Official Windows 7 Discussion

[OFFice357]

I think Microsoft did a pretty good job incorporating touch screen capabilities into Windows 7. I have a Vaio L Series Touch Screen PC, and I must say that while it isn't as good as the iPhone's, the touch screen's response, control, functionality is quite good.

[DenDen]

I had 7-basic on my netbook, and liked it, so I just installed the upgrade at home from Vista Premium 64-bit to 7-64-bit.

 

I had no problems with Vista until about 2 months ago when I got hit with the Windows Update Bug, that was impossible to fix.

 

I'm thoroughly impressed with 7, and have been using it for about 2 hours now. The responsiveness, the new interface features, the ease of upgrading, all flawless. My upgrade took 1 hour and 50 minutes. It's so blazing fast compared to Vista on a 64-bit machine. All I can say is WOW!

[FeelTheFORCE]

I bought Windows 7 Ultimate for $15 from my college's bookstore, and upgraded from XP Media Center Edition that came on my computer when I bought it in 2006. All-in-all I like it so far. It's not "OMFG AMAZING!" by any means, but in the same regard it's not bad at all for only $15.

[spaceace12]

Bought a new laptop and it came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. I am taking it to work to have a co worker load a full version of office and a full antivirus not the trial version that came on it. Then to start loading the programs I have on my current one. Hopefully anything I have loaded on my vista laptop will be good for my W7 one. The old one is going to my sister since she doesn't an computer. If it lasts a year, then it will be good, then I will probably get a gaming/graphic intensive desktop again.

[robbalvey]

I've been using Win 7 for about five months now and my last opinion hasn't changed much. It *IS* an improvement over XP (I never used Vista) and there are quite a few things about it that I really do like a lot. But....

 

It still has a whole slew of issues, some of them very similar to what I experienced on XP. I have a fairly decent machine at home (i7 - 2.67ghz - 6gb ram) and I still get "Program has stopped responding" errors all the time when I'm running things like Photoshop, Premiere, Nero, or anything else that requires a lot of memory.

 

If I have too many browser windows open at the same time, the OS seems to have problems. And it doesn't really like that I have about 10 USB hard drives attached to it. (all at about 1tb or more...)

 

Overall it's an improvement, and I would reccomend others to upgrade, but it's not the OMFG *HUGE* leap up from XP that I was kind of expecting (based on Microsoft's own hype) but I think it's a "good" upgrade.

 

--Robb

[cedarpointfangirl]

I just received my new Dell laptop with Windows 7. So far I like it. I really,really like the ability to do spilt screen. It is a big help to me when I am writing research papers for school!!

[robbalvey]

Does anyone know how to turn off the extremely annoying "Feature" that when you move a window to the top of the screen it auto-expands it into a full screen window? I really can't stand that and I haven't found any way to turn it off.

[Freefallbestrideever]

Yes i do!

 

Control Panel>Ease of Access Center>Make the mouse easier to use>"Prevent windows from blah blah". Check out the website howtogeek.com for more tips and tricks.

[Lady Gaga]

I also switched from XP to 7 months ago.

At first I didn't like it, but once I got used to it.. I loved it. It's honestly amazing!

I haven't had any major problems with it. I do get an occasional "Windows explorer has stopped responding" while trying to navigate through my control panel, but that's about it.

[TheScooterGuy]

Moved from XP to 7 at the start of this year!

The PC I'm using is a Dell (unknown model).

It includes JBL speaker system, built-in webcam with face reconisation and an Intel Centrino 2 processor!

[Ibztone]

 

If I have too many browser windows open at the same time, the OS seems to have problems. And it doesn't really like that I have about 10 USB hard drives attached to it. (all at about 1tb or more...)

 

--Robb

 

The browser window issues are most likely an IE 8 issue and not so much a windows 7 issue. I don't understand some of the issues with IE 8 like the issue with favorites. If you have a lot of favorites (multiple folders with many bookmarks) and you click on a boomark inside the folder and then go back to the same folder to click on another bookmark the folder will appear locked and won't respond to mouse clicks. It really is a strange bug.

[robbalvey]

So after using Windows 7 now on a daily basis on two different machines for the past 5 months my overall view of it is that it's really not an improvement over XP at all.

