windows 7 or stay with vista

Iguana Bob

ok first of all im trying to figure out if i should bother up grading to windows 7. i am presently running vista 32, with my processor being a core 2 duo p8400 and 3gb ram
should i
A. keep my 32 bit vista
B. get 64 bit vista( will this make any difference to how it runs, ie faster)
C upgrade to windows 7 (32 or 64)?

grizzly

What is it you use the machine for? If it's for work – research if all the programs you need will run well on 7, but otherwise I don't see why not.

As for 64/32 again this depends on what you use it for. With the RAM you currently have I'd say try 32 as your not going to see real gains.

Iguana Bob

no real gamin done on it just internet, torrents, 3d drawing, nothing major

Big Lar

I posted this in another forum a few weeks ago and I am just not going to type it again.

Its been five weeks since I installed Windows 7 64 Bit. I already had Vista 32 Bit installed with a year or so.


I installed it on a partition of my hard drive, Chucked on a few games and a few programs that I use on a regular basis. I constantly switch over and back between Vista and Windows 7 and I can honestly say that there is no noticeable difference in performance between the two OS's, Being a Vista user already Windows 7 has no WOW factor in it for me.


Installation

In fairness to Win 7, I found the installation of the OS to be one of the easiest and trouble free of them all, all I had to do was to shove in the installation disk and away we went – When it booted up all the drivers were installed – Which was nice. When I installed Vista I had to manually install drivers from disk and oh all those restarts..........................
Windows 7 updates drivers on a regular basis and includes them in a windows update, which is handy, Although I should point out that Vista does this also.

64 Bit the biggest “suck in” of them all - Well for me anyhow !

I said to myself that this time I would try 64 bit as it seemed to be a natural progression, Well what a disappointment. It turns out that not many programs out there are 64 Bit and run in 32 Bit mode, Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat & all the other programs that I use on a regular basis are only available in 32 Bit. No difference noticed in gaming – COD 4 & 5 both loaded and acted the same way.

I suppose the biggest kick in the teeth in using 64 Bit was the lack of a 64 Bit Firefox web browser – I like Firefox because of all the add-ons that it has. Anyway's seeming enough there is no such 64 Bit Firefox, 32 Bit does work quit fine on it although there is reports that it does crash from time to time on 64 Bit systems.
However Mozilla does have a 64 Bit browser calls Minefield, But the adobe flash player plugin player is not compatible with it, Also not compatible with it are most of my add-on's Like FireFTP, MouseZoom, Xoopit for Gmail and many others.

In Conclusion

Upgrade form XP to Windows 7 ?

Yes I would - Gonna have to move forward at some stage, other wise we would all be still running Win 95

Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 ?

I just cannot see any advantage, Sure enough Vista has gotten a lot of bad publicity over the last few year's , But most of the bugs seem to have been ironed out at this stage. Vista can be a hog on resources, but most PC's nowadays have around 2GB of Ram which helps the OS to run smooth.

Use a 64 Bit OS ?

Not on your nelly ! - Well not for the foreseeable future anyhow, The software is just not out there to make full use of it.



Just a few thoughts

THE END

Iguana Bob

anyone know if utorrent work correctly

EKRIUQ

Big Lar wrote: »

I posted this in another forum a few weeks ago and I am just not going to type it again.

Agree with everything except I haven't tried the 64 bit. I have Vista on my home machines and have been switching between Vista and windows 7 for the past couple of months and windows 7 does seem a bit quicker but I haven't as many programs on it yet. As for my work machines their on XP and will consider upgrading to windows 7 when it's officially released.

EKRIUQ

Iguana Bob wrote: »

anyone know if utorrent work correctly

Yes it works perfectly all my windows programs do, the only thing that isn't working on windows 7 is my fingerprint recognition on my laptop but I'm sure the driver will be updated soon.

