Windows 7 experience

[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.

[freak180]

Windows + [Number]

Programs (and new instances) pinned to your Taskbar can be launched by hitting Windows and the number corresponding to its placement on the Taskbar. Windows + 1, for example, launches the first application, while Windows + 4 will launch the fourth. We realize that this is actually one key-press more than just clicking the icon with your mouse, but it saves your hand the trouble of leaving the comfort of the keyboard.

:)

[»X«]

Wonder if anyone else is experiencing this issue. I'm running both Vista and Win7, using an ATI x1900xtx. Both installs have the latest drivers from ati. When I load up Win7, the fan on my graphics card speeds up as if I'm running something like Crysis. Even if its just at the desktop. It's very annoying and very loud. In Vista, its almost silent as it should be. Any thoughts?

[scrtsqurrl]

Installed it. Don't like it. Sticking with Windows XP till 2014, by then I will get Windows 8 or Windows 9.

[FloatingFatMan]

Installed it. Don't like it. Sticking with Windows XP till 2014, by then I will get Windows 8 or Windows 9.

Which will still look more like Vista/Win 7 than XP. :p

[rakeshishere]

Installed it. Don't like it. Sticking with Windows XP till 2014, by then I will get Windows 8 or Windows 9.

Keep whining till 2014 :pinch:

[Dogan]

Have the beta installed on 3 computers. The only issue I've had is that sound didn't work at start on one of the computers.

It works now so I give the beta 7/7 thumbs up (Y)(Y)(Y)(Y)(Y)(Y)(Y)

One of the computers I installed it on is a netbook (MSI Wind), and it runs way better than I thought it would.

Everything is smooth and the boot is really fast. Even Aero is enabled :)

[rakeshishere]

Is this common that i cant see Gadgets when i have disabled "Show Desktop items" on my desktop . Is there a way where i could see all the gadgets and not icons since in my previous experience the Aero peek feature becomes useless if i cant view running gadgets

[virgo89]

Very good so far. However couldnt get Chrome to work with it ;)

[Mizuian]

I installed it a few weeks ago, when it first came out, and so far, I've been very impressed with it, I have a slow spare computer which I've installed it on, and so far, Its been very quick, no freezes or slow down. It seems fairly compatible, but I've yet to try everything I want to try out. So far so good!

[X-Warlock]

Pretty impressed so far. I installed the 64 bit version friday night and while it was a quick instal, I ran into a handful of headache problems regarding driver installations. The driver package for my Asus p5ql-e motherboard required a little bit of editing on the config files to get it to recignize win7 as a compatible OS to an end result of not everything even being recognized by the OS. The ATI Catalyst drivers for my HD 4650 1gb card just refused to work. I tried the commercially available 64bit drivers for Vista, died half way through the instal. Found the Catalyst beta drivers for Win 7, and even they bombed out. Also found the OS was using a rather large chunk of ram to do essentially nothing.

Downloaded the 32 bit version if Win 7 this evening, and wow. Total difference! OS installed in less than 15 mins (including a drive format). Still needed to do a little hacking on my Asus motherboard package but everything was recognized and installed with minimal effort. ATI Catalyst beta drivers for 32 bit installed with no issue what-so-ever. Resource management seems vastly improved this time as well. I'm currently running several tabs of IE8, 2 concurrent downloads, and running mp3's in WMP and the OS is barely using 800 megs of ram. I seriously cannot recall the last time I've seen a Windows OS use so little ram.

Now to see how well the OS handles a little gaming...

[LeonG]

So far I'd give it a 6+ - I like it very much but would I pay $189.00 (or whatever they end up charging for their "Home Premium" full version? Probably not.

I will never again buy an "upgrade" product from Microsoft again unless they go back to their old way of confirming ownership - insert a valid previous version. I don't see that happening - too many ways to cheat them - but I will never again install another OS just to get the latest OS on my machines.

I also believe that this does seem like it should be an update to Vista but I do see why a name change is necessary. Obviously we can't see the code but aside from the new pretty face and a few things that could have just been added to Vista was the underlying code improved? Normally even this would not be a concern to me - I've used Microsoft products since the old DOS days and believe that they should be paid for their efforts - but are superficial improvements a valid reason to call this a major upgrade and charge accordingly?

I feel like we are going to be charged twice for Microsoft to get Vista right. If more time had passed since this change I might not feel this way but it hasn't and I do.

As for the rating..... like I said a 6+ across the board. This is going to be a GREAT product! Vista done right! I especially like the 64-bit version. Works flawlessly on my machine. I MAY buy this when available just for the 64-bit OS. There would be less tears when spending the money that I don't have because I would be buying an additional product - not updating something that I already have.

[Lord Ba'al]

After running the 64-bit version for a while, here are my results:

Installation: 7

Very nice and fast installation in 20 min.

Compatability: 6

Just micro-issue like Opera won't save vertical window size, or I needed Vista mode to install Intel X48 drivers.

Otherwise, anything runs fine.

Features: 6

I like the new Superbar and other things, but no absolute uber-features here.

Speed: 7

Very fast, love it.

The looks: 6

I like the looks, but it would be nice if you could customise themes more, not just changing the glass colour.

Overall: 6

Certainly a huge improvement over Vista, but there's still room for some fine-tuning.

[ZonoBurk]

On Vista both of my graphics index scores were 5.0.

Now on Windows 7 my graphics score is 4.9 and my gaming graphics is 4.7.

Before I updated to the new driver both were 4.9.

I'm gonna put in Crysis Warhead and see how it goes. Even though I couldn't play on all max settings with Vista using a 9500GT 1 GB (you can have everything on but the aa has to be off and it's fine).

