Can You Convince Me To Upgrade To Windows 7

[thunder30101]

Thats what I thought a linux chest beater lol now there is a user friendly os for the masses that has drivers for everything (not) and works right out of the box. Rest of the worlds os's ???? you mean microsoft ? cause it aint linux. Please go back to the linux forum and rant since you know absolutly nothing about win 7.

[bino]

W7 is far the best OS M$ has ever produced. Period.

People keep saying that... and it's true

I'll jump on the bus and agree that Win7 is the best ever.

[garyh]

W7 is far the best OS M$ has ever produced. Period.

People keep saying that... and it's true

I'll jump on the bus and agree that Win7 is the best ever.

Wasn't long ago there where people on TV saying XP is the best and they would never change and why would you bother too. These individuals seem to have gone quite about that now

[siamect]

Thats what I thought a linux chest beater lol now there is a user friendly os for the masses that has drivers for everything (not) and works right out of the box. Rest of the worlds os's ???? you mean microsoft ? cause it aint linux. Please go back to the linux forum and rant since you know absolutly nothing about win 7.

And you do? Welcome to show us what you know...

Please then tell all of us a little how you do it... tuning Win-7 I mean.

I need to know how to reach any long term acceptable performance from Win-7... and I think I'm not the only one.

It would be a great contribution to this community.

And please don't just paste in the 10 points from MS website. Bin there, done that... waste of time.

Martin

[Pib]

To the OP and using an auto dashboard/drive train as an analogy, going from Vista to Win 7 probably ain't going to give the OP any major change in how the auto appears and feels to ride, although the drive train will be improved. Now I do admit his system will appear a little faster...like it running XP. I did "upgrade" to Win 7 Home Premium (32 bit) from Vista Home Premium back in Oct 09 and it went smooth except for getting the wireless router connection and video driver to work properly (they worked; just not properly), but I got these issues figured out/fixed in about a week without too much pain.

Compared to my Win XP to Vista upgrade several years back, which was a horror story due to Vista's "not ready for prime time" appearance primarily due to drivers, my upgrade from Vista to Win 7 went pretty painlessly.

Summary to the OP: a Win 7 upgrade may fix your issues "if" caused by the operating system; but if it is the drivers unique to your computer hardware/programs causing the problems, then Win 7 may not fix anything for you. Switch over to Win 7 when the urge overcomes the true need (i.e., do you need it: No; do you want it: Yes) and your pocket book can afford it. Your experience/results may (probably will) vary...anytime you upgrade your operating system you are going to get some good and bad surprises.

[astral]

I am still on XP.

Whenever friends ask me to fix problems on Vista computers I find it a hassle.

Viewing a bradn new machine with Windows 7 was a revelation.

So much easier to access and set up things.

I am tempted for my old computer.

[JetsetBkk]

I am still on XP.

Whenever friends ask me to fix problems on Vista computers I find it a hassle.

Viewing a bradn new machine with Windows 7 was a revelation.

So much easier to access and set up things.

I am tempted for my old computer.

"So much easier to access and set up things." - this is a joke, right?

Is that why the "God Mode" hack was added?

I also am helping a friend upgrade to Win7 - an absolute pain in the butt.

I'll stick with XP until they stop supporting it and then I'll change to Linux.

[garyh]

I am still on XP.

Whenever friends ask me to fix problems on Vista computers I find it a hassle.

Viewing a bradn new machine with Windows 7 was a revelation.

So much easier to access and set up things.

I am tempted for my old computer.

"So much easier to access and set up things." - this is a joke, right?

Is that why the "God Mode" hack was added?

I also am helping a friend upgrade to Win7 - an absolute pain in the butt.

I'll stick with XP until they stop supporting it and then I'll change to Linux.

You obviously have not done many W7 setups then, I have done it many time, put in the setup disk run it, put in key code, put in location, put in name, thats about it, then install software, such a lot of mucking around.

