Brave Soul? Come in and say Hi ...

I see some people use W7 beta as their main OS. BETA 101, don't use it as your main OS unless you want to live on the edge . How many have already given up on Vista?

 

I'm already using Win7 as my main OS. I've first tried it out for a couple days, then deleted Vista entirely. Win7 has been good so far. Every program that I *have to* use runs well and it's overall much faster and more responsive than Vista. Also, since I installed Windows 7 almost a week ago, it hasn't frozen once, pretty good for a Beta OS. Not to mention I'm not even one of those vista-haters... I've liked Vista since it came out, I just realized that 7 is much better.

 

I am at the moment using windows 7 as my main OS, but I still have Vista, so if anything goes wrong I have a backup. If I did give up on Vista completely, it probably would be in the RC stages at least.

 

I didn't give up on Vista. I was forced to reinstall since I had the "can't update bug" so I figured wth and decided to try the Win 7 beta. Haven't had any problems yet (and I did make a backup).

 

Well, there were problems with my Vista installation anyways (regularly locked up, high CPU usage, slowdowns) so I needed to reformat anyways.

I tried out the M3 build, and while I wasn't particularly comfortable with that (as it's a pre-beta, and few people were running, so no community for support) as my primary OS, everything that I had read about the beta, combined with how stable I the M3 release was, I didn't hesitate on using 7 as my primary OS.

Greg

 

i havent booted into vista since installing windows 7. i'm dual booting though, and have a good copy backed up of both win7 and vista.

 

Windows 7 = Windows Vista SP3

 

Completely agree. I was so excited too...it's nice but the minimal updates don't justify a whole new OS.

I'm convinced that it's just a move to turn the page on the Vista PR nightmare.

 

To be fair, they didn't have a choice. If they had released it as Windows Vista SE, it would have still carried all of the problems that came with the name Vista. Just like that Mojave experiment thing.

Remember, most of the launch problems with Vista were compatibility. Performance was an issue, but not like compatibility was. The core of Windows had to be changed, the NT based system was far too outdated and full of holes. We now have better systems in place to verify drivers (which has seemed to be working) and an OS that is more stable if one application crashes. I haven't even talked about security yet, which Vista has always trumped XP.

So really, 2 years into Vista and most things are compatible. There were enhancements with SP1, but the biggest thing that improved Vista was time.

Time healed many of Vista's problems, but not the PR nightmare.

Greg

 

I am a very brave soul, that decided to do something potentially rediculous and time consuming if it didn't work out.

What I did was convert my original Vista install into a virtual machine using VMWare Converter, and store the virtual machine disk elsewhere while I wiped my main drive for Windows 7. I read up a little on other people's experiences with Windows 7 and VMWare related products and some had problems with networking, while others had problems with graphics and the like.

So I go in installing Windows 7 (64-bit) which goes smoothly, followed by VMWare Workstation. Finally the moment of truth came where I wanted to load up my virtualized original machine... and the result?



The best of both worlds

 

I have xp, vista and 7 on my computer. I use XP when I game because dx9 lags less than dx10. Vista I use to do transactions or anything that requires security. 7 is great, but I'll wait until the full release of the OS. At this point I might migrate my gaming from XP to Windows 7. I just feel that a beta OS isn't secure enough to risk doing financial transactions and such.

 

Funny I was given the impression that Windows 7 is a lot more secure than Vista - little things like being given total control over the firewall etc and that it is built on a Vista base...why would MS release a Beta that is in a state where you cannot use it for normal usage and is unsecure? (the idea behind beta testing IIRC is to use it normally until it breaks then you report the bug - well thats what I do with Ubuntu )

Personally I am using it as my main OS on the Vostro in a vain attempt to break it and when it breaks report it to MS, I also keep all my files on a portable HDD in a state of permanent back up if you like, not too much sits on the notebook HDD that isnt on the external HDD or DVD backups....

 

Because its a Beta. I mean if it was ready I would assume Microsoft would release it by now. Any bug in an operating system means a potential risk. I would rather use Vista which is a bit slower than Windows 7 rather than run the risk of exposing sensitive data. Also, most of the bugs that we discover during beta would not be fixed except some critical bugs. Most likely alot of the bugs would be fixed in the next beta (if they have one) or the retail release of Windows 7.

I set things like UAC and my firewalls at maximum settings so between Vista and 7 I do not really see a difference. For a general user, 7 gives more flexiblity if say you want to lower UAC or something.

 

Personally, I really don't have anything that's mission critical on my laptop.

When I formatted, I backed up everything to an external hard drive, which is housed in a toolless external enclosure. I can put my drive in that enclosure and use one of the many computers in the house to recover any data that I might lose if 7 were to stop booting some day.

I really don't have anything to lose. My email is done through IMAP, so it is synced with gmail.com as well as my iPod touch.

I am very familar with reformatting Windows, so I knew that if something got screwed up, within a couple of hours I would have a computer back regardless and by the next day it would be like nothing happened.

Greg

 

I have a similar setup, SpeedyMods. I had Vista regularly backup my files to an external drive every night or every other night. The only thing is that should my system become unusable then it's a real pain for me to have to reinstall all the software I have. To get back to fully operational status would take about a whole day!

 

Why W7 is not my main OS and just a one night stand .

Vista Start-Menu with Small Icons....


W7 Start menu with small icons






Now to the usual...

The famous SySWoW64 error I get every 2 minutes...



