Windows 7 - Anyone Looking Forward To It?

[E-Day]

So Maximum PC has reviewed Windows 7, giving it 9 out of 10 and a Kick Ass designation. I still use XP, and was interested in Vista before it came out. But after reading about it, and finally using it, I decided I didn't like it much. It felt very clunky and bloated. After reading about Windows 7, and the comments from people who really like it, I am looking forward to it. While it still looks flashy and is back to the blue task bar, it's also apparently as fast as XP. Mind you, after I install all my programs on my computer, XP isn't all that fast anymore, but my computer is also getting older.

so is anyone planning on moving to Windows 7 this year, or next? I would like to get a new computer within the next year to handle the video editing I do (and the editing I will hopefully be doing in HD), so I plan on getting Windows 7. And not the "I'll test it out for free for 6 years" kind of getting it. It will be a nice legitimate copy, which will be nice to have. It look like it will make up for what Vista didn't do and didn't do that well.

[triverse]

As far as your computer being newer, I have installed the "beta" that Microsoft officially released, well one of them (they are time coded to disable eventually, I think June of next year, I may be wrong on the date though) on a 1.2 gig computer I have here with 512 megs of RAM and it runs just as fast as XP does on that hardware.  Haven't unleashed it on my newly bought (read, it was being thrown away) 2.8 gig P4 system but will eventually.  I just don't know if there will be sufficient reason to upgrade really.  

I am the type that upgraded from Windows 98 shortly before coming here 2 years ago.  There was just not enough software that I couldn't use to require me to do the upgrade (Publisher 98 finally quit working so I bought, yes, paid for, a new copy of it) and I had to upgrade my Windows too so I just got an upgrade from a local vendor for $40 (legitimate, not a copy).

I have played with W7 and it looks nice and plays well but I just don't see upgrading right away.  Good luck if you decide to.  If done right, you may be able to pick up your new computer (if editing video in HD, I would go with an i7, costs more now but the amount of time you will save waiting for encoding will make up for that-remember, you can get more money, you can't get more time in life) and get W7 installed too.

[E-Day]

I think the Windows 7 betas are supposed to die in March, or the end of it.

It's not that my current system couldn't run 7; it doesn't need to, nor do I want to buy a new OS for it because of its age. It would last me a few more years if I wasn't planning on shooting home movies in HD, and then editing them into fun DVDs (or Blu-rays in the future). Even with SD content using Adobe Premiere Elements, my computer chugs along slowly when I have all the video clips in the time line for a 2.5 hour disc. HD would be near impossible. And considering I want to make some sort of music video of my brat for fun to closely mimic this Republica music video, I can only assume I'll need something more capable and demanding than Premiere Elements . A Core i7 is definitely what I was planning on getting, and instead of hunting down a new copy of XP which will have limited support by then, or a obese, bloated copy of Vista, I will jump into 7. I am just glad that it's getting all sorts of praise from all sorts of people

[triverse]

I knew when they first announced the situation with Vista that it was going to be the new Windows ME (hyped to no end, ultimately dropped from the product line in the future and hopefully to the glee of MS it is forgotten by the consumer to only be remembered as a Wiki page). There was just so much "different" in how Vista did things, they are stuck so to speak. They have to have legacy support in there or deal with the backlash from consumers about their $0.50 at a yard sale piece of Windows 3.1 calendar software not working on their new $100+ (if they come up from an upgrade) Windows OS because it says Windows on that floppy (I pulled some time at Wal-Mart last Christmas season and there were many customers coming in and paying $40+ for those USB floppy drives for similar purposes and when the clerk tried to let them know that the newest version of said software was cheaper than the drive they would get mad and storm off).

Apple broke legacy support years ago and haven't looked back (try running some OS 3 software on OSX-good luck with it). MS was on the right track with the emulation layer of Vista though. They were able to rebuild from scratch basically but use this emulation layer to offer support for old software (and why not, they own Virtual PC, why isn't that a normal piece of software in the library of DLL's that get installed by now?).  

People complain about how their computers not being so great nowadays and it is the fault of the consumer in general really. I mean, computers are held back by default by the standardization of an OS like Windows vs the myriad of setups available for the hardware. On top of that, they are held back even more because consumers don't want to deal with much work to get their computer working, it is getting to the point that it is too much to ask the buyer to put the install disc in and type some numbers-when was the last time you bought a computer that didn't have the OS already installed? Innovation in computer OS's is killed by the standardization required to make a sale.

Back on topic somewhat, sounds like you are having trouble with either swap space or RAM on your current computer (you said it chugs when making a 2 1/2 hour video right?). How much free space do you have on your cache drive, usually the same as Windows unless you specifically changed it in your editing software's settings. For a standard definition DVD you will need about 15 gigs free for cache (I have no idea why when the DVD is at best, no bigger than 9 gigs or so for a dual layer).

