Part 2 Categories are still there, and in Vista and in XP... you just have to click on icon view on teh folder. In the case of Win7: Ok so don't click on the button. Like I don't get it. Do you need to enter a 50 digit code, and play with 30 switches to turn on your lights in your room? No! you have a simple switch or button.. Nothing stops you from not pressing on the button. Also, this is because you are Admin (not real admin, no one is real admin). If you create an account as limited, that use will have to enter a user name and password, like Unix/Linux. VLC is not the best player out there, and is in 32-bit only. And yes it maters. I save quiet a bit of battery using 64-bit codecs on my laptop on some videos. Rootkits, now **** in your pants. Remember Sony putting on purpose some effecting millions of XP users? Trojans, Worms are what we consider Viruses.. they are different king of viruses. Safe web surfing is the best way to avoid all this crap. Yup.. that is called Internet Explorer ActiveX, without it, all programs that uses it, and built-in help documents of programs and Windows will not work. So if you uninstall IE, which you can in Vista and WIn7.. and unlike XP, it's not removing the shortcuts.. it's really uninstalled. Your programs don't fall into peaces. In Windows 98 all the way up to XP, Internet Explorer was used folder browsing. And had the whole ActiveX security problem story.. I won't talk about it, as you can find articles like about every month since Win98 release. Also, system drive of where Win7 is installed is always C:\. But ok. Ok... I spend almost an hour typing this... I will stop. Please read documentation, is all I can say. This was in Vista. Dude, you have a lot of reading to do. But it's OK! You learned a lot!
It sounds stupid because that statement is downright wrong - the pagefile is not used significantly until physical memory is exhausted, but you do correct yourself later on. SuperFetch is a fancy name for disk caching which has been an internal feature of Windows since vcache in version 3.11 (with previous versions relying on SmartDrive). Windows 2000 and XP will use all available memory to cache data read from disk - this memory usage isn't reported in the main PF display in Task Manager but is shown in the System Cache section (and can easily reach a few gigabytes, memory permitting). SuperFetch differs in that it tries to "cache ahead" by reading data in before it is likely to be used, however this still incurs the cost of reading data from (slow) disk initially and can be a net loss to performance if data is cached that is not subsequently used (due to the user doing something different). Standard caching only works on data that has been requested, so in the worst case scenario breaks-even (if you only need the data once, you gain zero benefit from caching but don't lose out either). That's simply because Win7 hogs 500MB leaving little space for any sort of caching on a 1GB system - WinXP under similar circumstances should have around 700-800MB to use. No, you haven't bothered to research PAE or properly review Microsoft's documentation. While PAE is disabled on XP post-SP1, there are several utilities that can still make use of it to access memory above the 4GB limit, including: Gavotte's RAMdisk (free); VSuite Ramdisk (free and commercial); SuperSpeed Ramdisk Plus (commercial); EBoostr (pre-caching for XP - commerial, requires online activation). PAE, as documented above, permits 36-bit addressing (up to 64GB) allowing that memory to be paged into a 4GB address space. Similar techniques were used with the original 16-bit IBM PC to access more then 1MB memory (known as EMS or expanded memory) and with older 8-bit micros to use more than 64KB memory (that being their limit with a 16-bit memory address bus). *Pedant alert* 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 = 16 x 1,152,921,504,606,846,976. 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 is nowadays defined as an Exbibyte rather than Exabyte, which is defined as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. Blame the hard disk manufacturers for this. Microsoft begs to differ. Nope - they use Windows' code to resize the windows and that code will use the GPU when available. If it didn't, the results would be painfully obvious, as anyone who has tried installing Windows from scratch, uninstalled a video driver or started Windows in Safe Mode can confirm. Did a quick source code audit on all those programs did you? Used a resource monitor to compare memory/CPU utilisation? Unless you did, I'd suggest you're in no position to comment. I've not used GridMove or AeroSnap but I am familiar with AutoHotKey and it requires far less resources than Microsoft's nearest equivalent (their IntelliType drivers which when I last checked used 20MB compared to 2-3MB for a typical AutoHotKey script). And "native support" is not always better - the theming support that Microsoft introduced with Windows XP was far less flexible and required far more resources than WindowBlinds, which has been offering theming support since 1998 (a more detailed comparison is given here). If you took the time to investigate - you'd see (hopefully rather quickly) that permissions aren't the issue (if they were, they could easily be fixed). I'm talking about graphics glitches and stuttering or black screens and crashes to take two examples. Actually, the biggest problems I've encountered with applications under a limited account have been Microsoft products. (Rise of Nations and the driver software for Microsoft's Strategic Commander). Remember DirectX9? Up till fairly recently, versions were offered for Windows 98 and ME. If Microsoft can produce a version of DirectX that can work across such different OSes as 9x/ME and 2K/XP, then they could have made DirectX10 for XP if they chose to. OpenGL 4.0 can run on XP and use many of the features touted as DirectX10 exclusives (most notably tesselation, though that was possible under DirectX 8 also). Because Microsoft cancelled their original plans (Longhorn) back in 2004 and had to start again using Windows Server code as a baseline? Oh grief, a marketing spiel. What Vista changed was the networking subsystem (rewritten) and moved the graphics subsystem out of the OS kernel (it had been moved there in NT 3.5 to boost performance - moving it back out again therefore reduced performance as kernel mode code runs faster). It's a separate component according to this Graphics APIs in Windows article... The idea is that you display enough intelligence to select shortcuts that don't conflict - though you do clearly have the choice to displace existing ones if you want. YMMV - I use the Start Menu for applications and Windows Explorer (and folders) for viewing (and organising) documents. When you have hundreds of documents, you need to have a proper folder hierarchy to keep them organised and libraries, in their current form, don't offer any real help with that. That I consider the "old style" taskbar (with window titles, still available thankfully) more useful than the new one. XP lacked the tuning applet - use it and you'll get results largely indistinguishable from Vista/7. You'd have to go back to the days of Windows /286 and /386 to get a version where everything graphical was done by the CPU. Even really basic chipsets (e.g. S3 VGA) can do blitting (moving/combining large memory blocks) which is needed to move windows onscreen - with this done in hardware, whatever desktop background you have is completely irrelevant to performance. As I noted previously, I'm using it on this system but steer well clear of most other Microsoft software. Shows what you know. Do you need a WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service? Nope. Do you need Windows Error Reporting? Not if you'd rather keep your system setup private. TPM Base Services? Useless if you have no TPM module. SNMP Trap? No use to individual home users. So there are plenty of services that have no relevance to users, depending on how they use their systems, how secure they want to be (some services like the Remote Registry can pose a security risk) or what applications they run. And memory savings aren't the only benefit - the fewer background programs running, the less potential for conflict or security compromise and the easier your system will be to maintain. Resource Monitor is not Task Manager and doesn't, from the pictures you show, demonstrate any greater accuracy in reporting system usage. Malware can hook the mouse and use it to click on such buttons in order to gain privileged access. The "Run As..." option in Win2K/XP would require a password, making it harder (but not impossible) to hijack in such a fashion. Did you try running that file? If you had (assuming it was present on your system) then you'd see a full IE window with all its browser functionality intact. It's not needed to access help documents or Windows itself (try renaming it to test) - HTML rendering for those is handled via other modules. I'd echo that comment but this is starting to take this thread OT. As for the original topic, Ubuntu (and GNU/Linux distros generally) have big advantages in terms of customisability and choice. Not everyone will like that (for that matter, Ubuntu's distinction from other distros has been in including a single "best of breed" application for a particular task rather than several) but gaming is where Windows is likely to maintain an advantage, unless Microsoft really screw it up.
