Bits Microsoft Windows 7 Review

I'm still in the camp of "we haven't come far since XP have we".

 

Exactly.
A major innovation from MS in the field of GUI design is the addition of... A command line

 

while 7 media center is improved overall, there are new bugs/ stupid features (it not defaulting to the correct aspect ratio all the time when windowed, it using a new wtv containter which can take up to twice the filesize of the old one, despite containing exactly the same audio and video, it going to a big prompt at the end of playing a video (with options to either delete or play the same video again, neither of which i ever want to do), when normally you would just want to go back to the directory you came from)

the pin/upin taskbar thing is no different from the quick launch before, expect now every app is further away and in a more random order.

something i noticed just now.... if you change resolution and/or monitor, you get stuff like: http://i36.tinypic.com/14lu0s3.png (note the cut off icons)

i dont actively go out looking for problems, but the amount of things i come across is insane.

 

lol pmsl XD

 

That would be why I wrote the word in there doodles!

Sorry, was just scribbling my thoughts down rather than qualifying my statements more thoroughly.

Perhaps entirely because XP has such a crappy taskbar im in the habit of using alt+tab to move bewteen apps, kind of a FPS left hand on the keyboard route to productivity... So Im not really seeing any sort of productivity gain in 7 for stuff being more organised in places that I dont really bother with.

The preview windows are nice if I have 40 000 papers open on the desktop and want to get to the right one easily, though (if you arent using a tabbed foxit app!). Its rare that I have more than GSAS, TOPAZ, 3 or 4 papers in adobe, excel sheet, email, couple tabs in a browser and some random db open concurently though. So its of limited value to me, beyond looking shiney.

The UI being more responsive.. I think you measn more responsive than vista, rather than more responsive than xp?

VPNing (connecting to work from home... sigh...) I much prefer on 7 compared to XP, but then I eschewed Vista completely so that might be a vista thing.

To be honest all it does for me is provide a platform that will support current gen hardware / next gen games / next next gen web content. It does it with a deal of style, looks 80% as good as some of the nicer gui linux distros (slackware, gos etc), and has some neato driver handling that annoys me somewhat in xp. Asside from that, nothing to see. Yet.

(Not like Im going to remove it though!)

 

Here's a pic for those of you who have never actually seen W7


http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/6662/w7desktop.png

I posted that pic because most of you that are against W7 sound like you've never even looked at it...

 

i havent noticed any real difference between them. they both worked for me pretty well, its one thing i havent had problems with.

oh btw, i turned off the snapping gestures. i found they would happen more when i didnt want them to than when i actually wanted to use them. as for the window preview on the taskbar..... ive not found any use for it so far.

 

I for one really miss the up one directory button. It's much faster to use that button than to keep clicking on the directory icons in the address bar. Especially when only the last few levels are shown.

I also am annoyed how slow copying is. I thought they would have fixed this from vista. It seems to be at least 3 times slower than XP still.

Besides these 2 items I really love Windows 7. Definitely feels much faster than XP. Although I did just upgrade to a core i5 from a 754 amd64.

 

Windows 7 user here. To answer some of the questions here. Regarding the task bar. Basically if you have several instances of the same application, like multiple Firefox instances or multiple windows explorer windows and so on, they are all binded to a single taskbar icon. When you hover that icon you can select the instance that you want to open as if your switching a browser tab. It works great because the taskbar is less cluttered and it is easier to find the window you want to switch to.
Regarding GPU transcoding. Windows 7 now uses Windows Media Foundations. It substitutes the old DirectShow codec filters.
Basically any codec built based on Windows Media Foundations can use the GPU processing power. Does windows 7 can transcode certain media files like H.264 files without any external software requirement. As additional codecs are built aroun Windows Media Foundations, they to will be able to use the GPU for media viewing and transcoding to other devices.
Windows 7 doesn't come with MKV format support but you can download a Windows Media foundations MKV codec from the web and it will use your GPU. So will soon be able to use our gpu to play any media file.

