Windows 7 - thoughts?

Is anyone else using it right now? I'm using the x64 version, the beta Microsoft recently released. It's actually really good, and I'm more impressed than I was with Vista's RC release a few years ago.

Aero Peek is kinda neat, but there's a lot of little visual things that kind of annoy me, simply because it's different. They changed up the taskbar, too. Lots of icons. Confusing sometimes. You can't go back to the original style, either. So for now it takes me a minute or two to navigate around because it also combines a sort of window management.

I'm still trying to get used to it! No driver problems. Woo-hoo! Dual booted with Vista, and so far, there's no reason for me to go back to Vista until the OS expires.


Has anyone else tried it out? Thoughts?

I hear it's quite pleasant and hardly Hitler-y at all.

I'm still on XP. I'll upgrade when they make another OS as stable and compatible and bloat-free.

Danarchy said:

I'm still on XP. I'll upgrade when they make another OS as stable and compatible and bloat-free.

I heard about the beta, but I wasn't going to try it since I've got too much going on to deal with restoring the computer if anything goes wrong with it, but you said dual boot? Maybe I'll still try it if I can have it dual-boot with the current XP SP2 install.

I've been tinkering with it in VMWare. Seems to be quite stable, but more or less the same as Vista with rounded corners rather than sharp metal edges.

I'm more inclined to compare it to Ubuntu and Ubuntu with Beryl/Compiz.

I installed it, but I'm not using it right now. I didn't notice much different from Vista, really. Same bloat, same slowness, worse compatibility than Vista (even programs that ran in Vista, like Google Chrome, won't run in Windows 7). SUA utilities haven't been recompiled, so they're hopelessly broken.

On driver compatibility: It's supposed to be compatible with Vista drivers, but it initially didn't accept my wifi drivers. When I pulled out a USB wifi device to use, and that worked, Windows Update found working drivers for my internal wifi, that pissed me off somewhat.

Chu said:

They changed up the taskbar, too. Lots of icons. Confusing sometimes. You can't go back to the original style, either.

Actually that's not true. It's hidden under the options for grouping. Don't remember exactly the words, but something about hiding and not hiding taskbar labels.

Damn. I was really hoping that this would iron out the kinks in Vista, but nothing I have read sugests that this is anything other than Vista with a modified interface (though I do like the screenshots I've seen, looks pretty and fairly original). Does it actually have any major new features? It'd be nice to finally see the cool new stuff that was cut from vista (EVERYTHING).

Though it's a beta so maybe they will make some changes before release. Or maybe not.

I'm starting to think they should go back to win2k and build something based on that again. After all, XP turned out okay eventually.

MikeRS said:

Actually that's not true. It's hidden under the options for grouping. Don't remember exactly the words, but something about hiding and not hiding taskbar labels.

Can't seem to go back to the classic Windows start menu though. That pissed me off a bit.

I've been using it for a few days. I like it, actually. Then again, I didn't dislike Vista all that much in the first place (after I actually spent more than a week using it, anyhow). I actually really like the new design of the taskbar, though it's essentially the same thing as pinning programs to the start menu in XP/Vista or having a giant Quick Launch toolbar. The UI also has some nice new usability features (such as dragging windows to either side of the screen to make window tiling easy and being able to peek at windows just by hovering over the window thumbnails with the cursor). I don't see anything about it that indicates that it's bloated. It runs faster than Vista does by a long shot, and I'd almost go so far as to say that it rivals the speed of XP. Startup and shutdown time for me is definitely a lot faster than Vista or XP. Application compatibility could still use some work, but I've only run into one program that I couldn't get to work at all (Fallout 3) so far.

I should probably note that since I recently upgraded from a Pentium 4 to a Core 2 Duo, this is the first chance I've had to use a 64-bit version of Windows at all. My XP and Vista installations are both 32-bit. I honestly have no clue how much of a difference that's going to make (aside from maybe a couple of slight compatibility problems) compared to using the 32-bit version.

If the final product is as good or better than this current beta is, then I'll seriously consider switching to Windows 7 as my primary OS, a move I've been holding back on doing with Windows Vista.

Can't seem to go back to the classic Windows start menu though. That pissed me off a bit.

I dunno why anyone would still want the classic Windows start menu now. It's so antiquated and useless... not to mention that it stands out like a sore thumb in Vista (it even looks out of place in XP to a certain degree). The modern start menu is actually really useful, especially since you can pin the programs you use most to it for easy access. I very rarely ever have to even look at the all programs list.

EDIT: Oookay, got Fallout 3 to work. I blame the game's stupid copy protection for the compatibility issue, not the operating system.

AgentSpork said:

I dunno why anyone would still want the classic Windows start menu now. It's so antiquated and useless... not to mention that it stands out like a sore thumb in Vista (it even looks out of place in XP to a certain degree). The modern start menu is actually really useful, especially since you can pin the programs you use most to it for easy access. I very rarely ever have to even look at the all programs list.

Having stuff hidden by default is really annoying. When I used Windows, I would keep all of my often used programs in the quick launch bar.

exp(x) said:

Having stuff hidden by default is really annoying. When I used Windows, I would keep all of my often used programs in the quick launch bar.

