Windows 7 is basically Vista renamed

[Zebo]

I think Windows 7 is worse than Vista having no option to cascade the start menu which I've grown to use since win95 days. The option should be allowed instead we are forced to use the new start system and search. Granted search is cool but it takes me personally longer to find my apps than cascading.

I also think it's funny all those people who hated or claimed to hate vista are praising Windows 7 when it's essentially the same thing. Sheep. Oh well.

Anyway I see lots of things I like about vista/7 but not enough to offset dislikes and make switch. Tired both for week + went back to windows 5 because it works best for me still. vista7 has issues like slow on great HW e.g. 4ghz c2d GTX280 etc, has crashed, locked up and otherwise felt clunky relative. Why would I even experiment when I'm so happy with win5 product and use all non-ms apps? dX 10 &11 and so on - that's it - MS is virtually forcing a certain segment of their users to upgrade by not writing graphics API for win 5. It's a fact of life I will have to upgrade but I'm looking for a leaner snappier version and I'm playing with making disks now with vlite.

thanks - I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

 

[Mem]

I think Windows 7 is worse than Vista having no option to cascade the start menu which I've grown to use since win95 days. The option should be allowed instead we are forced to use the new start system and search. Granted search is cool but it takes me personally longer to find my apps than cascading.

I also think it's funny all those people who hated or claimed to hate vista are praising Windows 7 when it's essentially the same thing. Sheep. Oh well.

Anyway I see lots of things I like about vista/7 but not enough to offset dislikes and make switch. Tired both for week + went back to windows 5 because it works best for me still. vista7 has issues like slow on great HW e.g. 4ghz c2d GTX280 etc, has crashed, locked up and otherwise felt clunky relative. Why would I even experiment when I'm so happy with win5 product and use all non-ms apps? dX 10 &11 and so on - that's it - MS is virtually forcing a certain segment of their users to upgrade by not writing graphics API for win 5. It's a fact of life I will have to upgrade but I'm looking for a leaner snappier version and I'm playing with making disks now with vlite.

thanks - I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

I can't understand when people say "slow" with specs like what you listed,no offence but there must be an issue eleswhere,I'm still using an old XP 3800+ X2 cpu with DDR1 RAM (4GB) and Win7 is more then fast,my other laptop has 2 GHZ Conroe 2 CPU with 3GB and again Win7 is more then fast enough,as to crashes well I'm still waiting for my first BSOD in Win7 retail,I'll did have a couple of BSOD in the old beta version due to software compatibility however final version of Win7 is excellent on stability and speed for all my general needs including beta game testing.

I do agree Win7 is like Vista ie share a lot of things and both very good IMHO,Win7 is tweaked/improved for older hardware peformance plus some new features,however Win7 is based on Vista and lot of those Vista haters forget that.

I still miss good old Dos 6.22 days ie... zero bloat but have moved with the times and I'm happy with Vista/Win7 etc...same will probably go for Win8 as well down the road.

 

[Nothinman]

Actually about a day. I played with it for an hour and could not believe how slow it was (win2k3 reboots in 30 secs on this machine) and it was actually frustrating as they totally changed everything and the simplest tasks such as setting a static IP became much harder (never actually figured it out without using google). Then I actually forgot to turn it off.

Later on I was doing something else and wondering why my server was so bloody slow then realized I forgot to shut off the vista vm. I shut it off and everything was more responsive again. The issue is Disk IO. Vista seems to thrash like crazy. I remember bringing up the task manager and it looked like somebody put a lie detector on the Iraq Information Minister.

A day isn't nearly long enough. It's pretty well known that Vista takes a while before it runs well, right after installation is pretty much the worst point. Once everything is installed, index, etc and SuperFetch has some time to learn your habits it runs a lot better.

 

[JackMDS]

I can't understand when people say "slow" with specs like what you listed,no offence but there must be an issue eleswhere,I'm still using an old XP 3800+ X2 cpu with DDR1 RAM (4GB) and Win7 is more then fast my other laptop has 2 GHZ Conroe 2 CPU with 3GB and again Win7 is more then fast enough

Same here, in matter of fact out of my Networked computers 4 are still on Mobo 939, Athlon64 4000+, 2MB RAM, running Win7 Ent., and they run just as well as more recent rigs with more memory.

By doing well I mean that when I do a task that takes time it does not take longer on Win 7 than Win XP on the same computers. After the boot what ever I do on Win 7 is just as fast as Win XP

I also installed Win 7 Ulimate on a Toshiba Laptop 1.6GHz P-4 class Celeron-Mobile, with 512MB RAM, that one is slow.

I did this installation for the purpose of seeing how Win 7 works on an inferior hardware with little memory. (My wife the none computer lover Dr., finds it very functional ()🙂 ).

Slow mean that Surfing, Network Transfer. Saving and loading take more measurable time than the Desktops.

I think that the issue is more the way we communicate.

This is a technical forum and the extend of technical exchange of data is the list of the Rig in the signature (which actually more of a social phenomenon).

