What's your favorite/least favority W7 feature?

Precisely.

 

What files/processes are you referring to? If a user really needs to take control of a file, then I recommended this: "Take Ownership"

I don't mind the restrictiveness cause there's always a way around it and it's only once in a while that I need to take such measures.

Also, if anyone is really sick of not being a "real" administrator, you can always just enabled the full administrator account that's disabled by default, it has full access to everything, but it's a high security risk.

 

Positives

I actually like Windows 7's control panel, because of the little search bar in the upper-right corner. Just type the part of it you need, and it comes up. Works even if they changed the name from XP-> Vista (e.g. Add or Remove Programs) and you use the XP name for it. I'll take Classic View in XP any day over Categorical or whatever the alternative is, but I don't remember exactly where everything is, and the Search Control Panel in Win7 does a good job of finding everything I need quickly.

The progress bar for taskbar items is nice, too. More useful the wider your taskbar icons are, of course.

The WiFi joiner is also more streamlined, which is nice. Now that I have an Intel card with good drivers, the time to join isn't much different between XP and 7, but reconnecting if I disable it (to save power) is a tad quicker in 7. I'll go with this for favorite feature, even though I use only Ethernet 2 months a year.

Negatives

AeroSnap is an improvement for the base install, but it's nothing compared to what nVIDIA's XP drivers provide in window-snapping abilities. Basically, it allows snapping anywhere, not just to left half/right half/fullscreen. So it works well with more than two windows, or if half the screen doesn't work well. Vista users can get this, too, but only if they have a Quadro - for XP, it works with GeForce or Quadro.

I also miss the middle-click-on-taskbar close functionality provided by Taskix on XP/XP64/Vista/Vista64 when using Windows 7. It provides tab reordering as well. So on the whole, I guess I'd consider the Windows 7 taskbar a net step down versus XP or Vista with addons for me. For a single least favorite feature, I guess I'd go with this, as the new features break the addons that provide me with even better features.

The restrictions on modifying C:\Program Files in Vista/7 are annoying, but IIRC they aren't so bad with UAC disabled. But the better solution for me is to install any game I want to mod to C:\Games or a similar folder, and to still disable UAC. Less secure, I know, but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

I'll admit to never having really tried to learn Libraries. They might be really nice if I did, and I'd thought before the Win7 beta that they could be really useful, but with a fresh install, there wasn't that much to library-ize. And My Documents in XP works well enough so long as I organize it every so often (which I'm sure would still be necessary in 7, too).

I'm still a WMP 10 guy for music (at least on Windows), so there's -1 for Vista/7 there. Not an IE person whatsoever. IE seems to have a couple potential useful features (Accelerators), but not enough to compete with Opera, and it seems to be less stable than IE7 in my experience (although when I used IE7 to access Amazon in a university lab today, it promptly crashed and burned, so +1 to IE8 today). I've still got IE6 installed on XP as no later version has given me consistently better results for what I need IE for - compatibility with non-browser-agnostic websites. That may change, though, as more sites phase out IE6 support. Half the reason I have IE6 is just because I find it amusing that IE6 still is the most used version of IE.

Aero as an interface isn't that bad, but it inevitably reminds me of Vista, which brings up bad memories. So psychologically I find Luna much more comforting.

And not so much a "feature", but Vista/7 have worse software compatibility than XP for me, even with XP mode factored in, so there's a definite incentive to use XP there. Stability-wise, Vista/7 win a Pyyrhic victory in that an nv4_disp.dll crash may CTD and allow you to save other open files before restarting to restore full GPU functioning, but the actual rate of crashes is no lower, and half the time my computer still totally froze/BSOD'ed when nv4_disp.dll crashed in Vista. So it wasn't anything I could count on. 7 also doesn't have proper drivers for my audio, and thus requires either a Vista driver that increases boot times by 3 minutes (probably some low-level incompatibility), or a generic driver that doesn't deliver as good of sound quality as XP (I don't find Vista's sound quality to be as good as XP's either, in practice - though theoretically it should be better, but it's better than 7's). So in stability, hardware compatibility, and software compatibility, XP has a clear edge on either Vista or 7 for me.

