Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Windows 7

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Windows 7

    So, as part of a general clean up of my system, I've installed the Windows 7 release candidate. Haven't had much chance to check it out so far, but it seems pretty good - obviously not much different from Vista, but quite a few sensible design decisions. The only problem I've come across yet (I'm sure there will be more when I've had more than an hour or so) is that that my soundcard doesn't have compatible drivers. Well, there is a beta release, which I've been downloading from Creative's incredibly slow servers.

    So, anyway, the point of this post was to find out if anyone else is using it, if they have any tips for making the most of the new stuff, or know any good websites.

    #2
    Windows 7

    Well, it doesn't look like any of you are running it, but in case you're interested, here are some of my experiences on day two.

    The soundcard problem seems to be more or less intractable for the moment. Even with the beta drivers it won't recognise the card. This isn't too much of a problem as the on-board sound works fine, I had some compatibility issues under Vista anyway and was contemplating ditching the card or gettting a different brand. Creative suck.

    More annoyingly, Windows Media Player 12 seems to be very buggy. I can no longer stream non-standard videos to my Xbox except through the Media Centre Extender, even though I could do so with WMP11. Moreover, I spent a very long time last night trying to work out why my video folders were only patchily showing up in the Xbox dashboard, despite the videos showing up in my WMP library. It turns out that some time after scanning them into the library, it had decided that the videos were on the C: drive, when in fact they were on F:. No idea why that happened, and a lengthy library restore fixed the problem. Who knows if it will happen again, though. On the other hand, WMP in W7 handles many more codecs natively, so I haven't yet had to bother installing ffdshow or anything like that.

    Another negative - the new disk check system seems to be pretty bad. I once restarted my computer shortly after the "Starting Windows" screen appeared, because I'd forgotten to enter the BIOS setup when I had the opportunity. When I'd finished fiddling and restarted again, it brought up the new version of the "Windows failed to start properly". It offered me a System Restore, which is quite nice, but when I declined, it then proceeded to run checks for far, far longer than Vista or XP ever used to, before telling me it couldn't do anything about the "problem". Not very fun or helpful.

    On the plus side - I love the way it handles windows, although I'm still getting used to it. It has a very OS X thing whereby if you move the mouse to the bottom right, all the windows go transparent to show you your desktop. But it also has a system whereby if you move your mouse over a programme in the taskbar, its windows are previewed (in real time - ie videos will be playing in miniature). If you then move your mouse over the preview, that one is shown and all others become transparent. There seem to be a few other nifty tricks like that, but I haven't worked them all out yet.

    Finally, I love Steam and Impulse. In the olden days, I used to dread having to reinstall an OS, because it meant I'd have to find all my game discs and spend ages reinstalling them. Now I can just re-install Steam, queue up a dozen games, go to sleep and they'll all be ready in the morning. It's absurd that Steam charges as much as they do (although I understand the publishers are worried about pissing off bricks and mortar retailers), but it's things like this that make the extra money over Amazon or Play well worth it.

    Comment


      #3
      Windows 7

      The burning question is -- for us XP users -- is whether it's good enough to justify the purchase of a new PC?

      I know the reviews of Windows 7 have been positive, but the danger for Microsoft is that people will only acquire it when they have to replace their PCs.

      Comment


        #4
        Windows 7

        I'd never buy a new PC just for the operating system, and I don't think Windows 7 changes that. Its networking features seem pretty good, but you'll only get the full benefits if all the computers on the network have it.

        I think XP (at least since SP2) users will find a lot of things to dislike about 7/Vista and relatively few things to really like. It's good enough not to worry about a forced change (eg on a new PC), and the media handling stuff is much better than in XP, but unless you really need 4GB+ of memory and hence a proper 64 bit OS, I don't see any pressing reason to upgrade yet.

        I know the reviews of Windows 7 have been positive, but the danger for Microsoft is that people will only acquire it when they have to replace their PCs.
        That's almost always the case, though, at least for consumers. They haven't really had much success with non-OEM upgrades since XP itself. And part of the reason for Windows 7 is to help persuade businesses, who overwhelmingly refused to switch to Vista, to upgrade.

        Comment

        Working...
        X