The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => Hobbies and Recreation => Computer and Electronics => Topic started by: landbeforetimelover on January 10, 2009, 12:59:37 PM
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Whoo hoo! I’m typing this on my new Windows 7 test machine! I’m here to tell y’all that I’ve tested out Windows 7 to some extent. Now before I start giving my opinion, let me give you some facts first. First off, the minimum system requirements of Windows 7 (according to Microsoft) are as follows:
*1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
*1GB of main memory
*16GB of available disk space
*Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface)
The specs of my test machine are as follows:
*3.2ghz HT P4 Processor (Now I know the clock speed seems a little high, but remember this is a P4 people!)
*1gb DDR2 533mhz ram
*250gb ATA Hard Drive
*256mb Graphics Memory
According to Windows 7, I have a rating of 3.3. That’s huge compared to what I would have gotten if I were running Vista. Right now, one of my Vista laptops has a rating of only 3.1 and it has the following specs:
*1.86ghz Pentium Dual Core Processor
*3gb DDR2 667mhz ram
*200gb SATA Hard Drive
*368mb Graphics Memory
My laptop blows this test machine out of the water, but it has a much lower rating. Okay. Now that you’ve got all the facts, let me give you my personal views and opinions.
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First off, let me just say that Windows 7 Blew me away. I’m not too much into eye candy, but even I couldn’t resist the temptation to just think “Oh my f***ing god, I love it!” right off the bat. The first thing you’ll notice is that they’ve gotten over the 256 color limit for a boot screen (s*** that was a surprise, let me tell ya). Trying to push my first impressions aside, I decided to actually try it out. Once I got to the desktop, I was a little shocked. The taskbar is this sort of transparent square and I didn’t like the color one bit, so I thought “Okay. I guess I’ll have to see what other hideous colors they allow you to choose”.
Right clicking on the desktop to get to the “personalize” menu like in Vista, the first thing I notice is this option that says “Gadgets”. Resisting the temptation to click on it, I continue on and click the personalize option. That’s when it really threw me for a curve ball. S*** I don’t even know if I can describe how awesome the theme selection menu is. You can choose between like 5 different glass themes with different backgrounds that relatively match. Yeah, that was cool but then I noticed something that said something about taskbar and window color. I click that and I’m just delighted.
Not only can you choose any color under the sun for your taskbar, you can choose the amount of opacity, shade, and features of it as well! I’m just blown away by it all….but then I look up at the taskbar and actually realize something. WTF??? Instead of long rectangle boxes to show what windows are open, you have these cool-looking square thingy’s. I right click on one and there’s a “Pin to Taskbar” option which will make it a permanent part of the taskbar. Holy s*** I love it! Clicking on the start menu, you can see that not a whole lot has changed aside from the ability to click the internet explorer icon on the side and see your most recent web sites you’ve visited.
Now on to the sidebar. Apparently, it wasn’t that popular of a thing ëcuz MS has taken it out. All the gadgets still exist though. You can get to them by right clicking the desktop and going to “gadgets”. Instead of being restricted to a sidebar, you can now move them around anywhere and they’ll stay. Now all this visual stuff is just blowing me away and I love it….but can it do anything? Is it a usable operating system?
F*** you’d better believe it! It didn’t seem to like IE at all. It was totally lagging and acting like crap. Once I installed firefox though, it was a whole different story. After firefox I installed Photoshop CS3 Extended. I must say that it starts up and installs a crapload faster than both Vista AND XP.
There were a few glitches with the visual stuff. It froze a bit when trying to open IE (I really had problems with IE for some reason. Maybe it got messed up during installation or something.). I must say that my test machine was having a hard time with some of the closing windows visual style effects.
Some things have to be considered though. First off, this is a BETA version of Windows 7. Second, it did just install. Drive indexing, initial updates, and setup processes do take some time…Even days in some cases. I’ll know a lot more over the course of several weeks.
