Anybody planning on having a look at Windows 7? The public beta test is supposed to begin today. I'm about to upgrade my main system from two 80GB EIDE drives to one 500GB SATA Drive. Since I'll have some unused hard drives lying around with no use for them (I can't mix SATA and IDE in this system), I was thinking of maybe trying to load the Windows 7 Beta on one, and tinkering with it. Anybody else going to do this?

A Beta test sounds like a great idea to me. For once we'll have a chance to tell Microsoft where to stick their Operating System at a time when it might actually help.

One misgiving though. As I say, the drives are only 80 gigs. The way MS Operating Systems increase exponentially in size, this may not be enough

Another thing I'm curious about is the Numbering system. Windows Seven, was it? Now, wait a minute...

• Windows 1.0
• Windows 2.0
• Windows 286
• Windows 386
• Windows 3.0
• Windows 3.1
• Windows 3.11
• Windows 95
• Windows 98 (first and second edition)
• Windows Me
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista

And that's not even including things like NT 3.51, NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows for Workgroups, and a few other less-than-mainstream variants. But even so, that would make this next one Windows 13, not Windows 7. Is this the Pentium Floating Point Error again, or are there some of these that they aren't counting? And if so, which ones? I certainly hope Me is one of the ones they're forgetting. Bloody heck, I'd like to.

I wanted to LOL this comment, but then I realized it wasn't actually funny.

Although you can buy 1tb drives for not a lot of money so I suppose software bloat isn't that bad.

I'm gonna wait for guys like you to take on Win7 before I even think about trying it. (This is a suggestion for you to provide evaluative comments once you feel comfortable making them.)

Well, windows 3.0, 3.1, and 3.11 were mostly the same system, if memory serves.

I also don't remember there being much difference between 95 and 98.

I'm pretty sure they'd just as soon EVERYONE forget about ME.

Using this (only slightly tortured logic) I get Windows 9!

I was surprised. I'd been looking for a new IDE drive, but it was $100 for a 500GB drive. But I found a SATA drive for only $70, and so it seemed like the way to go. Couldn't believe they'd gotten that cheap. I'M so cheap that I hadn't priced them in some time, apparently.

I'd had a friend once warn me not to try to mix SATA and IDE drives in the same system because the speed differences really played havoc with things. But the specs for my system on support.dell.com say that it won't work at all. (Which sometimes is their way of saying "it WILL work, but we don't want you to bother us with the headaches you'll have if you try". Either way, I don't feel like trying. 500GB is plenty for now.


Software bloat is still a bad thing, though. Even with a 1tb drive, it takes time to put a ½-tb operating system on it. Not to mention the time it takes to download a ½-tb Operating System. I don't want to sound like an old timer, but in my day (i.e. 10 years ago?), we could load an Operating System on one floppy disk, and we liked it!

3.1 and 3.11 were 98% similar, I think. A couple of files patched, no biggie. I thought of 3.0 and 3.1 being very different, I think because 3.0 still had Real Mode support and 3.1 didn't. Still, I guess they could all be lumped together under the umbrella "Windows 3".

But okay, let's assume they're trying to forget the really early stuff and work backwards, thusly:

Windows 7 = Windows 7
Windows 6 = Vista
Windows 5 = XP
Windows 4 = Me
Windows 3 = 98
Windows 2 = 95
Windows 1 = 3.0, 3.1, 3.11

So, wait a minute. That means the way Microsoft is telling it now, Windows 3 was really Windows 1? And Windows 1 was Windows Nothing?

And I thought trying to explain that the 21st century began in 2001 was hard.

Well, obviously some are counted as "sub-variations" - like, after 3, 3.1 and 3.11 you'd expect the next version to be 4.0, not 6. I suppose Me is considered a variation of 98. Still, that would make Windows 95 version 4.0, 98 5.0, Me 5.1, XP 6.0, Vista 7.0 and the new one 8. Funny. Or maybe they're counting Windows 95 as version 4.0, 98 as 4.1 and Me as 4.2 (or 4.1.1)? Seems a bit arbitrary, though - why not consider Win 95 and 98 separate versions? (Btw, I've never understood why the successor of Windows NT was called Windows 2000, not the successor of Windows 98. I guess consistency was never Microsoft's strength.)

I miscounted my own list earlier. After lumping 98 First and Second into one, that would make Windows 7 = Windows 13, not Windows 14.

Frankly, I think calling it Windows 13, with a big picture of a Black Cat on the cover would have been great, but marketing types are notorious stick in the muds (sticks in the mud?).

Lucky Windows 13 would be another good title. (Or maybe, in a nod to Hogan's Heroes, they could call it Stall Lag 13). Windows 13 sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

The question still remains, for you masochists out there, how do you actually participate in this historic Beta Test?

I think I've found their page:

Welcome to Windows 7



Well, that would be about... nowish. Looks like they're running a bit late.



The fun has not yet begun!... Literally!

Look at this!

Why 7?

It seems to answer the question of why this is called Windows 7 rather than Stall Lag 13...


Well, that was simple, wasn't it? Windows 3 really is Windows 3, after all! Kudos for that clever decision. But who knew that Windows XP was really Windows 5.1?

It's all very nice, clear, simple and logical... Uh... except for maybe one bit.



So Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1.

Windows users, always complaining...

Well, what are you into? Linux? Cause you sure don't seem like a Mac user.

Why don't I seem like a Mac user? But yeah, I run (Debian) Linux. I think I also have a (very seldom used) FreeBSD partition somewhere.

Actually, it is there. Use the VER command at a prompt, and you get:



But oddly both XP Home AND XP Pro claim to be Version 5.1.2600, which is bizarre. (Not sure about Media Center Edition, I don't have it loaded anywhere at the moment).

I hadn't paid much attention to that before. Windows 98 Second Edition said that it was "Windows 98 Version 4.10.2222", which makes it sound like it's version 4 of Windows 98, rather than version 4 of Windows.

This is all odd, because as I recall, Windows 95 was technically Dos 7.0, (and Windows Me was Dos 8.0) as the whole 9x line still ran on top of Dos, it just wasn't sold as a standalone product any more.

And Windows 3 and earlier weren't operating systems at all, they simply ran on top of MS-Dos, which was still sold separately.

All this confusion now is coming about as a result of Microsoft's recent tendency to pretend that the next version of the same operating system is actually a new operating system. In the old days with the version numbers, nobody thought that Dos 4.0 was a different O/S than Dos 3.3. 4.0 was obviously just the next version of Dos. But a new name for each version (XP, Vista) gives the impression that it's not directly connected to the previous version.


Calling it Windows 7 when it's really Windows 6.1 is just insane. The whole idea of returning to Version numbers indicates a desire for continuity again, and creating a feeling that these are all the same OS. But calling it Windows 7 indicates a desire to AVOID continuity, and avoid having people thinking that this is just "the next version of Vista" (which it is). So really, they shouldn't be using a version number for this product at all, given their desire to distance themselves from Vista. This product is literally "Vista 1.1" but they don't want us thinking that. So, why start using numbers again at all?

What happens a few years down the line when the REAL Windows 7 comes out. Will they call it Windows 7 (For Real This Time)?

Here are the minimum specs for the Beta:

Windows 7 Beta

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx


1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
1 GB of system memory
16 GB of available disk space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
DVD-R/W Drive
Internet access (to download the Beta and get updates)

None of this is too bad, except the Hard Drive space. (16 gigabytes just for an Operating System?????) Still, most people should have drives that big and be able to try it if they want.

You also have to have enough technical know-how to be able to download an .iso file and burn it to a DVD

The big trouble might be sound and video drivers, but my main deskto is 5 years old, so I imagine the proper drivers are already in there.

They say the download should take several hours, but I haven't been able to get there at all yet. Too many people trying now. They've got 32 bit and 64 bit versions up, though.

Since I haven't been able to get it yet, I'm not sure how big the download is. One pitfall I see coming up is that I've only got a single layer DVD Burner, so if the download is over 4.5 gigs, I may have to upgrade to use it.

The Beta expires on August 1, which I guess means that it turns into a pumpkin like XP and Vista do if they're not properly registered. Still, I'm going to have a go at it soon. Anybody else going to take the plunge?

You say ChessBase software uses too many resources and think that one GB system memory, 16 GB disk space and 128 MB graphics memory isn't too bad?

Ah, wait. I think that was Josh. OK, I take everything back and state the opposite—or whatever.

Did I say Chessbase software uses too many resources? I don't remember saying that, but I might have.

As for Windows 7, I said that the hard disk space WAS bad.


The memory and graphics isn't too bad, but it's bad enough. Especially if you remember the rule of thumb that you should always double Microsoft's system specs to know how much you ought to have minimum.

