News Microsoft confirms 2009 Windows 7 release

I installed it on my MSI Wind on Friday. Installation went smoothly. It picked up all my hardware straight away - no need to install any drivers.

Memory footprint at boot is about 600MB, compared to around 450MB on my XP setup on the same machine. It's generally fast and responsive, but occasionally there's a pause before it responds to opening an application or changing between windows.

Zone Alarm Free wouldn't install, but I can live with that. Running a video call in Skype revealed some incompatibilities with my RealTek HD Audio drivers - microphone detection was unreliable. I downloaded and installed the latest drivers; this seems to have fixed the problem.

Overall, I'm enjoying Windows 7, and I'd strongly recommend it.

 

You can't in good conscience compare the difference between XP and Vista and Win2K/XP and Win9x. Win7, Vista, XP and Win2K are evolutions of Windows NT while Win9x ended with Windows Me (even though I claim it actually ended with Windows 98 SE ).

 

I am running the RC on my laptop and I love it. I will be buying ultimate for my desktop pretty soon after it comes out.

 

I've had a few issues with Windows 7, but not many. I'm puzzled as to why the 64-bit Crysis executable dumps me back to the desktop in Win7RC, but works fine in Vista 64. The 32-bit .exe works in Windows 7 without issues, BTW.

Overall, for a beta, then a release candidate... Windows 7 is more ready to be a released OS than Vista was when it was RTM. A fair amount of this is probably to do with the fact that most companies actually seem to be writing drivers for it. That said, I didn't have to install a single driver on the RC. Not one. That's on an X58 rig, too.

I'll have to install CCC, though, so I can persuade my HDTV not to underscan with HDMI input. Unless someone has an easy way of getting ATiTray Tools running on Windows 7 64-bit?

 

And exactly what are these Vista issues? Vista has a whole ton less issues than XP did before they finally released SP2, the only things I've found people to be whining about is UAC and graphic drivers, you cna disabled UAC and drivers aren't MS's responsibility.

The control panel has been streamlined to be more accessible and whilst you might not use all the options and tools, others do.

Windows 7 has a rebuilt kernel among other things, small list here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#New_and_changed_features


Google around and you'll find a significant amount more.

 

I just went from 7057 to 7100 on my laptop and even though it only has 512MB RAM it feels very smooth and snappy at the same time. Pressing the power button to Windows completely loaded and 100% ready to do what I want: ~1 minute. Compared to almost 2 on Vista and roughly the same if not slightly slower on XP.

Me likey and it'll be the first OS I actually pay for. Either got it as a license with my PC or for free through MSDNAA.

 

Windows 7 runs a lot faster on my 5 year old PC than XP SP3 does. With exception to a few things that makes it chug a bit, this OS has breathed new life into my old PC.

 

I think i will wait about a year after the Windows 7 release, give companies time to fix over bugs in their drivers and give windows more time to fix crucial bugs.

 

At least a lot of the hardware manufacturers seem to be on the ball with Win 7 drivers this time, compared to when Vista first arrived on the scene, although I've never had a problem with Vista after the final release. Anyone who has concerns over using it should really read this article : http://www.tweakguides.com/VA_1.html

 

you should find that "most" of the vista drivers work on windows 7, if you cant find a specific win 7 driver.

i have to download the vista drivers for realtek hd audio card in my laptop, because the win 7 drivers don't recognise the mic.

it does run well. i did a clean install over the beta, which detected a previuos version installed and it moved everything over to windows.old folder

 

I normally wait at least 4 months or so.
I will look into getting Windows 7 early 2010 maybe?