OT: Windows 7
Giftzwerg
Anyone else running the public beta of Windows 7?
I'm very impressed. Seems to marry the performance of Windows XP with
the security and UI improvements of Vista. I'm typing this now on my
Acer Aspire netbook (Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz, 1GB ram, 150 GB disk), and Win7
just *flies*. Easily matches the performance of Windows XP ... and
Vista choked, big time, on this little PC.
Not a single hiccup in the beta, either. I've loaded all my business
software on this Win 7 netbook, and with the exception of the current
Cisco VPN client, I'm just flying along.
So far as I can see, this is *huge* good news for gamers. Any game that
ran on Vista will scream on Win7, and if the XP compatibility is equal
to Vista ... I think Windows XP is ready for burial.
--
Giftzwerg
***
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"Good morning, lefties; welcome to a world called More Shit You
Can't Blame On George W. Bush Anymore. Ouch. Check that Dow."
- Giftzwerg
Vincenzo Beretta
I didn't tested it, but some colleagues who did are marveled. It would seem
that Windows 7 could become what Vista was supposed to be.
I'm tempted to install it on my main PC - and see how 3D graphical-heavy
games are impacted. What is making me cautious is that my main PC is also
the one where I work the most, and, should something dire happen, a
reformat/reinstall would be da death. Is the public beta of Windows 7 stable
enough to take the jump?
Giftzwerg
rec...@hotmail.com says...
If you're talking about a dual-boot or VMware install, then sure. I'm
not sanguine about trying to use Win7 in an actual production machine -
although it's *almost* stable enough for me to recommend that.
What I did was peel off a partition on my "big" laptop of 50GB and dual-
boot Win7 with Vista (the installer is "brilliant" and can dual-boot
automatically between the two with zero hassles). I've been running
exclusively on Win7 for a week now, and haven't seen any major hassles
except the Cisco problem (which I have a workaround for now...).
But I wouldn't *replace* Vista or XP on my main machine. It must be
said that this is still very much a beta OS - a very, very strong beta -
but there are still issues.
For example, this netbook blue-screened on me just this afternoon, due
to a file-copy bug because I'm using the Vista driver for the netbook's
wireless. I expect teething problems like this in a beta, so it didn't
bother me. But on my *main* PC? Nah. Don't do that yet.
If you want to run on your main PC, and don't want to repartition, I'd
pick up a cheap-o internal hard disk and put the beta on that. It's not
like the extra hard-disk space is going to bug you going forward,
regardless of what you decide.
I haven't tried any games yet, not on my laptop or netbook. I would
expect, though, that games would potentially be a huge problem for a
beta OS.
I'll try to drag COTA over from my install repository tonight, and maybe
have an attaboy for MS and Panther/Matrix to report.
Arjuna
> I'll try to drag COTA over from my install repository tonight, and maybe
> have an attaboy for MS and Panther/Matrix to report.
Gifty,
I would be very interested to hear how it goes. We only converted to
Vista at the end of last year. I must say that I have been pleasantly
surprised by Vista and have not encountered any dramas with SP1. I
like the interface but yes it can be a little slow to startup. I can't
really comment on speed performance because I went from XP on an ol'
P4 2.4 to Vista on a spunky quad 2.83. So as far as I was concerned I
am already screaming along. But if we could rely on even faster
performance from Windows 7 then we could support larger maps and
higher unit counts and that would be good.
von Schmidt
about to come out:
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=39069
-von Schmidt
news.cogeco.ca
laptop and a virtual machine on my main workstation.
It is indeed what Vista should have been. I expect to be recommending it
wholeheartedly because the extensive UI redesign makes it the *easiest* OS
yet to configure and fix simple problems with. They really hit a home run
on the usability front. I also love that it is a major performance upgrade
(like Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard OS) and not a sluggish bloat-ware
special like Vista felt like.
This is the one that everyone has been waiting for. Coupled with the new
Intel I7 chips, I am confidently predicting a massive upgrade cycle when
this thing is released for good. I'll be being within 6 weeks or so of that
date myself.
It just has a good feel about it.
Regards, Rob Crandall
"von Schmidt" <von_s...@mail.com> wrote in message
news:dc7cc2b8-fedb-4174...@a39g2000prl.googlegroups.com...
Giftzwerg
> > I'll try to drag COTA over from my install repository tonight, and maybe
> > have an attaboy for MS and Panther/Matrix to report.
>
> Gifty,
>
> I would be very interested to hear how it goes.
COTA runs fine on my IBM laptop on a Win7 partition. Click-click-click,
playing.
I can't tell if the game will run on my Acer netbook, because the Matrix
installation process errors-out during the file decompression process.
I "blame" Microsoft / Acer for this issue. I get system-level file
decompression faults. Weird ones. And they're not confined to games.
MS needs to work on this piece.
