A week with Windows 7

[QueBert]

I'm old school, int he sense I still use DOS on a daily basis. I don't like GUI's outside of programs that need them, obviously Photoshop without a GUI would be horrible, for an OS I like CLI, that will probably never change, but this is about Win 7.

Since I almost couldn't get Vista to install on my box, and since Win 7 is based off Vista I expected the same, but I had a unused IDE drive laying around. (had problems with Vista + my MB's IDE) So I hooked it up and installed the beta. To my surprise it worked the first time, and thus far there's been no problems, Where with Vista the install would crap itself right after the first boot. Already gets a point from me

The new taskbar is funky, I'm still adjusting to it, at first I did not like it at all, but the more time I spend with it it's growing on me. As I post this I just figured out right clicking on an icon brings up a menu I haven't seen, on my explorer window it's listing 18 directories I frequently use very cool. Should save me some time. Sometimes when I hover over it pops up a list of windows, sometimes it pops up the actual windows, not sure why it changes but I like it overall better than XP or Vista's.

Speed is better, I have 2 gigs of memory and it runs well, of course I've only had it installed a week now, all my MS OS's have ran great at first. I don't really see a whole lot new, this basically is Vista 1.5 in my eyes, but it runs better than Vista does on my box and I just seem to like it more overall. Since I'm kind of using it as my main OS now I guess I'll have to buy it since I think the beta expires around the time Win 7 is supposed to hit the market. Hopefully I can upgrade to the full thing without a clean install. I've installed all the stuff I ran on Vista and aside from Daemon Tools everything else works (64 bit Win 7 BTW)

 

[stash]

You actually use DOS, or you use the Windows command line?

 

[sportage]

Knowing DOS is like riding a bike. You never forget it.
I still use dos command line instructions to do things like rename
the file extensions on a group of files. Nifty to know.
PS. Win7 is the best! I got my $$$ ready for the release.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: stash
You actually use DOS, or you use the Windows command line?

I actually use DOS, I have an older box set up and that is pretty much my main system, it does a lot of what I need much faster and better than Windows ever could. I use my Vista (now win 7) box for image and video editing and viewing. I still love DOS with all my heart. In Windows I still use a CMD box a lot because I can do most of my common tasks much quicker than clicking and dragging.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: stash
You actually use DOS, or you use the Windows command line?

I actually use DOS, I have an older box set up and that is pretty much my main system, it does a lot of what I need much faster and better than Windows ever could. I use my Vista (now win 7) box for image and video editing and viewing. I still love DOS with all my heart. In Windows I still use a CMD box a lot because I can do most of my common tasks much quicker than clicking and dragging.

Have you looked into PowerShell?

 

[Snapster]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: stash
You actually use DOS, or you use the Windows command line?

I actually use DOS, I have an older box set up and that is pretty much my main system, it does a lot of what I need much faster and better than Windows ever could. I use my Vista (now win 7) box for image and video editing and viewing. I still love DOS with all my heart. In Windows I still use a CMD box a lot because I can do most of my common tasks much quicker than clicking and dragging.

Just out of curiosity what are a few examples of your daily common tasks that you run quicker via command line ?

 

[Nothinman]

Have you looked into PowerShell?

It's probably the most misnamed product MS has ever released, it may be powerful but a shell it is not.

 

[QueBert]

QTF Nothingman, I tried it and didn't really know what to think. Nothing will replace my good ol' DOS 6.22 Box, I will admit I do like Windows 7 a lot more than I expected to though.

and to snapster, I type much faster than I can point and click, I can load DOS much quicker than any version of Windows, once in DOS I can get into PFS (word processor I use) and bang out my text documents in less time. I also am able to do my file maintenance faster, I am slooooow in Explorer. When I do file renaming/deleting etc in DOS. CMD box is great but I don't want to be kicked back into a GUI when I load something that doesn't need one. For the times I need some sort of file shell, I have Xtree Professional which I prefer over windows Explorer. And Ztree for windows is pretty bad ass

 

[Nothinman]

I also am able to do my file maintenance faster, I am slooooow in Explorer. When I do file renaming/deleting etc in DOS.

While I'm all for file management via the CLI I couldn't imagine using real DOS. I'd be so frustrated without some form of tab-completion.

 

[mafia]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Speed is better, I have 2 gigs of memory and it runs well, of course I've only had it installed a week now, all my MS OS's have ran great at first. I don't really see a whole lot new, this basically is Vista 1.5 in my eyes, but it runs better than Vista does on my box and I just seem to like it more overall. Since I'm kind of using it as my main OS now I guess I'll have to buy it since I think the beta expires around the time Win 7 is supposed to hit the market. Hopefully I can upgrade to the full thing without a clean install. I've installed all the stuff I ran on Vista and aside from Daemon Tools everything else works (64 bit Win 7 BTW)

I only have 1GB of ram and it seems okay for me also. I didn't really notice a substantial speed diference, in fact it seemed a little bit faster than my xp installation. Probably because it is still a fresh OS install. I am also using Windows7 as my primary OS and seems pretty stable apart from that one screensaver issue. (I set turn off Display 5 minutes after screen saver has started and all it does is make a blank black screen but does not completely shut down my monitor!) I don't know if you will be able to install the retail version of Windows7 without doing a clean install. Because it did say something about that in the FAQ of the official Windows7 website. But maybe they will update it later hopefully.

 

[Looney]

You can open programs faster than a shortcut double click? And you'd rather use a DOS wordprocessor because it opens faster than an up-to-date word processor? What processor do you use in DOS that's so good?

And what browser do you use in DOS?

 

[Nothinman]

You can open programs faster than a shortcut double click?

I know that I can in many cases. Or at least at a comparable speed and I don't have to clutter my desktop with icons.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: Looney
You can open programs faster than a shortcut double click? And you'd rather use a DOS wordprocessor because it opens faster than an up-to-date word processor? What processor do you use in DOS that's so good?

And what browser do you use in DOS?

I have batch files for all the apps I use, so yes I can open lets say PFS (word processor) faster than I could click to view my desktop and click on the icon. I use PFS and love it, very basic and uber fast. I use Lynx on my shell if I need to go to a web site to read something, it works beautifully if the site is HTML compliant and not chocked full of Flash or images. If I need to multitask I have Deskview X, but in DOS I rarely need to. Even in Windows I'm more of a 1 task at a time kind of guy.

There is nothing I can do faster with a mouse and a GUI OS wise than I can with a keyboard and batch files. I type "1" and it loads my word processor, 2 for my image viewer, 3 for my games menu (etc) I use Windows 7 when I need to look at a web site that's Flash or something. And for my video/image editing. So I'm probably in it about half the time. I pretty much live by "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" And for most everything else I do I can do it in DOS and not have to worry about BSODs, drivers or crashing, EVER. There's nothing wrong with Windows, heck I might even buy Windows 7, but I prefer a CLI and even if DOS is dead and no longer supported it's still my OS of choice.

 

[Looney]

Why not use a more up-to-date OS like a Linux distro? I never heard of PFS, but you don't have compatibility problems with Word users or printer driver issues? How about if you need to save something in dpf?

Seems a lot of work to switch to Windows 7 just to visit a website with Flash.