Opinions wanted on Windows 7 [Archive]

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sandar

January 25th, 2010, 10:33

RyanJames170

January 25th, 2010, 10:44

My PC has become unstable recently and I am going to replace the hard drive. The hard drive is now the oldest part of my system, being the only part not yet upgraded. I would like to know whether it would be best to install Windows 7 or re-install my old XP Home.

I think it would be best to look ahead and go for the newer OS, but with all of the furore over Vista, I am being a bit cautious.

If I decide to install Windows 7, do I:

Buy Windows 7 or Windows upgrade from XP to 7? I think I favour the former.
Are there any particular problem running FS9 in Windows 7?

One final question, has anyone used Open Office, if so is it any good? I need an office program, but MS Office ???? is quite expensive and I have to watch the pennies now.

Well i would say going to Win 7 is a good idea, mostly becuse of the fact that it dose move a little faster and its newer and more upto date but also.. more and more newer programs are ment to be run by it and vista.
it dose look a little better to. yes its kinda weird to get used to but there are enough simplification to it that you can probaly get used to it with in 1 month... i am sure you will look back at XP and wonder how it even made it lol..

Open office is more or less ezactly like MS office ecept that is Free... it can go from MS office to OO and visa versa as long as you save to the right file formats.. OO can save to MS office 97/XP/2000 witch ever MS office from 97 on up can open..
my best advice is to DL it and try it out.

BladeRun

January 25th, 2010, 11:17

I'm going to take the easy/short way out and agree with RyanJames on both points. I have had win7 a month now, and like it very much. I too skipped over vista and went from xp to win7, no complaints, all positive.

I also use Open Office, no complaints there. Sorry to be boring :sleep: :)

sandar

January 25th, 2010, 11:52

Snuffy

January 25th, 2010, 11:53

Don't have it yet.

IF and when I do, it'll be on a completely new system.

sandar

January 25th, 2010, 11:54

Thanks for that Ryan, more or less agrees with what I have already discovered. I need confirmation. :salute:

ananda

January 25th, 2010, 13:25

Buy Windows 7 or Windows upgrade from XP to 7?
Unfortunately one can only update to W7 from Vista.

Kiwikat

January 25th, 2010, 13:40

Unfortunately one can only update to W7 from Vista.

But you can do a clean install from XP to W7.

I really don't like W7 that much. It isn't any better than Vista to me. It actually crashes more than my Vista 64 did. That being said, I don't have any desire to go back to Vista.

I guess that's why I'm using Linux as I type this... :mixedsmi:

harleyman

January 25th, 2010, 13:59

I have Win 7 on two machines..

I think I still perfew XP Pro SP3 for all oround everything

Both my Win 7 seem to lag behing XP on opening apps and browsing the net.

ananda

January 25th, 2010, 14:09

I updated from Vista64 to W7 64 and all applications were carried over, even FS9 and FSX :jump:

I prefer W7 to Vista but I still do development on my XP machine.

George

Dangerousdave26

January 25th, 2010, 14:11

My experience with W7 on my Desktop Gaming PC has been good with the beta and RC versions.

My experience wth loading RC on a laptop I had a few months ago was a no go. There were no video drivers for that laptop. I opted to stay with Xp home.

My personal recommendation is to stay with XP until you upgrade your whole PC. XP is solid on your machine W7 might not be.

I also would avoid purchasing the upgrade version. The system builder version is about $50 cheaper than the upgrade version which is only availible in the Retail version.

All upgrades go better with complete clean installs anyway.

PRB

January 25th, 2010, 14:11

I'm running Windows 7 on this machine, and Open Office 3.1 as well. I like both. Open Office has a couple of quirks, like when you open a new instance of an application, it appears behind the other windows on the desk top for some annoying reason (:isadizzy:). But for free, I can put up with that...

safn1949

January 25th, 2010, 15:50

I have 4 computers right now,I ran Vista for 18 months with little problem.I ran windows 7 on an HP desktop with a 1.2 celeron and 1 gig of ram and it ran fine,I have it on 2 laptops and have only had one small problem with this laptop.Windows explorer will stop responding every once in a while.No such problem on the other laptop.

