Korean Job Discussion Forums

bassexpander · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

What do you think?

I've got it dual-loaded on the Samsung I'm planning to sell. At 2.8 ghz, it's workable, but not fast. I'm guessing it needs 2 gig of ram to be happy enough (I've got just one in that). I don't care for the linux-style launch bar in the bottom left corner. Maybe I can change that?

I'm wondering if it's really that much different than Vista, to be honest.

denverdeath · Joined: 21 May 2005 Location: Boo-sahn

Tried it for a bit last week, but had to uninstall it as one of my printers had issues with it(hp laserjet). Then again, I had to do an extra driver search for that printer with vista as well. Guess if both 7 and vista had some better(more) drivers included, they'd be better choices for many people. Good thing that I had the original drivers disk for this com or I wouldn't have had any sound. Anyway, vista seems to be working okay, but I think I either need more ram or a new com...maybe in the summer.

JBomb · Joined: 16 Oct 2008

it is what vista should have been imo. Smooth and pretty. Although machine I tried it on is sexy fast technical school student friend's beep box.

keetrainchild · Joined: 06 May 2008

I'm running it as a virtual machine inside VirtualBox. If I decide that I like it, I'll install it for real on my tertiary hard drive (which is a much slower 80GB drive with only an 8MB cache, so I don't except high disk performance), which will be a better test because I have the 32-bit version in VirtualBox, whereas the real installation will be 64-bit and use my actual hardware.

Edit: The Windows 7 beta doesn't have full driver support yet. I installed it on my hard drive, but it couldn't find a driver for my MSI Wifi card. I booted back into Linux, downloaded the driver, and copied it to my Windows partition, then booted into Windows 7 beta and set up the driver, and now it works.

Unfortunately, Windows still acts as though it's the only OS on the computer, demanding to take over the boot sector on the first partition of the first hard drive. I considered unplugging all my other hard drives before installing it, but didn't. As a result, Windows 7 overwrote my GRUB boot sector, so I needed to fix it. Now, though, it works well.

It's definitely pretty, and it seems reasonably fast. Of course, it's a new installation, so that's part of the reason why. Maybe I'll install a nice intensive game later and see how it plays.

keetrainchild · Joined: 06 May 2008

I installed it on a real hard drive, and it's rather neat. I like the new taskbar very much; it's sort of like the Mac OS dock, with just the icons. They're much more visible than the text+icons on the previous task bars, and it's easy to pin programs there for quick launching.

I'm using a 64-bit installation, and some drivers wouldn't install unless I right-clicked the installation executable and told it to run in compatibility mode for Windows Vista. For example, my sound card and motherboard drivers needed this to work. That's a fault of the hardware manufacturers/driver writers, though, not a problem with Windows itself.

Windows Media Player still lacks FLAC support/codecs. I installed a program called MadFLAC or something like that which installs a DirectShow component so they will play in WMP, but it should support more media formats without installing additional software.

Tomorrow I'll probably install a game on it to see how it works with more intensive applications. So far, it seems reasonably responsive (actually it is quite speedy), though new Windows installations generally are, tending to become slower after time. I'll find out eventually...

eamo · Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

I'll hold off using it until I build a new PC with i7 and LGA1336 parts. Maybe this Fall.

My x64 Vista Ultimate is working so well I don't see any need to rush into Windows 7.

It was kind of nice of MS to give out beta copies free until you read lower down the download page. It will stop working in June 2009!!

keetrainchild · Joined: 06 May 2008

Of course the copies expire Smile

Do you think Microsoft would give out unlimited copies of a perpetually-functional commercial operating system?

It's not Linux, after all!

Interestingly, back when 64-bit XP came out, they let people try that for six months before purchasing or uninstalling it. Wow, a free Windows OS until June... that's pretty nice, really.

Beeyee · Joined: 29 May 2007

Torrent sites are your friends to stop the countdown..........

bassexpander · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

Here's the thing I noticed after using it some more...

Windows 7 seems quite a bit less intense on the CPU, while being a bit more RAM dependent. If you have 2 gigs or more of RAM, you'll be fine. Now that I've noticed this, I consider it to be a good OS. I was running on 1gb. Even still, I noticed that my Pentium 2.8 CPU ran much cooler using Windows 7 than it did with XP. I think, if I had 2 gigs of RAM, it would have been fabulous.

The GEForce 5500 card I had on the machine wasn't enough for it. I was never able to run any aero-style graphics, and my machine rated the lowest possible (1.0) on the Windows 7 Experience ratings. On a newer machine, this will be very nice.

I still hated the hybrid Linux-style icon system in the lower-left launch bar. Yuck. Hate it.

sobriquet · Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Location: Nakatomi Plaza

I didn't even know Windows 7 was out.

i've resisted changing from my old copy of xp pro to vista all this time.

is windows seven a direct replacement for vista?

bassexpander · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

Yup. Very similar in many ways, but easier on resources, apparently.

TheChickenLover · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Location: The Chicken Coop

Using 32bit on my laptop @ work...VERY stable.

Using the 64bit on one of my machines @ home with 8GB of RAM...also, stable & the fps for gaming is much better. Windows 7 actually understands how to manage & allocated dual & quad core cpu's much better tha vista, so it's overall much faster.

(both comps are using 128GB SSD drives as well)

Chicken

JBomb · Joined: 16 Oct 2008

so icon task bar and RAM *beep*... really is kind of like OS X...

bassexpander · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

The icon taskbar SUX in Windows 7. It looks like a crappy Linux dist. Also, I find it slow because you have to hover over it and wait to see what other windows you have open. I'd rather have the XP-style bar than this.

ppcg4 · Joined: 16 Oct 2008

I dual-boot it on my 2.4GHz MacBook with 4GB of RAM and I absolutely love it. Really. The new taskbar is a godsend revision from the old way of doing things. Having one application icon and all the windows bundled to that icon, instead of taking up space on the taskbar for every window was a brilliant move.

It's also very stable for a beta. I've had one BSOD. I'm beginning to wonder if Apple will come up with something more radical than 7. Apple doesn't really have much to improve on IMO, but it will be interesting to see the exchange between the companies in terms of innovation.

I still say Windows XP, fully upgraded with the newest service pack is the best way to go (for Windows). It's a very mature and stable OS, and doesn't nag you like Vista does.