Comments on: A tale of two Windows installs

CNET News' Ina Fried set up two Windows machines over the weekend--one with Windows 7, the other, with the seven-year-old Windows XP.

[Sausagebiscuit]

Ina: First you have a typo here...
"The technical maneuver was fairly simple. Vista itself didn't want to let my make the move, but it was no problem once I rebooted with a Windows XP disk." -- let my make the move. Let my what?

2nd, how about you install Windows 7 on the 2005 PC and see how it runs -- that is if it will let you install on 512MB of ram. Just curious. Or at least drop 1GB in there and test their min. requirements.

[druble]

Hah, are you serious? You are poking the writer about a typo, yet your grammer is not exactly perfect. As far as Windows 7 on the old PC, honestly, who cares. Are we so caught up in XP that we have tunnel vision? How about I load Windows 3.11 on my desktop and see how fast it runs? The point is, older software is never going to be as power hungry as new software. XP may always run a little faster than newer versions of Windows, but that is not because of problems with the software, it is because newer software is written to take advantage of newer technologies and contain many more new features that require more resources. That is why we are always trying to make computers faster, to keep up with new software. Bugs in Vista are hardly a problem anymore, so now everyone complains about the speed. Well maybe everyone should be downgrading XP to 95, because I can tell you this, Windows 95 will run a heck of a lot faster on any machine than XP will. That is just the way it is with software. Old software runs faster on new machines than new softwar PERIOD. I am happy with my Vista machine. It runs fast with the service pack installed. Nothing ever crashes. All the software I use works. And I have yet to get any kind of virus infection that was not grabbed up by my security software right away. With XP, god forbid that I dont have 2-3 virus and spyware scanners to catch all the nasty junk that is always getting on it. On another note, I work in IT for a fortune 500 company, and I also provide services to people outside of work. I have yet to come across a Vista system that has a major virus/spyware/trojan infection. I only find that problem with XP machines. I am quite confident that the security I get from Vista is far superior to XP, and honestly if Flight Simulator X runs 4 frames per second slower than running it on XP, well I sure cant tell, and I am not stuck up enough to wine like a kid about it like "Oh I have to downgrade to XP because My game is unnoticeably slower, but not slow enough that I can tell without a program to tell me how fast its running....." If you can see a difference between 70 and 75 FPS (Excluding crazy people who hallucinate a difference because they are so sure one OS is faster than another) maybe you need to get a life, because normal people can notice a difference.

[cuwickliffe]

I'm running MS DOS 5 on my Core 2 Duo. I've never seen a faster machine. I don't know why people don't just downgrade to that.

jk

[celticbrewer]

I agree, I would have liked to seen Win7 on the old machine. Reports show people putting it on machines with 512MB of ram and it worked just fine. I need a use for my old craptop as XP is constantly crashing and even a slim-build of linux won't even install. I love vista on my powerhouse PC, but it's definitely a pig when it comes to system requirements/resources.

[Stormspace]

Older hardware should never run the old os faster than a new os and new hardware. With Vista it does and that's an unforgivable mistake. No one wants to be less productive on their new PC than on the old one.

[Sausagebiscuit]

druble, first off its "grammar" not "grammer". So don't nit pick. I was pointing it out so that it could be fixed. I was not bashing the writer.

Next, please use the enter key to space out your ideas instead of having one huge wall of text. I can't even bother to read it because it hurts my eyes.

[philoking]

I installed Windows 7 on an MSI Wind laptop last night with 1.5GB Ram and a 1.6 Ghz Atom processor and it runs snappier than XP did. The install also worked flawlessly with the exception of having to install a wifi driver. Sweet!

[Mergatroid Mania]

What are you, an editor?

[scratchface]

yeah, tha's just annoying. There's no need to be pedantic, she's not going to come back to change this typo, she's probably busy working on the next story. If the typo has a real impact on the readability of the story, shoot an email. She'll probably read that before she comes back to read the posts.

[Sausagebiscuit]

It sure is amazing how many people get bent out of shape over pointing out a typo. I don't know why either. Everyone makes mistakes and I pointed it out so that it could be fixed. This is a professional publication that I read daily and was looking out for the author before someone jumped in "HAI LOL U HAS TYPEOHS" and started bashing CNET for poor editing, poorly educated writers, etc.

I was in no way making myself out to be a grammar cop or typo police. Perhaps an e-mail would have worked, but many times CNET editors will reply to comments posted here. In this case, however, it seems an e-mail would have probably been better.

I also thank those who agreed with the 2nd part of my topic. All of this tout about how Windows 7 will run on netbooks and such, I feel that a test on the old hardware would have been well warranted.

I do apologize if my typo comment was out of place, but wow look how many people got worked up over it. I just wanted the story to be corrected... not being a jerk about it.

[solomonsd78]

I installed Windows 7 on my MSI Wind as well, upgraded to 2GB of RAM and the installation was painless and the OS works flawlessly, even though the turbo hasn't worked from day 1.