So there are a few things I like about 7. But there are many things I find irksome, some minor and which I could look over, but some major (especially compatibility). Hence why I've decided to wait out this Windows release, despite being able to use it for no cost beyond my already paid ACM membership, and stick with trusty 'ol XP.

 

compatibility will never come back. it works for most apps. you happen to be a worst case.

and, nvidia sucks with drivers, this is known. it's not a fault of those oses. then again, i've seen much installations with nvidia that never crash, so i'm unsure why you have so much problems with it.

 

Favorite: Snap Features, New Aero preview features, New Quicklaunch/Taskbar, new screen resolution changing interface

Least Favorite: Removing "Network" From the start menu, the default to hide system tray icons, new "personalization" interface, No more Aero thingy to scroll through the wwindows like in vista

 

I thought ATI sucked when it came to drivers?

 

na, ati started to not suck back with the release of the radeon 9700. and nvidia showed awesome crap with the start of vista, getting even that far to getting sued because they where the reason for the biggest amount of crashes of vista in the first half year.

ati, starting with the 9700, got their drivers in a montly schedule, and each whql certified. it took nvidia years to even get their drivers regularly certified at all.

and don't let us talk about the tons of cheating both did in their drivers for winning benchmarks. but nvidia did worse cheating, and got caught for it several times..

and, nvidias driver extensions to use for programmers are always very raw and not-well-designed to access their hw, making it very tedious to use the gpu beyond the specified defaults.

not to praise ati to be somehow holy or something, but nvidia did a lot wrong. and a lot of it on purpose. developer binding, customer binding, benchmark winning. i still remember how they detected if 3dmark was running and then manually the driver dropped all geometry that wasn't visible during 3dmark, so it wouldn't render it. just too bad, one could move the camera in 3dmark, and see how nothing but the actual default path got rendered... morons

 

Like:
search
superbar
aerosnap
peek

hate:
hmm.. nothing major. Maybe the Action Center

 

Favorite:

1. How easy Windows 7 is to set up out of the box. (By far the easiest OS to set up)
2. The fact that the OS is easily customizable to suite anyone from a novice to a power-user.
3. Rotating background images anyone??!!

Least Favorite:

1. I wish they would add a fancy GUI to make Aero Peek more easily configurable (ex: delay)

Comment:
Windows 7 is the best OS out there for the Majority of people. It offers a range of usability and customization to fit almost anyone's needs. If you are a new user, windows 7 will help protect you (UAC, privileges, free Anti-virus, etc) and make it easy for you to just pick up and go. For advanced users you have options (Disable UAC, unlock the "secret" admin account, mess around with the registry, use a command prompt, etc..) Basically for 90% of the things people will complain about, they can customize it to fit their needs/desires.

What more could you ask for from an OS than customization, stability, compatibility, and security? Cheaper price?

 

Seach in non indexed places is buggy. The interface in explorer is once more click fest making more lost time.

 

hm yeah. i got used to go to the command line, down to c:\ (cd \), and then search the whole partition (dir /s mysearchterm). it's faster for searching system files and such.

 

Thanks, forgot about that hack.

 

I use Attrib, which is slower. It is a habit from back before "dir" had the /s switch.

 

Weird observation and it may be obvious. I noticed this ever since the RC but I didn't see anyone mention it but did you guys notice that the Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons are bigger in 7 than in Vista?! I actually preferred them in Vista more.

Sorry for pointing it out if it was discussed before.

 

No, they are bigger. Presumably to encourage touch usage.

 

favorite: all the new aero options that let you view 2 windows side by side, the taskbar, and overall performance

Least favorite: The control panel layout.

 

I change the size back to Vista's, which is either 18 or 19 depending on how you look at it, mine are set to 19.