The Windows 7 woes have already begun for me. I did an in-place upgrade this morning from Vista 64-bit Home Premium to the equivalent Windows 7. Everything was going swimmingly until I tried to copy some files over from my main internal C drive to my 1TB backup external. The transfer dialogue got about 1/10th full and then froze. I tried to cancel, and moments later I was looking at my first BSoD since Windows 2000.

I've tried multiple times again and again and it still won't let me copy it over. Crashes every time. I was on the phone with support for 2 hours and nothing got resolved. Apparently it's a "new issue."

My advice: wait it out. I certainly wish I had.

I had to switch to using Macs for work in February, so it's all I've used in the last eight months. In eight months of forty-hour weeks, I've had one crash. One. Now I've been a PC guy my entire life, and I fully admit that most of the great software/mods/games/everything out there is for PCs, but man... one crash. As far as OS issues go, I'm not sure I'll ever look at Windows the same way.

sethg Wrote:I did an in-place upgrade this morning

This could be a part of your problem. There was a specific computer/OS configuration that would upgrade in 20 hours.

My advice, and what I've done for years: don't upgrade! Back up everything before, and do a clean install if you can. And if you can't, sorry...

i'm sticking with TinyXP

I think XP was the best windows is ever going to get (not that it was that great). Vista sucked, and though windows 7 is (slightly) better, it still suffers from the same problems since it's based on vista.

I think I'll stick with Ubuntu =)

2000 was good. Sure some aspects about it were kinda basic or undeveloped but it wasn't memory hungry and never gave me shit. XP sucked, Vista sucks and 7 looks like it might be ok.

bombpersons Wrote:I think I'll stick with Ubuntu =)

I'll drink to that. If only my music production software ran under linux... I'd never touch windows again.

mattimus Wrote:I had to switch to using Macs for work in February, so it's all I've used in the last eight months. In eight months of forty-hour weeks, I've had one crash. One. Now I've been a PC guy my entire life, and I fully admit that most of the great software/mods/games/everything out there is for PCs, but man... one crash. As far as OS issues go, I'm not sure I'll ever look at Windows the same way.

My PC has only crashed two or three times in the last year, and I'm running Vista...

Ya know, I hated Vista like crazy for the stupid locked down features and annoying UAC, but I never had the awful constant crashing that a lot of people described. That's why I'm so shocked with Win7. This version, which is supposed to be greatly superior, gave me the first BSoD I've seen in years.

[ファブリス]

XP is the first OS I bought for like 150 € back then and I was not disappointed. My box says "Version 2002" which sounds about right, wow.. I didn't realize I used it for so long. In all those years I could count on my hands the number of times it crashed.

I'll upgrade to 7 soon after I switch the "mobo" to DDR3 and 64 bits. Other than using 4GB+ of memory I wouldn't switch to Windows 7 unless upgrading or buying a new computer. I'll throw another spiffy graphics card on top of it and I'll be good for another 2-3 years

But yeah, always do a clean install. ALWAYS. That's why I would recommend always use another partition and your own folders to save your own-made documents: eg: D:/Fabrice/Documents/ D:/Fabrice/MUsic/ etc. THen when you upgrade you know that in C:/ you should look for some configuration files from your installed software to backup, and otherwise you can wipe it out, format it, reinstall, reinstall your apps, but all your media and personal documents are safe in anoter partition. ALWAYS create a second partition at the very least. This is helpful also for when you want to defrgament your drive.. put up to 30GB on the boot partition (I have 10GB on XP), so you can defragment the OS partition separately and not wait 10 hours for your trillion-gigabyte-has-all-the-japanese-youtube-videos to be defragmented

sethg Wrote:The Windows 7 woes have already begun for me. I did an in-place upgrade this morning from Vista 64-bit Home Premium to the equivalent Windows 7. Everything was going swimmingly until I tried to copy some files over from my main internal C drive to my 1TB backup external. The transfer dialogue got about 1/10th full and then froze. I tried to cancel, and moments later I was looking at my first BSoD since Windows 2000.