DirkG
I think PC World said the goal was to use Vista drivers in Win7. That's
good news for me. XP caused a complete replacement of all hardware, and
Vista was pretty much the same. I lost my printer, scanner, HOTAS,
soundcard, etc...
$150 operating systems cost $1000 in hardware upgrades :-P
Mike Kreuzer
news:MPG.23e14bde48b311fa98968e@localhost...
I haven't tried it yet, but I'm yet to hear anyone say anything different.
Regards,
Mike Kreuzer
www.mikekreuzer.com
eddys...@hotmail.com
> In article <7c348826-bce6-46ef-84e2
>
> > > I'll try to drag COTA over from my install repository tonight, and maybe
> > > have an attaboy for MS and Panther/Matrix to report.
>
> > Gifty,
>
> > I would be very interested to hear how it goes.
>
> COTA runs fine on my IBM laptop on a Win7 partition. Click-click-click,
> playing.
Ok, I've got a Vista partition which needed re-installing anyway so
I'm giving this Win7 beta a go.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Arjuna
> COTA runs fine on my IBM laptop on a Win7 partition. Click-click-click,
> playing.
Thanks.
One of our testers got the latest build of BFTB running under Windows
7 as well. So that's good to know.
Giftzwerg
b428c8...@r10g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, da...@panthergames.com
says...
> > COTA runs fine on my IBM laptop on a Win7 partition. Click-click-click,
> > playing.
>
> Thanks.
>
> One of our testers got the latest build of BFTB running under Windows
> 7 as well. So that's good to know.
Gamers are going to *fly* to Windows 7 once it's in release, by dint of
the performance enhancement alone. My advice to developers would be to
get your games running on Win 7 sooner rather than later.
--
Giftzwerg
***
"[Obama] said he will consider it a failure if he has not closed the
U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of his first
term in office."
- Washington Post
"All of a sudden, gosh, it's so *complicated* to close Guantanamo Bay."
- Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino
rus4...@hotmail.com
> In article <def48e45-7859-4c68-aedb-
> b428c8c23...@r10g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, d...@panthergames.com
>
>
> Gamers are going to *fly* to Windows 7 once it's in release, by dint of
> the performance enhancement alone. My advice to developers would be to
> get your games running on Win 7 sooner rather than later.
I've got both the 32-bit and 64-bit version running on partitions on
home computers.
They remind me more of Vista than XP, only Microsoft has defaulted the
system to a more conservative GUI, with stuff like "Gadgets" and user-
account notifications turned off to begin with.
I've also found it somewhat more difficult to make W7 look and behave
like XP than was the case with Vista.
For reference sake, I'd also make note of the system memory that W7 is
caching, 800MB in 64-bit and over 600MB in 32-bit. Again, those are
Vista-like numbers, so I dunno.
While the benchmarks that I've run using stuff like the 3DMark proggys
are pretty pitiful, performance-wise, I've still got an open-mind
about W7 because hardware driver-support is, as yet, so immature.
Time will tell.
Giftzwerg
@r36g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, rus4...@hotmail.com says...
> While the benchmarks that I've run using stuff like the 3DMark proggys
> are pretty pitiful, performance-wise, I've still got an open-mind
> about W7 because hardware driver-support is, as yet, so immature.
Hmmm. I haven't found a single piece of hardware, outside of the
Atheros wifi card I mentioned earlier, that Windows 7 didn't just
identify and automatically support. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have
four installs of Win7 - an Acer netbook, my desktop at work (a typical
business-grade workstation), my IBM T61 laptop, and my high-performance
gaming machine - and I haven't had a single problem.
The thing that still amazes me is that Win7 appears to be the first OS
in computing history that performs better on the same hardware than its
predecessor. Perhaps that says more about Vista being a dog than Win7
being decent, but it's still a pretty significant moment.
Another (somewhat sarcastic...) point to make is that I wish half of the
released games I bought this year demonstrated as much polish and
quality as this *beta* operating system.
rus4...@hotmail.com
> In article <055f6a18-d33d-413e-9512-88243ded1443
>
> Hmmm. I haven't found a single piece of hardware, outside of the
> Atheros wifi card I mentioned earlier, that Windows 7 didn't just
> identify and automatically support.
My experience has been similar to the extent that it'll identify
devices and go hunting for a driver, if none are included. A good
example being TrackIR, which really surprised me. W7 didn't know what
to do with an X-Fi titanium sound card, didn't know what it was, so I
installed Vista drivers for it. I also ended up swapping out the W7 64-
bit display drivers for Vista drivers because I couldn't complete the
W7 "performance" utility, and my 8800GTX ended up rated as a "0"!
> The thing that still amazes me is that Win7 appears to be the first OS
> in computing history that performs better on the same hardware than its
> predecessor.
Have you run any gaming benchmarks under Win7??? So far, I'm not
impressed, relative to either XP or Vista, the latter of which usually
benches about 1-2% lower than the former. I expect this to improve as
hardware producers publish their own drivers for the new OS. I
genuinely want W7 to be a success. Being a Vista hater isn't all its
cracked up to be. I'm ready for a change, so long as its for the
better.
