Testing Windows 7 RC

landbeforetimelover · **on:** June 02, 2009, 04:38:10 PM

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet. I've been using Windows 7 RC as the main OS on my school laptop for several days now and I'm loving it! There are still some bugs. The worst one is that sometimes when I get out of sleep mode there's a weird gray bar below the taskbar and it won't go away for anything. If you move the taskbar and move it back again, there are two taskbars! One of them is faded and doesn't work. This is a terrible bug and I hope they fix it soon. It didn't exist in Windows 7 Beta.....

I'm missing a driver for something and I have no clue what it is. It says "unknown device". Of course I can't use Driver Genius on a Windows 7 machine so I'm at a loss. It seems to work fine even without whatever the heck that thing is working properly. It looks pretty much the same as the Beta, but the screen flashes still exist. For example, after you put in your password it says "welcome" and is supposed to fade away and show the desktop. Instead, the display flickers and the desktop is instantly displayed. I know it's not a graphics driver issue because it was signed as "Windows 7 Compatible" via the Microsoft download website. It also does this right at startup before the login screen is displayed. It's quite annoying.

As for responsiveness, it's adequate. The Beta was better. Battery life is TERRIBLE. I only get about 1.5 hours out of my battery. With Vista my battery would easily last 3.5 hours.

It seems that MS has decided to go with a nature theme for Windows 7, which I like a lot. The Vista login screen is awesome and I love it, but I'm sure this login screen will grow on me in time.

Just like with Vista, you have to disable the service called "Superfetch" and disable drive indexing to get better performance. I must say that programs start up much quicker on 7 then they did on Vista.

One thing that must be noted is that the Windows 7 Basic theme SUCKS. It's sooooooooooo UGLY! Please people, don't get Windows 7 Basic for any reason. Once you install Windows 7, you'll most likely have the Basic theme enabled because the graphics card drivers aren't up to date. To fix this all you have to do is download some updates from MS (which will probably have your graphics driver), restart your computer, re-rate your computer, then restart it again to get the 7 Basic theme off.

It seems to stall a bit when opening windows if I'm playing music. Of course I download whole albums in APE format so they're over 300mb each most of the time. This might be why it's a bit slow...because it's trying to play those huge audio files.

I love the new connection options. Instead of some ugly annoying window coming up with your available connections (wifi), a small little menu pops down from the tools menu (where the clock is) and allows you to select the available networks.

I love the Action Center and the best part of everything....YOU CAN TURN OF UAC WITHOUT IT POPPING UP STUPID WARNINGS THAT THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR COMPUTER'S SECURITY EVERY TIME YOU BOOT!!!!!!!

Overall it's been a great experience and I'm glad that MS isn't going to release the final version for another year. It would be a mistake to release it right now. That's what they did with Vista and it backfired on them.

If you're curious, the specs of my school laptop are as follows:

*AMD Athlon64 x2 1.8ghz Dual-Core Processor
*2gb DDR2 667mhz Ram
*160gb SATA2 Hard Drive (yeah it's small. I know.)
*DVD-RW DL with Lightscribe
*Card Reader, WIFI, etc.

The model is HP Pavillion dv6000 (Action has one of these and apparently hates it). 7 runs smoothly on it and I'm glad I loaded it on there.

raga · **Reply #1 on:** June 02, 2009, 08:30:19 PM

I've never experienced that grey task bar glitch so that may be a problem on your end. I do have a question though, what is that "superfetch" thing you mentioned?

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #2 on:** June 02, 2009, 08:47:37 PM

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what is that "superfetch" thing you mentioned?

It's a service that stores your most recently used programs in the memory so they open faster. The downside to that is if your computer's not a piece of junk, it'll actually just eat up your ram and you'll experience even slower speeds. It's great for computers without dual-core processors and limited ram (1gb or less), but for the newer machines with all the dual core multi-gigabyte goodness, it just slows them down. For example, with superfetch enabled on my laptop, Photoshop opens in 4.4 seconds. Without it enabled, it opens in 4.9 seconds. It's not worth that .5 seconds because once you've opened a lot of programs, you discover that you don't have any ram left and it creates problems.

Now let's explore the flip side to that. If you've got a not-so-new PC let's say that same Photoshop opens up in 39 seconds without superfetch enabled. If superfetch is enabled, it'll open in 19 seconds. It's worth that 20 seconds for a bit of ram on such an old computer. Sure the older computer has less ram to spare than the newer one, but chances are if your computer is that old you won't be multitasking very much. And besides, it's worth sacrificing some ram if your programs open twice as fast.

If your computer has these specs or better, you should disable superfetch:

*Dual Core Processor (regardless of type or speed) or processor over 2.4ghz (P4 and Celeron not included)
*2gb DDR2 or 3gb DDR Ram
*200gb Hard Disk

Lillefot · **Reply #3 on:** June 03, 2009, 06:16:49 AM

Heh. I wasn't able to get myself a copy of the W7 beta. I didn't stand a chance against the massive activity at the download page.

I have turned off superfetch after you suggested it, Austin. (only curious about my processor, which is a: Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 1.83 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cahce)

One of the main effects that I've experienced after shutting down various of things, is a faster startup. Once I've typed in my password, it takes about 5 seconds before I can play, which is waaays better than before. One thing that annoys me is that I have the security center disabled, and it keeps poping up warning messages everytime I boot...

Maybe we could create a topic and list those things, servives, autostarts and whatever, that one could turn off without risk that something bad happens?

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #4 on:** June 03, 2009, 07:37:24 AM

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Maybe we could create a topic and list those things, servives, autostarts and whatever, that one could turn off without risk that something bad happens?

That's a good idea. Since I now use Vista as my main OS, I know TONS of ways to speed it up. It's such a slow piece of garbage until you tweak it a lot. <_< But I'm really sick right now and I'll be doing finals for the next three days so I'll get to work on it either Sunday or Monday (I have Saturday and part of Sunday totally booked with clients).