windows 7

[bobdea]

anyone use it yet?

I think this might shape up to be one of the better MS releases. anyone use the pre-beta?

it's on the torrent sites, I might install it at some point when I'm not so busy.

[patmoore]

Nope. I run Vista on three of my machines and have the Vista upgrade for my XP laptop but haven't installed it yet. There are some programs that won't run on Vista.

One of my machines is Vista 64 and it causes even more snafus with existing programs. Not sure I want to jump to the next iteration.

Let us know what you think if you do try it.

[bobdea]

Nope. I run Vista on three of my machines and have the Vista upgrade for my XP laptop but haven't installed it yet. There are some programs that won't run on Vista.

One of my machines is Vista 64 and it causes even more snafus with existing programs. Not sure I want to jump to the next iteration.

Let us know what you think if you do try it.

that's part of the game with a new OS, this at least should run everything that runs in vista without a hitch (in theory) since the kernel is the same or at least very similar.

MS is very good at dropping the ball but I'm not sure they're going to this time because they've learned some lessons with vista and they know they can't afford to this time.

The feature set is interesting, both UI tweaks and actual OS features

[Wun]

Next week's news: Windows 7 is actually.... Windows Mojave!!:lol:

[bobdea]

Next week's news: Windows 7 is actually.... Windows Mojave!!:lol:

????

LOL, I've seen it certainly not vista or "mojave"

[Dave ESPI]

whatever it ia,

I HATE VISTA!

I got a new HP laptop and it pissed me off so much I brought it back before it "couldn't go back"..... from being destroyed with a sledgehammer or whatever I had handy.

I got instead a Gateway FX laptop and am much happier........... even though a lot of stuff STILL does not run right on vista. I miss XP.

[C5 Golfer]

whatever it ia,

I HATE VISTA!

I miss XP.

Double quote of the day!!!!!!

[Kimo]

When I got my first Vista machine, I hated it. I hated it more, possibly, than you could understand. It crashed several times a day... everyday. Horrible. It all came to head 10 months after I bought it, just after I had my brain reduction surgery. I was no longer capable of dealing with the crap and I smashed it up pretty good.

Time for a new notebook. I didn't want a mac and (I think) XP was not being offered by anybody at the time. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it was very likely that the hardware was at fault. So I doubled down on my bet and got a Dell (last one was an HP) with Intel instead of AMD, 4GB RAM instead of 2GB and a video card with 256MB dedicated memory instead of 64MB shared (or what ever the hell it was).

The new computer runs Vista like a charm. In the 4 or 5 months that I've had it, it has crashed once. ONCE! I've never had a computer be that reliable. I almost never shut it down all the... mostly I just hibernate it. Internet Explorer mutinies once in a while, but never destabilizes the OS.

I think hardware is the most crucial deciding factor in what kind of experience you will have with Vista. For me, I think the part that made the biggest difference was the Video card. Then the system memory. I don't know what effect the processors had, but maybe Intel's chip set are better.

I'm not trying to defend MS or the manufacturers because they all certainly screwed the pooch with Vista. I'm just saying that it actually is POSSIBLE to have a good Vista experience even though it may be elusive.

Whoever said MS won't make the same mistakes with Windows 7 because they can't afford another cluster like Vista... I agree completely. Let's hope that they pull it off.

[skategoat]

You can still order a Dell with XP. I did it recently for a friend. I went all-Mac a couple of years ago and haven't regretted it.

[Gecko]

You can still order a Dell with XP. I did it recently for a friend. I went all-Mac a couple of years ago and haven't regretted it.

I had 2 months of all MAC and now can't stand windows of any kind...though in honestly its all the functional elements of working on a MAC are so annoying absent in Windows that I really miss

[Wun]

From my next laptop on, it's all Linux for me

[bobdea]

ubuntu is my secondary install on this machine. OS X is the first, I love the apple OS

[skategoat]

I had 2 months of all MAC and now can't stand windows of any kind...though in honestly its all the functional elements of working on a MAC are so annoying absent in Windows that I really miss

I have owned Macs on and off for the past 15 years but I kept going back to Windows due to software selection. When the Intel Macs came out, that limitation was removed due to the ability to boot into Windows. That made me switch, once and for all. Then I never did install Boot Camp. I kept finding Mac apps that were as good or better than the Windows equivalent, many of them high quality shareware.

The only Windows app I miss is Picasa. Ironically, I find a Windows app to be better for image management than iPhoto, Aperture or Lightroom for Mac (for me). Ironic because the Mac is supposed to be the preferred platform for creative work.