Bottom line: It’s 5-6 times faster than Vista and about 1.5 times faster than XP. The eye candy makes me drool and it doesn’t seem to lag the machine too much. The one thing that’s bad about both Vista and Windows 7 is the huge graphics requirements. XP would run on even 32mb of graphics memory, but realistically I wouldn’t run Windows 7 or Windows Vista on any less than 256mb of graphics memory. That’s the only bad part.
Obviously MS put a lot of work into Windows 7’s themes because there’s not even an option to go back to Windows Vista, XP, or Windows Basic themes. I suppose MS thinks it’s best not to encourage a step backward and sense their theme takes up so little anyways and themes like windows basic would look like total crap with all the other eye candy, there really is no point for having the older themes as an option.
Overall setup was extremely fast. It took exactly 28 minutes from popping the disk in to get a USABLE desktop (meaning you can click on the start button, go to the internet…).
Things I dislike include: Not having the option of a sidebar, the horrific looking display options in the control panel, glitchiness (I know it’ll be fixed in time. Hell, Windows 7 isn’t scheduled for release until mid 2010), The logon screen look (I prefer the vista logon screen look. The windows 7 screen look looks….incomplete. Maybe they’ll add onto it in time.)
All in all, so long as MS doesn’t add a whole bunch of crap that slows it down, this will be the Operating System we’ve all been waiting for. This is what I call an improvement from Windows XP. I might finally be able to put that 8-year-old Operating System to rest. Through the years I’ve totally customized XP in an attempt to do Microsoft’s job, but I’m sick of it! I sure hope this will be my main operating system in the future.
EDIT: SNAPSHOTS:
First off, here's a picture of the desktop:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...m/desktop-2.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/desktop-2.jpg)
There's finally a place for UAC settings!
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...uacsettings.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/uacsettings.jpg)
Here's the theme selection menu:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...eselections.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/themeselections.jpg)
This is what the start menu looks like:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...m/startmenu.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/startmenu.jpg)
Here's the window preview capability I was talking about:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...bum/preview.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/preview.jpg)
They've FINALLY came out with a new version of paint:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...album/paint.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/paint.jpg)
Media Center now has a windowed option (thank god):
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...mediacenter.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/mediacenter.jpg)
The display settings control center is pretty nice:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...bum/display.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/display.jpg)
I don't like the design of the new control panel very much:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...ontrolpanel.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/controlpanel.jpg)
They have a new version of calculator:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t.../calculator.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/calculator.jpg)
This is action center. I like it a lot:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...ctioncenter.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/actioncenter.jpg)
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Hey, can you give us some screenshots of Windows 7? It sounds nice, but personally, I'd like to see it for myself. And since I'm running a Mac, I really can't.
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Hey, can you give us some screenshots of Windows 7?
Sure but I'm about to leave for the day so I probably won't be able to show any screenshots until either tonight or early morning.
It's really cool. I just don't have time to show photos right now.
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Yea I'd like to see some screenshots too.
Personally I like the fact that the sidebar is gone, was pretty annoying in my eyes. I'd love to try it on one of my computers some day, but I'll wait until the full release.
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I wouldn't mind a photo show. Appears that the computer I would have used for testing can't meet minimum requirements (its pretty old) so I won't be testing this beta.
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I'm testing it right now, despite the VRAM in my laptop only being 128 MB. :p Seems to be installing okay so far. :P: :) There's several things I'll be testing, for a couple people, and giving them my feedback. :p
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From what I've read about it on various web sites it does seem interesting. I would test the beta but with my slow dsl it would take days to download so best not do do that. It's good that 2 folks here are testing it so they can give us regular reports. :)
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I'm gonna make a video of how great this OS is. I don't trust running a screen capture program on a beta OS though so I'm just going to use my video camera. It's 10mp. It should do the trick.
And I'll get the screenshots too, but I think what everyone will really want to see is the video. :p
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IT'll be interesting to see pictures, and moving video too.
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Sorry people but I probably won't be able to get to the video or the screenshots today. An emergency situation occurred with my Aunt's business in the IT department that I have to resolve. Being the department head of the IT department in a major business is heavy duty work. :neutral *Curses* Network problems. :bang
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Dont worry, we can wait :)
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Sure, plenty of time, good luck with handling that problem.
