Windows 7: So hows it going?!

[glorfy]

Well, its officially been released now.

Anyone got it? At £44 I couldn't resist.

So far I'm pleased as well... I never felt very comfortable with Vista, but win 7 just seems smoother and quicker. I like the new visuals and the pinning along the taskbar.

I didn't like the fact that it told me my hard drive was dying! All replaced now!

[Dave3d]

Hehehe.

I have had the Release version installed at home since 9/12/2009.
I have actually booted into it 2 times total (dual boot).
Once was to install and setup.
The other was to play a game (that didnt work very well in Win7).



I really should boot into it more for the download speed boost (if possible with my pitiful connection).
Other than that, I can live without it.

[glorfy]

I must admit I haven't installed any games yet! Hope I'm not in for disappointment!

[ol'norton]

Was it an old game Dave?
I have been using the beta for a while & the only problem I have had was I recently got a old game (Gothic 2) that wouldn't play. It plays on Win 7 with ATi cards, so it is probably more a nvidia driver issue, but Win7 has played all my newer games no problem.

side note: I've been using Vista for the last week to play Gothic 2, but I think I'll give up on it. It's too hard. I'm up to level 4 & I still spend all my time saving & reloading games because I get killed in a heartbeat.

[lakeside2189]

I am getting ready to load the finished 7 now and have mostly old games..Will comment on how they work for me later...

[Just Learnin']

I have been using the final release for some time now and have had very few issues with any games. I even played both the first and second Serious Sam games on it with no problems.

[Dave3d]

Yep, it was an old game.
Quake 3.

The game was SO dark I could barely see what I was doing.
I tried all of the 'ati' fixes, but nothing worked. (ati cards used to do this to Q3 also).
I was hoping the download speeds would be better in Win7 with Q3, but they were actually worse.
Since I play Q3 almost every night, I need to be able to see AND have a good connection to servers.

I will probably use it for DX10 games (or DX 11) in the future, but for right now it just sits.

[Snafu]

Anyone run any benches to see if there is a difference? I suspect 7 will be better.

What about the size of it? Just curious.

Ian did you buy a full install version or an upgrade? I would worry about the upgrade version retaining some of the vista quirks.

[Shayd]

Been using it since RC, and now have RTM installed. Its a fit and trim Vista and installs are a breeze.

All the benches I was doing earlier this year were all on the RC so I can't imagine it is slower with all the debugging removed.

I have yet to find anything game or programwise that I use that does not work, though about the oldest game I ran on it was the Penumbra Collection. Also have ran Guild Wars, Sacred, Champions Online, IL2, Lock-on etc and all work fine outside of Lock-on, it has a tendency to just crash, but then, its always has.

[Dave3d]

Anyone run any benches to see if there is a difference? I suspect 7 will be better.

What about the size of it? Just curious.

Ian did you buy a full install version or an upgrade? I would worry about the upgrade version retaining some of the vista quirks.

There have been many 'vista vs win7' and 'xp vs vista vs win7' reviews out.
Xp and Win7 usually take the top spots in gaming, but it depends on what game.
Win7 wins out on most synthetic benches, with vista a close second, and xp usually in last.

Win7 is ~8-12gb install, where Vista is ~12-19gb (with all the ultimate options at ~25-26gb), with xp pulling in ~2-4gb.

[glorfy]

Anyone run any benches to see if there is a difference? I suspect 7 will be better.

What about the size of it? Just curious.

Ian did you buy a full install version or an upgrade? I would worry about the upgrade version retaining some of the vista quirks.

I've moved to the 64bit version of Win 7 - can I install the 32bit version as well - obviously benchmarks wouldn't be relevant other wise. Seeing as I have 4GB of RAM I thought I might as well make use of it!

The pre release version was the full version, as at the time Microsoft were not sure wether they would be allowed to release an upgrade version. You have the option to upgrade from Vista on the DVD, but I favour a clean installation. I have to admit that the Vista I was using was the oem Acer version which comes with the laptop and I hadn't bothered to get rid of all their crap!

The window switching is much better than before.

I must admit I'm learning my way around at the moment - I downloaded the beta, but never installed it, although I did manage to put it on a bootable SD card!

[sford]

I've been using it for several months (RC and RTM) in a multi boot system. It works great for the things I need (Sharepoint development on W7, Virtual PCs, code development, SQL stuff). Pre-ordered the licensed copy and just patiently waiting for it to get here.

I had been happy with XP, then XP64, and not so much so with Vista; I ended up only using it for the Texas hold'em game.

I have never tried to upgrade an existing OS partition, always a fresh install to a formatted partition. I've always been skeptical of trying to upgrade existing OS's. Too much baggage. (By the way, I've read of several Vista users who've upgraded easily and painlessly, but I dont have first hand experience. I don't want to dissuade anyone from trying)

It installed at about 13GB (IIRC), it's now at 25GB with a whole lot of stuff added on. Read up on "Shadow Copy", it will gobble up quite a lot of OS disk space, doing what it is supposed to do. I personally don't care for it, I use DriveImgXML to backup/restore OS partitions. But I admit I haven't looked at Win7 bck/rstor, other than to turn it off. It may well be that MS got it right in this OS, and it may be time to quit imaging....

It certainly runs VirtualPC, IIS and Sharepoint much faster. Not really noticed any difference in program compile time.

No problems at all with any 64 bit driver support, or applications issues. But I haven't tried loading Eclipse yet, and that could be a problem.

Sorry for the wordy reply -

[lakeside2189]

Just loaded the full 7 ultimate..I used the RC some but you can tell they have tweaked it..it just seems to run faster at general use..I haven't had time to load any games yet..Just getting all my stuff loaded...No problems with anything except my Samsung scx-4720fn laser printer scanner...

Samsung has the drivers for the scanner but no 7 printer drivers. I have tried to shove the vista 64 print drivers down it's throat but it will have none of it..Can't seem to find a work around.

I really like the Samsung printer/scanner but you would think these companies would have had the drivers ready...

[Dave3d]

Well, booted into it just now.
Did all my updates, installed all my software (Avira Antivir, Firefox, Steam).

Just like I said before, I should REALLY be booting into this just for my downloads and browsing needs.

I am downloading a game through steam, which is taking all of my bandwidth (like it usually does in XP too).
The difference is, in Win7, I can also browse the web while downloading in Steam.
On XP, I CANT do that.
So, Win7 is definitely going to be my browser OS from now on.

[glorfy]

On a side note, my HP printer driver seems to be the best most stable most fully featured one yet! The XP one worked, the Vista one was a buggy piece of cr*p that kept on crashing and took them until a few months ago to get right. The Win 7 driver just works, is more fully featured doesn't crash and looks better! Almost worth the price of admission on its own!

On a side note, how did I miss Avira Antivir until now? I'm almost tempted to part with money for it just to support a worthwhile bit of software!