[Worf101]

Nice to see a "real world" test, but I wished you'd put the Beta through some paces, particularly driver installation for common items such as printers, gaming keyboards, etc... Still and all thanks for the information.

Da Worfster

[Thranx]

Right, because driver testing on beta software's a legit test? Drivers are the last thing to come into sync because they're vender driven. I was working at Xerox during the release of Vista... they didn't even start development until beta 2 and didn't have drivers released until a month after the consumer launch in January (RTM was Nov.). I was unimpressed by the speed with which they developed and released the new drivers... until I paid attention to competitors like HP who didn't have anything substantial until march or later, and even then only had a generic/unified driver for alot of their products. Let alone idiots like Creative Labs that still havn't created fully functional audio drivers for their NEW products on Vista.

That said Win7 shouldn't be a big driver transision as it's nearly the same kernel as Vista, but a "real world" test of the OS isn't going to be driver testing, it's going to be what people do every day. E-mail, media, web, Office apps. People don't install a gaming keyboard everyday, people don't install a printer every day.

If you want to play with Windows 7, just download VMWare Server (vmware.com) and run a copy virtually. It's free and easy to setup.

[spacydog]

I wanted to provide some feedback on drivers. It is true that Win7 is based on the same Vista kernel so the theory is that most if not all of the existiing Vista drivers should work on Win7. I tested this theory with a clean Win7 Beta install on my Gateway P-7811X gaming laptop. Most of the drivers shipped with Win7. The remaining few like chipset and touchpad were downloaded as Vista drivers and worked fine after installation. The other test would have been to do an XP-->Win7 or Vista-->Win7 upgrade but I'm sure that's what the Microsoft Win7 testers get paid to do.

Also, the real sign of a successful OS again goes back to drivers being available. The sooner they are made availalbe, even in the beta phases of the OS, the better prepared and satisfied consumers are with the OS once it's shipped. This was why Vista failed when it initially released... flaky or non-existent drivers from third-party vendors.

[tm_anon]

"a "real world" test of the OS isn't going to be driver testing, it's going to be what people do every day"

What exactly can a person do if the drivers on his new OS don't let him use the items he needs? For example, if a person has a printer he uses to print out documentation necessary for his customers, he needs the drivers for that printer to be there in order for it to work. If someone needs a webcam for video conferencing in order to get his job done, he needs the drivers. Those real world tests are both dependent on the driver support which needs to be there. It's a good place to test to make sure it's ready. A beta is put out for that very reason, to test to see if it's ready.

[cdaaawg]

Get a clue Worfster! How can a test setup be called "real world" when the vendor's software being tested supplies the hardware too! You wouldn't make a pimple on a real tester's ass. Just more crappy bloatware from a money grubbing empire.

cdaaawg

[medtondo]

So far I am a big fan of Windows 7 as well. I installed it on a 4 year old Dell XPS Gamer Gen1 laptop and had a few hiccups with the ATI 9800 Pro video driver, but that was soon fixed and the system runs well.

The whole recount of Day One with Windows 7 is here http://www.ryangroom.com/2009/01/09/windows-7-beta-and-dell-xps-laptop-gen-1/

[EyE322]

Windows Vista is the Windows ME of 2008

[kenpm]

EyE322: "Windows Vista is the Windows ME of 2008". Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. In case you're not old enough to remember, Windows ME was just an attempt by Microsoft to get something new out there for consumers while XP was still being developed. It had been a couple of years since 98 SE was released and they needed to release something since WIndows 2000 wasn't really intended for home users. ME was horribly insecure and buggy. Vista, on the other hand, is far more secure than XP with a cleaner, prettier interface. The only "problems" with Vista are that it requires modern hardware (at least 2gb of RAM to run smoothly) and that the hardware manufacturers took until 6 months after Vista was released to get their act together and release drivers that didn't cause BSODs.

Windows 7 is an even more refined Vista. They've tuned it to run more acceptably on lesser hardware than Vista could. And, since it uses the same driver model as Vista it will be much easier for hardware makers to get their products to work correctly with WIndows 7.

[eyepoker]

Eye... with any advancement its best, not required, to upgrade hardware as the new software always takes advantage of it. And with any advnacement the new is always better han the old. Always. Yes, some old hardware won't work and that is expected. You're desire to call Vista another WinME is initself stupid. Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response - you showed us your true colors.

[kenpm]

Wow, that makes zero sense. So now you're saying that ME was an upgrade over 95 in the same way that Vista is an upgrade over XP? "Even time line is the same"?? Huh? ME was the successor to WIndows 98 SE, not 95 which was actually THREE versions back from ME. And in any, all of those OSes were based on the same crash-prone, insecure, DOS-based architecture. Like I said, you're probably not old enough to remember...

[CrashPad63]

Eye22... Hey ******* it is explained to you point to point where your thinking is errored. Now go back to your linux or Mac box and play being a geek.

