Windows 7 is overrated
- Thread starter Shintsu2
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I like Vista. I don't get the hate one bit. It crashes far less than XP ever did to me, it runs smoothly now I have a good amount of RAM in my system, and it's easy to use. The only thing I ever had against it was the lack of customizability and the fact that it looked considerably less user friendly than the old XP Luna style.
Then I discovered how to patch and theme windows however I want, and now I love it. It works fine and looks how I want it to. I'm used to it enough to be able to use it efficiently, too.
I wouldn't have wanted it before the 1[sup]st[/sup] service pack though. That would most likely have been torture.
I haven't considered using 7 yet, I'm waiting til the teething troubles are gone, as well as the fact I just don't want another RAM guzzler after I finally got a system that could cope with Vista.
Then I discovered how to patch and theme windows however I want, and now I love it. It works fine and looks how I want it to. I'm used to it enough to be able to use it efficiently, too.
I wouldn't have wanted it before the 1[sup]st[/sup] service pack though. That would most likely have been torture.
I haven't considered using 7 yet, I'm waiting til the teething troubles are gone, as well as the fact I just don't want another RAM guzzler after I finally got a system that could cope with Vista.
I installed W7 Starter on my 10 year old laptop sporting a 1.2 ghz Celeron CPU, 768 mb ram and 30gb hd, expecting my laptop to physically reach out and give me the middle finger. Instead, they run smoother than XP and boot in about 15 seconds. Well, bugger me I thought, this is certainly madness.
Ahh, people are so silly sometimes.
VIsta wasn't terrible, it just had some serious security issues. Windows 7 addressed these issues and that makes it good. I dunno what else you should really expect from the damn thing...
Besides you stated you're using a laptop, right? Unless you've spent over £1000 on that laptop, it's probably shit. Sorry, but that's the stone cold truth. With the exception of the new Macbook range, most laptops being made nowadays have shit parts and are prone to breaking down. I've had Vista for almost 2 years now and I've had to reboot my laptop to factory settings more than 10 times. So that's not just XP. You're simply refusing to sort out your laptop and blaming XP for it.
VIsta wasn't terrible, it just had some serious security issues. Windows 7 addressed these issues and that makes it good. I dunno what else you should really expect from the damn thing...
Besides you stated you're using a laptop, right? Unless you've spent over £1000 on that laptop, it's probably shit. Sorry, but that's the stone cold truth. With the exception of the new Macbook range, most laptops being made nowadays have shit parts and are prone to breaking down. I've had Vista for almost 2 years now and I've had to reboot my laptop to factory settings more than 10 times. So that's not just XP. You're simply refusing to sort out your laptop and blaming XP for it.
So you don't want me to use XP or Windows 7
I guess I could just throw my computer in the lake of fire then
I guess I could just throw my computer in the lake of fire then
I have to say that I was completely unaware of any W7 hype until after release date. Honestly, my only experiences with Win7 up to release date were from the beta and the newsletter you get sent from being signed up for the beta. I got told about the beta by a friend who though it might be interesting.
Then hit release date and BAM, there are Windows 7 adverts everywhere and a few of my friends who are Mac enthusiasts saying how their Mac review idols say that its an excellent os.
I have used almost every windows os (not versions 1 or 2, apart from in virtual machines to see how they looked, which don't count).
I always found XP to be completely stable. I used it on many machines and have never had BSOD, or lock-up. This is prior to service pack 1 also.
As for Vista, I found it mostly stable. I have used it on a few machines. Its nor dreadful in the same way WinME was, but it was a heavy os even on higher end machines. The GUI is responsive nearly all of the time, however, but I had random occurrences where the system would lagggggg for no reason at all and would need a restart. Not the only person to have that problem. It did not crash but trying to change between programs just could not happen. Oh well.
I have used Win7 since the public betas were released. To compare the performance with Vista, it felt like the system had a hardware upgrade. And even after months the system remained stable and fast. I did not follow any of the hype there might be about Win7 but my experiences with it felt better. Many of the UI features were very useful. Some people complain about the taskbar having just one icon for each program but if you don't like that you can 1) turn it off and make it act like previous windows, or even better 2) go back to whatever os you like to use (nobody is forcing you to use it or upgrade).
