[The News Bot]

Microsoft has announced the latest Windows release will not be limited, after the initial launch crashed the whole of the Microsoft site.
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[pandemic]

I installed it yesterday, those using the upgrade should know it takes ages to install. I believe a clean install though only take 20 minutes or there abouts.

Not bad 1st impressions, much quicker and feels less memory intensive. There are still some minor bugs but nothing major. Only dreading that in August the license expires and I have to go back to vista again eurgh.

[AML]

I think its wise to let everyone know that this is still in Beta form and not a complete release.

You may experience issues with the OS and possibly driver issues (depending on your hardware)

If you plan to use it with a HTPC then make sure it is compatible with everything your going to use with it.

I suggest having it on a partition and not completely uninstalling you current OS.

Personally Ive already had driver issues.
I have a creative sound card and current win 7 drivers only support 2.0 sound, even though I have a 5.1 capable sound card.
My guess is that for a HTPC this will be a pretty big issue.

N-Vidia drivers were ok though, even supporting SLI.

[Alicatt]

The download, even on the Technet site, was very slow, and had to be restarted many times before it completed.

[alpine101]

Unless you are prepared to lose your current windows installation, you should NEVER choose the upgrade. This is BETA and when Microsoft launch the production version, you will have to reformat your hard drive and install it again. Read the notes that come with it. If you did the 'upgrade' you will lose all your current windows applications and data.
Only install into a spare free partition.

[Matt306]

or install to a Virtual Machine using something like Microsoft's own Virtual PC 2007


I was intrigued by the "backup or remove mp3's from any attached storage" statement when I installed it. Hopefully it's not some infernal DRM solution.

[dancingphil]

Originally Posted by The News Bot

Microsoft has [IMG]http://n08q1114fvte161.*************.info/img/1929/v08w1128rhlb/smile.gif[/IMG]announced the latest Windows release will not be limited, after the initial launch crashed the whole of the Microsoft site.
More...

Buying version 1.0 of anything is always fraught with danger. Microsoft is not alone in using its customer base as the test bed to ID and fix all problems.

Not wnating to start an OS war here, I am smiling at my first PC in 1985 have 2 Meg of RAM, and a "huge" 20 Meg hard drive. Now I run 1,000Meg of RAM/80,000 Meg hard drive, and am frustrated its not double that.

[andy1249]

Personally Ive already had driver issues.
I have a creative sound card and current win 7 drivers only support 2.0 sound, even though I have a 5.1 capable sound card.
My guess is that for a HTPC this will be a pretty big issue.

Creative had one almighty public relations disaster with deliberately hobbling audigy drivers for Vista .... hopefully they are not going down that road again ...

See here ,

Creative Technology Threatens SoundBlaster Driver Developer - X-bit labs

The backlash was huge after they publicly posted this statement ...

If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make,” said Mr. O’Shaughnessy.

They had literally millions of comments on their website , and they quickly backed down and allowed the modified audigy vista drivers ( which enabled surround features that creative said couldnt be done ) to be downloaded.

They would be extremely foolish to go down that road again.

With regard to the " Beta" of windows 7 , I have major network issues , but again , as others have said , its a Beta , and you cannot judge the OS on this release.
I certainly wont be installing it as the main OS on my HTPC , the Wife would kill me.

[terminal58]

I've been running Windows 7 for a while now, and I have to say its great, I've been a Vista user since day 1 and I thought that was a good operating system but Windows 7 seems to be a a great leap forward.

[welshy]

I don't mean to sound negative here but why move to a new OS just because it's there? I still use XP and it will take a heck of a lot to make me upgrade. What do we use Windows on a PC for?

1. Browsing the Internet...can do that in XP
2. Checking email...can do that in XP
3. Office applications...can do that in XP
4. Playing games...can do that BETTER in XP
5. Media and video...can do that in XP

etc etc. I know there's a lot more but lets be honest, XP does everything we need it to do on a daily basis.

What I want and perhaps Windows 7 will give it, don't know yet, is the ability to troubleshoot like in the days of Win98 and DOS (yes I'm old). The ability to get into Windows after a driver issue for example. A proper registry system, bring back the good old .INI files, at least they were in English and we could understand and read them!

Don't get me wrong, I love Microsoft software but for me XP works

[AML]

Originally Posted by andy1249

Creative had one almighty public relations disaster with deliberately hobbling audigy drivers for Vista .... hopefully they are not going down that road again ...

See here ,

Creative Technology Threatens SoundBlaster Driver Developer - X-bit labs

The backlash was huge after they publicly posted this statement ...


They had literally millions of comments on their website , and they quickly backed down and allowed the modified audigy vista drivers ( which enabled surround features that creative said couldnt be done ) to be downloaded.

They would be extremely foolish to go down that road again.

With regard to the " Beta" of windows 7 , I have major network issues , but again , as others have said , its a Beta , and you cannot judge the OS on this release.
I certainly wont be installing it as the main OS on my HTPC , the Wife would kill me.

I read about this before and I ended up going with Daniel 'K's vista drivers for my card. His drivers include all the features Creative (at one time) included but then removed to make people buy newer cards like the X-Fi range.