[jlaustill]

Hey EyE322, I totally see your point! ME was the last OS to NOT be adopted by enterprise, whereas 95, 98, and xp have ALL been WIDELY adopted. Vista will just never take root at my company, there are FAR to many problems with it. We still have a few 98 machines, but mostly XP machines. Although I am happily writing this on my Ubuntu machine :).

[gtyron]

So suddenly GNU/Linux and Mac OSX are not real operating systems and are just toys? Yeah Microsoft has a reputation for making bad software when they actually make great software most of the time, but the ethical issues people have with Microsoft certainly hold water(although I have seen some very subtle signs in the last few months that things may be getting better, such as use of Java in the download manager for Windows 7 beta and Ballmer's hint that IE may consider Webkit, these may not seem like big things but Microsoft hasn't actually done anything to push Java installations in about 10 years since Sun sued them for abusing Java, and Webkit is just a big deal because it shows that MS may finally be ready to make IE reasonably standards compliant and because it's very rare that MS ever uses out of house software(likely so that nobody can do to them what they did to IBM), overall they are just showing some tolerance for competition now). I fall under the ethical issue category and can actually justify my problems with MS and I'm sick of being cast aside with all the morons that don't know why they don't like MS. Crashpad, don't associate everyone who makes a comment like that with us and don't assume that GNU/Linux isn't a real OS, I've been using it for six months and aside from the initial adaptation to a new environment(which is hardly anything more that I've seen when moving to a new version of Windows) it has been very usable and I've actually found many things to be easier and that GNOME(one of the two most popular desktop environments for Unix like systems and probably soon to be the most popular) is actually much more intuitive than what I've seen on Windows. Furthermore not all GNU/Linux users like Mac, many of us distrust it just as much as Windows because of Apple's similarly shady history and for fear that Apple do with Mac what MS did with Windows(always a risk with proprietary software). Vista(despite being stable and a joy to use) requires all device driver vendors to have their drivers certified by MS before they can be used with Vista and must have a kill switch that MS can call remotely should they thing you are doing anything illegal. And as for Vista being another WinMe, in the initial compatibility issues it can be compared to WinMe(I don't recall anywhere near this much complaining about XP at its release). Vista was screwed by its first impression and MS to get past it, so in the sense of what Kenpm was saying(regarding MS's purpose for the release) Win7 is the new WinMe. They're taking Windows at a point that would have simply been a milestone and sprucing it up for release to appease the market(though I'm not trying to predict Win7's stability here).

[Thranx]

ME was a failure due to bum 3rd part software. What made it "buggy" was not the OS it was that for the first time in a consume OS, it locked down core system files. AV vendors and various software companies had, for years, been writing to and modifying core system files. Once Microsoft locked those down so that they couldn't be modified in an attempt to make the system more stable (98's BSoDs were nearly always caused by poorly coded 3rd party software and drivers) then people software wouldn't work, or the software itself would lock the system.

Once MS unified the business and consumer OSs with XP, the problem resolved itself. There was only one offering, vendors were forced to change. Many of them were used to 2K so the leap wasn't too great, but recall all the "XP is evil because it won't take software brand X" talk. Every new OS with dramatic change is recieved the same way. With Vista the problem was just greater do to places like this where the uninformed can rant and taint the views of the mass populace. Joe Consumer didn't use the internet in 2002 the way he does now, and was oblivious to any problems that were reported with XP. Now Steve in Idaho can't install his favorite 16 bit dungeon crawler and the world believes that Vista doesn't run apps made before 2005. Welcome to the Internet circa 2007.

On point, ME was a failure because the vendors weren't on board. Windows 7 is more akin to the 2K->XP migration. Slight differences, but nothing major... mostly a pretty-up refresh.

[EyE322]

See you are totally stuck on hardware but I am talking business model u fruit loop I understand the difference between this version that is 7 and vista, You asked me if I remember when ME was out well I wouldn?t have first posted that if I did not. Your just trying to be a know it all and show us you know the difference, that?s fine but you lack to see the whole picture. Cleary Vista and ME required visual and memory upgrade to function.
They were both pushed on public before a better and major release. Both had numerous errors and cost the public substantial money due to redundant upgrading. So go back to telling me how my floppy drive works with your x86 POS,

by the way like all you a&&holes I have Vista and soon will be pissed because all the ?New? hardware for 7 will include touch screen so I will never be able to take in the full benefits of 7, reminds me of ME.

[solomonsd78]

That is ludicruos, Windows ME was a joke that few who lived through it will ever forget. Vista had its problems early on but ME was nearly impossible to keep stable or usable for any lenght of time.

[ddesy]

Vista is like ME in the sense that although the problems are different, they are both throwaway OSes. MS just about confirms this when they've even said that it is okay to wait for Windows 7!

[cbmtrx]

Yeah, I have a question: Is Windows 7 as uninspired and quotidian as most Microsoft products seek to become, or does it possess anything that might suggest that imagination, creativity, and, above all, usability were in some way involved in its genesis?

[markdoiron]

Well, it still recognizes my age-old two-button mouse with a track wheel. But that's more than can be said for some hampered OSs out there. --mark d.