Otherwise verbal terms with No numbers can be deceiving.

P.S. I can do some of these comparisons since all my Desktops have Mobile trays. I keep few small old HDs with previous "historical" installation of Win 98SE, Win 200o, Win XP, and Vista.

 

[VinDSL]

A day isn't nearly long enough. It's pretty well known that Vista takes a while before it runs well, right after installation is pretty much the worst point. Once everything is installed, index, etc and SuperFetch has some time to learn your habits it runs a lot better.

And, (ahem) don't forget ReadyBoost... :sneaky:

In my (Vista) experience, ReadyBoost does away with 'disk grinding' almost entirely,

It takes a few minutes for ReadyBoost to get loaded (for want of a different word) after boot/login, but after that, the HDD basically goes dormant.

Hrm...

I'm not even sure these features are available, running in a VM, now that I think about it.

 

[Nothinman]

And, (ahem) don't forget ReadyBoost... :sneaky:

In my (Vista) experience, ReadyBoost does away with 'disk grinding' almost entirely,

It takes a few minutes for ReadyBoost to get loaded (for want of a different word) after boot/login, but after that, the HDD basically goes dormant.

Hrm...

I'm not even sure these features are available, running in a VM, now that I think about it.

You can pass USB through to guest VMs so it should work, although I think you need VMware Workstation for it to do USB 2.0. But I've never used ReadyBoost at all.

 

[Fox5]

And, (ahem) don't forget ReadyBoost... :sneaky:

In my (Vista) experience, ReadyBoost does away with 'disk grinding' almost entirely,

It takes a few minutes for ReadyBoost to get loaded (for want of a different word) after boot/login, but after that, the HDD basically goes dormant.

Hrm...

I'm not even sure these features are available, running in a VM, now that I think about it.

Readyboost is worthless for a desktop, you'd be better just adding more ram. Not to mention, desktop hard drives have better random and sequential read/write performance than a USB drive.
A laptop might get a decent benefit out of it, if it has under 2GB of ram and a slow 5400RPM hard drive.

 

[Red Squirrel]

A day isn't nearly long enough. It's pretty well known that Vista takes a while before it runs well, right after installation is pretty much the worst point. Once everything is installed, index, etc and SuperFetch has some time to learn your habits it runs a lot better.

And that's what I think is very poor design. What if I don't have any specific pc use habbits? It has to keep relearning and it's always going to be slow? It should be fast no matter what I do, right out of the box. If the OS takes a day just to warm up, may as well go back to using a Univac System.

And the issue with readyboost is that USB sticks have limited read/write so it would kill them pretty fast.

 

[Nothinman]

And that's what I think is very poor design. What if I don't have any specific pc use habbits? It has to keep relearning and it's always going to be slow? It should be fast no matter what I do, right out of the box. If the OS takes a day just to warm up, may as well go back to using a Univac System.

Yea, it kinda sucks but chances are that it'll still be better than XP regardless once the indexing is done. SuperFetch may preload stuff that you won't immediately use but that memory is just cache and still technically free so it doesn't hurt to reuse it for something else instead.

 

[RebateMonger]

And the issue with readyboost is that USB sticks have limited read/write so it would kill them pretty fast.

In the early days of Readyboost, that issue was discussed a lot and I believe the conclusion was that it'd take a LONG time (Microsoft claimed at least ten years) for a USB stick to be killed by ReadyBoost.

 

[lxskllr]

And the issue with readyboost is that USB sticks have limited read/write so it would kill them pretty fast.

I have a 2gb CF drive that's been in constant use as a ReadyBoost drive since Vista's release, and it's still going strong. Also, it caches very small files, so it benefits from the fast seek times. Large files it takes out of the HD where the sustained transfer is better.

Edit:
Incorrect content

 

[Red Squirrel]

In the early days of Readyboost, that issue was discussed a lot and I believe the conclusion was that it'd take a LONG time (Microsoft claimed at least ten years) for a USB stick to be killed by ReadyBoost.

That's good to know then, guess it's not access as heavily as ram is.

 

[Nothinman]

That's good to know then, guess it's not access as heavily as ram is.

Of course not, it's just a middle-man store/cache between memory and the hard disk.

 

[blackhawk]

origonal vista release was not well supported with drivers from other manufacturers, lots of built in intrusiveness and slow running till hardware was upgraded and now with service packs its matured so that I'm OK with it on 2 computers

7 is just a tweaked and rebranded vista that you have to pay for rather than another service pack, win win for bill and MS

I bought a 3 pack upgrade licence and got it on 3 computers now, vista drivers seem to work just fine which wasn't the case with xp-vista

 

[postmortemIA]

origonal vista release was not well supported with drivers from other manufacturers, lots of built in intrusiveness and slow running till hardware was upgraded and now with service packs its matured so that I'm OK with it on 2 computers

7 is just a tweaked and rebranded vista that you have to pay for rather than another service pack, win win for bill and MS

I bought a 3 pack upgrade licence and got it on 3 computers now, vista drivers seem to work just fine which wasn't the case with xp-vista

congrats on buying that pack on time - they have discontinued it. WTF with that, the upgrade price from windows vista to 7 is too much.

