Windows 7

If you can make your choices based purely on opinion and hype then what does it matter? The software applications you run and their availability on other platforms is the key here. There is simply no replacement for some applications in the OS X world. The Mac version of Office for instance is not on par, just one major application that is part of my daily life that would prevent me from the switch. I know that this goes both ways as well, I know a die hard Mac addict who couldn't make the switch easily even if he wanted. Months of application research and replacements would cut his productivity to much to make it worth while.
 
If you can make your choices based purely on opinion and hype then what does it matter? The software applications you run and their availability on other platforms is the key here. There is simply no replacement for some applications in the OS X world. The Mac version of Office for instance is not on par, just one major application that is part of my daily life that would prevent me from the switch. I know that this goes both ways as well, I know a die hard Mac addict who couldn't make the switch easily even if he wanted. Months of application research and replacements would cut his productivity to much to make it worth while.

Which is why the world has brought us Bootcamp and similar solutions :).
 
MS moving forward to blend virtualised environments and native apps. If this is successful with customers it could signal that MS can begin dropping "native" BC.

VMware has been doing this for at least a few months with their Workstation 6.5 release. I've tinkered with it quite a bit...
 
If you can make your choices based purely on opinion and hype then what does it matter? The software applications you run and their availability on other platforms is the key here. There is simply no replacement for some applications in the OS X world. The Mac version of Office for instance is not on par, just one major application that is part of my daily life that would prevent me from the switch. I know that this goes both ways as well, I know a die hard Mac addict who couldn't make the switch easily even if he wanted. Months of application research and replacements would cut his productivity to much to make it worth while.

To be honest, I don't use any specialized software and there isn't anything I would miss by going either way. The only exception is the following:

OSX- games, but I have a 360, PS3 and Wii to keep me busy

Windows7 - iphone/ipod touch SDK

And in OSX I can run my Windows XP Pro in Parallels if there's any non-gaming stuff I want to do.

But Windows7 looks pretty strong from the brief time I was able to spend with it. Windows7 on one of those mini Dell PCs would be pretty sweet. I had a hackintosh running OSX for a while, but got rid of it because I couldn't update. I really enjoyed using OSX. Using either will require a new computer because my nForce3 will not work in Windows7, and apparently not even Vista.
 
MS moving forward to blend virtualised environments and native apps. If this is successful with customers it could signal that MS can begin dropping "native" BC.

that sounds good. Not entirely new, we can say the NTVDM does/did this for DOS applications. (or even, the "386 enhanced mode" of windows 3.x). Using the "VM86" mode of x86 processors.

note you can probably do something similar with a linux guest on a windows host, have the Xming X11 server running, and shortcuts that launch a ssh client (putty) connecting to the guest and launching the app. With virtualbox's shared folder, the guest app can work on the host's local files. Same can be done with a linux host off course.

X11 is so great for that kind of integration, remote apps seamlessly integrate with your window management. I wonder if that MS stuff will allow to blend remote apps on your desktop as well as virtualized ones. (Unless it was already done. I only know of microsoft terminal server presenting a full desktop updated in a bitmap fashion)


one wrong quote from that article :
. If there's a major downside, it's one of resource allotment: Virtualized applications still require the overhead of their virtualized OS, so the physical PC will typically need to be a bit beefier than that $399 Dell special.
duh! you can only get dual or quad cores with 2 to 4GB ram nowadays and virtualization is very quick on that.
 
Am I right in thinking you get no d3d with a virtual machine ?
I have seen an option for 3D acceleration in VirtualBox, but I could not go much further in Windows 7 Beta's installation to make sure Aero was working...
A bit off topic, but VirtualBox only support some basic OpenGL 3D support. (Creating a virtual 3d card on the client that sends the commands to the real OpenGL driver on the host) Which ofc. means no Aero in VirtualBox.
VMWare has better 3D support and supports DirectX 9 I think in their newest Workstation edition. (Which isn't free)
 
I've had no real trouble until now (running 7 x64 on an Intel E5200, 4GB DDR2, 6800 GT + FW 181.20), but it seems to have some visible minor issues:
Font scaling is somewhat screwed up in (both FF3 and IE8), with large portions of the same web pages displaying large fonts where there shouldn't be any, and small fonts where they should have been bigger, alternatively.

The second is somewhat more puzzling, but i think the mainboard (Asus P5B-Deluxe WiFi/AP, with the latest 1236 BIOS) and RAM configuration are the culprits.
You see, the 4GB are arranged in a 4x 1GB fashion, with one stick of each brand per channel (two pairs, one from Transcend, the other from Infineon, all at SPD timings).
Now, if i leave the "memory remap" feature enabled in the BIOS, all the native windows apps detect the 4GB, but then i have the occasional long slowdown/freeze, where even Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work for up to a full minute.
If i leave it disabled, then Win7 x64 will detect 4GB on the performance rating screen, but the system info (Start->Search: "System Information") will report 4GB of "Physical Memory" installed, but only 3GB of "Total Physical Memory", as does "Task Manager".
CPU-Z 1.49 detects the correct amount at 4GB. Running on Dual-Channel DDR2-800.

Windows Bug or BIOS limitation ? I know this motherboard supports up to 8GB, so, I'm at a loss about it.

