Thoughts on Windows 7

Discussion in 'Detailing Bliss Lounge' started by loudog2, Nov 5, 2009.

  1. P1et

    P1et Official DB Moderator

    I was at Best Buy yesterday and couldn't see much difference between it and Vista. Am I missing something?
     
  2. P1et

    P1et Official DB Moderator

  3. Got Wax

    Got Wax Banned

  4. krshultz

    krshultz Nuba Guru

    I'm typing this up from the new Sony Vaio laptop, which is running Windows 7. So far, I really like it, although I certainly don't know all the clever little tricks yet. I like the application previews when you hover over the items in the taskbar. It seems to be laid out similarly to Vista, so it's not unfamiliar or strange, but it's definitely better.

    The installer/uninstaller stuff has gotten MUCH faster than it used to be. I purchased a copy of Norton Internet Security 2010 at Costco, so I wanted to uninstall the trialware version that came on this Vaio. It took less than ten seconds. MUCH faster. Installs are also a lot faster. Reboots and startups are also improved.

    It's an XPS 630. It was their entry level XPS when I bought it, but was still a pretty high end machine anyway. I believe that there was an option to downlevel it to XP, but there was a fee, and frankly, I didn't see the need in it. The machine is about 1 1/2 years old.
     
  5. agpatel

    agpatel OD On Detailing

    Grats on the new laptop, Win7 is great, no issues like I said. I like the autosize/auto snap on screen sizing. I run a dueal screen with my notebook and great to have two sites up on the second monitor and have the take up half the screen and Word open on the notebook screen when doing lab write ups.
     
  6. Denzil

    Denzil Guest

    Ahh I see. Yeah I just had my Dell XPS M1330 fail on me again courtesy of the Nvidia GPU. The good thing is that it's still under warranty (my assumption) and a tech came by my house within 3 days to fix it. So far I've had great customer service with my Dell but the hardware failures suck! :(

    That's exactly what I do. I really like how windows can snap to the sides of the screen and the top to maximize your current window.
     
  7. krshultz

    krshultz Nuba Guru

    Update. :lol:

    Those of you using the Aero Snap window resizing stuff, you can use (Windows Key + the arrow keys) to move the currently focused window around.

    Win-^ Maximizes
    Win-< Moves full left to halfway point of scree
    Win-> Moves full right
    Win-\/ Restores to original size and position

    Also, if you've got an open, or several open, windows from the same application, mouse over its icon in the taskbar. You'll get a popup with a thumbnail of each of them, showing you what's on them, along with a close button at top right of each thumbnail when you hover over it. There's even a registry tweak that'll let you change the time it takes the popup to appear (default is 400ms).

    They really did a great job with these little usability tweaks, and even the text in the dialog boxes and notification modals is much better written. They spent a LOT of time on this thing, and so far, it looks like they let it stay in the test lab until it was actually ready. Unusual in the software industry. :lol:
     
  8. agpatel

    agpatel OD On Detailing

    Did not know that, thanks for the tip!
     
  9. RamSus

    RamSus Jedi Nuba

    Been using Win7 for a while now & so far, it seems to the best operating system Microsoft has ever released. It's extremely fast to install (clean install) & runs fast also even on a laptop with 1 GB of RAM.
     
  10. Stems

    Stems Birth of a Detailer

    Just installed it yesterday on my new Intel SSD (incredible btw). It's fantastic! Though I do think this is what Vista should of been when they released it a few years ago. mind you, I never had any problems with Vista.
     
  11. Reflect

    Reflect DB Forum Supporter

    More info on registry tweak please!
     
  12. krshultz

    krshultz Nuba Guru

    Sorry, I missed this request. Here ya go:

    Windows 7: How To Change the Live Preview Delay Time for Taskbar Thumbnails | Microsoft Windows 7 | Tech-Recipes

    Works great. And this thumbnail routine they've done when you hover over an app in the task bar...that's brilliant. I wouldn't be without it now. I've often got several windows open of the same application, and it's a huge help to not have to go through all of them looking for what I'm after.

    If you look closely, the thumbnails are real time. Start a movie in Windows Media Player, for example. Then, go to the taskbar and hover over WMP. The movie is also playing in the thumbnail.
     
  13. MuddyWaters

    MuddyWaters Virgin Detailer

    Unless you are ready to replace a lot of out dated software (that currently runs great on XP or another OS) don't buy 7. Vista is even worse and I believe that MS discontinued it. Typical Microsoft - they continually rush garbage to market just to get you to buy latest the latest additions to their products.

    "I think there's a patch for that."
     
  14. Twisted007

    Twisted007 Banned

    soon all going to have to go to W7 or get something else cause they going to stop supporting xp an vista. an if your a gamer alot of new games won't work cause you need direct x 10 an they only have for W7. it sucks i run xp pro corp. an linux on my laptop at same time which is great for forums an places that can get alot of bugs viruses an crap.
     
  15. agpatel

    agpatel OD On Detailing

    Have been running Win7 64bit sense a few months before offical public release and never had a issue so far. Have not had many of the issues I had with Vista, mainly when using CAD programs the computer has not become unresponsive or anything. All-in-all, like it much better than 7.
     
  16. Twisted007

    Twisted007 Banned

    it is different you have to get use to it but all in all runs good so far only a few minor issues we see how it goes.
     
  17. carcat

    carcat Virgin Detailer

    I just started using Windows 7 on a new laptop about 2 weeks ago.

    So far, as I transition from my old laptop with Win XP, to the new laptop ..... I must say that Windows 7 feels a lot better than Vista. It has been stable and snappy ..... and works better than XP on a variety of web apps through both the Firefox and Chrome browsers.
     
  18. krshultz

    krshultz Nuba Guru

    I'm still 100% thrilled with it. I'm currently typing this up on the older Vista box I've got in the other room. The differences I notice between it and the Win7-x64 laptop are many, and Win7 is winning by a huge margin.

    - Data transfer from USB to HDD is faster in 7 by a HUGE amount
    - Boot time for Win7 is astonishingly fast. Last boot, and this is very consistent, was 32 seconds to the password screen; another 22 seconds to fully functional desktop, with Norton started and all services accounted for. That's under a minute from power off to ready to go.
    - Windows Installer is much, much faster in 7. The only piece of software with an ill-behaved installer on my 7 box is the Sun Java SDK. And that's mostly because Sun wrote too much of their own installer code - had they simply used the windows installer, it'd be better.
    - All of the aforementioned user interface tweaks on 7 really are very good.
    - The built-in help documentation is MUCH better in 7. They've revised quite a lot of it, and it's very well written, striking a nice balance between "too dumbed down" and "too technical."

    AnK, you sure you didn't mean "better than Vista" at the end of that post?

    Yeah, it's very responsive. And it looks like you've already been using Chrome, which is another performance upgrade. Chrome's Javascript interpreter is light years ahead of the one in Firefox in terms of speed.
     
  19. agpatel

    agpatel OD On Detailing

    Karl, yes I do mean Vista...
     
  20. Denzil

    Denzil Guest

    Ok so I've found a gripe about 7 that is a common gripe with Windows in general... they suck for software development purposes! I always find myself in a situation where I need to install a piece of development software only to find out it's not supported by Windows. One case in example is I want to use Phusion Passenger to get my Apache and Ruby on Rails up but there's only support for every mainstream OS but Windows. :(

    Ubuntu here I come. :)
     

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