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Windows 7

category: general [glöplog]
AFAIK (I might be wrong... just read it somewhere), if you work with x64 -only- processor, they will run on under Wow64 (it's some kind of 32 bit emulator)... if you use a mixed CPU (like AMD64) they will run natively.

I have a quad-core phenom and still am not really sure wether things are running natively or in emulation mode (I just know they add a *32 to the process on the task manager)... but seriously, not that I care. They run as fast as on Vista 32, I have never noticed any -practical- difference (I have not done any profiling though).

About Vista "working better"... I just like the enhancements... can't say it works "better" since better is a pretty relative word. Probably most of these enhancements (from the user-standpoint) can be installed on XP with third-party software (there's Windows Desktop Search, Taskbar replacements and whatnot), but I like them, and work great (no matter if coming from external software or integrated in the OS).

Seriously, now whenever I use a XP machine I just can't count the number of times I've used the "Win" key and started typing away to open a program or find a file till I realize I have to click "run" (or go to the slow XP's search).

In Vista, I feel everything is integrated and I am not running "programs" to make my typical user-actions. I also like the new explorer bar and the omni-present search box in every explorer window (even the control panel).

It's not the big big revolution one could expect after 7 years from XP (specially if you compare it to SP2 or SP3... compare it to raw XP from 2001 and you'll laugh), and definitely not what people were expecting with Longhorn... but I see absolutely nothing wrong with "some" (not all, yes) upgrades to XP :-)

As for performance... it probably does run indeed worse than XP performance-wise, but hardware upgrades are cheap these days. My last box was under $600 and it's a fully loaded quad-core at 2.4ghz, with 4gb of DDR2 1033 RAM, a GeForce GTX+ 9800 with 1gb of RAM and whatnot... definitely a pretty high-end machine (not the "latest", but not bad anyway). Those who are complaining about the RAM specs should just check prices, you can get 2Gb of additional RAM for $20 these days... I don't really see the problem with Vista sucking up RAM.

Vista sucking up hard disk space, taking hard disk space cost these days, is just as laughable.
added on the 2009-02-19 09:19:53 by Jcl Jcl
Jcl: My machine is rather beefy (Intel Core i7 920, Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard, 6 GB DDR3 1600 RAM, GeForce 280 GTX with 1 GB RAM) so I don't really care about "Vista runs <APP X> 3% slower than XP does". All I really care about is being able to strip away the useless eyecandy and user-hater-features, and that my soundcard and musicmaking software work.. and, of course, that demos run.

Now I'm being told by Garble that Windows 7 runs all of that flawlessly, so I'm thinking about trying that out today and see if it explodes or not. :)
added on the 2009-02-19 09:37:38 by gloom gloom
Gloom,

Your "regus ademordna" looses the d3dDevice in Vista, at least the last time I tried to watch it and before upgrading the driver to the last beta one from nVidia. Not tried with new drivers.

But .. it will be interesting to read about your experience on Windows7. Anyway keep in mind that it's a beta, so, may be in near future go better or worst. I have to point you, as you are musician, that I have read terrible thinks about sound and Windows7.
added on the 2009-02-19 09:45:55 by Aeko Aeko
It's indeed a bit of work turning off all eyecandy, UAC and stuff, but it can be done and it's not hard or need hidden registry keys or group policy editing.

However, I love Aero... it's not an "obstrusive eyecandy" (you can turn off transparency if you feel like it), and it feels much more fluid than GDI painting (it's not just a "theme", but the whole desktop compositing engine, or DWM) and it's way faster with the appropiate graphics card (and you have one hell of a graphics card :) )
added on the 2009-02-19 09:48:01 by Jcl Jcl
I'm guessing win7 still has all the eye candy (I hate it too.. even discounting the pointless waste of power, transparent windows are distracting and don't even offer any benefit when it's that frosted glass effect) but you can turn that off very easily. Having a properly hardware accelerated UI is definitely a good improvement.

The UAC thing.. well, UAC is actually a very good thing, it's just the vista implementation that was bad (way too many nag screens, and the whole "stop everything and paint the screen black! I have a trivial question!" thing). Win7 has apparently fixed that, it's supposed to be much less intrusive.