[iertry]

Well the new taskbar is pretty good in my opinion and they have a new file structure called lirbaries. So instead of having a documents folder it is like a saved search for documents and you can specify which directories to include. It's pretty sueful too. There have been mixed reviews over the taskbar though complaining it is too like the osx dock. I'm a mac user though so ersonally i ike it and combined with jump lists its pretty handy.

[solomonsd78]

I'd recommend you try the beta, or at least take the time to watch the videos and read the reviews of other people. I liked Vista when it came out, I can't praise Windows 7 enough, even in beta. On my MSI Wind Vista ran like crap and wouldn't update, Windows 7 was a breeze, almost pleasent upgrade. Sure there is a lot of eye candy but it has a lot of under the hood tweaks that really make life easier.

[ddesy]

@markdoiron

I call nonsense on the mouse. As long as a computer has the proper type of port, you will have no problems on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc...

[b_baggins]

MacOS has supported two-button mice out of the box for the last 10 years. Winston Churchill gave some good advice you might want to heed: It is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

[Swimatm]

Uh, does it matter? Really does it matter whether it possesses anything that might suggest that imagination, creativity, and, usability were involved in its genesis? Not having those things does not mean it's going to be a "bad" OS, okay?
It's one and only purpose is to run software.

[Dalkorian]

by solomonsd78 January 13, 2009 12:34 PM PST
I liked Vista when it came out ... On my MSI Wind Vista ran like crap and wouldn't update ...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm guessing you hard core winblows apologists don't bother listening to yourselves, otherwise contradictions like this wouldn't *ALWAYS* pop up in your apologies for M$.

[LadyLovelace]

Big words. Tiny thought.

[Ted Miller]

I am a Vista user on one of my home computers, although I use it all the time, I dispise it totaly. My bigggest gripe is simple file management. It is the worst I have ever seen in any operating system. You simply cannot use it. After all, is that not the most fundamental reason for an operating system...file management. At least XP offered a thousand ways to copy and move files. Try that with Vista or 7. You can't! Compressing in vista is also a joke, the copy and compression of files is slower then an IBM PC-XT. Please we are not idiots as you might think we are and stop the stupidity and Microsoft bootlicking NOW and start telling us the truth about things. Or CNet may find it self on the outside looking in along with Microsoft.

[assman]

There are a few problems with Vista but I have no idea where your "file management" gripes are coming from. XP had no file management features that Vista doesn't have. You can still copy and move files the same way as XP, and although I haven't attempted to use Vista's built-in compressor, I seriously doubt it's slower than XP's, that doesn't make any sense. Try using something like WinRAR instead, that's what most techs use.

[jqpublic99]

"[...] simple file management. It is the worst I have ever seen in any operating system. You simply cannot use it."
You simply CANNOT use it? Really? You're saying that the file managment is entirely nonfunctional? Of course not, that is a nonsensical statement. If you are having that much difficulty with simple file management, I woudl suggest the issue is user error, and you require some basic instruction.

"At least XP offered a thousand ways to copy and move files. Try that with Vista or 7. You can't!" XP in fact did not offer a "thousand" ways, and all those methods that were present in XP are there in Vista and Win7.

"Compressing in vista is also a joke, the copy and compression of files is slower then an IBM PC-XT."
Another simply stupid comment. SLOWER than a 4.77MHz PC-XT? You are either desperate to make negative comments or truly ignorant of the subject matter. XP/Vista/Win7 use the exact same compression methods.

"Please we are not idiots as you might think "
Your utter nonsense comments suggest otherwise.

This was one of the most stupid comments I have seen in quite some time. Your statements are utterly wrong, your comparisons completely nonsensical, yet you banter about with an air of supposed credibility while jumping on the 'Lets bash Vista' bandwagon when in fact you are quite obviously out of your depth, and really have no idea what you are talking about.

[KinjiruRM]

To 'assman': I can think of one serious complaint: Vista's explorer can at times be dog slow on any system. Little green bar taking ever so forever to build across the screen sound familiar? The Indexing system is intrusive and doesn't want to be easily shut off. Other than that, the navigation in file dialogues is confusing to most, until they've adjusted. One thing MS did with Vista and Office 2007 is completely destroy the old layouts. Looks nice, but very confusing. For someone such as myself, I'd rather have speedy functionality than eye candy.

Now, as for zipping, there is a flaw with Vista's built in compression and it is essentially unusable in some cases. It commonly takes forever to zip a file. Alternatives like WinRAR or WinZip work fine, of course. But out of the box, you -really- don't want to do any zipping.

[KinjiruRM]

Forgot to mention also that network copying from Vista to non-Vista systems can be agonizingly slow too, due to the default use of Remote Differential Compression.

[CrashPad63]

Never had one glitch in file management here. And Home networked with XP and Vista machines. Really beginning to wonder who are these supposed IT guys in here who fail in this.

