Installing Windows 7

[Fleeting Whisper]

I loathe Windows Vista with a purple passion you cannot measure

Then why are you getting W7? W7 is pretty much just a Vista service pack, in a new box. See Windows Mojave.

[Steiner]

This was Vista... not Win7

Though Win7 has a lot of the same features Vista... Win7 base code is completely different.

It supports almost ALL drivers, doesn't require Internet Explorer to be installed as the library that runs your file explorer (as vista did), handles Virtualization MUCH better... to the point where I can get Ubuntu running on VirtualPC for Win7, it handles system resources like XP does (meaning you don't need 2gigs of Ram to run it)... just to name a few.

Windows will always have its faults, no doubt about it... however saying that Win7 is Vista is an udder fabrication of the truth and quite hurtful  . lol

You're prolly running a linux distro, so your overall exposure to the hell Vista had and the beauty of Win7 in contrast, should be UNBELIEVABLY different if you haven't already experienced the difference.


..:kick:.. so there!

[Aggelakis]

doesn't require Internet Explorer to be installed as the library that runs your file explorer (as vista did)

I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE I.E. INSTALLED? REALLY?

*BRAIN ASPLODES IN GLEE AT THE POSSIBILITY* ?

[TonyV]

Then why are you getting W7? W7 is pretty much just a Vista service pack, in a new box. See Windows Mojave.

Yeah, they say that, but there really is a difference that I can tell.  By this time with Windows Vista, I had gotten to the point where I was almost ready to swear it off.  I had all sorts of problems running City of Heroes, problems that I'm not getting now.  Well, except that the UAC still dings me whenever I try to run it.    Still, so far it has been stable, and I can actually take screenshots now.

And other stuff has been working similarly well so far, not nearly the pain and anguish I experienced with Vista.  I suppose you could argue that developers have gotten used to the New Way of Doing Things by now, and by extension, Win 7 : Vista as Win XP : Win 2000, and maybe you're right.  Still, it doesn't change the fact that it is a much better experience.

Although, don't get me wrong.  I'm sure I'll still find fault with stuff.  So far, the UAC on CoH launch is irritating.  Also, my G15 keyboard LCD is pretty much useless; the LCD clock app that is supposed to come with it apparently just plain doesn't work.  And they kept that stupid filesystem layout with the Program Files (x64) stuff.  Those are minor annoyances, though, and mitigated by the fact that stuff actually works so far, something I couldn't say with Vista.

On the bright side, there have been a few surprises.  This morning when I went into my office, the machine was off.  At first, that irritated me because I don't like waiting for my machine to wake up out of sleep mode.  I hit the power button, and I swear to god within two seconds or so, it was on.  Bam!  Just like that.  A lot like my MacBook, in fact.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I'm going to leave the drop-into-sleep-mode setting on and save a few bucks on my power bill.  And the whole "pin my apps to the taskbar" thing is cool, too.  It's about time that PCs caught up to the Mac in that arena too, whose dock has been doing that for ages.  And I honestly don't remember if Vista does this (I don't think it does), but the ability to customize how system tray icons show up is actually pretty ingenious.  (And something, I daresay, the Mac--gasp!--doesn't do!)

[Tazhyngarth]

I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE I.E. INSTALLED? REALLY?

*BRAIN ASPLODES IN GLEE AT THE POSSIBILITY* ?

That right der

[Steiner]

You can turn the UAC off in your User Control Panel. It will most likely require a restart.

It's f'n annoying and I turned it off within the first few seconds, I hated it on Vista as well. There is no good that comes of having it on that added security for something that does a bang up job on keeping itself secure.

If you're running on a full-admin account have the UAC enabled at any would be advised, even if it was just set to the bottom (yea In Vista it was either on or off, in W7 you have levels MUAH HAHAHA). Only because if a nasty virus gets in there... they type that can manipulate files... the UAC stops it because it won't let it edit system files... but if you feel secure enough in your own settings that it's damn near impossible to get said viruses than there is no harm in disabling.

[TonyV]

It's f'n annoying and I turned it off within the first few seconds, I hated it on Vista as well. There is no good that comes of having it on that added security for something that does a bang up job on keeping itself secure.

I don't really want it off completely, I just wish I could whitelist applications.  I want an option that says, "Don't prompt me about this application and its loaded DLLs again."  I wouldn't even care if, upon a patch, it recognized that the application and/or DLLs changed and prompted again.

Ideally, there would also be an option to only prompt you with the UAC when an application attempts to modify stuff outside of its own directory and/or registry key.

[Fleeting Whisper]

it handles system resources like XP does (meaning you don't need 2gigs of Ram to run it)

My laptop has 2G RAM, total. On both Vista and W7, letting the OS sit there and do nothing takes up ~50% of my RAM (~1G), so I don't know what you're talking about.

And part of that RAM usage is precaching, which exists in both Vista and W7, so the OS isn't actually using that much, it's just reserving some space since it's expecting you to use one of your most commonly used applications.

[Lady Thanatos]

Also, my G15 keyboard LCD is pretty much useless; the LCD clock app that is supposed to come with it apparently just plain doesn't work.  And they kept that stupid filesystem layout with the Program Files (x64) stuff.

