Bits Microsoft Windows 7 Review

What about IE 8 on Windows 7? I haven't used 7 but I use Server 2008 R2 at work which I believe is identical. I love basically everything about the new OS except IE 8. The tabs crash frequently and sometimes the entire browser locks up. Is it as terrible on Windows 7? I think it comes with IE 8 by default and I'm assuming there's no way to downgrade to IE 7.

I generally like to use IE rather than Firefox so this is one of the few issues I have with upgrading.

 

Windows 7 search is pretty efficient, as long as you have indexing on all drives enabled (I guess this rules out SSD users though)

 

Can you explain more about this?

I read in in the review:

I have music in few folders in my Downloads folder. How to make this work? So that all locations in Music Library?

Thanks

 

Don't worry all of you who feel they can't let go of their blanky (XP), if you can't afford it you can always wait for Ubuntu release coming soon!

Pfffff, Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, Sorry I just had to get that in. What a backward step that will be!

 

Do you really think that I'm sure there are loads of people on this site that are nowhere near this level.

Myself I have such a machine but I'm very happy with Vista on it, Win7 is no more than a tarted up Vista really and a lot of its improvements are sure to come via updates I'd imagine, so no need to change that, I am however very interested how this OS will perform versus XP on my shitebook.

Whilst yes XP is old, netbooks are still being sold with this OS on it, therefore win7 performance versus XP is very relevant for a lot of people, netbooks were probably the only thing to come out in the last couple of years to provide any spark in the PC sales industry, unfortunately they could not cope with Vista and so most are sold with XP.

XP is poor, I know this, compared to running Vista there are lots of things that annoy me about XP, things like floppy/CD access do not slow up a Vista machine for example whereas on XP the file explorer becomes unresponsive, multitasking is typically better in Vista as is memory management, in that it uses all available RAM so things run up instant etc, improving the experience, but XP has been required for these rubbish low end web machines, wanting comparisons between XP and Win7 are valid in this case.

There are some positive response in the thread which is good but you can't just disregard XP because you think its old hat and people need to get with the program as I'm sure more netbooks were sold to consumers than 6Gb i7 behemoths and this is unlikely to change in the future.

 

Just use BACKSPACE
Its even faster then clicking the mouse...

 

Gadgets *can* run on the desktop in Vista..... or at least the weather one can. Do the others? Oddly enough, I'd never tried moving gadgets in that way and was very surprised to find my dad had done it!

 

The tests were run a few times over, and the figures published are accurate. Remember that Vista is on SP2 and we had to test the pre-launch RTM of Win7 (ie, no day-one patches etc.) so discrepancies are to be expected.

Yep, good point. And actually the Sidebar Process/App still appears in Task Manager, so it seems Microsoft has merely semi-hidden the Sidebar Process/App - still, at least that means one less icon in the system tray, and there's no silly wibbly bar on the side of your screen!

Essentially, the point we're making is that Gadgets work a bit better under Win7.

 

Thanks for the review, just ordered Ultimate x64 from MD

 

What do Gadgets do?

Sorry I'm still a bit confused about this as the #1 headline feature on the MS site is "snap", which seems to be a way of making two windows occupy half the screen. Is this really the most important new feature?

The upgrade advisor tells me my graphics card isn't up to running it, anyway - so I'm left wondering if it's worth spending £300 with nvidia to get this feature

 

One of the great new features yes. And hooray for it!
A great addition, but a poor replacement, as it requires you to know the name of everything thats installed.

+2

Holy..... that works! I never knew that, thx!

THE killer argument in my opinion (havin skipped Vista that is)

Weeelll, there's a time and place for everything, and on the machines of it's time Win98SE was faster than XP...
Allthough: doing a clean install with XP was much faster than with Win98SE, as XP had (nearly) all the needed drivers in it. (for hardware that was older than XP that is)

XP? Win2000 if you're lucky..NT more likely. Our manufacturing operations machines run on a pentium 1 with NT, the newest with XP. Some japanese manufacturers still use DOS. Industrial grade PC's are a loooong way behind

Having just gotten a new widescreen Monitor at work, having windows exactly half the size of the monitor is a killer feature yes!
Fot instance this Bit-tech answering box occupies about a third of my screen, the rest is blank fillers, the same with Word or with PDF's. Remember most websites are optimised for...1024 width? Hey that fits twice in a full HD widescreen monitor! 2 A4 sheets fit in real size on everything from 22" widesreen and above.
Most programmes are optimised for this as well...17" 4:3 monitors legacy

 

Omg...this is how far Apple has driven us, you've got Apps on your machines, not programmes!

 

Applications/Programs/Apps... same thing!

 

There seem to be a lot of people slating this without even trying it.

Why didn't they try the RC, or just ignore it altogether and use a different OS and move-on? Or is complaining about something they aren't going to use a new sport of some kind? (If so, how do you "score"?) Or are they slating it for the sake of slating it?

 

*This is just my opinion and in no way am I trying to start a flame war with anyone.*

Is it wrong of me to prefer Vista 64 over Win7? Granted, I've been using it since SP1 came out so maybe I'm just used to how Vista works.

I've been playing with the Win7 RC and the RTM for a few months now and I find the new UI and the libraries feature atrocious.

The removal of the quick launch bar was a really stupid move IMO and I don’t particularly enjoy the fact that I have to “hunt” all over the taskbar for an icon that moved because I opened a bunch of programs.

The way things are shared I can’t really comment on since I don’t use the sharing wizard but I have found that some of the other PC’s on the network didn’t “see” all the files once they were dragged into a shared folder. They appeared if you shared the folder again after they’ve been added but none of the 3 Vista machines on the network have this shared folder problem. Harddrives didn’t seem to have this problem though.

I did notice that Win7 seemed to be a bit more responsive but I’m talking about maybe a few fractions of a second (or at least it felt that way) It’s quicker than Vista on some of the older machines but that doesn’t really affect me personally.

The only thing that really interests me is the TRIM feature and (apparently) better SDD support but I’m hoping Vista will get it via windows updates.

Other than that, I see really no reason to leave Vista 64.

I’m actually rather surprised with some of these posts though. Is Vista really THAT bad?

 

Me too...

I have a question about the retail version of Win7. Are there any hardware upgrade limits or number of installation/activation limits on this one?

 

XP needs to retire, it was a great OS, but it's past it's prime.
It's patch on top of patch on top of patch, and it has lost a lot of performance over the years. Worse, it's age is showing in that its performance degrades at the slightest hint of a problem.

I can't praise Win7 enough, it is a worthy successor.
This is the first time MS has released an OS and I was happy to switch to immediately.

 

Ultramon is similar.
It makes as much improvement as adding that second monitor did in the first place.

 

Ultramon isn't Win7 compatible

 

you add it (or a folder that works in the same way)..
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/add-the-quick-launch-bar-to-the-taskbar-in-windows-7/
when i did it i just made a folder in the c drive and stuck all the shortcuts in there, the "%appdata-" thing didnt work for me