Windows 7

[==Troy==]

In XP, less memory is used and allocated when you are surfing the web etc. but electricity is still being run through the memory blocks which means these resources are just going to waste.

Irrelevant. Windows7 either claims that it uses that memory, or it really uses, which then means, that there is less memory for the other programs. (the above quote actually made me laugh for a few minutes)

In 7, more memory is used by the OS when surfing etc., but when you start something that needs alot of RAM, it will allocate free memory plus all the memory it can from the amount that was previously used by the OS in the background. As wierd as it may sound, 7 actually wastes less memory.

Read about RAM fragmentation. An OS that frees up extra space for a program is WRONG. you get so much fragmentation, since the program has to squeeze around partially filled memory banks, that the performance is going to get slower, and the RAM usage will increase.

it seems that this time MS has managed to pull it off quite well.

I know a person who claims that he was payed by microsoft for win7 promotion on forums, etc (i.e. arguing how much better it is)

One definite thing that MS did this time, is that instead of wasting 50% of their budget on their suits, they finally put it into marketting division.

[overkill]

Baw Baw. Some people really need to open their mind and stop being so arrogant. Windows 7 is the best thing Microsoft has done in a long time, XP and Vista do not compare.

Windows 7 uses less ram when there is less ram available, you don't see it hogging ALL the ram in a 1 gig laptop, now do you?

And i sure as hell am not being paid to say this, though i would love it. And i am not a windows 7 "fanboy" by any means, as I still prefer Linux.

[AF]

You guys have no idea how memory in modern machines works. What you said doesnt even fit in with XP memory allocation, or even windows 2000

All ram is, is a glorified cache for the pagefile.

Firstly, windows 7 is not going to make your cpu 4% slower than vista, this is tosh, 7 is based on vista and heavily optimized. Go read the windows 7 engineering blogs where they tell you how they did it and the statistics they gathered to prove it. They have the numbers, what do you have.

Regarding sp1, this is also tosh. 7 is stable, its built ontop of vista sp1, not made from scratch. There are people who ran the beta version of it as their main OS its that stable.

As for XP, there are a lot of missing things, and there's that much crap on it, but because we've been using it for so long we overlook it and its invisible to us now.

Things XP does we overlook that are epic fail:

• You cannot run more than one directx/opengl program without problems
• The UI blocks when network or file system operations are happening, which sometimes can be minutes long
• Windows update runs in a web page of all things
• Fundamentally insecure network stack and filesystem model
• Bitmap based GUIs?!?!?!?!

As for win7, under Vista you can push memory usage down to 400MB and under windows 7 you can push it down further, but eitherway XP is full of holes, Vista is obsolete, and windows 7 is uber fast and full of polish, and I mean UBER fast, Im not joking, its silly how snappy 7 is compared to XP, it makes XP look like an old man in a coma with superman running round him faster than light.

And libraries just pwn hard. The very concept of 'my documents' just goes straight out the window, as you control exactly 'what' it is.

[==Troy==]

They have the numbers, what do you have.

Sorry for replying only to a part of your overly excited post, but MS ALWAYS gave numbers. They gave same number for XP, for Vista, for IE 7 and IE 8, anything, and seriously, noone sane in this world ever believed them.

In the same way as the marketshare researches are always sponsored by MS...

I do not deny that Win7 is crap or not, I just cannot see people getting so excited over something which is no more than a few fixed for Vista (and yes, I am on Win7)

[SpliFF]

Can you clarify WHAT runs faster? The OS or third-party software? As it stands I don't use explorer (the browser or the shell) so I would only benefit from faster games. Is there any data to verify games run faster?

[Tribulex]

from my experience games run faster by a factor of 2 over vista, and 1.3 over xp. This is for stock nvidia drivers of a 9600m gt and a clean install of professional/ultimate editions, and the metric is framerate.

[SpliFF]

Well I've just been checking benchmarks and none of them support your claims. All I can see is that XP typically wins on mid-range settings and hardware while Vista/W7 tends to win at higher resolutions (like 2560x1600) or when using crossfire. In most cases the "win" was typically so small (1-5 fps / 1-2%) that it could easily be accounted to poor testing methods or transient differences (like background processes running).