Thank you Mr general theory, but XP and older Windows doesn't act like that. You want a proof, start a big application, minimize it, start StarCraft 2, play a few matches, now quit StarCraft 2. In WIn7 you are ready to use your computer. Under XP your HDD spins like no tomorrow and see things being drawn, and returning to your minimized application takes also a long time. You don't need to be a genius to know that! Elephants is like a car, they both tend to use roads or a certain path to get to a destination. It's not a renamed technology, it's new one. Oh yes, it's not showing for your convince of argument. In Computer Science, we have something called Proof by contradiction. Use that! Until then, you have no proof. No, because Windows uses a priority system. Yes, those are used everywhere on in your computer to prevent starvation (something wait for too long or forever to it's task). So you have 0 downsides of this. Yes, because Notepad and Windows Calculator consumes more than 500MB of RAM. What world do you live in? When I mean the whole system slows down, I MEAN the WHOLE system slows down. Not if you play a game or run 3DStudio Max. Performance decrease when in used. I swear I read exactly: "18 EB".. I guess I miss read. Huh? What are you talking about? Anyway, about your link. How many software doesn't say that their software runs on Win7 or even WinMe (while it says it supports Windows 95, 98)? And in reality the program works on all Windows OS including Win7 64-bit. Simple, because they DO NOT support it, or not yet. That means if you have any problems, you are on your own. Please read Engineering Windows 7 Microsoft Blog. Vista was 128GB+ limit. Win7 is based on Vista, in fact it IS Vista at the kernel level. Strange eh?! ALSO, you complain about what? 192GB? Dell has a workstation/server that you can buy, and allows you the upgrade the RAM to 192GB. It's real nice. The 192Gb GB from 3GB of RAM is ONLY 30k U.S last time I check. You can't even afford paying your car, you want to get a system with more 192GB of RAM?! Stop complaining for complaining and use your head once and while. You don't even know for sure that the current version of Linux will work perfectly well under 192GB of RAM. It's not like the 2 person in the world with such computer has a no life to ensure that every bits of Linux features works perfectly and performance is adequate, reflecting the speed of a computer with such memory. (IE: doesn't slow down at some point for wtv reason, between 24GB to 192GB of RAM) I was talking about AeroSnap. The only comment on autohotkey was based on what you said about it, which I replayed that it may conflict with programs keyboard shortcuts. So, basically, you need to find shortcuts combination that doesn't affect any of your programs or games. WindowsBlind system uses the GPU to assist itself. This new feature of WindowsBlind came after Vista was released (to support it, and they found a way to support it on XP). I used to have WindowsBlind on my XP and WIn2000 system, it killed my CPU. A simple moving Windows showed my CPU spike at 100%. I AM TALKING BACK THEN, BEFORE the GPU assistant system they included now. Yes, because that the only things you use. That is the runtime library, you can install DirectX 10/11 run-time library under Windows XP. Do you know what a library is? or I need to explain to you that as well? The problem with Longhorn is that is broke complete support for existent applications. Microsoft cannot do like Apple, they must support old software. Windows NT 6 kernel is not the same as Sever 2003 (which is what was release back then), it's been changed quiet a bit. Proof: Do we agree that Win7 is not based, meaning the kernel is identical, just new a features has been added on NT 3? If not, you still haven't done your readings. Sever 2003 is based on NT3. If Win7 is based on Server 2003, then it's based on NT3, but it's not. You just like to read headlines that fits your anger at Microsoft, because it just happen that over 95% of the population prefers it over any other solutions. You did not get me.. let me try explain different textureX9(shere1, "bg.bmp"); (assume this code exists) textureX10(shere1, "bg.bmp"); (assume this code also exists). - DirectX 10/11 will be able to execute both. - DirectX 9 can only execute the first one, the second one will be ignored during runtime. - The second one (textureX10) is more optimized than the first one. Get it? That is what is being meant. Try it, sometimes it helps understanding it better. An example: You have video's and you have movie's. They are both in there own folder, but you want both on the same folder for easy view. Libraries allows you to do this. When in used, both folders can be viewed so that both folders appear separated, or combine, or re-organized in a new way, like by date, or publisher for example. Oh really? So why Ubuntu doesn't support it for it's fancy animated OS. You need to have a fancy menchy (in comparison) Nvidia or ATi graphic card. Why when Vista came out Intel had to rush X3100 model so that it's able to be a real GPU and support Aero. And it just happened that the older Intel solution also does not support Ubuntu fancy animated desktop engine. I use all of that. I have a TPM chip, and I do use bit-drive encryption on my laptop. Error Reporting allows me to