Sir Oxman

Iguana Bob wrote: »

anyone know if utorrent work correctly

Works perfectly

Bob_Harris

Big Lar wrote: »

I said to myself that this time I would try 64 bit as it seemed to be a natural progression, Well what a disappointment. It turns out that not many programs out there are 64 Bit and run in 32 Bit mode, Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat & all the other programs that I use on a regular basis are only available in 32 Bit. No difference noticed in gaming – COD 4 & 5 both loaded and acted the same way.

I suppose the biggest kick in the teeth in using 64 Bit was the lack of a 64 Bit Firefox web browser – I like Firefox because of all the add-ons that it has. Anyway's seeming enough there is no such 64 Bit Firefox, 32 Bit does work quit fine on it although there is reports that it does crash from time to time on 64 Bit systems.
However Mozilla does have a 64 Bit browser calls Minefield, But the adobe flash player plugin player is not compatible with it, Also not compatible with it are most of my add-on's Like FireFTP, MouseZoom, Xoopit for Gmail and many others.

...

Use a 64 Bit OS ?

Not on your nelly ! - Well not for the foreseeable future anyhow, The software is just not out there to make full use of it.

The only thing that should turn people off of a 64bit OS is lack of 64bit drivers for their devices, which is becoming less common place these days.

32bit applications work seamlessly under a 64bit OS.

As for a 64bit Firefox, there is absolutely no need at all for a 64bit version. If there was you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Applications pushing large amounts of data and doing a lot of processing (image manipulation, video encoding, the operating system itself) utilize the potential of 64bit. (even if that means just a small improvement in performance)

Big Lar

Bob_Harris wrote: »

The only thing that should turn people off of a 64bit OS is lack of 64bit drivers for their devices, which is becoming less common place these days.

Well in fairness, I had no driver trouble with my installation

Bob_Harris wrote: »

32bit applications work seamlessly under a 64bit OS.
...................

That's my point, Why go 64bit if the software is not out there to make use of it ?

Bob_Harris

Big Lar wrote: »

Well in fairness, I had no driver trouble with my installation

That's my point, Why go 64bit if the software is not out there to make use of it ?

Conversely, why not go for 64bit if all software (32 + 64) runs fine on it, and you may see benefits in such things as 64bit video editing and you'll be able to use more than 3gb of RAM if you have it? :pac:

matood

Win 7 64bit, running smoothly, all drivers, no problems at all. It`s a lot faster, it use all my 6gig of ram, mostly editing pics with capture nx 2 and i can say the difference is significant. All 32bit apps running fine, no crashes since install.

Biggins

Tried windows 7 like others.
Did a frest install rather than an upgrade. Apparently its more recommended.
Have to say everything went smoothly. Drivers installed for everything. I noted that it during the instalation even asked me for my security key for my internet, so it automatically detected DURING instalation that I had a wireless signal in the house.
Was impressed at that alone.

If your using Vista and your happy to stay with it, I wouldn't upgrade.
If your using XP - definately.

NOTE: If you have old games/apps that used to NOT work under Vista, I would upgarde to the right Win 7 version that has the full capability for old apps/games to work in its MUCH improved compatability mode.

I'm off to an official Microsoft presentation tomorrow in Dublin for Windows 7 - and I have to say, they clearly learned their lessons from the amount of errors and slip-ups from Vista being too rushed out!

chrism2007

windows 7 blows vista out of the water. people who actually use their pcs for more than just looking at boards would never say its anywhere close to vista

vista was a unstable heap of s""t that should have never been released.

windows 7 is everything it should have been

monkeypants

I have a major hardware problem with my laptop right now, so that's the priority. I had 32 and 64 bit flavours of Vista and had no problems with either. Both ran whatever applications or games that I wanted to install and run. When installing 64 bit Vista, I did have to search around for a video driver.

I'll try 7 at some point, but it may not happen this year. I may leave it until I see the first service pack.

Overheal

Wiindows 7 64 bit. had a hiccup with video drivers initially but solved after visiting laptopdrivers2go.com

Theres a lot of nifty UI changes in 7. That alone is worth the switch. Theres also a couple additional power scheme options to twink with: you will extend your battery life by going up to windows 7.

