Who's taking the Windows 7 plunge?

[AtmaWeapon]

My hard drive is pissed at me right now. I'm deleting about 18GB of trash off of it in preparation for a defrag, backup image, repartition, then setting up a dual-boot into the Windows 7 beta.

Everything I've seen about Win7 makes it look like what Vista should have been. The system requirements are lean; you need a 1Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, and a 128MB DX9 video card to run it with Aero; technically it's faster with Aero than without because it will offload most of the rendering to the GPU. Classic theme still renders on your CPU apparently. Anyway, that's something even my 5-year-old box can handle. The taskbar looks cleaner. UAC's not as mean. Everything I hear about compatibility is positive.

Any other nerds ready to take the plunge? The beta's public, now's your chance to try it free!

[cbailey78]

you need a 1Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, and a 128MB DX9 video card
Boy, looks like you would have to invest alot of money to have windows vista!

[Deviance]

I'm in the process of downloading it at the moment. I hope this is worth trying out.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

I've had it as a dual boot ever since the leaked beta.

I tried searching today to see if the public beta was a newer version, but it wasn't uploaded just yet.

[Breaker]

I've had it as a dual boot ever since the leaked beta.

I tried searching today to see if the public beta was a newer version, but it wasn't uploaded just yet.

so.. is it worth it? what do you think of its performance.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

so.. is it worth it? what do you think of its performance.

Sorry about the earlier post, I figured you would have already read some early reviews.

In beta form, not really. Much better than Vista, but still nowhere close to XP.

They got rid of the shitty sidebar. Networking seems to actually work. (Connecting to the internet in Vista is the biggest pain in the ass...the connection ALWAYS went local only after a couple hours, until I restarted the computer...)

It definitely has speed improvements and seems to be lighter, but there is not a lot of new stuff here...

I pirate Windows anyways, so when it actually gets released I'll still download it.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/windows_7.png

[Chris Miller]

I tried Vista and the 7 beta, but my machine seems to like XP far better. Most of the programs I run don't seem to be compatible with anything else.

[Russ]

I like Vista, so I don't think I'll try Windows 7.

Ya I know, I like Vista. It's true. I'm just used to it. It's better than XP. I don't wan't to take the risk of going to a new OS that I can't use.

[ShadowTiger]

Ya I know, I like Vista. It's true. I'm just used to it. It's better than XP.I thought of a suitable analogy to make a post around, but the only "Fillet Mignon to dog food" analogy I could think of was how much WinXP "is" better than Vista. Interesting.

'cuz .. y'know .. .. just saying "better" makes for an astoundingly sound and agreeable argument.

The word "is" ... quite the dangerous tool.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

I like Vista, so I don't think I'll try Windows 7.

Ya I know, I like Vista. It's true. I'm just used to it. It's better than XP. I don't wan't to take the risk of going to a new OS that I can't use.

That's like saying Internet Explorer is a better browser than Firefox.

You may think it's true, but it's just due to shear computer ignorance.

[Brasel]

wow. think i'll pass. microsoft is just releasing a better os after vista so everyone who bought computers or vista will have to spend money on the new os...just as before. ill stick with ubuntu and my xp for now.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

wow. think i'll pass. microsoft is just releasing a better os after vista so everyone who bought computers or vista will have to spend money on the new os...just as before. ill stick with ubuntu and my xp for now.

http://www.imyspacegraphics.com/images/captain-morgan/180px-Captain_morgan.gif

[Shazza Dani]

If Vista users don't get free upgrades I'm just gonna pirate Windows 7.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

If Vista users don't get free upgrades I'm just gonna pirate Windows 7.

I hear they are considering making an ad based upgrade...who would want that?

PIRATE!

[phattonez]

So if you want to get a headstart on downloading Windows 7, you can go here. Note that it won't come with a product key, since Microsoft isn't handing them out yet, but they will come out soon.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

[Pryme8]

If Vista users don't get free upgrades I'm just gonna pirate Windows 7.

Microsoft knows your name, where you live and what you just said...

they are coming for you now.

[Shazza Dani]

Microsoft knows your name, where you live and what you just said...

they are coming for you now.

>.> I didn't do anything yet.

[Deviance]

Well I just finished the download of the iso around 2am this morning. All I got to do is just burn it to a cd. I'll post some screenshots later :P

[Shazza Dani]

Windows 7 looks like a mentally challenged version of Vista. I hate how the start bar looks like a slab of glass.

[AtmaWeapon]

Forget you haters. I'm running it right now and it's my new favorite thing. It also taught me that BitDefender's about the slowest antivirus ever; while I was slimming down my XP for the image I noticed that turning it off made me go about 5x faster. Now I just use Avira.

Anyway, I'm really liking it so far. I'm not really seeing much of a performance difference so I'm not really sure what the deal is there; it really takes numbers to do that and I'm not putting a stopwatch to anything. Security's better than XP. The install experience is better than XP. Hard drive usage, not so much, but that's cheap. I'm running full Aero glass on an Athlon 64 3000+ with 1GB RAM and a 256MB GeForce 7600 GS, and nothing's slowing down significantly. Any performance complaints are more easily explained by my aging hardware than the OS itself.