The choice to upgrade was easy for me. I got it free after sitting through a few hours of somewhat interesting presentations and demonstrations.
One thing I dislike about Win7 is the advertising campaign. The same campaign could almost be used to advertise beer. I mean yes its interesting to see something new in an os add (that only uses its own merits and doesn't mention another os and say how bad they are....MAC), but there is just something that just doesn't sit right about them with me. Maybe it is because they feel like they are saying "After a long hard day at work, nothing feels better than coming home and having a nice hot chocolate and sitting in front of the MS logo".
Then hit release date and BAM, there are Windows 7 adverts everywhere and a few of my friends who are Mac enthusiasts saying how their Mac review idols say that its an excellent os.
I have used almost every windows os (not versions 1 or 2, apart from in virtual machines to see how they looked, which don't count).
I always found XP to be completely stable. I used it on many machines and have never had BSOD, or lock-up. This is prior to service pack 1 also.
As for Vista, I found it mostly stable. I have used it on a few machines. Its nor dreadful in the same way WinME was, but it was a heavy os even on higher end machines. The GUI is responsive nearly all of the time, however, but I had random occurrences where the system would lagggggg for no reason at all and would need a restart. Not the only person to have that problem. It did not crash but trying to change between programs just could not happen. Oh well.
I have used Win7 since the public betas were released. To compare the performance with Vista, it felt like the system had a hardware upgrade. And even after months the system remained stable and fast. I did not follow any of the hype there might be about Win7 but my experiences with it felt better. Many of the UI features were very useful. Some people complain about the taskbar having just one icon for each program but if you don't like that you can 1) turn it off and make it act like previous windows, or even better 2) go back to whatever os you like to use (nobody is forcing you to use it or upgrade).
The choice to upgrade was easy for me. I got it free after sitting through a few hours of somewhat interesting presentations and demonstrations.
One thing I dislike about Win7 is the advertising campaign. The same campaign could almost be used to advertise beer. I mean yes its interesting to see something new in an os add (that only uses its own merits and doesn't mention another os and say how bad they are....MAC
), but there is just something that just doesn't sit right about them with me. Maybe it is because they feel like they are saying "After a long hard day at work, nothing feels better than coming home and having a nice hot chocolate and sitting in front of the MS logo".
Whatchu talkin' about, Willis? XP could run dual-cores long before Vista RC1. Moreover, Pro could run two separate processors from its inception. I should know, I was (regrettably) one of the early adopters of dual-cores, buying a socket 939 system in the summer of 2004. Windows XP 64-bit was released in 2003, but has never been popular. If my memory serves, the Vista RC was not available until around late 2006. Those were not Vista innovations, I'm afraid.Dys said:
Edit: But DRM integration was!
In terms of performance, Vista was initially a step backwards. It had almost double the memory footprint of XP -- much higher system requirements, without much to show for it. Once again, I should know. I had to deal with all the 'Vista Capable' laptops that actually had no business running Vista. That whole debacle lead to a lawsuit against Microsoft. Vista has gotten better, but it's still comparatively bloated when measured against XP and Win7.
XP performed worse with dual core processes than with single core, they also crashed regularly, this was not adressed until late 2007 so...Gruthar said:
XP 64 was never popular becase it was unusable. Presumably it is now working (with updates and such) but I've never seen any system run it stabely, and I don't think anything actually supported 64 bit stuff back then on top.
I think I bought my computer in mid 2006 and because XP couldn't handle the newest hardware (at the time it was core2duo) I was stuck between worlds, I could either use vista RC1 (after it was released in november of that year, I briefly used the beta before that) which sacraficed game performance because neither nvidia or ATi had their shit together, or I could use XP which also had balls performance because my CPU was poorly utalized.
