Windows 7

[Albuquerque]

Weird -- when I installed the newest Cats for Win7/64, it didn't need a reboot. The last set of patches prompted for a reboot, but I postponed. In fact, I think I finally let the machine reboot itself last night, which would be it's first actual reboot in the grand total of 8 days that it's been installed.

 

[Bludd]

Re: Win7 quicklaunch

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/888-quick-launch-enable-disable.html

I've found that pinning things to Start Menu is an adequate surrogate for Quicklaunch.

Pinning stuff to the new task bar takes too much space. I only have Firefox and Windows Explorer pinned there. Or do you actually mean Start Menu because that is not a new feature.

No, I need Quicklaunch. I want to have programs that I need to run with one press but don't are such that they don't stay up for long thus they don't need to be pinned and take up a lot of space. Symantec LiveUpdate is one of those applications.

 

[suryad]

I agree on a lot of points SB but for me the performance was the other way around. W7 the beta and even the RC on same hardware was just so much faster than Vista...sure Vista + SP2 improved a lot and then yes the difference could probably be not noticeable.

 

[Grall]

I called mine "Quicklaunch", just to show 7 who's boss.

Ha ha! Yeah, we gotta put those machines back in their place.

Good tip, but it's crap we have to jump through hoops to get back functionality that was built in from day 1 in previous OSes. I used to put all my games in the quicklaunch bar; it saved a lot of screen estate not having to have shortcuts on the desktop for everything.

I've noticed a surprising amount of rebooting too. Not much less than Vista 32-bit tbh.

Can't say I noticed any less reboots at all than vista. Or XP for that matter.

ATI video drivers required a reboot, despite Win7 doesn't actually need it, from what I read in a recent Ars Technica piece. What a jib.

I'll have to study and see if I see any performance differences later; my Vista startup times were getting ridiculously long after only about 8-9 months since I bought the whole damn PC (less actually, since I reinstalled the darned thing after I bought my Intel SLC SSD)... Boot time up until the login prompt took a LONG time, but load time after login prompt was very short despite starting up a crapload of apps. Curiously, my old Core2 Quad PC also running Vista booted faster to the login prompt using plain old crappy HDDs from a couple years ago, but then took ages from typing in the PW until the desktop showed up. It has gone much longer since last reinstall, so it's next on the list. I intend to blow it clean tomorrow probably (using Vista again), just put in folding and WoW on it.

Now I have (almost) a bare-bones install on the Win7 rig, only steam and skype so far, so boots should be much snappier. I wonder how long it stays that way, with windows rot and all, lol...

 

[hoom]

Or do you actually mean Start Menu because that is not a new feature.

Yup, I only ever had I think 3 icons showing on the taskbar with Quicklaunch, heaps on the menu bit, so the way I use it pinned to Start Menu is being essentially a merger between Start & Quicklaunch.

I don't care if its new or not, its working ok for me & much better than pin to Taskbar.

Here is what I'd settled on back in March after experimenting with the available options:

I have a bunch more icons pinned there now but otherwise much the same setup.

ATI video drivers required a reboot, despite Win7 doesn't actually need it, from what I read in a recent Ars Technica piece. What a jib.

For some reason 9.10 required a reboot but the previous bunch updated without reboot.

 

[Grall]

I'm disappointed that MS didn't finally fix the damn task scheduler in win7, it still juggles tasks around on my i7 between logical and physical cores like a sonofabitch. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy...???????!

 

[3dcgi]

I received my Win7 disk from Amazon today and finished installing a couple hours ago. Now working on re-configuring all my stuff again etc, and already the new taskbar is getting my goat. I can't tell the difference between a running program and starting it from scratch!

Like if I minimize IE it goes down into the dock ripoff MS invented. But the icon stays the same as before I started it! Meh. I miss the old taskbar, is there a way to bring it back coz this thing sucks... *Edit: brought it back, it seems. Phew! I noticed the setting earlier but thought I'd check out the default option first, only to find out I didn't like it AND forgot about the setting! I'm getting too old for this shit...

Now, can I get back the quicklaunch bar also...? It was rather convenient methinks.

On my system it's clear which are running and which aren't. I wonder if there's something weird with your setup. Also, if you didn't notice the link someone posted there's a way to reenable the quick launch bar.

It also loves to reboot at every scheduled windows update I've had so far(two times). It also rebooted when I installed ati CCC. Whatever happened to no more reboots?

I think the Windows Tweaker program I linked earlier can disable the automatic reboots.

 

[Moloch]

I'm disappointed that MS didn't finally fix the damn task scheduler in win7, it still juggles tasks around on my i7 between logical and physical cores like a sonofabitch. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy...???????!

Does that affect performance?

 

[vazel]

I think the Windows Tweaker program I linked earlier can disable the automatic reboots.

I know I can postpone reboots as long as I want I can do that in XP too. But then I won't benefit from the installed updates. I'm just disappointed a reboot-free OS is still a ways off.

