I'm still using winxp pro and basically wondering if it's time to change. Is win7 good yet? Good compatibility with almost everything?

What are you guys using?

Windows XP. Same question .

I've looked at some comparisons, apparently Windows 7 is faster than XP.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 16 2009, 8:47 pm by Centreri.

Windows Vista is compatible with everything I have ever thrown at it, and 7 has the same compatibility, but is faster in every possible way, plus comes with support for an XP virtual box.

Do it. 7 is awesome.

So:
Win95 - start point
Win98 (good)
WinME (fuck up)
WinXp (great)
Vista (fuck up)
Win7 (awesome)
?

Why not just partition your drive and put Windows 7 on there to try it out? I'd recommend EASEUS Partition Master to do it.

Windows 7 is not faster than XP, it is smoother than XP though. It takes up more RAM and 4x as much harddrive space(5x if you're going 64 bit)


You forgot Windows 2000, which actually isn't so bad, it only takes up 64 meg of RAM too, it's just a bit ugly. Windows ME and Vista are the red-headed step children of Windows, and XP and 7 are pretty smexy.

I didn't forget, I just put them in the NT windows group so I could keep the pattern.

Windows 7 is pretty much Vista with several significant improvements. 7 and Vista were two projects started near simultaneously, but 7 was delayed so Vista could be worked on.

Windows Vista wasn't a fuck up.

It worked fine, the only problem was that OEMs were putting it on systems that couldn't handle it.

It is actually slower than xp.

Vista has worse of a reputation than it deserves. Some of the bad reputation comes from 3rd party companies not having their stuff ready for Vista because they put off the development. There's also the fact that some companies didn't want to support their products that were only a couple of years old, so they didn't make Vista drivers at all. Then there's the misunderstanding about certain new features, or exaggerating the level of annoyance of certain new features. As for myself, I don't consider those elevation prompts annoying, though I do find it annoying that some programs want to run with administrative privileges when they don't actually do anything that needs it.

I'm probably not going to upgrade to Windows 7 when it is available unless there is some compelling reason for me to do so (I did try the beta and I haven't seen one or heard of one yet). One such reason might be if I was going to subscribe to Dish Network any time in the near future, because they may be having plans of releasing a dual tuner device that works with Windows 7. There are many people who are using CableCard tuners with their digital cable TV service in Windows Media Center on Vista who have mentioned that they would immediately switch to Windows 7 + Dish Network if/when Dish Network made such a tuner available.

For now, Vista is just fine for me; don't need Windows 7. Sure, I'd probably use it if I could get it for free (legally) or for a minimal cost, but currently it doesn't look like it would be worth the expense to upgrade.

A side note: I bought Vista for this computer because it was stable on this system and XP was not (even if I did a new install). I had been using Vista with almost no issues for a least a few months (release candidate 1) before I bought it. (Warcraft 3 had no sound in the release candidate, but I was told by Blizzard that the release version fixed this)

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 12 2009, 1:58 am by ShadowFlare.

I currently have Vista (came with my new computer), and for the most part I really like it. It loads up really quickly, it's very shiny and aerolike, etc.

However, for those who use it: Why are there two Program Files folders, and why did I once get a message that I can't write in a program files directory and how do I fix it?

Program Files and Program Files (x86)? If so, that's not a Vista thing, but 64-bit Windows in general. Program Files would be for 64-bit programs and Program Files (x86) is for 32-bit program. All 64-bit versions of Windows have done this. There are also similar things with some other locations and the registry, too. For example, windows\system32 is the folder for 64-bit system files and windows\SysWoW64 is for 32-bit system files. (I have no idea why they chose those names and set up the redirection like they did instead of system32 for 32-bit and system64 for 64-bit)

Windows only wants installers to write to Program Files (because it is the way it should be). If you really want to save a file there, you can run the program with admin rights, however.

Ah. Okay. Thanks.
And I can't just give myself access to everything there? I used to stick stuff like add-on programs (like SCMDraft in the SC Folder) or add-ons (like for Firefox) or whatever. And last time I tried to do something like that, it didn't let me. I can't force it to let me do that to everything, give me full access? : /.

It does let you mess with permissions if you want to. Just take a look at the security tab on files or folders (which wasn't shown by default on XP). Sometimes you may need to change file/folder owners, too. I wouldn't recommend changing any of these settings for the whole Program Files folder, though. Sometimes I do change it for some individual programs for compatibility reasons (so I don't need to run them as admin). It is easier just putting such programs elsewhere in a location where you already have access, though. (people do this on Linux all the time)

For most folders, you can work with things through Explorer for file copying, moving, deleting, renaming, etc. and it shows elevation prompts when needed, but sometimes you still need to mess with permissions and owners. Note that with zip files, you must first copy the files to another folder before copying to a restricted location.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 12 2009, 3:44 am by ShadowFlare.

Yeah, vista for me was just too hard to get around in... everything was so hard to find. So i switched to a mac lol.

Windows XP. All I really want an OS to do is run the programs I want to run on it. Until XP no longer does that I have no plans to switch ever.

Unless the next verison of windows uses less memory than XP or something.

sudo that bitch! Oh wait..

The one thing that bothered me about vista the one time I saw it (I don't actually have it) was how it prompted me with security warnings every time I tried to do something. It was essentially like the security prompts in Ubuntu, except it didn't require an su/root/Admin password (or any password at all).

If you are an administrator, you can do all that easily by turning off User Account Control. When you start up your computer it'll give you an annoying little bubble saying "Your UAC is off, click here to fix" every time, but aside from that, it's much nicer. Or you can manually edit the permissions of the programs files folder if you're an administrator, to give your account full permissions.

I wouldn't recommend doing this to the program files folder, though. It is probably better to only change the permissions on individual program folders for programs that are constantly needing write access to their installed location.

Disabling UAC gives you a little bubble? Did you disable it from MSConfig?