Safe to run windows 7 as main OS?

I can't game inside a VM, so the only way I can test it properly is to have it installed on a physical computer.
 
I wouldnt use Windows 7 as my main, mainly because it is in BETA and some i have noticed somethings dont work quite as well as compared to vista but it is very good for a intial BETA.
I do use windows 7 for general internet browsing and tf2 and that about it, i have all my other games and rubbish on vista partition.
 
Using as main OS on my laptop, and dual booting on my desktop.

my laptop gets far more use than my desktop atm, so i will be able to give it a good test on that. And if something did go wrong i would rather that happen on my laptop than my desktop.
 
I find it somewhat funny that everyone is trying to stress that Windows 7 should not be used in a normal home environment, because its "unsafe"
Correct me if I am wrong, but i've yet to read about any data destroying bugs (except that bug with MP3's which is very easily avoided)
I think if there were any serious issues with this OS, in its current state, they would have been reported by now.

Point is, "beta" does NOT automatically mean "unsafe"
 
Using as my main OS and will continue doing so, Vista is now a distant memory, I wont be running it again.
 
Using as main OS in work. Everything works about from one Creative App (which is due to me running 64 bit). Server Admin Tools works too (the Windows 2007 Version).
 
Loque said:
I find it somewhat funny that everyone is trying to stress that Windows 7 should not be used in a normal home environment, because its "unsafe"
Correct me if I am wrong, but i've yet to read about any data destroying bugs (except that bug with MP3's which is very easily avoided)
I think if there were any serious issues with this OS, in its current state, they would have been reported by now.

Point is, "beta" does NOT automatically mean "unsafe"
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The question was, is it safe to run as your main OS? And the simple answer is no.

NathanE isn't trying to say the Windows 7 is going to destroy your data and fill your home network with viruses. But that this is a beta piece of software and should be treated as a beta piece of software.

If you use it as your main OS with nothing to fall back to, you could lose a days work, while you're reinstalling windows, programs and retrieving backups of files. You could also lose all of the work you're work on at the time in Windows 7 so maybe even days of lost productivity.

If people want to, that's fine. But they shouldn't recommend other people do the same.
 
mrk said:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/windows-7-beta.ars

Ars has an interesting writeup on 7beta and has come to the conclusion that I’ve been thinking about ever since learning more about 7 – that it “is” Vista with a few changes here and there.
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Hi mrk, indeed. Windows 7 was always going to be Windows Vista but with a few tweaks here and there.

It runs the same, looks the same (with updated VS) and has some new GUI features which are a nice touch whilst finally sorting UAC out under an admin account for user requested tasks instead of warning on all tasks regardless of user.
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The "improvements" made to User Account Control, to me personally, are pretty mute. I leave User Account Control enabled in Windows Vista and in which, I need to change the settings in Windows 7 to have the same effect since the default option in Windows 7 is prompt me when programs try to make changes to my computer but automatically elevate for the majority of Windows tasks.
 
I also hope that the people that are running this as their main OS are actually contributing to the BETA program as they should be and giving feedback, both negative and positive? And not just running the OS to booster their IT ego's....
 
Regarding the UAC bits above, I’ll give you a prime example where it just doesn’t work on Vista.

With MSN 2009 installed I have it set to save chat history to my documents folder. With UAC off this is perfectly fine but with UAC on or in quiet mode MSN will throw an error saying it could not save the chat history when closing a message window.
Another example is on my laptop I use VCB (Visual Course Builder) for work purposes and also Photoshop CS4.

VCB has a built in clip gallery which I often edit the contents of from photoshop.
1: When working on a VCB project I click preview at which point VCB creates a HTML preview of my work and displays it in IE. With UAC on the preview cannot be created as it fails with an error message saying it could not create the preview files – UAC has blocked it without asking me for elevated permissions to allow it. A bit annoying....so I disable UAC for stuff like this.

2: When opening a clip gallery image from VCB’s install directory I do my editing in Photoshop and click “save” to overwrite the existing one but PS says it cannot do this as access was denied to the directory. I end up having to save to desktop then copying the updated image to the VCB dir via Explorer then UAC asks me if I grant permission for this action.

So yeah, 2 working examples of how UAC in vista is broken and hopefully has a welcome change in Win7 retail.
That’s the kind of beef I have with UAC and end up having to turn it off even after being made “quiet” using TweakUAC because it is stopping me from working efficiently.


Also anyone using 7 now, can you comment down the line in this thread if folder custom views reset themselves? It's a plague that has been a headache for Windows users since XP/2000 and never once fixed by MS. Manual workarounds exist but they are temp workarounds so eventually you'll need to redo the workaround again to keep things in check.
 
UAC was just an annoyance to me in Vista, and whenever I installed Vista, the very first thing I did, was totally disable it.
We've never had anything like UAC prior to Vista, and I personally don't see why it's needed now. Unless you totally have no idea what you're doing, then i guess its there to warn you when you're about to change something, but appart from that, it's completely useless and annoying for me.
 
Loque said:
Unless you totally have no idea what you're doing, then i guess its there to warn you when you're about to change something, but appart from that, it's completely useless and annoying for me.
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You do realise that that does describe the majority of Windows users?
 
mrk said:
Also anyone using 7 now, can you comment down the line in this thread if folder custom views reset themselves? It's a plague that has been a headache for Windows users since XP/2000 and never once fixed by MS. Manual workarounds exist but they are temp workarounds so eventually you'll need to redo the workaround again to keep things in check.
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I've personally never had a problem with that. I set my folder how I want it to display icons etc, then simply go into Folder Options and click the "apply to all folders" button, and thats it...

Burnsy2023 said:
You do realise that that does describe the majority of Windows users?
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Yeah I know it does. Thats why I mentioned it. I was talking about those of us who are completely comfortable in our level of Windows knowledge.
 
Loque said:
I've personally never had a problem with that. I set my folder how I want it to display icons etc, then simply go into Folder Options and click the "apply to all folders" button, and thats it....
Click to expand...

It's only an issue you'll encounter once a threshhold of stored folder views have been added to the registry after which the size has to be increased or the BAGS/MRU keys in the registry need to be deleted to start over with folder views again to clear existing views.

You'd encounter it sooner than later if you're managing folders day in day out as every folder opened will retain that particular view in the reg IIRC.
 
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