I like it, but I've not noticed any differences that are major enough to make me want to go through the effort of switching to it as my main OS. The new taskbar is also absolutely horrible. Vista is a fantastic OS, I don't get what so many people have against it.
Windows 7 RTM - What do you think of it?
- Thread starter bulldog147
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The new taskbar takes a bit of getting used to, but it's quite nice once you do.
I agree that there's not really much to make it a worthwhile upgrade over Vista, just that 7 has better marketing and doesn't have to go through the early days of Vista, where it was a terrible choice of OS due to lack of hardware support amongst other things, because it's basically the same. If I were on Vista, I'd probably not pay more than 20 quid for an upgrade to 7.
7 is a very nice upgrade from XP, however.
I agree that there's not really much to make it a worthwhile upgrade over Vista, just that 7 has better marketing and doesn't have to go through the early days of Vista, where it was a terrible choice of OS due to lack of hardware support amongst other things, because it's basically the same. If I were on Vista, I'd probably not pay more than 20 quid for an upgrade to 7.
7 is a very nice upgrade from XP, however.
When I first started uni people had trouble connecting to the resnet, and I helped a friend out who had vista. My parents use vista on their pc's but id never wanted much dealings with it.
Anyway, I knew what I was doing, but halfway through I wanted to chuck the laptop out the window because half my time was spent pressing 'yes' to UAC notifications. I couldnt even find the off button in the control panel, and I looked into it later and found its a tiny link in the bottom of a specific window to access it and turn it off.
I think theres a difference between you running the OS and the OS running you. I didnt like UAC, I didnt like that you werent the 'administrator' and so not all programs would work straight away when you wanted to use them, I didnt like the filing system, trying to find a folder on my mams pc I automatically thought, oh, my documents, which had files in it but then there was that users individual area too.
Windows 7 has these niggles too, but I realise XP isnt forever and I can go 64 bit at the same time. Ive got a harddrive ive cleared so I can download the beta and get used to it before its october release.
I just wish MS didnt simplify things to the point of pleasing the casual user because they didnt have to look at lots of different options at once, (i.e control panel grouped) but made the experienced user go wtf when all they wanted to do was change something simple and couldnt find it.
Nice example is word 2007, I thought it was like someone had said 'right chaps, new word, lets group everything into different areas and then spread those areas onto taskbars and in the regular drop down menus! Thatll make it easier!' No, it just gave me a headache trying to find something simple that was in a menu that didnt make sense :S
Schools are teaching kids to use computers using (now) older style OS's with older style software, but it all still works and doesnt make you want to take a hammer to it. MS seems more interested in churning out newer copies of everything without thinking about the issues people will have coming from schools and businesses that see no need to upgrade since everything works fine.
That was a bit longer than I planned
You say in your post that you knew what you were doing. However, the above post reeks of someone who clearly didn't/doesn't know what they are doing. What on earth were you doing to see UAC all the time? Yes you see it initially when installing your progs and apps but after that apart from updates one rarely sees it again. Again MS Office 2007 - yes it's different and not to everyone’s taste but its easy enough to use and the ribbons are grouped logically. The filing system in Vista is like a breath of fresh air when compared to XP and so is the search function. All in all something of an embarrassing post.
I would agree. However, people don't like change, hell I know people that get nervous when night follows day and again when day follows night.
A great many of those very same people are XP users as well. 
My version seems to take ages to load up initially sometimes.I think it's maybe because I did an upgrade from vista to W7 because I couldn't be arsed installing all my programmes etc again.Once I get the proper retail version i'll stick a clean install on.
Overall I prefer it over vista.And I was one of the few people that actually liked vista
Overall I prefer it over vista.And I was one of the few people that actually liked vista
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Hi, Can anyone with the Win 7 RTM tell me if Media Centre plays Blu-ray, or do you have to buy 3rd party software to play Blu-ray. The reason why,i tried to play a Blu-ray film on the RC version, and it would not do it. I ended up using Win DVD Plus 9 HD to view the film.Thanks
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Windows will never play Blu-Ray out the box. The only way you can play Blu-Ray within Media Centre is to use a program such as Powerdvd which will integrate itself into Media Centre's UI.
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Thankyou, Its a pity
Thats an overly generous rating for the steamer that is vista. I would rate it zero.
But 7, now that runs really nicely on my pc. Rarely boot to xp these days, its that good.
Now if only vmware would fix the vi client to run on 64bit
Upgraded my main home PC from Vista x64 to W7 x64 RTM last week. Took a bit of tinkering as I normally have the profiles, user data, music, videso and shared libraries on separate drives to C:. Had to point all these back to the C: drive before it would install, then had to set then back to their separate drives after the install.
Took a bit of faffing around to get the system back but the kids love W7. By far the single feature that my kids like the most is the library feature on the docs, music, video.... folders so they all add in each others as well as the shared library folder thereby minimising on duplicates.
Another oddity is that after the upgrade all user accounts seem to default to using the USA keyboard even though the region, currency etc.. is set correctly.
USB drive access for me is the same as under Vista, my Verbatim 16gb stick still gets around 30mb/s read times under W7.
One thing I just can't used to is having the desktop button on the far right, is there anyway to move this to nearer the Start bar?
Took a bit of faffing around to get the system back but the kids love W7. By far the single feature that my kids like the most is the library feature on the docs, music, video.... folders so they all add in each others as well as the shared library folder thereby minimising on duplicates.
