Windows 7 -When will you get it?

[synaesthesia]

It uses a little less RAM, but that'd be down to reducing superfetch's usefulness. So yeah, just mark that claim up to marketing. It still sucks up a crapload of HDD space, and it doesn't seem to want to completely idle much, not so good from a power usage point of view. That might change at release, but I wont hold my breath.

Sorry but all rubbish. It's lighter in installation than even Vista Basic (so far, bearing in mind it's beta status), quicker performing even than XP on some machines (may depend on drivers and other 3rd party factors) and otherwise rather efficient. Certainly more so than my Vista installation, although that doesn't say too much.
I will certainly agree it's a fairly hefty set of tweaks to Vista and that it's what Vista should have been, but that shouldn't detract from it's status as a quite possible decent OS.

[badass]

No more than Vista is, it's still just a tweaked version of Vista, only with even more software compatibility issues.

More or less true, but I believe that my organisation will go straight from XP to Windows 7.
Mainly because right now we have a load of Vista unsuitable machines on our network and by the time we are forced to use Windows 7, these will be gone. If at all possible, I will avoid having more than one desktop OS across the whole organisation.
Vista and W7 have some seriously good corporate features that XP will never have without getting 3rd party software involved (which will just increase complexity of managing our network)
I alos like the thought of SMB2 properly using our now completely gigabit network when combined with WS2008.

[Sputnik]

if you've got a large enough stick handy, try using USB stick as mentioned above!

well, I tried to follow a guide on how to put it on the USB stick and make it bootable but, I never managed it.

[hypnoticstate]

See, this is why i dont use the Windows betas.

[geezerone]

When I buy a new computer.

Can't be too far away unless you're like me and waiting until the last minute!

Only change mostly when I actually need to. Still XP here.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

hey guys seeing as this is the most popular windows 7 thread, is windows 7 32bit only or is there a 64bit version of it? what version are you guys using?

is there a premium, home and ultimate editon of this windows 7 or just one bog standard BETA version of it?


what are some of the major issues that have been identified with this beta? am i right in saying that vista drivers will work for this OS and that all pc games will work fine too in dx10 mode?

what are the prerequisite's in installing windows 7?

[Splash]

There are 32 and 64 bit ISOs available. I'm using 64 bit as my main OS now, after having tested 32 bit in a virtual machine.

The standard beta is of Ultimate, however there is a beta version of Home Premium for selected users only.

Major issues? Make sure you verify the iso before trying to install as I've seen some horror stories of corrupt downloads. I did an upgrade install from Vista SP1, but I see no reason why a clean install wouldn't be fine too.

There are limited antivirus packages available - I'm using the Kaspersky beta which isn't regularly updated and seems to crash the system when I run a manual scan however I've just filed bug reports for that with both Microsoft ad Kaspersky (as while keyboard and mouse are still active Explorer hangs and I can't bring up taske manager/process explorer to kill either process). Steam games are a little flakey - I actually got slightly better performance out of GTA4 than I do under Vista initially, but things got sluggish after about an hour to the point that I had to save and restart which fixed it. Other than that I've been using it pretty much the same way as I was before with Vista and have been quite pleased with the results as far as a beta OS goes.

As for prerequisites - not sure what you mean there... You need a PC with a DVDROM (unless installing from USB) and that's about it. I haven't even considered dual booting at this stage, so couldn't comment on what the bootloader's like.

[kalniel]

Can't be too far away unless you're like me and waiting until the last minute!

Only change mostly when I actually need to. Still XP here.

Hehe true. The temptation of new tech is always there, but when the most recent game one buys runs smoothly on maximum settings with an 'ancient' computer you have to take a reality check and really ask what difference it would make

That and I can just about persuade myself that the technology around the corner is going to be better than what I could get now

[j.o.s.h.1408]

There are 32 and 64 bit ISOs available. I'm using 64 bit as my main OS now, after having tested 32 bit in a virtual machine.