The only other problem I can think of as to why your computer is chugging would be the CPU but if I remember correctly, from our previous talks, you have a pretty decent computer there so it is probably storage on your hard drive that is the culprit.

[Data]

Windows 7 is said to run on 800 Mhz processors with 500 MB of ram and an 8MB video card. It is also said that windows 7 is faster than xp and Vista. Windows 7 X64 is the fastest of them all. This should be replacing two of my current computers. I read PC Advisor's take on this new OS. It is interesting reading Group test: Windows 7 on 5 low-spec PC

I'am downloading Windows 7 Ultimate RTM 7600 16385 X86 & Z64 as we speak. This version will never shut off like the Release candidates do. This is an origial DVD ISO that was released to Microsoft members of Technet. Untouched or modified. I won't go into further details of how to obtain it and activate it, in fact I said too much already.

[E-Day]

Back on topic somewhat, sounds like you are having trouble with either swap space or RAM on your current computer (you said it chugs when making a 2 1/2 hour video right?). How much free space do you have on your cache drive, usually the same as Windows unless you specifically changed it in your editing software's settings. For a standard definition DVD you will need about 15 gigs free for cache (I have no idea why when the DVD is at best, no bigger than 9 gigs or so for a dual layer).

The only other problem I can think of as to why your computer is chugging would be the CPU but if I remember correctly, from our previous talks, you have a pretty decent computer there so it is probably storage on your hard drive that is the culprit.

More specifically, Premiere Elements chugs along when it has to index and create thumbnails for the timeline when I am working on piecing together all the clips that go into a 2.5 hour DVD. I have an old school Pentium 4 running at 3Ghz, and 2 gigs of PC-3200 RAM, with 2 gigs being the most the board supports. For free space, I used to make my swap space drive the D drive, since the C drive was only 80 gigs. The D drive was 250 gigs, but there was always about 90 gigs free. I never let it get below 20 gigs of free space simply because I don't want to get stuck burning disc after disc of data in one shot . I am not sure how quickly Premiere would function now since I added those two SATA drive I bought from Phillyman.

On a similar not, my computer can barely run a 1080p video downloaded from the web. I tried it out with a sample clip off some site. Needless to say, it doesn't play smoothly at all.

Premiere elements isn't terribly demanding on a system or the most part; not nearly as bad as Adobe After Effects, which is what I think I will need to achieve some of the effects in that music video.

Anyhow, a new computer will mean Windows 7, which, according to what I have been reading, will be a great OS to use.

[meppi]

I had numerable problems with XP on a weekly basis, going from insignificant peeves, to huge software problems on many fronts.

When it became time to get a new laptop, I was lucky enough that a good buddy of mine bought one just before me, so I could help him out with the just released Vista.

After 2 separate installs and quite a bit of playing around with it, I knew this wasn't the setup I wanted to get as it would cause me just as much stress and headaches as my old XP and most likely even more.

So I stepped over to Apple and got a Macbook Pro, which came with it's own problems.

Which were: having to unlearn lots of stuff that everyone just assumes is normal on Windows as well as having to get to grips and finding the best software out for a totally different OS.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record or even worse, like one of those horrible cheesy Apple commercials, I do have to say that the transition went a lot more smooth then I expected it to be.

Just this week I had to go back to an XP system and I actually had trouble remembering how and where I could adjust certain setting in a program.

It reminded me how alien my macbook first felt.

Now that I have used it for a year and a half, day in day out, I can honestly say that I don't see me returning to a Windows OS, or any another one for that matter.

If Apple for some reason screws up their next version of OS X, then I will gladly stay with Leopard as I love it to bits.

It's just there, it does what it's supposed to do and actually feels transparent. Not having to think about things that could and will go wrong becomes real conforming very soon.

I know when I open it up that it'll be there, unless my hardware breaks, and when I close it down, it'll be the exact same when I boot it up again. Every single time.

The only thing I'm looking forward to now is Snow Leopard which promises some very nice tweaks and overall a very nice performance boost even with the same hardware configuration.

Best of all the upgrade will only cost €30 at most.

Damn, now I am starting to sound like those commercials.

[triverse]

With your specs, you should be playing HD video with no problem at all, I mean, it sounds like a problem with your installation of Windows causing your hiccups (my system is a 2.8 P4, 3/4 of a gig of RAM and no where near the hard drive space and HD plays fine on it).

[tinman]

I am doing a triple boot between XP/Vista/Win7

Win 7 is like Vista on Steroids

To Jake: I know how you do what you do...