Its worth the switch from Vista and definitively worth the switch from XP or older.

chrism2007

its a dream for media sharing across multiple PCs, laptops, xbox and everything else.

had it setup in about 10 mins and running like a dream

also the wireless is a lot faster on windows 7

Big Lar

Big Lar wrote: »

I suppose the biggest kick in the teeth in using 64 Bit was the lack of a 64 Bit Firefox web browser – I like Firefox because of all the add-ons that it has. Anyway's seeming enough there is no such 64 Bit Firefox, 32 Bit does work quit fine on it although there is reports that it does crash from time to time on 64 Bit systems.
However Mozilla does have a 64 Bit browser calls Minefield, But the adobe flash player plugin player is not compatible with it, Also not compatible with it are most of my add-on's Like FireFTP, MouseZoom, Xoopit for Gmail and many others.

A major problem with porting Firefox (or any web browser) to 64-bit is that any plugins or addons designed for the 32-bit version of that browser will not work. It's a limitation of 64-bit Windows - a 64-bit application cannot load a 32-bit library and vice versa. So developers would need to port their addons to 64-bit.

The mentality of not using 64-bit because there are few 64-bit native apps is a bit flawed. With that mentality in the mid 90s, people would have stuck with Windows 3.1 rather than upgrading to Windows 95. The older your apps are, the more likely you will run into problems, but most will run under 64-bit and I'd say XP Mode will take care of those that don't (provided that they don't use 3D I'd assume).

I just have to give myself a kick and get used to the Vista/7 interface. I always hated it but XP won't last forever.

xsiborg

EKRIUQ wrote: »

the only thing that isn't working on windows 7 is my fingerprint recognition on my laptop but I'm sure the driver will be updated soon.

if its an HP laptop with an Authentec fingerprint reader, download "digital persona", i had the same problem, and now, under windows 7 i can use my fingerprint reader to log in, AND i can use my xbox 360 as an extender. before, under vista, i had to disable the "use fingerprint to log on to windows" feature under vista.

incidentally, the media center portion of windows 7 is a MASSIVE improvement over vista, one knacky little thing being that when you select say "movies", it gets the movies from the EPG (i have the skyHD box hooked up via a huappage HVR-900H) and displays the cover art and a proper synopsis...

oh, and also it suports xvid codecs in the 360 WMC now aswel out of the box, something it couldnt do before from vista even with the codecs installed.

i could go on, but suffice to say- windows 7 was a bit of a jaw dropper for me, and the install only took say an hour, versus hours of doiwnloading updates for a reinstall of vista (even if it is now more stable thanks largely to SP2!).

i continue to run a dual boot win xp/win 7 config on my netbook for the time being, but to be honest. i'm counting the days for october 22nd, haha, then i'll see how the family license thing works out as i really don't fancy buying five copies, at worst i'll go with one copy of ultimate, two premium and leave the other two computers vista and xp respectively...

Overheal

Karsini wrote: »

A major problem with porting Firefox (or any web browser) to 64-bit is that any plugins or addons designed for the 32-bit version of that browser will not work. It's a limitation of 64-bit Windows - a 64-bit application cannot load a 32-bit library and vice versa. So developers would need to port their addons to 64-bit.

The mentality of not using 64-bit because there are few 64-bit native apps is a bit flawed. With that mentality in the mid 90s, people would have stuck with Windows 3.1 rather than upgrading to Windows 95. The older your apps are, the more likely you will run into problems, but most will run under 64-bit and I'd say XP Mode will take care of those that don't (provided that they don't use 3D I'd assume).

I just have to give myself a kick and get used to the Vista/7 interface. I always hated it but XP won't last forever.

