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Windows 7: Windows 7 beta testers, how do you like it and why?
- 1/16/09 12:34 PM
Windows 7 beta testers, how do you like it and why?
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 1/16/09 12:34 PM
For Windows 7 beta testers, how do you like it and why?
-- I like it. (Please give us some highlights.)
-- I'm not sure how I feel yet. (Please explain.)
-- I don't like it. (Please explain why.)
-- I installed it, but I haven't explored enough to tell yet.
Beta testers, please share with us a glimpse of your world using Windows 7 Beta. How does it compare to Vista or even XP, is it better, worst, or about the same? What can you tell us about this OS and it's features? Do any of these features stand out--visual enhancements, performance, widgets, etc...? Overall, tell what you think... We're all ears.
Thanks for sharing!
-Lee
My opinion
by FrankQC - 1/16/09 1:57 PM In reply to: Windows 7 beta testers, how do you like it and why? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Well.
Windows sure does look a lot better than Vista and XP (in my opinion).
I virtualised it using VMware Workstation and it worked (except for the internet). I tried to use the internet and didn't work.. missing drivers which I was unable to find.
It is faster and manages resources a lot better than Vista. My Vista uses a lot of memory, and windows 7 (with 1.5GB RAM config) was taking ~440MB of memory, which is outstanding compared to Vista.
The customization was also redefined and easier to navigate. More options are available in the lists.
VERY CURIOUS TO TRY
by GUARDIANANGEL822 - 1/16/09 8:39 PM In reply to: My opinion by FrankQCI was viewing an article directing me to the new Windows 7 Beta version for downloading, But what kept me from jumping full speed ahead was the warning that it would be fesable to download this beta version onto another computer in the event something should go astray, and it recommended to do a full backup. I have more than enough memory and drive space to do this and with dual processors on board, I feel I can handle the demand, But I live for my internet and another downloader said he / she lost that function in the beta download. I currently have Vista home basis and I am 80% happy with it's performance, even though I " must " run a smart defragmentation program in the background an set my Windows care pro program to automatically clean and optimize constantly, and I have registry cure as a back up. You would be astonished the file /application and missing registry keys that are being alligned and optimized within a 24 hour period. Furthermore, I do not want to lose everything in the process of expierimenting with Windows 7 at the expense of grasping at new features and not being able to get back to a functional Vista in the event of a crash of the Beta version. I love to tweek and pital around with new technology, and I am an advance computer user, I just want reassurance that if I jump full speed ahead with this Beta version, will I be able to restore my Vista and should I download within my main drive or try a partician. Vista was very unstable when I purchased it and now I have reasonable control over it's performance. Feel free to have anyone with technical expertise reply to me, John at jhaskins75@comcast.net
worried about need to backup...
by Striker - 1/16/09 9:13 PM In reply to: VERY CURIOUS TO TRY by GUARDIANANGEL822um, you should be backing up regularly anyway. And advice to back up prior to an OS install is just good sense (whether a 'repair', a reinstall or an install).
Anyway, it is certainly 'recoverable' as I had problems the first go round and it just reinstalled Vista. If you like Vista, I think you will love W7. If you hate Vista...I think you will love W7. Yes it is that good - and it is only a Beta.
Now the only problem will be in August when you either buy W7 or go back...then you will need to restore Vista and you should save any files created/modified to a backup (7Zip for example) in case that goes wrong.
