Windows 7 - So far, so good.

M Jarve

M Jarve

Audio Geek and NGE Freak
Downloaded and installed Windows 7 Beta on my gaming rig yesterday, and so far I like it. Much cleaner installation compared to Vista, and snappier to boot. I've only installed one game so far, Fallout 3, and it runs much better than it did with Vista.

I also like the new Dock, err, I mean redesigned taskbar. UAC also works in a less paranoid mode, meaning I can view the resource manager or the system management console without Windows second guessing my intentions. My GbE finally connects at full speed, which it would not under Vista (though it would under Xp x64). It also does not seem to thrash the hard drive as much.

It is not without its problems, though, and it's difficult to tell what is a bug, and what is simply unfinished/unimplemented. For instance, I cannot Remote Desktop to it from my Mac, and Direct X games that run at a different resolution than the desktop do not change resolution. The Energy Star setting for the network connections also cause my computer to loose internet and fall off the network if it is idle for any length of time (easily fixed by disabling Energy Star for that connection).

It seems to be a step in the right direction in any event. Time, however, will tell.
 
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That's good to know, thanks for the report. I'm still on XP and most likely my next computer will be installed with Snow Leopard. :D
 
I sure hope they put the upgrade out at a very reduced price. They owe it to the folks who ended up with Vista out of neccesity and now they are dumping it.
 
Duffinator said:
That's good to know, thanks for the report. I'm still on XP and most likely my next computer will be installed with Snow Leopard. :D
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The system I do all the important stuff on is a Mac running Leopard. The Windows box is basically an extraordinarily expensive gaming console, and sometimes media center.

It's almost the opposite of the Mac and PC commercials. The Mac is what I do all my serious work on, where as the PC is just for games. It's been this way for years, and neither has yet to let me down as far as what I expect from it.
 
I've heard that you can't d/l the beta unless you're on Vista. They're punishing users still on XP by not letting them participate in the beta test. Correct?

I'm not sure I'd do it anyway. I don't have a dedicated test machine, and I don't want to put it on my main (only!) home pc.
 
M Jarve said:
The system I do all the important stuff on is a Mac running Leopard. The Windows box is basically an extraordinarily expensive gaming console, and sometimes media center.

It's almost the opposite of the Mac and PC commercials. The Mac is what I do all my serious work on, where as the PC is just for games. It's been this way for years, and neither has yet to let me down as far as what I expect from it.
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That's good to know. I've been threatening to go Mac for almost two years now. I'm waiting to see if they update the Mac Mini at the end of the month, if so I'm in. If not I'll get a 20" iMac.
 
Fisherdude said:
I've heard that you can't d/l the beta unless you're on Vista. They're punishing users still on XP by not letting them participate in the beta test. Correct?
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Generally beta testers for OSes are available for Technet subscription holders.

I tend to not get on the bandwagon too fast, although I downloaded it already. I currently have nirvana with Vista with SP2 beta.

dew.
 
vinyldavid said:
Typing on one riht now, and I can safely say it's the best computer I've ever used! Only thing I would have asked for more is the 24"...but my parents said that's not happening. :tears: :D
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Nice, I really don't want a 24" monitor but I'd like the faster speed.
 
You need IE 7 to download it. XP, XPx64, 2003, and Vista/Server 2008 should all be able to download it. It is because it uses (you guessed it...) Active X for the download manager. It is open to the public for the next two weeks.

Vista, at least for me, had some very real issues. I had been using it since the first Beta, and a lot of things that were problems then still have not been fixed (sensitivity of UAC, ethernet not working at full speed, problems with drivers (not MS's fault there), and so on). During the course of that time, my hardware was not only Vista compliant, but so-far exceeded the required specification as to score 5.9 in most disciplines, or (as in my current and previous configuration) all of them.

The biggest problem for me, and the reason I would usually boot into XPx64 instead, were the random slowdowns and bouts of disk thrashing. The system would sometimes become nearly unresponsive, even though the Task Manager showed nothing really going on. This was across several hardware and software configurations, or I could have accepted it as a fluke- in just the past year, my Windows system has had 4 different motherboards and processors, as well as two video cards. Further, a system with 6GB+ RAM should not have bouts of disk thrashing through the swap file with a lean startup, and no background bothers (download clients, and things of that nature). For the most part, though, Vista worked fine. It is more secure (or can be made more secure) than XP, and on contemporary, high-end hardware, it runs decently as well (except as stated above).

Some of the problems were caused by third parties being unprepared- I was really stung by nVidia's drivers for their video cards. But that is also something Microsoft should have dealt with.
 
