Windows 7

[Blazkowicz]

that brings memories of using a floppy disk, or a bad/dirty CD giving a benign Blue Screen!

another annoyance is when a USB drive chokes and the whole desktop does so.

 

[Davros]

When I open the add/remove programs panel, do I get the Spinning Torch of Seeking for 15 inexplicable seconds? That sort of thing.

be thankful your not me, mine has over 300 entries

 

[hoom]

Acrobat plug-in for Firefox I'm looking directly at you in Tower-O-Sauron style!

Indeed, I'm fucking sick of waiting around for Flash stuff to stop causing FF to be non-responsive/going to a Flash heavy (badly coded Flash?) website & seeing my CPU usage shoot way up, with Windows responsiveness dropping off until I close that site.

Could be FF handling Flash badly I guess but its certainly easier to blame closed source Flash

When I happen to open a folder on an h/d that's spun down, does the entire desktop freeze while the drive spins up?

Yup, still happens on the release candidate & I think the only way to stop it on any OS is to either go all solid state (maybe in a decade at my salary/current prices) or keep the drives spinning.

 

[Tokelil]

Proves in studio please.
So far I've seen 0 comparisons where objective measurments show significant performance difference

I read about great performance improvements every where (esp. forums), but personally I think Vista SP1/SP2 was pretty much the same. I have been running the W7 RC from the day it was released and the first weeks it was faster, like all new OS installs are. Now with all my usual applications installed, I can't really tell the difference any more. A few cases the GUI is more responsive though. Most of the improvements I have read about (removing the dispatcher lock, memory reduction) have little relevance on my system I think. (Quad core, 8 GB RAM)

 

[Rangers]

Doesn't Windows 7 at least boot considerably faster than Vista?

I hope so.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Doesn't Windows 7 at least boot considerably faster than Vista?

I hope so.

Meh, who cares about boot up times when you have sleep mode?

 

[suryad]

Meh, who cares about boot up times when you have sleep mode?

Hmm good point isnt sleep mode less wear and tear on the ol hardware than a complete reboot? Perhaps I should start doing the same.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Hmm good point isnt sleep mode less wear and tear on the ol hardware than a complete reboot? Perhaps I should start doing the same.

I don't know about wear and tear but its certainly hugely faster. I can go from power on to desktop in about 5 seconds. Button to power down in a few seconds more.

And i'm only on a 2.4Ghz C2D with 2GB RAM and a fairly fat Windows install.

 

[Kyyla]

Meh, who cares about boot up times when you have sleep mode?

Exactly. I only shutdown when Windows update requires it. W7 seems to boot up a bit faster than Vista though.

 

[hoom]

So I noticed that the windows performance ranking thingie said I have DX10, thought it would show DX10.1 with my 4870 & decided to go hunting.
Dxdiag says its DX11 (RC build 7100), is that the real DX11 or some sort of preview build?

 

[Kaotik]

So I noticed that the windows performance ranking thingie said I have DX10, thought it would show DX10.1 with my 4870 & decided to go hunting.
Dxdiag says its DX11 (RC build 71000), is that the real DX11 or some sort of preview build?

It's real DX11 and it's been in earlier Win7 builds too.
edit:
DXDiag's "Display" pages DDI version tells you what DX-level your hardware can actually do, in your case it'll show 10.1

 

[hoom]

So I should actually be getting the benefit of the multi-threading improvements that are supposed to be back compatible then?

 

[Blazkowicz]

Hmm good point isnt sleep mode less wear and tear on the ol hardware than a complete reboot? Perhaps I should start doing the same.

with sleep mode you can completely shut off your PC more often ; if I use it often (when taking a dump, go dinner etc.) I may worry about the hard drive spinning down and spinning up

a few seconds of booting time and shutdown time is negligible regarding wear and tear (I don't see it much different than regular use)

 

[suryad]

I tried out the sleep feature and I dont think I am going to go back to shutdown and restart ever again unless some windows update happens and that requires a reboot! This is quite cool. I literally press the power button and by the time I turn the LCD on, my machine is ready to go!!!

 

[Bludd]

I like hibernation more than sleep mode, because sleep mode requires the system to be powered for it to work.

 

[suryad]

Hibernation > sleep mode.

Howzzat? Because if there is a power outage everything will be really jacked up because sleep I think uses a minimal amount of voltage to persist the system state in RAM? I am probably way wrong here but I look forward to an explanation.

 

[Bludd]

I updated my post.

 

[hoom]

Yeah, I go for Hibernation instead of Sleep too.
Its slower but you don't loose all your unsaved stuff if there is a power cut overnight/while at work.

Sometimes I seem to have trouble getting my PC to come out of the Sleep mode if I've left it on & gone away for a while & auto sleep mode kicks in.
It does actually seem to come back OK (more like a hibernation) after pushing the reset button, which is nice.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I tried out the sleep feature and I dont think I am going to go back to shutdown and restart ever again unless some windows update happens and that requires a reboot! This is quite cool. I literally press the power button and by the time I turn the LCD on, my machine is ready to go!!!

even better is when sleep happens in the middle of music playback

 

[Tokelil]

With 4GB and 8GB RAM, hibernation is almost as slow as a reboot on my machines. Sleep is cool on my laptop though and really fast.