Been running Windows 7 RTM on my testbed for about 3 weeks now.

Seems ok, much better than Vista was when first released, but still annoys me in many ways.

Some of my customers have asked about upgrading from their current Vista setups, but my advise to them has been to save their cash.
Personally I just don't think it's worth the money upgrading from Vista SP2 to Windows 7.

seacue:

You might want to try running VMware's Workstation on your 7 PC and create a
Windows XP virtual machine in it. Then you'll have the "best" of both worlds.

Boot up timings
 

Speaking from experence, one of the gotya's of XP is that through time, the boot up time becomes glacial and I do mean slow. Vista is much the same. I wonder how WIN 7 fares in this respect ? - From what I have read, its fundamentally an improved Vista.

CAT III

CAT III
I've been running W 7 RC1 since it's release in May and haven't noticed any slowdown to start up, but then again I do keep the start up items to a minimum.

I avoid startup delays by not shutting down the laptop. Just close the laptop, remove the cables, and insert everything in your bag. No start-up delays, that is, if you're not using a Desktop PC.

The laptop probably just goes into Sleep mode once the lid is shut.

Sleep mode is also available to use on a desktop PC with Vista+Win7

And drains the battery. :ouch:

Much better to hibernate.

SD

That's not XP per se, that's the software you install on top of it which 'requires' a memory-resident portion because people seem to have lost the ability to code properly any more.

A vanilla XP install, properly defragged regularly, and containing no new software, won't change in bootup speed at all over time.

I second that. There really is an imperative to maintain a pc, just as you would a car or your house. Although I've never had a problem booting the house.

I have a friend who surfs all day on a completely unprotected laptop & surprise surprise, it's infested with all sorts of horriblemess. She asks me to fix it regularly & I've now refused to look at it anymore until she puts antivirus on & turns on the firewall.

It's amazing how much stuff installs itself, and adds itself to the startup list, even when you think Win7 stops that.

I run MSCONFIG and Task Manager regularly, to see what's crept back.
Even though I don't use Windows Media Player, wmpnetwk.exe is always there. Often when I'm looking in one of the networked folders, WMP will pop up and ask to play something it's spotted.

There's AppleMobileDeviceService.exe, BBC Iplayer Desktop.exe, GoogleCalendarSync.exe, GoogleUpdate.exe, iTunesHelper.exe, jusched.exe, SearchFilterHost.exe, SearchIndexer.exe, SearchProtocolHost.exe, BM.exe, PAC207 Monitor.exe, CorelIOMonitor.exe, CorelPhotoDownloader.exe, wmdc.exe, mobsync.exe, QTTask.exe, and Acrobat Reader_sl.exe. Then there are about 14 copies of svchost.exe presumably supporting them.

I know what most of them are, and don't think I need them running all the time. I knock them on the head, but they soon sneak back.

AppleMobileDeviceService.exe, BBC Iplayer Desktop.exe, GoogleCalendarSync.exe, GoogleUpdate.exe, iTunesHelper.exe, jusched.exe, SearchFilterHost.exe, SearchIndexer.exe, SearchProtocolHost.exe, BM.exe, PAC207 Monitor.exe, CorelIOMonitor.exe, CorelPhotoDownloader.exe, wmdc.exe, mobsync.exe, QTTask.exe, and Acrobat Reader_sl.exe. Then there are about 14 copies of svchost.exe presumably supporting them.

I know what most of them are, and don't think I need them running all the time. I knock them on the head, but they soon sneak back.

True, all programs wants a part of our RAM and processor time, there's still no law in place that punishes the software vendors and programmers who abuses there customers, by installing some TSR's and background services which makes our system so slow. For the uninitiated, they thought they need a new machine. well thats what all PC vendors and software vendors wants us to do. buy buy buy buy buy....

