CF-28 with Windows 7 Running fine

Yea, i said it. So anyone give this a go yet? I got Vista up and running on a friends CF-28 with a little lower spec then mine (1.1/512/80g) and it ran faster then XP, no suprise. I know on my test rig, albeit a high def processing monster, Windows 7 runs twice as fast as Vista, almost on par with linux.

So if the logic continues for the TB, and i can get the touchscreen calibrated, it might be worth it. Hell, i might just try it and see what happens.

***THIS POST HAS BEEN MODIFIED TO INCLUDE RESULTS AND INSTRUCTION***

Windows 7 will successfully install and run (quite well, read entire thread) on you're CF-28 with a little bit of work on you're part. Out of the box almost nothing works, including audio, lan, and touchscreen. This is easy to fix!

Using another computer (due to no lan) visit the panasonic.ca website (see the stickys at the top of the forum) and download the audio, lan, and mouse drivers for XP. Open the device manager and right click on each of these devices, choosing "update driver". Select "browse location on my computer" and then "let me choose from a list". Click on the "have disk" button and navigate to the c:\utils\blah directory for that device.

Audio and lan require no further effort. Touchscreen simply needs calibration.

And viola, your jamming on Win7! Hey if i can do it drunk, anyone can do it sober.

 

We are all for experimenting, so lets experiment.

 

You sold me. That, and i am slightly intoxicated. Last time i hit this perfect mix of corona and jack i tore down my LT-R450. Lucky for me, i don't learn easily so on with the games!

This should be interesting.....

 

So far I've done W7 installs on CF-28, CF-29, CF-30, and CF-19. The CF-28 W7 had the lowest PC Mark 05 score when compaired to CF-28 XP. In the bench marking test It was dinged mostly on the CPU and Graphics test. Scores between CF-28 W7 and XP differed by a stagering 36%. So is it worth having W7 on your CF-28? Based on the benchmarking test the answer is an absolute no.

 

Which specs did you have on that 28? I know Vista was pretty fast, it beat out XP.

 

The issue on older models with W7 or Vista is RAM

I have tweaked XP to run at idle 150mb
The lowest I have seen on Vista or W7 is about 750mb
Right now i'm using 780mb on my cf-30 mk-2 on W7

If you only have 512mb available you will have poor performance in comparison to XP

Alex

 

It's almost done installing, and it wont take long to swap it to Vista so its worth appeasing my curiousity and boredom at this point

 

PC Mark 05 Score for CF-28 XP is 1428
PC Mark 05 Score for CF-28 W7 is 914
I never installed vista on any of my machines because its crap, so i dont have any specs on that.

The CF-28 Set up that I used was:
P3 1 GHz
512 MB Ram
Hitachi 80GB Travelstar 7200RPM

Hope this helps.

 

Your specs are exactly the same as mine.

As for Vista, if its Ultimate then i like it. Like meaning it is the only Windows i can stomach. Cant opinion on 7 yet, not enough use.

 

Nothing against the bechmarks or anything, but W7 is running just as fast as XP. Not faster, but certainly no slower. I loaded it up and fired up CS4 in the same time frame. Everything is working perfect less touchscreen, but i havent even tried fixing that yet.

I may not stay with it, we'll see. But OTB it's running great.

 

Start Task manager and report ram usage

Alex

 

393MB. High, but bear in mind it's a CF28 and i have PS CS4, FF3, VLC, and Taskmanager running. Oh and device manager is doing a scan.

 

Wow thats not bad , must be on my instalations that since I have 3 or 4GB installed it gets greedy

What is the boot time in compairision?

Alex

 

I would say about equal actually. I think 7 might be a BIT longer, but not enough time to think hey this is taking longer.

What is the max ram i can shove into this thing anyway?

 

768MB if you have 256 o/b
Fussy 512MB ram, read the cf-28 faq for the model of the kingston module

Alex

 

She's 100% running, including calibrated TS. Using all XP drivers.

 

ty. It's cool to say W7 works, but i will probably roll back to Vista because i do use it for video stuff SOMETIMES. The high def FX is my editing machine but i do need the 28 in a pinch

 

Screenshot at idle

 

Get a stick of Kingston KTM-TP133/512 and you will be golden.

Wow that is impressive because if you read the warnings from MS it requires a minimum of a 1.0 ghz processor with 1024 mb of ram. I can't remember if they were talking about a P-3 or P-4 processor. You answered my question it will work in my mark II with 768 mb of ram.

 

I'm really impressed with the outcome. I may keep W7, i really cant decide lmao. I already own Vista, and W7 is an eval im playing with. My luck buying W7 would be a hog version and i would be wishing i hadn't bought it.

In any event, it's a CF-28 running W7 respectively, so i can be proud of my drunken adventure.

edit: and note i didn't disable anything like aero and stuff, its all full out featured, out of the box W7

 

I've crashed it a few times since last post (intentionally). It takes a considerable amount of effort. Even launching CS4 six times didnt crash it, i had to go on a laucnhing spree

 

That is real good to hear, because I typically only have one user application open at a time. I now have options I did not know that I had.

 

Can a mod change the title to successful or something related?

 

That's really good news, I was wondering if and when I get my toughbook going again if I could put 7 on it. My reasoning is the Dept of Interior (certain divisions anyway) will be switching to 7 within the next year and as my personal/work computer compatibility is very important.

 

You should be fine. Don't expect miracles (ie understand its new software on old technology) but you can certainly function happily with it.

 

any updates? still running?

 

Well I got bored this morning and I am now dual booting Win 7 and Win xp pro. I remembered that I had an evaluation copy from the testing earlier this year (Build 7100) that I could not get installed on my son's computer. After playing with it for a couple of hours I got everything working including the touchscreen (I have no experience with vista so it took me a little longer to get the feel of how to accomplish a simple task such as updating a driver.

If anyone else does this do not use the panasonic video driver (Bad JuJu) just let windows 7 take care of it. Windows 7 also had a new driver for my engenious wireless card that works much better than the xp driver I initially installed. I also installed the windows lan driver. It also had a driver for my usb bluetooth dongle.

The Windows boot loader screen is clunky and lists Win XP Pro as an earlier version of windows. However I will fix my linux mint installation and use linux grub (grand unified boot loader) to boot into whatever system I want to with win xp as my default. I can also edit it to make it display the proper operating system name in whatever order I choose.

Windows 7 runs as fast as XP but boot times are slower, once running it is smooth as silk

When I get bored with this I think I will get another harddrive caddy and put my SSD in it since Windows 7 is claimed to be more SSD friendly.

 

did you install the 32 or 64 bit ultimate 7?

 

It was the 32 bit edition.