Schwindoze S3v3n...

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

Is anyone using it yet? Thinking about getting a new HD and installing it on that to see what teh hapz iz wit it...

[enderzero]

please report back.

[McNevin]

I'm a big fan of it. I'm rather fond of the Jump-Lists, and the mouse gesturing.

http://lifehacker.com/5254211/windows-7 ... d-features

Aparently its done too:

http://www.redmondpie.com/download-wind ... uild-7600/

[enderzero]

Installed Swhindoze 7 last week and have been Shwindoze 7ing now for a few daze.

My overall impression is... This is very similar to Vista. I was a late adopter to Vista so I missed all the early headaches and my quadcore 4GB pc never had any of the resource problems. So I don't really know what all the fuss was about Vista sucking so bad.

That being said, W7 is definitely better than Vista. But I wouldn't say it is an evolutionary leap. The new taskbar is... different. But is it really better? I have been doing the super quicklaunch bar for years and years now and W7 actually makes it more difficult (see my image for the new hybrid version). What I've been doing since is stared using 16x10 screens is running a vertical quicklaunch superbar with all my apps on the right side of the screen - and keep the taskbar on the bottom. No longer possible! So I'm trying things out this way for now before exploring a 3rd party app to do that the old way. So far it is fine I guess but I hesitate to say it is better.


click for big

I'm also not a huge fan of Windows Media Player 12. I was a huge fan of Windows Media Player 11. I used it for all my music management - spending lots of time getting my library just right. Guess what, WMP11 library files are INCOMPATIBLE with WMP12. What?! Why? As far as I can tell the program is almost exactly the same. Yeah it gives you a few more options for sorting and adds things I will never use like a "Recorded TV" tab. But why not make some sort of backward compatible wrapper for our libraries? Poor poor planning MS. Plus it is way uglier than WMP11. I wanna go back to WMP11 (and the nets is flooded with instructions on how to downgrade WMP) but feel like I should just embrace the newer version right? It isn't that WMP12 is so bad - just that it isn't any better than WMP11. I mean I think the only time I've ever downgraded was Winamp 3.

Speaking of SW problems. CHKDSK in W7 is Broken! It has a memory leak that doesn't allow you to run /r on a non system disk. The most frustrating part is if you google it, there are hundreds of sites talking about the problem - but just as many people arguing that it is perfectly ok to have a broken tool in W7 since it isn't essential to the use of the OS. Bullshit. It shouldn't be broken. MS doesn't want to recognize the problem to blight their precious OS launch. Just patch the program and be done with it. It worked fine in Vista.

Some more random thoughts:

Regarding speed - seems a bit faster. But I didn't feel like vista was slow.

Seems a bit less buggy/quirky. The long famously annoying folder settings reverting bug seems to be fixed. That's nice... although I had gotten used to it.

Where is our cloud OS? Mesh isn't even built into W7. I expected some sort of evolutionary move forward in this field.

I love the flexibility in the Notification Area. Just hide the icons you don't ever want to see and show the ones you do. Very well done.

The new "don't dim my desktop for UAC" is a wonderful feature... But I still turned it off.

Chrome still doesn't work in x64. Kinda lame. Seems like google could have that working by now.

I hear media streaming is better but I haven't tried it out yet. I'll look into it since it never, NEVER worked right in Vista.

Haven't played with Gadgets yet but never used the gadget bar thing in Vista.

***

So I didn't expect this to come out sounding so negative. I still have my Vista install on my other hdd and wouldn't even consider going back to it for a split second. Not that there is anything wrong with W7 - but I was hoping there would be a few more exciting features.

Anyone have a different opinion? Any killer tweaks I haven't found yet?

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

Your review brings up some disappointing issues such as the media player. I don't manage any of my music through any media manager because I hate maintaining that kind of crap BUT the fact that MS changed the format from 11 to 12 making 11 library files incompatible with 12 is a bad sign. There is no excuse for MS to do something like that and just shows they are still compromising too much.

Fixing the folder reversion should have been done with Vista.

Hated the windows sidebar because of how it slowed up start up time plus I didn't like it anyway BUT I heard that copying multiple files at the same time doesn't cause the speed of copying to slow down like before so maybe there is a file system change that would also work for when the OS loads multiple things at the same time during startup? Just hoping.

Obviously Google will fix their browser but it is odd that it doesn't work and to me would indicate that there is going to be a lot of incompatible software which is a REALLY bad sign to me.

Cloud computing? I don't even know what that is but it sounds like a generic form of distributed computing? That would be very cool for CPU intensive tasks like rendering and compression related stuff. It seems like a pretty complicated thing to do though and really would be best suited as an API that the OS supports. The thing is though who is going to be willing to host that sort of thing? I wouldn't give up any of my CPU cycles to anyone except for when my computer was in a screen saver.