Gloom: I'd say if you need a solid OS rather than the latest features and the extra ram, stick with xp rather than installing a beta os, and change to win7 when it's released. There's always xp64 if you need the extra ram I guess, although I've heard bad things about that one. If you don't mind some messing around reinstalling when the betas expire, and a bit of risk as it's a beta (sounds like it's pretty stable anyway), go for win7.
added on the 2009-02-19 10:34:08 by psonice psonice
Aeko: Hm, that's weird actually, since I believe Kusma uses Vista. The sound issues you have heard of are probably the draconian DRM-shite, which I don't worry about, since I'm not going to be playing back some licensed HD-content. If Acid Pro 7 works with Vista/Win7 then I'm pretty sure they have full access to the audio-path without degeneration.

psonice: Yeah, XP64 isn't really an option. I think I'm going to try Windows 7 actually -- just to see how it preforms for my usual tasks. I only use the PC for making music and demos anyway - everything else has a home on my Mac - so it's kinda vital that it works out. :) I don't mind that it's a beta, and I don't worry about the expiration date either. If I like it, I will buy it when the time comes anyway.
added on the 2009-02-19 10:52:48 by gloom gloom
I've been running win7 on my laptop for a while now, and I really like it. I have some problems with speaker sound sometimes (it randomly works/doesn't work) but that's not really an issue as I rarely use the crappy inbuilt speakers anyway.

All the applications I use works fine as well (FL Studio, VC++, Photoshop etc), and the laptop preforms much better overall than it did when I ran Vista on it.

I've seen reports that it runs very well on netbooks as well, so I'm gonna install it on my eee too as soon as I get my hands on an external DVD drive (too much of a hassle to do the USB-stick/SD-card install method).
added on the 2009-02-19 11:32:10 by wb wb
gloom: win7 beta iso is around 2,5gb. installation is much faster than vista. since you have decent hardware, you won't even have to download any drivers i guess. install, type in serial, login, auto-activation. windows update, update drivers (and install every critical updates), reboot. during installation just choose custom and give it some empty partition. on my machine it even added old xp installation to it's boot manager, so there's even no multiboot setup hassle.

you won't know unless you'll try. :)
added on the 2009-02-19 12:06:40 by unic0rn unic0rn
unic0rn: Yeah, that's probably what I'll do. Question: is it universally accepted that "all" Vista 64bit drivers also work in Windows 7? (Googled around a bit and there seems to be some difference of opinion on that :) I have a Wacom board that doesn't have any Vista 64 bit drivers - it does have Vista 32 bit drivers though..
added on the 2009-02-19 12:11:33 by gloom gloom
I heard Windows 7 was just a new skin for Vista.
added on the 2009-02-19 12:37:03 by kusma kusma
glooom: which wacom board is that? I have an oldie Graphire 4 (outdated along with the volito when the bamboo came out), and it works pretty well on Vista 64 (with its control panel, pressure sensitivity, and on-tabled buttons and scroll wheel, everything correctly).

Drivers for Graphire are universal for any Graphire versions (and Volito's), and Bamboo, Intuos and Cintiq do have Vista 64 drivers.
added on the 2009-02-19 13:16:40 by Jcl Jcl
gloom: should work i guess. i'm using some xp drivers (32bit, tough) on win7 32bit, and everything works perfectly (geforce 4 mx for example). again, you won't know unless you'll try i guess.

moose: and i've heard vista is just a new skin for windows me ;) nah, seriously, it's so much tuned up and improved vista version, that apart from similiar looks, i guess comparing those two is rather useless. looks like vista (kind of, looks better actually), is fast like xp (kind of, is faster actually), but it's neither of those.
added on the 2009-02-19 14:11:17 by unic0rn unic0rn
nobody compared win95 to 3.1, so stop comparing windows7 to vista or xp. It's a new version alright, give it a chance :)
added on the 2009-02-19 14:14:10 by xTr1m xTr1m
Of course everyone compared win95 to 3.1. There were tons of complaints about lack of compatibility, huge memory usage + wasted disk space etc. just like now. The difference then was that 95 was so enormously better than 3.1 most people loved it :) 95 had a ton of groundbreaking features compared to 3.1.