Opera crashing every beeping time I want to upload screens to post on NBR. This happens with IE8 too.



In order to upload these shots, I had to boot up Vista because W7 has random "Cannot display page" messages.

 

It's my main OS on my laptop. It's stable and fast. No complaints here. Although Vista was exactly the same, so there isn't any real difference for me.

 

My point exactly. Add to that Sp2 beta on Vista and x64 on my system is smoking fast. The W7 price tag will not justify the uber small speed increase you have. At least for me.

In its current state W7 is nothing more than Vista with a few modified options.

 

Well, I gave up on Vista more than a year ago. I've been running XP since then, and have XP and Seven on a dual-boot setup right now. Since the beta expires on August 1st, I figured it would probably be convenient if I had another operating system installed so I wouldn't have to install an operating system before I did anything else on August 1st. Some days you just want to read the news rather than install an operating system.

The other factor was that I reinstalled XP in December so it's running real nice anyway. That's also saved me from having to set up everything in Seven right away since XP's entirely set up to my liking - I can just switch to XP for the stuff I don't have set up, or forgot the setup discs for.

My guess is I'll probably run Win7 33-50% of the time. There's some programs that I already have installed in XP, but I can't run off the XP installs in Win7, that I don't have the setup discs for with me, so I have to run those in XP. And I do like XP a lot, so once I boot it up for one of those I'll probably keep using it awhile even after I'm using a program I could run in Win7.

But I like Win7 so far. It hasn't yet choked on any of my three programs that incessantly choked Vista. Vista would've completely, 100%, hard-reboot-necessary frozen 20 minutes ago (probably more) on my computer since I've got RMCPUClock running with C4 disabled on battery. And, though I haven't played them enough to be sure, the two games that never worked right in Vista worked just as in XP in my short test of each one. So I'm cautiously optimistic that I won't be back to 99% XP within a week.

btw, Wishmaker, could you shrink those two big screenshots? They're just a tad wide for us 1280x800 folks.

 

Heya,

I made the jump, but I don't do a lot besides write stories, school work, and do DVD Work.

So, I didn't have a lot ot lose to a reformat as I transfered all my stuff on my server.

Anyways, it's fully loaded, and workin' without a hitch on x64 driver wise. A few software issues, but nothing I can't handle and move around a bit.

So far, very snappy.

Hasta,
Ali

 

What's the price tag of Windows 7?

 

That's the thing though, we aren't sure what the pricetag is.

I've been reading rumors of just $50 to go from Vista to the same edition of 7. If people will spend hundreds of dollars on processors, RAM and graphics cards for what is really a small performance enhancement, why isn't 7 worth it? (For me at least) It is more reliable than Vista, faster than Vista, compatible with 99.9% of my software and 100% of my hardware and I gained an hour of battery life. I can't see a downside.

Greg

Edit: And I was certainly never a Vista hater, I do like Vista and would never go back to XP. When Vista was launched I saw a tradeoff in performance for features, and it was worth it. Now, I'm seeing more features, but I'm getting back what I lost when Vista came out. I have much better performance now, and better battery life than I could ever hope for under Vista or XP.

 

I'm using it as my main OS. So far so good, a lot faster than vista.

 

I have a desktop and 3 laptops.
The desktop is running Vista Home Premium 32 bit.
My work laptop is running Windows XP Business Edition (I don't have a choice)
My 7805u FX is running the version of Vista HP 64 bit that came with it
I am running Windows 7 Ultimate Beta as the main OS on my 6864 FX.

So far it's been extremely stable and faster. Time will tell, but I'm almost 100% certain that I'll be upgrading to Windows 7 when it's available for general release.

I will add that I would not feel comfortable running Windows 7 Beta as the main OS on my desktop. All of my files, programs, etc are on the pc and I wouldn't want to risk anything that critical.

JP

 

Main OS on old Inspiron 9100 and main OS on EEE, kind of (one ssd with XP, other ssd with W7).

 

I'm currently using it as my "main OS", meaning I do most of my daily PC tasks with it. But I am sober enough to know it is a beta OS and that I will eventually go back to my real OS, Windows XP. Of course I'm on a dual boot system and of course I know how to get things "back to normal" when I'm done with W7. Yeah, I rock.

Seriously. Enough 7 bashing. Instead of bashing it, why not use your bad experiences with 7 to help MS improve on their promises? You know, like a real beta tester? Know the risks of using a beta OS and your role as a beta tester of a beta OS!

Geez. MS did a pretty good job at hyping up 7. Perhaps too good.

 

That would be the ideal price for an upgrade. I really doubt it though, MS won't pass up a chance to price their new OS at the usual $200-300 range.

 

I'm hoping for Microsoft to have the upgrade pricing at $50... then it would lock me in to do the upgrade for sure. It doesn't make sense for Microsoft to price it at Vista's upgrade levels since it isn't entirely a brand new kernel.

 

I hope so. I'm not paying anything more than $50, that's for sure. If the price will be higher, then I'll just wait until I need to buy a new computer.

 

Hi

........​

 

Since when is it $200-300 to upgrade in the first place? XP to Vista was over $100, but unless you were buying Ultimate, it was under $200.

XP upgrades will not be sold, only Vista, and we are talking from Vista to the equivalent version of 7.

Greg

 

Plus you can buy the OEM version of these operating systems at like half the price of the retail version (this is for full install, not upgrades).