When the first Windows 7 beta (build 6801) was announced at PDC in late 2008, everyone was excited, myself included. Within a few days after release I was happily running my very first version of Windows 7. Right around new years day, Microsoft released the first public beta (build 7000) of the next gen OS. Since Microsoft was kind enough to share it with me, I decided to share it with everyone I know. Starting with my immediate family computers and expanding to my network of friends and coworkers. I went on a upgrading frenzy, installing Windows 7 on just about any PC I could get my hands on. Everything from an overclocked 3 Ghz quad-core PC to a 1.3 Ghz laptop.What have I learned from these installation adventures? I've learned that Microsoft has produced their most stable, reliable & speedy codebase to date. PC's that struggled just to run Vista's basic functions, now can run Windows 7 with all of its features (including Aero). By creating an OS that scales remarkably well, Microsoft has not left the owners of older PC's out in the cold. Allowing them to upgrade their OS without buying a new PC, or even adding additional hardware to their existing PC's. Windows 7 also has one of the easiest install\upgrade processes I've ever seen. With some machines fresh installing Windows 7 in less than 15 minutes.
To further cement my uber-nerd status , I created a spreadsheet to catalog all of my Windows 7 installs. Using a unscientific scale, I graded the PC's on everyday usability and performance. Out of all the PC's on the list, only two lacked the GPU power to run 7's Aero features & none of them had any major driver issues.
As you can see from the test results above, Windows 7 runs on very wide variety of form-factors and styles of PC's. If you have not already, download and install the RC of Windows 7. Which you can find here
How does Windows 7 run on your computer? Let us know in the comments.
I never had a problem with Vista. It was never slow and it crashed far less than XP. And was and is awesome when I needed a repair.
Lucky for you. Unfortunately I know of a great number of people who had the opposite to you.
Fortunately, not the case so far with Windows 7!
Yeah, it is only in the day-to-day work where Vista sucks.... lol
That laptop runs 7 with absolutely no issues as well.
All except for the covert Circuit City install, although you probably caused a few of their brain-dead employees a bit of stress when asked to explain why that version of Windows was so much better than the others...
I sure hope you've got time (reads : money) to burn doing that.
But still, thanks for the results, that's great to know!
It was about a week before they closed up for good, I just wandered over to the Touchsmart... put the DVD in and did a clean install. No one even asked me what I was doing... (ninja)
No, it doesn't. It RARELY can cause a device driver mismatch if something was updated in one beta and not in another and the installer routine doesn't pick that up through the registry.
All kinds of non-visible things can change between test releases like registry class IDs and executable filenames. Having two process class entries in the registry for any critical components is going to blow up. They do not support, or even attempt to support, 'upgrading' from beta to beta because nobody upgrades from the same version of Windows to the same version.
it does work, you have to change the bios setting from AHCI or ACHI or IDE or something. I can't remeber off the top of my head but I did it for my mom! or it may need to be changed to that!
Windows 7's installer should automatically detect AHCI and install the appropriate driver for it. (not true for XP, you had to get a driver disk ready)
The Windows 7 runs way more smoother than the Vista. I can't wait for the full blown version without all the debugging code in it. I had to go to Vista 64bit to get it to see all of my RAM/Video memory and I it bogged my computer down so much.
I mainly just play EQ2, watch movies and video's.
(spec of comptuer, EVGA 680i MB, 4gig DDR2, 2x 8800gt, Q6600 CPU, all sata drives,)
LoL I run mutiple clients and I guess unlike other people I actually like seeing all the pretty graphics that a game has to offer.
try burning to other brand of dvdr, some drives dont work with certain dvdr's thus giving impression as OS install error. also use 8x or 4x to be sure
Well I guess, it's runs Win7 without issue, but that doesn't mean it's fast for all applications.
Vista was a rushed and unfinished OS. From the consumer's viewpoint it should never have been released, but for Microsoft it made them some $$$ and bought them some time to make 7. What is unfortunate is that MS eventually made Vista preloads mandatory and refused to continue selling XP. Vista was not a good product, it shouldn't have been forced on consumers.
Windows Easy Transfer will make your move much easier; you won't be able to do an "upgrade" install when moving from 32 to 64 bit.
Im then going to give CS4 64bit a spin to see if that has any improvements as it should on large files in Photoshop. Handling up to 100 sq foot posters at 188-300 dpi will be easier
Not as perfectly as XP and Seven.
No matter what the circumstance, I always lol when I see perfect and XP in the same sentence.
This is too much for an OS. This is not a hydrogen car. Far from this...
This is too much for an OS. This is not a hydrogen car. Far from this...