[gtyron]

I think Ted speaks some credibility to run with here and he does speak some truth. In the beginning Vista did move files very slowly, it would actually use more time than XP would use to move the file while trying to calculate how long it would take to move a file, though now it's not bad. Also file management is far from being the most fundamental reason for having an operating system. The primary purpose for having an operating system is to unify a large number of computers with common traits that you can expect every one of them to share. Technically you can manage files without an operating system(though your application would have to perform some operating system like tasks).

[Breezy1601]

You might be referring to the virtual folders that Vista uses, as in they don't really exist as shown in the Explorer layout. For instance, user folders. I'm very much with you on this point. MS just tries to jack you around .. showing you stuff that isn't really on the drive and cannot be copied/pasted, etc. It seems like MS is trying hard to keep users in the dark and remove any need for knowing what files and folders even are. That was a Vista "feature" that particularly sucks for me. I have the Win 7 beta but haven't installed it yet. I'm guessing it's the same way.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Ted Mller wrote:

" You simply cannot use it. After all, is that not the most fundamental reason for an operating system...file management. At least XP offered a thousand ways to copy and move files. Try that with Vista or 7. "

Nothing changed between XP and Vista for the way to copy/move files. And those same options are there in Win7 as well.

It doesn't sound like 'you simply cannot use it,' as much as you simply don't want to. I can't blame the OS for an end user who doesn't want to use the product in the first place.

[davidsmi]

There are lots of 3rd party tools out there that offer better ways of file management, de-duplication and some are faster. It would be nice if Windows 7 is faster than WXP or Vista when coping files over the network.

My install worked great - and apps load quicker now!

[ddesy]

@CrashPad63

Benchmark before you criticize!

[Thompa]

After my experience of receiving what was touted as a 'complimentary' copy of Vista at one of the Nationwide Launch (remember those?) and then having it disabled by Microsoft later without any notice... forcing me to expend much time and energy correcting the situation... I certainly will NOT be installing any beta editions of Windows 7 on any of the systems I maintain.
Please everyone, be aware that there will be issues later for everyone installing a beta version - read the warning page before downloading carefully and do not get drawn into the hype.
If you are happy with XP.... stay there for a while!
We really do need some real world testing of Windows 7 with drivers and software before judging whether the eye candy is worth the cost.
As I see it the operating system should be known about but be discrete enough to not interfere in the operations of the software used on the machine!

[eyepoker]

Drawn into what hype? if anyone is unintelligent enough to download Win7 with the intent of using it forever then let them. Its BETA and as such there are inherent risks the most obvious of which is that it will eventually become disabled... because... its Beta! Thats what Beta is - temprorary, kick the tires, give us feedback... its not meant for use *forever*.

[gggg sssss]

so go buy a cheap Dell to try it out. Or a nice Dell and reformat later when it is live

[zcline]

Being in IT I can't seem to figure out why everyone is looking for imagination, creativity, etc. Mac and Windows both share the same issues... they are becoming exponentially bloated as technology increases. Why isn't speed our main concern? Why isn't speed Microsoft's main concern? While companies realize that some of us want features, others like myself would rather not have to wait for a huge OS to load.

As a professional machine, Vista has been a nightmare. For the home it's an absolute joy. I'm hoping Windows 7 can be exceptional at both. Thanks for the article.

[bj1126]

I just did the beta install yesterday on a really low spec machine. I wouldn't have dreamed running vista on it but 7 does quite nicely with the default install. I just wish I could get my NIC driver working on it and get it out on the net! Maybe I'll play with it some in my free time today.

[Kev_Orng]

The next version of OSX (Snow Leopard) is supposedly being designed to run smaller, lighter, and faster than previous iterations, by clearing out the bloat. I'm hoping Windows 7 is going in the same direction, but I'm not really into beta testing operating systems, so I'll be relying on tech sites to read what people think.

But the point is that your complaint about bloat and speed issues might be moot by this time next year. And that's a good thing. Leopard takes a huge amount of space on my two macs, but at least it does it quickly. My XP machines are zippy enough as well, but again with the bloat. I agree with you on the imagination and creativity; eye candy is not a good enough reason for me to upgrade the windows stations to Vista (they're just workhorses anyway) and the size issue will make me seriously consider Snow Leopard on the Macs. But if Windows 7 introduces more speed and less size, I'll be very tempted to upgrade those machines.

[wishfor420]

I've added the Windows 7 to my 2008 AD domain. Applied a few group policies to it and set it up to run a couple login scripts. Seems to show up well in AD. I was pushing out network configurations through the "Vista" GPO and they took along with Printer mapping. I look forward to do more testing in the business environment.

[wolivere]

I'm not sure what the train of thought here is. Microsoft has always been the company that takes good/great ideas that are niche. And turn them into something that is just that an every day experience.

I think if you are looking for a Picaso from Microsoft, thats the wrong road to go down.

Microsoft is the embodiment of US industry, which has always been light on home grown break throughs. But takes very good ideas, wraps them in marketing and sping, packages them and gets them out to the mass's. Much like the old Model T.