Another oddity is that after the upgrade all user accounts seem to default to using the USA keyboard even though the region, currency etc.. is set correctly.
USB drive access for me is the same as under Vista, my Verbatim 16gb stick still gets around 30mb/s read times under W7.
One thing I just can't used to is having the desktop button on the far right, is there anyway to move this to nearer the Start bar?
Nah,Thats an overly generous rating for the steamer that is vista. I would rate it zero.
But 7, now that runs really nicely on my pc. Rarely boot to xp these days, its that good.
Now if only vmware would fix the vi client to run on 64bit
I would give 7 7/10 Vista 6/10 and XP 4/10.
Those are more realistic ratings. Why do people seem to think its "cool" to like XP and bash vista?
Because when Vista came out, for many people it was horrible, largely due to problems beyond MS's control (I wrote them all down in another thread, can't be bothered to do it again)
This is usually true for any MS operating system. When XP came out it was considered to be slow and bloated and the new UI looks like crap (Personally I still think it does) and the hardware support was patchy and I'm sticking to Windows 98 (or 2000) as it's better. Looking back XP was probably the best thing to happen to the Windows line because it made the Windows NT line useable for home users and finally got rid of the DOS based Windows 9x, but people still moaned about it and some of those reasons were even valid.
XP is now what? 8 years old so many people don't remember the issues at launch time, hell some youngsters here probably haven't even used a computer running versions of Windows prior to XP. Everyone remembers the Vista launch though.
I think if you rate OS's based on what they were perceived to be like at launch day, XP would get a 4, Vista would get a 3 and 7 would get a 7 or 8. (I know we haven't even hit the official launch day but half of the people in this thread have RTM by now!) Of course the only reason 7 is doing so well is because it's basically a slightly updated Vista.
This is usually true for any MS operating system. When XP came out it was considered to be slow and bloated and the new UI looks like crap (Personally I still think it does) and the hardware support was patchy and I'm sticking to Windows 98 (or 2000) as it's better. Looking back XP was probably the best thing to happen to the Windows line because it made the Windows NT line useable for home users and finally got rid of the DOS based Windows 9x, but people still moaned about it and some of those reasons were even valid.
XP is now what? 8 years old so many people don't remember the issues at launch time, hell some youngsters here probably haven't even used a computer running versions of Windows prior to XP. Everyone remembers the Vista launch though.
I think if you rate OS's based on what they were perceived to be like at launch day, XP would get a 4, Vista would get a 3 and 7 would get a 7 or 8. (I know we haven't even hit the official launch day but half of the people in this thread have RTM by now!) Of course the only reason 7 is doing so well is because it's basically a slightly updated Vista.
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I have one annoyance and its bewen there since the beta, you cannot customise the Games explorer shortcuts. Its very annoying if you want to use box art or run a specific command from the shortcut. Other than that I do prefer using it to Vista and I was a Vista lover since the time they sorted out the teething troubles, pre sp1.
Ah it appears it's something to do with the audio driver for my Asus Xonar DX (beta drivers only thing available for win7), if i close HsMgr.exe they both open fine,
/comparethemarket mode on
interestings!
/comparethemarket mode off
EDIT: that's lucky, theres a small patch on the Asus forums which they didn't include on the beta driver page, ah well all fixed there
I wish I'd read this thread earlier, spent ages trying to figure out what was going on! Thanks
Well i just managed to install windows 7. I decided to format my XP drive and take the chance that this will work. Now, I have a few questions I hope someone can answer.
First of all, how do i set the start menu to be like it was in XP, instead of a thing on the right which opens up folders and a white space on the left for recent programs.
Secondly, I have a copy of office ultimate and the license allows 1 install on a PC and 1 install on a mobile device. Now that i have formated my XP partition (and thus got rid of the previous office install), will I have any problems installing it again on my laptop in windows 7 or will it think that due to being on XP, it will prevent a new install without a new key?
First of all, how do i set the start menu to be like it was in XP, instead of a thing on the right which opens up folders and a white space on the left for recent programs.
Secondly, I have a copy of office ultimate and the license allows 1 install on a PC and 1 install on a mobile device. Now that i have formated my XP partition (and thus got rid of the previous office install), will I have any problems installing it again on my laptop in windows 7 or will it think that due to being on XP, it will prevent a new install without a new key?
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My take on it is that lot of people vowed that Vista was the worst thing ever, either early on or via the nerd/press bandwagon.
W7 is a way for these militant Vista haters to step up to current generation Windows without losing face. Microsoft know this.
Soldato
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You can't. They removed the Classic Start Menu.
The start menu has been like this since XP. The Classic Start Menu dates back to Windows 95, and is quite frankly archaic.
Im used to this type of start menu though. My laptop used it as it was XP. My main PC running Vista uses it. I just like that sort of simplistic menu, using a sort of tree of layout (executables inside its folder, that folder along with others in a 'programs' folder etc...)
With this stupid new start menu i have to either open folders to get to the programs instead of using a menu, have limited ammount of programs shown on the small white area in the menu, or have tons of desktop icons.
One more question I just thought of as well, are windows vista drivers compatible with windows 7? because some of my thinkpad stuff is lacking drivers, and they only have windows vista or earlier drivers.
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