Vista/win7 are better than xp in a lot of ways, but not so much that people feel the need to run out and grab it.
added on the 2009-02-19 14:23:52 by psonice psonice
well, 3.1 was just a gui for msdos, so it's kinda different situation ;) and well, microsoft claims that win7 is just an improved vista, but still, vista is so fucked up, and on the contrary, win7 is so good, that yeah, it shouldn't be perceived as 'tweaked vista with new taskbar'.

microsoft learned a lesson from vista release. win7 is not revolutionary, it's evolutionary. and that's the right way to go. from microsoft website:

'Over the past few years, you've asked us to make some changes to Windows. We listened closely. Now it's time to share an early look at how we've used your feedback.'

may sound like an advertisement hype/crap, but this time, for the first time, they seem to be honest. win7 is faster, is more reliable and works how it should work. and noone who tried/uses vista, and didn't try win7 yet, will truly understand that, imho.
added on the 2009-02-19 14:29:52 by unic0rn unic0rn
I always said I would skip Vista (as I skipped Windows Me), and it looks like it might just turn out that way. :)
added on the 2009-02-19 14:45:17 by gloom gloom
ah, ME. Now there was a real disaster of an OS. I remember getting that on a technet CD, and installing with anticipation.. then using it for half an hour, and realising that it was a pre-alpha version, and that's why it was so extremely buggy, and why there didn't seem to be any new features compared to 98. Then looking at the CD, and finding that no, it was actually the final release version...

Vista looked like it was going to be that bad when it launched, but at least MS (and the driver writers, lets not forget their part in the launch mess) have fixed things this time.
added on the 2009-02-19 14:52:45 by psonice psonice
and software developers.

vista (and win7) just don't really like software which thinks that 'i can has admin rights, i can screw ur OS, i am da boss of this mess'. people needed some time to realize how to code properly.
added on the 2009-02-19 14:56:48 by unic0rn unic0rn
I have never understood Windows' broken way of handling running programs and admin rights, when compared to how great OSX does that.

PS! Windows 7 RC rumored to be released in 9 days.
added on the 2009-02-19 15:38:15 by gloom gloom
there is still one year to go before the final though (approx)
gloom: woot! link? I'd like to install the RC asap
added on the 2009-02-19 18:16:12 by xTr1m xTr1m
Uhhh, win 7 supports 4 gig of RAM in 32-bit mode. Downloading!
xTr1m: It's not out. When it's out, you can only get it if you have a MSDN/Technet-membership, is part of the "prioritized" beta-team, or download it from TPB afterwards I guess. :)

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/02/19/windows-7-rc-expected-at-the-end-of-february
Quote:
Windows 7 RC expected at the end of February

Chakkaradeep Chandran 16 hours ago · 65 comments & 6811 views
Advertisement (Why?)
WinFuture, a German website reports that the one and only RC build of Windows 7 will be ready at the end of February to be sent to select testers.

According to WinFuture's sources, the first-RC build has been compiled by now. The build number currently under test is not known, however WinFuture reports that 7048 was the latest build of Windows 7 and might be the RC, created a few days before and confirms that work is currently going on around the Windows 7 RC build.

The German website also reports that MSDN/TechNet subscribers along with the other private beta testers, would receive the RC build after 27th February, but not sure about the public beta which ended few weeks back.

Neowin earlier reported that we could be seeing the Windows 7 RC in early April, but with the rumor that Windows 7 is set to hit RTM in August, no wonder we can expect the RC build very soon!
added on the 2009-02-19 19:30:33 by gloom gloom
G.Raga: it depends on your BIOS and motherboard, actually (same with Vista). Most BIOS/mobos will use the end of the memory pool to address video memory (or other memory mapped devices, including the BIOS ROM itself) for 32-bit... so if you have a 512mb video card, you will probably end up with 3.5gb available (the fact that Windows 7 reports 4gb doesn't mean they are available for addressing).

You can use some nasty tricks like PAE (available via a kernel command line switch on Windows 2000 and up) if your CPU supports it, to address more than 4gb of RAM, but that tends to fuck up everything in every imaginable way and it's definitely not recommended. You can find more literature and links on the wikipedia entry for PAE
added on the 2009-02-19 19:36:54 by Jcl Jcl
Jcl: Oh, I see. Thanks for telling me that.

I downloaded build 7022 and put the installation files on the second harddrive, but it won't allow me to upgrade from a danish installation to an english installation. Don't think I'll bother until I get a new HD.

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