Giftzwerg
@a39g2000prl.googlegroups.com>, rus4...@hotmail.com says...
> > The thing that still amazes me is that Win7 appears to be the first OS
> > in computing history that performs better on the same hardware than its
> > predecessor.
>
> Have you run any gaming benchmarks under Win7??? So far, I'm not
> impressed, relative to either XP or Vista, the latter of which usually
> benches about 1-2% lower than the former. I expect this to improve as
> hardware producers publish their own drivers for the new OS. I
> genuinely want W7 to be a success. Being a Vista hater isn't all its
> cracked up to be. I'm ready for a change, so long as its for the
> better.
I don't put much stock in benchmarking, preferring to just trust in the
obvious. I've seen "benchmarks" which find Vista a faster OS than XP,
and, IMO, that's silly; Vista runs considerably slower on the same
hardware than XP.
This netbook I'm working on right now sails along cheerfully on Win7.
It barely managed to boot with Vista. XP ran fine. Microsoft could
bury me in "benchmark" numbers and my own usage experience with the
three OSs would triumph.
And I'm by no means a "Vista hater." Indeed, I appreciate the UI and
security improvements. XP was an utter security disaster; Vista is
almost a miracle in comparison. In two years of experience with Vista,
I haven't seen a single Vista system end up in my office door, bugfucked
with malware. That's astounding.
Which is why I'm so excited about Win7. The security and UI
improvements of Vista without the overhead of such a bloated OS.
Amazing that Microsoft is going to pull this off.
DirkG
> My experience has been similar to the extent that it'll identify
> devices and go hunting for a driver, if none are included. A good
> example being TrackIR, which really surprised me. W7 didn't know what
> to do with an X-Fi titanium sound card, didn't know what it was, so I
> installed Vista drivers for it. I also ended up swapping out the W7 64-
> bit display drivers for Vista drivers because I couldn't complete the
> W7 "performance" utility, and my 8800GTX ended up rated as a "0"!
>
I installed today. I also have a Titanium Fatality Pro connected
optically to a receiver. Surprisingly, it worked at install even though
Win7 only identified a generic spdif connection. I installed the
Creative Vista drivers, but the DDL registration crashes in the browser
window. Did yours register OK or did you do that yet?
I installed the latest Vista ATI 8.12 drivers and it worked without even
a reboot request!
Chris Nahr
<giftzw...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>This netbook I'm working on right now sails along cheerfully on Win7.
>It barely managed to boot with Vista. XP ran fine.
With just 1 GB Vista is definitely going to have trouble. I've seen
those benchmarks claiming Vista SP1 was faster than XP in games. I
have no trouble believing them, but they were run on a fully loaded
desktop system with plenty of RAM. Interesting that Windows 7 can
handle a 1 GB system, though -- I wouldn't have thought that Microsoft
can optimize the system that much.
--
http://www.kynosarges.de
rus4...@hotmail.com
>
> I installed today. I also have a Titanium Fatality Pro connected
> optically to a receiver. Surprisingly, it worked at install even though
> Win7 only identified a generic spdif connection. I installed the
> Creative Vista drivers, but the DDL registration crashes in the browser
> window. Did yours register OK or did you do that yet?
After installing the OS, Device Manager indicated the presence of a
"High Definition Audio Device," but I had no sound, digital or analog.
I didn't even try to install the drivers from the disk that came with
the sound card. Rather, I went to the CL website and downloaded their
latest driver package. It installed alright, but the website package
didn't include all the stuff that's on the CD (that ships with the
card), part of which is the dolby-digital software. I'm also missing a
lot of other stuff, like the mode-switcher and creative console. It's
strictly bare-bones, software wise. I've got six-channel audio, btw,
but it's over analog cables, rather than toslink. When I setup W7 32-
bit, I'll probably see if I can't do the complete install of the
Creative Labs software.
DirkG
Yeah, it's best to use the install disk. That's what I did. Run the
install file in Vista Compatibility Mode. The auto updater worked too
with no compatibility setting for the updated drivers. The only one
that didn't update was the Dolby Digital, and I think it's because it's
not registered yet. If I could get the web browser registration pop-up
to run in Vista compatibility mode it's probably run OK, but it starts
from the registration program...
eddys...@hotmail.com
> Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have
> four installs of Win7 - an Acer netbook, my desktop at work (a typical
> business-grade workstation), my IBM T61 laptop, and my high-performance
> gaming machine - and I haven't had a single problem.
Well, I tried to install the Win7 beta over a Vista boot partition -
long story short : bad idea. During the installation it'll try to move/
copy some files which fails for Zeus knows what reason.
Also, it says it needs 12 gig for the installation - what it doesn't
tell you is it also needs 12 gig on the C: drive, even if you install
it on the G: drive.