Honda already has a hydrogen car.
This is too much for an OS. This is not a hydrogen car. Far from this...
And yet you clicked on the article with Windows 7 in the title and even bothered to comment.
This is too much for an OS. This is not a hydrogen car. Far from this...
And yet you clicked on the article with Windows 7 in the title and even bothered to comment.
I also click for soap-opera synopsis and I like to see what others think or if they agree with me. For instance... I just found out that Honda has a hydrogen car. But actually I not even read the article.
Also have Win7 7100 running on an IBM Thinkpad T23 (PIII 1.13GHz w/ 512MB). It's set to best performance so it's more usable and it does take a while to give me a usable desktop after booting... but it works fine after that.
Either you're new here, or have been blind to the many many original new stories that Neowin has run in the past. And which readers have appreciated.
If someone else wants to inconvenience themselves by reinstalling the OS a year from now then they can have all the fun in the world doing that. Personally i'm not the kind of person that re installs windows every for months for the fun of it. My last install lasted 4 years.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170561
choose the version you want to match the version of windows you have ie: 32/64bit
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170561
choose the version you want to match the version of windows you have ie: 32/64bit
oh thank you, but I guess my GPU has a over heating problem. it started to give me blue screen when I tried to play heavy 3D games. so I don't expect it to play mkvs since they are compression monsters (: by the way I love the homecinema version, will use it with my new computer, cheers.
I hope you told them..
I hope you told them..
Exactly. Well I would hope he just imaged all 16 computers so he can just blast the old image back on it once it expires. If not he will have fun reinstalling 16 computers for his friends and family.
Intel 1.6ghz Core Duo, 2gb RAM, Intel GM945, A+ Aero
Via 1.2ghz, 1gb RAM, Via Chrome9, B+/A Aero
All fresh, all with Beta(7000) to RC(7100)
Once it was ok, but I don't want to listen 10 times about the 1.3 GHz Celeron that can run Windows 7 (wow you can even play spidercell)
Once it was ok, but I don't want to listen 10 times about the 1.3 GHz Celeron that can run Windows 7 (wow you can even play spidercell)
Umm. Technically you can run a very stripped down command-line-only version of Ubuntu on a 486, but a fully functional install with visual effects (like Windows 7) still requires:
1.2 GHz x86 processor
384 MB of system memory (RAM)
Supported graphics card
(According to the official website)
If a current user is on Vista, I'd advise against "Upgrade" installs, and no, this is not the usual blah-blah. We all know that upgrades aren't the best idea anyway, but Windows Easy Transfer is so good, it really makes the upgrade install obsolete.
To me, Easy Transfer is the best of both worlds. It transfers essentially all files and settings from all users and it does it smoothly and painlessly AND you still get all the benefit of a clean install. So, here's the procedure:
1. Run Easy Transfer on the source machine, and have a nice, big USB drive handy. If it's a machine you're upgrading, and you've got a partition with lots of space (aside from the one you're installing Windows on), so much the better; you can use that instead. Capturing all the files, settings, etc. is time consuming; it took me overnight to run this when I upgraded my laptop.
2. Complete your new Windows install. And do it as a clean install, in a freshly-formatted partition. If you have a domain-based network, enroll the system on your domain.
3. Run Easy Transfer from your newly installed Windows. There's a quick wizard to ask you which accounts you want, and then it goes on its merry way. Putting everything back takes much less time than it took to gather it all up
There are two drawbacks to Easy Transfer. One, it can take a very long time to gather all the settings and files for transfer. Since an upgrade install itself takes considerably longer than a clean one, this wasn't a huge issue for me.
The second drawback is that Easy Transfer doesn't move applications, which is a minor inconvenience. The advantage here, though, is that the apps will probably run better if they're installed fresh anyway. Easy Transfer [i]does[i/] move app user settings, though, so those custom palettes you did for Photoshop will still be there after you reinstall it.
Last edited by Thunderbuck on 26 May 2009 - 23:17
Not to be a detractor but what's this all about? The better CPU, RAM and GPU you have the better Windows 7 will run? Who'd have thunk it.
Celeron 400
4200TI
512Mb Ram
46Gb IDE HDD.
Well it installed and although a little sluggish (not overly so) seems to work fine. There are no built in drivers for the 4200TI or any from Nvidia so I stripped the drivers from a Vista CD (was stuck at 1024x768 with out them).
http://forums.aria.co.uk/showpost.php?p=89305&postcount=41
Obviously no Aero with that GPU and it would not complete WEI as it fails with an unknown error.
Feels like XP on a 256MB machine
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