M Jarve said:
Downloaded and installed Windows 7 Beta on my gaming rig yesterday, and so far I like it. Much cleaner installation compared to Vista, and snappier to boot. I've only installed one game so far, Fallout 3, and it runs much better than it did with Vista.
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What was better about it? Just curious.

Have you tried Vista with the SP2 beta -- I found it to be quite stripped down. My guess is the core of Windows 7 is based on Vista SP2/Server 2008 and will really be a lateral step based on a few tweaks. The Vista brand has been rejected. I also expect this to be the way that Microsoft proceeds in the future: gradual, incremental OS updates, rather than the jump off the edge update like the XP to Vista transition.

dew.
 
botrytis said:
Honestly, I don't know why people complain about Vista - I find it faster and less prone to crashes compared to XP Pro. Also all my hardware was Vista compliant so that helps.
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My youngest daughter is the only person in our household running Vista. She has a nearly new HP laptop with 2 GB of ram. After comparing the performance of her laptop to my other daughter's which is running XP, she had a professional pc tech friend of hers install XP Pro instead of Vista.

They measured boot time from a cold start with both OS's. Vista: 4 1/2 minutes. XP Pro: 60 seconds. She said her apps just scream now.
 
dew042 said:
What was better about it? Just curious.

Have you tried Vista with the SP2 beta -- I found it to be quite stripped down. My guess is the core of Windows 7 is based on Vista SP2/Server 2008 and will really be a lateral step based on a few tweaks. The Vista brand has been rejected. I also expect this to be the way that Microsoft proceeds in the future: gradual, incremental OS updates, rather than the jump off the edge update like the XP to Vista transition.

dew.
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In regards to Fallout, it maintains consistently higher FPS (as per FRAPS), without the dramatic fluctuations it experienced before. It also has not CTD yet (which would usually happen at least every second or third attempt to launch it under Vista, even with a clean instal). When Vista would begin to thrash the HDD, the game would randomly stutter and stall, then might be fine for half an hour before the hard drive would again begin to experience seizures and the game would become choppy again. This was sometimes accompanied by a CTD.

I would note that when running XPx64 (which is essentially Server 2003, for those who don't know), it did not behave this way. That is not to say that XPx64 did not have its own issues.

Edit: I also was not aware that the SP2 beta was available, though we had yet to receive the Action Pack at work.
 
Fisherdude said:
I've heard that you can't d/l the beta unless you're on Vista. They're punishing users still on XP by not letting them participate in the beta test. Correct?
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Not true.

I downloaded both the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 betas using a machine that is running XP Home.
 
M Jarve said:
You need IE 7 to download it.
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Maybe I don't understand what you're saying here, but I downloaded both 32-bit and 64-bit Win 7 betas and I don't have IE 7.

The system merely loaded up the Akamai download manager (after asking my permission) to do it.

I tried to get them Friday, but with the overwhelmed servers, MS temporarily took the betas off the public website. But, they were back up Sat morning so I grabbed them then. Just need to clean up an old drive for a clean install to start playing with it myself.
 
whoaru99 said:
Not true. I downloaded both the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 betas using a machine that is running XP Home.
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Thanks!

whoaru99 said:
...But, they were back up Sat morning so I grabbed them then. Just need to clean up an old drive for a clean install to start playing with it myself.
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'nother question...based on this post you've downloaded something and you're saving it. Is it just the installer executable, or have you d/l'ed and saved something like the entire set of cab files.

Oooh, a second drive might be a great idea. So, if I install it to a second physical drive, how do I boot to that drive without having a boot manager applet on the pc? (While I'm not a professional, I do go back to DOS 2, so I'm not a complete virgin!).

Thanks for the help!
 
The downloads were .iso files that you use to burn install DVDs. They're pretty big, about 2.5 gig for the 32-bit and a bit over 3 gig for the 64-bit.

I'm not sure how to do the dual boot from different drives. I'm going to do it the hard way, physically disconnect the current and run from the Win 7 drive. I'm sure there's an easier way that I may investigate. Perhaps something can be done by selecting an alternate boot order as it goes through the BIOS?
 
Also, the instructions say minimum of 16gb needed for the install. I plan to use an old 40 gig drive if I can find it....it might have gone into a computer that I gave away though.

The betas are listed as expiring 1 Aug 2009 so it's not something you'd want to start loading up with a bunch of important data that later has to transfer to something else.
 
whoaru99 said:
...I'm not sure how to do the dual boot from different drives...Perhaps something can be done by selecting an alternate boot order as it goes through the BIOS?
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You know, I think that would work! If you simply select that drive letter as the boot drive, the BIOS should go there first.
 
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