Windows 7

[Bludd]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146910

Developer clsid (one of the people behind ffdshow-tryouts fork of ffdshow) has made a tool for changing preferred decoders for Win7. It is a great tool for people who don't like WMP or VLC and wants, for instance, ffdshow to take care of decoding duties.

I had version 1.6 and it didn't support changing MP3 decoders, but this new version 1.9 supports it and this means smoother sound when skipping ahead in video files. This is good. One caveat: it can cause problems in WMP, but I don't use it at all, I haven't even set it up.

 

[Scott_Arm]

If you happen to be a Mac user with a Bootcamp install, Parallels Desktop 5 works very nicely. I have my bootcamp install running in a parallels virtual machine with coherency mode, so it looks like my Windows apps are running natively in OSX, and you get all the nice Expose window management. Obviously for high performance apps like games you'd want to boot natively into Windows7, but I'm using some programming tools and it's very nice with the mixed experience. You get full Aero support on the Windows etc, and the Windows start bar is docked in the OSX doc.

I like Windows7 quite a bit so far. It seems to be very snappy. I don't like the control panel much - too verbose for my liking. I found it made it harder to navigate. My brother is having massive problems (I haven't looked yet, but I think it's drivers) with his upgrade from Vista to 7 (32bit -> 32bit) but my clean install was a dream. Game performance seems equal to my XP install. Still not used to the new interface because I never used Vista, but I think I'm going to be very happy. And it's nice that they finally got the price of the upgrades and the OS a little more in line with what people are willing to pay.

 

[Miksu]

Developer clsid (one of the people behind ffdshow-tryouts fork of ffdshow) has made a tool for changing preferred decoders for Win7. It is a great tool for people who don't like WMP or VLC and wants, for instance, ffdshow to take care of decoding duties.

Thanks for the link! Do you happen to know if this works with Mediacenter? Trying to get FFDShow to work with W7's MC wasn't that pleasant task and I had to remove few files from the system32-folder to get it work.

 

[Kaotik]

TBH I don't see much point in that program, excluding VLC & WMP, don't everyone else allow you to choose your preferred codecs anyway?

I know I'm not having any problems using FFDSHOW & MPCHC combo when I want, and MPCHCs own codecs when I want

 

[Bludd]

TBH I don't see much point in that program, excluding VLC & WMP, don't everyone else allow you to choose your preferred codecs anyway?

I know I'm not having any problems using FFDSHOW & MPCHC combo when I want, and MPCHCs own codecs when I want

Are you sure you are able to use Ffdshow's MP3 decoder? Without this tool, Zoom Player would always use the MS MP3 DMO and not libmad as was set up in Ffdshow.

Miksu, it should work. I think clsid talks about it in the first post.

 

[Kaotik]

Quite positive, used basic mp3 file as example even though I do use WMP with MS's codec for music, it does the decoding in video files with mp3 audio track, aswell, though

 

[Bludd]

Interesting. It not like that for me so the tool is essential for me.

 

[Richard]

I don't like the control panel much - too verbose for my liking. I found it made it harder to navigate.

I never use the control panel directly nowadays:

a) Pin most accessed subpanels on superbar.
b) Type to search everything else on start search.

Anyway, if you still want to the view the "old" control panel then on its main page, set View by: to either Large or Small icons.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Thanks for the pointers.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I'm used to fast shortcuts independant of windows version or particular installation, that way I don't have to hunt for things on other people's PC : win+pause, right-click on comp/"manage", or typing things right away at the Run... dialog : devmgmt.msc, diskmgmt.msc, control ncpa.cpl, etc.

 

[Kaotik]

I'm used to fast shortcuts independant of windows version or particular installation, that way I don't have to hunt for things on other people's PC : win+pause, right-click on comp/"manage", or typing things right away at the Run... dialog : devmgmt.msc, diskmgmt.msc, control ncpa.cpl, etc.

You do realize that the "search" in start menu acts as run too?
Just press windows key and write "devmgmt.msc" without quotation marks and press enter and you're done.

 

[Blazkowicz]

sure but I don't get to use vista/7 much. Here I'm on a co-renter's laptop, which is one of those previously Vista computers, formated with XP pro corporate and awaiting for ubuntu.
A surprising amount of people do this in my student demographics including the non geeks

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I never use the control panel directly nowadays:

a) Pin most accessed subpanels on superbar.
b) Type to search everything else on start search.

Anyway, if you still want to the view the "old" control panel then on its main page, set View by: to either Large or Small icons.

Beat me to it, was just about to suggest the same thing. Basically get "classic" view by setting Small Icons. Thankfully this isn't one of the things I hated about Win7, there's enough of those already.

Anyway, slowly getting used to certain things in Win7. But still absolutely HATE how they butchered Windows Explorer. /sigh... I think it'll be a long time before I prefer Win7 over Vista. Right now Vista still has a definite edge. But Win7 definitely gets a lot of nods over Vista in the "don't need to install 3rd party stuff" (codecs for example), to do day to day stuff.

As well the latest Gigabyte BIOS for my motherboard finally has Win7 booting as fast as Vista.

Regards,
SB

 

[neliz]

As well the latest Gigabyte BIOS for my motherboard finally has Win7 booting as fast as Vista.

"as fast as" ? then you're doing something wrong!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

"as fast as" ? then you're doing something wrong!

Nope I never had any issues with slow boots in Vista. Vista 64 has always booted faster than XP for me.

Apparently there was something with the F3 bios for my Gigabyte socket 1156 MB that was holding back Win7 boot. As just flashing it to the new beta bios has it booting about as fast as my Vista 64 install used to.

Regards,
SB

 

[Berek]

Nope I never had any issues with slow boots in Vista. Vista 64 has always booted faster than XP for me.

Apparently there was something with the F3 bios for my Gigabyte socket 1156 MB that was holding back Win7 boot. As just flashing it to the new beta bios has it booting about as fast as my Vista 64 install used to.

Regards,
SB

On our machines at the office, I can say that both Vista and Windows 7 boots significantly slower than my home machines, though that is because we're running quite a few start-up scripts on each machine. All around, Vista is still slower it seems.

 

[willardjuice]

On our machines at the office, I can say that both Vista and Windows 7 boots significantly slower than my home machines

That's strange, my computer (with 7) boots faster than my mothers five year-old computer (XP). That of course might have something to do with the hardware in my computer being much faster than her computer's hardware. Nah it's definitely the operating system...

 

[Grall]

7 and vista both boot roughly equally fast on my PC with a SSD. I haven't timed it with a stopwatch or anything, just going on general 'feel'. It's in the same ballpark, even though it'll probably differ somewhat.

Then again, Vista's boot-time did slow down considerably as the install aged, to the point it was much, much slower towards the end of life. And that install was only about 8 months old too; I dunno if I had some kind of weird quirk or whatever with my particular PC, but windows rot is definitely alive and well in 2009.

 

[neliz]

Win7 in business environments is considerably faster than Vista for the simple reason that login scripts, profiles and redirected folders are synched in the background. There's no comparison against XP, XP can take up to 45 minutes to load up a roaming profile and execute login scripts while working on wireless, 7 is a blessing.

 

[Grall]

What could possibly take 45 mins to load up just to log in? That's...inconcievable.