Windows 7 experience

[rajputwarrior]

i'm a mac guy, and i LOVE windows 7... fast as hell, pretty, start menu is awesome, new taskbar is amazing, its great!

[Cold Blood]

well,I wasn't a big fan of vista though I didn't hate it,I prefered win 2008 server ,but windows seven is a nice surprise. I was really amazed when I installed it and noticed that it boots considerably faster than vista,almost as fast as xp. Love the new taskbar.Also it uses around 30-50 mb less ram than vista ^^ and it is pretty stable.I have to admit that it does use more ram than xp but that's wasted ram on xp anyways so it doesn't bother me. No issues for me except for program compatibility which isn't a big deal in my case. Overall it's pretty nice and extremely stable for a beta. Microsoft is on the right track with this one. It's what vista should have been.

[svnO.o]

I voted 7 for installation, 5 for compatibility, and 6 for features. I gave a 5 for compatibility because 2 of my games don't work.

First off is Counter-Strike 1.6 -- it only lets me play in software mode which is unacceptable. I also tried raising the resolution but it wouldn't let me. Second is PunkBuster (CoD4's anti-cheat system), I get an "unknown winapi" error when trying to play Call of Duty 4. I'm sure some other games have similar issues. Hopefully these will all be worked out before Win7's release.

As for features, I'm satisfied with what they got but there is always more features that would be great to have.

[rakeshishere]

7- Installation (took me only 20mins to install and OOTB support for all my hardware)

4- Compatability (Some of my apps and games Even in Vista/XP Compatibility mode seem to be broken for eg: PDF Factory,COD4 etc seem to be broken. Hope it would be fixed at RTM)

5- The features (In my opinion Not so much compelling features other than extra Eye candy over Vista but is miles ahead compared to XP)

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

Although Windows 7 is still Beta is it at this point far superior than Vista SP1. I can't say enough about it. I have not had any type of errors, everything works. It is more responsive. The Video is better and there are no major compatibility issues. I am not even using Vista any more. I rate it a 10.

[bbfc_uk]

Windows 7 is truly amazing, can't believe is it a Microsoft product - shows they can do something right if the listen to their customers and put their minds to it!

Almost all of the software I have installed worked straight away after the upgrade from Vista, the only issue was Norton Internet Security 2009 which required a re-install and now its working flawlessly.

ALL hardware drivers installed and working correctly, even my phone (Nokia N78) which was a bit funny under Vista works thanks to Windows 7 downloading new drivers for it and even the Nokia Nseries PC Suite works much better than it did under Vista (go figure!)

So far I am truly impressed with Windows 7 and WILL be purchasing it when its eventually released.

[Jorkand]

I installed my 3rd version of W7 today on an old d620 dell. The most amazing thing is how fast it comes out of sleep.

Also I now use Homegroup over Hamachi. It does make things quite easy. However I heard there is some sort of built in vpn. Anyone has more details?

[dt]

The most amazing thing is how fast it comes out of sleep.

I noticed that too -- it's nearly instant! :D

[Me Myself and I]

I really like Windows 7, and gave it all 7's in the poll. I am using the x64 version, and all the programs i used on x86 work, as do all the programs i couldnt get to work on Vista x64. The only issue i had was installing the drivers for my media extender, when it hung installing the updates via the cd. I simply uninstalled/reinstalled, problem solved.

20 minutes all in to install , its blazing fast, pretty stable, and looks good, I'm very happy with it so far. Absolutely no issues of any real note to report at all.I have been using Windows, since 95 only, and 7 is the best OS i have personally used, and by a country mile at that. I have 4GB RAM, and the highest percentage of Memory usage i have seen so far was 65%, and that was with many progs/windows open, and many processes running.

i have been critical of aspects of Windows previously, particularly with Vista, so i am by no means a MS fanboy. Its simply a case of credit where credit is due, from my point of view.

[ViperAFK]

remarkable stable. Just as stable as xp and vista for me, incredible for a beta os. I am loving it. It's more polished than vista and they are really heading in the right direction with the ui changes and superbar. It just feels more complete.

Only problems I have had were with punkbuster and a few games that aren't completely compatible yet.