Tip : don't burn the iso file to a dvd and install from there - simply
extract all the files from the iso file to your harddisk and run it
from there. Yes, that's right - M$ could have simply put everything in
a zip, but that would have been too easy I suppose.
Finally got it up and running, installed COTA and ... problem : the
main selection screen (the radio) comes up but if you select "new" or
"load scenario" you get a CTD <sigh>. It's not the UAC, nor a
compatibility issue, run as full admin etc.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Giftzwerg
@v18g2000pro.googlegroups.com>, eddys...@hotmail.com says...
> Well, I tried to install the Win7 beta over a Vista boot partition -
> long story short : bad idea. During the installation it'll try to move/
> copy some files which fails for Zeus knows what reason.
>
> Also, it says it needs 12 gig for the installation - what it doesn't
> tell you is it also needs 12 gig on the C: drive, even if you install
> it on the G: drive.
Hmmm. Check disk manager carefully, though. My I peeled a 30GB slice
off my Vista C: drive, and when I boot into Win7 it *sees* drive this
volume as Drive C:, and I can mount my Vista drive as another letter.
I'll bet yours is the same; it just switches the drive letters depending
on what OS you're booted into.
I guess I dual-boot and VM so many different ways nowadays that I didn't
notice this.
> Finally got it up and running, installed COTA and ... problem : the
> main selection screen (the radio) comes up but if you select "new" or
> "load scenario" you get a CTD <sigh>. It's not the UAC, nor a
> compatibility issue, run as full admin etc.
This looks like more bad luck. I didn't even have to fiddle with UAC,
do RUNAS, or use compatibility mode. I just ran the installer, loaded
the patches, and played normally. I get the usual UAC trigger when I
call for the Matrix initial screen, but that no longer registers.
That said, I have had mixed luck loading games on Win7. STARFLEET
COMMAND III, for example, installs fine, but just disappears into the
ozone on loading. CARRIERS AT WAR 2007 won't install correctly. Same
with WAR PLAN PACIFIC. It looked like it installed right, but some sort
of Microsoftian XML-esque thingie sinks it later on.
Overall, I'm batting about .450 getting games loaded ... not a terrible
record for a beta operating system.
--
Giftzwerg
***
"Source: Gov. Paterson was underwhelmed with Caroline Kennedy from the
start"
- NY Daily News
"What took him so long?"
- Giftzwerg
eddys...@hotmail.com
> In article <d5399849-1744-493f-9be2-389e8b884fd2
>
> > Well, I tried to install the Win7 beta over a Vista boot partition -
> > long story short : bad idea. During the installation it'll try to move/
> > copy some files which fails for Zeus knows what reason.
>
> > Also, it says it needs 12 gig for the installation - what it doesn't
> > tell you is it also needs 12 gig on the C: drive, even if you install
> > it on the G: drive.
>
> Hmmm. Check disk manager carefully, though. My I peeled a 30GB slice
> off my Vista C: drive, and when I boot into Win7 it *sees* drive this
> volume as Drive C:, and I can mount my Vista drive as another letter.
> I'll bet yours is the same; it just switches the drive letters depending
> on what OS you're booted into.
Nope - checked that - it sees itself installed on G: - this drive is a
logical partition on a secondary HD - and all other partitions are
available under their original drive name.
> That said, I have had mixed luck loading games on Win7.
My favourite file-manager utility won't install either. I haven't
really delved into it because this very same weekend my father-in-law
decided that prices had dropped so low thanks to this "Best Crisis We
Ever Had" that he "needed" another main machine. Went shopping with
him and he got himself a 2.6 Ghz, 3 Gig Ram, 260 Gig HD for a mere 399
Euros. So I spend the rest of the day setting it up and transferring
his files. Came home to discover my neighbour needed me as well : his
wifi connection was down <sigh>
Short : I spend almost the whole weekend tinkering on other peoples
machines <sigh> I limit my computer helpdesk interventions to near
family and friends but sometimes even this seems too much - I guess a
plumber has the same problem :)
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Giftzwerg
@q30g2000prq.googlegroups.com>, eddys...@hotmail.com says...
> > Hmmm. Check disk manager carefully, though. My I peeled a 30GB slice
> > off my Vista C: drive, and when I boot into Win7 it *sees* drive this
> > volume as Drive C:, and I can mount my Vista drive as another letter.
> > I'll bet yours is the same; it just switches the drive letters depending
> > on what OS you're booted into.
>
> Nope - checked that - it sees itself installed on G: - this drive is a
> logical partition on a secondary HD - and all other partitions are
> available under their original drive name.
Perhaps that's it, then; I just set up Win7 on the same drive as a
primary partition.
Giftzwerg
@q30g2000prq.googlegroups.com>, eddys...@hotmail.com says...
> > That said, I have had mixed luck loading games on Win7.
>
> My favourite file-manager utility won't install either.