Like XP says 128MB RAM to run, but you really want 256 as the rock bottom minimum. XP itself uses almost 100MB of RAM, so 128 would leave you almost nothing to work with. Windows 95 said it needed 4MB of RAM (though I once got it to work with only 3), but you really wanted at least 8. And so on. Whatever MS says, double it.

Windows has been bloatware for some time, though. That's what was so great about Dos. It just booted down and dirty and then got the heck out of the way, leaving as many resources as possible for your programs to use.

xkcd had a pretty funny take on Windows 7 and Vista.

I keep thinking of migrating to Linux, but I don't think there is a Linux version of most if not all the chess-related applications that I use.

That's true, but some of the native Linux applications are quite good and Wine + VirtualBox solve a host of other problems.

There are a lot of good applications under Windows, too. But it is not clear what would be the benefit of switching to Linux if the applications I use the most are Windows-only. I know Linux will be a struggle for me - from the internet set-up to running Rybka within Chessbase within Wine within Linux. Though the Windows Vista on my new PC sure makes me want to switch to something, fast.

I use Windows and Mac OSx. I have not dedicated a computer to Linux, although I would be interested in dedicating a partition to trying it. Could someone answer the following for me?

1. Which Linux is the best one to run? (Red Hat, SuSe?) I tried Ubuntu once but I am unsure if that is true Linux or what.

2. Does the version of Linux you use send out automatic updates like Mac OSx and Windows?

3. What can you do in Linux that you can't do in either Windows or Mac OSx? Are there any apps that don't appear in the other OS's?

4. Do people use Linux for any other reason than it is a protest vote against Windows? I am OK with that answer, just curious.

Thanks for any help.

P.S. I just stumbled across this guys' assessment of Windows 7. He is normally a softer version of a Windows Hater. Here is what he had to say:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10147933-17.html

Thanks for the link to the Win7 review. Maybe MS is going to do something right.

I am out of date by several years but since no one else is chiming in, I'll take a shot at questions 3 and 4.

The primary difference between Linux and Win operating systems is how they utilize and manage system resources. There are likely some things you can do in Linux that you cannot do in Win OSes, (and vice versa) but they are not the types of things that are likely to impact the non-technical user.

Linux appears to be the choice for server applications because it is technologically superior in ways that are relevant to server applications. So the use there is a technical one, not a mere snub of Windows.

The interface that you see is simply a way for you to interact with the OS. Theoretically the Windows OS could be linux but maintain the vista look-and-feel. That is my memory of what Mac did with OSX--they put the Mac interface over a linux OS. (I admit this could be wrong, but it is my memory.)

Hopefully someone better informed will add to this.

These are software distributions, which means that they come with their own ways of managing software (lots of stuff, not just Linux) and various configuration details. There are many good ones. I tend to prefer ones that use the deb software packaging system; I've always run Debian myself, but Ubuntu and others are fine as well. For people who really like to configure stuff there's things like Gentoo where you're encouraged to compile everything yourself.

Ubuntu has a reputation as being most suitable for people who are new to Linux, so maybe you could try that.


It could do that, but I've configured it not to because I like to always know what's going on.


In Linux it's very easy to set up a ssh/sftp server, which I use all the time. Also webservers, mailservers, fileservers, fooservers...

Generally I just find the usability of everything to be better. I find the organisation logical, I like scripting and using the command line, I like the metaphor of everything as a file, etc.

One of the most important things is that I can give my friends copies of Debian but not of Windows. Also, I can alter Debian if I like but not Windows.


See above.


Currently the phrase "operating system" means all of the following together to most people:

1) A program that manages system resources for other programs: allocates memory, shares processor time, talks to devices like graphics cards, the keyboard, mouse, etc... This is called the kernel.

2) A bunch of utility programs: text editors, web browsers, email readers etc.

3) "An interface": typically these days a graphical system that allows the user to interact with the utility programs.

Linux is just part 1. That's why the distributions are called distributions; Linux is just a small part of the code they actually deliver. Windows is all three.

Linux follows in a line of "UNIX-like" kernels. This is a system that's existed for over thirty years now and is architecturally quite different from, say, the Windows kernel. OS X does not use the Linux kernel, but is based another UNIX-like kernel called the Mach microkernel.

I've given Ubuntu Linux a try. I did have some difficulties, but overall the installation was rather smooth. I gave Mandrake Linux a shot some years ago, but there were too many problems with the drivers for me to stick with it. But this Ubuntu distribution is quite easy to install. If I didn't have to run certain applications under Windows, I'd consider switching permanently.

This is my first post under Linux, btw.

Finally tried installing Windows 7 on a spare hard drive last night, and was immediately hit with a problem, though disappointingly, it doesn't seem to be Microsoft's fault.

Pretty much every driver installed itself with no need to load from discs, EXCEPT for the Sound Card (a Sound Blaster Live). When I tried to load the drivers, it kept saying it couldn't find any card (even though it shows up in Device Manager as having a conflict, and I know the card is working in XP).

I did a little searching online, and saw several people kvetching about how Creative didn't support their stuff long enough, and gathered that people were having the same trouble using this card with Vista. So I'm stalled already. I don't really feel like buying a whole new sound card just to beta test Windows 7, so unless I find a workaround things will be limited.

I did notice though that 7 looks a lot like Vista. It does indeed show up as being Windows 6.1 at a prompt, and it still has the gadgets and Aero interface (though the Sidebar is gone). Some really lame default wallpaper of a fish in water (since Vista worked like a fish out of water, maybe that's apropos).

My limited memory is that the plan was to keep the basic Vista look and feel but clean things up a bit under the hood.

Yes, that seems to be what they've done. Which is odd, since they're trying to get away from Vista.

The Windows Experience Rating seems to be changed a bit. My desktop system is nearly 6 years old (I got it in Summer 2003). It was top-of-the-line then, and still does everything I need, but when I had it calculate the Windows Experience Rating, it came out like 3.4 out of 7.9. I was working at Dell when Vista came out and even brand spanking new systems had great trouble scoring that high. Many came out at 1.0.

My system's good, but no longer great. 2.6 Ghz Pentium IV Processor, 2.5GB of RAM, and Vista is loaded on an old 80GB Hard Drive, which probably has a slower transfer rate than my new SATA drive. So a 3.4 rating is nice. I'm not sure if that's because they changed the way it's calculated, or because Windows 7 is less bloated.

I still like the XP Look and Feel better. Even in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, McCoy was kvetching about how engineers just love to change things. That's the way I felt about Vista: "All the same features as before, but they run slower, and now you have to hunt to find them."

So do you still have to hunt and find things in Windows 7 then? That is my biggest problem with Vista, and I was hoping they'd get back to an easy-to-use style XP interface. If they don't, my next computer will have anything but Microsoft on it.

The 7 interface looks a LOT like Vista, so if you had to hunt there, you probably still will. I haven't really gotten used to it yet because I don't use Vista at home (I said I had it loaded on the 80 GB drive. No, I meant to say I had 7 Beta loaded. That's how similar they are!)

I could have sworn I once saw a Desktop Theme that gave the XP look and feel to Vista. I never bothered hunting it down because I've only used Vista briefly in training classes. Never used it on either my own work or home computers. I have a copy but have never used it. Why slow my computer down for no benefit?

Side Rant
The whole reason engineers love to change things is mainly for marketing reasons. You remember years back, every computer had those off-white putty coloured casings. Around 2001-2002, Dell switched to those black...excuse me... "Midnight Gray" casings. I thought that was for practical reasons. They don't pick up dirt and smudges like the putty ones did. Silly me. Somebody set me straight. It's for marketing. They want the newer computers to look different from the older ones so you'll be conscious of the fact that you've got an older one and want to upgrade. That's why they moved off of the (really nice looking) Midnight Gray ones to those black and silver ones a few years later. I think this is also the reason Microsoft changes its interface around so much. And why Office 2007 looks so different from Office 2003. Is it better? No, but it makes 2003 look old.

That's also why Vista was bloated. Up the hardware requirements so people will be more likely to buy new computers. I guess it's getting harder to convince people that they need Quad 4 Processors to print letters and check their e-mail. But this is also why businesses rejected Vista. They just naturally tend to hang on to computers and software both much longer than the average user. That's why Y2K was such a problem. So many of those old Cobol programs were still in use. Businesses don't buy whole new systems just because the ashtrays got full.

Oh well, I do have a copy of Vista, and maybe I'll look for that XP Theme and see how good it is. And also if it works in the Windows 7 Beta.