Given I fall into the mid-range category, have a HUGE collection of DX7-DX9 games, don't run crossfire/sli, and thoroughly despise the current rash of PC (*cough* console port) games I see no valid reason to spend hundreds of dollars on W7. For the same money I can upgrade to quad-core and buy more RAM and see significant improvements across my workload and gaming.

If I buy a new system in a few years (when i7 becomes affordable or AMD lift their game) then I'll seriously consider W7 but for now I still see no compelling reasons to upgrade (and several compelling reasons not to: HDCP/DRM for one, possible incompatibilities with older games for another).

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/review ... page=0%2C3

[Master-Athmos]

7 doesn't run games faster and also applications usually have no speed boost due to 7. That's for the most part of course for the reason that 7 pretty much is Vista and as such has a next to identical performance. With Vista having pretty much the same performance as XP there in the end is no difference in performance...

I'm not up to date with the latest benchmarks so there actually might be a performance difference but that'll be like 80,1 fps for XP, 80,15 fps for Vista an 80,2 fps for 7. All values that barely are measurable and are totally insignificant...

The only change on that sector probably had Vista which was a bit slower than XP due to no good adaptions to the new driver model it's using while being new. That got fixed over time though and as 7 uses the same model the performance remains the same which as told is more or less equal for all versions...

[Forboding Angel]

Why don't you just torrent the rc and see for yourself? MS is still giving keys away for rc via their site, and there isn't that much difference between rc and rtm.

Regardless, anyone who says that xp is better, either lives in a cave or is an idiot.

[==Troy==]

Why don't you just torrent the rc and see for yourself? MS is still giving keys away for rc via their site, and there isn't that much difference between rc and rtm.

Regardless, anyone who says that xp is better, either lives in a cave or is an idiot.

Or they just did not believe the marketting scam, while did test the RC.

[AF]

Windows 7 final > 7 RC, get a full version and trial it and use the trial extension hack

Windows 7 feels snappy, they ahve done a lot to their UI in terms fo polish.

For example, in windows XP if you open things like the start menu it waits before its loaded the contents before showing you it, in windows 7 it immediatly shows up and then displays the stuff as it loads. Vista does thsi too but ti always feels sluggish and the UI is slow to respond while its doing it, but the UI is always instantly responsive in windows 7 no matter what your doing.

This carries over into everyday tasks. Your cpu is at 100%? Under XP the entire UI is frozen and sluggish to update. Under Vista the program is frozen and the task bars etc might not respond when clicked on. In windows 7 the task bars and menus all work as if the computer is under 0% load even if its at 100%. No more waiting 5 minutes for task manager to launch when a game goes haywire.

7 is faster than vista but only marginally in terms fo how fast applications run. Most speed improvements are ones that have been made to windows itself and its footprint rather than speeding up how fast the programs run. Things like merging services together into single processes, removing obsolete services, making ones that auto-launch disabled by default, reducing memory footprint etc.

[Argh]

Just curious... are they still attempting to rip everybody off, with lots of versions of 7 with confusing names?

[Jazcash]

Yeh, Aero is a lot more stylish and CPU extensive. Overall, 7 will probably increase my personal productivity by maybe 20% or so which is an awful lot considering Vista decreased my productivity by around 30%

Vista was more of a Guinea Pig for Microsoft to chuck all their features on which were more gimicks rather than fully awesomeated features. In Windows 7 they simply "made everything work".

The search function on the start menu is so much faster, the taskbar allows for much more space and efficient window switching etc.

The tray works a lot better by hiding all the crap you don't want. In Vista and previous versions, you get a load of crap displaying even if you've chosen to disable it and it's generally unsexyier.

Libaries are a nice way to stay organized and media player is a lot more efficient allowing you to quickly open/preview files before doing anything with them.

I suppose one of nicest things I like about 7 is the simplicity and all the junk that Microsoft have either hidden or got rid of.
It's a lot easier to stay clean and organized and the glass is just lickable.

