Geezer

I got a new machine last week, and it was supposed to come blank, but it had a copy of XP on it (to test the hardawre I suppose).

Even with a virtually blank copy of XP, it still come up faster with 7 on it. Even now I have started to fill it with all my ****E it still comes up faster!

I can't comment on how it performs generally as my new hardware is much faster then my old rig, but it's by no means bleeding edge and it runs like a dream.

I'm even becoming used to the 7 interface........

Geezer

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Utter horsesh1t! You might be good at DIY mapping micky but leave the OS talk to the adults yea

StickyMicky

^^ ha!

Never saw this, i have not compared them myself, i am just going of what loads of other games have reported back to me, they all said that for gaming they were getting much better results from XP

The way they all pretty much said it was

1.XP
2.Win7
3.Vista


Regardless, i do plan to upgrade from XP at some point, as i suspect i will have to anyway once DX11 gets into full swing.

I have just saw this
Windows 7 UK Online Store - Student Registration

Its only £30 to people with a student email account, seams toooooo cheap to miss, as luck would have it, the missus has went back to uni again to do a masters degree, so i suspect she may have another student email address we can use!

StickyMicky

The Missus has just had the email back from ms with a link to buy it for 30 quid.

StickyMicky

Just about to buy it and i realised it was an upgrade package, so we backed off and did a quick google, it appears you cant upgrade XP straight to W7 and have to put vista in between them

Might as well just pay the £60 or what ever it is at retail IMO

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

You can upgrade XP but it wont port all your apps/registry/settings as well. As you say to do that you need Vista first. Anyway clean is best just install w7 n install your apps afterwards.

Daz34

You can clean install using upgrade media.

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/cle...rade_media.asp

Tenby

iTrader: (1)

you boys have got me, new pc on the way with win7

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

lol

StickyMicky

The thing about this that is putting me off a little is..

1. i have not done this kind of jiggery pokery before
2. the £30 offer for students we were about to buy is for a digital download version, you either pick 32 or 64 bit, then get your key and a download link.

I suspect it might be bringing unknown variables into the "clean install" thing, and i will end up getting stuck/pissed off and £30 down


I would like the option of switching between 32/64 bit (i know it needs a fresh install to do this but i have plenty hard drives)


Seen LOADS of full versions on fleabay for around £60-70 when i had a quick check the other day.

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

Don't bother with 64bit yet.

The world is slowly catching up. Drivers are scarce and some plug ins dont work. For example if you view a website using flash in the 64bit version of internet explorer it tells you that you need to download a plug in that doesnt exist yet. You are then taken to a web page that tells you in order to view the content you must use the 32bit browser.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html

I've had the same problem with the Ciscoand other VPN Client which doesnt work on Window 7 (64)

If Adobe and Cisco aren't upto speed imagine who else isn't!

Save yourself a **** load of hassle and install the 32bit for the time being and then go to 64 bit in a couple of months when everyone else has got their act together and some service packs are released.

I will say it's a **** load better than vista though.

Daz (MSCE, CCNA)

I've got the 64bit version installed and to be fair my laptop is proper quick when it works.
I'm

StickyMicky

Will firefox not work with the 64bit version?

I never use IE to be honest.

Iain Young

Firefox works fine on 64bit (as does most 32bit software). I run in full 64bit for pretty much everything now and only revert to a 32bit version on very rare occaisions.

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

Missing the point, On a windows 7 64 bit machine there are two versions of Internet explorer installed. There's a 64 bit version and there's a 32 bit version. They both work fine but when using the 64bit version and you view a site that has flash content you get the plug-in error.

If you look on the C drive you'll notice that there are two programs files folders one is for 64 bit programs the other is for 32bit programs and is followed with a (x86) suffix.

I havent tried it but I suspect that if you use a full blown 64 bit version of firefox and try to view a site with flash content you'll get the same error because Adobe havent come up with a 64bit flash viewer yet. Its fairly normal all this when a new OS is released. Give it a month or two and the rest of the world will have caught up.

Iain Young

Not really. I'm not sure there's a point to be made. Sure there is no 64bit flash yet, but you can happily run a web browser in 32bit with no problems. In fact, I can't really think of a reason why anyone would want to run a browser in 64bit mode. That's probably the reason there is no 64bit flash - what's the point? 64 bit comes into its own when dealing with large amounts of data processing, accessing lots of memory etc, something that the average web page doesn;t really need to worry about.

For software that can actually use the power (things like Photoshop, Premiere etc), then 64bit is a no brainer. They simply work much better. For other software, you can generally run the 32bit versions quite happily.

Why not simply use the 64bit OS now, and just upgrade your application software if and when it becomes available? That way you get the best of both worlds. I know I've been running solely on 64bit (Vista and now Win7) for 3 years, and haven't had any problems.

StickyMicky

This was my thinking, install 64 now, and maybe revert back in the future if required/needed, i suspect everything will move towards 64bit in the future anyway?

How long into the future is anybody's guess i suppose.

