My dad has the beta version of Windows 7 and is getting the full version. But then he likes Vista and I'm not overly keen. I'm still an XP fan (and still have a Win 98SE PC for some of my older games). My dad did build me a media PC for my 30th b'day though and put Vista on it. So i've got used to it a bit better (I quite like the desktop widgets), but I still only use it as a media PC in the living room and use my XP machine for everything else.
7 days until Windows 7...
- Thread starter johnnyh
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beanzontoast
Guru
- Location
- South of The Peaks
Plax said:
This is another reason I'm keeping Xp going on one machine. I don't play a lot of games of any kind, and when I do I prefer using a console, but there's a WW2 flight sim I while an hour away on every so oftten, and it's vintage 1998 so whether Win 7 (the basic version without Xp mode) will run it, only time will tell.
rh100
Well-Known Member
Just the other night, I loaded both our laptop's with Win7 RC Ultimate - so far so good. The HP machine is about 3 years old, AMD 64 Turion ATI video - installed straight away, no drivers required and runs really well. The Tosiba laptop is about 6 years old, again loaded well, except for video and wifi drivers - the video will only work in a basic mode (no AERO) and the Netgear card was recognized but could not get an IP and totally killed the wifi network, so ditched that just connected by cable, apart from that and a problem with auto update doing an unnanounced reboot - it's been great. The HP laptop however runs great without any problems, and the AERO interface looks fantastic. But have only used them so far for internet and general stuff.
A tip - if you have a dedicated video card (some laptop's don't), then make sure AERO is switched on. It then uses the graphics hardware rather than the CPU - so it looks better and runs quicker.
Why do a lot of people have a downer on Vista - I find it runs quite well on a decent spec - with very few problems - nowhere near as bad as XP when that first came out. I think a lot of problems were caused by the UAC popping up all the time, which was easilly disabled via the registry. I also use it for the media PC - a big improvement over Media Centre 2005 I think. But I do still use XP for gaming.
A tip - if you have a dedicated video card (some laptop's don't), then make sure AERO is switched on. It then uses the graphics hardware rather than the CPU - so it looks better and runs quicker.
Why do a lot of people have a downer on Vista - I find it runs quite well on a decent spec - with very few problems - nowhere near as bad as XP when that first came out. I think a lot of problems were caused by the UAC popping up all the time, which was easilly disabled via the registry. I also use it for the media PC - a big improvement over Media Centre 2005 I think. But I do still use XP for gaming.
rh100
Well-Known Member
Norm said:
I disagree Norm....If you was a proper geek
you would realise that PC World used to have a very good section for returned parts where people bought the wrong parts and took them back. Over the years, I've had cheap printers, graphics and sound cards etc. They still do them, but the prices have gone up a bit - so I don't bother going in anymore.Best place I've ever found to buy from is the local computer fair - it's on every week. I'll only buy from a couple of traders that I trust to take returns though.
As if!rh100 said:I disagree Norm....If you was a proper geekyou would realise that PC World used to have a very good section for returned parts where people bought the wrong parts and took them back.
That is the source of my current photo printer (price reduced by 66%) and the kids' laptop (only reduced by 33%).
But I'm not a geek.
johnnyh said:
To take an alternate view:
Why anyone is getting excited about an 'operating system' that doesn't even ship with a C compiler is beyond me. I suppose coreutils, ssh, a decent shell and a decent text editor by default are too much to ask for as well? How do you people get any work done?!
Black Sheep
Guru
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johnnyh said:
I've had a play on a friends copy (some people have been able to get it early) and its horid, almost as bad as vista.
this could be partly due to hardwear, a faster computer might not have had so many problems with it, but i think the laptop ( a dell) was intended to have it
darkstar
New Member
The amount of people using a product makes no difference to the quality in my opinion. The mac operating systems have increased in quality over recent years, leopard is just fantastic, so smooth and easy to use.johnnyh said:well the break down is like this...
So, Leopard is where it is at for less than 5.12% of all computer users.
Like it or not, Windows is where it's at.
Norm said:
Okay, I was being facetious...
but there is a kernel (ha!) of truth - Windows is on its 7th* release, yet it still lacks features that are standard on other widely-used systems. I don't just mean the lack of a compiler/linker as standard (although that is fairly fundamental) but more generally useful things - I mean, for example, what modern desktop OS can't natively read/write PDFs in this day and age?*Perhaps I just can't count, but I have trouble seeing how this is Windows 7. Before 95 the current version was Windows 3.x; then 95, NT, 98, 2000, ME, XP and Vista. I make that at least seven previous major releases; plus three, and this should be 'Windows 11', surely?
rh100
Well-Known Member
Carwash said:Okay, I was being facetious...
*Perhaps I just can't count, but I have trouble seeing how this is Windows 7. Before 95 the current version was Windows 3.x; then 95, NT, 98, 2000, ME, XP and Vista. I make that at least seven previous major releases; plus three, and this should be 'Windows 11', surely?
Apparently, it's not even V7, it's V6.1 - run winver on W7 to see the number. Learnt something new today, it's about the kernel number:
Quote:
The version history of the various Windows families goes like this:
- Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (and Windows for Workgroups 3.11) from the early 1990s used the version numbers as part of their name. The first releases of Windows NT, also from that era, followed suit, with Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5.
- Windows 95 was technically version 4.0. Windows NT 4.0, which was released exactly a year after Windows 95, adopted the Windows 95 interface. Windows 98 was version 4.10.1998 and Windows 98 Second Edition was 4.10.2222A. The much-maligned Windows Me was 4.90.3000. (History lessons here and here for those who care.)
- Windows 2000 was the first release in the version 5 family. It was followed by Windows XP, which was version 5.1. Service packs are identified by build numbers, but service packs do not affect the version number.
- Windows Vista was Windows 6.0 (Vista Service Pack 1 is build 6001, as the screen shot above shows). Because the next release of Windows is going to be based on the same kernel as Windows Vista, it should have the version number 6.1. Indeed, every copy of Windows 7 that has leaked to public view so far has had a build number of 6.1.xxxx. This numbering is almost certain to remain in the final product. If the major version number changed to 7.0, many applications written for Windows Vista would fail to install or run properly, simply because of version checking.
