Windows 7 - Your views

[Scottish Business Owner]

I've read some very favourabe reviews of Windows 7 on the internet and I wondered whether it's a good idea to upgrade.

I have a desktop and laptop both running Vista and I noticed a package offering a three user license to Windows 2007 for £129.99.

This actually seems quite reasonable so whats the views from people who have either made the upgrade and what's the opinion of the IT people.

Is it worth upgrading?

 

[McVicar Marketing]

Hi ,

Haven't got an opinion myself (as yet) - but would be very interested to hear what our IT gurus think.

How did you find Vista? I also run it on a laptop and a PC - and seem to be one of the few who don't have any problems with it. Actually quite enjoy it ....

I only had a couple of problems with getting all my third party peripherals working, while they got themselves sorted out with updated drivers. Is Windows 7 set to have similar issues?

As with Vista, I’ll wait a short while to see if there is any significant issues with it, then will probably take the leap across myself. Just can’t help being an ‘early adopter’ …

All best,
Inga

 

[Former Member 1]

Vista wasn't Microsoft's first disaster OS and it won't be their last.... I see absolutely no reason to do this company's final evaluation and testing for them... And pay for the privilege to boot! (or possibly fail to boot as the case may be )

 

[Mike Lewis]

,

To decide whether you should upgrade, the question is: Do you currently have any problems that the new version will solve?

If you don't, my advice would be to leave well alone -- at least, for now. Or, at least, do as Matt and Inga have suggested, and wait until things have settled down a bit.

Mike

 

[Brian McIntosh]

Have to agree with Mike here. I'm still on XP as it does everything I need it to do. And it's pretty stable. I've never tried Vista so don't know what i'm missing.

 

[Former Member 1]

Have to agree with Mike here. I'm still on XP as it does everything I need it to do. And it's pretty stable. I've never tried Vista so don't know what i'm missing.

Stress???

Many of my students start to build their own edit systems as they get into the course. Invariably those with the biggest problems are using 'turnkey' PCs under Vista... Nobody who scratch-builds even bothers with it....

I often reflect on the fact that for day-to-day computing there's nothing particularly pressing I do today that I couldn't do a decade ago under W98...:confused1: In fact I seem to recall commmenting when Vista came out that our CCTV server ran W98.... And it STILL does... T'ain't broke; I'm not for fixing it!!!

 

[doogie]

Personally I have only ever briefly touched Vista, and had intentionally stuck with XP, but found W7 too tempting

I was running the release candidate on my netbook at home for months, but once the RTM was available on Microsoft Developer Network, I upgraded my netbook to it, and also installed it on my main development machine.

Personally I absolutely love it - some things take a bit of getting used to (although I understand they were partially changed in Vista, so some of it will be familiar to you ),but it feels as fast on the netbook as XP did, and my girlfriend says she is happier with it on her laptop than she was with the preinstalled Vista.

Using IE8 on W7 brought me, a long term Firefox user and evangelist (since when it was called Phoenix - that's been a very long time in computer terms!) to using IE8 as my main browser at work and home.

According to the general consensus, if you are running Vista on a PC, W7 should appear to be faster, however even reinstalling Vista and not putting on a lot of the crud that gets accumulated over the life of a PC will speed it up to a degree.

I still have XP available as a dual boot on my main development PC, but have only loaded it about once, to find a specific file that permissions wouldn't let me see from W7, any other time I've needed to test things against XP, I've just run it in a virtual machine.

 

[Canary Dwarf]

Going to switch some time soon on the laptop, but will leave Vista on desktops. I like Vista's interface compared to XP, but it can be really slow on fast hardware, and niggly compatibility problems.

 

[doogie]

Going to switch some time soon on the laptop, but will leave Vista on desktops. I like Vista's interface compared to XP, but it can be really slow on fast hardware, and niggly compatibility problems.

If you're running Vista just now, and can be bothered with the upheaval, you should find that W7 has a similar look and feel, but will run a lot faster.

 

[Lanarkshire IT Services]

Hi All

From a support point of view it is excellent. Its fast, stable, easy on resources and the XP mode virtualisation really helps if you still need / have apps that require XP to run.

Best of new and old really!

Also check out SBS 2008 - pretty nifty but high hardware requirements.

Regards

 

[DickW]

I've had a few problems with Vista with the main issues being a lack of drivers. I'm still looking for one for my Epson laserjet which I can now only run by tranferring docs to an XP based laptop.. !!

Windows 7..... Nae chance yet..... Think I'll leave it for the first upgrade pack .....

 

[doogie]

I've had a few problems with Vista with the main issues being a lack of drivers. I'm still looking for one for my Epson laserjet which I can now only run by tranferring docs to an XP based laptop.. !!

Windows 7..... Nae chance yet..... Think I'll leave it for the first upgrade pack .....

What's the model of the Epson - you might find that there is W7 support for it.

 

[DickW]

It's an EPL-5800L.... A good standard printer ......

Also remembered that I have a similar problem with a scanner for which no vista driver exists....... That's a Trust unit but I think they've given up making scanners altogether..

What about programmes such as Office 2003... ? Is that compatible with W7?

 

[doogie]

Oh well that was quick - EPL-5800L according to Epson's support site, is not supported under Windows 7 at all.

Seems peculiar to me, but they've obviously got some weird processing going on and do most of the smarts in the pc rather than the printer, and therefore without the right driver, it's not compatible.

Office 2003 is compatible with W7, as are most programs that don't rely on any sort of special hidden operating system commands, and even then, the XP compatibility mode should take care of them.

 

[DickW]

Sadly the Epson won't work with Vista either....... !

 

[peterfarr]

I've found Windows & much faster, more stable and with a much better interface, however it's a bit wrinkly with some legacy applications and Windows Media Centre is slower than the Vista version. See my blog post at Peter Farr's Blog: Windows 7: The Curates Egg?

 

[computer storm]

I've found Windows & much faster, more stable and with a much better interface, however it's a bit wrinkly with some legacy applications and Windows Media Centre is slower than the Vista version. See my blog post at Peter Farr's Blog: Windows 7: The Curates Egg?

If you install windows xp mode you can run all of your legacy applications, I am running Nero 7 on my windows 7 installation and works fine, did you install the software with admin rights.

I say this as you have put down that you cannot get nero to work in windows 7 on your blog.

 

[peterfarr]

Thanks for your reply computer storm. I tried that but no joy...! :sad: I can live without Nero 7. And I was pretty p***** off that Nero wouldn't (I can't believe they couldn't!) provide an upgrade like all the other software people. There are plenty of functionality replacements for Nero :001_tongue:.

 

[Canary Dwarf]

My first impressions of Windows 7 are that in starts up faster, shuts down faster, looks and feels largely similar to Vista, but the new laptop I got it on overheated within an hour of unboxing it! It was a present from my wife so she's pretty disappointed, and she paid extra for 'top-of-the-range quality'.

Not OS-related obviously, but I will post a more comprehensive review when I get my replacement, hopefully today.

My biggest problem when Vista was new was not inter-OS compatibility, but 32-bit/64-bit availability. I still find that there are some programs/drivers not available for 64-bit OS. Is 7 exclusively 64-bit?

 

[Brian McIntosh]

I had to get a computer builtto run my photo editing stuff as my old one just ran out of steam. After much deliberaton, I plumped for Win 7 as the OS and It's been fabulous. All my programs have been loaded, even some old ones, and it's blisteringly fast. I'm really happy with it. Saying that It's not connected to the internet, only occasionally for updates, but I'm impressed.