[Crushdepth]

Choice of OS doesn't have to be a religion. I dual boot all of my machines with Windows/Linux now (even my netbook) because they are both useful and have different strengths and applications available. Re. Windows, I have XP/Vista/7 on different machines. My comments are:

* XP SP 3: Lightweight, quite stable and a good choice for old machines and slow hardware such as netbooks.

* Vista: The slowest / most demanding in terms of resource usage. Not good for old machines / netbooks. It is also less stable than XP and 7.

* 7: The best interface, quite stable and faster / uses less resources than Vista (although more than XP), the 64 bit version has compatibility issues with some software at the moment.

If your hardware is good use 7. If you got an old machine or a netbook use XP. There's not really any reason to use Vista anymore, if you have it then you might as well move to 7 because it will improve the performance and stability of your computer and is more pleasant to use.

Edited January 26, 2010 by Crushdepth

[JetsetBkk]

I am still on XP.

Whenever friends ask me to fix problems on Vista computers I find it a hassle.

Viewing a bradn new machine with Windows 7 was a revelation.

So much easier to access and set up things.

I am tempted for my old computer.

"So much easier to access and set up things." - this is a joke, right?

Is that why the "God Mode" hack was added?

I also am helping a friend upgrade to Win7 - an absolute pain in the butt.

I'll stick with XP until they stop supporting it and then I'll change to Linux.

You obviously have not done many W7 setups then, I have done it many time, put in the setup disk run it, put in key code, put in location, put in name, thats about it, then install software, such a lot of mucking around.

Upgrades, not "setups". Everything's fine until you want to transfer programs and their configuration data from XP to Win7. You may as well start from scratch.

[thunder30101]

And if you had read a little bit before installing, it is very well spelled out you cannot upgrade from xp, only from vista. Going from xp to win 7 requires a fresh start. Very simple, go back to linux maybe you have some exp in it but apparently not with ms products.

[JetsetBkk]

And if you had read a little bit before installing, it is very well spelled out you cannot upgrade from xp, only from vista. Going from xp to win 7 requires a fresh start. Very simple, go back to linux maybe you have some exp in it but apparently not with ms products.

I wasn't talking about upgrading XP to Win7. I was talking about upgrading the PC from XP to Win7 - i.e. a separate Win7 partition - and then using "Windows Easy Transfer" to move the applications' settings to Win7 from XP. Understand now?

[thunder30101]

I wasn't talking about upgrading XP to Win7. I was talking about upgrading the PC from XP to Win7 ????

I also am helping a friend upgrade to Win7 - an absolute pain in the butt.

UMMM which is it really ? , You really shouldnt tell people you are an expert on computers then crash their system and blame software.

[Supernova]

To the OP:

Set aside a 30GB partition and try it out for yourself. Only you can assess whether or not Windows 7 meets your computing needs.

So history repeats itself. Vista came out and the specs requirements were cranked up. Now everybody has powerful hardware and W7 is regarded as fast because it is not slower than Vista, at least not as a clean install.

LOL. "Everybody" doesn't include me... Here's my 'powerful' computer:

AMD Athlon XP 2600 @ 1.92GHz (OC'ed to 2.30GHz)

Gigabyte nForce2 Ultra400R motherboard

Corsair 1x1024MB + 2x512MB DDR

nVIDIA GeForce 6600 AGP8X 128-bit, 256mb

Hard Drives (3): 1x80GB ATA-100, 2x200GB ATA-100

Up until six months ago, this computer was running on 1GB RAM. During that time, I've installed both Vista and Windows 7. While I wasn't impressed with Vista, Windows 7 ran pretty darn good, considering this machine is some 6 years old. Having added another gig of RAM, Windows 7 now runs like a champ.

Unless you're going to be running CPU-intensive apps such as encoding video or play the latest games, a computer purchased within the past 5 or 6 years should be able to handle Windows 7 just fine. The thing about Windows 7 is the longer you use it, the faster it becomes (or so it seems). Bottom line: Upgrade to Windows 7, you won't regret it.

