Windows 7 Endorsement

[Julohan]

I figured there should be a thread for Windows. This is not for saying Windows is better than Apple. Though, it may turn out to be (beer). Windows 7 is great. I upgraded from Vista to 7. It was a huge improvement.

I am in school still and love the feature of the two windows side by side. I never knew I needed this feature until Windows 7. The speed of Windows 7 is unreal. I love the new taskbar.

I went from a XP laptop, which was okay, to a Vista laptop that was annoying, to Windows 7, which is the best one yet.

Before Windows 7, I was thinking about to Apple. My parents are huge Apple fans. They have multiple new Apple laptops, Ipad, Ipod, and whatever else they make probably. I borrowed one the Apple computers for a bit. It was an okay experience. It just seemed really slow. I would had probably went with a Apple computer still, if it weren't for Windows 7.

Now I am waiting for Windows Phone 7 to come out. It looks promising. I had an Iphone, I liked it, but it broke on me (My fault). I thought about going with Android but, not too keen on their privacy issues. Now I just have a crappy phone and I waiting till the end of the year for Windows Mobile Phone 7.

Anyways, I am very pleased with Windows 7, I think Microsoft is going in the right direction now.

 

[Pappers_]

Yes, we got a new laptop with Windows 7 and love it. I should upgrade our other two machines (both came with Vista). I don't suppose microsoft has an upgrade program for cheap?

 

[Julohan]

I think I paid $120. When I was looking I remember seeing a family bundle, where you could install on multiple computers, the price was pretty good.

 

[BigHefty]

I think I paid $120. When I was looking I remember seeing a family bundle, where you could install on multiple computers, the price was pretty good.

That family bundle was a GREAT deal. Although, I got ultimate through school for $20. Can't go wrong there.

 

[mightynintendo]

I remember when my roommate came home all excited about Windows 7. He started showing me all these new features and improvements. It was pretty cool!

And lucky for me all those features and more have been part of OS X for years.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I want to have Windows 7 but I resent the MS cycle.

Seems that Windows 7's "success" is awefully marketable. MS seems to relese a cycle of crap followed by groundbreaking products that require more horsepower. Yet, still does much of what 3.1 did at a fraction of the resources only prettier.

There just isn;t much money in making a product no-one see's a need in replacing is there.

 

[Homercidal]

I want to have Windows 7 but I resent the MS cycle.

Seems that Windows 7's "success" is awefully marketable. MS seems to relese a cycle of crap followed by groundbreaking products that require more horsepower. Yet, still does much of what 3.1 did at a fraction of the resources only prettier.

There just isn;t much money in making a product no-one see's a need in replacing is there.

True, but Windows 7 actually seems to require LESS machine to run on than Vista.

My biggest gripe is that I just don't see where there is huge improvement in user experience that justifies the cost of upgrading. Maybe security flaws, but one could argue that Windows 7 could have just been a large service pack instead of a whole nother complete install.

I could never decide if Windows ME, or Vista was the worst OS to come from M$.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

True, but Windows 7 actually seems to require LESS machine to run on than Vista.

My biggest gripe is that I just don't see where there is huge improvement in user experience that justifies the cost of upgrading. Maybe security flaws, but one could argue that Windows 7 could have just been a large service pack instead of a whole nother complete install.

I could never decide if Windows ME, or Vista was the worst OS to come from M$.

IIUC, Vista uses the the ME underlying codex. So, if that true, they suck equally.

I dunno about W7 resource use. What I do know is that the M$ site shows that my Vista machine with a high user experience rating will drop to about half with W7. That boggles my mind. It's a frigging Quad core machine with 8GB memory and a 1 GB external video card. Just makes no damned sense how OS that is touted as being more resource friendly than Vista would give such a poor rating. Not that the ratings mean much, i am just using the M$ comparative system.

 

[BlueSunshine]

I have Windows 7 and I enjoy it. However, it IS a resource hog (less than Vista by a bit but alot more than XP). Even when my computer is idling, the RAM utilization is always above 50% and I have 4 GB of RAM. It shouldn't take that much RAM just to run an operating system.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I have Windows 7 and I enjoy it. However, it IS a resource hog (less than Vista by a bit but alot more than XP). Even when my computer is idling, the RAM utilization is always above 50% and I have 4 GB of RAM. It shouldn't take that much RAM just to run an operating system.

Have you looked at all the programs running in the background? If not, you'd be surprised how much crap gets started automatically in the background without ones knwledge.

My issue is the opposite. I maxed out my system in preparation for Vista being a resource hog and I rarely see it use 50% of available ram. At idle it uses 2%.

For the longest time I thought I had bad chips but they all check out. Vista just won't use them. Not during games, movies, or while using graphics heavy applications like PhotoShop or CAD. It dumbfounds me.

 

[Brew-Happy]

I am currently running Windows 7 Ultimate(64 bit) on a 2.8GHz Quad Core with 4gb of ram. It is hard for me to compare it to my old laptop as this machine is physically much faster than the laptop. It is screaming tho:rockin:

Features: I like them in W7 as it seems to be more intuitive in finding stuff. The transition from XP to 7 was fairly easy. I have found that I can access my external hard drive connected to W7 with my Ubuntu laptop and stream music wirelessly Only issue was having the music files too deep into the filing system. Put the folder on top (E:\Music) and nary an issue now.
The speed of the boot up is amazing. Much faster than XP and quite close to Ubuntu 10

I am quite pleased and can see myself using this OS for 10yrs or so.