It is true that vista uses more ram than XP, but by the time vista was released every new gaming rig had at least 2gb of ram anyway, so the ram eating didn't matter. Again, it's true that for the first month or so games performance was poor while Nvidia and ATi got their stuff together, but it wasn't long before Vista gave better games performance (and it still does across the board from what I've read). Vista still isn't worth the update for most businesses, but then again it's not like there was ever any reason for business to update to XP from 2000
I'd like to not that, with the laptops not being vista cabable, that I had an IBM R30 (which was relatively new) when XP was released and it ran XP atrociously, the model up, which was stickered for XP (which mothers school gave her, no doubt punishment for something) barely ran it better. Since when are the minimum requirements an indication of anything?
It doesn't matter how much hate vista scored from people (justified or otherwise), it introduced a lot of features to PCs that were not the norm, and now are. It was a bigger, more substancial upgrade from XP than 7 is from vista, and it is far more of an upgrade than XP was from 2000 (I shit you not the SP0 install of XP is 2000 with a pretty skin slapped on it, yes they updated a lot later and added things in, but it was all possible on to do on 2000).
Err, where are you getting your info from? I never had any problems with either the stability of performance of my dual core system before 2007. Nor did anyone else I know. There would have been a s***storm of controversy if what you're saying was even remotely true. It was significantly faster than the P4 I upgraded from, and both cores were indeed used. Games were not multi-threaded back then and didn't benefit as much from multiple cores, but the CPU load was still distributed across both cores. Believe you me, I made sure of that. The only problem I ever had in those early days was that the dual-core exposed some coding quirks in games. Specifically, there were games that bypassed the Windows API and pulled the time stamp directly from the processor, leading to some really strange and jerky animation. That was not the fault of XP, though. I've never heard of any problems with Conroe processors and XP, nor of it being 'under-utilized.'Dys said:
And for the record, I've been running XP64 on my desktop machine since about 2005, again without any issues whatsoever. I can't speak for its stability when it was released in 2003, but it's been usable for a long while, certainly long before Vista in any of its incarnations.
With your third point regarding gaming machines and Vista, that was precisely the problem. The majority of consumers do not have gaming rigs. The majority of consumers are not gamers -- an OS is measured on more than just its gaming merits. Yes, Vista ran fine if you had the appropriate hardware, but there were brand new computers being sold with Vista installed (or advertised as being 'Vista Capable') that could not run it well at all, despite meeting the posted requirements. Remember the "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine" internal Microsoft e-mails? Even if you had a 2GB system, ~700MB RAM consumption is quite a bit. Don't forget that all that junk has to be loaded into the RAM too, resulting in markedly higher startup times. Yeah, Vista does offer better gaming performance through DX10, but I would argue that if DX10 were backported to XP, it would have done the same. There's no revolutionary code there, it's just video cards are designed around DX10.
Your R30 was already obsolete, even by 2001 standards. No doubt it couldn't run XP well -- it only had 128MB of RAM. It was built in the Windows 98 era. Don't know what to say about the subsequent laptop without more details. You're right that 2000 and XP were nearly identical at the onset. The difference is that Win2000 was not marketed towards the home user -- it was built in the spirit of its NT predecessors, as a business OS. XP was the first to market the NT kernel to home users, and we haven't gone back since. It would be more accurate to compare XP and Windows 98/ME, in which case it was a monumental leap forward. I was stuck with ME when XP came out, and was impressed with the difference (granted, after ME, ANY OS is better.) Yeah, XP had its problems too, and even back then there were people who refused to switch from 98SE to XP (the activation was one sticking point.) But like 98SE, XP has evolved over time. It's stable, and not a resource hog. It's reaching it's end-of-life, but it became a decent OS.
Win7 and Vista are very close too, but Win7 is clearly more optimized. As I said, I can run it on my old P4 system, whereas Vista didn't fare as well. Maybe not revolutionary, but I don't care about new features. I care more about twiddling my thumbs waiting for the damn OS to load.
The bottom line is this: if I care about resource consumption and overall speed, and my only two choices were Vista and XP, I would stick with XP, as I have. Yeah, I don't get DX10, but I'll survive. But going from XP to Win7, there really is no tradeoff. Hence why Vista is kind of a pariah.