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I just had to come here first thing after hearing about the beta. I knew you'd have a short review up, Austin (you're Austin, right? <___<). You're so handy-dandy :D
Sounds sweet. I want to test it myself, but I'm almost out of hard drive space. I'll have to wait a while to get another one. I look forward to your video demo.
So glad I decided to skip Vista :3
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I just had to come here first thing after hearing about the beta. I knew you'd have a short review up, Austin (you're Austin, right? <___<). You're so handy-dandy :D
Sounds sweet. I want to test it myself, but I'm almost out of hard drive space. I'll have to wait a while to get another one. I look forward to your video demo.
So glad I decided to skip Vista :3
Yup, it's Austin. You were smart to skip Vista. Anyways, I did shoot a video, but it's pretty awful. The lighting in the room sucked and I couldn't stop shaking the camera. I'm gonna have to re-shoot it when I get home from school today. BTW, I'm typing this on my Windows 7 testing machine. :D
But yeah, I'm trying to do everything on my P4 with Windows 7 and I must say I'm impressed. I don't have any trouble doing anything. I can play music, watch videos, edit images in photoshop, surf the net....all with blazing speeds. It does these things even faster than it did when it had XP on it.
To be perfectly honest this doesn't seem like a Beta to me at all. I think MS is just trying to get people to fall in love with them again because so many people went to mac or linux because vista sucked so bad. I think 7 is done right now except for maybe a few glitches with the glass themes that I've been noticing. All in all though, it performs a billion times better and more stable than Vista does at the moment.
EDIT: Here's the current usage of my space on my test machine. Windows is definitely slower now, but it's still fast and efficient. It'd be better if I had 2gb of ram though:
(http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/testmachineusage.jpg)
The thing sucks so bad it doesn't even have a DVD burner and has a floppy disk. :lol It originally came with only 512mb of ram (though it can handle 8gb).
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Floppies still exist where I work. ;)
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I've now got the snapshots. Let's do this!
First off, here's a picture of the desktop:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...m/desktop-2.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/desktop-2.jpg)
There's finally a place for UAC settings!
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...uacsettings.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/uacsettings.jpg)
Here's the theme selection menu:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...eselections.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/themeselections.jpg)
This is what the start menu looks like:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...m/startmenu.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/startmenu.jpg)
Here's the window preview capability I was talking about:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...bum/preview.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/preview.jpg)
They've FINALLY came out with a new version of paint:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...album/paint.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/paint.jpg)
Media Center now has a windowed option (thank god):
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...mediacenter.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/mediacenter.jpg)
The display settings control center is pretty nice:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...bum/display.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/display.jpg)
I don't like the design of the new control panel very much:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...ontrolpanel.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/controlpanel.jpg)
They have a new version of calculator:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t.../calculator.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/calculator.jpg)
This is action center. I like it a lot:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/t...ctioncenter.jpg (http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa146/tlordame/second%20album/actioncenter.jpg)
Well, that pretty much sums it up and I must say I love it! There's not really a way to accurately describe this OS to you, so the only way you'll be able to truly experience it is to download it yourself. Better hurry! The deadline is January 24th or when 2.5 million people download it. ;)
You should also know that the way I personalized it, it really doesn't do Windows 7 justice. It looks a lot cooler if you use one of the default themes, but I'm actually using this computer now so I'm not going to change it back to some basic Windows 7 theme. :p
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Thanks for the pictures and info.
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Holy fartsicle, new Paint?! O_O
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Looks pretty cool...a bit like a Mac with the glassy icons at the bottom.
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As someone that HATES Vista. I'm... impressed. I'm running in on a VM at work and only have a gig of RAM devoted to it. It's not running that poorly. Most of the points already got hit on here I see that I was impressed with.
It's not a step-up from XP. But in time it could be. It's a VAST improvement to Vista. The fact I could RUN it decently with 1gig of ram attests to that.
