More Windows 7 Woes

So to continue.... I forced myself into downloading from MSDN Tech Net and installed the final release OEM, (Why the heck did I bother) Try moving personal folders to another drive, and you'll be pulling your hair out like I did. Vista duplicates these folders if you dont move all the folders and files, But Windows 7 Triplicates them. for example, if you move your music folder to a D: drive, bot only will you have the 2 current folders My Music, and Music, but also a Copy of Music, so you now have 3 folders of the same category showing just to confuse youamd so forth with every other folder you try to move. Add to this nothing new but a name, and non existant features in Media Player, and your good to go! (Over a clifftop). rushed rubbish from Microsoft again!

 

I tried W7 RC and the RTM x64 and considering the amount of praise it's getting, for me, Vista runs a whole lot smoother. When opening windows in W7 I always noticed they seemed to 'stutter' rather than open really fast and smooth as in Vista. Along with issues I had with my X-Fi (using the official drivers from Creative) - when you click on files, for example, you get that 'clicking' noise - in W7 I would get that sometimes but other times I'd get like a 'muted' click. Hard to explain but really, really annoying.

I also have my music, pictures and video folders on an external hdd and I'm pretty sure I did manage to move them over without any fuss. I think I just deleted the original sample content, chose to include my hdd folders in the original shortcuts then removed the original folders which were pointed at also. Again, hard to explain as it was some time ago now and have since uninstalled W7.

Finally, I just can't see these issues being resolved for the official launch if they're going to use the current RTM. Time will tell though.

 

Sharing experiences is helpful, especially if someone else is having the same problems you are. However, having seen so many XP/Vista/7 threads all over the net, and so many different opinions, I would say you have to try each on your machine for some time, making your common 'tweaks' etc, before passing judgement.

While I don't like Vista much, and do like 7 more, and still love XP, there are many knowledgable users who think opposite of that. It could be perception, settings or the differences in hardware. Whatever it is, until you try each out, and find for yourself which is faster/better, you cannot take anyone else's opinion as fact. There are just too many differing opinions to do so.

That said, I like to read posts like this to get a feel for what things others find either good or bad. Helps me to keep an eye out for those things myself.

Sul.

 

Anyone like to start a sweepstakes on when Windows 7 will be replaced

I'll start the first bid: $1500 @ 5/1 that its 15 months from launch date

 

The better question and less predictable one is what they will name it. The rate they are going it will be Windows ME2

 

While I like 7 reasonably well, I really don't find it all that much different from Vista. It does seem a bit cleaner in general, less glitches from my trial of it. But it still is very much like Vista to me. Vista x64 came with my current 1 year old PC, and I'm pretty sure I'll just keep that for Win installs and not bother with 7. I am on Linux and Vista most of the time.

 

I spent the last two weeks with it, and, I'm honestly not impressed. It's still the same old Windows, just "prettier" and slightly lighter. I'll run down the list of the major points made when most suggest the upgrade:

1. Interface. Nicer looking? Eh, eye of the beholder, I'm not impressed. Easier to use? Unless you had trouble navigating the Control Panel and/or finding your own files, and had no clue Windows had a search function, no, it isn't easier.

2. Resource Usage. On crap systems, yes, it uses less. On the flip side, it still runs like crap on crap systems (Tested on a pre-2004 system with 1Gb of RAM and integrated graphics). On current systems, there is enough memory and decent enough graphics capabilities that, in my own opinion, resource usage didn't matter (Tested on a system from last year with 3Gb RAM, mid-range Dual-Core and a separate, mid-range graphics card).

3. Speed. This really falls under resource usage for the most part. A crap system will deliver a crap performance and a good system, a good performance. I will say though that on my updated test system, it was NOT faster than XP. To me (without running any benchmark nonsense), it was roughly the same.

4. Security. Whatever. Honestly very few "enhancements" affect your home user anyway, most of them deal with IT. And regardless, it's still Windows, it will still be attacked relentlessly and there are still countless vulnerabilities waiting to be found in it. Don't get rid of your 3rd party security apps yet and keep marking your calenders for the second Tuesday of every month.

