“It has been 2 days now since we started downloading the Windows 7 beta… After a fast start, the download has crawled to a grueling pace of about 30kB a second. Not sure how much longer I can take this… may have to eat oxen soon… Send… help… ARGH!!!!”
I am probably one of the bigger Vista defenders that you’re likely to come across, but I still have some interest in this Windows 7 beta. Might be fun to dual-boot on my laptop, which, though very new, runs Vista a lot worse than my not-as-new (but much better specced) PC.
I think it’s a smart and interesting tactic MS is taking… they’ve basically gussied-up Vista, slapped a new name on it, and released a free demo to build hype. But will I ever get it downloaded? Only time will tell!
My Vista pros and cons list:
PROS:
- Search within any window. – I used to hate Windows search, and that damn XP dog didn’t help matters. Even worse, you’d have to manually select which folder to search in. Then with Vista it got a lot better – every window had a Search box, and it would search only within the context of those folders. Awesome, even with indexing off.
- Xbox 360 stuff. – Vista allows you to hook up to your Xbox 360 quite easily, allowing you to run a 175watt gaming machine, a 400watt computer and 2 separate video displays in order to access your music and stuff. All joking aside, pretty slick.
- Native DVD and other format writing. – I often forget on XP machines that they can’t write DVD data discs right from Explorer – another Vista feature I would miss. I also like how Vista doesn’t even pretend to suggest you “safely remove devices”, they know damn well people just yank them out.
CONS:
- “Vista hangover” – You can go take a dump, run around the block, make breakfast, all sorts of things while you wait for Vista to load. This is even with a ton of useless services disabled. Then, even once it does boot up, it has what I like to call the “Vista Hangover” – useless and/or really slow for another minute or two. It’s like it won’t do a damn thing until it’s had 3 cups of coffee, smoked 3 cigarettes and scratched its ass for awhile. Once up it’s fine, but since I don’t believe in leaving a PC on 24/7, the slow boot is an issue.
- “Live File System” on writeable CD/DVD’s. The default for writing discs is always the “Live” file system, which should be renames the “suck” system as it’s pretty much useless in anything but the PC you’re using to burn it (thus negating the purpose of burning a disc). Yes I know you can select “Mastered”, which I always have to do, but if “Live” doesn’t work it shouldn’t be there.
- Wireless networking takes the long way around the barn. – If my iPod Touch has been connected to a spot before, it doesn’t even ask, it just connects, and quickly at that. Vista isn’t as easy, and you often have to manually select stuff, set it as “home, public, away, etc” and all of that BS. It’s rare I would say Apple does something better than MS, but I just did.
sad to hear that i just started downloading about half hour ago and was hoping to install it tonight
I downloaded the Beta Sunday night, installed it last night (full, not a dual-boot), and am using it.
My laptop’s specs aren’t that great: 1 GB RAM, 1.83 GHz Intel Centrino processor, integrated Intel 945GM graphics card.
However, it runs well… for a beta. Doing nothing it eats up 70% of my RAM though, but usually idles at about 6-12% processor usage. Compared to XP, it’s slow, but I never thought I’d see the Aero flip on my laptop outside of Linux.
Keep downloading though, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
i don’t think i am going to dualboot i think i am going to try it it in vm and see if it works i have an amd dual core with 1.8ghz clock speed and 2gb ram
I’m not sure what you guys are seeing….I downloaded a…er umm less-than-legal version and I got it in an hour or two. Then, just to make sure, once I heard the demo download limit was lifted, I got one from MS, which only took about 2 1/2 hours.
+5 points for Oregon Trail picture, followed by +1 point for reference.
I’m not sure what you guys are seeing….I downloaded a…er umm less-than-legal version and I got it in an hour or two. Then, just to make sure, once I heard the demo download limit was lifted, I got one from MS, which only took about 2 1/2 hours.
+5 points for Oregon Trail picture, followed by +1 point for reference.
p.s. Think we can get you and Jones to do a regular computer segment?
2nd using it, took 9hoours to download at 1 mb internet sppeed and about 20 mins to burn
There are probably torrents you could find which wouldn’t be subject to microsoft’s overwhelmed servers.
Aw Ben, don’t bother. It’s exactly as slow as Vista, but quite a lot of very simple things are broken. On a brand new install, it took 30 more seconds than xp, and didn’t recognize 1680×1050 resolution. By the way, both the indexing you mentioned you liked and an aero-like interface is available in xp, and works just fine. Xp is faster in almost every last benchmark under the same hardware. Even Crysis has a very easy dx10 hack. I know xp has many flaws, but 7 really fixes none of them, and does it slower.