Update: I find that TOAW3 works fine on my Intel Atom netbook. The
installer takes a ridiculously long time ... but after patching the game
runs just fine - even with the weird 1200x800 screen resolution.
I've played through a dozen turns of the "Bong Son" scenario. No
problems. YMMV.
smr
> In article <0f45bcc9-8b7a-4f25-bd77-bcec360a7011
> @q30g2000prq.googlegroups.com>, eddys...@hotmail.com says...
>
>>> That said, I have had mixed luck loading games on Win7.
>> My favourite file-manager utility won't install either.
>
> Update: I find that TOAW3 works fine on my Intel Atom netbook. The
> installer takes a ridiculously long time ... but after patching the game
> runs just fine - even with the weird 1200x800 screen resolution.
>
> I've played through a dozen turns of the "Bong Son" scenario. No
> problems. YMMV.
>
The installer/MSI bug thing has a fix:
http://winse7en.blogspot.com/2009/01/fix-msi-installer-or-windows-update.html
With this, I've been able to install just about anything so far.
Overall, loving Win 7, and I certainly didn't hate Vista. The UI
improvements, particularly in taskbar/systray/window management, already
make me pine for my home machine running 7 when I'm stuck on XP at work.
As a widescreen monitor/max window at all times kinda guy, I'm
particularly enjoying that this is the first version of Windows ever
that makes docking the Start Bar to the left or right side workable on.
No wonky gradients, no 4-inch wide to accommodate text on buttons BS...
it's really sweet.
Only hardware that's giving me grief is a Line 6 GuitarPort that I
haven't even bothered to troubleshoot yet 'cuz that's due for an upgrade
itself.
The performance increase over any other variant of Windows on netbooks
is fuckin' amazing, particularly since MS is claiming that they didn't
really change much under the hood.
Oddly, since this is the first MS OS to release sans native mail client
in forever, I actually grabbed the Windows Live Essentials pack to try
out the latest version of what used to be Outlook Express and stuff and
hey, whaddaya know, it's the first free MS mail client ever released
that doesn't suck.
This'll save them grief on the bloatware/anti-competitive bundling
front, too. If you're a total cloud services user, you'll never need the
stuff it has. If you're not, there's non-suck, freely downloadable
versions of the tools everybody expects an OS to have UNLESS it's
Microsoft in which case having those tools bundled in is an abuse of
monopoly power...
Anywho, verdict on Win 7 so far is a gigantic, two thumbs up.
--
smr
Giftzwerg
Only hardware that's giving me grief is a Line 6 GuitarPort that I
> The performance increase over any other variant of Windows on netbooks
> is fuckin' amazing, particularly since MS is claiming that they didn't
> really change much under the hood.
Even the Atom processor - which has to do better than the others on
Vista - craps out horribly except in the XP or Win7 world.
> Oddly, since this is the first MS OS to release sans native mail client
> in forever, I actually grabbed the Windows Live Essentials pack to try
> out the latest version of what used to be Outlook Express and stuff and
> hey, whaddaya know, it's the first free MS mail client ever released
> that doesn't suck.
Ditto. Live Essentials are ... well, live and essential. I'm using WL
exclusively on my netbook. I decided to see how far I could get using
MS applications alone.
> This'll save them grief on the bloatware/anti-competitive bundling
> front, too.
<laughter>
I always laugh out loud at the though of how the average shithead user
is going to download Firefox, Chrome, or Safari *without* a bundled copy
of Internet Explorer. Good luck with that, luser.
Yah. Here's to the EU for being too fucking stupid to think that one
through.
[PS: Apple doesn't ... uh, bundle a web-browser ... do they? That
isn't similarly illegal because _________________ ?]
> If you're a total cloud services user, you'll never need the
> stuff it has. If you're not, there's non-suck, freely downloadable
> versions of the tools everybody expects an OS to have UNLESS it's
> Microsoft in which case having those tools bundled in is an abuse of
> monopoly power...
>
> Anywho, verdict on Win 7 so far is a gigantic, two thumbs up.
Yeah. Just the boot-up performance is so much better than *XP* that
it's amazing.
eddys...@hotmail.com
>
> Yah. Here's to the EU for being too fucking stupid to think that one
> through.
If only that was the only thing they didn't think through ...
> [PS: Apple doesn't ... uh, bundle a web-browser ... do they? That
> isn't similarly illegal because _________________ ?]
Because Apple are the Good Guys (tm) - didn't you know ?
Anything and anyone even remotely succesfull, like MicroSoft for
instance, simply has to be Evil (tm) - it's the law.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Briarroot
Exactly. What's hilarious is that both company's business practices are
essentially the same, it's just that Microsoft is much better at the
game than Apple! ;-)
--
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of
his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others who have not
exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first
principle of association: the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of
his industry and the fruits acquired by it." - Thomas Jefferson.
rus4...@hotmail.com
> In article <0f45bcc9-8b7a-4f25-bd77-bcec360a7011
>
> > > That said, I have had mixed luck loading games on Win7.