Edited August 17, 2009 by tinman

[MacGruber]

I tried Vista some time ago, and I can tell you:

It is the worst piece of s* OS I tried in my life

Then, a few weeks back, I tried win 7 and they are a plenty of upgrades in it regardind Vista. I think Vista were a like Beta of 7.

Anyway, I'm currently using XP SP3 and I think I will use it forever.

[Data]

I tried Vista some time ago, and I can tell you:

It is the worst piece of s* OS I tried in my life

Then, a few weeks back, I tried win 7 and they are a plenty of upgrades in it regardind Vista. I think Vista were a like Beta of 7.

Anyway, I'm currently using XP SP3 and I think I will use it forever.

I don't know why people complain about Vista so much. It may be due to user inexperience. It's not like XP at all and could be compared to learning to drive on the opposite side of the road. Vista is faster and safer and when you learn how to tweak it, the usability far exceeds XP.

The time has come for me to stick with Windows 7. Last Christmas I tried the beta out and quickly lost interest due to the bugs that I wasn't interested in dealing with. Today I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit for my home server and the computer I'm using for work. Let me tell you, if you had 100 or so programs installed on Windows XP you know how slow it is just to boot up. Well Windows 7 is like trading in a 1978 Chevrolet Nova for a 2009 Toyota. It starts up in 14 seconds and begs for your input. The taskbar can now contain all of my open programs and switching between them is much more streamlined than XP and Vista. I can say I'm very happy with my productivity now and await the first service pack.

I had to set up an old wreck I had piled in the corner that ran Windows XP because of the Creative Audigy card I've been in love with for years, only works with XP the way I want and am used to. This computer also contains my entire collection of Flash games and ROM's that work with a single core Pentium @ 1200 Mhz.

That's all I have to say about this for now. Two thumbs up for the next wave of Operating Systems.

[Thor]

Well the new laptop that I was talking about has win7 on it and it's great. I love it. It will take a bit of getting used to but all the stuff that they loaded it with is great and it's not as much of a resource whore as vista. Though I did end up taking back the laptop I can't wait till I get a new one again in about a month.

(I brought it back because it had no 3D accelerator on it) So I found an HP that I want but it's almost $1000 so I have to save a little more money to get it.

[Data]

Here's what I think now after having Windows 7 retail Ultimate X64 installed for over a month.

The new look is excellent.

The new kernal is more complex and up to date.

It is fast, fast fast.

The calculator is handy.

Shake the window with your mouse and it cleans the desktop. (shake)

The taskbar should always have been this good.

The clock has a calender.

I had a problem with Media Player. I decided to try it's indexing feature to find all my media. 5 thousand songs on another computer over LAN at 100 Megabits/sec. It took too long to open Media Player after everything was indexed and I decided I would uninstall it. Be forewarned that if you uninstall Media Player on any Microsoft Windows version, you cannot reinstall it without reinstalling the whole O.S.

I had Nero 9 reloaded installed so I could do some heavy video editing before I sent the final product to my server. Nero has a major hangup with Windows 7. Any version going back as far a Nero 7 will not work the way it should. This pissed me off because Nero Vision used to work excellent at cutting commercials from my tv shows. Nero Recode will crash whenever you try to crop the movie. If it doesn't crap out then, it will during recode. It's utterly useless. Nero has known about these problems since last Christmas while Win 7 was still in Beta. There are alot of unhappy users who want their money back and by every right. They paid for a product that advertised features and abilities and instead got a piece of crap.

Virtual Workstation by the company VMware runs on Windows and Mac machines. It's job is to emulate a computer, so it uses your computer's resources to run almost anything that would run on a regular computer. If you have a problem with the operating system you run in VMware it's as easy to fix as deleting a single file without formatting hard drives and ruining your registry.

I tried running Nero in Vista 64 the way I had before but it crashes even harder in the virtual machine. This prompted me to start backing up my hard drive so I could wipe it and install Windows XP. Yeah Windows XP because if I try to install Vista 64 or Win 7 X64, I get to the installation screen (12 minutes on my machine) where it tells me that a CD/DVD driver cannot be found and I should go get it for him. Shit. This problem is quite common. I've done some research on drives that don't install the Operating System and it 's pretty sketchy. There is no magic driver that works. Don't waste your time looking. I'd say more brands don't work than do. None of mine do even though my bios can read the DVD player and anything before Vista up to Windows 95 also have no problem installing media from it. Microsoft's solution is to go get a USB drive and they show you how to make it into a bootable drive. (Cats, dogs and also humans jump through hoops)

That's a pain in the neck solution. I learned a while back that if you install Windows XP X64 (not X86) you can insert the DVD from your XP desktop and start and finish the Vista or Windows 7 installer without trouble.

