Comments on: Living with Windows 7 release candidate

CNET News' Ina Fried has been using Windows 7 for some time, but for the past week she mothballed her home Mac and Windows XP work PC, putting her faith in Microsoft's latest.

[CDubber]

"It does all the important stuff--it let me write this blog, use Twitter, and play games on Facebook."

Wow, Windows 7 does all that??? Text editing, Twitter and Facebook games? The Microsoft astroturfers are right: Windows 7 is THE MOST AWESOME COMPUTER OS EVAH!!!

*snicker*

Dismissive reply from Microsoft PR (AKA monkeyfun14) in 3...2...1...

[pithenumber]

isn't just working what Apple sells its OS on?
just working==boot up, use browser/office apps/...
apparently, Win7 just works

[smatofu]

99% of my time in front of PC is: browsing in FireFox, talking over Skype, reading email in gmail, watching TV in MediaCenter etc. There is no way a new OS can make much of a difference. Perhaps, you can save a minute or two, because the new OS is more efficient, but that is most. The meaning of Operating Systems may just be overrated.

If I am going to spend $500 on something, I will better buy a new dishwasher because it will save me 10 minutes of my time every day, it will save water and electricity.

[128shot]

smatofu

if thats really all you do, i advise switching to Linux to save some pennies.


I'm a heavy gamer and generally what you'd call a computer 'power user'

Mac OS X lack of gaming support kills me. Cause i wouldn't mind a switch. and I'm not a big fan of dual booting (why? its not worth my time)

I have several lesser linux media machines for the time being, but I need the ability to upgrade hardware as I see fit.

I don't get that flexibility with any other OS.

[smatofu]

128shot,

I would have switched to Linux, but there are several critical components that are mastered in Windows, for example, graphic drivers, dual-display, drivers for unique devices, like, remote controls, X10 controller etc. I know it may be possible to setup everything in Linux, but there is no overwhelming reason for me to do it because everything works perfectly in Windows XP already.

Operating System is just one of multiple layers between contents, work, entertainment etc on one side, and the user on the other side. All this excitement about the new OS doesn't make much sense for me.

[LeeNipp]

ok, i hear/understand your grumbling but heres my experience:

fresh vista install clocks in at a overall system rating of 4.0
fresh install of windows 7 clocks in at an overall score of 4.9

thats a big difference. and i don't know if it matters or not, but the end result is that it feels better, the U.A.C. didn't tic me off or require me to screw with the settings and it was the easiest OS i ever installed. admittedly, i'v only been with 7 for a couple of days. but it feels to me like a very different environment.

[The_happy_switcher]

How many of you are gonna 'upgrade' to Vista SP3, aka Windows7?

[Renegade Knight]

Vista I paid for. 7 will come with the PC. I"m not paying for what I should have had to begin with. Then I'll install OS-X and fix my main gripe about my MacBook (which is hte laptop itself).

[cpopken]

You are too late AppleRocks, Woodslawn already beat you too it.^^^

[The_happy_switcher]

Now I know how Microsoft generates so much revenue. They are able to convince the sheep to buy the same OS with a different name every 2-3 years.

[pithenumber]

that's how Apple makes cash
Linux is the only one making an OS for a reason other than making cash

[seven7dust]

@pithenumber
Apple's Software revenues make up only 5% of Total revenue !
plus OSX is only 129$ compared to 300$ for the Windows Equivalent

[monkeyfun14]

@seven

I can get a copy of Vista Ultimate for $130

[man_w_balls]

IMPORTANT TIP:

If you have a multi-boot system, be sure to disconnect (physically) any hard drives that you don't want Windows 7 RC to fuçk up!
I installed it to a specifically dedicated separate partition on a separate drive from my main boot drive where I have Windows XP and a Unix OS in a dual-boot setup. Guess what? Windows 7 still broke everything! P.O.S.
Even though I explicitly specified a separate drive and partition, Windows 7 erased everything from my Windows XP partition on the separate hard drive, plus all the bootloaders present on my system. In other words, nothing worked after Windows 7's installer ran. Not even Windows 7! I got a big fat blue screen, just like old XP's BSOD.
The nerve of those M$ bastards - they think they own everybody's PC! The installer was so intrusive that it removed my separate hard drive's bootloader and erased everything on my XP partition. Somehow when I gave the command to format drive 2, partition 1 and install Win7, the installer formatted drive 0 partition 2 AND drive 2 partition 1, and installed Win7 bootloader on both hard drives. Luckily my other drive uses GUID partition table so it couldn't comprehend how to fuçk it up.
But damn! Now I've lost all my progress on GTA IV on Windows XP.
Fuçk you Microsoft.

