h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What is your opinion on Windows 7. I tried it and didn't like it. Mainly because it was Vista with a prettier theme and old programs are not all compatible. On the plus side they seem to have fixed some of the bugs like windows don't freeze all the time like they used to on vista.

If you have tried it what is your opinion on it?

If you have read about it what do you think?

Will you buy it or upgrade to it once it comes out?

I've heard mixed views on it so far.

Got to play with it a day or two back; as my lodger is in the #'biz' he's got a full copy of the err whatever its called pre released version to profesionals....

It ran quickly; this on an ancient old battered laptop we use for testing stuff on....

Initially seems very clunky and wierd, just because its not set up how I'd set it, and all the things on the menus arn't where i'd put them... I guess that is the default layout of things... which well, no one keeps that once they've got an OS installed.

the search/run type in stuff box is an idea that I can see potentially being very useful but again, just playing with the OS for an hour or so you're not going to suddenly be as famuliar and comfetable with using its features as you are with an OS you've been using 16 hours a day for years and years...

Launch time on applications seemed fairly fast, again for an ancient laptop anyhow.... But i'd not used that machine with XP in ages so I can't really compaire...

There is a free applicaiton avilible from MS to test compatibility of your existing PC and its hardware, with the new OS. so far I've heard a lot of people stressing the importance of making sure you've copies of everythign on the HD before installing win 7, not just your own files etc, but also any software, as the install isn't relaly* an update, its effectively a reinstall and so I think most of the software on the machine gets lost or at least broken when installing 7, so you need to reinstall it.

The support for more physical memory/RAM will be what eventually means I upgrade; at the moment the 2 to 4 GB I can have at teh most in XP just isn't anywhere near enough for some of the things I'm doing, so being able to straight away take it to 16 or 32 or whatever GB of RAM will be really handy....

I'd be interested to see what people think of the 64 bit version, as I remember \xP 64 effectively being utterly broken and no good to anyone :- I'm always in a quandry though with the 64 bit question, as though I do have some* software that will work or at least which can be updated to work on a 64 bit system, there is some I use a lot which I think will just not work full stop with it

I think things in the hardware software world have moved on very fast in the past decade, and on the negative side, they're not always at teh same point as each other:

Why are so many devices made that are still only USB 1.0? Its just too slow for half the things they're trying to achieve (this goes especially for soundcards, wehre most manfacturers are going out of their way to lie to customers, saying a soundcard is 'USB 1.0 and 2.0 compatible', when relaly its just USB 1.0 and won't run at the faster speed...)

Simularly, how many everyday application take full* advantage of the duel core, core II, quad core, and now the I7 2 X quad core processing? (one of my main bits of software I use does, but the vast vast majority of software on this system, including new software costing £1000, just won't see the second, third/forth processer cores).

ASimularly, some things are catching up eventually (the recording sofwtare I use has supported using over 100 GB of RAM for some time, but there hasn't relaly been a viable OS to actually* allow to do this, well you could with Vista if you wanted to symultainiously break everythign else on the PC).

A lot of this will for me, I guess as for many others come down to money; sure the OS is X price; but how much will you then need to spend updating hardware that just won't work with 7, or on updating software that won't support 7? Will my old copy of Office standard 2003 (which meets all my office requirements nowdays), work with 7? I already know its going to cost me multiple hundreds of pounds just to update one of my essential bits of software to work with 7... so I might be putting off upgrading for a while, despite the benifit for me at least in being able to have more RAM

Lodgers now installed it a couple of times on machines and hasn't noticed any problems with haardware not working, even on this ancient old laptop I tried it on, though I have heard many people report teh opposite.... Definately test that hardware compatibility test thing MS offer before jumping right in...

I ran it on my laptop (1.83 ghx dual core, 1 gig ram, intel 945 chipset) and its what vista should have been. Is quicker than vista but its still nowhere near as fast as xp. Yes you get lots of gimmivks with it, wallpapers that cahnge every 30 mins etc, but for most people who didn't upgrade to vista the change from xp to windows 7 will still be annoying.

Widgets aren't tied to the side abr anymore, in fact there is nno sidebar. You can "remove" IE8 and Windows media palyer 12 etc.But i have my doubts as to how well it actually removes it or whether it just removes the icon.

Personally I can't see the upgrade from xp to windows 7 being worth it but they are desuppporting xp so people may have to upgrade or use antoerh os. Vista to 7 is probably worth upgrading yes but not xp. If only they weren't de supporting it.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/146995;_ylt=A0LEVFV7Z4FKanABJxBMMJA5

so its still not perfect!

From what I've read, it's better than Vista. Some people are saying that if you buy a Vista laptop/PC after a certain date, you should be able to have a free upgrade to Windows 7. Don't quote me 'cos I don't know if that's gospel. I've also read that it's XP with some additions, rather than Vista with some subtractions.

I have an XP PC and a Vista laptop. I'm so ed off with Vista that I have two options: downgrade to XP or switch to Windows 7. The drivers for Vista will work with Windows 7 (or so I've read), so that's the option that involves the least hassle for me. I've never bought an OS that's just been released before, so that should tell you how much I HATE Vista.

I've heard the free update thing for both vista and xp. not sure how true it is though.

I have Vista on my desktop and the thing I hate the most is anytime I use explorer to do any function like access network settings for example it says the program is not responding and it freezes. Also it didn't always detect my internet connection properly. And basic things like arranging folders are a pain with the user interface.

In windows 7 I can tell that we're going to need to upgrade software quite a bit. That's how they make their money. And while some things have been smoothed out-like connecting to the internet and windows not freezing as much-they should have been fixed since the beginning.

I switched to XP on my laptop because I used to have Vista in it and it was a nightmare. It was incredibly slow and explorer froze even more than on my desktop and the system would never go to sleep when I closed the laptop. On the plus side sleep worked most of the time in windows 7.

Not used Windows 7. Heard it's better than Vista (no great shakes there!).

However, I have had a works PC with Vista and Office 2007 on it and a) Vista, not nice, and b) the ribbon menu system in Office is awful for 'power' users.

I have heard Windows 7 is based on the ribbons model is his correct, and not to topic-drift too much what do people think of the ribbons. As I need it for my job on tight deadline stuff having to spend 10minutes working out how to do something that would have taken me seconds is eating into my productivity. And don't start on the Excel VBA stuf that is subtley but annoyingly different on the actual spreadsheets..

Overall at home I'll stick with XP/Office 2003. Both work very well for what I do.