The standard beta is of Ultimate, however there is a beta version of Home Premium for selected users only.

Major issues? Make sure you verify the iso before trying to install as I've seen some horror stories of corrupt downloads. I did an upgrade install from Vista SP1, but I see no reason why a clean install wouldn't be fine too.

There are limited antivirus packages available - I'm using the Kaspersky beta which isn't regularly updated and seems to crash the system when I run a manual scan however I've just filed bug reports for that with both Microsoft ad Kaspersky (as while keyboard and mouse are still active Explorer hangs and I can't bring up taske manager/process explorer to kill either process). Steam games are a little flakey - I actually got slightly better performance out of GTA4 than I do under Vista initially, but things got sluggish after about an hour to the point that I had to save and restart which fixed it. Other than that I've been using it pretty much the same way as I was before with Vista and have been quite pleased with the results as far as a beta OS goes.

As for prerequisites - not sure what you mean there... You need a PC with a DVDROM (unless installing from USB) and that's about it. I haven't even considered dual booting at this stage, so couldn't comment on what the bootloader's like.

what i mean is do i need to install this first or can i install it on top of my vista OS in a seperate partition or hdd?

[Splash]

As I said I've not dual booted, but when you run the installer from within Windows I'm pretty sure it gives you the option of a clean install, which would suggest that there's no problem with running the install to another partition either by booting from the DVD or running from within Windows.

[Grey M@a]

Reading through the thread and a lot of people saying they would use Windows 7 for DX11. As said in the original Windows 7 thread, for those on Vista already, this rules out an upgrade to 7 as DX11 will be coming to Vista apparently.

Personally there is no need for Windows 7 at present for my needs. Vista does it just fine and games work a dream on it. It will be a few years yet before you even see DX11 games hit the market, DX10 is just starting to come through as the norm but a lot are still only using DX10 for the shaders.

[TheAnimus]

1-2% CPU usage while doing nothing isn't idle at all, the OS is stopping the CPU from entering Cn states, that gobbles up battery time and stops the machine from reaching it's full potental battery life.

This is an 800mhz CPU we're talking about on the Q1 Ultra.

If it where taking 1-2% on a 'regular' spec machine, that would be like 10% on this thing.

It is idling at 0, i'm getting over 3 hours on the small battery, with brightness at max.

It normally has a case of me watching a video, hitting pause, waiting for 3 mins as i change tube, so thats about the only time i test it idle. But in all seriousness, the CPU is speed stepping fine.

The only issue i've had with that was with some very dodgy atherous drivers. I was hoping Win7 would improve the transparancy of kernel time spent in per driver. But it hasn't. (yes its hard to measure, but there are plenty of metrics that indicate where blame could be placed).

[hypnoticstate]

since im not going to download the beta, anyone able to point me in the direction of a video showing windows 7 in use? i tried youtube but nothing seemed to be there.

[shaithis]

since im not going to download the beta, anyone able to point me in the direction of a video showing windows 7 in use? i tried youtube but nothing seemed to be there.

Its the same as Vista. A few very subtle differences......but otherwise the same.

[master2k27]

im looking forward to windows 7 i did test vista beta and RC but they where rubbish at least build 7000 was stable

[dangel]

1-2% CPU usage while doing nothing isn't idle at all, the OS is stopping the CPU from entering Cn states, that gobbles up battery time and stops the machine from reaching it's full potental battery life.

Battery life on my acer seems _better_ than XP - and certainly the HD is a heck of a lot less chatty than Vista. The memory saving isn't from "to reducing superfetch's usefulness" at all - most of it comes from the rework of the DWM, the addition of triggered services etc, 7 still uses free memory in the same way which i've not objection to at all (it's far more sensible). A lot of work has/is going into reducing power consumption and that's bourne out by my own experience. Vista would eat my acer alive, XP and 7 don't - and the latter (if anything) is doing a better job. Not bad.
Lots on this sort of thing here: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/default.aspx Very good read, along with real-world metrics.