XP or 7?

Various circumstances require me to reformat my laptop, but I'm torn between which OS to use:

XP: Faster in general, but no AHCI support (someone here got it working, but I can't find that thread with the new, crappy Google search - if someone could link to the thread on how to get AHCI working on an XPS M1330 without a floppy drive, I'd appreciate it).

7: I'd like to try this, but I may not have the time to reformat and reinstall everything when RTM hits in August. Also, it's largely unexplored territory as far as driver compatability issues go.

So what do you guys think? Do the new features in Windows 7 outweigh the hassles? Or should I stick with XP?

 

i was a 100% XP supporter and was scared to upgrade as I like my system to be superfast and responsive.

when i did the upgrade, Win 7 is as fast as XP if not more responsive due to the enhanced features.

go ahead, upgrade to win 7, i promise u you wont regret it

Driver compatibility is no issue at all, any vista driver will work on win 7, infact, most of the drivers like the network lan and wireless and bluetooth and webcam and VGA are already preinstalled, you will just have to update a few specific drivers like fingerprint sensore or so...

 

No.. not all Vista driver work with Windows 7.

 

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/upgrade-advisor.aspx

The list of features that W7 has on XP is endless... it is definitely a worthwhile upgrade if it can be done smoothly. Plus, 7 will have a virtual compatibility layer for XP, so it should run older programs normally.

 

Yep! That's why some drivers softwares now are made to use by Windows 7.
Windows 7 uses higher resources than XP but lower than Vista.
Moreover, windows 7 would auto-update/install your drivers while you're installing Windows 7 itself. You don't need to download drivers by yourself.
Basically, Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista and XP.

 

The best description I've ever heard of Windows 7 is that it is a fixed version of Vista.

 

I just installed Windows 7, let's see what drivers Windows 7 automatically installed:

Chipset driver? Nope
Graphics card driver? Nope
Ethernet driver? Nope
Wi-fi driver? Nope
Audio driver? Nope
Webcam driver? Nope
Card reader driver? Nope

It didn't install a single driver for me. To be honest, I'm quite disappointed, but I'm not really surprised since both XP and Vista SP2 were the same.

 

Which took you a whole 15mins ?

 

Some drivers are brand specifics. You still have to go to the manufacturer's web site to download them.

 

It's time to move on from XP but wait until 7 is done

 

That's the whole point - Microsoft is claiming that unlike Vista, Windows 7 supports even the most obscure of devices out of the box. Clearly they fail to deliver, as usual.

Perhaps my expectations are a bit high, but with everyone claiming that 7 is the best thing since sliced bread, should I really feel otherwise?

 

I wonder what kind of strange system you have.

look at my sig / specs...

video driver, DTECTED with a windows update (nvidia driver that is)
sound driver, DETECTED
NIC , DETECTED
WAN CHIPSET, DETECTED
WEBCAM, DETECTED,
MOTHERBOARD CHIPSET DRIVERS, DETECTED
MOUSE, DETECTED (LOGITECH VX REVOLUTION)
QUICK LAUNCH BUTTONS, NOT DETECTED (THE VISTA DRIVERS WORKED FINE)
BLUETOOTH, DETECTED

guess i got luckeh? Win 7 FTW

 

well, you're by large a minority with drivers not found => yes, you should feel otherwise: you should feel anger at your system.

the claim they do is mostly true. quite different hw configurations, all installed win7 with no problem (so does vista as it's mostly the same/similar drivers anyways).

but don't expect microsoft to deliver drivers for everything. in the end, they would not need to deliver any driver at all that's the hw vendors job.

 

I have a Dell XPS M1330. Not only is it a fairly common notebook, it's also one that's still being sold today. Maybe HP is just more proactive about supplying Microsoft with drivers than Dell is, I dunno.

Anyways, this whole fiasco reminds me of a conversation I had on another technology site back in 2006 about the Vista RC. It went something like this:

Me: My scanner isn't working in Vista
Others: ZOMG VISTA IS THE BEST OS EVAR!!11!1 IF SOMETHING DOESNT WORK THEN UR WEIRD THERE CANT POSSIBLY BE ANYTHING WRONG WITH VISTA

Of course, these were the same people who were bashing Vista a year later.

 

well, i haven't ever bashed vista. but i dropped my scanner and got a new one because it didn't work anymore on vista haha

but i don't blame vista. it was a scanner with win98 drivers, and i got xp drivers from the company that bought the company that bought the company that made the drivers. now even that company doens't make drivers for vista anymore.

i don't blame vista. i don't blame the company. it's just the way it goes.


and yes, actually, i had to install some dell desktops. it hasn't found any driver. but the c:\drivers from the original installation they gave on the desktops was still in existance, and a simple rightclick the device, scan at c:\drivers worked for all the devices.

so, dunno, maybe, yes, hp is more proactive at delivering device drivers to microsoft than dell. but actually, the devices are not from any of them, so it may just be dell buying some less-supported hw.

