Windows 7

[Rik]

If only everything else had come down in a similar way, Ray. New cars for a fiver, a house for £10. (Mind you, the latter may come to pass...  )

[Ray]

If only everything else had come down in a similar way, Ray. New cars for a fiver, a house for £10. (Mind you, the latter may come to pass...  )

This is very true, Rik. 

[Sebby]

(Mind you, the latter may come to pass...  )

[Noreen]

Interesting "New York Times" article. http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/21/technology/ptpogue22.4-413118.php

[Rik]

Interesting read. I've always believed Vista was rushed to the market before it was ready. Increasingly, 7 looks to be what Vista was meant to be. I think maybe it's time to move to a Mac.

[Sebby]

It definitely is, Rik.

That said, I'll give Microsoft some credit as Windows 7 looks really good to me.

[Rik]

Can I add, "at last" to that.

[Sebby]

You can.

[Noreen]

First off: thank you for your interest in beta testing Windows 7! As we near January 24th, we wanted to update everyone again on the next steps for the Windows 7 Beta. The amount of feedback we have received has been amazing and continues to pour in. We are at a point where we have more than enough beta testers and feedback coming in to meet our engineering needs, so we are beginning to plan the end of general availability for Windows 7 Beta..........

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/01/23/general-availability-for-the-windows-7-beta-to-end.aspx

[JB]

Well as a confirmed XP addict I thought I would give Windows 7 a go on a spare computer. I should say that I have never used Vista but have reconciled myself to the fact that support for XP will stop one day and I will need to move on.

I am actually quite impressed. I had to reinstall because some drivers I installed for my sound card completely destroyed the system but now I have used a set of Vista drivers which are doing the job.

It will be interesting to see all the tweaks come along in the coming months to give it a few extra facilities, like an easily accessable command prompt. I already found people discovering tweaks to speed up the menu display and reduce the wait time when a program is killed at shutdown, just like XP.

Wonder how the guys testing it here are getting along?

[Ray]

I downloaded and tried to install the beta on Friday but I couldn't get the install to complete, it was getting to the stage where the install was finalising and the machine just froze, so I gave it up as a bad job and haven't tried it again. Seems reading the MS forums that this is not an uncommon problem.

[Den]

From the reports I have read so far Windows 7 is a good step forward and users of Vista will be very happy with it as they will not notice any major changes but users of XP will notice the changes and wonder what the hell it is all about and be able to justify not changing to Vista in the first place and will sit there with a smug look on their face because they waited and did not have to admit they were wrong. 

[Rik]

Quite right, Den.

[Noreen]

I hope that anyone who wants to try it noticed this part of the link in my above post.

Starting January 27th, the Windows 7 page will be updated with a warning that time is running out on downloading the Windows 7 Beta and that we will be limiting downloads shortly. People will be encouraged to register and start the download of the Windows 7 Beta sooner rather than later.

February 10th, new downloads of the Windows 7 Beta will no longer be available. People who have already started their Windows 7 Beta download and have not yet finished will still be able to finish their download and are encouraged to do so.

February 12th, people will no longer be able to complete their download of the Windows 7 Beta. Anyone who hasn't finished downloading the Windows 7 Beta will be unable to do so.

[Rik]

I noted.

[Sebby]

Me too.

[D-Dan]

I have it a try on a VM and have to say that, compared with my aborted test runs of Vista, I was pleasantly surprised (though I'm still not keen on Aero). So I've taken the plunge, wiped XP off my 2nd machine and installed 7 on that. (Incidentally, are they planning going as far as Windows 10? Or is the 7 of 9?)

So far so good. Got the ATI drivers on there, firefox works a treat, and one or two programs I use regularly (one in particular - SAM Broadcaster - was especially important on PC2) and all seem to be working.

The only thing I can't figure out is the performance index - which gives me a paltry 2.0 because of 3D gaming performance. Now it may not be the fastest card out there (ATI 1950GT) but it's still pretty quick - so I can't explain this. All other index scores are where I would expect them to be, and 3D Aero performance index is 6.9, so I'm not entirely trusting of the rating.

Now, there's just one more thing to do - GET MY DUAL BOOT WITH UBUNTU BACK. When will MS finally support grub so I don't have to go through the re-installing grub rigmarole every time I experiment with a new Win OS???

Steve

[drummer]

Now, there's just one more thing to do - GET MY DUAL BOOT WITH UBUNTU BACK. When will MS finally support grub so I don't have to go through the re-installing grub rigmarole every time I experiment with a new Win OS???

I've read a lot of positive reports about Grub4dos which seems address some of Grub problems Windows users experience.

http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Grub4dos_tutorial

Not used it myself, but discovered it after I'd uninstalled Ubuntu for the nth time.

[Sebby]

The only thing I can't figure out is the performance index - which gives me a paltry 2.0 because of 3D gaming performance. Now it may not be the fastest card out there (ATI 1950GT) but it's still pretty quick - so I can't explain this. All other index scores are where I would expect them to be, and 3D Aero performance index is 6.9, so I'm not entirely trusting of the rating.

Same here - I can only think it's due to early drivers.

[D-Dan]

I've read a lot of positive reports about Grub4dos which seems address some of Grub problems Windows users experience.

http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Grub4dos_tutorial

Not used it myself, but discovered it after I'd uninstalled Ubuntu for the nth time.

The guide here has always worked for me - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

[Steve]

I use EasyBCD with Vista and Ubuntu, seems to work ok for me with Grub installed to the Ubuntu partition. It will also allow an XP install and then restores the Vista MBR which the xp install "breaks"

[sobranie]

I've been playing around with Win7 for around a week now and have come to the following conclusions;

1) It's pretty.
2) Icons a little confusing at times.
3) I can't figure out what it does that XP can't do equally well.
4) Seems to be an expensive update (eventually) which doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to line 
MS pockets. 
5) Would I buy it ........ Nope !!!
6) Will dump it soon unless anyone out there can persuade me that this is 'triffic'.

[Rik]

Sounds like my feelings about Vista, Rick. I'm increasingly thinking that the way forward is to bite the bullet and learn Linux, or buy a Mac...

[Sebby]

I'm no Vista fan, but I think that Windows 7 is a big step forward. Sure, XP can do the same things, but Its starting to look tired now. It's a bit like saying there's no point in upgrading a car for the sole reason that they all do the same thing, i.e. get you from A to B.

[Rik]

That's a valid argument in my book, Seb.