[Gary A]

I have no idea about upgrades. I backed up everything I wanted to save and did a clean install on both my desktop and my laptop. I really had no intension of going to Win 7 on my laptop. I was happy with Win XP Pro. After using Win 7 Pro, it became aggravating to use XP on my laptop. Since my laptop has a few years on it and has only a single core processor and a GB of ram, I was concerned that it may have problems with Win 7. Many drivers are also proprietary for Thinkpads. I used the same package I bought for the desktop just to try it. I was absolutely amazed that everything installed and worked. I was prompted to update some of the drivers via the Internet and that worked perfect too. It was totally painless. After a few weeks of testing with the laptop, I bought Win 7 Pro for it too. Again I was amazed that the new key validated without having to reinstall the system. I'm quite happy with both my machines and would never consider going back to XP Pro.

Different strokes for different folks. Win XP Pro was fine until I actually tried Win 7 Ultimate. Had I not tried the Win 7 Ultimate evaluation copy, I would no doubt still be happy with XP.

Edited January 27, 2010 by Gary A

[Supernova]

I have no idea about upgrades. I backed up everything I wanted to save and did a clean install on both my desktop and my laptop.

A clean install is the way to go.

[garyh]

I have no idea about upgrades. I backed up everything I wanted to save and did a clean install on both my desktop and my laptop.

A clean install is the way to go.

I have done a couple upgrades from Vista, I used windows easy transfer to get the files of onto another drive then formated installed W7 loaded the easy transfer file and worked like a dream.

[JetsetBkk]

I have no idea about upgrades. I backed up everything I wanted to save and did a clean install on both my desktop and my laptop.

A clean install is the way to go.

I have done a couple upgrades from Vista, I used windows easy transfer to get the files of onto another drive then formated installed W7 loaded the easy transfer file and worked like a dream.

I installed Win7 on a partition on another drive and made the desktop dual booting: XP & Win7.

The dual booting didn't work as M$ said it would - Win7 booted all the time with no option to boot XP. Had to use EasyBCD to sort things out.

Used Windows Easy Transfer to dump the XP data and import it into Win7. The two most important applications - uTorrent and Thunderbird - did not have their data correctly transferred and had to be sorted out manually.

UAC gets in the way of trying to do things on Win7. Having to give administrators the right to access folders in Program Files is a pain in the butt. Having a shortcut called "Application Data" that goes nowhere is ridiculous.

[JetsetBkk]

I wasn't talking about upgrading XP to Win7. I was talking about upgrading the PC from XP to Win7 ????

I also am helping a friend upgrade to Win7 - an absolute pain in the butt.

UMMM which is it really ? , You really shouldnt tell people you are an expert on computers then crash their system and blame software.

Which is it? It's both - upgrading a friend's PC to Win 7, not installing Win7 on top of XP.

As for the rest of your fantasy post, trolls aren't really appreciated in the computer forum.

[garyh]

I have no idea about upgrades. I backed up everything I wanted to save and did a clean install on both my desktop and my laptop.

A clean install is the way to go.

I have done a couple upgrades from Vista, I used windows easy transfer to get the files of onto another drive then formated installed W7 loaded the easy transfer file and worked like a dream.

I installed Win7 on a partition on another drive and made the desktop dual booting: XP & Win7.

The dual booting didn't work as M$ said it would - Win7 booted all the time with no option to boot XP. Had to use EasyBCD to sort things out.

Used Windows Easy Transfer to dump the XP data and import it into Win7. The two most important applications - uTorrent and Thunderbird - did not have their data correctly transferred and had to be sorted out manually.

UAC gets in the way of trying to do things on Win7. Having to give administrators the right to access folders in Program Files is a pain in the butt. Having a shortcut called "Application Data" that goes nowhere is ridiculous.

Maybe your just not holding your mouth the right way.

[Supernova]

I installed Win7 on a partition on another drive and made the desktop dual booting: XP & Win7.

