Windows 7: Yea or Nay?

[Albuquerque]

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)

I'm using vanilla Realtek onboard audio that came with my Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4. It had significant issues in XP if the system is under load (which makes sense, because it's a software solution anyway) that have never once recurred under Vista (which also makes sense, because the brand new audio stack has monumental changes that reduce latency along with core features of Vista that allow for far better thread scheduling under duress.) Further, I've had three hundred Vista machines go through automated build process framework that I architected, and none of them in had any issues with audio at all. A few of those machines (IBM Thinkpad T400) had problems with the switchable video option, but that was resolved by a manufacturer driver. Another random few had bluescreen issues (IBM T60/T61) that were later found to be caused by a malfunction in the docking station of all things.

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

My last XP system was a 7900GT and suffered the same problem, and I have used a GeForce Ti500, a modded Radeon 9500np, and a Radeon x800 before that last NV part. All of these had problems with alt-tabbing in XP. And startup times on Vista were far better than XP on my system, along the lines of 30% or so.

I bet you`re older than XP, wanna finish that line of tought ?

Sure. The average lifespan of an modern operating system is probably at MOST a decade. The average lifespan of a human is about 60 years, give or take based on your environment. When I get to 60 years old, there damned well better be someone coming in behind me with bigger, better and broader ideas than mine. I have no problem with that, and would be honestly concerned if anything else were really the case.

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.

I think you can look at anything and find the negatives, just like you can look at something else and entirely ignore the negatives. It's called bias, and it's a standard human trait. I think you've discovered your own. NT 6 and later (Vista and up) have massive changes to thread scheduling that greatly enhance multitasking performance under high load, power utilization, far more I/O throughput and prioritization under high load, far better logging output for "basic" system support staff (like our contracted helpdesk), far better system recovery options (like instanced copies of documents that you've saved), far better remote management functionality and group policy capabilites -- it has WORLDS of benefit over XP and 2000.

Just because you either A: don't use it or B: don't see it does not negate the fact that these things DO exist.

 

[NRP]

Hell yeah, me and Albuquerque were the last dudes to rock XP+7900GT on AGP!! (I still have mine)

OT, I think I like Vista's UI a little better than W7's. Never had one single problem with either one however. Honestly, I never understood all the FUD about new versions of Windows. Especially from people who purport to be tech enthusiasts.

 

[Davros]

Here ya go a proper file manager for win 7
http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm

 

[Kurt]

XP on the desktop and Vista on laptop for three+ years now. Still prefer XP user interface. Stability-wise never had a problem with XP, so it's a draw.

 

[Npl]

My last XP system was a 7900GT and suffered the same problem, and I have used a GeForce Ti500, a modded Radeon 9500np, and a Radeon x800 before that last NV part. All of these had problems with alt-tabbing in XP. And startup times on Vista were far better than XP on my system, along the lines of 30% or so.

I was talking about startup-times of Applications

Sure. The average lifespan of an modern operating system is probably at MOST a decade. The average lifespan of a human is about 60 years, give or take based on your environment. When I get to 60 years old, there damned well better be someone coming in behind me with bigger, better and broader ideas than mine. I have no problem with that, and would be honestly concerned if anything else were really the case.

The difference is that OS`s dont work worse than at the beginning with higher age. XP served me well enough close to 10 years ago and it does even better now with faster hardware.

I think you can look at anything and find the negatives, just like you can look at something else and entirely ignore the negatives. It's called bias, and it's a standard human trait. I think you've discovered your own. NT 6 and later (Vista and up) have massive changes to thread scheduling that greatly enhance multitasking performance under high load, power utilization, far more I/O throughput and prioritization under high load, far better logging output for "basic" system support staff (like our contracted helpdesk), far better system recovery options (like instanced copies of documents that you've saved), far better remote management functionality and group policy capabilites -- it has WORLDS of benefit over XP and 2000.

Just because you either A: don't use it or B: don't see it does not negate the fact that these things DO exist.

A for half of those changes, and as B: I dont care what supposed "improvements" Vista/7 ships with, I look at the result and particularly IO performance is lower than XP. Might be I dont see an advantage unless I have tons of IO running at which point 7 is unusable and XP is "more" unusable - this is not the workloads I need, and on everyday work XP is faster for me.

At the end of the day I`m still using Windows 7, but not because of its (partly marketing/asymptotic) improvements but the expected lack of support in the near future.

 

[Davros]

regarding vista/win7 on my pc i notice no difference between xp\vista but on other peoples pc's vista is as slow as hell

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'll say Yea, but it's not an overwhelming Yea, just an approving Yea. I'd recommend upgrading, but I still don't like some things about it.

 

[Davros]

My Tip

"Start menu replacement utility Classic Shell adds back some of the missing features in Windows 7 or Vista that used to exist in XP—like the Classic-style Start Menu.

During the installation process, you can choose to install two optional pieces—the first is the Classic Start Menu, which is a full-featured replacement that includes drag and drop, recent documents, and keyboard navigation. The second is Classic Explorer, a plugin for Windows Explorer that adds a toolbar with buttons for Up, Delete, and Copy/Paste, changes the file copying UI to look like XP, and a number of other changes. You can install one or both of these components, so if you want the start menu but don't want the explorer plugin, it won't waste resources on your system."