An up to date to system (with adequate hardware) running Vista is a lot faster than a comparable system running XP. I don't care how much of a failure Vista alledgedly was on release (though my experience was far superior to XP, I accept that my computer was very, very new and designed for Vista not XP). I'm not even going to bother contest it anymore, just google search benchmarks and you'll see it performs better in games, and boot times. In my case it may also have been XP having a hatred of my motherboard, but the various tools I was using suggested that my CPU was the issue.Gruthar said:
It seems my source for windows updates for dual core systems was slightly out, it was in fact late 2006 (hotfix as well as a later fix). My experiences before these updates were certainly not positive.
The laptop I was talking about (that mother used) was an R52 if I Recall. Though it may not be fair to blame all the problems on the operating system as the laptop itself was a shitheap. The R30 was bought new in late 2001 and was designed for windows 2000 (cannot tell you when they were released new, I can only assume they were the latest thinkpad model when I bought it for school), the point there is windows XP had bloated RAM needs compared to earlier operating systems (XP was already released when I got the laptop new and the laptop could not run it).
These is one stable way to test both operating systems in a reasonable manner.
Install them in virtual machines which are configured identically. Every single time you will find that vista boots a whole lot slower.
And boot times/resource usage of windows 7 are by comparison much better than vista. XP still boots much faster in virtual machine tho.
And I must say that benchmarks are very misleading. I can make my games run at several hundreds of frames per second after turning off all the post processing and fancy rendering effects (Which I cannot live without). I personally experienced a performance hit when in-game after upgrading to vista. This is not around the time or release. This is middle of 2008 (So drivers cannot be an excuse). Directx 10 games were worth this loss in speed. Windows 7 by comparison to Vista (The original topic remember?) still performs much better in any of my games.
I did not dislike Vista as it was nice to use but there were many problems. This cannot be denied. Windows 7 have been unproblematic for me so far.
Install them in virtual machines which are configured identically. Every single time you will find that vista boots a whole lot slower.
And boot times/resource usage of windows 7 are by comparison much better than vista. XP still boots much faster in virtual machine tho.
And I must say that benchmarks are very misleading. I can make my games run at several hundreds of frames per second after turning off all the post processing and fancy rendering effects (Which I cannot live without). I personally experienced a performance hit when in-game after upgrading to vista. This is not around the time or release. This is middle of 2008 (So drivers cannot be an excuse). Directx 10 games were worth this loss in speed. Windows 7 by comparison to Vista (The original topic remember?) still performs much better in any of my games.
I did not dislike Vista as it was nice to use but there were many problems. This cannot be denied. Windows 7 have been unproblematic for me so far.
Google disagrees with you too:Dys said:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/windows_7_review?page=0%2C0
Relevant stuff is on page 4.
And frankly, I don't need a benchmark to tell me what does and doesn't run faster. I've worked on hundreds and hundreds of desktops and laptops by now. From a clean load state, XP starts and shuts down faster, period. I don't see how Vista could possibly beat it when it has nearly double the amount of data to load.
The hotfix was for dual-cores with ACPI enabled. Most dual cores did not have this problem. I heard of cases where XP would use the uniprocessor HAL, but I never ever saw it in person. Your experience with XP and Vista is not typical.
I'm not claiming XP was the end-all OS at release. I don't remember if there were complaints over the bloatedness of XP at the time. It probably was. But it became an excellent OS over time, and maybe Vista could too. The issue is that Vista is not good now, in the present day, whereas XP is, and 7 is all-around better than both.
To drive my point home: if Vista is such a good OS, and Win 7 and Vista are as similar as you've claimed, why can Win 7 load with a memory footprint comparable to XP's? Why can I load Win 7 on an old machine, and not Vista? Are you going to claim 7 is a downgrade of Vista?