seperate Hard Drive
by inhimjim - 1/17/09 7:59 AM In reply to: VERY CURIOUS TO TRY by GUARDIANANGEL822Why not take your HDD out and pop in a new one for Windows 7 trial. They sell very cheap now. Thats what i'm doing on my laptop. I have video driver issues so far with 7 and when I want to play my game I just pop the Vista HDD in and go. and there is NO chance of messing it up playing with 7 as it is physically not connected when I'm working wih 7
Thank you
by GUARDIANANGEL822 - 1/17/09 8:08 AM In reply to: seperate Hard Drive by inhimjimI considered that option, but I have some maxtor ata drives available and some are new, but I discovered my Dell inspiron 530 does not use the ATA drive configuration, I believe it uses the sata version and the connector configuration and pin placements are different. That is why I requeast the possibility of performing a dual boot on the same Hard Drive.....Please respond, Thank you, John
Dual Boot
by Nomadica - 1/17/09 11:31 AM In reply to: Thank you by GUARDIANANGEL822I have a Dell Inspiron 1720 to which I run Vista. When I downloaded W7 I put it onto my D drive with no problems at all. If you dpo not have a secondary drive you will have to partition it first. If you have an existing one you are set. any info that may be on the D drive will be saved as Windows.Old. Then if you wish to revert back to the old contents on D drive one just reverts back to Vista. Hope this helps Guardian Angel
conflict
by GUARDIANANGEL822 - 1/17/09 2:25 PM In reply to: Dual Boot by NomadicaThe downloading process of the ISO file completed, and by design, you now must burn it to a dvd disk. Great so far!!! until my burning software, roxio media creator does not reconize my on board dvd burner and states " no drive detected ". This is beginning to frustrate me. When you download the beta software, its logo is the same as roxio and I downloaded the file to my documents and then open the file and it immediately opened roxio, even when I defaulted the open programs to Windows write / burn feature. I have a dell inspiron 530. with the tssp DVD-RW-CD_ROM drive. Is it a possibility that this is just a read only dvd drive. It accepted the burn of the first beta download I attempted, but when I try to download to my hard drive, again Roxio CD creators appears....
Great so far
by Wispa65 - 1/28/09 6:53 AM In reply to: seperate Hard Drive by inhimjimI have used this beta for some time now. I personally find it to be alot more stable than Vista. I must add that i had now issues with my Vista Ultimate. It worked like a dream for me. Anyways everything that i used in Vista i am using in Windows7. Since this is a beta for testing, i decided to test on all levels i now how. While i may not be as verse as some you guys, i know enough to probably save myself some mistakes. With that said i decided to upgrade through vista instead of doing a clean install (did a backup first ofcoarse). Since the final product will provide this option i thought why not? After all we are testers aren't we? The process od upgrading is painfully slow i must note. Approximately 2hrs!!! Insane. But once it was finished and i rebooted, i flowed like water. I honestly had only one problem so far, even that i find is very minor. My mouse pointer jumped to other position on the screen sporadically every now and again..but straighened that out. I currently have Windows 7 dual booted with Win XP Pro. Everything worked and continue to work fine for me. Less comsumption of resources. Sweet! I am running this beta flawless on a system with Sempron 3400+(1.8GHz) 1 gig ram, XFX nvidia 9800gt(WMMD win7 beta drivers) 250 gig HDD. And no problems so far. Even my games run alot better than on vista. This is a great beta and i am excited for the final product. I think MS is on the right track with this one.
Been burned installing new OS so ..
by paisano44 - 1/17/09 4:17 PM In reply to: VERY CURIOUS TO TRY by GUARDIANANGEL822I have had my computer crash will installing Ubuntu and other operating system so I take now take the greatest care in installing beta programs. While you can install Windows 7 in a new partition in your drive. I would not do it this way because when the beta runs out it will not longer be useable and you will not easily get back to your prefered operating system without going through a few extras steps.
I have XP Pro and Vista on my computer put I installed them in separate drive while I had the drive with my XP Pro disconnected. I have a brand new Compaq w/ 64 bit capabilities. It came with Vista installed and I hated it! I made completelyr removed the, well that is another story in itself ... But let me tell you that Windows 7 is a lot better so it is worth giving it a spin.
To be on the safe side I would put it on completly separate drive that has nothing of value on it. Then I would connect all drives back and use the BIOS on your sytem to determine what drive you would want to boot. That is if your regular operating system is on Drive C, than boot to C. If you want to boot Windows 7 and it is on drive "X", than boot off driv "X".
Hope that this helps. I been burned many time by just installing programs and operating system without thinking the whole process through!
Regards,
Rich
Change for change sake...
by FinGif - 1/17/09 4:18 PM In reply to: My opinion by FrankQCThe GUI so far seems to be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. All the moving around of tasks controls in the GUI for what appears to be no good reason. I don't like the fact that Microsoft seems to be shifting to a new model; Windows as a service. I have been taking Ubuntu Linux for a test drive and the more I use it the more I like it, and the less I like Windows (Vista or 7).