Other than that, it's running beautifully so far.
The major difference ? No more hard drive "scratching", a constant hell of mine whether i run 2, 3, 4GB RAM systems, one or more fast hard drives, 32bit or 64bit versions of Vista, etc.

Hello Inkster, regarding the P5B Deluxe problems you're having I am having similar sort of issues, did you have any problems with Vista and the P5B dlx with 4gb?

When I enable memory remapping to see the full 4GB Windows 7 refuses to start but I can get into safe mode OK.

Do you have any ideas?
 
I had been having a pretty good experience using W7-x64 and had actually started moving my "mission-critical" apps over to start the process of transitioning to 7 as my main OS. It was while trying to install MS Office 2007 that I encountered my first major issue. The installer would always crash. I got around the main installer crashing by selecting the option to install on first execution. This got me further, but all the apps crashed when run. running the SP1 update patch - crash. Updating from Windows Update - failed.

It was during this last failure that one of the new features of the OS intervened. A box popped up listing a known problem caused by the "Customer Experience Improvement" service (How ironic is that?). It then listed all the steps required to work around the issue and after executing those steps everything worked perfectly. The move to integrate troubleshooting help into the OS like this was IMO a stroke of genius and is so much more intuitive than the old methods of searching the web, hoping to match the exact terms you need to pull up a relevant result. I'm very impressed.
 
I got a question for the virtualbox users (if any) how did you get internet working in the guest OS?

Hmm I did some reading and I have some things I can try out but I guess I need to wait till I get home...
 
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I got a question for the virtualbox users (if any) how did you get internet working in the guest OS?

Hmm I did some reading and I have some things I can try out but I guess I need to wait till I get home...
Setting the network setting to Host Interface and it "just worked" for me. (NAT didn't work I think)
 
I had been having a pretty good experience using W7-x64 and had actually started moving my "mission-critical" apps over to start the process of transitioning to 7 as my main OS. It was while trying to install MS Office 2007 that I encountered my first major issue. The installer would always crash. I got around the main installer crashing by selecting the option to install on first execution. This got me further, but all the apps crashed when run. running the SP1 update patch - crash. Updating from Windows Update - failed.

It was during this last failure that one of the new features of the OS intervened. A box popped up listing a known problem caused by the "Customer Experience Improvement" service (How ironic is that?). It then listed all the steps required to work around the issue and after executing those steps everything worked perfectly. The move to integrate troubleshooting help into the OS like this was IMO a stroke of genius and is so much more intuitive than the old methods of searching the web, hoping to match the exact terms you need to pull up a relevant result. I'm very impressed.

Similar experience with installing Visual Studio 2005 on Windows 7. Installer kept dieing. Then it brought up the dialog, I ran the command and it installed.
 
Setting the network setting to Host Interface and it "just worked" for me. (NAT didn't work I think)

Got it working :) Just had to choose a different virtualized card instead of the default one. As soon as I chose the Intel Desktop version I was ready to rock and roll. I am really enjoying the W7 experience. It went ahead and grabbed one update from Microsoft. Really cool. Very not intrusive...just lets you do your own thing. 2 thumbs up from me. I am tempted to just switch completely to this OS! lol though its not a smart idea at least till the RC is out :)
 
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local

1.34 MB (1,415,823 bytes)

Had to delete it four days ago as I had a desktop icon that just wouldn't stick. All better now. :)
 
yes but do you know the max it will go to in xp it wont go higher than 8192k
when i click on start games sometimes it takes a while to open because the pc is fetching all the icons cos they wont fit in the cache
 
Yeah, sorry, after posting the above I figured that was what you were looking for. When I had my icon difficulty (it spread to three icons eventually) I was looking for the same info as I figured I'd try to bump my cache size. I was too chicken to add the registry info that would work for XP and I couldn't find any info on how to change it for Windows 7. I also bailed on hunting through my registry.

I'll check the google again and see if my registry has any matches.
 
Huh, same thing here, took a few seconds to load up my games folder. First time I ever clicked on it and it's at default. Second time I clicked on it it loaded immediately.

My icon cache size didn't budge. 1.34 MB (1,415,823 bytes)

I'll now check another icon heavy folder I have which prior to this loaded right away.

Huh, still loads right up. And so does the games folder.

Interesting. Does Windows recreate the cache at every bootup? Mine says "Modified: ‎Today, ‎January ‎21, ‎2009, ‏‎8 hours ago"

So maybe mine isn't saturated yet.

Edit: Wait, maybe you set Windows to do that automatic update thing they ask you about when you first open the folder? It says it will check for artwork etc. Could that be causing you to get a slow load time?
 
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The beta is not quite stable when under load

So far I had several Opera crashes (which never happened udner Vista last few months), Firefox crashes, Photoshop crashes, twice explorer.exe got stuck doing smth (50% load ie 100 on 1 of cores), 1 Outlook 2007 carsh.
Installing network printer if Win7 does not recognize it is a pain, searching mapped folders does not work, some programs won't install even with the help of troubleshooter.

All above for x64 version.
Also both x64&x86 - when in domain every time one tries to access folders mapped via group policy manually enetering user/pass is required :???:

But it feels much better than Vista beta1
 
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