I have had huge issues with Vista where things just don't work and now that W7 is out how much effort is going to be dedicated to Vista? probably not that much as no one ever says how much they love it and I am sure MS knows it sucks and would want everyone to buy/upgrade to the W7.

I installed the beta W7 and windows destroyed the boot loader for the other two Linux OSs I had on my machine but then Fedora destroyed the entire partition and then my backup HD of my whole system died. So now I have lost everything. I have been working for almost two days now trying to recover the data. I have tried a bunch of recovery software and it either crashes, doesn't work at all, works at an unusable level, or doesn't have the functionality I am looking for. The shocking thing is so far with the browsing I have been able to accomplish, without recovery, I have something like 2.5 MILLION files on my HD and I have to go through all that to extract the important non-OS stuff. I am hoping I can get to that point.

Is it me or does 2,449,131 files sound a little ridiculous? I don't think I have anything outside of the ordinary in terms of what I have installed but holy crap that is a lot - hope this recovery program doesn't crash...I am sure I will have to probably run it again too...

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

If 2,449,131 files is ridiculous then 4,506,857 is ludicrous...Yeah, I have 4.5 million files on my hard drive...

[McNevin]

Yeah, you think they could have fixed the folder contents bug, in either SP1, or SP2. I must admit, it is stupid they never fixed that.

Think Vista will become the next WindowsME in MS history.

[Beeeph]

I heard the MS store in the middle of the MS commons has a gigantic bargain bin filled with nothing but copies of Vista for $5.

[McNevin]

I heard that they buried 2 tons of Windows Millennium CDs in the Nevada desert.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

I heard the MS store in the middle of the MS commons has a gigantic bargain bin filled with nothing but copies of Vista for $5.

Umm...yeah...you should get paid $5 for each copy you take from ye olde bargain bin...

[McNevin]

Lots of new and useful keyboard shortcuts in Windows 7.

I especially like:

Shift + Right-click on a folder

It is used to add the command prompt option to the Folder, so you can easily open the command prompt in that particular folder.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

#1 FAIL was BSOD while trying to format an external that Ghost was using.

#2 FAIL: fucking copying a big bunch of files while multi-tasking!!!!!!

This pisses me off to no fucking end! Am I the only one in the world that moves large amounts of data around? It was just 15.2GB and it got stuck about 7/8 the way through. Meanwhile I was browsing and Chrome would continually lock up. The file copy eventually failed and I had to use task manager to end it but it took multiple tries to kill it and eventually explorer had to be restarted with AN extremely long wait before I could "my computer" would even show up.

The problems are occurring while trying to back up files to a WD my book external using 1394a. It is REALLY bad...numerous lock ups and AFAIK the WD MyBook is one of the best external HDs out there using the Oxford 934 chipset which supports USB2.0, 1394a, and eSATA...ridiculous...Did I mention that I also tried the Seagate external that is generically named? Also an iOmega NAS? And a Buffalo DUO core that smoked as soon as I plugged it in? How much more bad luck will I have trying to back my data up??? Remember the other 750 internal that just stopped working after I backed it up to a new 1.5GB drive? What is the deal with all the problems stemming from Ghost? Now the MyBook? It is insane to think how fundamental of a computer operation I am attempting to do with a ridiculous amount of problems...

Ever since Windows 98 copying a large amount of files from A to B has ALWAYS seemed to FAIL at one point when I don't just let the OS handle the single task of file copying... unbelievable.

Bear in mind this is a FRESH W7 install to a NEW WD MyBook...which I still think is a very cool little external.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

64bit Windows 7 drivers for Canon MX310 - FAIL!

Printing doesn't work.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

I think this may be a motherboard issue? I don't know, the new Western Digital My Book external HD works beautifully on my old Windows XP box using the Soundblaster Audigy Firewire port but it fails on Windows 7 64 bit...what the hell...

[enderzero]

Forgot to mention I fixed the Chrome issue with this. Wtf Windows Audit Mode??


Still not using Chrome tho.

[McNevin]

WTF is audit mode?

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

I think there actually may be a legitimate problem with W7 and firewire...appears I am not alone when it comes to problems.

[R3C]

I am now dual booting Windows VII and Snow Leopard X.VI.II, and so far it is working flawlessly. I just hit the boot menu key, and either choose to boot from the W7 drive, or from the EFI device for OSX. This is running on my i7 system.

I haven't used W7 heavily yet, just got it installed, got the drivers on, and installed Steam, Borderlands, and Dragon Age. From what I've seen so far though, it works great, and does seem a little bit snappier than Vista. The whole installation process was the quickest I've ever done on anything 95 and up. Nearly the entire process was automatic, other than the initial drive setup. Very nice.