Sider Rant
Speaking about Trek 1 and Dr. McCoy kvetching about engineers changing things, Mad, Cracked, Sick and Crazy all did parodies of that movie, and I picked up copies of them all. One of the better gags in there was on that Cracked did, I think. Kirk says something like "It's no use arguing, I'm taking over the Center Seat, Will." (which is almost verbatim a line from the movie). Decker replies "Even that's been changed. The Center Seat is now the one on the left."

Sidest Rant
A couple of other good gags in the Trek 1 parodies were from the sequence where Kirk zips around the ship in the travel pod. Cracked had a joke where Kirk says "My, she's beautiful. Truly a model ship." and Scotty replies "So, you canna see the wires too, eh Captain?" Mad had a bit where Scotty says something like "You must be sentimental to see the Enterprise again, sir. You've circled round her three times," and Kirk replies "Yes, I am sentimental to see her again, but also, where the heck is the door to get in??"

From what I've read, there isn't an XP theme for Vista (classical, yes), but you can download various customized ones. Windowblinds sounds ok. Perhaps installing virtual software might be a better choice to create a virtual machine running XP? I don't have Vista myself and my sister won't let me experiment on her laptop (don't know why, really :-) so I don't know advantages and disadvantages of the various solutions--damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor biologist, not a computer programmer.

Based on their "Mojave Experiment" ads and website of not too long ago they aren't trying to get rid of Vista, at least not as far as the look and feel go. They are trying to get rid of the slowness and some other "features" that had users complaining.



Amen brother. I'm still running XP, but was required to up grade to Office 2007. As far as I can tell there is no additional, meaningful functionality, just a stupid new interface that cost me hours trying to find the basic functions I was already familiar with.

I'd be okay with learning the new interface if it actually provided me with some benefit. But after using it for however long, I know how to do everything I used to do, but it still takes longer. So the utility of the product has decreased meaning I spent time learning new stuff that makes me less productive.

Nah, marketing folks make changes mainly for marketing reasons.

Engineers make changes because they make something better. Unfortunately in the tech world "better" has become synonymous with "more." Even more unfortunately this thinking is being reinforced by marketing types.

Looking at the Mojave Experiment website I don't see any real necessary, day-to-day functional improvements in Vista...just a lot of "cool" stuff that represents "more."

I'm sure that since Office 95 there are new features that have been added to Word et al, but how many of those features are actually used by more than a handful of people?

My mother finally had to get a new computer because Netscape got too bloated to run on her old one. Whatever the new features were she didn't, and still doesn't, need them.

There was a time when the hardware upgrades really mattered. I had a program that took 24 hours to run on a '286 computer, 45 minutes to run on a '386 and less than a minute on a '486. Those were meaningful hardware upgrades.

But going from dual to quad core processors? That's strictly for extreme users....if it weren't for software bloat most of us could use a P-4 processor without any loss of productivity.

Actually I am using a P-4 right now and the only thing wrong with it is....some of the newer software won't run properly and the hard drive is too small (80GB). Everything I HAVE to do works as quickly as I can...Assuming I get to keep XP a quad core computer would not buy me one single iota of productivity.

(And the size of the HD is only an issue 'cause I have lots of mp3 files. Convenient, but hardly necessary.)

That's true too, but sometimes they just keep the same things and move them around. Like you used to set Computer Name on a network through Network Devices, but XP moved it to System Properties. XP also added this Category View to Control Panel, which added no new functionality, and only caused you to have to make an extra click if you used it.



Wow, that's pretty bad when Netscape forces you to upgrade. One place worth checking out is OldVersion.com. I found this place last year when I was looking for a Firewall that would run in Windows 98. Someone gave me a 10 year old laptop that I decided to use as a backup Web Surfing system (sometimes I need a spare). XP would just slow it down, and it only has like a 5GB hard drive, so I bought a Wireless Card and loaded 98 Second Edition on it. The problem was finding a Firewall that would run on 98. But I looked up the last version of Zone Alarm that would run on 98, and found a copy of it at this site.

I still use Internet Explorer 6, because 7 just moves everything around with no new functionality. I generally don't change IE until things I need stop working in the old version.

Ever since back a couple of days one of my desktop computers have been making a non-stop sound similar to the sound old home freezers used to make, I do not have an idea of what could be causing such noise. I welcome any helpful comment to help me figure this whole thing out

this following picture features a Gateway same model as the one making the noise, which I bought just about a year an a half ago



note: Okay, I just had a guy take a look at it, he told me it was the power supply fan that wen't bad.

Generally, odd sounds are caused by either a fan, the hard drive or the CD Drive. They've got the moving parts.

The CD drive is easy to eliminate. Just make sure there's no disc in the drive. When I first did tech support at Dell, techs were actually telling people to stick a pen in the power supply to stop the fan, and if the noise persisted, it was the hard drive. I think they figured out that this was asking for trouble, so soon afterwards, they started doing it the other way around; telling people to unplug the hard drive, and if the noise persisted, it was the fan.

So, that'd be the thing to do. Open the system, and, while the noise is going on, unplug the power cable to the hard drive. If the noise doesn't stop, it's one of the fans. Probably the power supply fan, but of course these days, systems may have more than one. The power supply fan is still the biggest, though, and the most likely culprit.


The funniest tech support solution I remember is when Western Digital put out a bad batch of hard drives, with some kind of resin that would stick a bit and stop reading. We were actually telling people when that happened, to lift one corner of the system an inch off the ground, and let go. Callers always thought they'd heard the tech wrong. "You really want me to lift it up and let it drop?"

Yes it was the power supply fan as you indicate, a friend of mine came over earlier today and replaced the fan with one he had.



I know by experience that conducting business over the phone can sometimes be a real headache

Thanks for the comments

Is second hand. Back in the days of floppy disks a secretary kept losing her work. She'd write it out to a floppy and then when she went back to it the floppy would be corrupted.

Techs came and checked over the machine and couldn't find anything wrong, but the problem persisted.

Finally a tech sat down and watched her create a new document from start to finish. He saw no problems so asked what she did with the floppy when she was done. She showed him: she stuck it to the metal filing cabinet with a magnet

Yeah, I've heard a lot of those. Like the one about the caller who thought the mouse was a foot pedal, and the one who thought the CD Tray was a cup holder. Not sure how many of those are urban legends and how many are real. I was going by ones I knew about personally.

Another one I remember. This was right after Windows 95 came out. Another tech put a caller on mute and started laughing hysterically. Somebody asked him why. He said that he'd told her to click "My Computer", and she'd said something like "I'm nowhere near your computer". Okay, it was funny, but it wasn't that funny.

One gag I liked that I still have a picture of somewhere. Somebody made Windows XP labels, with the logo and everything, and stuck them on to a set of 5¼" floppy diskettes. I once saw Windows 95 on floppies (a stack of them about 25 disks high), and I shudder to think what it would take to install XP that way.

Here's another thing I can attest to, since I have some old manuals, like the IBM XT and Dos 3.3 manuals, that mention it. Some very old computer manuals go out of their way to point out that you shouldn't type the letter "l" in place of the number "1". Why on earth would anybody do a thing like that, you may ask? Actually, there's a good reason. Because some older manual typewriters had no number "1" key (I've got one of them actually, which I got used in High School to type reports on). Typing classes taught you to just use an "l" for a "1" on those machines. So, to make sure that people didn't carry that habit over to their computers, they warned you that l and 1 may look the same to you but not to your computer.

I had forgotten about the "l" and "1" keys.

Somehow I made that transition without a hiccup. But I do remember running into lots of folks having trouble with "O" and "0". I still think we need a slash running through one of those.

I'm posting this from (I can barely bring myself to say it ) Vista. ( )

I've still been unable to solve the problems with getting the Sound Blaster Live card on my desktop system to work in Windows 7, so I thought I'd try to load 7 on my laptop, which is two years newer.

Dell Inspiron 600m, 1.6 Pentium M Processor (equivalent to about a 2.4 Pentium IV), 2 GB of RAM. I have a secondary 20GB hard drive in a drive casing, that I use for testing programs that I don't yet trust on my main hard drive), but had no particular use for it now, so I thought I'd try Windows 7 on the laptop.

Before I did, I decided to load Vista, just for comparison purposes. I had a Vista Ultimate Dell OEM disc, which I just loaded. The good news is that it automatically loaded EVERYTHING, sound and wireless included. I didn't have to put in a single Driver disc. The bad news, as I expected, is that the Windows Experience Index came out to a rock bottom 1.0 No surprise there. I've seen newer computers than mine get that rating. No aero interface, nothing.

