Windows 7 is coming out soon, and I was wondering what you thought about it. Will you upgrade? Is Win7 an upgrade at all, or a downgrade from what you use now? Please say what OS you use now, and your thoughts about 7.

Currently, I use Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I am thinking of paying for Win7, because I currently have no version installed. I'll probably be getting the most basic version, as OS X will be my main OS. I think I might try to find a copy of XP instead, if it turns out 7 blows.

It's too early to think about buying 7 just yet.
Every Windows system so far only got good after 1-2 updates. Even Vista isn't that bad anymore although XP is the most common and thus most compatible.

I'm very pleased with XP right now. I don't see a reason to upgrade except the better security of Vista/7, but that alone is just not worth it to leave my reliable XP I've grown so accustomed to.

I'd say get XP for now, or Vista if a nice working environment is important to you. When you've got an older OS installed it's easy to upgrade or create a dual boot scenario from it. The reverse requires a reformat.

It just happens that they're so good, that you tend to turn them off.

I've been using the Beta since February. It's the best OS I've ever used in a day-to-day environment. The UI is great, it's fast, it's as secure as a non-moron would need, and it includes a Windows XP virtual machine, if you're a douche who can't stand to be without native compatibility.

Don't listen to anyone who hasn't used it.

How much CPU / RAM / etc. does this drain? I mean I know virtual machines that use up so many resources that your 3GHz Computer feels like a good Pentium 3. Or worse.

Also how well does it work? Like the XP VDM or compatibility mode that worked only in like 25% of the cases?

The only weird thing I find with Windows 7 is that everything is all icons now. No words. It's really annoying...

Just like every complaint about Windows, you can tweak it to a way you like.

It's an XP virtual machine. It works with everything that XP worked with. All the time.

Windows 7 is the way to go. If you havent noticed they are trying to correct everything that they "messed up". They have been doing an incredible job at getting feedback, debugging everything, tweaking things so you can tweak them the way you want. They are trying to incorporate a lot of things that people have at trouble with in the past, even things that were just commonly inconvenient that wasn't MS's fault.

And 1 or 2 updates till its good is NA with W7 just because literally millions have already reported faults that would come out months after the release. So when the "1 or 2" updates come out it will just be extra polish. But i am confident in this system cause whoever is heading this project has had a gun to his head on making it right. To much is riding on it for MS to f it up.

It works perfectly so far as I know, but I have no idea how much power it eats because I've never had to use it. Also, let it be known these are the 2 configurations I've used it on.

AMD Athlon 64 @ 2.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM - 32 and 64 bit versions.

Core 2 Duo @ 2.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM - 64 bit version.

I've been using it - it works fine. XP has no advantages over it that I've seen. When I first aqcuired it, explorer.exe crashed once in a while but that hasn't happened recently so I'm assuming it was fixed in one of the updates.

You mean other than an extra 768 MB of RAM?

Honestly, Windows 7 is quite impressive, and once more hardware starts creating specific drivers for it, it'll be really nice

ram is as cheap as fuck...its not worth even considering as a factor anymore

How about I have 8GB of RAM and couldn't give a damn either way?

XP uses 300 MB of RAM
7 uses 350 MB of RAM

I don't see where you get 768 MB of RAM from.

How much can the interface be customized? Can you just slap any visual style you want onto the OS, or do you need a patch? Or is it not possible at all?

What about when changing fonts, sizes, icons, and such? In XP, there were many cases where different kinds of elements would use the same settings -- if you want to change the icon font, you had to change the right-click menu font, too. (And stuff like that.) Does 7 actually have separate settings for separate things?

Windows 7 Requirements
Windows XP Requirements

Yeah, I know you can get all fancy and try to make Windows 7 take less, but with effects and everything, for one, XP does not take 300 MB, you overstated that, and Windows 7 takes more than 350 MB of RAM, you blatantly understated that. Nice try. Sure, you can try to make Windows 7 take less, and you certainly can pull it off, but I also have a working XP that takes about 64 MB of RAM, something I doubt you will ever get Windows 7 down to. Those XP requirements say you only need 64 MB of RAM, 128 recommended, I estimated at 256 MB of RAM, overshooting the actual requirements, so don't try to stretch it even more than I already have.

Not to mention the additional 16 gigs or so of HD space required. I know that all these things are "cheap", but when you're constantly refurbishing computers and large amounts of space and RAM are rare, you think a bit more about these things. I'm not saying that it makes Windows 7 worse than XP, on the contrary, it actually allows you to make full use of the new technology that allows such things to be so cheap, but you can't just completely overlook it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 5 2009, 6:16 am by Falkoner.

Erm. A few megabytes of RAM nowadays are insignificant. So is a few gigs of HD space.

Do you guys even read my posts? I like Windows 7, it's a good OS, the only reason I'm even bringing up these problems is because they're the only thing I can possibly complain about with Windows 7.

I can't possibly think of a way to complain about a few minor problems such as taking up more space and memory, because it's probably natural that they have to in order to have those 3d interfaces, components and etc. And yeah, if a guy has a crappy computer and wants to use Win7, then that guy should buy a new computer instead. I do not like complaining for the impossible.
Thats like complaining about how mother f'ing huge a truck has to be to carry mother f'ing lots of loads.

But are these necessary? And can you turn them all off and use as little space as older OSes?