Windows 7 - What Is Better?

[Johnxxx]

I sit here in front of my computer with WinXP SP3 and have Firefox running and Maxthon in a different virtual desktop. Sometimes I go to Eudora to check my mails. Sometimes I play a video (on my TV) with the VLC player and Girder (the old free version) to enable remote control. Music plays with Winamp. I download with Freedownloadmanager. With Sony Vegas and DVD Architect I create my own DVDs. Skype is running in the background. Games? Perhaps every four months... It is not a simple installation that I have - 500 GB HD are full with applications and data I (could ;-)) need. In addition to this I have a lot of external HDs for backup and data I do not need very often.

What might be different or better if I install Windows 7? Does it make sense to try it? Please help.

[Daffy D]

Not sure Windows 7 is "Better" that is a matter of personal opinion. It is "Different" .

Seems you like to "play around" with different set-ups and applications so I would have thought trying out a new operating system would appeal to you.

I have set up dual boot with W7 still using XP as my main system but going over to W7 when I feel adventurous. I have to say I like the look and feel of W7, more genteel, and have the underlying feeling that I will gradually migrate totally to it.

Give it a try nothing to loose and possibly something to gain.

[Johnxxx]

Give it a try nothing to loose and possibly something to gain.

I might loose my HD space and my temper for nothing. That is a lot

[spacefruit]

Give it a try nothing to loose and possibly something to gain.

I might loose my HD space and my temper for nothing. That is a lot

To try, I first installed W7 on a second disc - disconnecting the origional one and thereby isolating my origional setup.

Now I love W7 as I do a lot of OS installs. What used to take a lot of time with XP (Most of an afternnon on average) is done in under an hour, with 40 minutes of that tweaking. The quickest was about 25 minutes. Extraordinary.

In use, so far it is very smooth and none of the seven instalations I have running have yet complained. Even the wife likes it better than the Vista she had before.

For me its the ease of setup, usualy no further drivers are required.

I also have a short fuse sometimes, and W7 hasnt even lit it yet. (As for OSX....<picture smashed macs>)

As a side bonus, it means I can run several older machines in the office on a LEGAL O/S. Something the sstaaff dont comprehend but I do try to be legal. It also means come march 2010 I will have to fork for licences or revert to dodgy 2000.

[Rice_King]

To try, I first installed W7 on a second disc - disconnecting the origional one and thereby isolating my origional setup.

Or just install Win7 in a Virtual PC / machine.

YouTube Video:

Link for Microsoft's free Virtual PC application.

[Johnxxx]

To try, I first installed W7 on a second disc - disconnecting the origional one and thereby isolating my origional setup.

Now I love W7 as I do a lot of OS installs. What used to take a lot of time with XP (Most of an afternnon on average) is done in under an hour, with 40 minutes of that tweaking. The quickest was about 25 minutes. Extraordinary.

As far as I know you cannot install Win 7 over WinXP but only over Vista. Is this correct?

I would copy the OS I have to a new partition and then upgrade. A virtual system is never the same like a real running system even if it would be safer. In addition to it my computer has not enough memory for such a thing. But if I cannot upgrade XP then I would have a new OS - but nothing else without installing at least my main applications again - at least what I can install on the new partition. Otherwise I have to upgrade to Vista and then to Windows 7.

Sure there are tools to move settings. My my experience was not so positive with those things.

[Plus]

Yes, you will lose all your data if you install Win7 over XP, you'll need a separate partition for that. Win 7 then will give you an option to run "earlier windows version" on boot.

The biggest pain in the neck would be installing all your programs in Win7 again, they won't work anymore, even if you can see them in your drive D (win7 renames the drives when it runs).

The good thing you can still boot into XP and everything will be just as it was before.

I can't say how Win7 is better than XP. I've used it for a couple of weeks on two machines. It's nice, has a better look and feel about it, but it's still just an OS. It opens directories and copies files and has icons everywhere. That much hasn't changed, just everything looks better. I can't say it loads particularly faster, or transfers data particularly faster - performance impovements are negligible.

It's the fresh look and old dreaded XP default theme that makes it a no-brainer. I have booted in back in XP only once. It's awful.

[RKASA]

Just install another drive with that much data your going to need another one anyway.  Put data on other drives or partitions  Put OS's in thier own locations.   Always.  Now you know why.  

I have win7 in virtualbox,  I beleave if your a windows user full time your going to want to see it installed native.  Virtual system alway degrade an OS but provide a lot of uses and fast access without rebooting.

[Plus]

I forgot to add, most of the time my computer runs Linux with the bare xfce desktop, it's on practically 24/7. When I actually use it I log into kde desktop that has aero like effects (not working in Windows). No need to reboot for that one.

I do like booting into Win7, though, it's just beautiful.

Oh, and if you don't have any spare drives, download "gparted" live CD, it can shrink your existing partitions to make space for Win7 install. There's no free Windows based software for this task, as far as I know.

Edited May 23, 2009 by Plus

[hkt83100]

I forgot to add, most of the time my computer runs Linux with the bare xfce desktop

It is kde here

I do like booting into Win7, though, it's just beautiful.

Win7 is running nicely in a VirtualBox here. I gave it 1 GB RAM for the install and reduced it later to 800k. First thing to do is install a virus protection and on and on. I guess I will free up the disk space quite soon again. I admit, it is nice to look at, but that's all. I got no real use for it, all I do is handled by Kubuntu 8.04, on the notebook I just installed 9.04, after small hick-ups it's running perfectly on a 7 years old Acer with 512 k RAM :-)

[nikster]

I have been using Mac OS X for the last 3 years, Win XP on the side for the occasional check or as backup machine.

I just noticed _the_ major new innovation in Windows 7, strangely I haven't heard much talk about it. It seems that search now works. This sounds tame but it's actually a huge deal. If you are on OS X, you are used to never using the mouse for anything - you hit CMD-space, and type the app or document you want to open in the search box. Starting apps is infinitely faster this way, even faster than going to the dock.

On Windows, this now works. It's never worked for me on XP or during my very limited time trying Vista. But now, on Windows 7, I can hit the windows key, start typing "Vu" and up comes Vuze as an option, I can start it in a fraction of a second. IMO this makes Windows about 500 times more usable.

So they changed the control panel layout, which sucks. But search comes to the rescue - just type whatever you are trying to change in the search box, and it does a pretty good job at offering you control panels that will do that.

The Windows XP search was so bad that I had disabled it. I used to use Google Desktop but it had its problems. Windows search seems to make this unnecessary and vastly improve the day to day windows experience.

Other than that, again IMO - same same, some more annoying dialogs and warnings, but not totally over the top like Windows Vista. I have not yet turned off UAC, and that means that they have really improved UAC too. But coming from XP it's still a little more annoying than before just much less so than Vista... Switching for Aero is something that I'd not seriously consider, sure it looks a bit more refined but what really counts day to day is usability.

[Plus]

At first I thought Win7 copied files faster than Linux, but this morning I saw comparable speed when copying from ntfs external drive to usb fat16 stick. Apparently my linux hiccups were about fragmented usb rather than system itself.

I mentioned elsewhere that even with Win7 support for DivX codec, the best application so far was linux based SMPlayer. Just yesterday Win7 refused to play a movie at all.

Linux gives me a lot more headache, though, nothing seems to work right out of the box there.

Right now I'm typing this in XP with "silver" theme, and it looks ok to me, and EVERYTHING works like a clock. Most Xp installs don't have any nice themes and no free alternatives, only shareware.