Great OS - A major improvement.
by mlf1142 - 1/26/09 8:06 PM In reply to: My opinion by FrankQCI had an extra HDD for my Inspirion 6000 to install Win7, thus was definitely a clean install (only took 20 min) and easy operation.
If I want to go back and forth between XP-PRO SP2 and Win7 is to do a HD swap - just easy for me to do it this way.
Then, just added the drivers for hdwe that Win7 didn't recognize and was on my way to test this 'bad boy' out.
So far, all of the 3rd party programs that I installed worked great (even old DOS programs that one can use the CMD line in the "RUN" box - which I only find discomforting that there was no "start/run" box with Win7 .. had to find it..) and had no problems with them.
Only gimp that I have is IE8. To make it short: do download Firefox 3.05 for you'll find a lot better browser than "8" can ever be. Even Google's Chrome is better than IE8...on my other HDD, I'm just using IE6.
Yet, in all: Win7 is a definitely blessing over VISTA (Just like ME against Win2k..a blessing)
I love it
by Jonmor68 - 1/16/09 2:07 PM In reply to: Windows 7 beta testers, how do you like it and why? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I like new taskbar, much easier to see icons for us oldies.
Some are complaining about not having a sidebar, me, I prefer it this way as I can place the items I want see regularly where I want, without having to move what I’m doing out of the way.
The system is less intrusive and a pleasure to use.
Installation was a breeze, it only took 25 minutes from boot to use.
Everything that was connected was working from word go. The only correction required (though working) was my pci SATA controller card needed the driver installed, it had a yellow sticker attached.
When you want to check something simple like hardware devices, you no longer need to go nuts giving permissions.
I liked Vista, never had a problem with it, but I like W7 even more. I will be upgrading.
I'm lovin' it
by beerman55448 - 1/16/09 5:57 PM In reply to: Windows 7 beta testers, how do you like it and why? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I am running 7 on an old XP machine with only 1GB of ram and a single core processor. It runs faster on it than XP ever did.
re xp machine
by HJBartz - 1/28/09 7:56 AM In reply to: I'm lovin' it by beerman55448what are the specs for the machine ie cpu etc?
here's my config:
AMD AthloneXP running at 1.7g
MB ?? (dont know - machine was salvage - haven't checked - nothing on MB)
768mb mem DDR1 (Win 7 tells me there's 1.0 gig)
40gb hdd ide
DVD/CD burner combo
CD Rom (Win7 recognised both by brand name)
OnBoard sound (VIA)
ATI Radeon 9000 + TV-out and DVI graphics card (not recognised by Win7)
Intel Pro 10/100 NIC
WIN7 32bit
on home network of 4 machines connected through 10/100 hub and then through 2wire adsl modem to the internet.
Installation (clean install) was flawless and was all done in about one half hour if that.
You're right Win7 is pretty fast even on my old equipment.
Problems:
occasional bsod - goes into self-repair mode and then tells me its found new hardware (non-existing cd rom)
No 3D hardware accelleration (dont really need it - not a games machine)
I realise WIN 7 is only a test beta but, come on, in XP we had a preview of updates to be installed and the choice of installing or not installing any particular up-dates. THAT'S MISSING IN WIN 7. I noticed that tonight's updates were all updates for Office 2007 - guess what - I dont have office 2007 installed - so now now i've got crap taking up space on my hard drive.
Where's the button bar in windows explorer?
IE8 frequently refuses to shut down
Hate the Windows Explorer layout
Other Software running on machine:
MS Visual Studio Express Editions (all) plus MSDN Library Express
Windows Live mail and messenger
Flashget (downloads slower on this machine than on my XP machines)
Kapersky Antivirus and firewall
DirectX 9.0c
All in all Win 7 runs fairly fast on my machine - will I buy it when it is finally released? Probably not. It will depend on price and whether or not I can afford to build a new computer to accommodate Win 7 or if someone writes some drivers for the non-supported graphics cards.
(ps: they must be a bunch of sourpusses at MS - sheesh, they taken out the cheat in Freecell - aw come on fellows!)
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