G15 problems? *looks at her G15 clock & date display* After Win7 installed, I just popped the driver disc in there and it works fine again.

I find the Win7 file organization to be HUGELY SUPERIOR to Vista. Let's just say that after eight months I finally moved files off my external and onto the internal HD. That's how much I hated Vista's asinine sort system ("Let me [Vista] sort things how I think you [the user] should do it, not how you want to organize them!"). The double Program Files is a minor thing for me; I just put my game directories (and anything else I thought would constantly update) into Program Files and Office 2003/Adobe Suite into Program Files (x86).

I disabled the UAC for now. I may re-enable it to a low level to give it a try again.

The pin-to-taskbar option didn't cut it with me. So I re-enabled the Quick Launch bar and ignore pining. It works.    I also disabled IE8 and installed Firefox.

The only minor problem I have is that the computer thinks the external HD is the boot drive -- I realize I have to tweak that in the BIOS. I must've had the external connected when I installed or something equally dumb.  

I <3 Win7. It automatically setup my wireless adapter! It saw the wireless printer on the network and configured itself to be able to use it! (My husband's Vista machine could never print to the wireless printer but mine could. It was strange.) <3 <3 <3

-- Lady T

[SuckerPunch]

Yeah, just about everyone I know that didn't like Vista loves 7.  I'd say so far it's a 100% conversion rate, anecdotally.

[Shades29A]

i like 7 ...
got me 3 keys from school
1 for the computer at school, 1 is 32bit, and the last is for my (yet-to-buy) 64bit PC

[Steiner]

I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE I.E. INSTALLED? REALLY?

*BRAIN ASPLODES IN GLEE AT THE POSSIBILITY* ?

I'm going to assume you don't think this is great thing and you're just being a smartass (which I loled at, so don't think I'm coming at you, lol).

The reason I listed the fact that IE doesn't have to be on your computer in Win7, is because:
1.) Gets viruses easier than most other mainstream browsers.
2.) Unlike 90% of all the mainstream tabbed browsers, In IE7-8 it creates new instances of explorer and puts them into the main MDI window. So 5 tabs is the same as having IE open 5 times... resource stupid if you ask me.
3.) The file explorer in Vista was driven (and required) IE to be installed on your computer... meaning if you had anything wrong with IE (say a virus), browsing your files could potentially give the virus access to your filesystem! That scares the hell out of me for multiple reasons, but I doubt I'd need to go into description.
4.) IE SUCKS, always has, always will... and to have the option to say "buh-bye" is a warming feeling to someone who knows what hell IE has cost and caused web devs world-wide.

My laptop has 2G RAM, total. On both Vista and W7, letting the OS sit there and do nothing takes up ~50% of my RAM (~1G), so I don't know what you're talking about.

And part of that RAM usage is precaching, which exists in both Vista and W7, so the OS isn't actually using that much, it's just reserving some space since it's expecting you to use one of your most commonly used applications.

My GF has a 4 year old Toshiba Satellite M115-S1061.
Has an Intel Celeron M Processor 420 (1.60GHz, 1MB L2, 533MHz FSB) & 512MB PC4200 DDR2 and IT runs at 20% on idle, XP had her running 75% on idle (granted assume 3 years of bad choices for the XP %).

She's flying on that computer, and it's an honest POS... two weeks ago we restarted it and it wouldn't turn back on until I opened it up and cleaned the connections from they PSU to the mobo... (Post win7 install).

Her computer would be crawling if it had Vista installed... which is why I state, it's running faster than XP so there in-lies my reasoning for stating it handles resources as well XP (in this case better).

(Experience May Vary, lol)

[SuckerPunch]

2.) Unlike 90% of all the mainstream tabbed browsers, In IE7-8 it creates new instances of explorer and puts them into the main MDI window. So 5 tabs is the same as having IE open 5 times... resource stupid if you ask me.

Steiner, sometimes I really wish you'd think / research more before you post things.  The multiple-process thing is what Chrome does, and it's very much not a stupid thing.  If one tab crashed, you don't lose your entire browsing session.  You just lose that one tab, because you can kill it's single process without affecting anything else.

It's a very good thing and one of the more intelligent things the IE developers have added in.

[SaintNicster]

Steiner, sometimes I really wish you'd think / research more before you post things.  The multiple-process thing is what Chrome does, and it's very much not a stupid thing.  If one tab crashed, you don't lose your entire browsing session.  You just lose that one tab, because you can kill it's single process without affecting anything else.

It's a very good thing and one of the more intelligent things the IE developers have added in.

And Firefox is in the process of doing this as well.

[TonyV]

Oh, but you're leaving out the massively huge advantage of having one process = one tab:  If some stupid javascript takes forever and a day to complete, you're not just sitting there helplessly unable to do anything else.  You can browse other tabs or whatever.

At work (and some of you know in excruciating detail how I feel about our internally developed sites), that's particularly prevalent.  Everything locks up for sometimes ten to fifteen seconds. while some poorly piece of @#$! javascript code does whatever it's doing, and you're just stuck.