[MongooseProXC]

Sounds like you broke it yourself with unnecessary excessiveness.

[man_w_balls]

Mongoose:
No. The problem is Microsoft's design, as it clearly refused to play nice in a multi-OS system. As a computer researcher/experimenter, I need every OS that I can find room for.
The Windows 7 installer deleted data from drives that it was not even supposed to touch, as it was directed to install to an empty drive, but it DELETED DATA FROM OTHER DRIVES. That sucks.

[vlad98]

I tried to get it but installation failed. Did not detect my SATA drive. Not a good move, MS! Moving back to my Windows XP so far.

[robert1275]

I have been using the Windows 7 release candidate as a test to see if it would upgrade my Vista without problems and it did exactly that. I also made a fresh install onto several test PCs and all went well. I have seen some install issues on the Windows 7 forums but I am sure these will be ironed out quickly by Microsoft. I haven't had one issue with Windows 7 yet. Even SLI works well.

I like the sentence:

"It does all the important stuff--it let me write this blog, use Twitter, and play games on Facebook".

What a about the non so-important stuff? Any hint?

[MongooseProXC]

So does a mac but it doesn't mean that it is any good.

[Joey2250]

Win7= Vista SP
Logic (Version #s)
WinXP = Win 5.x
Vista = Win 6.0
Win7 = Win 6.1
By the definition of version numbers, Windows 7 is only a REVISION of Vista, not a new version.

The OSX argument is stupid as a retort, because YES they are "service packs" OSX means OS 10.x and everyone has been of the format 10.x so DUH all you are doing is stating the obvious. Apple as never tried to cover up the fact that it is releasing 10.6 next. Windows on the other hand releases a version 6.1 and calls it 7 to fool you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows

[pithenumber]

10.5.0
10.5.1
10.5.2
10.5.3
10.5.4
10.5.5
10.5.6
10.6??? it should be 10.5.7 if what you said is true

[dmackdaddy]

I too have been using BETA and now RC1 as my main work laptop for months (weeks with RC1) and have had no glitches so far. I have an 32Bith HP laptop at work with 2GB of RAM that is probably from 2005 and it was running like crap with XP and Vista and now runs like a new 2009 machine would. I have nothing but props for WIN7!

At home I upgraded my 2008 Dual Core Gateway with RC1 64bit with 3GB of RAM and that thing screams! My main desktop at home is also a Dual Core, which I will backup and then try an upgrade on to see how it goes but will probably end up doing a fresh install with a 15K RPM hard drive and just keep the back up as an mountable image.

In either case, WIN7 is going to be good when everyone else gets to use it will be even better;.

[dmackdaddy]

I too have been using BETA and now RC1 as my main work laptop for months (weeks with RC1) and have had no glitches so far. I have an 32Bith HP laptop at work with 2GB of RAM that is probably from 2005 and it was running like crap with XP and Vista and now runs like a new 2009 machine would. I have nothing but props for WIN7!

At home I upgraded my 2008 Dual Core Gateway with RC1 64bit with 3GB of RAM and that thing screams! My main desktop at home is also a Dual Core, which I will backup and then try an upgrade on to see how it goes but will probably end up doing a fresh install with a 15K RPM hard drive and just keep the back up as an mountable image.

In either case, WIN7 is going to be good when everyone else gets to use it will be even better;.

[maeckg]

Note to commenter "man_w_balls": With Vista, MS began a whole new boot loader, so if you have other OS already installed, you will need to use something like EasyBSD to change the boot loader. Not sure what happened to your installation, but I have installed Vista and Windows 7 several times on multiboot systems including an Ubuntu installation with no problems and no overwriting of a partition. One issue could be the Drive 0 / partition 0.position. It is a well known stategy to install the oldest version first to that position as a sacrifice the original IBMDOS beast, then install anything else to another partition. Life will be easier.
Before installing anything, I backed up my new laptop so I had some sort of recovery disk since no system DVD came with it, but shrunk with Vista Disk Management single harddrive which had preinstalled Vista so I could create a separate partition for my user data and another for a future Windows 7 installation. That paid off nicely when I installed Windows 7 RC this weekend/ took less than 40 minutes.I like a fresh start so do not use the Easy Transfer, but my own files are safe on my user partition.
By the way, Windows 7 installer has a little button bottom left below box showing available drives which helps with easy partitioning in case you want to make some adjustments. This helped my with another multiboot system so I could right size a drive. Much easier than the old days with fdisk.