A windows 7 quirk...you can't manually rearrange folders or files in a folder,it won't let you.I feel this will be fixed later as a lot of people don't like it.It will run everything back to CFS 1 but if you want to run CFS 1 see the thread in the forum on joysticks.

I run open office on both of my laptops and it works well,if it's free,it's me.Windows 7 is visually very nice and you will have to get used to it from XP as it does things a bit differently.It boots up very fast and is easier on resources then Vista.I have had no other problems with it.

RickN

January 26th, 2010, 00:14

So far I like Windows 7. Not a real improvement over XP but it is OK.

I use Open Office on some computers and if you are use to MS it is not bad. For most things including our work computers I use Word Perfect. It runs great on Win 7 including 64 bit and you can get OEM copies cheap.

http://www.royaldiscount.com/product_detail.cfm?pid=1671&stateful

aeromed202

January 26th, 2010, 03:29

I helped buy my daughter an ASUS laptop with W7 on it. It had a 2 week no-questions-asked return policy so she worked hard to get used to the W7 coming from XP. She ended up keeping it saying the W7 was OK once you got used to it. It seemed hobbled with features that made no sense, like they were thought up and bundled just to up the feature numbers. But she was able to customize (shut off) enough of them to make things more sensible. I figure in a year or so MS might respond with a service pack to address some of those annoying things and make W7 more friendly from the get-go.
Don't know how it does with gaming though. But a good point was made here that things are being made to work with W7 now so we will all end up going off in that suit eventually.

safn1949

January 26th, 2010, 04:02

I have gone thru 5 laptops in the past 2 years,still have 2 of them.When they are new they have tons of useless crap on them in the form of programs,etc that are bundled in.

When I get a new one,or in the case of my desktops older computers,I go thru them and clean all of that stuff up.Turn off certain things and then go from there.Have had Vista for quite a while windows 7 is more user friendly and runs much better on less of a computer.

Xp is a good program,I have it on the 2 old desktops but you have to remember it was a serious dog out of the gate with a lot of teething problems back in the day.It really depends on what you are willing to settle for,compared to Windows 7, XP looks prehistoric.

GT182

January 26th, 2010, 04:20

I ran ME, first computer I ever owned, and didn't mind it even tho many thought it was crap. XP came along and there was trouble with that. MS fixed it pretty well with 3 service packs. Being forced to go with XP, which I dreaded, I've come to love it. Vista was/is crap to many, but some have overcome that. Now W7. Looks to me like W7 is a "pay for" service pack for Vista, and still isn't up to par with the polished XP.

I'm still going to wait until I'm either forced to go to W7, or MS decides to polish it with service packs. XP runs so smooth I can't see making the switch right now. And I know everthing I have will run on it..... I don't have to run anything in a "compatability mode". Out of the box and boom, it's up and running. To me that's what counts.... ease of use and no headaches. Just my http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v64/GT182/2cents.gif.

safn1949

January 26th, 2010, 05:57

That's the nice thing about Windows 7,I haven't had to fool around with compatability mode yet.It seems to just run everything.:USA-flag:

vora

January 26th, 2010, 06:12

What's almost spooky with W7 is the absence of weekly updates. On XP you have tons of security updates each week, on W7 none (after the initial updates).
This ought to be a good omen, right? :engel016:

wombat666

January 26th, 2010, 06:14

FWIW, W7 is the first O/S I've come across that runs almost as good as the hype.
Two programmes incompatible so far, but that's a 64bit v 32bit matter.
There a few odd quirks like desktop icons going out to lunch and coming back a day later and the interface navigation can be a bit strange after XP but if you run in 'Classic' aka 'bare bones' desktop it's no drama.

Neither my elderly scanner or printer work, good excuse to shop around for some shiny new hardware and the old XP system is running as a back so the Flash Drives are getting a workout.