WHen I installed it on my gateway m6862 I was really impressed, on install ALL my drivers were installed. Aero, wireless, webcam, touchpad, sound ect.. all worked on first login flawlessly. the ONLY driver I had to download was my touchpad driver because it was scrolling too fast.

This is already fast, stable, polished and it's only a beta release. I am very very impressed. Happily using it full time on my laptop. sadly I had to uninstall it on my desktop because I mainly play games on it and a couple aren't working yet and steam seems to have some issues with it.

[Mike the mod]

Hi folks,

I just finished the instalation no my

Asus A7V400-MX / AMD 2500 Sempron / 1gig DDR PC3200 ram

I just got a popup that updates have been installed

and Click here to reboot a nice featrue is I can choose how

long to postpone the reboot.

I have installed Courier Beta 1196 Beta for email it works well:

I have added Avant Browerser 11.71 build 21 and inported my Bookmarks

into IE8 (Beta Win7)

I'm using Avira Antivi for antivirus, it has updated a couple of

times since the install on the 14th.

So far so good.

I give it a solid 6

Mike the mod at Win7

http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/Win7

[Denis W. Veteran]

Installation: 6. Still installs quick as Vista's, though one time while installing Windows 7 on my laptop it refused to boot. :huh: But after retrying the install it proceeded smoothly. If I was a newbie I would probably give it a 4 if I didn't realize Setup kept failing because of a bad disc image burn. :p Windows 7's out of box experience is FAR better than Vista's. They wisely kept the full WinSAT check until a time when your system's idle, but it still does a quick check to verify if your card can run Aero. It also allows you to join a wireless network (and does it with a cool list animation!). And after you're done with the wizard, you're automatically logged into your desktop - a CLEAN desktop. No slow loading sidebar to disable. No spammy Welcome Center. Just a clean desktop.

Compatibility: 6. On my three Windows Vista/7 compatible machines, my HTPC and laptop have all of their drivers available via Windows Update, or in the case of my laptop, 32-bit drivers offered by Dell. On my desktop, now that I've replaced my aging scanner with a HP AIO, I can now run the 64-bit build with all drivers. HP's drivers still have a bug where it hangs at the network setup screen, requiring you to kill the installer processes. Otherwise the machine still works. Until a few days ago, the lack of properly working Creative drivers held me back from using Windows 7 fulltime, but now with the fixed set up for grabs, sound works great. Most of my apps work, a handful of them requiring Vista compatibility settings to please the installers.

Features: 7. (Get it... 7? lol) Not only have they provided flashy updates to the Aero experience, but they added in things power users will appreciate, such as hotkeys, and fixed numerous UI quirks found in older Windows versions. One example is the popup wireless list - much more intuitive than an Aero Wizard.

Speed: 6. Snappier than Vista, surprising since this code isn't final yet.

Looks: 7. Aero done right. (Y) The colour hot tracking was drool worthy on first use, now it's pretty mute. But it still looks cool. There are also subtle animations, such as the 'swoosh' in the Jump Lists, the snapping animations, the thumbnails dynamically resizing, etc. This time, I hope the fit-and-finish team for Windows 7 won't have to do that much work, in contrast to Vista where they had an avalanche of complaints from testers.

Overall: See its version number. :) Vista wasn't terrible, but not according to the media. This time around, we can hope to see an end to the tired phrase "I heard that Vista was slow, bloated, incompatible, crashy..."

[valhalla_rk]

It's fun using it. very professional, not only eyetoy like Vista (but i must admit, i left vista before SP1, i don't know how is it now).

Installation went like a charm, i was really surprised.

I like the libraries, and from what I tried, except the fact i have ULI based chipset on the board (which worked horribly with geforce 6200 on vista) , and i have a slight problem with the SATA driver during the installation, everything - everything is smooth, even the graphics, a thing a can't say on vista (again pre-sp1).

