Windows 7: Yea or Nay?

[eloic]

Hi.

Ok, Microsoft's last OS is Windows 7, a step further from the Vista iteration of the Windows family.

It is a fact that a lot of people disliked Vista. Even some people who bought new PCs with Vista, uninstalled it to install Windows XP (which I myself own).

So, it seems that Microsoft wanted to release something that could end all this "hate", addressing compatibility issues, accessibility, performance and so on.

What do you think? Is it better than Vista?

New features such as DirectX 11 are pushing the consumer to upgrade their OS one step further from XP, but I don't want Vista and I wonder if Windows 7 is better.

 

[Grall]

It is a fact a lot of people disliked Vista because they were,

A: stupid
B: ignorant
C: both

...Anyway, what's the point of this topic? It looks rather sockpuppety in my perhaps overly cynical eyes.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Why do you not want Vista/7? Can you give a single reason? Have you at least tried it, or have your formed your opinion on hearsay?

 

[John Reynolds]

It is a fact a lot of people disliked Vista because they were,

A: stupid
B: ignorant
C: both

...Anyway, what's the point of this topic? It looks rather sockpuppety in my perhaps overly cynical eyes.

But, but. . .Win7 is sooo different and better than Vista.

I'm still running Vista on my main machine.

 

[deeFive]

i liked vista it made my pc life easier, i liked the look of areo (i stoped skining at this time, back in the xp days i used to run a litestep desktop with all kinds of mods) and loved the way that media center worked with my 360! i currently like windows 7 it feels like a good solid evolotion of vista the only issues i have with it are that i would like more "power user" options in windows explorer (up arrow ect...) and the fact its due to be replaced in two years time (even then i will be happy if they add options to sort by expandable pile on the desktop and the windows phone start hub to replace the task bar!)

so all in all i do like windows 7!

 

[Bludd]

It is a fact a lot of people disliked Vista because they were,

A: stupid
B: ignorant
C: both

I don't know about that. Skipping Vista and all the teething-problems sure seemed enlightened to me.

 

[Davros]

I don't dislike vista but I'm glad I didn't spend money on transparent windows and a gui that isn't as good

 

[Mize]

I switched my main rig from linux to W7-64 so I could play games. For literally everything else the Linux install and GUI was faster and more responsive. I even bumped the video card from an 8800GTS to a 5970 when I installed W7-64. One the plus side, the games rock.

 

[Npl]

Its inevitable to upgrade at some point and installing WinXP is taking significantly more time with adding all patches & drivers.

Other than that I would still pick WinXP as I never had this short hangs and stopping audio (unless heavily abusing the OS), file operations and UI were notable faster. Win7 certainly doesnt feel like much of an improvement but rather like an OS totally overburdened with crap... like Vista but not to the same extent.

 

[digitalwanderer]

The representative from the honorable town of Highland in the are known as "Da Region" does hereby stand and cast his vote most enthusiastically for "YEA!".

 

[Mize]

The representative from the honorable town of Highland in the are known as "Da Region" does hereby stand and cast his vote most enthusiastically for "YEA!".

Dig, man, you've been watching WAY too much C-SPAN.

 

[Albuquerque]

Other than that I would still pick WinXP as I never had this short hangs and stopping audio (unless heavily abusing the OS), file operations and UI were notable faster. Win7 certainly doesnt feel like much of an improvement but rather like an OS totally overburdened with crap... like Vista but not to the same extent.

I feel entirely the opposite, in fact if there's absolutely only ONE thing that VIsta / Seven have EVER done better than XP, it's the audio stack stability. I had more problems with sound hiccups, glitches, or entirely missing audio streams on XP than I've ever had with Vista or Seven.

And as for "overburdened with crap"? I really don't feel it. For me, Vista and Win7 are FAR more responsive to the multitasking that I do than WinXP was. Alt-tabbing out of a game in XP was almost always destined to either crush the entire OS into a massive seething blob of page-to-disk, windows painting onto the screen about as fast as I could've manually type the raster bits into RAM from my keyboard, and about 65% of the time the game would be unrecoverable.