[Grex]

Installed it into VMWare Workstation i have running on my laptop. Connected it to a virtual 2003 AD domain. No issues at all. Figured it would run real slow. Not the case.

The Superbar is pretty sweet. (Y)

Overall I like it. :D

[Lawrens]

Been using it for a few days, I like it, I skipped vista so I might be getting win7.

I enjoy the new taskbar, I didn't like its appearance that much at first, still don't, but it works well, I even kept it on large icons for a while even though I hated the appearance, I just don't like the bar and block look, but being able to see your status on the msn messenger icon is quite nice, and accessing its options is something I enjoyed, the appearance does a good job, so I got used to it, however I wish the taskbar is a little more customizeable, also I love the jumplist, I do have a lot of free space on the task menu even when I pinned everything there, so I crave for some customizability sometimes.

The screen edge snapping is quite cool, there're times where I would use it, but I wished it's a little more flexible than having the windows always at 50% of the screen size, I find myself resizing one window when I have 2 windows docked inorder to get the most out of the window with the most contents, doing so would block the other forcing me to click on the bottom one again and adjust that, which kind of defeats the purpose of the auto snapping/docking, so I hope there's an option to tile them and adjust both windows size by the center, also, I don't mind them adding more to it, more tiling options (those windows stacking/side by side options on the right click on taskbar could then be put into use more), but I guess it's just small touches they decided to add in to make things easier, not a full blown window tiling management, so I guess I can live with it if they decided to keep it like that, it's still a useful function.

I haven't played with homegroup yet, I kind of don't have many devices that could access it, I only have another mac, 360 and a ps3, i'll mess around with it later, but so far it seems quite convenient since win7 could see my 360 when I turn it on right from the network neighbourhood.

One thing I wish they'd change is flip3d, I find myself using alt-tab and the intellipoint's middle click Instant Viewer more, but it's just something extra, so can't really complain, but imo they should add to it making it better.

I haven't found much bugs or glitches, which is a good thing, and it's quite snappy, I wish windows drawing could be a little bit faster but that is probably my crappy video card or the drivers. Overall I enjoy being in win7, its faster than leopard on my intel 32bit macbook pro, application also launches fast, and I hope they continue to add in more convenient features in windows management, I think they're going towards the right direction, and I hope they continue to polish the interface more.

[Cojage]

One of the reasons i went back to XP was because of the decrease in performance when gaming on Vista. And, the menu structure in Vista was a bit ridiculous compared to XP, but not annoying.

So i tried Windows 7.

Installation - 7

Quite faster than Vista, no problems here.

Compatibility - 6

So far everything works, but not everything behaves the way it should be, but usually i just had to turn compatibility mode. And one time an application installer hung and the only reason to quit it was by rebooting it.

Features - 6

No new features that werent in Vista, unless I'm wrong. I also can not stand the look of the standard superbar. The quick launch menu and the applications bar are too vaguely separated. I'm not a apple fanboy(both xp and osx user, like them both equally), but the superbar is obviously inspired by another OS :)

I know this is a beta. But at this point, the only difference besides the looks i can see with Vista is the performance. But, this is still a beta.

[McDave]

Yesterday decided to try out Civ 4 (came free with my graphics card ages ago) but failed to start as Libarys not found. The solution was to install the Directx dist for June 07. Bit miffed that Win7 does not include the latest Directx Libarys.

[Stingray]

Looks like a winner to me.

[Iian K]

Installation of Windows 7 went well, I've had a few issues here and there and have been reporting them to Microsoft, and I see nothing major to add at this point.

Interestingly enough, this time I didn't have as many issues stability wise as I did during the Vista Beta Program.

[mail]

Not really had a good experience it's using 34 gigs of space on 36 gig partition, I it just takes as much space as possible. Also it keeps spawing windows poblem reporting service got up to 25 earlier.

[mrlopez8]

Maybe I'm too critical but shouldn't Win7 run all the programs that Vista will run?

I used DAEMON Tools Lite Image Drive 4303-lite on Vista to install software from ISO files but it won't work on Win7. Has to use Isoedit. Doesn't work as good as it did with Vista but I hope MS makes DAEMON Tools work in the RC1 version.

AVG AntiVirus 2009 v8.229 build 1410 wouldn't install so I tried it in compatibility mode for Vista & XP, still won't install. Had to download Kaspersky Anti-Virus ver 8.0.0.1015 free trial until I find another Antivirus program.

I'd love to use the old control panel but I'll just get used to the new one. I also like the LAN monitors on the taskbar near the clock because I could see Internet activity and the little globe that lets me know I have a connection to the Internet. Can it be added to the taskbar in Win7?

Aside from those things I like the OS.

[McDave]

I used DAEMON Tools Lite Image Drive 4303-lite on Vista to install software from ISO files but it won't work on Win7. Has to use Isoedit. Doesn't work as good as it did with Vista but I hope MS makes DAEMON Tools work in the RC1 version.

At first I was peaved Daemon tools would not work however Virtual CloneDrive works much better for me running iso files. Can right click the drive from explorer and mount from there + there is no taskbar icon.

I'd love to use the old control panel but I'll just get used to the new one. I also like the LAN monitors on the taskbar near the clock because I could see Internet activity and the little globe that lets me know I have a connection to the Internet. Can it be added to the taskbar in Win7?

Getting rid of classic view has to be the most frustrating change of them all. Takes more clicks to find the tool you are looking for and also got to think what catgory it's in.

[»X«]

So far so bad. For reasons unknown, Win7 refuses to shut down. If I click shutdown, nothing happens but I cant run any other programme, wont log off, wont restart, wont run task manager, NOTHING. So I've been using it for 4 days and each day I have to turn off the power. WTF?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Probably a stray driver. What have you installed within the last week?