Re: Should I upgrade to Windows 7?

**War.mongeR1** · 09-17-2009, 07:54 PM

Well, yesterday, my laptop decided to take a dump on me. It was running Windows Vista and hasn't had any real problems for about 2 years now. For some inexplicable reason, after a firefox update and restart, it decided to dump its boot file. Anyhoo, I'm gonna need my laptop for work and was wondering if I should bother chasing down a copy of Windows Vista or should I wait just a few weeks for Windows 7?

When I bought the computer, it told me to make a backup disc of Windows (which I never bothered doing), and it never came with Vista discs.

What would you all suggest I do?

**ChiefBoatsRet** · 09-17-2009, 09:35 PM

Call the computer company and they will send you a disc, if you dont whine hard enough they will want some cash for their trouble.

**Acreo Aeneas** · 09-18-2009, 09:41 AM

They're supposed to include the Vista backup disk. So whine and tell them they never included it when they were supposed to.

I'm upgrading shortly. So just checking and double-checking to make sure my files are backed up. Hope to see everyone in a few hours time.

**War.mongeR1** · 09-18-2009, 02:15 PM

Originally Posted by Acreo Aeneas

They're supposed to include the Vista backup disk. So whine and tell them they never included it when they were supposed to.

I'm upgrading shortly. So just checking and double-checking to make sure my files are backed up. Hope to see everyone in a few hours time.

Good luck, Acreo! I think I'll be buying Win 7 once it's released. Sounds good!

**Acreo Aeneas** · 09-18-2009, 11:49 PM

Well, I have half of my programs reinstalled and I've had one restart since installing the nVidia drivers (190.96). No BSOD upon restart which tells me the Win7 drivers are much more mature and stable than that for Vista's even though the driver model from what I understand hasn't changed from Vista to Windows 7. This speaks volumes about nVidia and probably ATI/AMD in that they are just poor-to-bad with releasing good stable drivers and support for their products.

Anywho, I don't want to give the impression that one should "try Windows 7 if you have a persistent graphics-related BSOD" since it's such a extreme solution. At the same time, it's worked me so I guess going from XP or Vista to Windows 7 just to solve something like that may not be as extreme of a solution as I originally thought. Especially if you are a full-time "higher education" student and can get a free copy of Windows 7.

I have two games reinstalled, GTA IV and CoD 4, but have tested neither of them offline or online. So I'll have to post back on that later when I can find time with my new busy schedule.

The JumpList thingy isn't as great as I thought. If you have more than 10 or so items in the list (with categories shown or not), it prematurely cuts off the rest of the list and doesn't show the rest. So it's only a half-hearted attempt at combining the Quick Launch with the new "superbar" pin and quick list features. The new "Sticky Notes" is now a separate app and no longer a sidebar gadget. It gained the ability to resize and be colored in more than 3 shades, BUT you change font family or font size of the note text. Maybe they'll fix that later on with a patch, but so far it doesn't look like it will happen.

For some reference, I have Windows 7 Professional x64 installed (RTM) and did it through a clean install using a 8 GB A-Data USB flash drive (F8 after POST to boot from a UFD). No problems with the install or set up/personalization of Windows 7. Unfortunately, and this may be due to the limited read speed of the UFD, there was a good 15-20 minutes where there was a wallpaper loading screen with only the blue circle showing BEFORE the first window shows up asking what language, keyboard, and country you are in to install Windows 7 pops up. After that screen, I waited another 10 minutes with no other pop-ups other than a single message "Copying files...". At which point the usual install process came on. Hopefully that helps others when they install Windows 7 on their machines. Total time from initial loading to when I was in the Windows 7 desktop is approximately one hour. That's higher than the 40 minute estimate (see the chart Monkey posted in the other thread) that MS engineer said a clean install and a medium-end system should take.

**Polska** · 09-19-2009, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Acreo Aeneas

Well, I have half of my programs reinstalled and I've had one restart since installing the nVidia drivers (190.96). No BSOD upon restart which tells me the Win7 drivers are much more mature and stable than that for Vista's even though the driver model from what I understand hasn't changed from Vista to Windows 7. This speaks volumes about nVidia and probably ATI/AMD in that they are just poor-to-bad with releasing good stable drivers and support for their products.

Anywho, I don't want to give the impression that one should "try Windows 7 if you have a persistent graphics-related BSOD" since it's such a extreme solution. At the same time, it's worked me so I guess going from XP or Vista to Windows 7 just to solve something like that may not be as extreme of a solution as I originally thought. Especially if you are a full-time "higher education" student and can get a free copy of Windows 7.

I have two games reinstalled, GTA IV and CoD 4, but have tested neither of them offline or online. So I'll have to post back on that later when I can find time with my new busy schedule.

As a quick addon to that, I do quite a bit of PC gaming and have not had any issues yet since install, so for about 3 weeks (Win 7 Pro RTM). Played Starcraft, GH3, Red Alert 3, Fifa 10 demo, Street Fighter 4 and Heroes of Newereth (mostly this game). I had some driver issues in the RC, but it looks like whatever they were, newer win 7 drivers fixed.

**Acreo Aeneas** · 09-19-2009, 02:39 PM

Just an update from me...

Tested CoD4 online. No problems, only that I'm pissed at the amount of rampant cheating and the inability of PunkBuster in doing it's job/function.

I found a better jumplist app than the JumpList Launcher above: 7stack. The problem I found why the JL Launcher wouldn't display more than 18 items was because the up/down buttons to adjust the maximum displayed items is completely grayed out in v5. The new one I'm using is the 7stack application. It's easier to manage but requires me to have shortcuts in folders in order to use it. The other downside is 2 of the 3 jumplist display options is hard to read (text on a glossy/transparent background). It's not very polished, but overall the added ability to change the app's icon that shows in the pinned taskbar is a nice plus.

Startup to desktop seems to be a bit slower while shut down is maybe twice as fast. The desktop loading is much quicker or at least seems that way. However, going from sleep/lock back to desktop seemed to intermittenly disconnected my external hard drive. I didn't notice this until last night when I was using the drive and it suddenly disconnected (though it was physically connected and on).

It would seem the memory footprint has dropped or maybe even memory management has improved over Vista significantly. With basically the same amount of applications loading at startup, I only eat 28% or so of my 4 GBs of RAM vs. in Vista I would eat 38%-45% of my total RAM.

I tried out the side-by-side window feature where the windows blow up and each take up half of your screen. You basically drag the window until your cursor hits the side and then the outline of the window will expand to 50% of your screen. Pretty cool. Same with the Aero Peek, pretty nice. The ability to do a slideshow wallpaper is perhaps the one feature I liked the most. Now I don't have to run a separate app to do that function. Having "Fill" and "Center" back is great for those wallpapers that don't have the same aspect ratio as my monitor.

**Acreo Aeneas** · 09-20-2009, 02:15 PM

Crap. Maya won't install and installer keeps telling me "your version of Windows is not supported" even if I run it in compatibility mode with Vista or XP. Look's like I'm stuck travel back-and-forth to school to use their computers for it.

**ScratchMonkey** · 10-30-2009, 08:31 PM

Support vendor suggests that you should wait until SP1 before upgrading.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10...rm-Warns-Users
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...ort_firm_warns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescuecom

**Acreo Aeneas** · 10-30-2009, 10:10 PM

Which is why I did a clean install. No problems.

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