Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

sybrfreq wrote:

ajerimez wrote: 7 is generally slower than XP, especially in OpenGL, so hopefully it offers some compelling new features to justify its existence.

I haven't noticed this.

I suspect that machine spec has a big impact, with the amount of RAM and the choice of video card being the largest variables. In particular, I suspect that there is a bigger difference in relative performance between XP and 7 on machines with only 1 GB of RAM than there is on identical machines with 2+ GB of RAM. For that matter, I bet that there is a significant difference in Win7 performance on machines with 2 GB vs 4 GB.

I do have an old machine that is pretty much at the minimum spec for Win7. It runs XP SP3 very nicely. If I have the time, perhaps I'll try installing Win7 on it for comparison, but I'm inclined to keep it on XP.

I'm looking at Win7 upgrades this way: for machines already running XP, I'm inclined to keep them on XP, but for machines running Vista, it's a no-brainer to move to Win7.

The one thing that might make me move from XP to Win7 on my home machine is some of the under-the-hood security enhancements on Win7, though I haven't examined the issue closely yet. I haven't really talked about this yet, but I've been running an XP machine at home without live antivirus/malware protection, and the performance improvement has been astonishing. Win7's implementation of a "Least-privilege User Account" seems more sophisticated than XP "standard" user, so that might be worth the upgrade.

As an aside, I'm sure that under most circumstances, the performance difference between a machine running antivirus software and one not running antivirus software is much greater than the difference between XP and Win7. Note: I am not suggesting that you go without antivirus protection on a laptop that you use in a public place. I'd only risk it if the machine is on a pretty secure network, and it is certain that the machine will not be used to visit shady websites.

bri3d wrote: I'm pretty pleased with Windows 7 - but it's years too late.

Windows 7 is what Microsoft should have released as Vista - it's basically a reliable, stable, solid version of Vista. So, I quite like it, and I plan on running it daily, but it's not exactly a tour de force from MS or anything

Well put.
I've been running Windows 7 RC for 3 or 4 months now on my main machine and intend to buy the full version when it comes out. It boots fast and I think I only recall it crashing once since I've used it.

My specs :
Quad-core 2.40GHz intel Q6600 CPU
4GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 (with NVIDIA PureVideo [pops his collar])

The GUI is still cumbersome to use though
Microsoft seems to be regressing in the GUI and usability dept. They're making it shinier and more convoluted, not sleeker and easier to use.

Windows 2000 was so good usability-wise. What happened?

milatchi wrote: Microsoft seems to be regressing in the GUI and usability dept. They're making it shinier and more convoluted, not sleeker and easier to use.

Starting with the Start Menu! One of the things that I really dislike about Win7 is the inability to revert to "classic" appearances. Even on Vista you could turn off most of the crap and get a reasonably Win2k-like experience, even if it took a lot of work to do so.

josehill wrote: Even on Vista you could turn off most of the crap and get a reasonably Win2k-like experience, even if it took a lot of work to do so.

maybe if you want a win2k-like experience, you should be using win2k For better or worse, microsoft has made something different. Nobody says you must change, if you want to continue using ms-dos 6.22 then go right ahead...

milatchi wrote: Windows 2000 was so good usability-wise. What happened?

every version of an operating system that has been released has been more complex than the last. For example, in dos if you want to run a text editor, you just type in 'edit', and you have an editor. When windows came out, suddenly you had to look through menus for the editor program. eventually there were more and more menus, and multiple programs that do the same thing. Later yet came menus of menus, and now they are in 3d.

There is always more and more programs and tools in the system, and they are always thinking of new ways to organise them. If you don't like the new system of organisation, continue using the old way until there is a new new way, and try that.

The old taskbar in it's theory of operation has been unchanged since windows 95. Nice to see microsoft try something different. Even if it's only slightly different and the mac has had something similar for eons.

sybrfreq wrote: maybe if you want a win2k-like experience, you should be using win2k For better or worse, microsoft has made something different. Nobody says you must change, if you want to continue using ms-dos 6.22 then go right ahead...

As I said, I already have Win7 installed in a few places, and, overall, I think it's a big improvement over Vista. That doesn't mean that I can't criticize the parts of it that I don't like.

I actually quite like Windows 7's new taskbar, Aero Peek, and a lot of the other tweaks that have been made in 7. On the other hand I find the new Start menu layout from Vista to be really annoying.

The fact that you can't really change the frontend highlights my main frustration with Windows - it forcibly hides too much. Sure, a "home user" doesn't want to see a lot of verbose debug messages, or tweak every aspect of their OS, but the functions are usually already there, hidden deep in some logging or debug tool, or a secret registry setting. It's very frustrating to *know* it's possible to do a lot of what I want to do and see a lot of what I want to see, just hidden away so well it's not worth the time to find it. I hate seeing a progress bar spin forever and having no idea what's going on in the background.

Mind you, I'm a die-hard non-Windows user and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the RC. I've it running in a VM and I actually went ahead and ordered a 64 bit Professional SB disc, so I can run my RAW processing software natively.

I am curious about what you guys dislike about the vista start menu? I am more a keyboard guy so I type words in the search box most of the time. I found this is much faster to get shortcuts and run them than the old clicking way

voidfoo wrote: I am curious about what you guys dislike about the vista start menu? I am more a keyboard guy so I type words in the search box most of the time. I found this is much faster to get shortcuts and run them than the old clicking way

That's probably the best way to use it -- I'll have to try to do that on Win7, now that the classic view has been removed entirely.

To me, the "new" Start Menu feels very cluttered and visually distracting. Even under XP, I switched back to the classic Start Menu. I also like to disable things like "Personalized Menus," etc., since I want frequently accessed menus to be predictable, rather than dynamic.

sybrfreq wrote: maybe if you want a win2k-like experience, you should be using win2k

I am. Well, the Assistant is. And they're going to force her onto a new o.s. when hell freezes over and I have to buy a new computer that won't run w2k