Has anyone tried windows 7 yet? & what do we think of vista?

[beaky]

Seems thing are a little boring for me at the moment. I am still waiting on a delivery date for my next pin and i don't want to order any parts for my current pins incase i need/want to buy parts for the one i am waiting on.
So i am going to wonder off the beaten pinball track and talk about something totally different.
As we all know to access this great site we need a pc.
At my place we have 4 p.c.'s. One for me, one for my wife and 2 for the kids. My pc is pretty beefy, it has a quad core cpu with a max speed of 3.5Ghz (only running at 2.5Ghz as it runs a bit to hot if i run it any faster) and 1.5 terrabytes of harddrive space. plus 4 gig of ram (i can only use 3 gig of my ram in xp)
I only have 1 video card in at the moment but the main board can run 3 P.c.i.e 16 cards together and combine them as one. but of course you need to be running vista to do this, hopefully windows 7 can run all 3 video cards together.
This pc comes in handy when doing work with corel draw, some of the side cabinet art work files are 170 meg in size so you need a bit of grunt to work on files this size and not wait forever when zooming in or out or filling areas.
As you may have heard windows 7 is out.
has any one tried it?
I used vista for a while but went back to xp
one of the many things i hated about vista was always being asked if i wanted to run something after i clicked on it.
and of course microsoft won't or can't fix all the bugs in vista.

any way i want to here your comments on vista and 7.

[goodolddays]

Haven't tried either Vista or Win 7 and don't plan to upgrade anyway cause all my hardware is around 5 years old or more. From what I have read so far there isn't really much need for the average XP user to upgrade to Win 7, but if you are using Vista there are advatages to upgrading.

Bottom line .. if it ain't broke don't fix it is my Motto when it comes to PC's .

Cheers
Dave

[Extra Ball]

I have 2 PCs one on Vista, and one on XP. XP seldom if ever gives me issues, but Vista does daily.

[ajlaird]

I have been using Windows 7 for over 6 months now, and I have to say it seems very stable and very usable. It is Vista done right.

The biggest problem with Vista was the lack of driver support at release, which basically meant having to buy new peripherals if they were any older than a year or so. And the annoying way they set up User Account Control - every time you did something it asked if you were sure, a couple of times.

With Windows 7 they have got much better driver support in place, including an automatic lookup via the Internet which actually works in most cases, and they have simplified User Account Control so that it is about right and not so annoying that everyone will turn it off.

UI wise it has some improvements over XP (which is now 8 years old - although patched a few times since its launch) such as hovering over the taskbar icon will give an active thumbnail and so on. Also, the Media Centre actually picks up the EPG from the channels which my Vista version never did. Multi-monitor support is supposed to be much improved in Windows 7 although I don't run such a setup.

Also, it actually has lesser hardware requirements than Vista and in some cases will run better than XP on existing hardware.

So yeah, go ahead and get it.

[Rod71]

Haven't tried either Vista or Win 7 and don't plan to upgrade anyway cause all my hardware is around 5 years old or more. From what I have read so far there isn't really much need for the average XP user to upgrade to Win 7, but if you are using Vista there are advatages to upgrading.

Bottom line .. if it ain't broke don't fix it is my Motto when it comes to PC's .

Cheers
Dave

I'm the same.  The computer i am on was purchased early 2003 

Still using a CRT until it shits itself.

[goodolddays]

I'm the same.  The computer i am on was purchased early 2003 

Still using a CRT until it shits itself.

Yeh Rod .. I am still using CRT's too till they die (got 4 PC's in da house).. more important things to spend the hard earned $$ on eh?

Cheers
Dave

[Rod71]

Yeh Rod .. I am still using CRT's too till they die (got 4 PC's in da house).. more important things to spend the hard earned $$ on eh?

Cheers
Dave

Well i'm a Muso, and at one stage I was a bit of a "Gear Head". Ya know, having to keep up with the latest trends and only buying top shelf equipment.  But you soon realise that it's a never ending road that you're traveling on.

So these days i'm happy with what i have because "It does the job!"

I'm the same with computers.  Until such time that it dies, or i need to perform a task that my current gear is unable to handle, I'll stick with it 

[beaky]

fortunatly I didn't buy all 4. i bought 2 of them and the other 2 were obtained when i supplied new p.c's and gave them a $25 discount if i took their old pc. but they have at least a 1.8 ghz cpu in them.
i have 3 kids and they always seem to need the pc at the same time.

I will give windows 7 a go, I have a spare 250 gig hard drive so i will try it on that. That way if its a pain then i can go back to xp. or i will just have a dual o.s pc.

Thanks for the comments guys 

[ajlaird]

By the way, if you want to use more than 3.25GB RAM then you need 64 bit Windows 7.

[beaky]

By the way, if you want to use more than 3.25GB RAM then you need 64 bit Windows 7.

thanks

[johnwartjr]

I really want to run Windows 7, but am not willing to spend $220 on the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade x64. I've been on Vista for a long while and have not had problems.

220 bucks to me is a couple weeks groceries, or some cool pin parts :) I beta tested Windows 7, so I'm familiar with it.

[JD]

Agree with Ajlaird word for word.

Re Vista
The only thing I would add is dont underestimate the re-learning involved particularly with microsoft word. I think it's change for the sake of change and adds little more value really. Also the cost of repurchasing say Outlook and microsoft office suite. Going up from 2003 office is no problem but giving vista files back to a 2003 user is also a bloody pain. There is a patch available now but just another hassle you dont need.

Good luck

J.D.

[swamprat96]

Windows 7 is very good. Cheapest way to get it is whats called OEM version  which is around for $160-$180 for professional and $120-$140 for home. BUT you have to do a fresh install no matter what was on the PC previously- and you can't move OEM versions- its stuck on the PC you install it on. Nor can you upgrade CPU or motherboard... I would recommend the 64 bit as 7 is the last windows to be available in 32 bit so may as well make the change

Vista was very very bad. Slow clunky buggy with UAC (user access control) which is like your worst nanny. A real piece of shit. I perservered until  service pack 1 which fixed nothing and regressed to XP. I support a few friends machines still and Vista gives me the most headaches. 7 is great and stable and XP always reliable.

Would I move from XP? Don't really see the point - if its not broke don't fix it. But Windows 7 is far better than XP in networks for file sharing/copying. If you swap a lot of files between machines 7 is for you

Tony

[beaky]

I went and checked the asus web site for windows 7 drivers for my pc and there are none available. 
only thing i can do is try it on my spare hard drive first and see how it goes.
my mainboard is not even a year old yet.

[ajlaird]

I've just put myself together a new desktop computer for home - the other one was having heat issues and I was not looking forward to summer.

Opted for Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. So far everything is working but I guess most things connected aren't that old.

I have this one set up as a TV recorder - 2 x dual DVB-T PCI Express cards so can record 4 channels at once if required. OS drive is 500GB, and I striped two 1.5TB drives together to hold TV shows; that way if there are any really good sporting moments that you want to relive there should be enough space to keep them...

Successfully copied everything required off my old computer so far; hardest part was getting Windows 7 to install on the 500GB drive - ended up installing Linux on it first as there must have been some previous Windows 7 RC leftovers on there stopping Windows 7 from installing???