News - Microsoft updates WGA notifications for Windows XP

[j.o.s.h.1408]

well there you go. sounds like every new OS at launch is full of bugs so i dont see why people want to buy win 7 when thats out straight away.

[kalniel]

It's true.

I think some of the reasoning is that it's so similar to Vista under the hood that there can't be that many new bugs. 98SE had fewer bugs than 98 at launch I think, for example.

[dangel]

OS are very complex software and i cant remember a OS ever released since win 98 that diddnt contain any bugs. maybe linux and OSX are more stable at launch but i dont remember a MS OS thats been stable from day 1. who knows maybe win 7 is stable as rock at launch

Depends on your metric - tbh Windows has been 'stable' (in my eyes) for some time now if the bar is 'doesn't BSOD all the time'. 7 hasn't crashed on me yet and i've been using build 7000 (the beta) at work full time for weeks. Windows is getting a lot more robust (by design) - a gpu driver crash merely causes a small inconvenience (while it's reloaded) thesedays rather than annihilating the OS (a la Windows XP) for example.

Personally, I'll be switching to 7 pretty much immediately on most of my systems unless there's good reason not too - i'm sick of XP now (it just feels so darn 'old') and Vista simply can't scale as well as 7.

[badass]

Depends on your metric - tbh Windows has been 'stable' (in my eyes) for some time now if the bar is 'doesn't BSOD all the time'. 7 hasn't crashed on me yet and i've been using build 7000 (the beta) at work full time for weeks. Windows is getting a lot more robust (by design) - a gpu driver crash merely causes a small inconvenience (while it's reloaded) thesedays rather than annihilating the OS (a la Windows XP) for example.

Personally, I'll be switching to 7 pretty much immediately on most of my systems unless there's good reason not too - i'm sick of XP now (it just feels so darn 'old') and Vista simply can't scale as well as 7.

Could I be imagining it or does Windows 7 x64 make better use of my 4 cores than Vista x64 does.
I haven't looked into it that deeply but I'd imagine they have made it more multi threaded.

[dangel]

Could I be imagining it or does Windows 7 x64 make better use of my 4 cores than Vista x64 does.
I haven't looked into it that deeply but I'd imagine they have made it more multi threaded.

You're right - they did tweak multicore support (or so they said)

[j.o.s.h.1408]

You're right - they did tweak multicore support (or so they said)

i've got a i7 rig so maybe this win 7 will make full use of my 8 cores?

[dangel]

It'll probably make better use of them yes.

[baius]

who knows maybe win 7 is stable as rock at launch

I think some of the reasoning is that it's so similar to Vista under the hood that there can't be that many new bugs. 98SE had fewer bugs than 98 at launch I think, for example.

I thought Win7 = Vista SP3?!

a gpu driver crash merely causes a small inconvenience (while it's reloaded).

Yeah, playing RA3 the other day, the graphics driver crashed. I naturally feared the worst, at least expecting the game to be shut down, but the driver restored itself (or did something) and RA3 was still up and running. I was very pleased. (My computer has since stopped turning on, but that's besides the point.)

Leads to a thought: I heard that Creative sound cards (in particular) were having to use special Alchemy drivers to access EAX effects through Vista. (I think that's what Alchemy was/is for - can't remember.) Is that still the case? Are the drivers quite robust now? Any Creative users?