The dual booting didn't work as M$ said it would - Win7 booted all the time with no option to boot XP. Had to use EasyBCD to sort things out.

Assuming you were already running XP, installing Win7 (as the second OS) should enable dual boot automatically.

Did you install Win7 to a primary or extended partition on the second HDD? If it was a primary, was the partition set 'Active'? This would explain why there was no option to choose XP in the Win7 boot menu.

UAC gets in the way of trying to do things on Win7. Having to give administrators the right to access folders in Program Files is a pain in the butt. Having a shortcut called "Application Data" that goes nowhere is ridiculous.

Compared to Vista, the implementation of UAC in Win7 is so much better; less intrusive. Overall, a welcome change in this department. However, I do agree that having to grant Administrators access rights to folders like Program Files doesn't make a whole lot of sense. More often than not, it just gets in the way of things.

The "Application Data" folder doesn't exist, but a shortcut is created for legacy app compatibility. There are quite a few of these, app data isn't the only one.

[welo]

Compared to Vista, the implementation of UAC in Win7 is so much better; less intrusive. Overall, a welcome change in this department. However, I do agree that having to grant Administrators access rights to folders like Program Files doesn't make a whole lot of sense. More often than not, it just gets in the way of things.

I guess the idea is to protect sensitive files by default, and this includes system and program files. It makes sense if you think about what a user can accidentally or intentionally do when having write permissions to the program files folder.

I haven't made up my mind up yet on UAC, it is not really clear what it has been designed for. Just to protect the user from himself, or work as a security boundary to prevent malicious programs to change the system.

There was a huge discussion on that topic when it turned out that the less intrusive UAC in Win7 actually gives a free-pass for malicious programs to circumvent UAC. Conclusion was that if you expect any protection from malware through UAC you have to set UAC to its highest level, which will make Win7 behave like Vista again (in regards to UAC). Google 'Windows 7 UAV flawed' or read here.

I run UAC at tightest level and can't say I am annoyed. The only time it can get frustrating is manipulating secured folders from a non-elavated program (e.g. file managers such as Windows' own Exlorer). In such cases you can temporarily run Explorer as Administrator (that is start Explorer as administrator in the first place and not elevate it through the UAC prompt) and it'll work like a charm.

UAC is also criticized to create a false sense of security. The issue reminds me of that of personal firewalls with application based rules. Both UAC and personal firewalls will provide information when a process tries to do something, but for the average user it is still difficult to correctly decide whether a specific request is legitimate or not.

The whole topic is still a bit confusing to me, I wonder whether I should actually try running Windows 7 as regular user without administrator permissions at all.

And I guess the problem is that to have a secure system you either have to deal with questions of security yourself (which is actually a fair bit of work and requires some knowledge) or you have another person (administrator) take care of it (that's what bigger companies mostly do). An administrator will restrict your user account and will be in charge of system and software changes relieving you of the burden of worrying about it (but leaving you with little control over your PC).

welo

[garyh]

Compared to Vista, the implementation of UAC in Win7 is so much better; less intrusive. Overall, a welcome change in this department. However, I do agree that having to grant Administrators access rights to folders like Program Files doesn't make a whole lot of sense. More often than not, it just gets in the way of things.

I guess the idea is to protect sensitive files by default, and this includes system and program files. It makes sense if you think about what a user can accidentally or intentionally do when having write permissions to the program files folder.

I haven't made up my mind up yet on UAC, it is not really clear what it has been designed for. Just to protect the user from himself, or work as a security boundary to prevent malicious programs to change the system.

There was a huge discussion on that topic when it turned out that the less intrusive UAC in Win7 actually gives a free-pass for malicious programs to circumvent UAC. Conclusion was that if you expect any protection from malware through UAC you have to set UAC to its highest level, which will make Win7 behave like Vista again (in regards to UAC). Google 'Windows 7 UAV flawed' or read here.