find solutions to OS related problems. It's the one that suggested me to get the HP LaserJet 1015 drivers instead of the 1212 model, so that my printer works properly under Win7 as HP doesn't support it. And guess what? it works like a charm. WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service is used by my HTTP server emulation software. I use it to test and develop my web site which is in PHP before reaching my web server. I am sure it could use different method, but that is the one it uses. What can I say. You know, don't get me wrong, I used to be like you, "MUST disabled EVERYTHING!!!", but then i noticed that I am always having problems. The day I just said, I wont' touch anything this time, I did not notice any performance difference, my RAM consumption is the same (I left SuperFetch before), and now everything just works. After lots of reading, I see that Vista has a new sever system. Psst, and the cool thing is that it broke a few programs that uses a service for activation else goes under trial.. you know those annoying software. Yea it broke them, so they went full version without you have the need to enter their super long serial numbers. Ahhh, good times. Obviously that was fixed with updates and newer versions. It's not the few kilobytes saved of RAM that will do anything. If you have no password, Windows blocks 100% of remote connection calls. You can't even share a file over the network. If you have a password, well don't use Abc123. Also, Remote Registry is not a security risk. It can only be accessed on your network. It designed for buisness. So unless your wireless password is nothing or Abc123, but instead have a strong password and a good security level set (well you know, good security practice package, that we all sue here), you have nothing to worry about. So.. just open resource monitor instead of task manager. Task manger doesn't show all the information that task manger does. The Task manager doesn't even tell you, easily, which process is using your HDD like crazy, for instance. READ MICROSOFT DOCUMENTATION You know why the screen goes dark, and that the dark area of your computer is actually no more "updated". That is because Windows generates a, what they call, secure account, so that no process, hacks, viruses, malware, etc. is able to reach it. Only your keyboard and mouse. The background is actually a screen shot, set as background. When you click on Cancel or Allow, the security account is removed. It's a very small account which allows nothing, stays in memory (it's not an actual account being created and deleted, it's a special account, which also the OS monitors to check if the system files related to this has been modified). Ok I uninstalled IE and actually I don't ave that file you are talking about it... It must be some other program that put it. And I was wondering why the ActiveX component was found there... it ended not being one. OS files can't be deleted or renamed, so it's something that you have on your computer that put it there, or you.
I'd have to disagree there about Linux. My g'friend has a NC10 netbook and she was not happy about using XP on it. The biggest problem with any windows is that its not very flexible. I noticed there was a netbook version of Ubuntu made specifically for smaller systems with small screen output. I installed it without any drivers or compiling and it works straight out of the box. She loves it. The menu system is so easy for beginners and she finds it easy to use open office. Not being a teccy she is so happy with using her netbook. It does not matter to her whether its Windows or Ubuntu just that it is so easy and simple to do everything she wants to without any fuss. I bet if you showed 100 people who had never used a PC before (yes, they still exist) how to install the OS and start web browsing over 80 would choose Ubuntu because it installs all the basic drivers for you and is the easier to set up. People like simplicity. Your 2 cents is most welcome. I have been an avid Windows user for the past 20 years. Competition is great for us all. I have been massively impressed with Ubuntu. I remember how difficult but powerful the older unix-based systems were to use so it was a great surprise to see how good Ununtu is. And I look forward to using Windows 7 too. I have just spent £650+ on a new PC so I want the best OS on there. If that means I have two or three different ones then so be it.
yerp, ubuntu sucks compared to windows7 I'm a regular user of both so =/ talking about simple setup's, Everyone would pick ubuntu? then they'll run into drivier errors, they'll have a hard time setting their wireless cards up, Then when looking for new software they'll be pretty limited and have to check that it does run on ubuntu, where as windows, You follow the basic install instructions, and once logged in, it'll find all your drivers for you, keep them up to date, exc, w7 rocks
I really like Win 7 although my experience of other OS's is limited to a bit of a play with Ubuntu and a few goes with OSX. Personally I was a bit turned of Linux because I'm not that smart when it comes to sorting out stuff on computers so really need a OS that does everything for me. I completely understand however why someone more clued up than me would want to use Linux and I love the ethos of open source software.