[greg3305]

This is news? XP zippier than Vista? You're complaining about the performance of a Vista machine with only 512MB of RAM, some of which is going to be borrowed for video memory? Vista has gotten a bad rap because people like you try to install it on ancient machines that aren't capable of running it, and are then surprised when it doesn't work. Yes, it requires more powerful hardware than XP. Yes, that may be a drawback for individuals and businesses that don't have the money to spend on hardware. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the OS.

[BK216]

EXACTLY

[ddesy]

An OS is supposed to stay out of the way and let things run. Having higher hardware requirements goes against this, and I think Microsoft would agree based on the fact that Windows 7 seems a bit snappier. Besides, Vista is buggy even if you say it isn't until you are blue in the face.

[rapier1]

@ddesy:
"Having higher hardware requirements goes against this"

I disagree. It used to be that all an OS did was provide the basic environment for everything else to run in. However, what people *want* from an OS has changed considerably over the years. They don't just want something that can manage the file system and provide a run time environment. They want a window manager, they want file indexing, they want built in applications, firewalls, and they want it to be easy to use, robust, and pretty. We've moved from operating systems to operating environments. The environment takes up a lot of code and a lot of power to meet shifting consumer demands.

[ddesy]

@rapier1

You argue for an operating environment. An OS should provide the ability to run on lower powered machines and make all of the tools optional. If the OS has high requirements, it takes away resources and requires more powerful machines. Pointless.

[gggg sssss]

@ddesy:
Windows 3.1 ran in 16 mb. 16 mb cost $200 then. Vista needs 4 gb 4gb costs 150 now. What is your point?

[Notoapplefanbois]

Well actually xp is sometimes slower than vista, in certain circumstances e.g. if the xp PC is "well used" and the vista pc is a fresh install.

But after using all three operating system's, the snappiest out of the three on a low spec pc is xp(Pentium M740, 512mb of ram, go 6200 GPU), however when I upgraded the ram to 768mb on the same pc, then Windows 7 is definetly the snappiest, even with aero on providing the res is only at 1440x900.

However if you are going for Performance then I still prefer TinyVista because it is snappier than even xp on 512mb of ram, only downside is that a lot of extra's are cut out, but then again that's why it's so fast.

[rapier1]

@ddesy:

I'm not 'arguing' for anything. I'm merely pointing out that this is what consumers want. They don't want a barebones install. They want a full environment packed with loads of stuff so they don't feel like they need to buy or install anything else past the OS. What you *do* seem to be arguing for is a return to OS distributions that are essentially only the kernel and thats it. I personally think that would be a fine thing but its not going to happen because people like you and me aren't representative of the vast majority of consumers.

[Myshkin57]

If the OS is supposed to run on every PC being made then it is a problem with the OS if it does not run well on every PC being made. If they were making an OS that is not supposed to be on every machine, then it should have been sold as such. As it is, the griped with Vista are legitimate as it was intended to run on all PCs.

[miltimj]

Wow, what a worthless "review". You're excited about... "Particularly handy is the button in the bottom right-hand corner that lets me make all the windows disappear from the screen." ....?? The "Show Desktop" icon that's been available for a decade now? How about WindowsKey-M? Does the same thing.

How about checking out any of the actual new features? Running HD on your computer isn't one of them, by the way.

[solomonsd78]

The show desktop and windows-m don't do the same thing and that is the key. Yes, clicking in the bottom right hand corner will take you to your desktop, but hovering will make all of your open windows transparent without switching. I've had instances where I wanted to glance at the desktop for something without completely going to it and end up minimizing windows or hitting the show desktop and then restoring windows. It is a convenience that can make a difference.

[sargebx]

hello i read a post that had asked to install windows 7 on a minimum requirements pc well i got it

i have installed windows 7 on a athlon xp 2800 that is 2.1 ghz
with 1 gig of ram and an ati x800 graphics card now i know this isnt rock bottom specs but it is rather close and windows 7 runs great there is no lag in any features that i have tried so far

[CrashPad63]

Running mine on 5 year old Dell lappy 1.67 Pent with 512mg of memory. Runs circles around the fresh install XP. Yeah Windows 7 is the shiznaz.

[EyE322]

Yo! Crashpad, shiznaz huh?? On that old klunker u got?.. too funny well im running Beta 7 on VMserver 2 on server03 standard (cuz im cheep) 2x quad core HP380 gen5 some junk I just had laying round, dude. How you like them spec sound better then yours well they are play'a, why dont you catch up. Im gonna have to start calling you 'Simple Jack'!

[CNET editors' note: Offensive content removed.]

[Chilly Penguin]

>> As for the Windows 7 test machine, it's a loaner Lenovo X300 from Microsoft.

Just curious. You'll be returning this "loaner" to Microsoft when you're done with your testing, yes?

[timber2005]

Dur, hence the term "loaner". Usually goes back where it came. You don't leave the Ryder truck at radio shack.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Reviewers rarely get to keep the equipment that they are doing reviews on. From cell phones to automobiles, the OEM sends out a product sample to be reviewed and then it is sent on to the next reviewer in line for it.