It is not as smooth as XP Pro SP3 32 bit but beats XP Pro 64 bit hands down.
Can't comment re Vista as I never bothered with it.
No doubt W7 will receive a polish some time this year but it has more things that are positive than negative IMHO.

:jump:

Bjoern

January 26th, 2010, 13:34

One final question, has anyone used Open Office, if so is it any good? I need an office program, but MS Office ???? is quite expensive and I have to watch the pennies now.

Go for OpenOffice.

Been using it for years; no problems at all.

FAC257

January 26th, 2010, 13:49

Another Office option that should be coming up soon is MS's move to the free versions of Microsoft Office 2010 Word, Excel and Power Point. They are going to be some sort of online access type setup. Not exactly sure how that's going to work.

I'm currently running the full beta Office 2010 suite with W7. I like it quite a bit. The only thing that "bothers" me and I say that with a smile, is that Office 2010 blends into W7 so well I sometimes have to stop and double check what window/application it is that I actually have open.

One of the other reasons I'm going for this early test drive on Office 2010 is that it will be available as a 64bit app which will prompt me even more to finally move to a 64bit system.

FAC

Ickie

January 26th, 2010, 13:50

I have 2 XP Pro computers and 1- 32 bit windows 7 and and 1- 64 bit ultra win 7, vista really sucked.
I am really happy with windows 7.
Note I did an update on the windows 7 32 bit and it took about 8 hours fo get it perfect.
I did a fresh install of the ultra 64 windows 7 and it took about 1 hour.

MaddogK

January 26th, 2010, 14:29

How does W7 play with DOS proggies ? I have alot of emulators (going back to the 8 bit days) and XP does a nice job keeping them stable even when stacking emulators. Was curious how W7 would fare.

Moparmike

January 26th, 2010, 14:53

How does W7 play with DOS proggies ? I have alot of emulators (going back to the 8 bit days) and XP does a nice job keeping them stable even when stacking emulators. Was curious how W7 would fare.

So far, I've not had too many problems with little command-line DOS apps.
If you do get a problem one (usually 64-bit systems will give the most problems), give DOSbox a try. It's a nice little open-source DOS/x86 emulator.
http://www.windowsreference.com/free-utilities/dosbox-free-opensource-dos-x86-emulator-for-windows-linux/

Other than that, to the OP...
I'm happy with Win7 on my new system.
I don't know if I would upgrade an old system from XP to 7...all depends on the age of the hardware I suppose. Older hardware I'm content with sticking to XP.

OpenOffice works just fine for me on Win 7. I decided to stick with that since I use it quite a bit on Linux anyway.
I also have my old copy of MSOffice 2002 installed for those odd-few XLS worksheets with macros (like the AvHistory FDE spreadsheets) since OO.org doesn't play well with most MSOffice macros.
(7 does have some issues with Outlook2002 too...but I haven't used that for email in quite a while).

MaddogK

January 27th, 2010, 10:13

So far, I've not had too many problems with little command-line DOS apps.
If you do get a problem one (usually 64-bit systems will give the most problems), give DOSbox a try. It's a nice little open-source DOS/x86 emulator.
http://www.windowsreference.com/free-utilities/dosbox-free-opensource-dos-x86-emulator-for-windows-linux/

Other than that, to the OP...
I'm happy with Win7 on my new system.
I don't know if I would upgrade an old system from XP to 7...all depends on the age of the hardware I suppose. Older hardware I'm content with sticking to XP.

OpenOffice works just fine for me on Win 7. I decided to stick with that since I use it quite a bit on Linux anyway.
I also have my old copy of MSOffice 2002 installed for those odd-few XLS worksheets with macros (like the AvHistory FDE spreadsheets) since OO.org doesn't play well with most MSOffice macros.
(7 does have some issues with Outlook2002 too...but I haven't used that for email in quite a while).

Thats kinda my question, I run a CD emulator (to setup the faux drive), DOSbox over that to get the atari/commodor emulator up. Atari spartados on the 800xl emulator sees the faux drive and I load my 8bit ware from the faux drive- ALL under XP, and all very stable.