 

[JACKDRUID]

There are a lot of people claiming Windows 7 runs as well as XP on their older machines, whereas Vista would bring these systems to their knees.

its true, win7 runs much smoother and better than Vista on my old machine, athlon 64 3200+ w. 1gb memory.

alot less UAC crap, alot less prompt, all drivers were setup and working correctly.

and all software works even without xp compatability mode.

visual studio 2005 and 2003 work as well without compiling errors.

 

[mchammer187]

UAC is way different from Vista to W7

I remember using vista and having UAC pop up every time I opened certain programs.

Also W7 has a very streamlined install compared to Vista.

For my motherboard I could not even install Vista from a clean install without slipstreaming some when AHCI was turned on in the motherboard.

I remember another issue with quicktime files that caused you to lose/unmount your hard drives (ie windows would not recognize them unit you rebooted) was eventually patched for Vista but it took way too long.

I havent used Vista since I installed the windows 7 beta back in march or april though but I remember upgrading to W7 beta and thinking this is a breath of fresh air.

edit: I also had to run so many things in XP compatibility mode under vista it was really getting ridiculous.

I currently run 0 things under compatibility mode now.

 

[Zebo]

I can't understand when people say "slow" with specs like what you listed,no offence but there must be an issue eleswhere,I'm still using an old XP 3800+ X2 cpu with DDR1 RAM (4GB) and Win7 is more then fast,my other laptop has 2 GHZ Conroe 2 CPU with 3GB and again Win7 is more then fast enough,as to crashes well I'm still waiting for my first BSOD in Win7 retail,I'll did have a couple of BSOD in the old beta version due to software compatibility however final version of Win7 is excellent on stability and speed for all my general needs including beta game testing.

I do agree Win7 is like Vista ie share a lot of things and both very good IMHO,Win7 is tweaked/improved for older hardware peformance plus some new features,however Win7 is based on Vista and lot of those Vista haters forget that.

I still miss good old Dos 6.22 days ie... zero bloat but have moved with the times and I'm happy with Vista/Win7 etc...same will probably go for Win8 as well down the road.

Mem why arnt you leet anymore?

Are you using 64 or 32 version? It's slow like twirly circle thinking thingy when navigating OS instead of snap win5 gives. I registry tweaked and minimal control panel tweaked the heck out of it for some improvement but it's still not there IME.

I am currently sucking about 800 megs of ram on boot with windows 7 x64. Granted we have all that ram so why waste but it can't take that much to run an OS. Bloat is caused by 1000s of tiny apps embedded which I never would use being a third party apps fiend therefore wasteful and resource hogging.

Never used DOS I came from Apple's childish teletubbies OS in 1994 only now to be greeted with similar starting with XP and full blown now.🙂

 

[Zebo]

UAC is way different from Vista to W7

I remember using vista and having UAC pop up every time I opened certain programs.

Also W7 has a very streamlined install compared to Vista.

For my motherboard I could not even install Vista from a clean install without slipstreaming some when AHCI was turned on in the motherboard.

I remember another issue with quicktime files that caused you to lose/unmount your hard drives (ie windows would not recognize them unit you rebooted) was eventually patched for Vista but it took way too long.

I havent used Vista since I installed the windows 7 beta back in march or april though but I remember upgrading to W7 beta and thinking this is a breath of fresh air.

edit: I also had to run so many things in XP compatibility mode under vista it was really getting ridiculous.

I currently run 0 things under compatibility mode now.

You could turn off UAC in Vista via GPEDIT, CP, REGEDIT or MSCONFIG but the slider option was not there. That is one improvement if you use it at all which I don't.

 

[Mem]

Mem why arnt you leet anymore?

Are you using 64 or 32 version? It's slow like twirly circle thinking thingy when navigating OS instead of snap win5 gives. I registry tweaked and minimal control panel tweaked the heck out of it for some improvement but it's still not there IME.

I am currently sucking about 800 megs of ram on boot with windows 7 x64. Granted we have all that ram so why waste but it can't take that much to run an OS. Bloat is caused by 1000s of tiny apps embedded which I never would use being a third party apps fiend therefore wasteful and resource hogging.

Never used DOS I came from Apple's childish teletubbies OS in 1994 only now to be greeted with similar starting with XP and full blown now.🙂

To answer your first question I was never an elite member if that's what you mean,I did turn down being an AT Mod due to other commitments at the time,I have both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Win7, both run fast and fine.

I am currently sucking about 800 megs of ram on boot with windows 7 x64.

I think some of that is due to superfetch too since it learns what programs you use over time,ram is so cheap nowadays and to be honest 800mb is not a lot by todays standards unless you remember the good old DOS 6.22 days where 2 or 4mb was average back then.

Hardware is getting more complicated and faster, OS and software is also getting more complicated with new stuff added etc..not surprised ram requirements are going up all the time .


Hope that answers all your questions 🙂.