Allowing the reviewer to keep the product would not be ethical if you wanted to present any sort of unbiased opinion.

It would be hard for someone reviewing a sports car to remain objective when they get to keep the car afterwards, for example.

[gggg sssss]

who in their right mind would want to KEEP a lenovo?

[Mark_Anderson]

Pretty much anyone who has a job.

[kuroyama--2008]

I understand full disclosure and all of that, but I have to wonder just how objective we can expect an OS review to be when said reviewer is using 'loaner machines from Microsoft'.

[kenpm]

It's called a loaner because she has to give it back when she's done testing. She doesn't get to keep it so I don't think her objectivity is in question because she is using a loaner.

[timber2005]

Assuming it has the similar specs to another machine and not some quantum 9000 tHz processor, its really moot.

[DustoMan]

You wouldn't happen to write for Information Week do you? ;o)

[Vegaman_Dan]

The Lenovo X300 happens to be one of those current generation machines that came out in time for this and gives a realistic benchmark for what you can expect for the OS on current equipment. If a company were to buy a new notebook today, the X300 is one of those IT standard systems available out there.

[solomonsd78]

MS probably supplies the hardware so that the OS can be compared in a standard environment and then the reviewer can go an do their own testing on a non-standard environment.

[inachu]

World of Warcraft plays a lot smoother with Windows 7.

[Gimli_Richardson]

He-heh-heh...this is the review I was waitn' for!

[deke913]

ding ding ding ....thats all i need to know

[srice555]

"First, though, I unplugged the PC's Ethernet cable, knowing full well that putting an unprotected Windows XP machine on to the Internet is akin to pushing a baby carriage in the street to see if there is traffic."

You did this at work right? Let me guess.... your department got a full /24 from the ISP so that every pc is in your group can be connected directly to the internet with an internet route able address and no firewall. Stupid is as stupid does.

[contentcreator--2008]

Exactly. I find this whole "unprotected PC on the net" thing silly. It's a meme that has been running around for too long. Even at home, how many people have their machine connected directly to the internet, without a nice little firewalled router as part of their DSL/Cable/FIOS?

[kenpm]

In your case, the stupid is in your comment. Ina didn't say that the PC had an internet routable IP address, just that it was "unprotected". A bare XP install that is behind a NAT router is still incredibly insecure and an easy target for malware infection since it was running the unpatched version of IE6. In this case I think Ina did the smart thing and doesn't deserve that "stupid" comment.

[ddesy]

No matter how much protection is in between an unpatched PC and the Internet, hooking it up without any protection is a mistake.

[colinnnwn]

@kenpm and ddesy

A bare metal install of XP with no security software and only the most recent Firefox is perfectly safe behind a NAT router for long enough to install said security software and allow Windows Update to do its thing, provided all ports are blocked, and you never launch Internet Explorer. If you disagree, pray which exploits do you think are still possible in such configuration?

[Mergatroid Mania]

I agree.

All my computers XP operating systems are installed with the computers connected to the internet, and using a hardware router. The firewall in my router works great. After a complete install, the only thing I do is install antivirus software. Job done. Never had a problem.

[ddesy]

@colinnnwn

If you think NAT is perfectly safe in all situations, maybe you shouldn't be involved in IT.

[gggg sssss]

@kenpm and ddesy and colinnnwn
do any of you know what a router actualy does? what NAT is? You think somehow the internet can find a particular machine behind the router and force that machine to download a file? You guys use Macs, right?

[hunkyboi69]

Maybe it's some kind of magic NAT that they are banging on about, because no NAT equipment that I have ever used puts any computer at risk that is behind it, unless that particular box is in the DMZ.

There are 3 ways that I can think that the said computer could be exploited behind a NAT and all but the 3rd require user action or interaction.

For an unpatched XP installation to be exploited from the internet by a worm behind a NAT device, that machine would either have to be in the DMZ or have certain ports like 139 or 445 forwarded to it, which would be ridiculous as nobody with half a brain would do that.

The other, more likely way of being exploited, is using an unpatched version of IE on said unpatched machine. However, only a fool would use IE for any more than perhaps browsing to update.microsoft.com to get updates.

The 3rd one, is that another box on the network could be also unpatched and be infected with a network worm which propagates to our 'new' unpatched XP installation. Um...unlikely.

So said NAT exploitation realistically can not occur without gross stupidity.