I also found that I can't keep Vista on long. With XP, the Dell OEM version would pick up the Dell BIOS and activate Windows automatically, without needing Serial numbers. Not here. Even the OEM version of Vista wants a serial number, which I don't have (the disc is just left over from a training class). Not bad news, as I had no intention of using Vista more than I could help anyway, it's just something worth remembering.

Anyway, time to wipe the drive again and try with Windows 7. Hopefully I'll get some sound this time (since it's working in Vista, I'm hopeful). Vista used about half the space on the 20 gig drive, and Windows 7 was also using about 10gigs on my desktop computer, so it should fit halfway comfortably here.

Bit of a setback here. Got Windows 7 loaded on the laptop, and the sound doesn't work there either (even though it did in Vista). The wireless card driver and the Smart Card reader also didn't load automatically. (Actually, the Smart Card reader didn't load automatically in Vista either, but I barely noticed, because I've never once used it).

Breaking out the Driver discs, I see that the SmartCard Reader loads manually (whoop-de-do), and so do the sound drivers (now we're talking), but the wireless card does not (I knew it was too good to be true).

But at least it's better than Vista, right? Well... maybe. But actually, the Windows Experience Index on the laptop comes out to 1.0 also (Now I'm curious to see how the desktop scores in Vista).

So, as it stands now, I can run Windows 7 on the desktop, and have no sound, or run it on the laptop and have no wireless.

I'm not seeing myself involved in any stampede to Fry's to pick up a copy of this when it comes out. I mean, I may get a new computer with Windows 7 on it, sure, but I sure don't see myself purchasing a copy to upgrade any existing systems. But things could change. It is a Beta, after all.

All right, by having Mr. Scott sit on the warp engines and nurse them, I've managed to get the wireless drivers installed on the laptop. So now, I've finally got one fully functional system running Windows 7.

Well, just barely. As mentioned, the laptop only got a 1.0 Windows Experience Rating, which means I don't get the Aero interface and those translucent crystally Windows title bars. You know, the ones that eat up all those system resources on eye candy. But I'm doing this for fun, so I was hoping for a little candy.

Speaking of that, why is the rating so low? How does this break down, compared to the desktop?



There we are, the big difference is the graphics, which seems odd, since this has a decent amount of video memory (the basic version of this system, that probably 90% of the customers bought had none at all.

Checking Device Manager, I see that it only loaded a basic VGA Video Adapter during install (Vista had picked up and loaded the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 drivers automatically). After manually loading the correct video drivers, and re-calculating the Windows Experience Rating... the system crashes. Three consecutive times. Yep, this is Windows all right.

But it's okay, because you know what? Every window in this Beta version has a link to Send Feedback. So every time something like this happens, you can write a letter to Microsoft that they will read, and kvetch about this stuff.

Keep it up, Petrosianic! With all that feedback maybe they'll get a decent version out that is efficient and doesn't gobble up resources...although since the advent of Vista I'm seriously looking at other systems for a new computer (which I have yet to custom make).

You think it's time to make the jump to Linux yet? I've thought about it, but my big issue is compatibility, which is the one thing Windows has been pretty good about. I can still run most software going back as far as 1981 in Windows.

Might be worth looking into, though. Basically, the way I've got the desktop set up now is I've got the new SATA drive in one bay and an old IDE drive in the other. I can't use both at the same time. But I can turn one or the other on in BIOS at every boot. So I just put my real stuff on the SATA drive, and can leave the IDE drive in there permanently for screwing around purposes, like loading new operating systems.

The "window" of opportunity to download the Windows 7 Beta has closed, so if anybody hasn't got it yet, it's too late now. But here are some early reviews of the Beta, and they do vary.

Infoworld: Oops! Microsoft did it again!

Business Insider: It's a faster Vista.

Business Tech: Windows 7 Beta, First Impressions

theinquirer.net: Windows 7 Is Enough to Kill Linux on the Desktop (!?)


The first review is very negative, but gives no benchmark data. The second review is positive and also links to several other reviews that are worth looking at. The third one is neutralish but basically positive. And the fourth is insanely positive (but what would you expect from a website called The Inquirer?)

Here are thumbnails of the reviews Business Insider links to, and they're all basically positive:

• Lockergnome.com: Vastly better than I expected on a few important fronts. The biggest front proved to be the speed front... Visually it feels like a Vista release.
• Auctioneertech.com: Windows 7 is a faster Vista... Very fast on our test system.
• Wardpeter.com: The whole feel of Windows 7, is more of a Service Pack upgrade, rather than a new OS... The boot up process is faster than Vista and the installation of software is also quicker.
• Techfob.blogspot.com: A very dependable version of Windows, with no real surprises, good or bad.
• Geek-news.net: Windows 7 for the most part feels like Vista Second Edition or as a friends said, "what Vista should have been when it was released."
• Arstechnica.com: Vista foundation hasn't gone away—if you couldn't stand Vista's UI (whether it's because you didn't like Explorer, Aero, Control Panel, UAC, or anything else), Windows 7 is unlikely to do much to help, as it builds on the same UI. If Vista's hardware demands were too steep, Windows 7 will likely cause you the same grief, as its hardware demands match. And if Vista didn't work with a program or device you need to use, Windows 7 will offer no salvation, as its compatibility is virtually identical.

My own experience hasn't been positive yet, but has been too limited to really tell. The hardware I've been having trouble with is semi-legacy stuff (the desktop was top of the line in 2003, and the laptop was midline in 2005), but still I want that to work.

Here's one review that said something I've been thinking:



But here's another one that makes some points:



What they're talking about is, you know how in older Windows, every Window was a separate icon on the taskbar. Then in XP you acquired the ability to group similar ones together. If you had 10 instances of Notepad opened, they'd all be grouped in one Notepad icon, and if you clicked on it, you'd see a list of them all. But if they had similar titles, it might be hard to tell which was which. Now you get a kind of thumbnail sketch of them. It's nice, but it's also "makeup", not the kind of thing that I buy an OS for.



Two things that they've definitely fixed are the shutdown process, which so many people had a hard time finding at all in Vista. Now, you just click Start, then click Shutdown, and down you go. It actually involves one click less than XP. Also, the Account Control popup has been pared back (though you could always have turned it off in Vista anyway).

The last review also says this, which has definitely not been true for me:



Last night I just let Vista install on the laptop, walked away, and it was ready a half hour later, with no driver installation. Windows 7 took a bit longer, but wasn't too bad. XP has been a bit slower for me, but not too bad either. Load the OS, get the driver discs that came with the system, and spend a few minutes loading Sound, Video, Network, and Modem drivers. No big deal.

Windows 98 has been the slowest for me, but that's my fault, as I only have an Upgrade disc for 98 Second Edition, so I have to load 98 First Edition, and then take the same amount of time all over again loading Second Edition. Then load the drivers for my memory key from a floppy, since 98 doesn't have those built in. Still, not too bad. And Windows 3.0 and 3.1 were pretty easy too.

Really, 95 is the only one that ever gave me much trouble. In the early days of Plug and Pray, the hardware was often finicky, and sometimes you had to intall sound before video or vice versa, or do the Plug and Pray Shuffle, where you'd remove a piece of hardware to keep it from grabbing an IRQ, let something else have it, and then put the first piece back in to take another one. That was truly painful. You shouldn't have to open the case to install an operating system. Still, overall Windows installs have never been that bad for me, as long as you keep all your driver discs in the same place and readily accessible.

The irony here though is that in my case and with my hardware at least, Vista loaded easier last night than 7 did. I think I'll try Vista on the Desktop tonight, just to see if the Sound Blaster Live works there. Once having done that, I can put Windows 7 back on. That'll be two Windows installs again tonight, and it's not much fuss. I can just walk away and do something else for most of it.

Well, for Windows compatibility Windows is better. But for general backwards compatibility UNIX systems (like Linux) aren't bad... UNIX was originally written in 1969, and I'd bet many programs written then would still compile and run fine, although many of the things they're for would be redundant now. I sometimes play NetHack on my computer; it was first written in 1987. On my (standard issue) Debian there are some configuration files timestamped in the early nineties. I understand that with some packages installed that can go even into the seventies.

I had a look at that, and I found out the problem. The system requirements for the Aero Interface are 128MB of Graphics Memory. (Aye caramba, that's a LOT for eye candy!)

But maybe that's not hard and fast. I found one of those fine-print system requirements lists, and it says:



My laptop actually has got 64MB of Graphics Memory. Most 600ms had none at all, and just drew from the regular RAM, but when I got it 4 years ago, I popped extra $ for the graphics memory with the idea of hanging onto it as long as possible. Maybe the Aero Interface is just off by default, and I can get it to work by turning it on manually and being at a low enough resolution.