 

[Grall]

Does that affect performance?

Yeh, of course it does... It's a context switch after all.

I was hoping to see four cores spiked in CPU use with Win7 when I run my CPU folding clients and four "cores" more or less idle, but instead the CPU useage is all over the place on all eight just like with Vista. WTF!!!

That's gotta be millions of cycles lost every second due to this dumbfuckery.

 

[pcchen]

Yeh, of course it does... It's a context switch after all.

I was hoping to see four cores spiked in CPU use with Win7 when I run my CPU folding clients and four "cores" more or less idle, but instead the CPU useage is all over the place on all eight just like with Vista. WTF!!!

That's gotta be millions of cycles lost every second due to this dumbfuckery.

But context switch is more or less mandatory. It's not like if you have only 8 threads with 8 cores, these threads won't have context switch at all. (In theory, it's possible to do so, but to my understanding no OS actually do it this way).

The only downside of a "core migration" is that some data cached in the local cache (L1 cache, and L2 cache in the case of Nehalem) may have to be purged unnecessarily. However, since both Core 2 Duo and Core i7 have reasonably large shared cache, this is not a very serious problem (if it's ever a problem).

By the way, it's possible in Windows to assign a thread to a particular core. There's an API for this. However, sometimes these assignments put too much restrictions on the scheduler and can make performance worse.

 

[function]

I did some (game benchmark) tests on Vista 32 before switching so I could compare to Win 7, and have just run the first one on Windows 7.

At 800 x 600 (I wanted to test the CPU), the Counter Strike Source video stress test is about 6.1% slower on Windows 7 64 bit. Damn.

I'll try out Resi Evil 5 and Lost Planet and see how multithreaded stuff in affected.

Edit: Resi-Evil 5 benchmarks (800 x 600) are coming in at around 5% slower for the fixed, 5 - 7% slower for the variable.

Also found a nice bug in the Nvidia drivers where whatever image scaling mode you chose and confirm, it then changes back to the "use display scaling" option. Which is fine, because that's what I want to do. Except what this actually does is force the crappy nvidia display scaling.

 

[Arwin]

So I just got shipping confirmation, which means that in about two weeks I might receive my upgrade disc.

Now I was wondering if anyone has experience with upgrading from Vista while having Ubuntu 9 installed also. Can I expect any problems with my Ubuntu install here?

 

[Kaotik]

So I just got shipping confirmation, which means that in about two weeks I might receive my upgrade disc.

Now I was wondering if anyone has experience with upgrading from Vista while having Ubuntu 9 installed also. Can I expect any problems with my Ubuntu install here?

At worst you need to re-do your boot system, as I don't think Vista/Win7's support Linuxes and the upgrade will probably overwrite the bootsector

 

[Broken Hope]

I received my Win7 disk from Amazon today and finished installing a couple hours ago. Now working on re-configuring all my stuff again etc, and already the new taskbar is getting my goat. I can't tell the difference between a running program and starting it from scratch!

How is it not obvious which icons represent running programs and which don't?

It's easy to tell which programs and running and which are in focus just from the taskbar.

 

[Grall]

It's easy to tell which programs and running and which are in focus just from the taskbar.

I don't agree. I found the scheme messy and unclear, especially when I had a bunch of windows all belonging to the same program. For example, Steam was doing re-install from a backup, and I had some different tabs open in IE. Switching between the two was a real drag.

Heck, looking at that pic of yours and I've no real idea which program has focus. The FF icon seems a bit brighter than the other two icons that have a grey background, but it's not a difference I'd spot at a glance, that's for sure. Also, having running and non-running programs all jumbled together is simply not very ergonomic. Misclicks seem to be begging to happen with such a setup, causing people to launch unwanted programs when they in reality want to switch back to another.

...So I turned that shit off real quick.

Btw, I hate MacOS's dock too I might add. It also sucks. After minimizing safari, and since I don't regularly use macs, I had to scan nearly each and every icon manually to find my window again since the minimization animation went off to one side of the screen, and the program's icon actually resided on the opposite... And the mac-heads say it's so easy to use! Bah.

 

[vazel]

I found it confusing and annoying to use at first but I gave it a couple days and there's no problem anymore. Try to give it more than a few minutes before you write it off.

 

[3dcgi]

I noticed that the default theme doesn't have much contrast. Especially with the title bar so I changed the colors on my system. Also, my icons get wider and include some text when the program is open.

 

[swaaye]

I noticed that the default theme doesn't have much contrast.

I think the modern love of (by OS GUI builders everywhere) shiny translucent pastel shit is obviously the problem. Throw in a crappy LCD with poor contrast and it gets even worse.

I'm not even sure the end users care if the GUI is pretty or not. I know for sure that people do care if they have a hard time seeing/identifying the GUI though. I think that the companies that make this stuff are the only groups that really care how pretty it all is.

 

[Bludd]

I have to turn off the translucency in Vista and Win7. It makes me queasy.