Windows 7 - How Is That Going?

Hello,

So far, my experience with Microsoft Windows 7 has been very positive. One unusual thing I noticed during testing the release candidate was that it installed more device drivers automatically than the RTM version did, however, this was not a problem since I had all of the device drivers for my computers downloaded, extracted and ready to install.

My guess is for the test cycle, Microsoft wanted users to be able to get up and running as quickly as possible, even if that meant including pre-release drivers, while with the RTM release users were expected to go back to the various hardware vendors to get production drivers. This is actually a pretty good approach, though, and I do not fault Microsoft for taking it.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Loathe the fact there is no direct upgrade path from XP to W7.
Hate the new start/task bar (would like the classic one back please) and cannot believe there is no repair/restore option (ie like the 3rd option on the old XP CD/DVD) to fix a damaged system.

I am finding more and more with Vista and W7 once the OS fails to boot that’s it you are stuffed , lose everything and have to start again. Yes there may be advanced ways and means for the really smart people out there ( read more cost) but for the average ones who just want to use their PC this is a real disappointment.

Sure it works faster than Vista (it would need to) but I have found NOTHING I do in W7 that I cannot already do in XP and because I know XP backwards I am actually much more efficient using it so very hard to see any justiifcation for spending more new dollars to do the same old tasks in a way that Microsoft now thinks we should work.

Ken

Three installs so far.
A current/powerful self built machine, An older “el-cheapo” PowerSpec desktop, and an Acer Aspire One netbook.

ZERO problems with the installs. All three machines came up and were running in short order with minimal input from me.

The “self built” machine had no issues at all and that includes the multiple TV cards I have installed in this “media box”.

The PowerSpec machine didn’t -actually- have any issues but the video performance finally caused me to buy a better video card for that machine (it was using the onboard video).

The Acer netbook had a couple of missing drivers (Sound and a driver for the Targus USB bluetooth adapter I have plugged in, but they were both installed at the first “windows update”.

One thing I found odd is that it seems like Windows 7 likes to “over share” with people inside the “Homegroup”. I like having one tightly controlled share folder not a folder for each form of media. Figuring out how to re-configure that sharing was….interesting, but more of a preference issue than a problem.

I only had to dump a couple of pieces of really legacy software, everything else I had that ran under XP still runs on these machines.

I haven’t tried any games yet.

I ran the Beta then RC with very little problems. Built a new PC and ran RC then did a fresh install of Windows 7 Pro version with no problems. Finish up yesterday with the installation of the software. Did take advantage of the Microsoft Easy Transfer program which may it a lot easier. Did try the RC to Windows 7 Pro without a fresh install the fix posted on the Web did work but not a big deal. Overall this was painless as there were no surprises.

For the most part I like Win7 very much. One particular problem I have with the x64 bit version is … at times the PC stops responding like opening up IE8 or Windows Explorer. When this happens the screen goes to a white hue and either recovers or not. This happens normally when I need the PC the most. It frequently happens on all my Win7 PCs. I am not sure this is happening but it does. It seems to be related to Task manager not releasing programs. Ex: I will have 4 or 5 or 6 IE8 applications running but they are really not running. Task manager just didn’t clear them out. I cannot force them closed unless I reboot. At times I will have many programs show up in Task Manager when they are actually closed. I may have 3 or 4 Outlook programs open, even when it is closed. Could this be that I have 4Gb of system RAM. This didn’t happen when I had 2GB system ram and was running WinXP on the same hardware.

Well, the first issue that I came up against was that Win 7 did not recognise my wireless card which meant that I couldn’t connect to the Internet.
Connected by wire and then Win 7 found a driver that worked… and then proceeded to download a bunch of updates… already!
First impression is that it is stable and after altering the UAC.. is reasonably acceptable… but the screen appears to be ‘chunky’ - big icons in the toolbar and seemingly lots of hidden stuff yet to find.
I hear that the ‘Homegroup’ idea is useless unless ther are other PC’s with Win 7. Also when accessed, Homegroup comes up with a typical unhelpful MS error message when I try to print the password!!( A printer is connected and prints from MS Office).
Advice? If your operating system is working… leave Win 7 alone! Way too expensive for any benefits it may bring!

regards,

Allan Thompson

Windows 7 is truly amazing, after installing it on several of my test computers I have had only one driver that did not take and within 3 days it was updated via Windows Update. I have installed it on a laptop with 512 MB of ram running XP and after the install it ran even better than it did with XP. I have also done three Vista upgrades and for the first time in Windows history, not one problem, not one missing driver, nada, nothing, all worked as advertised. Contrary to popular belief I never had a problem with Vista. I must have installed it on 7 or 800 machines and once setup none of my clients had problems with one exception. That particular client could break air. Anyone who continues to use XP, shame on you, this is truly a great operating system and I do mean great. I should add I installed 7 Professional on my netbook and it runs like a charm!

I am absolutely amazed. I have installed it on about a dozen computers now and at the most, it took a couple of reboots and some updates to get all the drivers right - and some of them were old equipment. And it was all automatic, I didn’t initiate any searches

One machine was one that I had been unable to find drivers for the built in sound card and Win7 found it on the second reboot.

I even have it running on an old Compaq Laptop, 800MHz Processor and .75 Gig of RAM - runs much better than I expected. I think it is actually performing better than XP did on this machine but I haven’t had time to perform any test to proove that.

I am very happy with Windows 7.

I’ve been using the beta’s and RTM versions since it was available to me through software assurance. I’ve had no stability problems, and I’ve only run into a single device that has a driver issue. It’s annoying because the device I’m struggling with is a USB to VGA converter to drive my second monitor. Other than that - it’s all been pretty good so far.

I also have it installed on my MSI Wind nettop, which is an Intel Atom machine with 2GB RAM. It’s run “OK” but definitely not great. I would still prefer Windows XP on nettops and netbooks over Windows 7. Anything beyond running IE and the machine really was at it’s limits. I would hazard a guess that MS Office 2007 would be a little too heavy for such a light weight machine running Windows 7.

Well, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate - 64 bit version, and found that much of my hardware doesn’t work anymore. Printer, scanner, cell phone (doesn’t sync). Oh well, I need to get newer equipment, always thought so but I’ve been putting it off for a while.
The 64 bit is an issue also, not only do I have old hardware, I have old programs which need to be upgraded. Inevitable.
Other than that, I know that I have a hardware problem, that is one of the reasons for going to Windows 7. I am going to try new ram to correct the problem, but my point is that Windows 7 handles it very nicely. IE used to hang my computer causing a re-boot, now it asks to restart, and the restart is quick. Also having a problem with Outlook, same thing, it asks to restart. Keeps all of the data intact and restarts. What a pleasure.
Everything else is working just fine, after the installation, it updated all of my drivers automatically and all of my new hardware just works.
Quicker booting, hardware error trapping, just great.