 

[Kurt]

My Tip

"Start menu replacement utility Classic Shell adds back some of the missing features in Windows 7 or Vista that used to exist in XP—like the Classic-style Start Menu.

During the installation process, you can choose to install two optional pieces—the first is the Classic Start Menu, which is a full-featured replacement that includes drag and drop, recent documents, and keyboard navigation. The second is Classic Explorer, a plugin for Windows Explorer that adds a toolbar with buttons for Up, Delete, and Copy/Paste, changes the file copying UI to look like XP, and a number of other changes. You can install one or both of these components, so if you want the start menu but don't want the explorer plugin, it won't waste resources on your system."

I want the classic explorer thingie but for Vista. I never understood why they changed it in the first place. I hate having to have some side panel open to navigate with any semblance of convenience, instead of the old up, back forth etc. And don't get me started on the bloated 'intelligent' toolbar in Vista. Just because there is one Audio file in a folder doesn't mean I need a whole bunch of icons clutter up the top of the window. Also the path view and number of files / size needs make a come back. Win98SE had it right.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Can't answer this question or the poll.

While both Vista and Win7 are HUGELY better than XP, Win7 isn't always better than Vista and Vista isn't always better than Win7.

Versus XP there's just no comparison. XP is just plain horrible in comparison to both. I now physically cringe everytime I need to use an XP machine.

I like Vista. It does everything great. Then again it helps that all my hardware had proper working drivers when it launched so I never had the bad first impressions that many Nvidia, Creative and HP printer using people had. The only negative was the subpar network file copy operations due to the broadcom network chip on my motherboard at the time. I still have no clue if Broadcom ever resolved that issue with their network chips.

Win7 actually improves the user experience in many ways (no need to install codec packs to play the majority of media files for instance), but degrades the experience in other ways (absolutely FUBAR'd explorer for instance).

So if there was an option for "Win some/Lose some," that would be my choice.

That said, I one machine on Win7 and one machine on Vista. Vista machine won't be getting upgraded as there's no need. Win7 doesn't warrant upgrading from Vista, IMO. But neither do I regret entirely upgrading my main machine.

Regards,
SB

 

[jaredpace]

I like XP better. Win7 is nice, though.

 

[Florin]

I don't think either Vista or Windows 7 are particularly bad at anything. I am more comfortable with the XP user interface, though.

 

[Svensk Viking]

I have always thought that those not liking Vista never gave Vista SP1 and Vista SP2 a chance


What I really, REALLY hate with Win7 is that they butchered the classic menu...Vista's classic menu is as it should be, whereas Win7's feels like Win95

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I jumped from XP to Win7 64 - I wanted support for my 64 bit processor and all of my 4 gig of RAM. Generally, I've been quite happy. Win7 is more stable, and able to handle larger jobs, deals with disc access better, multi-tasks better, etc. Even program and hardware compatibility is pretty good.

Sure there are some annoying niggles and certainly stuff that should have been improved from XP that hasn't been, but overall, I think it's a necessary step if you have more up to date hardware and software to run.

 

[eloic]

Thank you for all your comments and opinions.

Most of you agree on Windows 7 being a better OS, but I also see totally different opinions.

It seems that this isn't as objective as I thought, after all...

 

[Blazkowicz]

I've suffered an awful bug, and didn't know the reason - a friend couldn't add files from a USB thumb drive into windows media player, after fucking with it I tell her to download winamp.. try lite edition then full, drag'n'drop didn't work (winamp showed a "forbidden" mouse cursor).
the point of winamp and clones is to just drag'n'drop files in an easy playlist, dammit .

not even vlc accepted it. and a right-click on a file or selection shows no shell extension to add files in windows media player or winamp.

no idea why it went wrong but it irked me. in the end my ghetto laptop made for the 3rd world with puppy linux and an audio player I've never heard of gave us music from the USB mp3 drive.
I already thought windows 7 is a no-brainer (good) except for the file manager. now, that's easily the worst file manager I've ever used, I absolutely hate it

if I get it someday the first thing I'll install after firefox will be a 3rd party file manager.
and I had a semi-good impression with Vista's file manager.. (it's crippled, but looked nice and was better than XP's default for grandma)

 

[Albuquerque]

I've suffered an awful bug, and didn't know the reason - a friend couldn't add files from a USB thumb drive into windows media player, after fucking with it I tell her to download winamp.. try lite edition then full, drag'n'drop didn't work (winamp showed a "forbidden" mouse cursor).
the point of winamp and clones is to just drag'n'drop files in an easy playlist, dammit .

not even vlc accepted it. and a right-click on a file or selection shows no shell extension to add files in windows media player or winamp.

no idea why it went wrong but it irked me. in the end my ghetto laptop made for the 3rd world with puppy linux and an audio player I've never heard of gave us music from the USB mp3 drive.
I already thought windows 7 is a no-brainer (good) except for the file manager. now, that's easily the worst file manager I've ever used, I absolutely hate it

if I get it someday the first thing I'll install after firefox will be a 3rd party file manager.
and I had a semi-good impression with Vista's file manager.. (it's crippled, but looked nice and was better than XP's default for grandma)

Something else is broken on that box; there's nothing in Win7's explorer that denies playing music from a USB flash device. Or USB-attached HDD. Or from my phone connected with a USB dongle.

 

[Mize]

If seen particular USB chipsets refuse FAT16. Is it FAT16 by chance?