Dive in lad. Its the little things. Instead of staaaaart.....alll prograaaams......accessorieeeessss.......c-...c-....calculator! Now its like WindowsKey-"calc"-Enter-BAM! The old start bar is the bane of all creation. Not to mention quickly jumping to anything from the start bar: games (Wow Enter BAM; goo* Enter BAM) utitilies (defrag Enter BAM) documents (Price List Enter BAM)

If youre a decent typer, it shaves loading up programs from sometimes 10 seconds down to 2. 5x faster just because of a UI tweak. And Windows Snap. I use this a lot more than you think you might on paper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaK4ull896E

From what I gather, most people are mostly against the glass, and the window borders more than anything else. Frankly its a silly thing to get hung up on in the way of upgrading. They arent that much different, either. you can always disable glass.

As for the 64 bit thing, its only useful if you require a large chunk of memory. browsing will be one of those things that will be good for it later. but currently the smaller plugins to FF - because of their small footprint they would actually eat up more memory from being upped to 64 bit. As it is you can expect FF4 to have 64 and 32 bit crossover, similar to windows vista and 7.

Itsdacraic

I had a lot of stability issues with my Dell Studio Laptop before upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 (well I installed it on a seperate partition). Since i started using Windows 7 on it, 3 months back, I can only remember once where I had to do a hard power down of the machine compared to almost once every second day with Vista.

Would definitely reccommend it.

Gingerspice99

Its a lot like it was if you go back 10 years......

98 then = Xp now....ok
Win ME then = Vista now....crap
Xp then = Windows 7 now....yay!

Setanta_og

I am thinking of upgrading but have heard a few people complaining about the upgrade stalling during the 3rd stage of installation when expanding the new windows files.
Problem appears to be that the upgrade stalls at the 21% expansion and wont go forward then after several stalled minutes the program kick out and rolls back to the insitu OS i.e. Vista/XP??
Any update from anyone on this????

chrism2007

Setanta_og wrote: »

I am thinking of upgrading but have heard a few people complaining about the upgrade stalling during the 3rd stage of installation when expanding the new windows files.
Problem appears to be that the upgrade stalls at the 21% expansion and wont go forward then after several stalled minutes the program kick out and rolls back to the insitu OS i.e. Vista/XP??
Any update from anyone on this????

how many millions of people do you think have upgraded at this stage?

youll always hear "stories" when your talking of that scale

forget them and upgrade. its the best piece of software i ever installed

worth every cent. id pay twice what it costs not a problem

it was like a bridge between all my hardware. had everything networked in 5 minutes. no headaches and no third party software. its the future :pac:

and fast as f""k too

ive installed on 4 pcs and 5 laptops with no problems

Overheal

Tens of millions of customers and at least half as many PC and hardware configurations - some people are bound by Murphy's Law to have issues with any computer related procedure; as I type this, someone is turning on their perfectly fine working machine On only to find that Today it has a disk read BSOD.

Just upgrade. You probably have a 0.1% chance of running into any substantial problem.

Smau5

chrism2007 wrote: »

vista was a unstable heap of s""t that should have never been released.

windows 7 is everything it should have been

No, Vista was released in preparation for 7.

chrism2007

Smau5 wrote: »

No, Vista was released in preparation for 7.

whats the difference? it was still released and its still a heap of s""t

Smau5

chrism2007 wrote: »

whats the difference? it was still released and its still a heap of s""t

Vista stalled time.

monkeypants

chrism2007 wrote: »

how many millions of people do you think have upgraded at this stage?

youll always hear "stories" when your talking of that scale

forget them and upgrade. its the best piece of software i ever installed

worth every cent. id pay twice what it costs not a problem

it was like a bridge between all my hardware. had everything networked in 5 minutes. no headaches and no third party software. its the future :pac:

and fast as f""k too

ive installed on 4 pcs and 5 laptops with no problems

+1

You wouldn't believe the problems there were when upgrading from Windows 95 to 98 back in the day. A very small percentage of people have a problem and it's probably due to not upgrading from a pristine copy of the original OS, but one that's been used for a couple of years.