I don't think there is going to be a huge difference in the remaining power in your battery, as when you're in sleep/hibernate/standby whatever you call that, the only power that's being maintained is your RAM which consumes negligible wattage (didn't crosscheck and researched but this is how I understood it). Besides, the battery has also internal resistance which will make the battery drain even if it's unused or even if disconnected.

So How Good Is you WIN-7 copy?
 

Software pirates hijack Windows 7 China debut - Security- msnbc.com


I got this black screen regulary on an unpirated verion of XP that came with my new computer. When I ran the event viewer after each event it always seems to come up with a CA virus update as the last command before crashing.

So now it's time to renew (which I won't be doing) and just load in a freebie AWG

Following my venting about battery drain, I've drawn a blank with Sony over the power being sucked out of my battery. They refuse to budge - and that's after half an hour of structured argument as to why it's wrong. My wife's HP can be left for a week OFF or Hibernate, and the batt shows 90%+ My Vaio loses 10-15% per day. The only way to stop this is to take the battery out. I've posted the link with the Sony excuse for this.

It's astonishing just how annoying this is.
I would be scared to own a battery that lost a significant amount due to internal resistance. I'd leave it down the garden in a bucket of water.;)

Sleep / Standby are different to hibernate - in hibernation the contents of RAM is written out to disk, so no power at all is required for the RAM.

SD

Just to reinforce what SD has said there is a huge difference between sleep/standby and hibernate.

Hibernate will commit the memory to disk and effectively power down the machine. Sleeping is disabling all non essential components but leaving the machine running.

Whilst they may sound similar, if you sleep a laptop and chuck it in a case you have a high chance of everything overheating as the ventilation has gone. If you hibernate you dont need the ventilation as you have effectively powered down.

I stand corrected. Hibernate is indeed better as it completely turns off everything. But again, sleep/standby will not overheat anything as it will turn off the harddisk, CPU, etc, except the RAM, which is consuming negligible power and negligible temperature compared to cpu, which at that time is already turned off. checked my XP, can't find hibernate, I clicked shutdown and I have only the following options: Log off Shutdown Restart Standby don't know whether i disabled something by accident, the reason why hibernate is not displayed in my xp.

Thanks for the Replies
 

Thanks everyone for the details. Yep like many I do keep an eye on the progs instantiating at startup. monitoring with msconfig and winpatrol (a blast from the past but works on XP). Re the comments about processes consuming battery life - In my experence it does make a difference - minimising the number of extraineous startups does help. PS I forgot to mention I'm running Norton 2009 on the offending M/C - ESET NOD on the "Banger" 800mhx, 10 Gb HD XP SP3 ( My only piece of Kit that did run SP3 without grief initially)

A big drain on battery performance is wireless - You can set things up so that it sleeps after a period of inactivity - I know wifi is never totally inactive but every little helps. Modern HD's seem to be very miserly in their power requirements -As does RAM - Finally you can always slow the CPU a bit - Re Rivits comments. PS I think that the BIOS has to support Hibernate as an option - Not sure though.


CAT III

Press shift while looking.

And Standby doesn't power down everything except RAM: many items remain powered to varying degrees depending on the manufacturer. As Mr Rivets has found, Sony models supposedly in S3 leave a lot of unnecessary things with power, including any built-in camera.

"Can't find hibernate"
 

AFAIK, Hibernate has to be turned on when 2000 or XP is installed.

<START> <CONTROL PANEL> <POWER OPTIONS> then the hibernate tab, and 'enable hibernation'. Then, as BFiver says, you can find 'Hibernate' as an option on shutting down if you press the shift key.

jimtherev, thanks found the hibernate

Hmmmmmm, My pre-ordered shrink-wrapped windows 7 has arrived by snail mail this morning, since the invoice stated quite categorically that it would not be dispatched until the 21st, the Royal Mail obviously has a time machine. :ok:

Received mine from PC world on 19/10/09 I thought it odd as have lots of emails from them stating that it would not ship until 21st and then take up to 7 days to arrive! I guess the forth coming postal strike may have had something to do with early arrival?