Can W7 do that ?

Dangerousdave26

January 27th, 2010, 12:25

Thats kinda my question, I run a CD emulator (to setup the faux drive), DOSbox over that to get the atari/commodor emulator up. Atari spartados on the 800xl emulator sees the faux drive and I load my 8bit ware from the faux drive- ALL under XP, and all very stable.

Can W7 do that ?

I can tell you I could not run Wolfenstien 3D, Dangerousdave in the Haunted Mansion, or Bards Tale 1 on W7. It does not like 16 bit games in windowed mode. Which is something XP would do.

The other side of that coin is Castle of the Winds which was an old dos game runs fine but it loads up in full screen mode.

I have not tested Dosbox under W7 yet but their site claims Vista is still in the works which mean W7 might not work either.

gigabyte

January 27th, 2010, 13:48

Hey folks,
I have been away and just caught this thread, I am running Win 7 /64 and dual boot with Vista (which always worked fine for me so I was never a Vista hater) and I have had no real issues to speak of. I have one driver problem - Dazzle DVD90 - no 64 bit driver which is why I have the Vista partition.

I also set up an XP Pro Virtual Machine with the XPMode in Win 7 for several very old Dos games - Leisure Suite Larry (yes I still have it..lol) and Wing Commander 3, 4 & 5, they all work just fine. If you have the compatible hardware XPMode in Win 7 works extremely well, just make sure to enable Virtual Machine support in your BIOS and have at it.

I also tried a little experiment just for the heck of it and I have been pleasently surprised. I am running most of my apps on both Vista and Win 7 from single installs, what I mean is I set up Win 7 and installed Open Office, FSX, X3, MS Digital Imaging Pro and several Video editing apps, etc... on a seperate drive (E:\Program files\appname...) and tricked Vista and Win 7 into using the same installitation. It was tricky to set up and took some time but it works flawlessly. Here are the steps;

1) Install Vista on small partition as C: (I did this first because the last OS installed will be the default when you power up so I wanted Win 7 as my first choise)

2) Install Win 7 using Dual Boot method so Vista installation is kept, Win 7 also assumes C: when you boot into that OS. I used a larger Partition for Win 7 as well.

3) Installed my main apps in Win 7 to the E: drive (I just accept all install paths except the drive letter I change it to E: )

4) Once everything is running fine and tested in Win 7 I shut down and booted to the Vista Partition.

5) Now I navigate to the E: Drive and simply added an X to the start of the Apps folder I used so it was now e:\XProgram files\...

6) Repeat the install of the apps and games I wanted so Vista set the Reg entries properly and tested each app and game - all worked just fine.

7) Now the fun part, I left everything as is for a few weeks going back and forth between the 2 OS's and not touching my XProgram Files folder (just in case) and I was able to boot to either Win 7 or Vista and use every program I had installed on that e: drive, the Registry in both partitions had the proper entries and I was only using one install of each program so I blew away the E:\XProgram Files\ folder and recovered over 80 gig of space (X3 and all the mods was just over 30 gig alone).

I am not sure how useful this information is, but it was a fun experiment and for me I do need Vista to use my Dazzle for converting the home movies I have on VHS. I have a year or more work to do on that little project.

Just a short side note to this, I did also try one app on the E:\Program Files\ folder from the XP VM and it worked just fine, although XP Mode treats the hard drives as Network shares so you have to map each one, it makes a little more work but it is functional.

Overall I would not recommend this to everyone but if you like to tinker it can be interesting and for me it works just fine. Oh and BTW I also share a common My Documents, My Pictures etc on a 3rd Hard drive between all 3 OS's so that is not an issue.

If you get Win 7 and do not need to pop for the Ultimate version which includes XP Mode, it is a free download from MS so unless you need to spend the extra for BitLocker stick with Win 7 Pro and save the $20.00 or better yet send the $20.00 to Ickie we can use it for the new server... hint, hint, hint...lol