 

@Peon, It seems the problem is your PC. Not Windows 7. Other people installed Windows 7 with auto-installed drivers. Are you sure your internet is plugged in during the installation of Windows 7?

Personally, I do not use Windows 7 but my friend show me Windows 7 installation infront of my eyes. He said "NO NEED FIND DRIVERS with W7".
I was wondering(He must be joking). After all, the windows installed successfully and do not need a single manual driver download. I was shocked.

 

I was very impressed when Windows 7 managed to find a wifi driver which took me hours of searching for (bought off ebay ).
Also same response for my rather old printer.

 

I made the same with Vista on some old p4. my friend was shocked, too. he told me "i don't have drivers for vista, no cd has vista on it, they're too old". installed, all incl aero started up, perfectly well.

it's always nice to have an os newer as the hw. chances for drivers are quite big then. when installing xp on those p4s, we had around 1hour driver setups and updates and all

 

You are actually comparing Windows Vista to Windwos 7 in terms of speed? LOL u must be kidding

Windows 7 blows Vista out teh w!ndow when it comes to sp33d d00d.

 

Agreed. Because Windows 7 uses less resources to run compared to Windows Vista.
So, plenty of resources is left untouch. Your computer manage to run faster with more untouch resources.

I heard that, Vista uses 4x(almost) more resources compared to XP.
W7 only use 2x or 3x more resources compared to XP.

 

If you would not do such childish "teh" and "w!ndow" and all that, maybe people would believe your statement.

Still, it's true that win7 in a lot of cases performs better than vista. or at least, in all cases, just the same.

For all the rest, please grow up. It doesn't blow anything out of the Window. It has some nice tweaks that help in the boot process, once started up, it's mostly the same.

 

Now that made my day haha

 

thank u for teh support dude. Added to that Win 7 uses less resources than Vista, I have never actually experienced any major performance hit at startup with its superfetech service, I think the superfetch service uses less priority now to load frequently used programs into the RAM for faster access, which leaves u with a feeling that there is nothing really hogging the system down at start up.

I can click on internet explorer as soon as I see the Windows 7 desktop and it runs instantly.

 

That's awesome. Windows Vista would need to wait forever to get in IE or FF during start-up.

 

Yup, I think the whole thing has to do with how the superfetch and the startup files get booted. But even Windows 7 boot time time is much much faster than Vista's in General, you can say it falls between XP and Vista, which is considered to be superfast.

 

I have like 10 scanners that are new from all those free ($0) inkjet all in one printers from NCIX. They're all W7 compatible.

For my netbook, Windows 7 all the drivers except for 2 of my PCI-E card reader. Though I have to upgrade some driver to support additional features that the generic driver from Windows 7 doesn't support. IE. multitouch on the touchpad.

 

The way I see it is that Windows 7 (and Vista) use system resource more efficiently. They may use more system resources than XP does in general, but in the end the overall computing experience is greatly improved.

Anyway, to answer the original post, I recommend installing the RC build of Windows 7. It expires next year in March (if I recall correctly), so you have plenty of time to work with it before needing to buy the retail version. Granted, re-installing all your applications will be a pain but that's a 1 time deal. Another reason is that you are likely going to need to perform a clean install anyway if you go from XP to Windows 7 (I think).

 

Is it really that fascinating that microsoft have managed to intelgrate older drivers as well as new drivers? This could've easily be done in Vista too, it's really a friggin minor thing if you ask me

 

it's a major thing as you have to collect them all, but yep, they've done so in vista, too. the trick is just, the database of driver has grown since the release of vista. but if you install vista right now, you have the identical driver experience to win7 in most cases.

 

Peon, did you actually try using the Upgrade Advisor before jumping into the installation of the OS? It would have informed you which devices had drivers under W7.

 

Yep, and it painted a considerably rosier picture than the reality. When I checked Windows Update, it did have most of the promised drivers, but that wouldn't really have helped since my Ethernet adapter showed up as an unidentified device.

The worst part was my webcam - Creative's software doesn't work with the Microsoft drivers, and the Creative drivers wouldn't install through the exe. I ended up having to manually extract the drivers and install them through the Device Manager, and I have a feeling that the average person would not know how to do that. I mean, how many people are even aware that most installer exe files are essentially just self extracting archives?

 

Then all you need to do is find and install the ethernet driver off your laptop manufacturer's website. After that, Windows should be able to handle the rest for you.

As for Device Manager, right-clicking on an unidentified device and trying to install a driver for it will bring up an option to either search online or browse for the driver manually. It's not too difficult.

 

That's basically what I did - certain members of this site just blew the whole thing out of proportion in order to defend their beloved Windows 7. I think you and DarkSilver are the only ones who actually read what I posted.

Except it wasn't an unidentified device - Microsoft actually installed drivers for it after running Windows Update. Those drivers just didn't work.