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This is going on my Vista Laptop. NO QUESTIONS ASKED!!
Wish me luck. :D
EDIT: Ugh! I'm trying to get the download but the site keeps freezing on me. I'll have to get it tomorrow.
See ya later!
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I'm too lazy to make a new topic, and it involves my quest to clear up space on my hard drive to install Windows 7, so I'll just ask here.
I just deleted 3 files, about 6 GBs total, after I backed them up on DVD+Rs. This includes the W7 installer. 6 GBs of deleted files got me back a wussy little 2.41 GBs of space. Question: What the ****?
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Remove old Windows System Restore backups...they take up a lot of space if you haven't cleared them in a while.
Start - Accessories - Disk Cleanup - Advanced
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This is going on my Vista Laptop. NO QUESTIONS ASKED!!
Wish me luck.
I wouldn't do that if I were you. #1 it's still in Beta and #2 you'll have to remove it AND all your data from your laptop in a few months when it expires. Just wait until the full version comes out. I'll be making a lite version of it myself. ;)
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Out of curiosity, like Ultimate, does it have animated BGs?
and like XP and earlier, is it easier to get to defrag?
Paint: when you rotate a selection does it still delete the outer pixels sometimes? Does it crash when you save from time to time?
Calc: odds are it doesn't have a graphing function still XD but... can you set it to scientific so we can see it?
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odds are it doesn't have a graphing function still XD but... can you set it to scientific so we can see it?
It's no different from the old calculator except it looks different and it remembers your history. Not that big of a leap, but it looks a heck of a lot better than the old one did.
Out of curiosity, like Ultimate, does it have animated BGs?
So far like with Vista, Microsoft plans to release that feature only in Windows 7 Ultimate edition.
and like XP and earlier, is it easier to get to defrag?
Nope. You have to right click on "computer" and then go to the "Maintenance" options and then click on "defrag" to get to the disk defragmenter program.
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I have to, on mine... for some reason, use Command Prompt to do it...
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I have to, on mine... for some reason, use Command Prompt to do it...
That's ridiculous. To defrag in Vista (any version) simply follow these steps:
1. Go into "Computer"
2. Right click on the "C" drive
3. Click on "Properties"
4. Go to the "Tools" tab
5. Click "Defragment Now"
6. Click "Defragment Now" on the window that comes up
It's important to note that Vista automatically defragments your drives by default. You should never have to manually defragment your drive. :p
There are exceptions to this of course. If you've got an illegal copy of Vista, some hackers disable this feature of Vista because it eats resources like crazy.
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So I'm planning to get another hard drive, hopefully within a week. After I transfer my stuff to the new one, as I plan, would it be safe to use the old one to test Windows 7? Same PC, but different hard drive?
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In my vista I can get to disk defragment via menus as well. Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, then click on Disk Defragmenter.
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So I'm planning to get another hard drive, hopefully within a week. After I transfer my stuff to the new one, as I plan, would it be safe to use the old one to test Windows 7? Same PC, but different hard drive?
Personally I'd put them on the same hard drive. Just dual boot with Vista (or whatever operating system you currently have) and Windows 7. Then later after Windows 7 expires you can format the partition you made for it and convert the drive back to a single partition via a form of partitioning software.
NOTE: The oldest Operating System MUST be installed first!
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When I get a laptop I'm gonna make sure it's XP.
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When I get a laptop I'm gonna make sure it's XP.
Good luck with that. You'll be lucky to get one that's 2007. At best you'll be looking at a dual core Athlon 64 with a max memory expansion of 3gb and a 160gb hard drive. Just wait until Windows 7 comes out and buy a brand new laptop then.