[man_w_balls]

I have 2 SATA drives and 1 IDE drive. Windows 7 was directed to install to the empty IDE drive. Then it proceeded to install plus delete all other bootloaders and replace them with its own. Including the SATA drives which it should not have touched. It even formatted the Windows XP partition on the SATA drive!
But I did have everything else backed up already to the other SATA drive, which it couldn't touch. Now I just have the hassle of reloading XP and all that rigamarole. Microsoft's bootloaders and setup procedures are inferior by design, and they need to die (and they will on my system).

OS X 10.0(cheetah) $129
OS X 10.1(puma) free
OS X 10.2(jaguar) $129
OS X 10.3(panther) $129
OS X 10.4(tiger) $129
OS X 10.5(leopard) $129
Total= $645

OS X 10.6(snow leopard) $129?
Total=$774
I guess OS X is worth every penny, huh?

and people can't stand the price they pay for windows. atleast the service packs are free.

correction

OS X 10.0(cheetah) march 2001 $129
OS X 10.1(puma) Sept. 2001 free until Dec. 2001 OS X 10.0(cheetah) $129
OS X 10.2(jaguar) $129
OS X 10.3(panther) $129
OS X 10.4(tiger) $129
OS X 10.5(leopard) $129
Total= $774

OS X 10.6(snow leopard) $129?
total= $903

[Kev_Orng]

My experience was different;
10.1 Puma free with my computer, 2002
10.3 Panther $129, 2004
10.5 Leopard free with my computer, 2008

Total: $129

That's pretty good, actually. Didn't have to pay extra for a bare minimum of acceptable features either.

But that's just me, I'm not the type of person to buy every version if the old one is working fine. If I was a windows user, I'd still be on XP until I couldn't buy software for it anymore.

That being said, a Service Pack is more or less a necessary patch to fix bugs, whereas different versions of OSX are usually actual changes in features, stability and UI.

Anyways, Panther was a perfectly usable and stable operating system for the 4 years i used it, although by the middle of 2008 I was starting to have performance issues with some newer software. Panther owes me nothing, it was money well spent.

[seven7dust]

No one's forcing upgrades on you !
Apple just Improves their Products on a regular basis
unlike the largest and most Efficient Software company in the world { no Prizes For guessing who that is }

[Thunderbuck]

RE Win7 == Vista SP3

There's some truth in this; the UI hasn't changed much, superbar notwithstanding. There's a fair amount going on "under the hood", though, that kind of justify this as a new version.

Worth bearing something important in mind: Vista was an INTERIM VERSION. It was intended to transition users from the old NT kernel to a newer, more secure version. Vista brought us new Windows infrastructure such as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). These were significant new developments based on managed code. Only in the past year or so have they seen widespread support from developers.

The trouble with Vista is that it needed to maintain legacy support as it introduced these new technologies; any OS that has to keep a foot in the past like that faces problems.

Windows 7 improves on three fronts: the new technologies have improved, more current programs and drivers support them, and MS is using virtualization for legacy support. A good example of maturing tech: in Vista, each open window was held both in RAM and in graphics RAM, meaning it was occupying double the memory it actually had to. What this meant was that as the user opened more windows, he had less RAM to run applications. In Win7, these windows are only maintained in g-RAM, meaning a MUCH smaller hit on system performance.

VirtualPC isn't so much an app in Windows 7 as a suite of virtualization features for the OS; it's integrated very tightly. XP Mode is a VERY significant shift for Windows; it's an easy, destined-to-be-widely-supported way to install and run legacy apps. And it's almost perfectly transparent (launch times are a bit slow; an acceptable compromise as far as I'm concerned).

I believe that as of today, Windows 2000 stands as the high-water mark in Microsoft's history, but I think Win7 might just prove to top it.

[Angmarr]

Win 7 is an awesome improvement, better than what apple comes with @ the least!

[pwa1970]

CNET ought to just preload the comments from each Windows 7 story on to the newest Windows 7 story, its like reading the same book over and over and over...those who love Apple, GREAT, those that love Windows, GREAT, lets all be happy! They both are good or they wouldnt sell the way they do and both have reasons to keep trying on the next version...its the way of the world, always something new and exciting to discover!

[MoKraak]

Sounds like Vista ME to me.