Also why should Vista users get a free upgrade? The 2-year development cycle is what MS was committed to before Vista, and they screwed it up big time. Notice the release dates for the "home" OS:
95: 1995
98: 1998
ME: 2000
XP: 2001
Vista: 2007
7: 2009?

Notice that 6-year gap there? That's a problem. Thing is, lots of people are silly and think that a 6-year cycle is what MS has always done, so they believe the columnists whining that this is too soon and it's just cashing in on Vista's failure. It may well be so; look how fast XP followed ME. It could also be that Vista was a venture that started nearly from scratch, and Win7 is built upon Vista's core. Either way, it's been 2 years, and the new version's out. It does look like there will be an upgrade program (http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=609&pgno=0), but only if you buy Vista during a certain timeframe, and I'd presume that timeframe would be about 6 months before the Win7 launch through 3-4 months after.

Half the complaints in this thread are settings I discovered how to change in my first 10 minutes with 7. Don't like the glass taskbar? Right-click your desktop, choose Personalize, click "Window Color", and uncheck "Enable transparency". Boom, solid taskbar's back. Don't like glass period? Choose the classic theme at the cost of software rendering.

Personally, I'm impressed that this beta OS is able to bring Vista to my aging machine.

[Shazza Dani]

I only said Vista users should get a free upgrade because Windows 7 feels more like a Vista SP2, or like a big bugfix. Vista had some problems, they fixed them, and called t a new operating system.

[Deviance]

Well just got done installing Windows 7 which I am currently using it at the moment. Decided to make some screenshots.

http://sjnetwork.net/pics/v1.JPG
^ First thing I tested was ZC and ZCL (It works)

http://sjnetwork.net/pics/v2.JPG
^ Basic info about my pc.

All in all the installation went smooth. Even found all the drivers I needed.

Also you can get the copy of the beta here now.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

[AtmaWeapon]

I only said Vista users should get a free upgrade because Windows 7 feels more like a Vista SP2, or like a big bugfix. Vista had some problems, they fixed them, and called t a new operating system.Seriously, go through the list of new features, and try it for yourself before making this assumption. I've used Vista for a few months at work, and from what I've seen so far saying that Windows 7 is just a bugfix update to Vista is like saying that XP was just a bugfix update to ME.

XP Home felt, looked, and smelled just like ME. There were less differences between XP and ME than there are between Vista and 7. I'm looking at a taskbar that lets me rearrange the taskbar buttons. I'm looking at Aero glass on a machine that can't run Vista. I'm looking at right-click menus that let me open Windows Explorer in the folder I want instead of the default view. I can restore, maximize, and tile windows without a right-click. That's just some of the UI features.

The "Libraries" concept I'm playing with right now is something that might exist in Vista; I haven't actually tried interacting with it like I just did, but it's pretty neat. So I've got this "Documents" location that works like My Documents. I can right-click on it and set it to point to multiple folders, and designate one as the default save location. Now, when I open the "Documents" link in the open/save dialogs, I can see all of the locations I chose at once. This isn't a big thing to the normal user, but I keep my documents on a separate drive. In XP, I had to track down a slightly-hidden feature to remap My Documents to the new drive. In Vista, I'm sure there's such a feature as well. In 7, I don't have to find an option, I just right-clicked "Documents" and found what I needed in the properties window. Now Win7 uses E:\Documents instead of C:\Users\Username\Documents, and I can add other folders if I get other hard drives (for example, if I want to separate my MP3s which I rarely need to archive and back up from my source code which I have to back up frequently.)

I don't feel like it's an incremental upgrade at all, it's actually quite big.

[Deviance]

I am still messing around with it as I am typing. I like how now you can just pin your applications you use straight to the taskbar. But when I was viewing the control panel. It's ugly as all hell.

[firebug]

Hmmm.. I'm wary of newer Windows. I was an early adopter of XP, and was sorely disappointed to learn that DOS games would NOT play natively. In fact, I didn't like XP at all when it first came out. Same with Vista. I bought Ultimate edition release day (big mistake) and had a hell of a time getting my network to work correctly. I finally just boxed it back up and reinstalled TinyXP. Never looked back. Windows just loves to spit shit out and then take years to fix all the little bugs. By that time, they're releasing a new OS anyways. *shrug* I like my box that does everything I want it to, how I want it to, when I want it to. I'll switch over only when absolutely necessary.
Although it does look pretty.....

[AtmaWeapon]

Hahaha. I'm not sure what I did, but I got a bluescreen that completely killed it. Reformatting now o7!

[Radium]

I installed it today, it's awesome, so much more fun than windows vista! I love the built in desktop slideshow ability. Oh and the whole new taskbar icon system is freaking genius.