And the framerate increase going from WinXP to Vista on a crossfired system was measurable too. The new graphics stack is FAR better for that particular kind of performance, which granted not a whole lot of people have.

XP is a decade old operating system that needed to be replaced. I'm glad it's going away...

 

[Davros]

what soundcard alby?

 

[Npl]

I feel entirely the opposite, in fact if there's absolutely only ONE thing that VIsta / Seven have EVER done better than XP, it's the audio stack stability. I had more problems with sound hiccups, glitches, or entirely missing audio streams on XP than I've ever had with Vista or Seven.

Well, the opposite for me. And I seen this behaviour on a row of systems. Vista was even worse as it sometimes just totally hanged for 20 seconds or so.
Are you using a Soundcard which bypasses the Software Mixer by any chance? (Creative does AFAIK)

And as for "overburdened with crap"? I really don't feel it. For me, Vista and Win7 are FAR more responsive to the multitasking that I do than WinXP was. Alt-tabbing out of a game in XP was almost always destined to either crush the entire OS into a massive seething blob of page-to-disk, windows painting onto the screen about as fast as I could've manually type the raster bits into RAM from my keyboard, and about 65% of the time the game would be unrecoverable.

Alt-Tabbing was sketchy in WinXP and yes it did mess up the system a couple times for me, but I almost never had a problem with it once I got rid of ATI-drivers.
The graphics stack sure is an improvement, it just pales against the longer startup times and tons of background processes introduced

And the framerate increase going from WinXP to Vista on a crossfired system was measurable too. The new graphics stack is FAR better for that particular kind of performance, which granted not a whole lot of people have.

I wouldnt know, I dont like the idea of having multiple gfx-cards even if I had the money to spend on it. 60 cards outputting 60FPS still means you`re waiting 1 second to be shown each frame (with AFR atleast)

XP is a decade old operating system that needed to be replaced. I'm glad it's going away...

I bet you`re older than XP, wanna finish that line of tought ?
I wouldnt mind a replacement if it were an noteable improvement, Win7 is a bag of up and downs for me. When I switched from 98 to XP I never looked back as 98 died several times a hour when developing programs. I dont see big improvements like that in Win7 anywhere while the downsides are there all the time.

 

[eloic]

It is a fact a lot of people disliked Vista because they were,

A: stupid
B: ignorant
C: both

...Anyway, what's the point of this topic? It looks rather sockpuppety in my perhaps overly cynical eyes.

Excuse me? You may not have 'overly cynical eyes', but you DO have overly rude words, because I'm neither stupid nor ignorant.

 

[eloic]

Why do you not want Vista/7? Can you give a single reason? Have you at least tried it, or have your formed your opinion on hearsay?

I just asked if you all consider that Windows 7 is better than Vista. I never said that I don't want Windows 7.

On Vista, I tried it just a bit. I didn't like it too much, the same way I don't like the amount of resources that needs to run the OS itself, nor the compatibility issues that many users found on it.

 

[eloic]

The representative from the honorable town of Highland in the are known as "Da Region" does hereby stand and cast his vote most enthusiastically for "YEA!".

"Yea", I can see your enthusiasm.

On topic, there are different opinions in this thread, so far... I can't still decide. :-S

 

[swaaye]

I think 7 is superb as long as your machine is okay with it. Older hardware sometimes doesn't work all that well with it. Old notebooks in particular.

I run XP on older hardware, stuff from DX9 days like my notebook with a GeForce 7 Go. XP is much faster for gaming on there for whatever reason. I also "downgraded" a new 12.1" notebook I got that has a gimpy Athlon Neo and a Radeon 3450. XP really doesn't bother me at all on any level.

I run 7 on my desktops with modern dual cores or better and DX10 hardware.

 

[Mize]

I still can't get over how dog slow 7 is on my C2Q@3.6+5870. It must be my slow hitachi HD, but it's maddening.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I didn't really think Vista was all that bad, but I kept mine nicely up-to-date and tweaked to the gills.

I just like Win 7 better. It seems all around quicker to me, and definitely oodles sexier!