[KingCrimson]

When I got my first Vista machine, I hated it. I hated it more, possibly, than you could understand. It crashed several times a day... everyday. Horrible. It all came to head 10 months later after I had my brain reduction surgery.

Kimo, your puns are really, really, really killing me. :lol:

[Kimo]

Thanks. Just thought I'd slip that one in there.

[rhaskins]

I support about 350 desktops and laptops with XP SP2 - because SP3 breaks too many things. We still have a lot of issues with XP, altho not near as many as with Win2k. Most issues with XP are user related (some users are incapable of learning anything or wanting to learn anything). Overall, it is fairly stable with the odd weirdness. I have 2 test machines running Vista since it came out that maybe have been rebooted 5 times in the last year for upgrades, 2 personal laptops (Toshiba's) with Vista that never had any problems. I find Vista more stable. All our machines are now less than 3 years old. The best thing we have done to stabalize XP was to remove all our Dells for HP desktops/laptops. The second best thing we have done is to completely remove the ability of users and power users to do any type of system changes. I run true workstations (special hardware) and my XP never crashes. It gets rebooted once in a while when I install an upgrade or other sotware install that requires a reboot. I run a plethora of systems and test software with no issues, software that stresses a machine's environment a lot. My biggest issue is with JAVA apps, some of them are just not ready for prime time. Some Cisco and HP java based software just cannot run on the same machine at the same time.

The single largest issue with XP we had is with users that would install anything that attracted their fancy. Some users had so crapped out their registry doing that kind of stuff that they had a 20 to 30 minute boot time. Since that stuff was/is self documenting, we knew what was going on. We did resolve that with policy lockdown. Now they have to ask, me, nicely. And the answer is always no. Unless there is a business reason and we have no other software that can accomplish their tasks.

I run a large group of servers with server 2003 and server 2008, and the 2008 machines are very impressive. The new hyper-V is outstanding for virtual environments. The new apps from MS are just getting better and better. I am really looking forward to the new version of Windows desktop for the enhanced policy control potential.

The only reason we don't upgrade everyone to Vista is the workload and the fact that we have over half of our machines in the field. policy control over Vista is better than XP. The enhanced policy control of Office 2007 is just amazing.

My two Toshiba's run a lot of different software, and they are very stable, secure, and can attach to anything to get internet access. From that experience and supporting other Vista machines for friends, I cannot understand what people are carping about when they say Vista is not stable. Every time I have found an unstable Vista machines among friends or thru consulting, it was caused by the user. One machine had 5 different browsers installed, and they could not figure out what was going on with the machine. That cost them about $400.00 in consulting fees - troubleshooting, uninstalling the crap, further troubleshooting to ID orphaned DLL's that did not uninstall from the crap software, complete reinstall, no restore CD's/DVD's, downloading Lenovo software, reinstall apps. All that time adds up. BTW, Lenovo sucks IMHO. Out of the box they have such weird drivers and crap software installed on their machines that they are just weird, XP or Vista. And so much of their software is dependant on another piece of their software. Remove the wrong app and the entire machine is unstable. HP is so much better engineered.

And Apple/Mac machines aren't any better. :D

YMMV.

Rick

[trailertrash]

From my next laptop on, it's all Linux for me

You have to want to run Linux. Get ready to spend hours dicking around with it just to get it to work. I went through this recently and went back to XP. Linux is cool but if your not into screwing around and just want things to work go with XP.

[bobdea]

You have to want to run Linux. Get ready to spend hours dicking around with it just to get it to work. I went through this recently and went back to XP. Linux is cool but if your not into screwing around and just want things to work go with XP.

HAHAHAHAHA, that's rich

Mac OS and Ubuntu have had me dicking around way less than XP, XP is a pain in the ass. My vista experience has not been bad, I do run it on a newer machine but then again apple hardware is not exactly a big player in the PC world

One issue with windows in general but particularly XP is that it needs constant hand holding. even the system alerts are frivolous, it's as if the the OS has something to prove. "look at me! look at me!! I blocked something and alert you just like ever other semi modern OS but unlike them I feel the need to tell you and force you to read a stupid dialog!" it drive me insane that MS includes a pop up blocker for IE but yet not one for the ****ing OS that should be on by default. MS apparently modeled windows XP after the tactic of porn sites with the pop ups designed to piss you off.

There is less of this in vista and it also seems to run as fast if not faster on my machine where XP lags. Also, XP feels like it run out of memory when I have a bunch of apps open where Vista does not, no idea why this is....

