I lol'd. Fo'sho :awesome

@Sageun: cheers, but I'll still wait for the update, since my setup's a bit older.

 

Windows 7 is by far my best experience with a PC operating system since Windows XP. It's not very resource intensive at all, and manages to run tolerably well even if your computer has below the recommended specs. It has yet to crash on me, something I'm very thankful for.

I'm a big fan of the Aero glass GUI--it manages to look good and yet is very functional. The new taskbar is fantastic once you get used to it--although when I used WMP I lamented the lack of the toolbar player with the new WMP. In particular, the new taskbar allows for organization--something I have a particular inkling for on my computer.

In general, Windows 7 is not particularly innovative, but it has none of Vista's faults and manages to improve on everything of Vista that was right. I would highly recommend replacing XP with 7 if your hardware is up to it. You'll lose some performance due to it being relegated to the operating systems processes, but it's an overall better experience.

 

Installed it. Surprised with how fast it plugged in, and the only hitch I had was forgetting to unplug my other hard drive, seems it's just like Vista, and spazzes when I have my hard drive that's formatted as a dynamic drive in.

It's fast, faster then XP is for me, but I haven't gamed on it yet, I'll check with 3dMark later. I know I'll be asking for more RAM for Xmas though, since now that this 64bit OS seems stable. I tried Vista 64 when it came out and holy fuck I had issues.

With 2gb of RAM though, I'm running 63 processes, and have 60% of my memory taken up. Wmplayer seems to always have a large chunk of memory being held even when it's doing fuck all... fuck it. I added the gadget version of Media Center for easy access, and holy shit they added a ton of stuff to it!

I really love what they did with Media Center, and the internet TV, but the ones I checked weren't HD, so shitty. Be nice if I could get video to play in the gadget window for Media center instead of ads for other shows. I got prompted to add an internet tv gadget, but I can't find it either.

So far I like it a lot, I still can't stand the overly large icons though

 

Bought the 64bit Pro, $30 student deal.

Like the fact that I can finally use all of my installed RAM, probably will pick up some more for Christmas. Install was a breeze, no problems what so ever. Liked the backup and restore feature, reminded me a bit of server 2008's.

What little bit I have played, Mass Effect and Lord of the Rings Online look awesome. I haven't tried installing any older game yet.

I just need my school IT department to go ahead and run their damn compatibility test so that I can switch over full time.

 

That might have something to do with the onslaught of touchscreen and multitouch-capable computers/monitors/laptops/nettops coming out, perhaps?

 

True, good point. I had a shitload of issues with my sound card, I wound up having to turn off driver enchancements to get my music files working with windows media player/video with media center. More thanks to Creative refusing to provide drivers worth a fuck for Vista and up though then 7.

I had a few issues too with programs I set to launch at startup not starting, turned off UAC, will see later if that fixes it.

 

Right click -> Properties -> Taskbar Buttons -> "Never combine"

 

ctrl + mouse wheel changes the icon sizes, I couldn't stand the large icon size either.

Is anyone else having trouble with the size of web pages? Some web pages fit the screen, but others require me to re size them to fit the page which is a pain, especially when it then becomes hard to read the words. Also the text appears blurrier, I'm not sure if this is just on my computer though because I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem. Help would be appreciated.

Edit: Never mind, I just had to adjust the resolution

 

I have Win7 on both my main desktop computer and my netbook. It runs amazingly on both computers, and the only problem I have with Win7 is the growing huge size of winsxs on my core 8gig SDD card on the netbook. I do have more than 8 gigs on the netbook, but 8gigs is the size of the C drive and I only have 200mb free.

At this point, there is no reason to not upgrade to Win7... even if you are one of the XP purist that think no OS is better than XP.

 

I just upgraded from build 7000 on my laptop, and I have to say it works much better (I hadn't upgraded every time they made a release...I stuck with the first one, lulz). Memory usage is still sky high (laptop is 4 years old, only 1GB of ram; using ~77% of that right from boot), but I can't really complain. Things are snappy, pretty, and generally work the way I'd except.

I still hate Windows Update. It makes me want to rape it in the eye with rebar.

 

Last install of Windows 7, my PSP made it reject my USB ports. Needing to reinstall is fail.

 

Warning-Did not read other replies

Windows 7 is nice, but it's not revolutionary. I consider it what Vista should have been if it hadn't been fucked up upon release by just about every factor imaginable.

Drivers work well and I've so far had it be compatible with every piece of hardware I've thrown at it, going back to an old 2001 Dell with barely enough ram to support it.

It's quick and speedy I suppose, personally I notice little difference between it and vista besides start up times. Start up is very quick, about 20 seconds on my laptop.

On the software side, you pretty much get what you expect. Anything that worked with vista will work with windows 7. Will be able to use 99% of whatever XP could use. I've yet to find a program I couldn't run besides games that don't like 64 bit, but I had that problem on vista as well.