I'm yet to have a computer running XP boot faster than the same computer has after I've installed and optimized vista. I've dealt with 5 high end computers on a regular scale over the past 2 years (only having built one, which is mine, the other 4 were friends who I eventually persuaded to use vista). Vista doesn't have double the amount of data to load that XP does, sure it has a bit of bloat before you've turned all the worthless shit off, but when it's running cleanly it's barely more. It also boots applications far faster than XP did, which means that when other programs (Steam, MSN, xfire, logitech setpoint etc) load, they load significantly faster. I don't see how anyone with enough sense to type a coherent sentance can try and claim the XP boots faster when they've clearly never toyed with a clean vista. Compared to XP right now, vista is the far superior operating system, you sacrafice fanboy priveledge for a better UI (unless you've modded the fuck out of XP, as the overwhelming majority of those who refuse to upgrade have), slightly better ingame performance (especially on higher settings, which no doubt most enthusiasts will be running at) and a significantly faser boot time (you're welcome to disagree all you want, that's the result I've consistantly seen, even on computers that do not have a seemingly unjustified hatred of XP), sure sometime in the past XP was as a better performing operating system, but that has not been the case since long after all the rabid haters had their minds made up for them.Gruthar said:
I've not used 7 enough to comment on it being better or worse than vista, but I'd put money on it being a 'downgrade' from vista in the same way the vista was a 'downgrade' from XP (if at all). My claim isn't that vista is the better system but that for the average vista user, the update doesn't add enough to warrant the effort. Also that it's retarded that all the vista haters are so readily embracing such a similar system.
With the link you gave, straight off the bat (well, more like 5 or 6 pages in) to your link it starts comparing vista x64 and 7 x64 to XP 32 so it's really comparing apples to oranges (a 32 bit system will always eat less ram than a comparable 64 bit), and still XP isn't a complete winner. Here's a source that focuses more other games. While the performance boost shown rarely seems enough to make an significant difference to gameplay (except on the higher settings) it certainly debunks the myth that Vista lacks performance comparable to XP, as it usually pulls out slightly faster. Of course, not all games will perform faster or as well on vista, then again not all games will perform faster on XP. In general, Vista is slightly superior (the overwhelming majority of comparisons I've seen are similar to the one I've linked). So really I don't give two shits if there's the occasional game where an XP system has between 2 and 10 FPS higher than a 64 bit system that has to emulate a 32 bit system to play the games shown.
This gets better and better. You've come to your conclusion based on the whopping five high end computers you've worked on. Remember when I mentioned that the majority of consumers are not gamers? That the measure of an OS is more than just its gaming capabilities?Dys said:
But nevermind that. Evidently you need to "turn off all the worthless shit" in Vista to get it to run well. I think that's the step I was missing in all the retail-disk OS reloads I've had to do for clients. And on my own test machine on which I clearly never toyed with a clean Vista. We all had this crazy notion in our heads that a decent OS doesn't have "worthless shit" to disable. Our bad, Vista is not bloated. Oh, and let's not forget that eye-candy makes a better UI. Speed is not a factor. Forgot that one too, but that's just because this majority who have modded the XP UI have eluded me.
And then you go on to say you haven't really used Win 7 much, but you're somehow sure it's not worth the hassle of upgrading to from Vista. Does this mean I get to type angry italic sentences about people who can form coherent sentences clearly not toying with operating systems to substantiate their claims?
I also never stated that XP was better at running games. I actually agreed with you in my second post that Vista was better than XP for gaming, largely due to DX10. All three OSes are probably about equal in DX9, but it's a moot point since it's already obsolete. But for the third time, I reiterate that an OS is not just for gaming. Even if you assert that the bench I posted was fundamentally flawed because 32-bit OSes inherently use less memory, that wouldn't affect all the benchmarks conducted (the hard drive test being an important one vis-a-vis loading.) You keep saying that all the benchmarks show Vista is a winner, but I'm getting the impression that all you're looking at is video game performance. Either that or Google is lying to me and feeding my delusions and anomalous first-hand experience.