>
> > My favourite file-manager utility won't install either.
>
> Update: I find that TOAW3 works fine on my Intel Atom netbook. The
> installer takes a ridiculously long time ... but after patching the game
> runs just fine - even with the weird 1200x800 screen resolution.
>
> I've played through a dozen turns of the "Bong Son" scenario. No
> problems. YMMV.
>
> --
> Giftzwerg
> ***
> "U.S. Stocks Slide in Dow Average's Worst Inauguration Day Drop"
> - Bloomberg.Com
> "Good morning, lefties; welcome to a world called More Shit You
> Can't Blame On George W. Bush Anymore. Ouch. Check that Dow."
> - Giftzwerg
Just wanted to resurrect this topic for a moment to update my comments
regarding W7.
About ten days ago, I built a new system to replace a box filled with
parts that were eighteen to twenty-four months old. After putting the
new system through the proverbial ringer, I've found that the new
version of Windows is actually outperforming WinXP in the benchmarks
that I made reference to in my earlier post. Applications are
installing with little or no hassle and then functioning very well on
the whole. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this is
diametrically opposed to my experience with a RETAIL copy of Vista
three months after it was released by MS a couple of years back.
Really looks like things are looking up on the OS front.
eddys...@hotmail.com
> Applications are
> installing with little or no hassle and then functioning very well on
> the whole. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this is
> diametrically opposed to my experience with a RETAIL copy of Vista
> three months after it was released by MS a couple of years back.
Haven't enjoyed much luck with my Win7 beta installation. Battles from
the Bulge beta won't run on it while other beta bunnies got it running
on their Win7 beta.
Of course that is beta code running on a beta OS so I guess it'll get
sorted out in the end
Other (minor) stuff installs fine, and it's my impression as well that
it's going to be the new XP and that Vista was just another Windows
ME.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Chris Nahr
>Other (minor) stuff installs fine, and it's my impression as well that
>it's going to be the new XP and that Vista was just another Windows
>ME.
Me was a dead end, a development branch that died with this version,
whereas W7 is actually a refined Vista. The appropriate analogy for
Vista would be Windows 2000, the real predecessor for XP with largely
identical technology but not quite as polished.
--
http://www.kynosarges.de
eddys...@hotmail.com
> On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:49:19 -0800 (PST), "eddyster...@hotmail.com"
>
> <eddyster...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Other (minor) stuff installs fine, and it's my impression as well that
> >it's going to be the new XP and that Vista was just another Windows
> >ME.
>
> Me was a dead end, a development branch that died with this version,
> whereas W7 is actually a refined Vista. The appropriate analogy for
> Vista would be Windows 2000, the real predecessor for XP with largely
> identical technology but not quite as polished.
> --http://www.kynosarges.de
Technically correct. What I meant was that Vista will be the OS that
will fade away very quickly once the new Win7 arrives - just like Win
ME.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Rob Pollard
<eddys...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9a18b081-2ee1-4c93...@o36g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
It will fade away rapidly for use, but I suspect it will replace ME in the
minds of most people as the archetypical OS failure.
RobP
Giftzwerg
roberta...@hotmail.com says...
> > Technically correct. What I meant was that Vista will be the OS that
> > will fade away very quickly once the new Win7 arrives - just like Win
> > ME.
> >
>
> It will fade away rapidly for use, but I suspect it will replace ME in the
> minds of most people as the archetypical OS failure.
Nonsense. Vista works perfectly well, something that couldn't
reasonably be said about that miserable dungheap of FAIL that was ME.
Indeed, Vista is, after all, only the second most popular OS in the
history of humanity; in what sense can it possibly be considered a
"failure?"
--
Giftzwerg
***
"President Barack Obama is refusing to be rushed into his first decision
to send troops into [Afghanistan], an early sign he may be more
independent minded than U.S. military leaders expected."
- Politico.com
"Well, that's an interesting way to spin Obama's laughable flipflop on
one of *his own campaign promises*."
- Giftzwerg
Rob Pollard
"Giftzwerg" <giftzw...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.24076625806b734e98972c@localhost...
> In article <Z1gnl.3686$OT2....@newsfe29.ams2>,
> roberta...@hotmail.com says...
>
>> > Technically correct. What I meant was that Vista will be the OS that
>> > will fade away very quickly once the new Win7 arrives - just like Win
>> > ME.
>> >
>>
>> It will fade away rapidly for use, but I suspect it will replace ME in
>> the
>> minds of most people as the archetypical OS failure.
>
> Nonsense. Vista works perfectly well, something that couldn't
> reasonably be said about that miserable dungheap of FAIL that was ME.
>
> Indeed, Vista is, after all, only the second most popular OS in the
> history of humanity; in what sense can it possibly be considered a
> "failure?"