I didn't look at the specifics of your 1394 problems, but I've got my 1394 audio interface connected, and it's been outputting just fine. No glitches, connection woes, or anything of the sort. I do have a TI chipset though since I'm running a Gigabyte board. They rarely have issues like some other chipsets.

[enderzero]

No problems with my Audigy onboard 1394 though I have only tried it with an ext hdd. I've had a lot of people asking me if they should upgrade to W7 and I am now answering whole heartedly yes. The OS may not present too many revolutionary upgrades but it is rock solid.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

I have the TI chipset on the chambord and teh Oxford 934 on the external which is pretty much the best setup and it works but is really slow.

The legacy driver fix works for a lot of people on their old devices like video cameras and old external HDs but no luck for me...I am sure it will get fixed though so keeping the MyBook.

[McNevin]

So is there some issue with Windows 7? Or is it a Driver problem? In my experience creative's 64 bit drivers have never been that great.

[R3C]

In my experience you are correct about that.

I really like it as far as a Windows OS goes. It's damned stable, and it's faster than a pensed rabbit with a torn shuba! It runs faster than the Wand of Befal cutting swiftly. It's definitely not a slow-cutting trencher beak. I have yet to experience any time passing wizzenberry operations either.

Hmm... Time to invite Seth over to beat Below the Root for me again.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

It depends on your experience, W7 has some inexcusable basic functionality issues.

I can't copy files to my external drive without it hanging in the copy dialog, if I cancel the copy explorer crashes, I cannot get my new Canon printer to show up, I got a blue screen of death trying to format a drive.

You should be able to do all these extremely basic fundamental OS tasks. It is stable only when you let it idle. Windows Vista was more stable in my experience.

As far as the speed goes, there is still too much OS overhead. For the kind of processing power I have it should be better for FOUR CPUs and ridiculous GPU capabilities...Maybe it would be more to my liking if I bought an SSD.

This is not to say that it will eventually will get better - I know it will since these are easily addressed issues. I think I may install the 32-bit version and see how the drivers work out then.

[McNevin]

I just copied 17.5 gigs to my external, and it worked fine (USB2). Can you use USB2 or eSATA?

[enderzero]

I have completed all of the tasks you are having problems with l2icks0r with no problems. You definitely have some i/o issue skrewing thing ups0r.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

I got my printer to work - it was the USB cable if you can believe that.

I got my external hard drive to work - I just bought a drive dock and a fast seagate and am getting 100MB/s through eSATA READ/WRITE. It works great and will be good for backups. Interestingly enough the drive performs at a rate of 116MB/s READ 107MB/s WRITE.

A drive to drive copy of 15GB took 2 min 40 seconds so pretty happy - finally. Now I can get back to playing around with OSs again and do a final install of Windows 7.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

I am able to boot Windows 7 from my eSATA hard drive dock.

Steps I went through to do this:

1 - physically transferred drive from computer case to drive dock
2 - boot
3 - I got a GEOM error right after posting
4 - physically transferred drive from dock to case
5 - booted from windows 7 DVD and did repair my computer->startup repair
6 - rebooted but computer locked right after posting with no error message
7 - transferred drive from case to drive dock
8 - reboot and SUCCESS!

I think what steps you could actually do is this:

1 - transfer drive from computer case to drive dock
2 - boot and get GEOM error
3 - run startup repair
4 - reboot

[R3C]

I was thinking of doing this very thing! I have my EFI-X/OSX install on my main drive. I've been booting using F-12 to get the boot device menu. Every once in a while this doesn't work quite right, and it ends up swapping my drive boot order in the BIOS. Not sure why. (I wouldn't think this information would be written. (unless something larger is happening)

So, I want to run W7 off of an eSata, so I can just unplug it when I'm not using it. (This way I can be sure that OSX isn't writing anything strange on the Windows drive, and V/V.) It doesn't seem to have done anything of the sort so far, but I'm paranoid about such stuff.

[R3C]

Actually, as much as I like OSX, and as simplistic as it is for music making, I may ditch it. (or at least relegate it to an external drive) I think W7 will be the main OS. Dual booting is just trying my patience. I don't like stupid extra steps to do things, and having to hit F-12 and select a drive to boot from is a stupid extra step. I'm getting to the point where I just want things to work. I solve enough computer-puzzles at work now to where I've finally reached the point where it isn't fun at home anymore. Bleh... I don't have time to tinker with things when I'm at home these days.

[Bill Drayton Jr.]

Yeah...I had a bunch of problems too and it became taxing...not sure how much I will play around with linux anymore really. I need to have my main system up and running so I can get back to normal life stuff but am going to stay with 64bitW7