I downloaded it the official way, and it took about four hours.
I was getting 350KB per second (practical download speed), which is my limit.
Haven’t installed it yet though.
Got mine at 1.4~kbps, using XP of course, I wont touch vista, it fails miserably. It helps to have a cable modem. :] They disabled alot if directory access, such as the temp dir paths, local settings, and others, they make shortcuts that lead to nowhere, or access denied even by taking ownership while logged in the administrator account which you still have to disable the user accounts to get to. UAC isnt as much a pain as it used to be, its quick, and even accepted drivers for my ati tv wonder pci (1998) and worked with media center. They ironed out the driver bugs, but there are plenty that im not going to list. I have installed it on aceleron 1.3ghz, 512mb ram, +5 years old e-machine and it handled pretty well, i will attempt to install it on my NES-PC (itx board based) and see how it goes. Will not move from xp untill windows 7 SP1 comes out. Till then, all my hardware works fine and fast for the time being. Cheers.
Correction: 1.4~Mbps
PROS:
» Search within any window.
U do that on WINXP, (CTRL+F) you can also turn off the animated characters.
Someone uploaded it to rapidshare, and that’s how I got it, torrents were going to take >2 weeks and M$’s downlod didn’t start at all. But with rapidshare, I was actually able to use my 12 Mb/s connection, and it was done by the time I woke up. Probably way before then. But of course, rapidshare decided it was illegal to upload a public beta to their site, so the links are down now.
Pros:
On the same computer I was using Vista on, it seemed a little faster, but my hardware ran Vista fine, so I’m not concerned.
Wireless worked before I even installed my drivers, and the connection window is better than Vista’s by far.
The dock rip off is less of a dock than you might think. It’s still the taskbar and the quick launch, but it looks rather ugly. I guess the reason is that it is thicker is for netbooks and touchscreens.
Explorer is awesome.
Changing the color of window borders now also changes the taskbar. I love the black taskbar, and I always have my windows black, but you have no idea how many people were begging me to help them change it.
UAC can now be set to only show up when a program tries to change something, and you can set it to not dim the screen.
Very stable for a beta, I can’t wait to see the real system in action.
Cons:
There is no “classic view” option in the control panel anymore, but there is an equivalent. The problem is that now, all the icons are smaller, and the text is to the right of the icons instead of below. That wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s alphabetized into rows instead of columns! That makes it almost impossible to see any organizational scheme at all unless you know what you’re looking for.
It’s Vista
A lot of the same problems with vista have yet to disappear, but they’re numerous and minor, so I won’t bother listing them here.
Overall, I hated Vista, but my computer didn’t have good support for XP, so I had to grin and bear it. Luckily, I have OS X and Linux on my machine at all times, so I only have to go into Windows for gaming. But Windows 7 might actually change my mind. It’s fixed enough of the problems I had in Vista that I might actually enjoy using it.
P.S. Has anyone else noticed that neither Microsoft or Apple are really adding anything or changing anything in their OS’s this year? Windows 7 is more of an upgrade to Vista than Snow Leopard will be to Leopard. All Snow Leopard is doing is removing the old PPC code and working on stability… I just find it funny that neither company is working on their OS’s, and at the same time, people are getting into netbooks and minimalist computing.
Installed Windows 7 on my Advert 4211(Re branded MSI Wind) Works perfectly, even better than XP on this thing in my opinion 🙂
Downloaded it overnight from bit torrent, 32-bit edition.
I’ve been trying it for a while now. (Un?)fortunately the Gadgets died of dysentery on day 2.
Anyone else miss the “Directory Up” button? Anyone want to get rid of that stupid bar in Windows Explorer with “helpful” functions? (“Add to Library”, “Organize”… I swear it would be a lot better if they didn’t make all this “helpful” crap mandatory. Also, Webbish control panel = :c ) I’d also lik eto see traditional menu bars come back. They decided to cram it down our throats in Paint and Wordpad.
3.2 ghz Celeron D (yeah I know)
1.0 GB RAM
120 GB SATA HD
It idles with around 40% RAM used and 4% CPU activity with Aero running.
[quote]
P.S. Has anyone else noticed that neither Microsoft or Apple are really adding anything or changing anything in their OS’s this year? Windows 7 is more of an upgrade to Vista than Snow Leopard will be to Leopard. All Snow Leopard is doing is removing the old PPC code and working on stability… I just find it funny that neither company is working on their OS’s, and at the same time, people are getting into netbooks and minimalist computing.
[/quote]
Actually Apple is in the process of overhauling their OS with Mac OS 11 and I believe that are shooting for sometime in 2011. But with Apple at least they provide interim upgrades to the OS, that add new feature. Mac OS X has come a long way since Cheetah(10.0).