Still, the underlying question behind all this is why should I upgrade to either Vista or 7? Not for eye candy. I'm trying to think back, about what meaningful improvements new OS's and versions of OS's brought to the table:

Dos 4: Broke the 35MB hard drive partition barrier, and allowed partitions of up to 2gigs (which was enormous at the time). Somewhere around this time came CD-Rom support, and XMS/EMS memory, which was huge.

Dos 5: Fixed the bugs in Dos 4 and made it usable.

Dos 6: Brought in Drivespace (big whoop), and Memmaker (which wasn't that bad). Maybe worth $50 or so, but not the $400 that they charge for an "Ultimate" version of an OS today.

Windows 3.0: First usable version of Windows.

Windows 3.1: Added True Type Fonts, but took away Real Mode.

Windows 95: Plug and Pray (hey, it worked eventually). Replaced the stupid Program Manager with the Start Button so things weren't always in the way. Brought in Fat-32 in the later versions. First Windows that was more than a Dos add-on.

Windows NT: More stability but no Plug and Pray and fewer drivers. if you were a business, if you were a home user.

Windows 98: Integrated Internet Explorer with the Operating System making it hard to get rid of.

Windows 98 Second Edition: Added some under the hood functionality and stability that keeps 98 still semi-usable even today.

Windows Me: In future slang dictionaries, I fully expect "Windows Me" to replace "Bite Me".

Windows XP: At the cost of a slightly more cartoony interface, it added NTFS, and the Windows NT kernel. Not strictly necessary at the time, but definitely an improvement.

Windows Vista: Slowed your system down, hid all the controls, and gave you translucent Windows.

Windows 7: Jury still out. They're saying that it might fix the slowdowns caused by Vista, but I still haven't seen anything really new and improved on XP yet. The translucent windows are cute in a bathroomy sort of way, and seeing your windows do "that flip thing" is cute, but so what?

Well, I'll keep playing with it. But the main problem seems to be that they got things just about right in the mid-late 90's. Really nice interface, really good functionality. But they've still felt obligated to keep cranking out new versions. Updates are fine and necessary, but by giving each new version a new name, they've been trying to create the illusion that each one is a new product, rather than a service release of the last one. Some people would pay $200-$400 to "upgrade" from XP to Vista, but nobody would have paid $400 to upgrade from Dos 4.0 to Dos 4.01. That's why they keep changing the look and feel; to foster the illusion that this is a whole new product. Really, you have to wonder if Vista and 7 both wouldn't have been better done as XP Service Packs 4 and 5.

Right now I won't even buy a new computer at all if it means having to get Vista. When 7 comes out, that may change. But even if it does, I can't imagine buying a copy of Windows 7 in the store to put on any other systems, even assuming it works on them.

Can't you buy a computer without an operating system and just install XP on it?

Yeah, or just build one from parts. You don't save much money dooing it that way though. Dell occasionally sells OS free systems that just come with a copy of FreeDos, but the price savings isn't nearly as much as the cost of the OS. Rather than do that, I'd just buy it with an OS and wipe the drive.

One program I'd recommend to the hilt is System Commander, which lets you set up to a hundred or so OS's to boot from. I haven't used it lately because I don't have 98 drivers for my two main systems, and never went to Vista. But I got it when 95 came out, as I wanted to use 95 but wasn't willing to give up Dos. My secondary laptop still uses it to dual boot to either Dos 6.22 or Windows 98SE.

I think when I do get a new computer, I'll get one with Windows 7, but also get the latest version of System Commander, to be able to dual-boot it to XP. Hard drives are getting so big these days, that fitting both on shouldn't be an issue. I think I'll want at least one copy of 7 just for when Microsoft gets funny. They like to do things like releasing Halo 2 to work in Vista only, to try to encourage you to upgrade.

I can get you an XP system at the local walmart, but I suspect the shipping to Finland might be cost prohibitive.

Or, you can do what I did. I bought a 24 inch iMac with core 2 duo 2.8 ghz processors. I then created a second smaller parition and installed Vista on it flawlessly since Apple gave you all the drivers and a way to dual boot it.

I can't play a networked game of C&C that way, BUT, I have my OSX and for everything I need to do and when I need to go into Vista (so Deep Shredder 11 can kick my *ss) then I can seemlessly boot into Vista too.

The best of both worlds (for me, anyway).

Now, what exactly is the deal with the new Macs? I've heard that they've got a command prompt now, are running on Intel processors (?) and that you can run Windows on them. But I'm not sure what that means. Over 10 years ago, a Macvangelist that I know was running Windows 95 on his Mac on some kind of emulator, and it worked, but it was very slow and clunky. I take it that's not what the new ones do.

Something I've long wanted, that I think I'll suggest in Feedback to Microsoft (unless it's already there).

For wallpaper, you've got the option to Center, Tile or Stretch. If you center a small picture, it doesn't take up enough of the screen. If you tile it, it usually looks silly (unless it's one of those old bmps that came in Windows 3.0 and 3.1 that was specially designed to be tiled; like that one of the teeny car that when you tiled it looked like a giant parking lot).

But if you stretch it, you might distort it. Like if I've got a 400x400 jpg, that's too small to use as decent wallpaper, but if I stretch it to 1024x768, it comes out misshapen. As a result, I've spent a lot of time carefully cropping pictures I wanted to use as wallpaper to a 4:3 ratio so they could be stretched. What Windows needs is an option to Stretch Without Distorting. Stretch the picture until it hits one wall, and then stop. In other words, stretch my 400x400 picture to 768x768, not 1024x768.

Or does Vista already have this? Think I'll check both Vista and 7 tonight.


Had another look at the Aero thing last night. The Radeon 9000 video card in my laptop doesn't seem to be able to run it at any resolution. One thing that's becoming clear to me is that without the translucent crystally windows, Vista and 7 (or should I say "Windows 6 and 6.1"?) is decidedly less attractive than Windows XP.

Another thing that would be nice would be the ability to run two separate wallpapers on separate monitors. I've got a setup here where one monitor is at 1400x900, and the second one is at 1280x960. There's no way to run one single wallpaper on both that won't come out either distorted, or with blank spots on one monitor or the other. But if I could run an 8:5 ratio wallpaper on the first one, and a 4:3 on the second one, they'd both look right.

I'll have to remember to send this as Feedback to MS tonight. Having written it down here will make it easier to remember.

The iMac I have is an Intel Mac. This is what I have, but I do not have the 3.06 ghz processors. It runs Vista flawlessly.

http://www.apple.com/imac/

Best buy discounted the 2.80 ghz processors because the 3.06 processors were just released. They also offered Vista Ultimate for $75 with the purchase of a new PC (the MAC qualified as a new PC), plus they gave me 2 year zero percent financing on the purchase.

So, for about $60/month I have what will be probably my last desktop (this one has a minimal footprint), pay no interest on it over 24 months, and the 24 inch monitor is more than big enough so I can put it on the table I built to house my DGT chess board. Come to think of it, I'll take a picture of my setup. Perhaps it will inspire others.

If it is all the same to you all though, I will take the picture after about only 3-4 moves in the a game against Deep Shredder 11. That is about how long I can keep the game even before he/she starts to rough me up.

Does it run both the Mac OS and Vista? I'm not much up on my Macs. I've got one of those black and white Macs from years back, and one of the early Mac Powerbooks that someone gave me.

My problem with the Macs was always their lack of compatibility even with their own stuff. I had a friend in the early 90's who swore by Macs, but he had to keep one of the original Mac 512's around to play games like Hex and Lunar Rescue because they wouldn't work on more recent ones. I really liked a game called Starfleet 1, which is much better in the Mac version than the PC because it was released a year later and had some improvements added in. It plays on the Black and White Mac Classic, but not on the Powerbook. It seems like every generation of new Mac stuff doesn't run the previous generation of Mac stuff. Even the Mac itself was a successor to the Apple ][, but wasn't compatible with Apple ][ software.

But if you can run Vista on your Mac, you should be able to run any PC software that works in Vista.

My understanding was that when Apple puts out a new OS their philosophy is to design it to work and work well without worrying about legacy software.

edit: ignore this rambling crap if you managed to see it.

I have my iMac set up as dual boot. I set up a second partition on my Hard Drive. One partition boots Mac OSX, and the second partition boots Vista. I can choose which one I want to run when I boot up by holding the "Option" key after I power it on. I do not run the Windows emulation that you may see out there. There is no reason to do that. I have a dedicated NTFS partition that I boot and run Vista from.

On the Vista side, I run Deep Shredder 11, Microsoft Office, Exchange, and a Visual Development studio. I have Adobe installed, etc. Everything you would expect from a true Windows machine. If I get time I will install Yuri's Revenge on it as well (no IPX Protocal though, so no online play). I do expect it to work though.