I dont know why anyone wouldn't use win 7 64bit it's the best most stable OS I've ever used it just works. I cant be arsed with keep fixing things I just want it to work and win 7 does.
I don't deny the *nix experience can be relatively painless, especially with the more friendly distros such as Ubuntu -- of course Ubuntu netbook edition is going to work well on a netbook as it was designed for that. I'm talking more esoteric tasks, for example -- * Having to compile a piece of software manually from source as it hasn't been added to the distros package management repository and doesn't exist as a binary, then having the compiler fall over for whatever reason. * Finding hardware is poorly or not at all supported -- anything non mainstream. I built a dedicated MythTV server with 4 tuners that I had to meticulously research to ensure their tuner chipsets were supported, and even when I had the system built had to jump through numerous hoops to ensure they all played nicely together. Another bugbear used to be wireless adapters. X server not playing nice with certain graphics card/monitor combinations. I'm sure there are numerous more examples I can't think of right now. I know it must sound like I really hate *nix and I'm a total Microsoft zealot, but it's quite the opposite -- I'd much prefer if *nix was the dominant desktop OS, but it just doesn't have the bucketloads of cash that are thrown at Microsoft every day. A combination of bucketloads of money combined with the community driven philosophy of open source would make an OS *truly* to be reckoned with -- the fact that *nix based operating systems are as good as they are is nothing short of amazing.
Good to see some great loving for Win 7. I know Vista was a mixed bag and awful for devices and drivers. I have installed Win 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP and Solaris and now Ubuntu and the easiest install is Ubuntu by a mile. Every device worked straight away with no drivers needed - even my Netgear N+ wifi dongle. I find XP more responsive and get greater graphics love. I like XP because it is fairly stable but I suppose it feels a little old now. Ubuntu is slightly slower but much more stable and I actually enjoy using it! I cannot remember being so emotive over an OS before. I hope Win 7 leaves me feeling the same way. The only thing stopping me being ultra excited about Win 7 is the past 20 years frustration of using Windows. All the adverts I see about 7 second features are things that should of been in Windows 98 not some 12 years later! Microsoft are not known for their inventiveness. But from reading all the comments from you guys maybe they are now starting to listen. (As I said before - competition from MAC & Linux is a good thing for us all!)
I am running XP and have been thinking about upgrading to Win7 for a while, so had a quick look on Amazon and Scan.co.uk and Windows 7 Home Premium edition is selling for £115 inc VAT. Seriously? £115? Am I missing something or is this normal price?
The laptop I had when I came to Uni 2-3 years ago had Vista on it and I disliked it so much that I dual booted with Ubuntu (and then quickly ended up using Ubuntu as my primary OS). But then 7 came out and I must say that Windows 7 is IMO better than Ubuntu. 7 is still bloatier and slower than Ubuntu, but from a usability and accesibility stand-point it's refreshing to use Windows 7. (Not having to spend ages hacking away at command line to get a program on Ubuntu to work via WINE, etc). Ubuntu is fine though and if developers actually created software and games specifically for it, that'd be awesome since Ubuntu and Linux in general isn't difficult to develop on (naturally it's just that there's barely any money there). So yeah, I liked Ubuntu. I still do. But Windows 7 was a refreshing change (from Vista and Ubuntu)
Ive never been a microsoft fan. But ive got to swallow my pride and say that im very impressed with Windows 7. I expected it to be released and get slated, but when it didnt, i started doing my research and decided i would give it a try. Very happy with my purchase. Everything just works.
whats wrong with £115 seems pretty reasonable to me considering how much you use it. photoshop CS5 (not extended) is a single program and costs £657.60 for homer users seems like a fair deal to me ive worked for a company before and thier software was around £125,000 for the full suite !!
You're talking about commercial software used to produce products and services that are then sold on, so the costs are part of the business costs. No-one pays full whack for Photoshop unless you use it at/for work. You're not comparing like with like. Windows 7 Home Edition is an operating system for a home computer.
that £115 is for a retail version, which allows you to use it on any number of pc's as long as it is installed on a single pc at a time. oem is considerably cheaper, because it is meant for 1 pc forever, you are not entitled to transfer oem to a new pc.
