little weird, how often do people search their disks? It's not something I do often, so the overhead is a negative factor in performance terms for little or no gain.

[Noreen]

This was posted on American forum to which I belong.

I installed Windows 7 RC 64-bit on an ASRock Socket 754 system today. CPU is an Athlon 64 3000+ plus 1 GB RAM. System has integrated Nvidia 6100 graphics. To enable Aero, I allocated 128 MB RAM to video. Resolution is set to max for an HP vs17e monitor at 1280x1024x32.

With AntiVir Personal installed, the system runs amazingly well. All with a single-core processor and about 895 MB of usable RAM.

Text display is better than Windows Vista and far superior to Windows XP. When enlarging text with DPI controls set to 125%, the text is still sharp and free of jaggies. Will try 150% later.

Internet Explorer 8 is usable with Compatibility Mode turned on for all sites. I advise that setting for all users for the time being.

Installation was flawless except it did not recognize my wireless USB adapter. I used the Windows Vista installer from NetGear and everything went well. The driver for the WN121T has been problematic with Windows XP and Windows Vista 32-bit. I will further explore that in the future.

Later this year, I'll try Windows 7 with a gaming setup. Right now, I am busy enough and have plenty to occupy my research such as selecting an email client, etc.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I think Microsoft is going to deliver the goods with this OS. Granted, it's Windows Vista SP1 at core. But there appears to be enough improved to make Windows 7 worthwhile as a replacement next year.

[Rik]

So there's still some hope... 

[Noreen]

I was interested in this part

Text display is better than Windows Vista and far superior to Windows XP. When enlarging text with DPI controls set to 125%, the text is still sharp and free of jaggies. Will try 150% later.

[Simon]

That would certainly be a benefit to some users, Noreen. 

[Sebby]

Indexing has always struck me as a little weird, how often do people search their disks? It's not something I do often, so the overhead is a negative factor in performance terms for little or no gain.

I think the one thing it's handy for is email, but otherwise I completely agree.

[Sebby]

So there's still some hope... 

Certainly is. I dislike Vista and I've made the move to Mac, but credit where credit's due - Windows 7 looks really good and MS deserve praise for it.

[Rik]

I think the one thing it's handy for is email, but otherwise I completely agree.

Mailstore is even better.

[esh]

Does anyone remember Microsoft FastFind from Office '97? Computers weren't blazing back then, and indexing your whole system every 4 hours caused... headaches. Accursed thing.

I was mildly surprised that one of my friends got linux going without any prior prompting from me, and managed to get it useable. He struck the same problem as me though, as soon as you want to use it as your primary system, no games make it ...annoying. And dual booting is such a chore. Don't get me wrong I have a Linux workstation but it's not for casual use. For that I use Windows XP 64, which is very good, and built on Windows Server 2003.

[Lance]

And that is one of the main problems. For as long as Windows is dominant in the marketplace, software vendors are going to concentrate their efforts there. 

[Glenn]

Just installed W7 RC and it is a lot faster then the beta, and vastly faster than Vista

[Rik]

They've been busy stripping out all the debug code then.

[Sebby]

and vastly faster than Vista

So is an 11 year old computer running Windows 98.

[Lance]

And a computer booting into dos is quicker still!

[Sebby]

True.