Bottom line for me is that I will NEVER give Creative my money EVER again.

I will continue to use Daniels drivers and if my card ever breaks I will start using my mother boards sound chip/card or get another makers card. (for example Asus has a range of sound cards that work well)

Anyway, i hope Daniel can make his drivers compatible with 7. I was hoping the vista drivers would work but they didnt load properly so I just left it.

[AML]

Originally Posted by welshy

I don't mean to sound negative here but why move to a new OS just because it's there? I still use XP and it will take a heck of a lot to make me upgrade. What do we use Windows on a PC for?

1. Browsing the Internet...can do that in XP
2. Checking email...can do that in XP
3. Office applications...can do that in XP
4. Playing games...can do that BETTER in XP
5. Media and video...can do that in XP

etc etc. I know there's a lot more but lets be honest, XP does everything we need it to do on a daily basis.

What I want and perhaps Windows 7 will give it, don't know yet, is the ability to troubleshoot like in the days of Win98 and DOS (yes I'm old). The ability to get into Windows after a driver issue for example. A proper registry system, bring back the good old .INI files, at least they were in English and we could understand and read them!

Don't get me wrong, I love Microsoft software but for me XP works

I know what you mean there mate, but lets face it. XP is getting old and i was surprised at how good some of the new features of Vista/7 are.

I cant imagine going back to XP after using vista and now 7.

I have to admit that I waited a LONG time before making the move. Basically I waited till SP1 was out for Vista which brought a lot of improvements to vista.

So now if you compare Vista sp1 and XP sp3 they both perform almost the same gaming wise.

7 should be even better i hope.

Also remember that XP doesnt support DX10 or 11 so if you want to take the next step graphics wise to DX 10 or DX11 you will need to move to Vista or 7.

I recomend skipping vista and going straight to 7.

Im thinking the reason everyone hates vista is because of performance issues. But if your a serious PC gamer then your PC will be high end enough to use vista.

My gaming PC gets scores of 5.9 for everything in vista and it runs really well!
You also need to consider tweaking vista to run even better.

Anyway, my main point is that vista and 7 both have a lot of features that XP doesnt have. Dont ask me for a list though.

[Centinel]

I'm still on XP, but I have to say, I'm impressed with Windows 7, and it's still in Beta. It looks like Microsoft has "actually" done some work, and the OS might be the first piece of S/W from MS that could actually be released on it's target date and not in a few months. What do you ppl think? anyone else used 7?

[Samorlg]

I have a question which I think is relevant here. If I were to install a new hard drive replacing my existing one and use the new drive with windows 7 installed, could I replace it in the future with the old drive and still have my computer working just the way it did before? I would partition the drive but I only have a small 120 gig and it's full, just about.

[Samorlg]

OMG no one can give a reasonable answer on this. Some must be able to say, "yes you can", or "no you can't" with a reason of course. I thought you guys were a brainy bunch of know hows, come on, some one must know. If I'm to be more precise on my ask, I'm just worried that [maybe] the mother board's bios, drivers, whatever there is on there might change rendering my (old) drive useless and thus I've lost my data, answers, thank you.

[Steven]

Hi

Its relatively late and you should try here:
Operating Systems & Software - AVForums.com

I would point out that Windows 7 is in beta, which means it should not be your primary OS

[eric pisch]

Originally Posted by Samorlg

I have a question which I think is relevant here. If I were to install a new hard drive replacing my existing one and use the new drive with windows 7 installed, could I replace it in the future with the old drive and still have my computer working just the way it did before? I would partition the drive but I only have a small 120 gig and it's full, just about.

If you take out your existing drive, when you put it back in providing it has not been damaged (faulty when you started / droped knoecked / taken out whislt on ) it will work exactly as it did when you turned of the PC last time it was plugged in. The BIOS only knows about the specifications of each drive not what is on it.

Swapping the drive is a very easy way of making your pc a blank canvas for a beta OS with out the hassle of multi booting (which can trash both OS's)

[AML]

Originally Posted by Samorlg

OMG no one can give a reasonable answer on this. Some must be able to say, "yes you can", or "no you can't" with a reason of course. I thought you guys were a brainy bunch of know hows, come on, some one must know. If I'm to be more precise on my ask, I'm just worried that [maybe] the mother board's bios, drivers, whatever there is on there might change rendering my (old) drive useless and thus I've lost my data, answers, thank you.

Hey.

If you take out one drive and put it back in at a later date im guessing it should still work as long as you havent made any hardware changes or updated the bios.

If you put in a new drive and install 7 onto that drive it will work normaly. And Im guessing if you take that drive out and put it back in later it should still work.

Like I said, just make sure you dont make any hardware changes.

[Samorlg]

I suspected that might of been the case, shall still back up photos and videos(you never know) but thank you very much for the info.

[WillieCocker]

Originally Posted by welshy

Don't get me wrong, I love Microsoft software but for me XP works

And for others it's as boring as a white wall.
Don't get me wrong , i loved XP , but that was many years ago.