I run UAC at tightest level and can't say I am annoyed. The only time it can get frustrating is manipulating secured folders from a non-elavated program (e.g. file managers such as Windows' own Exlorer). In such cases you can temporarily run Explorer as Administrator (that is start Explorer as administrator in the first place and not elevate it through the UAC prompt) and it'll work like a charm.

UAC is also criticized to create a false sense of security. The issue reminds me of that of personal firewalls with application based rules. Both UAC and personal firewalls will provide information when a process tries to do something, but for the average user it is still difficult to correctly decide whether a specific request is legitimate or not.

The whole topic is still a bit confusing to me, I wonder whether I should actually try running Windows 7 as regular user without administrator permissions at all.

And I guess the problem is that to have a secure system you either have to deal with questions of security yourself (which is actually a fair bit of work and requires some knowledge) or you have another person (administrator) take care of it (that's what bigger companies mostly do). An administrator will restrict your user account and will be in charge of system and software changes relieving you of the burden of worrying about it (but leaving you with little control over your PC).

welo

Don't forget some computer owners need to be protected from themselves also.

[welo]

On the question why to upgrade? Sometimes it's just a single feature that can make a big difference, depending on your use case:

• Being able to switch the system language without even restarting the system (logoff/logon)
  
• The reworked UI - MS improved many smaller things which together make a huge difference to XP (start menu, explorer, task bar, search, task switching, systray icons)
  
• Supporting more than 3.5GB of RAM with 64bit
  
• Increased stability (XP was not bad but my Win7 is rock solid)
  
• Improved system recovery options built-in (system imaging software)
  

I guess you can mod Windows XP with additional software to make it behave/look similar to Win7 (imaging software, skins, alternative start menu), but it's the 'package deal' you get that makes Win7 a good choice. Costs are probably not the decisive factor since all those tools will cost as much as a Win7 license.

welo

[Supernova]

The whole topic is still a bit confusing to me, I wonder whether I should actually try running Windows 7 as regular user without administrator permissions at all.

welo

If I'm not mistaken, the default user account in Windows 7 does not have Administrative privileges (unlike XP).

[welo]

If I'm not mistaken, the default user account in Windows 7 does not have Administrative privileges (unlike XP).

Just checked, mine is still member of Administrators group. Not sure if this is something you can choose on installation, can't remember

[garyh]

If you don't want to be logged in as admin create another account without admin privileges, can't imagine why you want to, there are people on this thread saying admin does not have enough privileges.

[welo]

If you don't want to be logged in as admin create another account without admin privileges, can't imagine why you want to, there are people on this thread saying admin does not have enough privileges.

Yeah, I know how to create an account without admin privileges or revoke the privileges from my current account.

The problem on Windows is that users and software developers have lived too long without this basic but effective security concept. Now users have a hard time implementing this concept because a lot of software will not run with limited user accounts at all, even after installing them under a privileged account.

I tried to work on a restricted account on Windows XP but it was a pain in the a**. And I'm not talking about inconveniences but major obstacles to make software work on 'standard' user accounts. I am not a professional Windows administrator but consider myself a (very) advanced user, but in the end I gave up. And I dare say that this is a commonly acknowledged problem for Windows XP home users (larger companies with their own IT department are a different story), and that's why this whole UAC thing actually came up. To provide an easier way to implement a more restricted (and safe) Windows environment.

But I more or less forgot about it until recently, when I switched to 7 and UAC.

I will give it a try and see what happens on win 7 on a restricted account

welo

[bellste]

Only you can decide whether it is worth it, but I like having the latest version of software whatever it is. Go to microsoft.com and look/compare different versions, best info you will find on new features. I use win 7 ultimate, networking-multimedia are much improved, searching within folders is very nice etc. I have friends that still swear by xp though I dont know why.

I upgraded from XP, which was quite som fuss to do. (It's easy if you have Vista they say.)

I didn't like 7 at all. I deleted it and went back to XP SP3.

Edited January 28, 2010 by bellste

[JetsetBkk]

Maybe your just not holding your mouth the right way.

You'll have to explain that one!