I like the task bar, it makes keeping multiple windows open easier to imagine. However, there is a very annoying firefox bug where FF will lock up once in a while (maybe twice a week) when one of the the right corner accessibility buttons are pushed. Whichever you press will start to flash and it will lock up every FF window you have open. I can't stand it, end up having to alt-cnt-dlt and end the task to solve the issue.

Windows 7 is a resource hog in the sense that it takes a minimum of 1 gb of ram and a minimum level processor to run it (a 1.6ghz atom can run it ffs). The only reason Vista was considered a resource hog was because it had taken so long to come out, so the requirements between XP and Vista were vastly different. When considering that XP is over 9 years old now, it's not really a fair comparison to compare the two. (or for that matter windows 7 and XP.)

Verdict:If you have XP, it's definitely worth the upgrade. If you're using Vista, I can't justify spending the time, effort, and/or money to install Windows 7. Everything you get with 7 you can get with third party software, without the hassle of backing up all your data, installing windows, reinstalling your games/programs, ect ect.

 

Awesome, thanks. I have a problem with games that try to install Dx9c, errors out at the end, but hasnt broken anything yet. Had an OpenAL32 problem for a bit, googled the right driver. Windows changed the way they do 3d audio, so EAX got gimped apparently, planning on getting a newer soundcard then my Audigy 2 ZS soon anyhow. I enjoy 3d sound =P

 

I had the best upgrade experience ever when upgrading to 7 from Vista. I was one of the freaks that put Vista on a brand new computer, and had no problems with it. I even got a coupon for a free version of 7 when it came out, which is what I installed.

The freaking upgrade ran in a window (for about half the install) while I still had access to my firefox and VLC. If that's not progress, I don't know what is!

All my settings ported over fine with no backup, and even my third party video card drivers remembered their settings. I had to tweak the monitor arrangement and such - there's no way to move the "hide everything hover" to the left side of the taskbar, alas.

 

Getting fed up with the way Windows 7 copys. I knew I had copied over a good number of files to my flashcard, but not which. I had around 2 gigs left to copy, with 3 gigs left free on the card. Selected all>copy>paste.

FUCK YOU, not enough room. The select all option selected around 8 gigs of stuff sure, but 6 gigs of the shit was already there. Any other operating system in the fucking history of sane computing would of asked me straight off, or when it got to the already existing files, Over write, another copy, or keep, you know kinda like Windows already does.

Apparently it checks the total size of the stuff you're trying to copy versus the space available, and doesn't bother checking to see what's already there first. I have found no sane way, other then deleting entire contents off flash drives, and repasting the whole fucking lot at a nice hour long or so paste.

If it checked for already existing files compared to what you're trying to paste FIRST it'd be no problem, or you know, just damned started doing what you told it too before it ran out of room.

Trying to manage around 500 ROM images to these cards is pissing me off.

 

It doesn't do that with me. When I copy/paste something into a folder that has the same named contents it will ask me if I want to replace/rename/etc... Maybe you've chosen at one point in the past and accidentally set that as the default?

 

It asks me Aekiel, but at the end of the copy instead of at the start. As far as it thinks, I wanted to slap 8 gigs of shit into 3 gigs of space. It will look at the full size of everything I've selected, and compare it to what's left spacewise, instead of asking overwrite or replace first, which would of drastically reduced the space needed.

Merging instead of copy/paste seems to be more friendly, but that's a giant pain in the ass renaming shit.

 

I don't know about that copying problem, never faced it personally. However, both me and my cousin run 7. I have 32 bit and my cousin has 64 bit. So far, it's been a pretty good experience, definitely better than Vista. If you have XP, then I would still suggest upgrading as a little extra system load will be present, but there is greater ability to customize and more functionality - not to mention it looks cooler.

On the software side, I have yet to run across a program that doesn't work, either regularly or in compatibility mode. Performance, even of games, is pretty good, minimal to no lag, which is good especially considered my laptop is a pretty old and crappy machine.

Most of the inbuilt themes are ok or decent, but there are lots of ways to customize everything, even more than in Vista, and without the same resource drain.

As far as 64 bit goes, again, my cousin has had no problems per se. The only things that would not work were high end games, and that is more due to his video card, which is pretty low-end.

IMO, all the reports of it being an Ubuntu-killer are unjustified, but it is definitely worth upgrading to from XP or Vista. If you are due for a new computer with 7 preinstalled and do not have access to a free copy, then I would say just wait till you get the new computer. Aside from that, go for it. It's pretty fun.

 

Problem I had with wmplayer.exe and the sidebar gadget for it refusing to turn off and eventually sucking up resources like shit? This fixes it incase anyone else has it happen:

For me it was that it was interfacing with my G15, and despite disabling it in the G15 settings, it was still trying to on the Windows end.