Windows 7 - How do you like it?
 

So I threw windows 7 on my 2½ year old vaio notebook to try it out. When I was installing it, I had accidentally clicked past the cd key screen. What's surprising, especially for an MS product, is that it let me continue installing without entering a cd key. In fact, it's still running and I've never put in the key that they gave me.

The only issue I've run across so far, is that any video driver that I've tried to use, both from the windows update site and the 32bit vista driver from the sony site, lock up the pc when I try to full-screen a video. But, the default vga driver works ok, except that the picture quality in videos isn't that good, and when there is high motion scenes it kinda skips. But, being beta and only a driver issue, that's no big deal.

It runs pretty smooth on my pc, 1.73Ghz centrino with 1GB memory, with all the default eye candy on. The workgroup file browsing actually seems to be a bit faster than what it was in xp, so that was pretty cool.

I'm not sure if it's just a setting I haven't found yet, but it seems as if standby and hibernation mode are disabled in the beta.

The show desktop button is in a nice place, in the bottom right corner of the screen. I'm not sure how it was in vista. But having it in the corner like that makes it really easy to hit the button quickly.



How do you like the w7 beta so far?

i havent used it but my friend tried it out and likes it

I've always had issues with Windows, always been a fan of BSD/Linux. I had Windows XP on a 2.4ghz system of mine I had laying around and it ran like crap. I put Windows7 on it and it works VERY well. No issues at all. I also never entered a key and it's been working like a champ for games.

I have a 2.8 GHz box that I need to do something with. Is the beta free or do you pay for it?

It's free and available until Jan 24th, according to the wikipedia page. The beta install is going to expire on Aug 1st.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...-download.aspx

use it on main machine and love it. quick, responsive, works in sleep mode, and top performance.

Crap I just realized my spare box doesn't have 1 GB of RAM.

You guys have any suggestions as to what else I could put on it? It's running Windows 98 believe it or not, LOL, but it basically doesn't work anymore. I don't know if it's the operating system that finally killed it or if there is a hardware failure somewhere. I would like to test it somehow before buying an operating system. I could really use the box for some tasks that I need to do.

Any advice?

I am running it.. heres the scoop so far.

1st.. it didn't reconizes my 2nd partition had to go locate that and fix that error.
2nd.. ie8 crashes everyday, all websites look broken in someway.
3rd.. in photoshop when selecting an area to crop it makes tons of lines all over the place.
4th.. no drivers for anything yet.. but that makes sense.
5th.. my mouse jumps all over the places.. like I drank 40 cups of coffee.
6th.. my laptop nows makes this weird clicking sound about every 2 hours.. no sound on.
7th.. my tabs were not working, but suddenly they are.
8th.. you get my point..

on the bright side.. I like the new taskbar, the speed difference is noticable, i like the option of draging stuff to the side and it going half screen or to top and it going full screen and drag to middle and it goes a default size.. also looks alot cleaner.. not 1000 folders and files all over the place. very simple to navigate.

when I save stuff onto the desktop from the net or photoshop image.. it tells me i need permission.. or its being used and i click again and it works.. i get this like 50% of the time..

when the bugs are gone thou.. i think it will be the better of them all.

I haven't really installed anything on it yet, just media player classic and firefox. They seem to work well though. Oh, and ffdshow, thinking it might help out with video quality.

Yea i like the taskbar redesign also. Having the icons there instead of the program bars, or whatever you wanna call em, is a spiffy touch.

I haven't tried it but my friends said they like it.

I'm loving the 64 bit build... Everything is running noticeable faster... Very simple and clean layout. Only issues I've experienced so far is DVR playback in media center, but I'm assuming that has something to do with my mpeg accelerator.

It's not much different from vista, now windows 7 can recognize voices, example: "Open notepad", then opens it... And we don't have that common bar, it's different now, like MAC interface. Windows 7 will be more solid than vista, but it mays be called Windows Clouds...

People complaining and judging betas (they got for free and nobody forced them to try) as a final product are....wierd

I've installed it and everything seems fine so far. kinda makes me think of windows 98 and vista mixed. I have it on my laptop and it goes into hibernation anytime i close it. only problem i have is trying to get it to work with my phone as a modem.... but thats driver issues i'm sure...

Working good so far.

I have it installed on a Mac and an older PC desktop. No major issues, but I haven't done too much with it as of yet.

Yeah you have the demo version

Didn't try it yet, it takes me a lot of time to install all the programs I need. But thanks all for the opinions.

that would be the whole point of a beta..