 

[Brew-Happy]

I have Windows 7 and I enjoy it. However, it IS a resource hog (less than Vista by a bit but alot more than XP). Even when my computer is idling, the RAM utilization is always above 50% and I have 4 GB of RAM. It shouldn't take that much RAM just to run an operating system.

I agree with GilMinumBeer. If you bought this machine preloaded with Windows you probably have a ton of software running in the background. Mine as DIY build so I only loaded W7 and a few other required programs. Keeps it simple.

 

[Marsdude]

I have Windows 7 and I enjoy it. However, it IS a resource hog (less than Vista by a bit but alot more than XP). Even when my computer is idling, the RAM utilization is always above 50% and I have 4 GB of RAM. It shouldn't take that much RAM just to run an operating system.

Windows 7 is using just over 30% of the RAM on my 4 GB machine, and that is with Firefox and Outlook running. There are a lot of things that can use RAM that aren't related to the OP system. There is likely some programs or processes that are loading and staying resident in RAM that are not related to the OP system.

On another note. I too have thought about giving apple a try. Apple's UI is really nice. However, I have two big stumbling blocks with using Apple's products. First is price - they are WAY too expensive for what you get. Second, I don't like the way Apple dictates how you use their products. If I want to run Flash, I want to run Flash. If I want to use my device by plugging in a USB cable or whatever, I want to be able to do that.

Someday I may buy an iPhone to replace my Storm2 (if they ever go to Verizon) but for my computers I will stay with Windows, despite their flaws, and play around a little with Linux.

 

[BlueSunshine]

Yeah, my machine is a DIY too but the RAM utilization really jumped from XP x64 to Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. I have the same number of applications running on 7 as I did with XP yet it still hovers above 50%.

When I first got Windows 7, it ran my CPU at 100% at all times, it was pure hell. I updated my BIOS and thankfully that cleared up the problem. Perhaps I need to do some tweaking and update some drivers to clear up the RAM issue.

 

[Bedlam]

So, when you upgraded, did you wipe the drive of the old OS, transferring data to a remote drive, or just patch it in?

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

So, when you upgraded, did you wipe the drive of the old OS, transferring data to a remote drive, or just patch it in?

+1? I read that the upgrades patch through Vista. Thus, if you ever have to reload the OS you MUST load Vista OS first then the W7 patch.

That was a deal breaker for me on the upgrade. Price for full OS is the deal breaker for me on replacement.

 

[ChshreCat]

I have Windows 7 at home and a Mac with OS X I use at work all day. The Mac crashes WAY more than my Windows 7 machine at home does.

 

[RonRock]

I've been running WIN 7 since beta and think it is the best OS yet. But, nothing is perfect. The search function sucks. Do a search, find several instances of the item. Make your best guess and open it, if you guess wrong you have to search all over and start again. PITA. I can't believe this has not been fixed yet. Very irritating.

After the beta timed out I had to buy a WIN 7 disk and do a clean install. I found a good deal on Ebay, eventually I'll buy a license to install 7 on my wife's Vista laptop and get rid of Vista for good. The license can be found cheap on Ebay also.

 

[ChshreCat]

 

[Synovia]

I have Windows 7 and I enjoy it. However, it IS a resource hog (less than Vista by a bit but alot more than XP). Even when my computer is idling, the RAM utilization is always above 50% and I have 4 GB of RAM. It shouldn't take that much RAM just to run an operating system.

You've got a virus or malware.

 

[BlueSunshine]

You've got a virus or malware.

Nope, believe me I'm on top of all that stuff.

 

[Rick91981]

IIUC, Vista uses the the ME underlying codex. So, if that true, they suck equally.

I dunno about W7 resource use. What I do know is that the M$ site shows that my Vista machine with a high user experience rating will drop to about half with W7. That boggles my mind. It's a frigging Quad core machine with 8GB memory and a 1 GB external video card. Just makes no damned sense how OS that is touted as being more resource friendly than Vista would give such a poor rating. Not that the ratings mean much, i am just using the M$ comparative system.

Vista has nothing to do with WinME. The problem with Vista is it was a complete re-write from the ground up so it was bound to have bugs. Also the biggest problem with Vista when it was released had to do with lack of mature driver support from third parties. MS botched the release and did not give ample time to hardware vendors to get properly functioning drivers out. After service pack 1 was released for Vista it fixed alot of problems and now with SP2 it is a mature stable OS.

Windows 7 is actually based off of Vista. It has many improvements on top of it though and is a far superior product. The launch of Win7 was a smoother because the driver support was already out there as Vista drivers worked fine on Win 7.

As for your performance ratings, they are smaller because with Win7 the scale was changed. Vista is scaled up to a 5.9 rating while Win7 is scaled up to 7.9. The criteria for a higher number is also more demanding in order to properly reflect advancing hardware.

 

[Rick91981]

You've got a virus or malware.

Not necessarily. It could be numerous things. First thing I would check is for a fault driver that is taking more resources than it should allow. Open task manager(ctrl + shift + esc) and then click on the "Processes" tab to find out what is using the resources. If one particular process is using a large chunk then you need to investigate into what the process is and why it is using so much. If it is just because of numerous things running then click start and type in msconfig and hit enter. Click the startup tab and eliminate things you do not need to run at startup. If you find you got rid of something you needed then just go back into msconfig and re-check it to enable it. After you run msconfig you will be prompted to reboot. When the machine reboots you will get a notification saying windows is running in diagnostics blah blah just click the checkbox for don't show me this again and then click ok.