The less technically inclined would have been at a loss as to what to do at this point. Most people I know have never heard of the device manager and they think that exe files are some sort of magic that requires hex editing to get into.

 

Currently, which drivers do you *not* have installed, and which are installed but not working?

I would suggest using some drivers off the manufacturer's website; some Vista drivers are supposed to work fine on W7.

 

Everything works now (the webcam was the last issue), I'm just not pleased that I had to do things that I haven't done since the Win98 days to get it working.

 

I am very vocal about my dislikes for Vista and my encouragement of XP, but Windows 7 is the way to go in every instance I have tried, as long as the PC meets the minimum hardware requirements.

And as far as drivers go, in some cases XP drivers wind up working as well as or better than Vista drivers, which makes me very happy with this OS, and assures me of a tremendously more stable experience. Now if only we could go back in time....

 

"Fixed" as in neutered, or as in repaired?

 

I really think it has been repaired, unless I'm missing some information.
Performance has been enhanced by creating an on-demand, dynamic provision of system services. Direct X 10.1 is released with a few refinements for the graphical system. UAC, a huge gripe for many, has been tweaked (some would say for the worse) and made less invasive. The new taskbar seems very functional, though I personally hate it's aesthetics. The OS also takes up less space, from what I've heard.

Overall, however, W7 doesn't bring any innovative or new solutions to the table. For the most part, it consists of fixing complaints issued against Vista. At least Microsoft is fixing them, though not willing to call it Vista Service Pack 3.

 

I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist the double entendre - getting stuck in rush-hour traffic does that to me sometimes. Your judgment about Win 7 being _Vista repaired - what _Vista should have been but wasn't - is almost certainly correct. The aesthetics in _Vista take some getting used to as well (I've been on it for the last four weeks - sounds like a drug when you put it that way ).

 

Peon, I think there must have been some other flakey issue with your original install. I have a Dell M1530 (the same generation as your 1330) and I've installed 4 different W7 builds on this thing. The last three had every driver out of the gate except the webcam, and maybe the card reader. And the card reader always was picked up with the first Windows update.

Now I believe you when you say you had installations issues, but I don't think it should be seen as anything close to representative of what 99% of folks will experience on that M1330 or any other recent vintage machine.

 

Well played, sir, well played.

 

I agree. Seven looks promising, but as of right now everything I've read says gaming performance is still quite a bit worse going from Vista to Seven.

 

Ditto on that. If you already have XP, stick with it until October 22 when 7 will be available for the masses.

 

that's sort of a chicken'n'egg problem i had for years. if you install an os somewhere and don't have the ethernet driver, have fun searching for it (on custom built pc's from friends, that can really be a nightmare ). once you get that, windows update normally finds everything.. as you experienced, too.

well, you have one word in here that explains your real problem: creative. Microsoft is "in war" with creative since quite a while because of their beloved crap drivers they delivered in xp days, and it's one of the reasons why vista doesn't have a hardware audio stack anymore. Google it up, tons of info should pop up about creative and Microsoft. so while this is not a sound card, but a web cam, it's still from that one company that never really got how to make compliant drivers that just work with the rest of the world. special drivers, special apps, and often, special bugs (and even special spy ware and all in some cases )

 

same for.. always. stick with what you have. if you have vista, stick with it. if you have xp, stick with it. just don't pay money for another os, not really needed. except for fun, of course.

 

I can totally relate to that. For this reason I will never again buy any Creative product. They've shafted their customers far too many times. Abandoning support for products prematurely seems to be another virtue of theirs.

On topic; I have three production machines running 7 RC, one is even a six year old dell desktop, most of the components on that one don't even have working Vista drivers (NVidia Ti4200, SB Live etc...) and shockingly 7 not only works but works very well, more stable than XP in my experience.

Granted, my sample is not a definitive indication of anything but I've always had minor issues with XP and Vista, mostly driver and power-management related but I have so far come across none of that with 7 RC.

For me both XP and Vista are over and done with.

 

I fully agree. except for being over and done with vista, which i am not, and for a long time won't be. in my experiences so far, win7 and vista have the same stability. i got win7 to bluescreen, and to kill it's bootfiles till it couldn't repair them by itself. i've got two problems with vista this year. the rest was software related (and the two problems may be driver related, still trying to find out more about it..).

but yes, i'm done with xp. it's performance was fast/slow/fast/slow all the time toggling around, stability the same. byebye, you served well.

win7 <-> vista. both perform the same for me in different use cases => no need to switch to a beta product or spending money on it (and it lacks some features that get used by me or others on vista right now.. so.. i'm in wait'n'see state)

 

Am I the only person that finds the amount of space required for installation is disturbing?

Windows XP SP3 - Under 1 GB
Windows 7 - Over 10 GB

 

well it's not true so you're the only one..

 

What I absolutely hate about installing XP Is hunting down the drivers. On Windows 7, in one of the comps here, all but internal mic, BT, and fingerprint reader was installed .