I've tried multiple times again and again and it still won't let me copy it over. Crashes every time. I was on the phone with support for 2 hours and nothing got resolved. Apparently it's a "new issue."

My advice: wait it out. I certainly wish I had.

Been using Windows 7 for a while. running 64bit version. Loving it so far.

In-place upgrades are never a good idea from the start; I've had 0 problems so far and I've got 2 1tb external eSata /USB drives and regularly beast my machine as I'm a professional developer.

You might want to check you drives and try http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php - the windows copy is not so hot across all the versions.

My advice. If you're using vista now, get Win7: it's the best service pack to come out of MS!

If you'd upgraded from a Mac, how many new versions of your software would you have had to buy?...

Just another recommendation here to do a clean install. Doing an upgrade just has too much potential to create issues.

I've been running Windows 7 Professional for about 3 weeks now (free copy via MSDNAA through my school, yay!) and absolutely love it. Best Windows OS I've ever used, and I'd venture to say better than Linux was the last time I used it... and this is coming from someone that ran Linux exclusively for a 5 year stretch.

Most of the problems from Vista are fixed. UAC is MUCH less annoying (defaults to one popup when a program wants to modify the system, as opposed to a popup for basically every change) and is configurable in terms of how many warnings you want. It's also MUCH kinder with the memory footprint, somewhere between XP and Vista. Everything feels every much as fast as XP did too.

lerris Wrote:I've been running Windows 7 Professional for about 3 weeks now (free copy via MSDNAA through my school, yay!) and absolutely love it. Best Windows OS I've ever used, and I'd venture to say better than Linux was the last time I used it... and this is coming from someone that ran Linux exclusively for a 5 year stretch.

Same here, besides I wouldn't say its better than Linux because I use Linux on all my systems... notebook excluded. After I was to lazy to install Linux on my notebook because of different hardware difficulties (e.g. fingerprint reader, kernel killing network card...) and less battery life, I switched from Vista to win7 some weeks ago and the boost was really great. Now I have really low boot-times and switches from and to standby are almost instant. Could be a a better driver support, too as I have a Thinkpad an the Lenovo guys claim they worked closely with Microsoft and optimized everything for Win7.
So it doesn't makes much sense to complain about Windows if you just have a bad support for your hardware from your vendor. Buy something better the next time as Windows can't magically heal bad drivers.

I've had Win7 under parallels for a few weeks*. I've only used it like 3 times but I've had no problems with it other than being slightly slower than XP. It does look a lot prettier than XP and is faster than Vista, but I still see no major reason to switch from XP unless you need to play DX10/11 games. I guess upgrading is inevitable though since MS isn't going to be supplying security patches anymore.

That said, Windows is still godawful in terms of interface design. It might have more eye-candy now, but it's still incredibly inconsistent and obviously designed by committee. The DRM being so deeply integrated into he OS is also repulsive. I can't see myself ever switching back. As a consumer, I prefer an OS designed for consumers (OSX), instead of designed for corporations.

*Still having EDU access is great. I got two copies of Win7 Pro, weeks early, for free!

Jarvik7 Wrote:That said, Windows is still godawful in terms of interface design. It might have more eye-candy now, but it's still incredibly inconsistent and obviously designed by committee.

There are some little quirks about the UI that bug me, but I think it's gotten a little better. I love the new taskbar for one thing, but I really wish in the case of stacked windows (i.e. 2 explorer apps open at once), clicking on the icon would bring up say the most recently used of the 2. Instead, it brings up the window to select which of the 2 you want to use, the same as just doing a mouseover would do.

Finally giving the language bar (when attached to the taskbar) an auto adjust is wonderful as well. That may have been added in Vista, but wasn't in XP so sometimes portions of the bar would be hidden until I readjusted it.