[Ci7]

i wander who the hell voted " windows 1 was better." :geek: :spam:

[Erikas]

Yesterday did an upgrade from VISTA Home Premium to Windows 7 (32bit) on my laptop, a Toshiba Satellite A300-1GN. I first uninstalled all little apps which are easy to re-install and not much work. I left office 2007 and some other software, abbyy finereader and some specific translation software etc. (I am a translator). Anyways, the upgrade took about 2 hours as I was expecting having read forums beforehand. After completion and briefly using it I must say that i am very pleased and impressed. All software except abbyy finereader 9 migrated correctly, which worked fine after re-install. All hardware was recognized although windows update recommended some updated drivers. I cannot say if my laptop is faster or not but it feels smooth and responsive. I love the appearance and superbar. All in all I am most pleased and I hope it will stay like that after using for a bit longer that one night :)

[Ruti]

I installed Windows 7 on both laptop and desktop, all programs work, was having some random freezes on desktop till i installed nforce drivers from the nvidia website, and everything is running smooth, not 1 problem or bug since then, games work pretty well though, my only need is daemon tools.

[Tel]

i've only played with W7 for a few hours, i noticed on my second machine (PentiumD 3.4GHZ, 4GB of RAM) it took about 20 minutes to even get to the installation option, where as my main rig installed it within 15 minutes

[Lee G. Veteran]

can someone help me out..

i keep getting disk errors since i installed windows 7. i never once had a disk error with vista.

the message i got told me to use chkdsk.

how can fix that error?

Reinstall. I had the same error (and the chkdsk loop). I solved it by formatting and reinstalling :/

Installation - 7

Compatibility - 7

Features - 6

Speed - 7

Looks - 7

Overall - 7

[FloatingFatMan]

Just installed it on my main PC, 3 teeny tiny driver issues which were resolved in 5 minutes once I installed them.. These were for:

SM Bus Drivers for my Gigabyte P35-DS3L mobo

Lexmark X1270 Printer/Scanner

Hauppauge DVB-T SE USB2 Stick

That was it... Install the drivers and Bob's your fathers brother. I'm even getting interactive services in Media Centre, which I DON'T get on Vista as the TV pack doesn't work with my stick.

[devBrian]

I am beyond impressed. The install was a bit slow for me, though... I'm a little spoiled by XP's install time, so I gave it a 6.

The rest are 7, easily.

[[B00]]

I am certainly enjoying the speed of how things open. Only had one little problem which was my HP6L Laserjet printer as they have removed it from the list. Has took me ages to get it going but its working now. Apart from that it found everything. Am so impressed am currently installing it onto my XPS laptop :)

[Orange Battery]

People who said it has everything, you are easily pleased. The UI needs some work, pictures in a folder look all un organised if they are different sizes. The glass transparency is ok but looks a little chunky and has those annoying diagonal lines (Im guessing they are meant to create a flare effect) that don't move as you move a window.

I love the features of the new taskbar, its looks on the other hand are basic, apart from when you hover your mouse over a tab, the shine effect is cool. Work is needed here and the hole pinning items to the taskbar - I don't see the point in that.

I hoped for more customisation options for files and folder, right now it all seems the same, just in different places. Gadgets are cool but very limited and I don't like how the close X appears every time you hover over a gadget, should be able to lock them.

With some additions to the UI this could be a very good version of Windows.

Oh and last of all - New options for the start button and a decent alternative to glass please.

[ProiektHat]

i dual-boot vista x64/windows 7 x64 and i rarelly boot to vista (only to play stalker-clear sky or far cry 2, i couldn?t get them to work on windows 7).

install was quick, all software running snappy, hardware ok too...i?m quite impressed with this beta.

[Rudnartim]

Definately a 7, although when I upgraded from Vista x64, there were some issues with BSOD, and also WMP12 wouldnt import files properly on the 2nd user account on this machine, but i decided to upgrade overtop the upgrade and now everything works perfectly, when it RTM's might finally hvae to format. Just to clean up that harddrive abit

[sn00pie]

Just installed it on my Macbook. My previous computer used XP, so I never got a chance to really see the issues and problems people complained about regarding Windows Vista. But with Windows 7 its so far rock solid and it is very pleasent to use.

I really just love the way everything looks. The taskbar is very dock-like. Which to me is a good thing, even though some could argue Microsoft copied Apple.

For any Mac users who want to install 7 its a breeze. I think it took me less than 1.5 hours including burning the Windows 7 install DVD, its a breeze of a process by any regards.

But to be honest, as good as it looks, and as revolutionary as a step this is for the Windows world and users. It is not enough to make me want to switch from OS X, just yet atleast.

PS: My apostrophe button isn`t working I think...looks like I`m having some keyboard issues lol