All in all, Windows 7, in my own personal opinion is not better, it's merely a bit "lighter"....and that's with a good system and BEFORE all the Service Packs and patches start showing up.

 

LOL ME2 That's a good one...

Well I personally went out a few weeks ago and bought a Macbook Pro.

As Tech I just use Windows only to stay on top of things for my work, other then that it's going to be OS X from now on for me, oh and let's not forget I do need that Winblows box for gaming too, LOL...

P.S. The Final Release for OEM is out? I thought it was due out in October?

 

October is when it will be available to the general public. The RTM has been out for quite some time (Technet, MSDN).

 

And on torrent and rapidshare sites. The days when Microsoft could keep it out of the hands of hackers are gone forever!

 

......but you need to be very wary of what you download and install from those sites - especially a main os.

 

That's so true!
The common concensus seems to be that XP runs much faster than Vista,yet on my system,with an almost identical setup, Vista is vastly quicker in everything from start-up time,menu speed,etc. Only file transfer is slower and that was easily resolved by using Teracopy in place of the native option.

It really is a case of try a new OS and see how it performs for you personally since there isn't a universal rule that A is better than B or C.

 

I guess I have had enough. My machine is pretty snappy in XP. I have put Vista Ultimate 32 on, less than happy. I have used 7 beta and RC1, and I thought I could be happy. Sadly, after an attempt to switch completely over to 7 until October, I have failed.

I actually like 7 quite a bit in terms of the UI. Sure, Vista/7 have some really idiotic changes, like where they place panels/configs, how the whole address bar is slow and clumsy, most especially how the default windows explorer is configured. While Vista seemed clunky, 7 seems much more refined.

But, alas, I give up on 7. M$ knows of my chipset, they provide a driver for it in XP that works as well or better than the Intel one. My hdds are fast, well maintained and cooled. Vista (and SP1 or SP2) both have very pathetic hdd speeds. 7 was better I thought. After a fresh install (again) the other night, on both my Raid0 array and my storage drive, I found out just how slow it STILL is. Which of course led me to tweaking the snot out of 7 to fix it, which of course did not work, which, of course, lol, led me to performing some tests of my own.

Take this as you like, I am only presenting what happens on my hardware.

Windows 7, default, takes a measurable amount of time to show the contents of sys32, an indicator of seek/read performance. It caches/superfetches it and indexes it, so consequential lookups are somewhat fast. Do a lot of searching and browsing, with a finite cache, and you are back to square one. Turn caching off and speed slows way down again. Turn indexing off and it is pretty fast.

Windows XP on the other hand, default install, is very fast to seek/read a directory such as sys32 with many files. Pretty much instant on my machine. Turn cache down/off and it still reads fast. Tune the services down to only what is vital to run the OS, and not much difference, still fast.

Now, copy a large contiguous file from one drive to desktop on 7. Contiguous files present a good picture of overall speed, whereas many small files will almost always be slower. Besides large files give better graphs.

Anyway, exact same drives, one 750gb sataII hd1, copy 3gb file to the 750gb sataII hd0 with 7 installed. Time is about 2:20 with indexing and such garbage off. With that garbage on, I stopped after 3 minutes because I saw no point in continuing. Now, COPY that file from destop of hd0 to another directory, takes roughly the same 2:20.

XP installed on hd1 (which is now the boot drive), copy same 3gb file which is now on hd0 (the win 7 drive) to desktop, copies in 50 seconds. Copy 3gb file from XP desktop to another directory on XP, takes approx 40 seconds.

It is absolutely astounding the difference in seek/read/write speeds between vista/7 and XP. Using drivers available from intel, tweaking the settings either in bios or device manager, make no difference. Vista is king of slow, at roughly 1/4 speed of XP, 7 is the queen of slow at roughly 1/2 the speed of XP.

