Got Windows 7

I remember a recent poll question here which asked what operating system would be next for members. I figured it would be Windows 7 for me. Just not this soon.

A few days ago I got home from work to find that our old desk top had a major failure.

We bought a laptop with Windows 7 64bit.
The transition has been an easy one. There are so many similarities between the two systems, maybe a bit different in location and layout.
The responsiveness has more than made up for any minor difference.

 

I still have some issues as far as layout is concerned. I really don't like the whole "junction point" idea at all, and libraries I just see as unnecessary. Those things aside, Windows 7 is a fantastic OS. It's fast and, so far, crash-free.

 

Yep, so far Win 7 x64 has been great here on both desktop and laptop. Been running it since it came out. I also don't care much for the whole libraries thing, seems useless to me.... oh well...

 

Also don't see anything to attract about libraries feature. Does it have any merits?

 

It's been stable and fast here too.
I'm surprised by how much I like Windows 7!

 

I was thinking the same about the libraries for some time, but I have change my mind. I got rid of the libraries (registry edit) except for my documents, and added in Program Files, System32, Windows, Public (public user data) and AppData (from my user). Then in explorer I don't normally enable "show all folders" or "expand to current folder" options. This way, when I open explorer, the left (treeview portion) is somewhat tidy. The libraries area then is usually open so I can get to common areas that I personally use a lot in a convenient way. I make a seperate library for each.

I have also used libraries as I am working in specific areas so that all the data is grouped together easily. I set the library and then after I am done I remove it. I find it to be very handy for how I do things.

The favorites I leave alone. I like having the downloads and recent areas there. I use the downloads one all the time. I think the favorites and libraries being right on top and usually pre-expanded is why I tend to use them.

The thing I don't like about the favorites is that items you add to it don't expand. It is limited to that one place. In order to expand it, you have to jump (in the treeview) to that location, which is a bit messy for my tastes.

The thing I don't like about the libraries is that if you include more than one directory in a library, the root of the library includes all files. This has proved handy a few times, but usually becuase the library does allow navigation with its own treeview it is just more work to include more than one main directory per library.

Windows 7 explorer and start menu are confusing to me, because it seems like they each took a step backwards (or 10 steps sometimes) in how easily you get to do what you want to do. I don't appreciate having to click many more times in the latest OS when the previous one (XP) was much more streamlined. I use two things to tame this down: classicshell and a reg tweak to get rid of full row select. In classicshell I can tell the treeview to work the same as it did in XP, which is much faster for me. I also like how the classicshell uses its own start menu, much faster IMHO. But better, you can set how you would like to use the real start menu. I use a middle mouse to get the standard win7 start menu.

I have found that using the address bar in win7 explorer sort of grows on you. For some things using the tree view and having it autoexpand like XP did is faster, for others (especially network drives) the new address bar works better.

I have no use for the junction points. I wish they would have just made us deal with the new directory structure and spared us the confusion that those things bring.

Overall, I have to say I do like win7 better than XP, although XP was faster in many ways. Not that much faster for most things, but having flip-flopped back and forth between the two, XP on my hardware takes the speed crown. But XP is missing a lot of features in win7 that I absolutely love and definately does increase my productivity. Like all of M$ operating systems, you have to learn about it to really make it do what you want I suppose.

Sul.

 

I've removed my XP dual-boot a while ago for even more space
Was an early adopter (got legal RTM a year ago), XP almost seems foreign now.