Review: Windows 7

Post by **buksida** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:12 am

I've installed this on a couple of machines now and had a play with it so thought I'd post a bit of a review.

Installation off the DVD takes about 45 minutes, it will ask you if you want a compatibility check and whether you want the 32 (x86) or 64 bit version, this will depend on what CPU you have. Then it takes you to the disk selection stage where you can tell it where to install, after that its half an hour of copying files and a couple of re-starts - all pretty painless.

Also in the installation process is the option to 'upgrade' or 'custom install'. You can only upgrade if you have Vista already, you can't from XP - it needs to be a clean install. Upgrading is not usually recommended anyway as a clean setup will work better in the long run. I'd suggest installing it on a spare hard disk to test it first, also make sure all of your data is backed up.

Although Microsoft tout that it will work on older hardware it still had problems with drivers as expected. Things like sound and network devices that XP finds automatically W7 won't so you may need to manually download the drivers if you have an older machine. It seems to have more drivers for newer hardware.

Startup time is very quick and it seems to assess your hardware and allocate resources accordingly, unlike Vista which just chews a gigabyte of memory before it is ready to do anything. So yes, it is suitable for older machines - it installed and ran ok on one of the orphanage computers which was a 6 year old Pentium 1.8 with 512 megabytes of ram.

It is quite easy to tweak and within a couple of minutes you can turn off all of the annoyances such as UAC, auto updates, and the multitude of Microsoft alerts and messages if you don't want them. The task bar is a lot better and it looks like they've pinched a few ideas from Apple here, rolling over minimised tabs shows a little preview window and general manipulation and switching between them has been vastly improved.

Operation seemed very fast and snappy, unlike XP which has to think about things before engaging itself, file transfer is at least twice as fast and even the internet seemed quicker when testing IE8 on a few pages (not that I intend to switch to that browser!).

I've still got more extensive fiddling to do on it and need to ensure it will run all of my programs and applications, that is coming up in part two, there are bound to be a few compatibility issues!

Post by **richard** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:36 pm

Interesting reading Buksi

Look forward to you next posting

Went for Vista in the the uk and had the option to go XP. Not happy with vista so looking to migrate to 7

Post by **buksida** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 9:14 am

So far so good, I've managed to get all the drivers working and install most of my software on it without a hitch. Nvidia already have Windows 7 compatible graphics drivers available and it found the drivers itself for the onboard sound and network - the mainboard is about a year old. I haven't tried the printer yet as its out of ink.

Software list as follows:
Avast
Comodo (I prefer a firewall that tells me whats going on so off goes the Windows one)
Live Messenger (MSN)
Skype (needed to download the latest version)
Daemon Tools
Malwarebytes
Filezilla
K-lite codec pack
ABC Torrent Client
Nokia PC Suite
Dreamweaver
Fireworks
Flash
ACDSee
MS Office 2007
MS Money 2007
Nero 8
Adobe Reader
Firefox (with all my add-ons)
Winrar

Most programs need to be the latest versions to work with Windows 7 and it has a 'compatibility mode' which will enable older software to run on it. Sometimes it throws up a "this program has known compatibility issues" error when you try and run something it doesn't like but so far the program has still been operational.

I would say that any software written to run on Vista will run on 7 and most XP stuff will work in compatibility mode.

Now the important stuff ... games, its no good to me if it wont run Grand Theft Auto IV!

Post by **Randy Cornhole** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:13 pm

For me to change from my current vista setup, which I find ok to be honest once you have tweaked it too death. It will have to be a cheap upgrade. Unless I can pick up a moody copy.

Post by **STEVE G** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 1:28 am

Buksi, you mentioned above that you turned off auto-updates in Windows 7. Having left my laptop in Thailand I've just bought a netbook running XP and the bloody thing spends half its time updating things.
My laptop has XP and never does this, so how do I go about stopping it?
I'd be grateful for any other advice on turning things off that annoy me, because all I do with a computer is come on here, send a few emails and do a bit of administration and I don't need really need anything else.

Post by **BaaBaa.** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 1:42 am

If you download revo uninstaller, go to tools then autorun manager, you can choose what you want to run on startup.

Post by **STEVE G** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 5:01 am

BaaBaa. wrote:If you download revo uninstaller, go to tools then autorun manager, you can choose what you want to run on startup.

