The Glade 4.0

I was wondering if anyone has tried 7 yet? Should I go with Home or Pro? I'm looking at buying a laptop and it's free included or +75 for the upgrade to Pro. I mostly will be playing WoW, DOTA, listening to music, running Reason, Propellerhead, Ableton, Photoshop and Photomatix Pro.

What do you guys suggest? Should I just take Home and load XP dual boot?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I haven't played around with it at home. However, one of my buddies loaded one of the Win7 betas on his home machine and ran WoW on it, said it ran better on 7 than it did on Vista.

I've been looking at 7 for my next machine (delayed indefinitely since I'm on a console kick), but I'm going for the Ultimate copy when I do.

I love 7. As long as your system has drivers, you should have no problems.

So is "Windows 7" the official name? I figured closer to release Microsoft would go with another image-y name (like...I dunno, Windows Snowflake or something). I can get behind the simplified nomenclature.

windows 7 is the official name. I've been running the RC version for a few months now and haven't had any problems with it. my daughter does some gaming and seem to like over her XP machine. Official release Oct 22.
I preordered ultimate for $149 when it was offered., Just found out friday since I do a lot of work for non profits it's available to me for $9 , $7 for pro.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

Pro has built in "XP mode" which should be able to run about anything that 7 can't run natively while remaining in the 7 environment.

So...go Pro. But what do I know?

I have been running Windows 7 since the first beta was released. I am now running the RC1 and plan on upgrading to retail when it comes out. I have never had a single problem with it.

The virtual XP environment you can run in pro/ultimate has one downside: no 3d acceleration. It's mostly there to run old business applications.

You can probably get Home and enjoy it without complaint. I like to have everything, though, so I'll likely get Ultimate even if unnecessary.

Basically all versions of Windows 7 come with all the features of "Ultimate." It's just that the cheaper versions have more features locked until you pay for them. However, I believe you can pick and choose which ones you want to unlock (and pay for) therefore I wouldn't really recommend the more expensive versions.

I have been using Windows 7 beta 64 bit off and on since January. It wasn't until around May that I began using it as my primary OS. I personally love it. It's fast, it's efficient, it's pretty. I was even shocked the 64 bit version ran "Beavis & Butthead: Virtual Stupidity" (a 1995(!) adventure game that runs directly from the CD, the only thing it touches your hard drive for is save games).

I've been wanting to make the jump to a 64bit operating system for some time now, as I have been sick and tired of the 3GB RAM limitation of 32 bit OS'es. My biggest fear was the incompatibility of older games, as 64bit won't run anything lower than 32 bit games (including a 32 bit game with a 16 bit installer... though if you can get around the installer you are golden). But most things I've thrown at it actually have run. If the games you are concerned about are MS-DOS games, I'd recommend DOSBox (which you probably already have if you play them with XP). The games it won't run (or won't with any user-made patches), I'll just keep Windows XP around. I plan on doing the same thing I am now, partitioning my drive and having XP installed on one partition and Win7 on the other.

The only two games I cannot get to run (that SHOULD run) in Windows 7 beta are Majesty 2 and Secret of Monkey Island (the new version on Steam). The latter was working fine the first time I installed it, now it refuses to run. Both just won't start up, though Majesty runs fine on my wife's Windows 7. I am hoping that the retail version will solve whatever it is that needs to be solved.

For people who run Vista and it's stable, you probably don't need to upgrade to Windows 7 right off the bat unless you've got money to blow. Windows 7 does feature some changes (and a lot less bloat) but they are essentially the same operating system.

I love how fast and efficient Windows 7 feels. It starts up very quickly. I groan whenever I have to boot up XP, as it takes four times as long to get to my desktop (with the exact same programs/tasks loaded).

I didn't want to touch Vista until it was out of what I called "Public Beta." But when I heard they were streamlining vista, relaxing the security pop-ups, and basically taking everything negative people had heard about vista and turning it around, I decided to give the beta a try. I pre-ordered two copies in the summer (for me and my wife), and we eagerly await them.

If you're still in XP limbo and wanted to make the jump to Vista but held back because of all the early negative reports, then Windows 7 will welcome you with open arms.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I think I may have to get Windows 7...when I build a new machine later next year.

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Ron Paul 2012

I'm def looking forward to windows 7 myself, though the thing i'm more wondering about is it's perfomance compared to XP, probably my biggest is the concern of memory, my system has 2GB of ram which is still fine for gaming on XP, but i'm wondering if 7 is as bad as Vista in memory usage. I guess i'll find out soon enough though since I had done the $50 pre-order for the 7 home premium upgrade so i'll probably get it sometime next week.

My wife only has 2 GB of RAM. And she plays a lot of games and they run just fine. The only game I have seen that I personally believe more RAM would help her is in Age of Conan when the game begins to slow down in populated areas.

RAM is so cheap now that there's almost no reason not to upgrade. Windows 7 also comes with both 32bit and 64bit OSs on the same DVD, so if you have a 64bit capable processor I'd recommend the 64 bit version, so you can break the 3 GB of RAM barrier.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I'looking at buying the new Asus G60VX, it comes out tomorrow. I think I'm looking forward to getting Windows 7.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Good, hopefully i'll be fine then.

Well since I have an older system there are some reasons to not want to upgrade, performance DDR1 memory is hard to come by now, and adding another pair of 1GB sticks means I need to drop my memory timings from 1T to 2T and 2GB sticks never had the faster memory timings the 1GB sticks did and with the older Athlon 64 X2's fast memory timing was more important than clock speed of the ram unless you got up above 800Mhz which isn't easy with the old DDR1's that the default speed is 400Mhz. Obviously slightly slower timings are a much better thing than running out of memory, but i'd like to avoid it if posible being that it is an older system it needs every ounce of extra speed to keep up with newer games.


Though I may end up having to do a full upgrade soon enough, i'll see once Dragon Age comes out since i'd rather get that on the PC since that would ultimatly have mods where as the PS3 version while it will run fine won't ever have those mods and i'm not sure if my PC will run it at high enough graphic levels at 1080p.

...

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't know how it'd perform on old hardware. Probably slightly better than Vista would.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

On my current PC, I have Vista. I take it there's no way to just upgrade to 7 short of a complete wipe and reinstall?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I believe you can upgrade straight to 7 from Vista. You need to do a complete install for XP.

Yep. Vista lets you upgrade without a full wipe. XP, not so lucky.

And it looks like I was wrong. I thought that the 64 bit and 32 bit versions of Windows 7 came on the same disc. My copy of Windows 7 that arrived today had two separate discs. One 64bit, the other 32.

The downside is that I may have to get a new monitor, as for some reason it won't let me change my refresh rate from 60 hz (and on a CRT that is headache city), unlike it's beta version.

The bright side is that Majesty 2 and Monkey Island work, which they refused to in the beta.

Another thing to note: Even though I bought the "upgrade" version of Windows 7 (and did a clean installation/wipe) it never once prompted me for my XP disc or an XP product key (and I am pretty sure it didn't check my other partitioned drive to see what was installed on it). It looks like you can upgrade to Win7 as if it were an OEM copy.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Info on activating the Upgrade version without an existing disc (although it sounds like it just worked for you Numbuk)

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

Interesting. Yeah I didn't even have to go that far. I just installed the OS as normal and had it format that partition of my HD. No registry editing or anything. It wasn't a completely blank HD, but it may as well have been.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!