There's an option for the modern start menu so that it won't auto-hide programs. :P I used to keep all of my frequently used programs on the quick launch bar too, but that became more of an annoyance than anything because I had like 20 quick launch items, which took up a lot of room that could have been put to better use. In addition to that, with the icons being so small, I would always accidentally click on a different program from the one I actually meant to open.

You could probably say that the space option will come into play with the Windows 7 taskbar too, but with the way it's set up (when you run a pinned item it doesn't take up any extra space on the taskbar) I don't see that being an issue.

It's okay. It's somewhere between XP and Vista in terms of how good it is, so thats not exactly great. I like some things about it, others make me want to murder small children. I dont find it to be as obnoxious as Vista, however, so I'm going to say microsoft is on a (very slow) road to making better OS's

MikeRS said:

I installed it, but I'm not using it right now. I didn't notice much different from Vista, really. Same bloat, same slowness, worse compatibility than Vista (even programs that ran in Vista, like Google Chrome, won't run in Windows 7).

It's motherfucking beta, what do you expect?

I remember people saying the same thing about Windows 95. In an era of Terabyte HDs, 20 GB is nothing.

I tested windows 7 last night on a P4 with 512 MB RAM. It was actually faster than XP, and by pure miracle it detected all my hardware, including my old Soundblaster Live! sound card. note that this computer couldn't even run aero, but W7 works. Fancy that.

P.S. Google Chrome not working? Especially since Google feel as if they need their own window style and god knows what else, I can't help but see that as a problem.

(Actually, Google Chrome worked with --in-process-plugins)

but, my verdict: what John said.

Danarchy said:

I'm still on XP. I'll upgrade when they make another OS as stable and compatible and bloat-free.

Mee too. XP is the best OS Microsoft made yet.

Danarchy said:

I'm still on XP. I'll upgrade when they make another OS as stable and compatible and bloat-free.

I've got the .ISO sitting on my desktop. I'd like to say I'm interested in fiddling around with it, but I just spent a week salvaging old parts and putting Server2008 on my laptop.

I'm still on Debian. I won’t upgrade downgrade whenever they make an OS as stable and compatible and bloat-free.

Csonicgo said:

It's motherfucking beta, what do you expect?

You expect me to give glowing reviews just because "I'm sure it'll be better"? Hell no, I'm telling it as it is.

I remember people saying the same thing about Windows 95. In an era of Terabyte HDs, 20 GB is nothing.

In an era where laptops with 80-120 GB disks are still extremely common, you better fucking believe it matters.

P.S. Google Chrome not working? Especially since Google feel as if they need their own window style and god knows what else, I can't help but see that as a problem.

There's tons of other applications with their own UI styles bypassing all native controls. Here's an example of two that are working on Windows 7: Steam and Microsoft Office.

MikeRS said:

You expect me to give glowing reviews just because "I'm sure it'll be better"? Hell no, I'm telling it as it is.


In an era where laptops with 80-120 GB disks are still extremely common, you better fucking believe it matters.


There's tons of other applications with their own UI styles bypassing all native controls. Here's an example of two that are working on Windows 7: Steam and Microsoft Office.

What are the specs on your computer?

This with Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 amd64 as the primary OS.

AgentSpork said:

I dunno why anyone would still want the classic Windows start menu now.

Simpler organization.

AgentSpork said:

It's so antiquated and useless...

I wasn't aware that forcing you to click a cramped array of links leading to your program was modern and useful.

AgentSpork said:

not to mention that it stands out like a sore thumb in Vista (it even looks out of place in XP to a certain degree).

Uhhh, Classic Windows theme ftw?

AgentSpork said:

The modern start menu is actually really useful, especially since you can pin the programs you use most to it for easy access.

There is a similar phenomenon that can be placed just about anywhere and has been on computers for some time, they're called shortcuts.

Danarchy said:

I'm still on XP. I'll upgrade when they make another OS as stable and compatible and bloat-free.

^ Same here. XP pro, SP3 has been very reliable for me. :)

I hope it'd help Doom Builder (2 for best results) cause i'm not really happy that Doom Builder doesn't run in 3D on my x64-bit HP Pavilion...

But! When it's complete, from what is said, it uses almost half or alittle less processing and RAM then Vista, making me able to play more laggy games better to run.

Point is- Better gaming.

I've actually noticed some speed improvements in a couple of games in Windows 7 as opposed to XP also, which is pretty awesome. Left 4 Dead for instance chugs if I have dual core rendering enabled in XP, but runs smoothly with it enabled in Windows 7. I've also noticed a significant increase in speed when playing Fallout 3.

ducon said:

I'm still on Debian. I won’t upgrade whenever they make an OS as stable and compatible and bloat-free.

yeah I wouldn't upgrade Debian either, you might lose your wifi or your sound card support or even your damn Standby mode

You know, the Vista-style start menu is actually pretty good, I never gave it a shot until I was forced to use it in Windows 7; I had assumed it was just as badly-designed as the Windows XP redesign, boy I was wrong. It's so much easier to use than the 95 or XP style start menus. You just hit the Windows key and type in what you're looking for, be it program, file, control panel, whatever. I just hit WinKey, type "note", hit Enter, and it opens notepad. WinKey->"mouse"->enter and it opens Mouse Options. Reminds me of Beagle.

also Csonicgo: Shoe away, troll, don't bother me.