>
>
Second most owned OS in the history of humanity, but I'm not too sure about
the word 'popular'. MS are in a very good position that whenever they
release an OS they can ensure that most new PC's come with it, which helps
with the numbers. I heard that in terms of Business market penetration its
been a failure, with many businesses refusing to take it on.
That said, I'm currently typing out this reply in Windows Live on a Vista
Premium platform (only got back on Vista on the 27th Jan 09). I like the UI
on Vista, games performance has nearly caught up with XP in most cases, but
alas, file handling remains a slow and painful process. 'Calculating'....
I have heard great things of 7 and although I downloaded the beta I never
got a chance to install it. I suspect that MS will have a winner on their
hands with 7 and all the issues with Vista will disappear.
What OS are you using the 32 bit or 64 bit version? I'm interested because
in my experience the people that got the 64 bit version of Vista sing its
praises on the whole - unlike the 32 bit owners.
The worst issues I had with Vista were the frequent 'Explorer has stopped
responding messages' followed by a complete reset of Explorer which
sometimes left the system in an unstable state. For me the final straw was
back in April last year
(http://ooan.blogspot.com/2008/04/vista-problems-again.html) where any
window I opened in Vista would open up white and would only update 5-10
minutes later. Did all the usual stuff, like check drivers and updates but
never found the cause, so I switched back to XP, which I have been in until
very recently.
RobP
Giftzwerg
roberta...@hotmail.com says...
> > Indeed, Vista is, after all, only the second most popular OS in the
> > history of humanity; in what sense can it possibly be considered a
> > "failure?"
> Second most owned OS in the history of humanity, but I'm not too sure about
> the word 'popular'. MS are in a very good position that whenever they
> release an OS they can ensure that most new PC's come with it, which helps
> with the numbers. I heard that in terms of Business market penetration its
> been a failure, with many businesses refusing to take it on.
My business didn't take it on, and that decision was mine. But business
adoption is a more complex issue than consumer adoption. I also
deferred adoption of XP at $ork for two years after it was released,
simply because Win2K and NT workstation 4.0 were already in place, and
... well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So Vista was released in late 2007. I immediately got some copies and
started looking at it. But there was zero support from our business
vendors until late 2008, so there was no question of adopting it. If I
had, the various tech support arms of those vendors would have instantly
pointed to Vista as the source of any and all problems with their
products. By the time support for Vista appeared, I was using early
betas of Windows 7.
ME, in sharp contrast, I evaluated and got rid of immediately. Never
got near us. It was garbage.
> What OS are you using the 32 bit or 64 bit version? I'm interested because
> in my experience the people that got the 64 bit version of Vista sing its
> praises on the whole - unlike the 32 bit owners.
Both. My home system is 64-bit, but my laptops and work system are 32-
bit. The only practical benefits of Vista64 are increased kernel
security and the ability to break the 4GB memory barrier ... and I
really only need that on the home system that I edit photographs on.
> The worst issues I had with Vista were the frequent 'Explorer has stopped
> responding messages' followed by a complete reset of Explorer which
> sometimes left the system in an unstable state. For me the final straw was
> back in April last year
> (http://ooan.blogspot.com/2008/04/vista-problems-again.html) where any
> window I opened in Vista would open up white and would only update 5-10
> minutes later. Did all the usual stuff, like check drivers and updates but
> never found the cause, so I switched back to XP, which I have been in until
> very recently.
I've seen Vista systems afflicted with this. We call it
"whirlygigging," after the damn swirling circle as Explorer decides
whether to crash or not. Not sure what causes it, but it's infrequent
and running the repair process from the DVD (in my experience) fixes it
completely.
--
Giftzwerg
***
"Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had
halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it
clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the
bomb."
- Los Angeles Times
"Bush saying Iran wants the bomb = BAD/LIES
Obama saying Iran wants the bomb = OK/TRUTH"
- Purple Avenger
eddys...@hotmail.com
> in my experience the people that got the 64 bit version of Vista sing its
> praises on the whole - unlike the 32 bit owners.
32 bit Vista owner here. On one Vista system the DRM fails and keeps
on failing, on my Vista laptop the automatic SP1 upgrade went fubar
and I had to re-install everything from scratch. Never had a problem
with my XP system, in fact : I just keep using it as my main system
and I like it very, very much.
Vista ... well, I'll just keep one around for beta testing I guess,
but it's batting 0/2 at the moment.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Giftzwerg
1f197d...@j1g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>, eddys...@hotmail.com
says...
> Vista ... well, I'll just keep one around for beta testing I guess,
> but it's batting 0/2 at the moment.
And we all need to keep in mind that the number of operating systems
released that didn't have significant problems is zero. XP was a nasty
pile of shit until SP2.
rus4...@hotmail.com
> And we all need to keep in mind that the number of operating systems
> released that didn't have significant problems is zero. XP was a nasty
> pile of shit until SP2.