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

OK let me clarify a little. When you're runningwin 7 64bit it runs 64 bit IE by default. Thus everytime I surf the net it's automatically running IE 64 bit if I want to see sites with flash content I then have to close down and specifically open the 32 bit version. The point I am making is this is a tad tedious and is just one example of existing problems. I totally agree 64bit is better for big apps. I run a lot of big sql scripts (SQL2007, Crystal reports and VBA) and associated apps when I'm developing and I sh*t you not eveything runs alot quicker.
I've had more problems associated with 64 bit too in that the VPN client we usefor my remote users works fine for all 32 bit users but results in BSOD if I try to install it on a win7 64 machine. I then have to upgrade and post them out the lastest Cisco VPN client

All I am saying is things will be better in a month or two when more is released for it. That said, I am looking at things from an IT professional / developers point of view (as I have some 200 users to worry about) rather than that of the home user / gamer.

Mickey I can confirm that machines are being sold with 64bit installed from the factory so its inevitable that things are moving in that direction anyway. Don't forget it was the same when XP came out there were no drivers for that for a couple of months.

Driver issues aside I'm really liking windows 7 at the mo, its far more stable and less resource hungry than Vista. Looks like MS have redeemed themselves with the release of win7 because lets face it vista is right there with windows ME as far as crap OS go .

Iain Young

Mine runs 32bit IE by default (it always has done since the day I installed it - Vista and Win7). Sounds like your configuration might be a little odd.

Not sure about that. 64bit operating systems have been around for years now. I don't see any evidence that an extra couple of months is going to make a huge difference. The only thing that will persuade software vendors to produce 64bit versions is when it becomes financially viable (i.e. when enough people are asking for it).

It was never that bad

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

I've just realised I could have installed 64-bit Win7 I only have 2Gb of RAM - is it worth the install again?

PS. Never had any issues with Vista - Win ME on the other hand!

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

Iain, you're making me out to be some kind of amatuer : lol. You're forgetting I do this for a living. I've been and I.T. professional for around 13 years now and been a Microsoft Certified System Engineer for 10 of those and renewed atleast 3 times. Cisco certified for 8 years too. Admittedly I am more server side these days and have worked for a couple of the worlds biggest companies in reasobly senior roles (was network manager for British American Tobacco in Sydney for a couple of years which was a 5000 node natiowide Win2K environment) I certainly know how to install an OS From scratch without making "it odd"

If you remember when XP was first released it was the same then, very little worked on it and there were very few drivers available. Within a month or two of its release things improved no end. I've no doubt things will be the same. Also don't forget that just because things worked Vista 64bit doesnt mean they will work on Win7 64bit. There's no better test bed than the general public that's why a service pack will be released within the next few months as things crop up that would never be detected in a development test environment. Its always part of the product development life cycle.

So far so good for Win 7 (64) for me though, I'll not be changing back.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Well you might be an IT professional Daz, but if anything that post proves you are an amateur speller

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

Dnt you fooking start wv dat spellin stuff

They are errors with my typing not my spelling LOL

Iain Young

I've not idea what you do for a living, but I've not suggested that at all. If you want to play that game, I've been writing software professionally for these operating systems for over 15 years now, and my company is about as close to MS as you can get without actually being employed by them. Started off working on tsr memory managers and cobol compilers for msdos and have worked on software for every iteration of windows since then, but also sco, aix, hp, various flavours of linux etc. So there

That's nice. I wonder why you get a different Win7 installation to me then. I've got 64Bit Win7 installed on 4 machines, and on every single one I get the 32bit IE by default, (you have to go searching for the 64bit version). Perhaps the MSDN version of the OS is different somehow to the version you are using?

Geezer

I installed the 64 bit version of W7 (Home Premium, retail) and it had 64 bit IE in it.

WHat surprised me was the fact that IE was in it at all after the malarkey with MS and the EU. I thought they had made MS take it out?

Geezer

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Trying to out-geek each other on ScoobyNet. I've seen it all now

Can anyone spare a moment to answer my sodding question?

dazdavies

iTrader: (22)

I somehow knew he'd end up being condescending.

Iain FYI, it wasn't MSDN , beta RC, or any other flavour, it was a plain old boxed retail Ultimate version purchased from PC world or rather their business account department Equanet on the day of it release.

Whilst you're trying to top trump me for whatever reason saying you're only running it on 4 machines gives me an idea of the size and caliber of your company

It was a straight forward bog standard default options 64 bit install. It's been the same on the 12 other user machines I've installed it on I'll let you know when I roll it out to the rest of the 200 or so users I manage here.

Penny drops though as programmers are an incredibly strange bunch I'm glad I stayed away from that and went into the management side of things

Dunk, Yes!

Iain Young

Glad you finally realise it

Very true

Iain Young

Sigh - You were the one who started throwing around employment stats, not me

Hmmm, sounds like there might indeed be a difference between MSDN versions and the retail releases then. That may well be something to look out for in the future, (I assumed they were the same).

Not really. I personally have 6 development machines, 4 of which are currently running 64bit, and 2 running 32bit. Company wide I dread to think how many thousand machines we have (given that we have offices in almost every country in the world and employ several hundred development staff).

Well, if you are installing from the same image, then you will get the same result. The number of machines won't make a difference. It does sound like there are differences between the versions.

Strange - we have the same impression of I.T. folks

p.s. Dunk, Yes

StickyMicky