As for the question regarding what Windows 7 brings that makes it that much worth upgrading?
Well same question could have been asked when Windows XP came out. What Windows 7 brings basically is built in support for a lot new
technologies and devices and added productivity features. The same exact phrase could have been used for Windows Xp when it came out.
To put it simple, it binds with the "cloud" better, Has built in DLNA support. So if you have multiple networked devices at home, you can send media to them from Windows 7 with the "play-to" feature. Or you could enable internet media streaming so you can access your media files remotely.
Another point is if you have a new computer you probably have a recent gpu and a multi-core system. Windows 7 takes advantage of this in a much better way. It is faster doing what needs to be done.
If you have a notebook you can take advantage of all this features as Windows 7 uses resources better and thus can ran faster in a notebook.

 

I agree with Bit-tech; it's worth installing and using.

It overshadows the previous Operating systems and Microsoft has done the things as they should be done.

Now I hope, that with the next generation we will move to new technological concepts; especially with Fermi with ARM cores when the 28nm generation of GPU/CPU starts.

 

I doubt we'll see transcoding video in iTunes as it could reduce sales of videos from iTunes store, but who knows, they've surprised me in the past. That is, unless they lock it down to iTunes purchases only or something.

Flip3D is pointless, I still yearn for exposé on my windows 7 machine.

 

The 3 application limit in Starter was removed back in May.

 

i got a question, so far i've been suprised by windows 7 and it's good reception, as soon as i used vista i thought i'd never be interested in any new ms operating systems and just stuck to xp and linux but i'm interested in giving this a try now and see if i prefer it to xp for when i build a lynnfield machine. Thing is i'm currently using a sempron 2400 with 1gb of ram and a X1300 pro, would it be worth trying out windows 7 on my current machine or just leave xp on for when i'm not using windows 7? Reason i'm not confident about trying it out is cause the last driver to support my gpu was catalyst 9.3

 

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/22/windows-7-launch-event-with-steve-ballmer-watch-now/

 

The GPU should be supported out of the box (Windows 7 is pretty good at just finding drivers for stuff)... first time I installed the RTM was on my X301, which isn't the speediest machine around. I was online and downloading Firefox within 15 minutes of pressing the on button before starting the installation.... via USB key of course.

I had a couple of drivers to install for OSDs, the 3G modem and the fingerprint reader, but for the most part, there wasn't a lot for me to do - the machine was completely usable and I was only installing drivers for more obscure stuff.

Essentially, as long as there are Vista drivers of some description, you'll be able to get it working in one way or another. I was using Vista drivers for a bunch of stuff on my ThinkPad X60 when I was running the beta on that particular machine, because Lenovo didn't release proper Windows 7 certified drivers until recently.

 

One thing that often confusses me is why people get all worked up that a new OS isn't as fast, as compatible or as small as a former OS. I mean where do you draw the line? Win 7 isn't as small or fast as Win 95! it isn't as small as Win 3.1! It isn't as small as MSDOS!

We focus on XP so much and that's probably because most of us have used it for so long thanks to a delayed and then poor vista launch but i seem to remember alot of grumblling about lack of drivers, support, compatability, speed etc when XP first came out compaired to Win 2000 or 98. XP was a pretty big resource hogger back then as well, i mean it needed a fair percentage of avalible processor speed, ram and HDD space from an adverage 2001 PC. Windows 7 is the same today. At the end of the day we want to get the most out of the hardware we have paid a lot of hard earned cash for. I want to be able to play the latest games, use the lastest software and get the new effects but if i was so paranoid about speed performance instead of watching my Bluray's, my DX10 games or my other multimedia and internet options then i would still use win 98! XP was a great operating system in the end no one denies that, but in order to get the most out of todays hardware we need up to date software and XP has appeared to have reached a limit.

In 8 years time i'm sure there will be lots of people saying how fast windows 7 runs on their computers too! It's time to move on people otherwise why keep upgrading these computers of ours?

 

Read your sig

 

Why these threads become paranoid after the first two pages?

 

If i remember right the only chipset driver i install on xp is my lan as everything else is disabled because i have a sound card and wireless card so i guess i could just disable the lan and stick to wireless, my motherboard has no vista anything cause asrock don't care for socket a anymore, i'll download a copy of home premium after i've backed up all my crap so i can make some space for a partition on my linux drive when i get home

 

yeah i kind of forgot i even had that there! i havn't updated that in years. oh well looks like im the hypercriticle one!