Hey peeps, been test driving the release candidate of Windows 7- really liking it so far. Everything seems to run at least as quick as on xp and so far I havn't had much trouble running any of my apps and games. What trouble I have had was solved using techniques that work with Vista. Anyways, thought we ought to have a thread for folks test driving W7.
Cheers!

I started a thread about the 64 bit version, complaining of not being able to install half of my Asus mobo drivers ( 64 bit versions on their website ) and some of the extra nice utilities like TurboV. After trying for a long time I gave up. Will have to go to the 32 bit version if I get it at all. I ain't gonna pay the full price for the 64 bit version and risk never getting it to run right on my rig.

That being said, I think it more AsusTek's fault and not Microsoft's.

As far as how I liked it other than that I can't say I liked it too much. After being used to XP it was too hard to find stuff. And I saw no Run command line anywhere. How can you bring up commands like Msconfig if there's no run command line?? I finally found where they hid the hard drive managament utility though. Microsoft always makes it hard to find stuff and XP was no exception. You only remember how to find things like System Restore if you do it all the time. MS likes to mess with people's heads and bury half their stuff in a maze of confusing layers. Hard to navigate sometimes. Some things never change in the MS world, remembering where to navigate to find things is one of them.

All run commands can be entered in the search bar in the start menu. Also the Windows 7 discs will contain both 32 and 64bit versions. For anyone interested if you pre-order win7 upgrade disc (which you can do a clean install with) before July 11th you get a big discount. Home Premium for $50, Pro for $100

quote:

Originally posted by Urufu_Shinjiro:
All run commands can be entered in the search bar in the start menu. Also the Windows 7 discs will contain both 32 and 64bit versions. For anyone interested if you pre-order win7 upgrade disc (which you can do a clean install with) before July 11th you get a big discount. Home Premium for $50, Pro for $100

I supposed I could do that and have both 32 and 64. Not a bad price for MSOS either. Where do I go to order it? The same place I went to download it?? I know, I know, that's what Google is for.

If you can do a full install with the upgrade version then what's the real difference between it and the "Full" version?? Why pay more for the full version if both are really full? By clean install do you mean full install??

One of the major reasons to upgrade is to move to 64 bit, if for no other reason than to be able to use more than four gigabytes of memory. But there are, and will increasingly be, more and more reasons to leave XP32 behind.

I'm interested in the preorder, but also a little thrown by what they mean by upgrade.

Just in playing with the various menus and such, it's really been pretty straightforward. The program control isn't bad, and certainly no worse than Zonealarm's various warnings. It seems that the idea is to make where certain things are, more logical. And, strangely enough, I'm using less memory and getting better reception on my network with 7.

Also, it worked and looked great without installing any chipset drivers- heck any drivers at all. I've been installing various drivers, but it seems I didn't need to- how about that?!

You never need to install chipset drivers. Windows and most other programs will run without them. Only question is will the programs, especially games, run as well without them. The answer is usually no. Your motherboard has chipset drivers for a reason. They aren't put on your system to take up space. Your chipset is a traffic cop directing traffic to varying degrees depending on which processor you have. Helps things to run more smoothly.

The difference is the upgrade disc requires that there be a previous OS. You do not have to do an in place upgrade, you can do a full clean install. With XP upgrade discs they asked you to put in a windows disc to prove you had a previous OS. Vista was a little different, if you had an OS on the hdd then you could choose to upgrade or to do a full clean install (formatting in the process), if you had a blank hdd you had to use the disc to install vista but not put in a product key, and not activate it, then "upgrade" the vista you just installed. Kinda silly but not such a big deal to get windows 7 for $50.

Oh, and go to http://store.microsoft.com/home.aspx for the deal.

quote:

Originally posted by mortoma:
You never need to install chipset drivers. Windows and most other programs will run without them. Only question is will the programs, especially games, run as well without them. The answer is usually no. Your motherboard has chipset drivers for a reason. They aren't put on your system to take up space. Your chipset is a traffic cop directing traffic to varying degrees depending on which processor you have. Helps things to run more smoothly.

Well, right, except that with XP various components (like my wireless adapter) wouldn't work until I installed the drivers. With 7, the wireless card has worked from minute 1 without me installing anything, and is working better than it ever did on XP using the D-link drivers. I installed the chipset drivers, and it seemed to make no difference in performance. Without graphics drivers, everything looked great and ran fine, installing them (as you would expect) made a difference in games. I'm just saying that 7 is a very different animal than XP was in regards to how, and how well it works.