Sure there's a lot of stuff they could have done better but it's a massive improvement from XP and a must upgrade for Vista users.

Oh, and UAC is a lot more customizable with a slider allowing a few different levels for it to be set too in terms of annoyingness.

It's worth at least trying the RC before XP fan boys make judgements.

[KDR_11k]

• You cannot run more than one directx/opengl program without problems

Interesting, I've had Blender, Upspring and Spring open at the same time plenty of times.

[SpliFF]

• You cannot run more than one directx/opengl program without problems

Interesting, I've had Blender, Upspring and Spring open at the same time plenty of times.

Yeah, that sounded like crap to me too.

So what's so special about this Libraries thing? I put my games in d:\Games, my apps in D:\Apps and my movies in D:\Movies. How much more organised can I get?

[Gertkane]

I do not deny that Win7 is crap or not, I just cannot see people getting so excited over something which is no more than a few fixed for Vista (and yes, I am on Win7)

That is roughly the point. A "fixed" vista is pretty much better and more usable than any other OS out there.

Some guys are just too h4rdc0r3 and wont switch out of principle. I expected 7 to suck just a little less than vista (which i hated to the core) yet i have found it to be very good. Performance wise - i run a 1.5year old average spec pc (Core 2 Duo, 8600 GT, 2gb ram) and i've found that either there is no change at all in performance (Medieval Total War 2) or a slight increase (Risen). Haven't had much time to check many games out.

And besides, ram is dirt cheap nowadays. I'm a cheapskate that's why i run with 2gb ram, extra 1gb sticks are like 25-30 bucks.

[SpliFF]

And besides, ram is dirt cheap nowadays. I'm a cheapskate that's why i run with 2gb ram, extra 1gb sticks are like 25-30 bucks.

Which would be fine, except that most consumer motherboards won't take more than 3Gig, and those that claim to tend to crash on POST. Losing 1gig is 1/3 of your RAM.

Which is beside the point. Caching or not there is no valid reason for an operating system to exhaust 1 gig of RAM before the first application even runs. I understand the concept of "pre-loading" but frankly it's a trick, it optimises MS applications like office and IE at the expense of your true workload (games for me, but could be music, CAD or some other task).

Anyway, it's OT. I'm still waiting for someone to provide a convincing argument that doesn't involve blindly downloading gigabytes of data and formatting partitions. It's faster than Vista? Whoopee! That's like saying a Datsun is faster than a truck! What compelling offerings does Win7 have, and why are they compelling?

I'm not trying to be belligerent here, I just don't see how "Win7 is awesome" explains WHY it is awesome. Also the OP and myself are talking about upgrading from XP, so what value are these Vista comparisons?

What FEATURES make it worth AUD$400 and WHY?

[Gedanken]

Haha everyone ignore everything in this thread so little of it is grounded in reality

[Gertkane]

...

Well if you or a friend studies at any school with affiliations to MSDNAA you can get a legal copy of it for free (as with pretty much everything else MS offers). If not, just torrent it (has to be up to date) and try it out.

You will be hard pressed to find that you have actually lost any performance in games etc. I've been trying out games that i had before i did a clean install of 7 (had a clean stripped out XP before like i said) and even with recent games there is no visible performance decrease to say the least.

All your arguments to not use or try 7 are what i had before i actually tried it, so all i can suggest is try it out when you have a chance (i.e. when you can back up your stuff to dvds or another hdd). It was also much faster to install 7 than XP for me and it boots faster, which is wierd since i kept my XP as clean as possible.

[SpliFF]

What arguments? You still haven't provided anything to argue about. You managed to totally ignore the fact I don't want to download or install it until somebody stops acting like a lovestruck schoolgirl and tells me how I'll benefit.

Boot times? I reboot my computer once a fortnight, if that. I'm certainly not going to notice if its 5 or even 30 seconds faster.

All your post did was help confirm my suspicions that there's no useful functionality I don't have already or can't install.

I know nobody cares whether I install it or not, I was just hoping somebody here could use their big words to tell me what all the fuss is about.