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For those of you who can't stand the slowness of Microsoft's server and would like to download a copy of Windows 7 Beta, you may now download it from my website.
http://66.41.14.94:81/Public%20Application...20ONLY!.iso (http://66.41.14.94:81/Public%20Applications/Windows%207%20Ultimate%20Beta%20-%2030%20Day%20Trial%20ONLY!.iso)
I am only guaranteeing (and yes that is how you spell that word) this version for a 30 day trial. If you choose to activate it illegally that's your business, but please don't ask me for a way to activate it other than the method I've described below:
Go to the Microsoft website and get a product key, then input it into Windows either after or during installation. There is a limit of 2.5 million keys so when they're gone they're gone! Don't ask me for a key or a way to activate it! You can use the thing for a full month even without a key before you're forced to activate.
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Automatic disk defrags probably aren't that bad of an idea since many people don't do them often enough.
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You know what, it's been IMPOSSIBLE for me to get anyways. Site keeps freezing regardless of what browser I use and so it's just not worth it. Even though I'll be waiting over a year for the FULL version, I'm sure it'll be worth it. :)
Now, I have only ONE question...
How well do the multiple Security Programs work? (Give me the works here.)
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How well do the multiple Security Programs work? (Give me the works here.)
Like with any version of Windows, having more than 1 antivirus installed at the same time is not a good idea. I've extensively tested AVG and Spybot and they both run beautifully on the Beta.
You know what, it's been IMPOSSIBLE for me to get anyways. Site keeps freezing regardless of what browser I use and so it's just not worth it.
Read my above post. It's on my server now. :p
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Just curious, how large is the Beta and what date does it expire on?
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So I'm planning to get another hard drive, hopefully within a week. After I transfer my stuff to the new one, as I plan, would it be safe to use the old one to test Windows 7? Same PC, but different hard drive?
Personally I'd put them on the same hard drive. Just dual boot with Vista (or whatever operating system you currently have) and Windows 7. Then later after Windows 7 expires you can format the partition you made for it and convert the drive back to a single partition via a form of partitioning software.
NOTE: The oldest Operating System MUST be installed first!
Mmm, yes, but what if something goes wrong? Wouldn't keeping it on a separate drive be at least a little bit safer?
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Just curious, how large is the Beta and what date does it expire on?
When it's fully installed, it takes up around 8gb. I don't know for certain what day it expires on, but it's sometime in August so it's pretty far off.
Mmm, yes, but what if something goes wrong? Wouldn't keeping it on a separate drive be at least a little bit safer?
Naw. The principle is the same whether you put it on a separate drive or not. I've personally never had a problem with dual booting and I've done it countless times. I can give you a free utility to convert your hard drive to a single parition if you're comfortable with a command-line interface. If not, you'll have to go with something like Norton drive partitioner or something.
EDIT: But MS does say that they recommend putting Windows 7 on a separate computer and don't recommend a dual boot. They have no warranty or support for their Beta version of Windows 7.
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MS does say that they recommend putting Windows 7 on a separate computer and don't recommend a dual boot. They have no warranty or support for their Beta version of Windows 7.
Indeed. So would a separate hard drive be enough of "another computer", or would the other parts still be at risk?
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Indeed. So would a separate hard drive be enough of "another computer", or would the other parts still be at risk?
There's always some risk when using Beta software, but MS is mainly just covering their butts so they don't get sued. Most likely nothing bad will happen. I'd recommend using a different computer than your main one for the test, but if you don't have another one available, I don't see any difference in risk between dual booting with a single hard drive or with two different hard drives.
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another hard drive for the install of Windows 7 would be fine. since it would be on a different HDD than your main OS, you should be fine as far as files and stuff.
hardware is rarely susceptible to software issues. normally hardware doesnt care one way or the other, it just asks that you have the right drivers to control it :).
im sorting out a separate computer to install 7 on right now. ive heard its awesome. only time will tell xD
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It does seem good from what I've heard. Hopefully it'll remain good through the beta period and into the release.
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Hmm. Well what about the eventual uninstall? Didn't you say something about removing all data along with the operating system once the trial period expires? Or is that for a computer using it exclusively, rather than a dual-bootable one?
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Hmm. Well what about the eventual uninstall? Didn't you say something about removing all data along with the operating system once the trial period expires? Or is that for a computer using it exclusively, rather than a dual-bootable one?