I once reinstalled an old, OEM copy of WinXP thinking that I was safe
behind a NAT router until I could get the system online (more or less
immediately) to download and install SP2. The download and install of
the service pack might have taken forty-five minutes, but the OS got
buggered, BLASTER I think it was, before the process was completed.
The lesson? Download SP2 and install it BEFORE going online instead of
attempting it via Windows Update. Life in the wild can be a hazardous
proposition.
BP
<roberta...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Second most owned OS in the history of humanity, but I'm not too sure about
>the word 'popular'. MS are in a very good position that whenever they
>release an OS they can ensure that most new PC's come with it, which helps
>with the numbers. I heard that in terms of Business market penetration its
>been a failure, with many businesses refusing to take it on.
True. MS has used its dominant position to artificially inflate the
numbers for Vista, by making sure that new PCs are sold with Vista -
but the PC companies cater to business buyers by allowing a
"downgrade" to XP pre-installed. In other words, when I bought a new
laptop back in November, everything I looked at came with Vista
installed, but I exercised my option to downgrade and got XP instead -
but MS can still count that as a copy of Vista sold.
BP
Giftzwerg
re...@newsgroup.please says...
Two points:
(1) Microsoft doesn't give a rat-fuck if someone replaces Vista with
XP, any more than Blaupunkt cares if you replace their stereo in your
new car with an AM radio. If you got some money in return for a
product, that's a sale. They got your money. They gave you Vista.
Sale city.
(2) The number of users who replace Vista with XP when buying a new PC
is so vanishingly small as to be insignificant. Sure, gamers and power-
users *might* do this - but they're such a small amount of the market
that everyone ignores them. The vast majority of PC buyers just use the
OS they brought home from Best Buy. In the two plus years Vista has
been out, most of the people at $ork have purchased a new PC, and
exactly zero (0) of them has made an inquiry of me or my department
about down-licensing to XP. What's the theory here? That some salesman
whips out his slipstreamed XP installation disk and starts canvassing
the ASUS website for his motherboard drivers? Comical.
PS: Microsoft has *always* allowed down-licensing. On all their
products.
--
Giftzwerg
***
Giftzwerg
***
"A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the
Guantanamo Bay detention center concludes that the prison complies with
the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva conventions."
- NY Times
"Huh. One wonders what every leftist cunt in the pueblo was yappin'
about for the last eight fucking years, then."
Graham Thurlwell
<snip>
> The lesson? Download SP2 and install it BEFORE going online instead of
> attempting it via Windows Update. Life in the wild can be a hazardous
> proposition.
I once had to reinstall XP on the family's PC. Installed XP,
restarted. SP1 from CD, restarted. SP2 from CD, restarted. Met with a
screen demanding I activate now.
No problem, I'll just go to the desktop, install the modem drivers and
then active. No activate later button, can't get to the desktop. Ah.
Where's the phone gone?...
To be fair to Microsoft, activating over the phone was fast and, IIRC,
free. Nevertheless, it taught me to be wary of getting anything else
with activation.
--
Jades' First Encounters Site - http://www.jades.org/ffe.htm
The best Frontier: First Encounters site on the Web.
nos...@jades.org /is/ a real email address!
eddys...@hotmail.com
> To be fair to Microsoft, activating over the phone was fast and, IIRC,
> free.
Ha ! - for you guys it probably is - for the likes of us M$ can't even
be bothered to have a working webpage with the details of how to go
about this.
This is the link you get when you click on "activation and validation"
on their official Vista website :
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/genuine/default.mspx
The result : I've now overwritten the partition with the non-working
Vista I paid good money for with a Windows 7 beta and I figure M$ owes
me a free OS.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
rus4...@hotmail.com
<eddyster...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 24 feb, 18:55, Graham Thurlwell <nos...@jades.org> wrote:
>
> > To be fair to Microsoft, activating over the phone was fast and, IIRC,
> > free.
>
> Ha ! - for you guys it probably is - for the likes of us M$ can't even
> be bothered to have a working webpage with the details of how to go
> about this.
>
> This is the link you get when you click on "activation and validation"
> on their official Vista website :
>
>
> The result : I've now overwritten the partition with the non-working
> Vista I paid good money for with a Windows 7 beta and I figure M$ owes
> me a free OS.
>
> Greetz,
>
> Eddy Sterckx
All of a sudden, I find myself getting really paranoid about how I
manage all these partitions.
I've got three OEM WinXP licenses, all 100% legit, than can be easily
reapplied as I upgrade my equipment
Likewise, I've got two Vista Premiums licenses, but the documentation
at hand would indicate that they're less "transferable" than the XP
license.
Basically, I find myself downgrading systems to Vista as I continue my
migration to the W7 beta, which is to say that the Vista-OS systems
are getting the short end of the hardware stick.
WinXP is sitting pretty on the primary partitions, but looking at
retirement, circa 2010.
This can't be what M$ intended, or is it?