I've been using Win7 ever since the RC came on MSDN (which was around 21st May), and I have to say it preforms rather well. It still sucks memory like a bitch, but memory is so cheap these days that this is virtually non-issue. There are a couple of interface improvements, but nothing ground breaking.
I only recommend it to people who:
a) need software which is not supported on XP
b) have DX10+ video card
c) have Vista installed

There are no other redeeming features worth noting, unless you are all into the eye candy interface. Stick with XP, which is in expended support all the way until 2014.

I'm hiding out in Karmic Koala right now. I guess this weekend's project is to do some more backing up and attempt a clean install and hope and pray that it works out well.

Ooooh, my god, is this going to haunt me everywhere on the internet? People who are still stuck on XP are Luddites, Mac users are leprechaun, and Linux users are all just crazy. And no, Windows 7 isn't perfect, but it's just a freaking OS, who cares?

/There, 500 pages of OS flamewars covered in one post.
//Only 500 pages to go!

?

Not really a flamewar. Just sayin... might want to wait on that upgrade, buckaroo. Didn't work out well for me.

Yeah, well, I'm drunk, and there's enough fighting about Windows 7 on every other forum I go to that it seems inevitable at this point. Didn't upgrade, anyway, even though I could have. My files are worthless to me, and I like the way fresh installs run.

Besides, I didn't not steal it a few months ago, so it was worth every penny.

I have had vista on my laptop for 2 years and it's never crashed. I must be one of the few to have a good experience with it, because it runs really nicely (although I can imagine it's less than optimised for low end systems). Anyway, there are a lot of positive reviews about Windows 7 out there - probably worth upgrading to in the future once they have a few initial bugs ironed out.

I'm still happy with my Vista which has been running smoothly for 1.5 years. Windows 7 looks nice, I don't really have a reason to upgrade.

b0ng0 Wrote:I have had vista on my laptop for 2 years and it's never crashed. I must be one of the few to have a good experience with it, because it runs really nicely (although I can imagine it's less than optimised for low end systems). Anyway, there are a lot of positive reviews about Windows 7 out there - probably worth upgrading to in the future once they have a few initial bugs ironed out.

Personally, I have a Mac running Snow Leopard, which was an upgrade from Leopard. I must say, I had absolutely NO issue upgrading, and I like Mac quite a bit better than Windows. (I used to hate Macs, by the way, so don't say I'm biased )
But beside that, I do some volunteer work where I have to use a Dell running Vista.
My view? Vista is not nearly as bad as has been said. However, I've also used an HP running Vista, and… let's not go there. I think the issue with Vista may be one of compatibility with the computer's hardware, by which I mean that apparently either MSFT didn't give accurate system requirements, or manufacturers/people ignored them.

Windows 7 seems to be a lot nicer than Vista, from what I hear.

(But I'm sticking with Mac.)

I've always been a pretty "conservative" windows user. Windows2k was my favorite OS for years, and I only reluctantly switched to XP when 2k was unable to run some of the software that I needed. When Vista came out, I tried it for a least a month, but went back to XP, because I hated everything about Vista.

I've been using Windows 7 since the release candidate came out, and I have to say, its my favorite version of windows, ever. There are so many nice things that help productivity:
- viewing windows side by side by dragging them to the side of the screen
- libraries for helping organize files
- search built right into the explorer window
- fast boot up and shut down
- new taskbar is nice once you get used to it
- use can customize what shows up in the system tray, hide annoying things
- easy to install the japanese language pack (maybe requires ultimate edition?)
- minimal running services, low memory usage, stuff you don't want can be uninstalled

Good timing. I'm thinking of getting Windows7 for my Dad for his birthday this week. Pls excuse the basic questions - I'm not particularly techy and find myself trying to help out someone who's getting a bit older.

After reading this thread, I understand that a clean install is better than an upgrade. Am I correct to assume that 2 versions are available (upgrade and complete) and the complete version would cost more?

Dad has 2 computers - one XP and one Vista. Things are working fine, but having to remember 2 different systems can be a bit much and there are some networking issues. Will I have a problem installing Win 7 (upgrade or complete) on the 2 computers? Appreciate any advice.

Edit: I've since read that clean install is the only option for XP.