My copy of Windows 7 stripped a gear after I ran the Wise Registry Cleaner. I removed some registry keys that I shouldn't have and all sorts of problems started. I wouldn't have done this but it was a last resort. I uninstalled Nero 9 to try 8 and then back to Nero 9 again. This is what promted me to start tearing this mother done. The DVD drive wouldn't run my Installation Disc. I tried to run disc defrag and it stopped responding before I could ever start the scan. Then I couldn't close it. My uninstaller wouldn't work. I tried to run my Installation disc and the ISO I keep handy but they refused to execute. No rhyme or reason, just like I wasn't even there.

I'm using Windows XP X64 now. I was planning on using Vista 64 Ultimate for alot of reasons but I'm just too tired of screwing around. When I here Nero is working good with Windows 7 (I guess June 2010), I will upgrade back to Windows 7.

[Thor]

My new laptop that I got after taking that other one back of course also has Win7 and I too have been using it for a month or more. Yeah it's super. So fast and is not getting bogged down very easily either. I love being able to use my laptop as a media server and connect to my Xbox or PS3. Or of course my wife can connect to my laptop as well since her new laptop also has Win7.

I've not run into any out of the ordinary issues with mine and I've been trying to do a lot with it.

[SuperFrog]

I tried Vista some time ago, and I can tell you:

It is the worst piece of s* OS I tried in my life

Never tried Windows Me??

I don't know why people complain about Vista so much. It may be due to user inexperience. It's not like XP at all and could be compared to learning to drive on the opposite side of the road. Vista is faster and safer and when you learn how to tweak it, the usability far exceeds XP.

I'm IT support person, and I can answer you that question. Mostly people had problems with protected directories (for example Program Files) where their old software would save personal settings, and now you need admin rights and run it as admin to be able to save into Program Files. Also, some users (including me) had problem with Vista not shutting down properly.

I love being able to use my laptop as a media server and connect to my Xbox or PS3. Or of course my wife can connect to my laptop as well since her new laptop also has Win7.

And you couldn't share your media before windows 7?! It's like that commercial for Win7, about sharing.

I'm currently using Win7 on 2 of my laptops, XP on old laptop, Win98 on my retro station and WorkBench 3.1 on Amiga. Ahhh, both of Win7 laptops have Ubuntu installed that boots from FlashDrive. (Only GRUB installed on flash drive)

[Thor]

And you couldn't share your media before windows 7?! It's like that commercial for Win7, about sharing.

I'm currently using Win7 on 2 of my laptops, XP on old laptop, Win98 on my retro station and WorkBench 3.1 on Amiga. Ahhh, both of Win7 laptops have Ubuntu installed that boots from FlashDrive. (Only GRUB installed on flash drive)

No, no. Of course you could. It was just such a big hastle. Well I don't know about my PS3 but I used to have my XP system sharing files with my Xbox but it didn't work very well at all. You would have to download a special program from Microsoft and then configure it to work, but the file types were limited. Even doing XP to XP was a pain in the but to get working. Windows 7 made it so much easier and being able to talk to the PS3 is just gravy.

As for Ubuntu I was thinking about putting that back on one of my laptops, but when I remember how long it took just to get wireless working because there was no driver for my wireless card. I had to program one... naw, I don't think I'll bother. Amiga on the other hand, I'd like to see that again

[SuperFrog]

As for Ubuntu I was thinking about putting that back on one of my laptops, but when I remember how long it took just to get wireless working because there was no driver for my wireless card. I had to program one... naw, I don't think I'll bother. Amiga on the other hand, I'd like to see that again

I had less problem with Ubuntu then with Win7. Ubuntu it self got drivers and updated them at first opportunity, where I had to download some of drivers for Win7.

Amiga is still one of my fav computers. Great games, and with WHDLoad it's great retro-toy. (With WHDLoad you can play all games from HD)

[Phillyman]

I had less problem with Ubuntu then with Win7. Ubuntu it self got drivers and updated them at first opportunity, where I had to download some of drivers for Win7.

Amiga is still one of my fav computers. Great games, and with WHDLoad it's great retro-toy. (With WHDLoad you can play all games from HD)

My tutorials are going to be made from within Ubuntu, glad at least one member will know what I am using

[tinman]

My tutorials are going to be made from within Ubuntu, glad at least one member will know what I am using

O, U 2

The Real GeeK SquaD

[The Bear]

I saw this set up at school finally... looks alright.

Honestly, I'm just not in the mood to have to set up all my crap again... I'll wait till I get a new computer.