It truly is like having (2) PC's. One Mac, and one Windows Vista.

That's my understanding too, which is one of the main reasons I didn't become a Mac user. Who wants to toss out their entire software library every couple of years? Especially when you've got a platform that has precious little software written for it in the first place.

Which leads to the other main reason I didn't get a Mac. When I was planning on buying my first computer, I made a list of all the games I was interested in playing, and only a tiny fraction of them were available for the Mac. (and that hasn't changed over the years).

The first computer I owned was an old Apple ][ someone gave me. This was the early 90's when there was still a little Apple ][ software in the stores, but it was dwindling fast. Buying a Mac would have been the next logical step. But for those two reasons I bought a PC instead.

No need to emulate any more if the new Macs can run the real McCoy.

I presume Mac OS won't run in NTFS, which is why you have a separate partition. In System Commander, you can create separate partitions, but you don't have to, if you have multiple OS's that will run in the same kind of partition.

My previous main system has a 2 GB primary hard drive, formatted for Fat-16, and is set up to dual-boot to Windows 95 or MS-Dos 6.22. There's a secondary 4GB hard drive, partitioned two ways: a 2GB Fat-16 partition (which Dos will read), and a 2GB Fat-32 partition (which Dos can't read).

Fat-32 support was dropped in Vista, incidentally.

Could you install XP on your Mac?


Speaking of that, I sent Windows 7 Feedback to Microsoft the other night complaining about that. Hopefully they'll put it back, but don't hold your breath. So many older games require IPX for network play, that I can't believe they dropped something that takes up so little space.

I'm going to try Yuri's Revenge in Windows 7 this weekend.


Upgrading to a new OS without having to lose your old one until you're ready is great. I'd never have bought a Windows 95 machine when I did if I'd had to give up Dos to do it.

Another pain is reformatting your drive, and having to get everything back the way it was. This last time was much easier because I didn't redo the old drive, I bought a new one. So I could just install them both in the system, put Windows on the new one, but boot back to the old one any time I wanted to see how I'd had things set up on it.

I understand. There was a time that I would have been furious at upgrading to an OS that didn't let me run legacy software.

These days I'm less concerned, in large part because the bulk of my computer usage is supported by my employer. They buy a license for Office that covers employees' home computers. I am forced to update Office every time there is a new release whether I want to or not.

The next major application I plan to adopt is available as a web based app that I will be able to access from any web browser. As long as Firefox works I'm good there.

I don't play that many games anymore and the really, truly critical files these days are photos, music, and documents.

If Windows 8 was a truly great OS, but wasn't backwards compatible, I would have some software to replace at personal expense, but not all that much. Much of what would be replaced has been with me since Win95 and really should be updated/replaced.

But I can see where someone who has a large personal investment in legacy software wouldn't be nearly as calm about the whole thing.

First evidence that 7 is less bloated than Vista: When I loaded 7 on the 5 year old Dimension 8300, it got a 3.1 Windows Experience Index, and the translucent Windows did work. Last night I put Vista on it and it only got a 2.3 rating. The translucent Windows didn't work either, despite the fact that I replaced the video card last year and it's got 256 MB of Video RAM, which should be much more than enough. No idea what the problem is there.

The diagnostic center did turn up a troubleshooting report saying that the Sound Blaster Live card definitely wasn't supported in Vista, though that's more a problem with Creative Labs not supporting their products long enough than a problem with Vista.

So I'll put 7 back on the desktop's backup hard drive, putting me back in the situation of having a desktop running 7 with no sound and a laptop running it with no translucent windows.

I have a computer related issue which I think could be easily resolved with help from this thread, here it is:

I used IE 7 most of the time, one of the reasons for this is the fact that when I saved to my favorites interent explorer organized the earlier-saved fovorities at the top of the list, this allowed me to start looking from the bottom of the list up. It happens that for some reason IE7 is now placing my favorites in a disorganized fashion, eg. if I were to save this page to my favoties righ now IE most likely will place it anywhere in the list making it very difficult for me to find the link. This situation could have been easily tuckled if I had saved my favorites inside folders, if I had done that I could just open the folder containing my favories and tell windows to let me view them as last modified. I tried to get my fovorites in folders by going to my documents>favorites(on the tool bar)> Organize favorites, but the organize favorite feature does not allow me to multiple-select. My favorites list is just too big for me to even think about doing the Organizing proccess one by one, it would probably take me a year to finish it. Any helpful commends? Please

note: yes I tried downloading several other browsers and importing my favorites from IE to check if I could get a better chance at tuckling the issue, but most of the browsers I tried automatically organize the favorites in alphabetical order(with not options for changing this)

Windows XP pro

note: another way to tuckle the problem could be for me to find the whole favorite folder (if there is even one) in my computer, I have looked for the thing all over my computer with no results

I am back with another problem

..after I finish editing html webpage templates in my html editor the graphics do not show after I open them in any of my browsers. I suspect that this has nothing to do with the html editor, and that it might have something to do with some kind of browser of computer setting causing the problem. everything was working just find a couple of days ago.

note: I am going to shut down my anti virus software and see if that helps, any related commends are welcome

What's the name of the HTML Editor? The most likely explanation would be that the editor is screwing up the directions to the graphic files. Are they online, or elsewhere on the hard drive?

I tried two different editors (Kompozer is one of them), but I end up with the same problem. I usually do not edit html files in this particular computer/location, that's the reason I had to download Kompozer (kind of an emergency situation)

note: the graphics are on my hard drive (they are html web page templates made to specifications by a friend)

note: the templates show just find before they are saved from the editor, once they come out of the editor the graphics do not show (text does)

I think I got it, I kept forgetting that the resulting edited file have to be saved to the same folder containing the unaltered template. The graphics in the resulting edited template feed off the original one in the same folder, there is not way for you to have even concidered that I was making such a stupid mistake. There is not telling how much this basic mistake costed me today.

Haven't messed with Windows 7 in a while, although I did get an e-mail from Microsoft saying they were expecting to release-to-manufacturing on October 22. Even taking into account the extreme optimism of software release schedules, that's hopeful if you're looking forward to it. I'm not exactly, but with Vista halfway out the door, I certainly wouldn't buy a new system until it's all the way out (Not that I really need a new system now, anyway...)

I haven't messed with 7 in a while just because I acn't get sound on my main desktop (no Vista Drivers for Sound Blaster Live), and can't get the translucent windows on my laptop (and Vista/7 is much uglier than XP without that). But I did salvage a Sound Blaster Audigy card recently that I might use to have another go at it. I downloaded the Release Candidate and burned it on to CD, but haven't loaded it yet.

Found this amusing xkcd cartoon...

Well, no more speculation--Win7 is out, but is the final release version any good?

I bought a computer during the "free upgrade from Vista to win7" period so I am qualified to download a "free" copy. Is it worth what will certainly be a hassle to upgrade. I'm guessing it really is better than Vista--how could it not be--so I'm leaning towards upgrading, but waiting to hear if there is any unanticipated problems.

(FWIW, the upgrade will be going on a computer with very few personal files in place so I can easily save them off to a flash drive before upgrading.)

I put the Windows 7 hard drive in my laptop for the first time in a while. It did come up and seems to work, though it has a message saying that your copy of Windows isn't genuine. Not sure how long it will keep working, so maybe I ought to just go back to XP Pro on the secondary hard drive. The laptop is 4 years old, so there's no real question of Windows 7 being better for it than XP.



The question then is not "Is it any good?", but "Is it better than Vista?" Yeah, it probably is. Functionally it's a lot like Vista, but it's less bloated under the hood. I think Microsoft deliberately bloated their software to make people want to buy more powerful hardware, but Vista was so bad that even some Microsoft exec complained that all he had was a $2000 e-mail machine. Whenever I tested Vista and Beta 7 on the same system, Beta 7 ran faster.



Depends how big a hassle it is. I don't like stuff like that, because suppose you need to reinstall Windows? The auto restore partition on your laptop that sends you back to factory settings will still have Vista, rather than 7. That's why I'd rather not purchase a new system at all just before a new OS comes out. That's not much help to you now, I guess.

Generally, such an upgrade isn't too much a hassle. Just make sure all your personal files are backed up first, of course. Get a good external USB hard drive if you don't have one (they're cheap now) and copy everything of value there. You say you have so little there that you can do it with a flash drive. If your computer has that few personal files on it, I'd say go ahead. Even if there are problems with 7, they'll be fixed in automatic update patches, probably faster than Vista will be fixed at this point. The real danger is if there's something BIG that's wrong, but we'd have heard that by now if it were true. You probably don't need to hold off, if you have the time to do it.