Partitioning your hard drive is like splitting it into two different hard drives. Once the trial has ended, format the one partition and then join it with the other one. If you don't know about this, perhaps it's best if you just install it on another computer or on the second hard drive. If you don't know how to create a new partition, format it, and eventually join it with the rest of the hard drive, then don't even try it. It's not something that I'd recommend just looking up how to do online then doing it.
I thought you knew more about computers than you evidently do. If you know how to install a second slave hard drive then perhaps it's best that you do that. You obviously aren't experienced in the area of partitioning a hard drive so I wouldn't recommend you do it. Most people learn about partitioning their hard drives through screwing it up a few times on a spare computer. Since you'll be using your main one and you don't know as much about partitioning as I thought you did, I think you should just use the slave hard drive. Better safe than sorry right?
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either way really. the beta will apparently become inactive around august, so then you would need to either reformat your HDD on a separate PC, or just delete the Windows 7 OS off a partitioned HDD or a system with 2 HDDs set up for dual boot
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I thought you knew more about computers than you evidently do.
You have poor judgement <_______<
I have brothers, they know some stuff. They'd be helping me on this. I don't particularly trust them to create a partition, but installing a secondary hard drive shouldn't be a problem.
Better safe than sorry right?
That would be the reason for all these questions, yes.
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Just install the second hard drive if you're not up to tackling the partition and boot record problems that will arise when it expires.
If you want to do it the easy way (well easy in my opinion anyways 'cuz ya don't have to take the case off), then deal with the partitioning software.
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I'm running out of hard drive space anyway, so a new drive is not optional. And as long as I have a secondary drive, I might as well put it to use.
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Lol ok..
Mom told me that daniel ( :lol) said that windows 7 sucks... From what I've seen I'm not going to agree with him :p He didnt have any fair arguments either so.
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You know what? Come to think of it, all this time that I've had my new hard drive, I still have the old one in my computer. It's just been disconnected since I got the new one, that's all. Maybe I should test it on that one. After all, I don't need to worry about losing stuff on the old one. It's already on the new one anyways.
Okay, maybe I will go to the server and download a copy after all.
EDIT: WTF? 1 day and 20 hours it'll take to download!? Is that right?
EDIT 2: Nevermind! Getting faster now. :)
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EDIT: WTF? 1 day and 20 hours it'll take to download!? Is that right?
EDIT 2: Nevermind! Getting faster now.
Yeah sorry about that. My server lags sometimes when you first start downloading from it. Either that or someone else was downloading it at the same time you were. :p
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WTF? 1 day and 20 hours it'll take to download!? Is that right?
Ah, so it wasn't just my internet :D
I had trouble downloading it too. It started downloading it at 33 KB/s. I thought something was wrong, so I restarted the download. It jumped to 200 KB/s. For about 20 minutes. Then back down to about 30. I sighed, and just let it go from there. 10 minutes later, it jumped to 1.5 MB/s, and the download finished about 20-30 minutes later.
Just let it keep going, it'll probably pick up at some point.
EDIT: Wait, are you talking about downloading from Microsoft.com, or from Austin's website?
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He was talking about austin's website.
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Well, I've been experiencing some new issues. 1gb of ram really isn't enough to run it decently when you've got other programs such as Photoshop and such. Though 1gb isn't enough with XP either if you run the programs I do. :p
I've been getting out of memory messages when working with photoshop and firefox. The memory errors don't occur unless I've got a couple of external hard drives, my cell phone, and a few other devices plugged in though so it might just be a glitch with Windows 7 itself.
And I can't play a video in VLC from an external device such as a flash drive or external hard drive. It gives me an out of memory error and crashes. I've added 2gb to the computer to boost it up to 3gb and the error still occurs, so I think it's a glitch with Windows 7. I've sent a lengthy and detailed report to Microsoft about the issue.
EDIT: And I've taken the extra 2gb of ram out so now I'm back to 1gb. I want to test the thing with the minimum ram requirement since ram is such a big issue for me.
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Okay, so I've got another hard drive. For moving my data from the old one to the new one, my brother recommends using a drive cloning program.