[rhaskins]

One of the biggest issues I see with the XP/Vista/Mac debate is an economic one. People that have a lot of issues with XP and Vista usually are using machines on the low end of the price spectrum. That $400 Dell is not going to perform as well as that $800 HP. PC hardware manufacturers go with the low bidder on all their hardware for the price point. When you start to get at the $800 price point, the hardware starts to perform better. This is an issue with dirverse drivers and cheap hardware. I refuse to purchase consumer class pc's; the business class PC's are just that much better. HP business class PC's ($750) without the built-in cameras and all the sound hardware run very smooth. Ditto for upper end consumer class pc's ($1,000).

Contrast that with Apple: they set the engineering standards, they manufacture their own hardware, and to get in you have to lay down $1000.

To me, from my experience, that is a major factor in the instability of a lot of XP and Vista based machines. Cheap hardware and not enough memory. Unless it is a Lenovo, then it is the tickey-tackey way they engineer their software and drivers.

Rick

[trailertrash]

HAHAHAHAHA, that's rich

ah... bobdea, the fox news of accurate i.t. information. ;)

[bobdea]

One of the biggest issues I see with the XP/Vista/Mac debate is an economic one. People that have a lot of issues with XP and Vista usually are using machines on the low end of the price spectrum. That $400 Dell is not going to perform as well as that $800 HP. PC hardware manufacturers go with the low bidder on all their hardware for the price point. When you start to get at the $800 price point, the hardware starts to perform better. This is an issue with dirverse drivers and cheap hardware. I refuse to purchase consumer class pc's; the business class PC's are just that much better. HP business class PC's ($750) without the built-in cameras and all the sound hardware run very smooth. Ditto for upper end consumer class pc's ($1,000).

Contrast that with Apple: they set the engineering standards, they manufacture their own hardware, and to get in you have to lay down $1000.

To me, from my experience, that is a major factor in the instability of a lot of XP and Vista based machines. Cheap hardware and not enough memory. Unless it is a Lenovo, then it is the tickey-tackey way they engineer their software and drivers.

Rick

Apple's boards are nvidia and intel, their cheap hardware is $600. they are fairly standard PCs with the exception of EFI instead of BIOS. it still runs XP and vista as well as any PC and that's my point. You can't blame it all on hardware.

BTW, MS software has some serious issues like any software. MS does a bad job at fixing issues more than anything.

[rhaskins]

having software issues. I just find that good (expensive) hardware seems to run more trouble free than the cheaper stuff. Business class machines are usualy built to a spec for the life of the product, where consumer class machines are not. Sales engineers at both Dell and HP have admitted this to us. The consumer class stuff may change a lot of parts during a production run, where the business class suff doesn't. The changing parts in the consumer class machines brings driver issues.

We had some where we had perfect images that did not run on machines later in the manufacturers production run, we kept having to chase issues around with drivers and other functional problems. We switched to business class and those type of issues resolved. Cheap Compaq consumer class laptops (pre-merger with HP) were the worst example of that. God I hate the low bidder stuff. We had a bright young person save us a boat load of money by buying some of these - they all ended up being scrapped.

I have had computers (business class) running very stable pre-SP1 with a stable set of drivers and software confniguration.

Again, YMMV

Rick

[Kimo]

There is a registry edit you can do to put an end to all those

"look at me! look at me!! I blocked something and alert you just like ever other semi modern OS but unlike them I feel the need to tell you and force you to read a stupid dialog!"

pop up balloons. It made XP more enjoyable. I believe this key edit that I used years ago from WXPNews

Get Rid of Balloons Telling You to Sign up for Passport!

We have many requests for a tip on how to get rid of those irritating balloon tips that remind you to register Windows XP or get a Passport. Want to get rid of those "helpful" balloons? Then check this out:

• Click Start and then click the Run command. Type Regedt32 in the Open text box and click OK.
  
• Navigate to the following Registry key:

• HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
  
• Click the Edit menu, point to New and click DWORD Value.
  
• Rename the new value to EnableBalloonTips and press [ENTER].
  
• The default value is 0 and you want to leave it that way. Close the Registry editor and restart the computer.

[bobdea]

there's absolutely no reason I should have to make registry edits to do that, it amazes me there's no control panel for it(at least that I could find).

If registry hackery is the only way to do it then shame on them, ****ing annoying OS. It gets you in the habit of just closing boxes and ignoring anything the OS complains about.

[Kimo]

there's absolutely no reason I should have to make registry edits to do that, it amazes me there's no control panel for it(at least that I could find).

If registry hackery is the only way to do it then shame on them, ****ing annoying OS. It gets you in the habit of just closing boxes and ignoring anything the OS complains about.

Sure you shouldn't have to, but I offered you a relatively easy solution to your problem. If you don't want to use it, that's fine, but it's time stop bitching about it.