[rich5665]

I loaded a clean install of Windows 7 onto a circa 2001 Compaq DeskPro, 1.5 GHz P4 - 512MB RAM and a 128MB Nvidia Graphics Card. The install went smoothly. I don't believe I have ever had a Windows install finish as fast as the Win 7 install. I was suprised that I had to download a video driver for a 6 year old graphics adapter and the integrated audio device. I have an older Linksys USB Wireless Card and loaded the WinXP driver in order to use it. So far I'm please with the look and feel of the OS, my only issue is during shutdown process, the system hangs so I have to power the system down manually. IE 8 is nice, but I'll pass on Microsoft's Live Search Utility. While doing a search for AVGFree ver.8, Live Search displayed quite a few links that pointed to Antivirus 2009 which in itself is a Trojan. Loaded the Google Tool after that. Win 7's UAC is much friendlieras well and gives you more control over the enoying warning that popped up when trying to install software. Even the warning seems to have gooten a new look from the Vista Version. If the Beta is any indication of the final product, I will skip Vista completely for Win 7.

[solomonsd78]

I've noticed in all of my machines that Windows 7 typically takes longer than I was used to Vista in shutting down although on boot up it was comparable or faster than before.

[i8246i]

So...you wrote a few paragraphs about Windows 7....and briefly mentioned Windows XP...while kind of stabbing a few remarks at Vista..


How exactly is this "A Tale OF Two Windows Installs"? Why didn't you do a speed test between the two computers on similar tasks (nevermind you didn't attempt to install XP on a similar desktop or laptop..so you really couldn't have done any real comparisons), or relate more to some of the problems you have had (or your friend has had)?

This is comparable to an entry in someone's Livejournal...definitely not worth the money you made today. Perhaps you need to make this a part of a series of "journal entries" as you follow the ups and downs of using these machines...perhaps even seeing if you can dual-boot XP and 7 on that "loaner" you have?

Even better, have a three way brawl between XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

[kenpm]

This is a very common problem with CNET these days. I think they are under a lot of pressure to write a few articles everyday so the quality of the articles is usually not much more than a simple blog entry - a lot of opinion and very few objective facts.

[BigGuns149]

I agree with the statement that there should be some benchmarks. Vague comparisons aren't useless, but more data points are always appreciated.

I would definitely agree that CNET has gotten sloppy with their stories and that management seems to prefer quantity of stories over quality.

[ggirton]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

[wishfor420]

I just finished my gaming pc with XP running. Phenom 9950, Gforce 8800GT, 4GB ram. Call of duty runs at 60fps with resolution and all settings cranked up. After just finishing the final tweaks with this I would not even think about loading a Beta Microsoft product on this machine. So the power of VMware compels me. Vmware workstation 6.5.1 Created a 20GB virtual disk, 1GB memory and loaded windows 7 on in about 30 min. Quite surprised that everything went smoothly. I did notice that during the install I did not see a place to put the Key but Microsoft did not hesitate to remind me once the OS was loaded. Installed Office 2007 Pro, Firefox, Clone-DVD, DVDShrink, Kaspersky AV suite (the demo they give for Win7 users) along with VLC. I tried to play DVD's in this virtual machine with no luck on the windows media player. It kept giving me errors about screen resolution which google-ing it I found to be a common error in Vista. VLC works with no problems. I also tried to install COD-WaW which is vista compatible. No luck. I get through the main install no problem but when updating with patch it gives me error messages. I've tested Office 2007 with load times on large, complicated excel worksheets that have many links, pictures, and visio diagrams integrated into it. Speed was about the same as the XP virtual machine with same hardware settings. No Aero interface but that just blogs down the computer even more. Not really worth it. So far I'm pretty happy with it. for a virtual machine, its a great sandbox for web browsing and downloading of new tools. Rather have this machine die than the Game PC.

[Imalittleteapot]

No Aero does not blog down the computer. It blogs down the GPU leaving the CPU free to do other stuff. Turn it off and your CPU gets blogged down and your GPU sits bored and unused. You only turn Aero off if you don't have an Aero capable GPU or you really don't like the Aero style.

[DustoMan]

You tried to install Call of Duty on a virtual machine? Of course that isn't going to work! And I'll re-iterate teapot, Aero doesn't slow down your computer at all. Your 8800GT runs Aero like butter, I know, I had one of those cards.

[medezark]

Virtual machines don't usually give you full hardware acceleration for video. Try setting 7 up as a dual boot instead of in a virtual machine.

[patddymac]

You gave a friend the option of XP or Vista? Can I have a copy?

You burned Elmo's giggly face to your hard drive? Wow, an optical hard drive?

[umdala]

I'm writing this on a PC I don't own, don't care what hardware/software it runs since I don't have to, and, best of all, no PC will ever make a bloody mary as well as me or my wife can (while we are drunk, mind you). Doesn't any of this talk bore any of you to death? These things are just overpriced tools. No one ever remembers an email, but if I send a postcard, they call me to say how much they enjoyed it. That says it all. Hanging out with people in person is still wayyyy better than on online. You guys are nuts. Try taking your PC to the beach and see how it stands up to one day in the sun. Good luck!

[Kev_Orng]

@umdala, while I agree with you on most points there, I also know that the computer is an important tool that warrants discussion and generates interest.

I also know that some people like going to the beach (with or without their PC), but you don't see me walking up to people who like the beach and asking them how they can stand sitting on a boring beach for more than half an hour.

But hey, if it makes you feel good about yourself.