1. Is this indeed the way to go?
2a. If yes, any recommendations in the way of which program to use?
2b. If no, what should I do?
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1. Is this indeed the way to go?
2a. If yes, any recommendations in the way of which program to use?
2b. If no, what should I do?
First off, I would NEVER recommend using a drive cloning program unless absolutely necessary. You should set up the new HD, format it, and put XP on it. Then you can put in the old drive as a slave and transfer any data you want to the new drive. If you don't own an external hard drive, this is the point in your life when you wish you had one most. External hard drives are essential when it comes to data transfer and data backup.
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Okay. One more question, just for reassurance: my copy of XP is a reinstall CD that came with my computer (Dell Dimension E521). This won't cause me any trouble, will it?
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how is the beta testing of the windows 7 guys :confused ?
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my copy of XP is a reinstall CD that came with my computer (Dell Dimension E521). This won't cause me any trouble, will it?
So long as you're installing the OS onto the computer it was designed for, there should be no problems. You'll most likely be asked for a product key during install. It's on the side of your computer on a sticker.
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i know the windows 7 is Vista :confused i confused
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i know the windows 7 is Vista dino_confused.gif i confused
Windows 7 is the next Operating System to be released by Microsoft. They recently released a public Beta version of the OS. That is what's being discussed here.
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Alright, this will hopefully be the last question I feel the need to ask you, Austin: Are there any options during the Windows 7 and XP install processes which you believe I should alter from the default selection?
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Austin: Are there any options during the Windows 7 and XP install processes which you believe I should alter from the default selection?
Only the time zone (if applicable). If you're using dialup, you might have to adjust some settings to comply with your long-distance standards. I don't know anything about that though since I only had dialup for a week or so before I switched to high-speed and I've never put XP on a computer that was destined for dialup. I'm sure you can change the dialup settings once it's installed, but I'm not sure how to do it. As I said, I know nothing about dialup aside from the fact that it's slow. :p
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Hmm. Good thing I have broadband :D
Thanks for all your help, seriously. You've become my go-to tech guy. (b?_?)b
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Well, I'm using Windows 7, and I've got (really) early impressions.
The glass theme stuff is pretty neat.
Runs nice and fast, although I'm not sure if there's any difference between this and XP.
In WMP, which I use as my default player (unless it's a filetype it can't play, in which case I switch to VLC) I opened a MIDI music file. Strange enough, the drum beat seemed to be missing. Muted. The rest played as normal, but there's a missing part of the track! Strange.
Firefox doesn't seem to like automatic downloads. I've had to click "try again" when dowloading VLC and AVG.
Haven't tried gaming yet. I'll install Steam and/or Oblivion in a bit.
Other than that, I'm still trying to get used to the interface. It'll probably be a few days before that happens. That's why this is "(really) early impressions".
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Okay, I fixed the WMP problem by changing the playback speed momentarily.
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Wait what.
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Do yourself a favor and don't use WMP. It's a bloated hunk of garbage. Use VLC or just about ANY other type of media player. WMP requires that you install all these codecs and it's just a resource hog (Vista and WMP just go together). They haven't changed this with the newest version. If I play a movie in WMP on my laptop, the battery will last about an hour (I'm not even joking). If I play the same movie using VLC, the battery will last for 2.5 hours. Why? 'Cuz WMP uses so many resources and thrashes your HD more. It's just a piece of junk. I stopped using it back in version 8. I still check it every time there's a new version to see if MS pulled their head out, but it hasn't changed. They got the message with Vista. Maybe they'll get the message with this program as well.
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And how about they drop Internet Explorer already and give us what we REALLY want? Firefox all the way, baby! Although, I doubt that's ever going to happen. :P:
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I've only ever found WMP to be a bother with my old system, when trying to play a DVD in fullscreen, which would cause the video to slowly but surely lag behind the audio (possibly because I was using the monitor's max resolution of 2048x1536, rather than the native resolution; I'm not sure if that even works like that). But even that was easily rectified by exiting fullscreen and resizing the video to fit the maximized player.