I loaded up the Win7 beta the other night and nearly put a bullet through my head. Not because of Win7 itself, no. It looked really nice and would LOVE to start running it, but 3rd party driver support for most of my hardware just isn’t there. At all. It pisses me off because my machine, while a few years old, still meets the required specs. And from what I can tell, it WOULD run just fine if I had those drivers, and of course, half my crap has hit “end of life” status according to epox/nvidia/linksys/realtek/creative labs… the list goes on. I’m completely convinced it’s a freakin’ conspiracy to force people to upgrade when they don’t really need to. So until I can afford to build a COMPLETELY new system, Win7/Vista are a no-go for me. …Then I’ll have to upgrade all over again for Windows 8 because the 3rd party manufacturers will have abandoned all that hardware yet again. Lather, rinse, repeat. :/
Shame about all these negative comments, I found the thing really good! It’s such alot faster than vista on booting ( even if it is a fresh install), and runs as quick if abit faster than vista. Also it’s really stable fora beta runnng many new games and apps easily, drivers wernt an issue as all my win xp/vista ones loaded up fine. The task bar is understandably a good idea in concept but it needs a bit more tweaking. You have to try it I guess!
download really quickly i think this will be my main windows os until ms doesn’t let me use it anymore i already deleted vista so i still have this and ubuntu 8.10 on my machine
Shawn said: “this will be my main windows os until ms doesn’t let me use it anymore”
Are they going to do that? It seems like the decent thing to do would stop supporting it, and decline to offer future updates, and security fixes… but if my computer might someday become a brick because of this… I’m not sure I’m interested.
yeah they said the beta will stop working on august 1st or something like that
yes xp is faster than windows 7 but bloody hell windows 7 is faster than vista and more stable even in its beta stage.
@joel: the reason for it not picking up your resolution is becasue it is a beta that doesnt have the right driver for your gfx card or monitor. when i installed it on my laptop it didnt have the driver from my gfx card so it ran at 1280×786 which is kinda low for my laptop and aero didn work becasue there wasn’t the right driver so i conected it to the net and got the right driver then my resolution poped back up to what it was running in vista and aero turned on adn my windows experience index jumped to 4.0.
drivers that didnt get detected on install:
nvidia graphics card
fingerprint scaner
a few other things like web cam
i can say im going to try and avoid going back to windows vista, vista is a slow peice of shit
the only major problem i am having is the sidebar is not opening anymore no matter what i do it will not open 🙁
I enjoy the beta. Though 9 GIGS OF INSTALATION that a new recod for M$.
Im using.
Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600@ 4.6Ghz
(1) 9800GT@700Mhz
500 Gig Sata
2 Gigs Dual Channel OCZ Ram @1600Mhz
Its running perfect boot time is some where between that of Xp and Vista, Not anyting bad though.
Oh PS. I hope that W7 will have DX10 like vista.
Thats the only reason I have vista.
i might just have to buy a copy of this when it comes out i already wiped vista off my machine and don’t know if ill even reinstall it when the beta expires
I love the guy up there that is going to wait until windows 7 sp1. Those are the type of people who shouldn’t even own a computer.
Computers are flawed and so are the people who write software for them (like me). SP1 doesn’t mean anything so get over it. Windows 7 is like SP3 of Vista with a great taskbar. I personally love the new taskbar. It forces me to be more organized.
It is a quick launch bar and task manager all in one. I would have to say that is the single best reason to move to Windows 7.
A lot of people complain about memory usage since vista:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html explains why this is very well. The memory is now more of a cache, allowing programs to run much faster.
I actually would not like the wi-fi automatically connect thing. I like to be in control of things, something that Apple does not provide its users. Such assumptions by the device can lead to trouble very quickly.
Ben, sounds like you got a bum hand, My vista boots quick, and has next to no problem with networking. I simply open up the laptop, and boom, its connected. As for boot speed, mabey 3 minutes from completely powered down with battery disconected to fully logged in.
System Specs for comparison.
Dell XPS M1530
C2D t5800 (2ghz)
4 Gig Ram 667mhz or 800, not sure
500gb SATA 3.0Gb/s at 5400rpm
Geforce 8600 gt
Class N Internal Wireless
Bluetooth
Thats all that realy matter for this
I must say that Windows 7 Ultimate (The version that I’m running now) is the Best windows Version that has been released in quite a while
its not the windows xp dog, ITS ROVER FORM MICROSOFT BOB!!
we have 2 msi wind units at home that we always use whenever we go out camping, they are very light and feature packed _