For years I have looked forward to the next revision of hdds and chips, because I understand that how I dictate the speed of my computer is largely influenced by how fast the hdd reads and writes. Using 7 feels like a downgrade in performance. Taken properly, once an application loads, and the hdd is no longer called into duty, they are largely the same in 'feeling' fast or not. But you have to include the hdd reads/writes because that is one quantitive value you can 'feel'.

Please, don't blow a gasket. This is a rudementary test/analysis based on how I percieve speed and based on my unique hardware configuration. I don't doubt a bit that some here use Vista and find it is faster for them. But I would find it interesting, if you could have an exact clone of your machine so that XP and Vista/7 sat side by side, and you did the exact same things, to see which you would actually say is faster.

Later.

Sul.

 

i personally LOVE Windows 7, its been completely flawless for me, no product incompatibilities (and i use some pretty obscure programs as well) NO slowdowns whatsoever like ther wer on Vista, id say VERY close to XP performance but with SOOOO much more included, very good product from microsoft (first one in a while)

 

I finally gave in and set up a dual boot system last weekend with my XP machine.

Windows 7 installed perfectly and ran good until I started an installation of Open Office.

I use Microsoft Word 2003 but wanted to see how Open Office would work too. Anyway, the machine crashed part way through the installation and would not reboot.

The boot manager remained after I deleted the partition containing Windows 7 and after a lot of research, the removal of this was very easy. I just ran "fixboot" from the Windows Install Disk Repair function. It removed the boot manager and XP continues to run with no problems.

I am going to wait a while before buying Windows 7 but will probably eventually do it. It seems like a nice program.

 

really? x64 or x86 version? running OpenOffice here without falt.

 

Yeah, I really like it, but I can't justify such an enormous slowdown like that. Perhaps there will be better driver support, or whatever it is, once it is for sale. And I was ready to plop down some $$ too. lol.

Sul.

 

Sully,

Win7 certainly doesn't like your computer or vice versa. I did a similar test using Win7 RC and WinXP. WinXP was slightly faster but Win7 was not like your computer. My computer is a 2 1/2 year old Dell 9150, nothing fancy.

Win7: 4.48 GB file from HD1 to Win7 desktop on HD0= 1:18
WinXP: 4.48 GB file from HD1 to WinXP desktop on HD0= 1:04

Win7: 4.48 GB file from another partition on HD0 to Win7 desktop on HD0= 2:01
WinXP: 4.48 GB file from another partition on HD0 to XP desktop on HD0= 1:55

Win7: 4.48 GB file from Win7 desktop to another partition on HD0= 2:13
WinXP: 4.48 GB file from XP desktop to another partition on HD0= 2:00

 

I wish mine were presenting those numbers. I have an Intel 975xbx2, wd 750aaks hdds, 4gb ram, on XP it shows the hardware can really scoot. I would love to know why it is so crippled on vista/7.

Thanks for the feedback. Maybe there is hope somehow lol.

Sul.

 

Well, we have similar HDs. I have two WD 640 GB AAKS. Only 2 GB RAM.

I have three different Win7 builds on this computer and subjectively they are the same. They "feel" OK. I'm in no hurry to change to Win7 full time. I'll continue with WinXP as the primary OS on this computer. In the marketplace, I think Win7 will be the most successful of Microsoft's OS.

 

I certainly don't understand this. If you disable thumbnails, everything speeds up. If you take ownership of the file/directory you are copying and copying to, everything speeds up. I mean take ownership, as in remove the Admins Group as the owner and make your User the owner, regardless what group you are in. It flies in the face of what you should do. But it did indeed speed file copying massively. Still not enough to beat XP, but with these options now 7 is maybe 3/4 the speed of XP.

Strange.

Sul.

 

So when it is released it will not be called Windows 7 but go by another name?

 

you cant call windows vista or windows 7 me two. windows me never really worked at all. vista works fine but its slow. windows 7 is faster and the RC felt fast enough for me and it works better than vista. i havent tryed the rtm on my main hardware yet but i assume it will be faster than the RC since the rc would still have some sort of diagnostic tools enabled.