I also highly prefer the interface (especially 10 and 11) to VLC and WinAMP (the latter of which I HAVE found to be a bother). The one that comes with 7 is a little more confusing to navigate, but I'm quickly becoming accustomed to it. I'm also happy that it can now play MP4 files.
Besides. Someone's gotta test this shit, and you obviously ain't gonna do it :)
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I've tested WMP in Windows 7. It crashed. It couldn't play a movie on my test machine, that only has 1gb of ram. Maybe if I had 3gb or more it could actually play it. :rolleyes:
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Indeed, I forgot to list my specs :O
2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual-Core Processor
3 GBs DDR2 SDRAM @ 533 MHz
160 GBs SATA 2.0 Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
NVidia Geforce 8800GT 512MB Graphics Card
No overclocking on anything.
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i really know win 7 is vista
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Indeed, I forgot to list my specs :o
2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual-Core Processor
3 GBs DDR2 SDRAM @ 533 MHz
160 GBs SATA 2.0 Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
NVidia Geforce 8800GT 512MB Graphics Card
No overclocking on anything.
Hmmmm. A decent system. I could run everything I need to on that if I just added a couple of 500gb hard drives. :smile Over the years I've realized that I don't need the biggest and the best of everything. I came to my senses and sold all my best stuff before it became valueless junk. My main system has the following specs:
*2.2ghz AMD Athlon X2 4400+ Dual-Core Processor
*3gb DDR2 800mhz ram with heat-spreaders (I could put in 8gb if I wanted)
*4 HD's: 1 500gb, 1 500gb, 1 500gb, 1 200gb
*Windows XP Pro Lite SP3
*Custom Gaming Case
*368mb Integrated Graphics
*650 watt PSU
*2 Dual-Layer DVD Burners
*19 USB ports (2 cards with 4 ports each on back, 8 integrated on back, 1 on front in the card reader bay, and 2 in front panel)
*6 Firewire ports (2 integrated in back, 2 on a card in back, 2 in front)
*2 ESATA ports (2 on card in back)
*4 Custom color fans (1 on transparent glass of case, 2 in back of computer blowing air out, 1 on bottom of PSU. All blue.)
This is currently my best system. I bought a kickass computer from HP.com, but I ended up returning it. It just wasn't worth it to me to have a 3.19ghz core2quad processor and 8gb of ram. I could never use it. :p Now most of my systems are comparable to this one with at least 2gb of ram. I really don't need any more than I have. I get enough experience with newer systems when clients bring them in because of the manufacturers shitty support. :p
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Well, I've done a test with Oblivion, at the same settings as I use on XP.
With the copy I run on XP, I always have one, specific, enduring problem: whenever I engage more than 2 enemies in combat, I would experience a drop in framerate. From about 60 (staring at inanimate objects) to 40 (staring at 1 non-hostile NPC) to 30 (staring at multiple non-hostile NPCs) to 20 (engaging 1 or 2 enemies) to 12 (engaging 2-4 enemies) to 8 (engaging 5 or more enemies).
I just got ambushed by 3 zombies and 3 wraiths in a catacombs. Then I went to the Imperial City Prison area and assaulted a guard. I was then confronted by 7 guards. In neither of these instances did the framerate drop below 25 during the fighting.
I do have a single mod installed on the XP version that I don't have here, a texture mod. However, I don't think it's a factor, because the framerate is the same in both versions UNTIL I engage an enemy or enemies. At that point, and that point only, the XP version slows down more than the W7 version. Regardless, I'll try to get the mod installed on this one tomorrow, and see what happens.
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Sorry but my experience with graphics is extremely limited. I don't play games. I used to know a lot about graphics, but that was back in the day when I was happy to have upgraded my graphics memory to 16mb. :p Since then it hasn't been of much concern to me so I've pretty much dropped it out of my studies.
When something doesn't work right with my graphics card, I try to update the driver. If that doesn't work, I replace it. :p I'm pretty practical when it comes to things like this.