You'd be making a stronger case for Vista over XP if you advocated the security improvements it's made over XP, or the important changes it made in driver implementation. But it's not more efficient than XP. That aside, Win 7 is better than Vista in almost every way. It's cosmetically similar, but not functionally. Thus far, all you've done is call people rabid XP fanboys, posted video game benchmarks, and spoken from evidently limited experience. Good job dodging my question about putting Vista on an old machine, though.
The majority of haters are gamers, my point isn't that it's an awsome OS, but that it's a step up from XP and that it implemented a lot of new features. Obviously, as you seem to have been unable to pick up on it, the operating system was designed for enthusiasts, not your average office computer, as such it is in enthusiast level computers that the benifets are apparent. In the real world most bussiness models are based off of 2000 or occasionally XP (far more often 2000, especially in larger businesses). This is, of course, because for large scale bussiness operations both XP and Vista are considered inferior (be for cost related reasons or performance), so talking about what's most appropriate for the largest userbases becomes redundant as neither of us are are part of that demographic. You're flat out wrong if you think that any of XP, vista or 7 are the most used or most stable operating system on budget rigs.Gruthar said:
Why should I care how an operating system performs on systems that I'm not likely to use? So I don't try and run new software on old systems, yay for me? My point about Vista being the better OS (than XP) is still very much true, as in my experience and for my needs, it is.
Being a dick doesn't make you right. Do you think that the majority of users use a windows OS the way windows released it? I earlier said I've had experience with 5 top end machines in which I upgraded XP to vista and compared performance, it's probably worth noting that I've worked on far more computers than I can count running 2000 or XP in various offices (mostly with news ltd) and I can tell you that I've not seen a single large corporate desktop use an OS that isn't notably different from the standard microsoft release. This is, of course, because they are all optimized to run the specific purpose as efficently as possible. Basicially you're certainty that vista is a worse OS than others because it runs excess stuff in the background is clearly poorly though out, as every modern build of windows does as well. Most of the market for Vista gaming rigs are gamers, and while most PC gamers like to act the elitists they generally know fuck all about computers and end up destroying them with half baked modifications and viruses (thus all the over the top security and hand holding in vista). If you miss the point of the system that completely you might as well go buy a Mac, as Mac OS will boot faster.
Go back and re-read what I said. Note that at no point do I say that I'm sure that it's not worth the hassle, rather that at this point in time based on what I've heard it isn't enough of an improvement to motivate me upgrading (which would require going out and spending several hundred dollars on the operating system). Are you seriously telling me I'm wrong for being sceptical about new products before I drop money on them? I've not tried it yet, installing an OS on my system that doesn't meet my needs (or doesn't meet them better than my current system) is stupid, so naturally I need to get in and use it a bit before I commit....Did you buy XP/Vista/W7 on release? If so, you're far from the most intelligent person on the internet, if not, why bring up a mute point?
Compare XP 64 to Vista 64 and I think you'll find that vista quite convincingly is the clear winner (even though it's insanely difficult to find comparisons since after Vista SP2 came out, I also can't for the love of god find anything comparing the 64bit systems, and I somehow doubt you'll be will to take anyones word that Vista 64> XP 64). Windows Vista boots out of hibernation far more quickly (I don't actually know anyone who uses hibernate in XP consistantly, and in fairness I've not had a whole lot of chance to test it on XP so this assertion is limited to word of mouth and my experience), loads up automatic startup programs faster (for some reason XP is just incredibly slow with things like xfire, steam etc, again if I could find relevent benchmarks I'd post them but they just don't seem to exist, especially not with vista not booting up all the security stuff first) though does take slightly longer to load windows UI (overall I find it's far faster, though again this is based on the relevent demographics computers and programs they are likely to use, I've no business testing how fast a 512mb ram system with an intel centrino boots and loads steam). In my mind driver implementation and effeciency are kind of the same thing in my mind(along with updates etc), you already seem aware of the drivers so I'll skim past that.
Basicially why I ignored the "running vista on an old machine" question is because it's pointless. The system isn't designed for older systems, or budget systems. I've said all that above, but that's more or less it. Running vista on an old computer is like installing a high end SLi setup on an office computer (where all the other specs are far below that of the graphics). It's just pointless.