Just saw this while checking the news headlines. I hadn't spotted the little button at bottom right. I wonder how many trillion other things I haven't found yet.


BBC NEWS | Technology | A look at what's new in Windows 7

I think you're correct in your assumption.

So much for not auto installing Internet exploder, it did (V8) but gives you a link to FireFox in the favourites list :ugh:

Clean install totally painless although there were one or two pregnant pauses where nowt appeared to happen but over all no problems whatsoever :ok:

I feel cheated! Mine didn't arrive, and I'm off to the Northern Hideaway for a week in the morning. I'll have to carry on with the RC version for a whole week :(

My copy of Win 7 Ultimate arrived a few months ago. Delivered first class from the internet. :p

I'm not sure when my W7 RC starts to disintegrate. Is there any way of telling the exact time?

Next August I believe LR.

Next August as GG says.

What will happen is you will lose your wallpaper in favour of a black background & a reminder every hour to come in no 7, your time is up. It will otherwise work as normal, so no need to panic, you will still be able to carry on and/or get all your data off as required.

goldfrog

http://209.85.48.8/1889/52/emo/mini-respect-.gif http://209.85.48.8/1889/52/emo/mini-respect-.gif
http://209.85.48.8/1889/52/emo/mini-respect-.gif


They have changed it from what was originally mooted :(

Happy birthday, Windows 7!
 

Well, it's here now...

I have been running Win 7 RC for several months. I should add that never before have I been tempted so early by a new offering from Microsoft - previously I have done what others here are advocating and waited a year or so. Two things made the difference this time: the first was the Vista bloatware on my Dell (I have wanted XP Pro on the machine when I bought it earlier this year, but they would only supply Vista Ultimate, due to compatibility (i.e. Windows Media Center [sic]) with its bundled Hauppauge DVB-T TV card. The second was the fact that I had recently passed on my old PC to my daughter and so, for the first time, had a non-critical testbed to try it out on.

I needn't have worried. It puts Vista in the shade, and although I've never run XP on my Dell, I reckon that it would give that a run for its money speed-wise. Yes, the interface is pretty much Vista (with some tweaks) but then the interface was the only thing about Vista that I liked - I'd run XP for years using the Windows Classic interface because I couldn't for the life of me see the point of those fat title bars and I hated the dayglo green Start button.

If you're wavering, I recommend that you give 7 a try. As the press is saying, Microsoft really needs to get this launch right following the (shall we say?) 'suboptimal' uptake of Vista. I think they just might have done that.

Incoming...

Gadget :ok:

Thought it might help to add my experience of Win 7.

Upgraded from Vista home premium to W7 home premium with a downloaded copy.

Went on no problems and nearly all the programmes worked. However - the scanner did not work (HP 3010) and I had to talk to HP to get a solution. Win 7 comes with IE 8 built in. This has a glitch (for me) that does not allow opening a link, say from a pprune thread. Have tried many suggestions from Google but no go.
Opera and Firefox all OK.

Another problem. I downloaded Chrome. Then uninstalled it! It left another glitch that prevented me from opening a link from any of the office 2007 applications. Googling found me a solution to that problem.

It still looks like Vista though
MC

I installed it on the desktop last week, and had no problems. I'd been running the Win 7 RC so knew what to expect from it.

The only difference that I see is that I no longer have the "Remote Desktop Server" on the desktop, which is a slight pain. I'll be looking for a suitable free VNC viewer to go on there, I think.

I'm in the middle of swapping the laptop to Win 7 HP now - or rather, the laptop is. I've just left it to get on with it.

What's the licensing deal...can you put a copy onto your laptop?

3 installs iirc on retail copies. Stand to be corrected though...

One machine per license. Family pack of Windows 7 Home Premium (in select markets) which will allow installation on up to 3 PCs.