windows 7 - worth upgrading?

[chef]

i've had it since RC1 and its fine on my dell m4400, no issues whatsoever.

[JoJoGabor]

Yes defintely upgrade, its so much faster. I initially ran it in a Vmware workstaion VM and it was more responsive than the Vista host it was running on. Since had it on my work laptop for around 5 months and recently did a clean upgrade at home - no issues what so ever. My laptop is back to useable speed

[AtW]

Is it faster than Windows XP? I think not.

[VectraMan]

Is it faster than Windows XP? I think not.

I think so. YMMV of course, but my experience is that whilst XP would go to hell as soon as something is thrashing the hard disk, the Windows 7 GUI remains responsive under similar circumstances.

Whether responsiveness equates to "faster" is debatable, but it certainly feels faster.

I found Vista was better than XP in that regard, and Windows 7 is better yet. It's because of having a proper window manager. Unlike XP it doesn't waste lots of time paging in applications just so they can draw themselves, and one of the things they said they improved on Windows 7 was not locking the whole system whilst its drawing code is being paged in. It's a long standing Windows multitasking issue they've finally got to grips with.

But if you run it in a VM, or don't have enough RAM or a good enough graphics card for Aero, you don't get that benefit.

Only gripe I have with Windows 7 is that my desktop has quite a noisy hard disk, and it never shuts up.

[AtW]

I think so. YMMV of course, but my experience is that whilst XP would go to hell as soon as something is thrashing the hard disk, the Windows 7 GUI remains responsive under similar circumstances.

That's possible - they made some good kernel changes in Windows 7 that may help it, if some bad app loads up disks however things won't be great - get rid of that app.

I installed Windows 7 this weekend and removed it: did not support my Soundblaster Live at all, old Classic (Windows 2000) scheme looks tulip, had to spent lifetime to find in Control Panel admin tools management console to deal with disks and that FEW times I found it and then could not find, total bulltulip design - it was easy in XP.

Total fail - I thought I'd use it as Direct X 11 dual boot, but it fked up my existing install by setting up its own bootloader that ignored previous Windows XP install

[DiscoStu]

I don't like change, everything is in a different place.

WHS

[TykeMerc]

Is it faster than Windows XP? I think not.

In my experience, on this laptop, it is.

I bought the laptop a year or two ago with Vista Business and scrapped that for XP a couple of weeks later. Installed Windows 7 about 2 weeks ago (without formatting) and in my opinion it's better than XP and streets faster than Vista. The build took under an hour.

There are a few trivial niggles (I hate not being able to use the "classic" Start menu for example), but it's been very solid and quick. Things like it picking up wireless network points and obtaining IP addresses after a boot or hibernate are very quick and the startup itself is surprisingly swift.

I've been pleasantly surprised and will happily install it on some other machines.

[AtW]

In my experience, on this laptop, it is.

This can be perception - they've spend a lot of time making it FEEL faster, which is of course all that matters these days to amateurs.

[TykeMerc]

This can be perception - they've spend a lot of time making it FEEL faster, which is of course all that matters these days to amateurs.

I am indeed an amateur.

I've not been making a living since the IBM PC (yes the one before the XT) was launched, not seen and worked on all of the DOS iterations since 2.1 and every Windows release since then.
I don't in fact have many retired MCSE's (when they meant something and weren't issued with cornflake packets) and MSP certs dating back to NT 3.51 and the current ones and I was never a CNE either.
I've never built corporate networks or rolled out tens of thousands of desktops and well in excess of a thousand servers with builds I've either directly engineered or managed.

For all of the tasks I've thrown at this machine since I rebuilt it It's proven to perform better since I installed Windows 7, but of course that's my purely amateur opinion and not that of a seasoned professional.

AtW you've proven yourself to be an utter t0sser on numerous occasions, ST*U, your opinion is worthless.

[AtW]

I am indeed an amateur.

I've not been making a living since the IBM PC (yes the one before the XT) was launched, not seen and worked on all of the DOS iterations since 2.1 and every Windows release since then.
I don't in fact have many retired MCSE's (when they meant something and weren't issues with cornflake packets) and MSP certs dating back to NT 3.51 and the current ones and I was never a CNE either.
I've never built corporate networks or rolled out tens of thousands of desktops and well in excess of a thousand servers with builds I've either directly engineered or managed.

For all of the tasks I've thrown at this machine since I rebuilt it It's proven to perform better since I installed Windows 7, but of course that's my purely amateur opinion and not that of a seasoned professional.

AtW you've proven yourself to be an utter t0sser on numerous occasions, ST*U, your opinion is worthless.

You are a pro mate!