:cheers:

Thanks for the advice because I didn't buy a computer so it could enjoy itself updating things, I only want it to do something when I tell it to.
Ten years ago I could achieve that with windows 3.11 and it's a complete mystery to me what any later version has achieved that hasn't annoyed me.
And before anyone tells me that I should have bought a Mac, I'll politely point out that they don't sell them on the high street in Somerset for the 250 quid that this thing cost!
Actually apart from the problems above it's the latest version of the Aspire One and it's very good.

Post by **Randy Cornhole** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 8:04 am

'Auto Updates' are the Devils children...

Post by **Roel** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 8:53 am

Is this not because that from the moment XP is installed on a new computer, either in the shop or even in the factory, it is not connected to the internet and therefore missing all the updates. Once connected it has to catch up. My new laptop did some serious updating in the first few days but after that everything went back to normal.

Post by **buksida** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 9:12 am

Auto Updates are easy to disable, no need to download or install anything, simply go to Control Panel > Automatic Updates > Turn Off Automatic Updates (XP) or Control Panel > Windows Update > Change Settings > Never Check For Updates (Vista).

Any computer or software these days will want to constantly update itself, the only way to stop them is to use a solid third party firewall such as Comodo, Zonealarm or Kerio.

Windows 7

Post by **STEVE G** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 11:59 am

buksida wrote:Auto Updates are easy to disable, no need to download or install anything, simply go to Control Panel > Automatic Updates > Turn Off Automatic Updates (XP) or Control Panel > Windows Update > Change Settings > Never Check For Updates (Vista).

Any computer or software these days will want to constantly update itself, the only way to stop them is to use a solid third party firewall such as Comodo, Zonealarm or Kerio.

Windows 7

Thanks for the advice; I'll comment on Windows 7 sometime in about ten years as thats about how often I bother to change systems!

Post by **Guess** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 2:09 pm

STEVE G wrote:..........................and the bloody thing spends half its time updating things.
...............

As has already been said there is no need to install anything, just switch updates off or do what I do and set it to "let me know" and I will decide when to install. This way you can select the updates you want and at the same time avoid validation crap getting downloaded.

Another factor that has a bearing on updates is the age of the build that you installed. Some laptops will have been hanging around for a few months and updates will always back track to the last known update (KBnnnn) and offer all updates since then. After a week or so the amount per day will decrease. I have just been through this exercise with Vista SP1. I then upgraded to SP2 and still downloads were being offered at an unacceptable rate. Now they seem to have stopped. Updates that are refused are not offered again but you can still get them if you request them.

Some of the security updates are quite important according to various geek (including Microsoft's own) sites. It all depends of the environment you run in and what software you run.

Windows Updates is indiscriminate and offers everything available which gives you the choices of downloading anyway or checking if they are at all relevant to you.

There have been no major improvements on Windows 7 with regards the update mechanism so what you did with Vista should be OK for 7.

Post by **STEVE G** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:18 pm

Good to see you back Guess and thank-you for the advice. I'm going to turn off updates as my laptop in Thailand is running an old version of XP with no updates and I don't have any problems.

Post by **hhfarang** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 7:13 pm

Steve,

What I do and you may want to consider is to set XP so that it notifies you when updates are available but lets you choose which ones to download. The reason I do this is that I feel that I should download all security updates (holes they've found in their sucky operating system that need to be plugged) but I don't download the other things that they just want me to that eat up my resources.

They identify the security updates in the description.

Post by **Guess** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 9:39 am

hhfarang wrote:Steve,

............... set XP so that it notifies you when updates are available but lets you choose which ones to download. The reason I do this is that I feel that I should download all security updates..............

Thanks Steve,

This is what I was also recommending. The same feature exists on Vista and Seven and the UI has become more friendly.

The point Steve makes is extremely valid. If it works don't fix it.

I recently downloaded the Vista x64 SP2 upgrade from Microsoft and it trashed my OS. I repeated the operation thinking that it had stumbled on a glitch or maybe I had had a short power outage. This was not the case. I repeated the operation on another partition and the problem was repeated. This was purported to a reliable MS piece of software rather than a torrent download. I then got a torrent download and it worked fine on x86 and x64.