Thanks Petro,

I backed up my personal files to CD the other day, then found out that the upgrades aren't actually shipping till mid-November. Sigh. I guess that gives me time for a portable USB drive. (I've been resisting because I really doubt that I have a need for a portable hard-drive. But I can't hold out forever, eh?)

I found a nice article to walk me through the upgrade process--sounds like it will be a bit of a pain for me, but not nearly as bad as if I were trying to upgrade a computer with tons of software that would need to be reinstalled. (I dread the day I need to replace my home office desktop--sooooo many programs and files to reinstall/transfer.)

Software has been getting too bloated for too long. Certainly the windows family has been designed assuming that consumers were going to purchase more capable hardware. But we've reached a point where the majority of consumers have plenty of hardware muscle: who types fast enough to push a 1ghz processor to keep up--unless the word processing software is bloated?

I am far from a power user, but I am more demanding than most office users and I hardly use the capacity of 4 year old processors.

Hard-drive capacity is another story entirely. I still remember when a 5MB hard-drive seemed irrationally large. These days 320GB is feeling a bit tight, at least for personal use. My business use--my work computer-- still fits comfortably on an 80GB drive.



Unfortunately I wasn't in a good position to wait. I always tell people not to buy a new computer unless they will start actively using it within the next week to 10 days. If I could have waited for win7 I would have.

What program do people use to make screengrabs of DVD's? I usually use Intervideo WinDVD. But I just got a new laptop with Windows 7, 64-bit version, and neither version 4 or 6 will run on it properly (and the basic DVD players that come with a new system never have that capability).

Trying to figure out what to do next. Should I get the latest version of WinDVD to make screengrabs with? Or is there a better program out there?

I have Nero 9. Screen captures use the ALT + some key and save them automatically.

If you want screen captures without paying money, use MS Snipping Tool--you can find it in the program menu: Accessories/Snipping Tool. .

Snipping tool requires you to stop the DVD, then drag your cursor over the area you want to copy, then rename the file yourself. Takes longer, but I prefer it because the Nero version I have isn't very compatible with Win7 (very slow to load, hard to fast forward or backward, sometimes freezes on loading, won't shut down easily, etc).

If I do have lots of screen captures (e.g. the movie Home), I will fire up Nero and then get something to drink while it slowly loads. Only cost me 10 dollars and was labeled as repackaged for Win7. I imagine the newer versions of Nero might be quicker, if you can find a good deal.

I think I have Nero Express, which is a free download. Can you screengrab with that? I haven't messed with it much.




A lot of stuff isn't that compatible with 7. They took out the entire 16-bit subsystem, making it almost impossible to run DOS programs, unless you know about DosBox, or something like that.

Vista took out IPX support, making it impossible to use networked play in games that use that protocol, even if the game itself runs. And XP took out VESA. It seems every O/S is massively bigger than the last anyway, so why snip out things that couldn't take up much space? Probably for compatibility reasons, rather than space saving.

I shouldn't complain though, Microsoft is still lightyears ahead of Macintosh, which can never seem to run its own software a couple of years later. Although that may be changing, I haven't checked out Macs since they introduced Intel processors.

I just loaded Ubuntu Linux on a spare hard drive, and plugged it into the laptop. Even though it's vaguely Windows/Mac-like, it would take a while to really learn how to do much with it.

But you don't really need to do much, because everyone knows the whole point of using Linux is to be able to feel like you're sticking it to Bill Gates. So okay, I'm sticking it to him. I'm posting this message through Mozilla Firefox, on a Linux O/S, so Bill Gates had no part in the creation of this post, so he can stop counting his money for a moment and put that in his pipe and smoke it.

Well, enough of that, I'm going to go play with Windows 7 some more. Actually, I like a lot of the new features they added...

oops, missed that post. Not that it matters as my answer is "I don't know". :-)

Is your Firefox working well? Ours started crashing every 20 to 30 minutes on laptops and desktop. I updated everything I could, disabled various add-ons, went through all the help files, tried sending off messages when it crashed but got the Sorry, we couldn't send your file, please try again, or words to that effect. I finally gave up and just switched to Chrome. The only time I use Firefox now is to download and convert youtube videos using a Firefox add-on.

I'm starting to learn Python--you'd probably like it Petro. It is named after Monty Python and the help files say not only are people encouraged to make Python references in programming, but it is mandatory to do so. I'm still struggling with the basics and learning syntax--the learning curve for me is so steep I feel like I'm hitting a vertical wall, scrabbling for purchase, losing my fingernails in the process. Python is heavily used and referenced in Principles of Planetary Climate by Pierrehumbert so if I want to make any progress through that book, I have to learn some basics first.

Other users though say Python is much more intuitive than other languages and more versatile. I'm a long long way from even beginning to have an opinion on that.

Nero Express seems to be just for burning, copying CDs, DVDs. I don't think it does screen captures, Petro. Last week I noticed I had it (guess it loaded with regular Nero 9) so thought I'd take a look at it.

In some thread or other Ken and I were talking about e-readers. I know it isn't truly and e-reader, but the ipad 2 is looking particularly attractive for catching up on my .pdf file reading. There remains two questions:

16GB or 32GB?

Good pdf reading app?

Well, I think I've finally figured out why to go with Internet Explorer over Mozilla Firefox. I tried to go from playing with it to using it as the primary browser on one computer, and think I found the flaw. The bookmarks are all stored internally in the system. There's a backup file but all the bookmarks are globbed into one big file. In IE, every bookmark has a separate file, which means you can to in there in Total Commander or Windows Explorer, and move them around or access them much quicker than you can going through a Favorites Menu.

My backup Firefox file opens as an htm and I can then scroll down and click on the bookmark link to open up a bookmarked site. Supposedly I can take that file to another computer and load my bookmarks onto that computer. I've not had success actually doing that...I can move it, but I haven't been able to get the new Firefox to actually read them, so I just end up opening the bookmarks and then clicking on the links I want open. I've not spent a lot of time working it out though as I mostly use the same computer when traveling and can google any bookmark I've forgotten. And I use Chrome now so don't bother with Firefox anymore (I have noticed it has stopped crashing though...a bit too late now).

Re: Good pdf reading app.

Have you seen this one?. Costs 0.99 cents. I haven't used it myself.

Kindle can read pdfs, but awkwardly. The journal articles show full page and the only reason I can actually read them is because I'm near-sighted, and even then I'm straining. You can magnify the page, but then you only have part of the page magnified so you have to scroll up, down, sideways. The sideways button doesn't have an in-between function either. It is either all the way to the left or all the way to the right, and with the magnification levels in steps (100, 150, 200, etc) you sometimes can read the left, the right, but not the in-between.

Anyway, if you find something good, let us know.

I'm thinking about getting a tablet PC, but really don't want to spend 500 Euro or so on an iPad or Galaxy Tab. Does anyone know whether the cheap ones for around 200 Euro/dollar are any good? I guess they have less memory, a less powerful processor and a worse display, but does that matter much just for reading eBooks and surfing the web? I don't intend to watch high definition videos or run sophisticated applications anyway. In particular, I'd like to try it for reading newspapers. Seems like a waste of paper to get a print version every day.

I have a Kindle for that. It comes with a web browser - not great, obviously, but fine for non-interactive browsing (don't use it much myself - I use my N900 for that). For reading the Kindle is excellent. If the newspapers you read are available for it, you'll probably be happy with it. Subscription prices tend to be pretty low.

Thanks, that's an option too, I'll look into it. Any experience how newspaper versions on Kindle or Android tablets look?

On the Kindle: no colour, usually no pictures at all. I guess that's the big downside. But very easy and pleasant to read and browse. It's like looking at printed paper.

My overall reading has gone way up after getting a Kindle. A major strength of the Kindle is that it's very light and slim and the battery lasts for a far longer time than devices with an active display. You can read massive Russian novels in one hand during commutes. It's also cheap compared to computer-like alternatives.

My plan is a kindle for reading novels and such--after I thin down my unread physical book count--and other devices for other tasks such as web browsing.

The nook has color and I've read some gossip that it is now being released as an android tablet rather than as a locked e-reader. I think it sells for around US$250.

Agreed. I've finished 8 books on my Kindle now just from using that spare time to read (in airports, waiting rooms, waiting for a friend, etc).

Battery life is great. I took it with me into the bush for the last two weeks where I finished one book, got halfway through a second, and started in on a third (had lots of downtime when weather or wildlife wasn't cooperating), and all that reading only used up 1/4 of the battery life. Next week I'm gone for over a month and the battery will easily last that length of time.