Thanks for the explanation, Urufu. Do you think that xp mode is worth the cost of going pro? I'll probably preorder.

The chipset drivers (and all of the rest) were on the Windows 7 disk, and were installed with the operating system. Many systems that you would install XP on had no need of any additional drivers, because the drivers that were bundled with XP were as up to date as any available. The latest hardware will require additional drivers for XP. W7 is so new that the bundled drivers will take care of just about everything.

Good info, Repoman11- a question, how do it know? What I mean to say, it has chipset drivers for all the various motherboards already on disk? Or does it get them after it figures out which mobo you have? With xp, there wasn't much that worked without a explicit driver install on my part.

The driver cache on Windows 7 is larger than ever, no doubt. I'm sure it's one of the many reasons it takes up so much disk space. But as newer hardware is released, it will begin falling behind. But so long as a driver for the network interface is there, any missing drivers will be downloaded with the updates.

Getting the drivers automatically- that's something new, then?

quote:

Originally posted by erco415:
Thanks for the explanation, Urufu. Do you think that xp mode is worth the cost of going pro? I'll probably preorder.

Probably not, most users will not have a need for it, it's not for gaming but for other software that will not run in Vista/Win7. I ordered Pro just cause I'm that kind of tweaker but for most pro is entirely unnecessary.


Erco, this is nothing new, when XP was first released it di have some basic drivers for basic hardware built in. But not long after that hardware progressed to the point that none of the built in drivers in XP were relavent. Vista has the same thing, built in drivers, but when Vista was released the hardware folks were NOT on the ball and had not made Vista drivers yet, hence all the problems Vista had on release. Win7 has an advantage in this area as there are a lot of vista drivers around and win7 uses the same driver model for the most part. It won't be too long before you need to start installing the drivers again. I don't trust the drivers from windows update anymore, not since that time they updated the X52 drivers but the old software was incompatible and there was no way to roll back. What a pain that was. Bottom line is it is always best (in most cases) to install the drivers for your hardware and keep them up to date.

quote:

Originally posted by erco415:

quote:

Originally posted by mortoma:
You never need to install chipset drivers. Windows and most other programs will run without them. Only question is will the programs, especially games, run as well without them. The answer is usually no. Your motherboard has chipset drivers for a reason. They aren't put on your system to take up space. Your chipset is a traffic cop directing traffic to varying degrees depending on which processor you have. Helps things to run more smoothly.

Well, right, except that with XP various components (like my wireless adapter) wouldn't work until I installed the drivers. With 7, the wireless card has worked from minute 1 without me installing anything, and is working better than it ever did on XP using the D-link drivers. I installed the chipset drivers, and it seemed to make no difference in performance. Without graphics drivers, everything looked great and ran fine, installing them (as you would expect) made a difference in games. I'm just saying that 7 is a very different animal than XP was in regards to how, and how well it works.

Thanks for the explanation, Urufu. Do you think that xp mode is worth the cost of going pro? I'll probably preorder.

My USB wireless card ( Belkin Wireless G Plus MIMO ) did not work with Windows 7 automatically as there were no such drivers in it's driver database apparently. And my wireless adaptor card is old, at least two years.

And not only that, it didn't work well with Windows 7 even after I installed the drivers from the disk. Sometimes I boot into Win 7 and it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it works only after I put it into a different USB port!! So far not impressed with Win7 at all. But I have not tried the 32 bit version yet.

Sorry to hear that mortoma. It really makes one wonder how one person can have no issues and another have nothing but issues. I've even seen it with people who have the same gear.

For your wireless adapter, you said you used the drivers off the disc? Were they Vista x64 drivers?

That's interesting about your USB card, Mortoma. I don't have any hard evidence yet, but I *seem* to have issues now and then with things plugged into USB. My Saitek throttle quadrant, which plugs into my G15 keyboard, often won't power up until I plug and unplug it. My USB mouse stayed lit up after shutdown, and I needed to unplug/plug it to get it to turn off. On the other hand, my wireless adapter is a D-Link Pci-E Unit, and has worked exceptionally well. I'm thinking maybe a USB issue?

If W7 drivers aren't available, I use Vista 64. If the Vista drivers don't want to work, then I try comparability mode, and that seems to work then.

I'm not a Vista user, how similar are V and W7 from the user standpoint? At first glance, I like 7.

The USB port on the G15 is not a powered hub, it may not be providing enough juice to the throttle quad. I know when I plugged my trackIR into my G15 it flipped out due to lack of power.

Indeed, but the only thing changed is the OS. It worked normally under XP.