The decision just got a bit tougher. A nook with the same display technology as the kindle, with a touch screen* and allegedly longer battery life will be coming to market in a couple of weeks. I've only made a little bit of progress with my physical book back-log so I won't have to decide any time soon. Even if I go with the kindle I am thrilled to have a viable competitor.

*not a true touch screen, infra red sensors figure out where you are pointing and cause the display to act like a touch screen.

There seem to be relatively few newspapers available for Kindle, and no Austrian ones at all. The one I currently have a subscription for does have a version for tablets, though, so I'll go with an Android tablet for now and see how it works. Might consider getting a Kindle or something similar for reading novels later. Or stick with the tablet for that purpose too if it's reasonably convenient, as there's a Kindle app for Android too.

I saw that today, Spock. I agree it does make the decision harder. If I find a display model somewhere, I'll give it a try (not that I'm giving up on Kindle, but always nice to know how the new tech stuff works). Battery life is supposed to be double that of a Kindle (two months instead of one month) although I've only depleted my battery twice since I first bought my Kindle in early January (despite lots of reading).

@littlefish, sounds like a plan. I read some free news sources on my tablet but have no qualms about eventually purchasing a true e-ink reader for novels. I could read a book on my tablet, but I think the new nook suggests that novels want a different device.

@ken, I'm anxious to see them as well. They won't start shipping until June 10, but I imagine some stores will have pre-release demo models to play with. I'm really hoping one of the general electronics stores will have them so I can compare kindle to nook in one spot.

Got my tablet (Archos 101 for 250 Euro) and like it a lot so far. The 10" touchscreen is very convenient for websurfing, the Kindle app looks good, the free world newspapers app is also great. Unless you want to use it mainly for watching videos (where the better display and larger memory should make a difference, although the video player on the Archos runs fine too) or need a longer battery life than 6 hours or so I frankly don't see what could justify twice the price for an iPad or Galaxy Tab.

Anybody got any opinions on the Windows 7 look, involving pinning programs to the taskbar? I tried it a few times, because of articles saying try it, you'll like it. But I found it very confusing because icons on the taskbar (of programs that weren't open) looked so much like opened programs. This was especially annoying with Internet Explorer, as I couldn't tell at a glance if I had any open windows without putting the mouse over the IE icon first.

In the end, I just went to a geektools site, and got the procedure for restoring the QuickLaunch toolbar (a la Windows XP/Vista), and moved all the pinned-to-taskbar programs to the QuickLaunch bar. Am I missing out on some benefit Windows 7 provides, or is it better this way after all?


Change the Windows 7 Taskbar to Work Like Vista


Add the Quick Launch Bar to the Taskbar in Windows 7


I'm glad we've got the ability to pin programs to the Taskbar. I might use it every so often for special projects. But for day to day use, I think it's less confusing the old way.

For the most part I don't think much about the new taskbar. Mostly it does what I need it to do and I don't find it particularly annoying. A couple of minor issues, but not enough to make me upset.

I did download Fences which reorganizes your desktop icons in a way that I find pretty useful. Not really addressing your issue, but I like it.

One other thing I don't like in 7 and Vista is that the Start Menu doesn't telescope outwards every time you open a folder, like it did in XP and earlier. That made it a lot easier to see. I tried to see if there was a way to give it the old look, but haven't found it yet if it's there.

XP used to have a Search feature that was very nice, right on the Task Menu. You could search for file, then for text within a file. Like I could search *.txt, for P1500, and get a list of every text file on my drive that mentioned the Dell P1500 printer.

Either it's changed in 7, or I'm going to the wrong place. I type Search into the command line and get a thing called Windows Searches, that looks a lot like Windows Explorer, but with no way to do searches like I was just describing. Is that somewhere else, or is it gone?

Just install cygwin and you can even use the grep command.

I had quite a strange experience with the feature to search for strings in files. It worked with *.for Fortran sources but it didn't do with *.f90 or *.f95 sources. Then I found out that the definition of file extensions it works with has been changed by Microsoft from one to another operating system (I don't know if it was the change from NT4.0 to Win2K or from Win2K to WinXP, though).
I wonder how that feature works or why they have to make it dependent on the file extension. (What about files without an extension or with extensions with less or more than three characters?) It's also very inconvenient in my opinion that you can usually just search indexed files. That's usually one of the first things I deactivate on any Windows system because "unmotivated" harddisk activity makes me a bit nervous sometimes.

As I don't have Windows 7 I have no idea what they have changed, but I assume it must still be there. Sorry.

Did anyone else already get Windows 8? I figured I'd give it a try on my notebook PC since the upgrade only costs 30 Euro for now. Works fine, but somehow I expected it to be more revolutionary. Basically it's Windows 7 with a tablet-friendly new start screen put on top of it. However, if you start a desktop application you automatically get redirected to the old desktop, which looks exactly like before only without the start menu. So you don't get to spend much time on the new start screen unless you manually return to it every time, for which there's little need. Pity, because it looks nice with the potentially useful live tiles and is quite usable even without a touchscreen.

Frankly, I think Windows 8 has a rather provisional feel to it, as if Microsoft was in a hurry to put out an OS for both tablets and PCs, but didn't have time to design a common user interface for both. You're basically forced to work in two different interfaces, which doesn't really cause practical problems, but just doesn't feel very elegant. On the other hand, it does boot slightly faster than Windows 7, all Windows 7 software seems to run fine, and you have the option of installing apps for the new interface. So it's nice to have, although not much of an improvement over Windows 7 on the PC.

I think I'll wait till I pick up a new laptop. The one I have now is just over a year old so they'll probably have a new Windows version by the time I'm ready to buy (barring any sudden computer death).

It seems like Microsoft only gets every-other operating system right. Windows 8 is getting wildly variable reviews which worries me.

I used XP until win7 came out. I think I will use win7 until whatever follows win8 becomes available. I am a desktop user and I want an OS designed for the desktop. We'll see what MS comes up with next year.

By giving names to the Operating Systems, theyve conditioned people to expect revolutionary changes. In the old days, people weren't surprised if there weren't huge changes between Dos 6.0 and 6.22, or even between Dos 5 and 6, because it didn't sound like there should be.

Windows 7 itself is actually Windows 6.1, not Windows 7. In other words, it's Vista, version 1.1. But since Vista had a bad name, they didn't want to call it that.

Vista (Windows 6), and Me (Windows 4.9) were pretty poor. So was Dos 4.0. Those three are Microsoft's worst OS's.

I skipped Vista for home use too, as a lot of people did.

In this case it was understandable that people expected revolutionary changes because it's the first Windows version that is designed for both tablets and PCs, and thus comes with a completely new interface. But in fact you get something more like Windows 7.1 and Windows RT (the pure tablet version) in one, only that they're neither properly separated nor properly integrated.

I think it's too harsh to say they got it wrong, it's just that the combination of old and new interface isn't entirely logical. If that bothers you, you can install a free little program that brings back the start menu and allows you to boot into desktop mode, and you'll get a slightly improved Windows 7 with no problems at all (but still have the option of using apps for the new interface). If Microsoft had included that option themselves they probably would have gotten a lot less criticism.

But really, I think even the new interface works fine on a PC, it's just that you can't do much in it and have to switch back to the desktop anyway.

Maybe that's exactly what it really is. But, since Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1, that would mean that Windows 8 is Windows 6.2. If anybody has a copy, can they please run the VER command at a Dos prompt, and see what version it really is?

"Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200]"

Ah ha! So, Windows 8 is Vista 1.2, then.

Here's the way it works:

Windows 1, 2, and 3 were all called by those names (even though none of them were operating systems, only shells).

Windows 4 is Windows 9x (it's also Dos 7).

Windows 5 is Windows 2000 and XP (XP is 5.1).

Windows 6 is Windows Vista, 7 and 8.

Windows NT exists outside of this numbering sequence as a completely different OS, although parts of it went into Windows 5 and 6.

Speaking of Windows NT, it's got a screwy numbering system too. The first version wasn't Windows NT 1.0, as you'd imagine. It was 3.1 (because the interface was modeled after Windows 3.1). After 3.51, the next version had the Windows 95 interface, so that version was called... no, not NT 95, that would make too much sense. NT 2.0 was called NT 4.0.

Windows names are Microsoft's equivalent of the Pentium Floating Point Error

Sort of like the Star Trek movies (the old ones, not the reboots although ST 2 is out soon).

Even the old series finally broke the pattern with Star Trek X.

Microsoft's marketing is completely screwy now, with every update being marketed as if it were a whole new operating system.

As often happens, Dos is the only one that got it right. Dos 1, Dos 2, Dos 3, et cetera. And when they did minor updates, they called them that (Dos 4.01, Dos 6.22). Everything makes perfect sense in Dos.