 

Sure, it has some things it does better, but it seems to come with it's own, equal set of frustrations.

 

My biggest is the random "Program not responding" that I seem to get just as often, if not more frequently, than on my XP machines.

 

I use both operating systems every day now, and other than being able to view .mts files in the native Win 7 mode, I think both Win 7 and XP are both equally as good and equally as bad.

 

If you are asking "should I switch to Windows 7?" my answer is simple - "Unless there is a reason why you NEED to, don't bother."

 

Unless you want to see screens like this on a pretty regular basis...

Oh, look...CS4 crashed...again. I'm not running a crappy machine either. I've got an Intel i7 with 6 gb of ram. Running 64 bit Win 7, I get screens like this about 10 times per day.

IE crashes on me all the time too. I get ths error most frequently. Happens on my desktop and my laptop probably about once an hour. I'm forced to close down IE or FF and restart. Luckily Win 7 seems to remember where the programs crashed and pick up where they left off, but still...ANNOYING!

Heh, Win 7 crashed while I was looking for this Win 7 topic! Funny, no? I mean, I know that I put a lot of stress on my computers processors. I run CS4 quite frequently, I have 8 tb of space over 6 external hard drives, and probably will have anywhere between 3 to 8 IE windows open at a time...BUT...Win 7 with my configs are supposed to be able to handle this! It cannot. At least, no better than XP did. Maybe it's time for a Mac? No, that comes with it's own equal share of frustrations too....

Edited July 12, 2010 by robbalvey

[Skycoastin Steve]

^Never had that problem with Windows 7, Robb, but my laptop is fairly new (bought it at the beginning of February). Unless you're totally against Firefox, maybe try that as your browser. I get the occasional crash while browsing, but it's pretty rare.

[themeparkman25]

Robb-Use Google Chrome. I seriously love this browser in congruity with Windows 7!

[Skycoastin Steve]

^Google Chrome was a nightmare for me, not that user friendly at all. My old computer sucked and didn't handle Firefox well, but it's perfect for this one.

[robbalvey]

It doesn't matter what browser I use. I get the exact same Windows 7 crashes in IE and FF. I use both browsers quite frequently. I don't have a preference of one over the other. To me, IE and FF, much like Win 7 vs. XP, or Mac vs. PC, I find they have equal amounts of strengths and weaknesses and I don't find any one better than the other.

 

I will say that Win 7 was much more stable for me when I first installed it, but lately I'd say I get about 5 to 10 "Program has stopped responding" errors per day depending on what I'm doing. Only about 1 in 5 times does the program actually recover from it's stopped responding error.

 

And this is pretty much what XP used to do to me as well.

 

--Robb

Edited April 10, 2010 by robbalvey

[robbalvey]

OK, I've just found another huge annoyance in Windows 7. How the F**K do you search for something and not have it give you like a MILLION responses???

 

I'm trying to simply search for "CS3" and it's giving me EVERY FREAKING FILE on my hard drive that has a "C" and "S" and a "3" in it. And on top of it it seems like it's giving me a bazillion random results that don't even have my search criteria in the filename. I want to search JUST THE FILE NAMES!!!! How I can do this???

 

I've gotten something like 486,245 results!

 

In XP you used to be able to tell it to search "filenames" and it would only return results that had CS3 as I typed it.

 

I can't seem to find any other place in Win 7 where it allows me to enter a search.

 

I'm really starting to hate Win 7 more and more the longer I use it.

 

Seems like it took functions that weren't broken...and broke them.

 

--Robb "EXTREMELY FRUSTRATED!!!" Alvey

Edited April 12, 2010 by robbalvey

[DenDen]

^Robb,

 

Do an old-school wildcard search. (with quotes!)

"*CS3*.*"

Quotes give you only exact results...

Asterisks are the wildcards either before or after "cs3" and for the file extention.

[jray21]

I'm with Robb on this one. I can't see too much of a benefit over XP. I've been having the same problem as Robb, but not near as often. However, when it comes to DVD and Blu-Ray burning, XP definitely is better. So far. Hopefully some updates will make it better.

[dandaman]

I don't understand it, but I seem to be the only person on the planet who's had VERY minimal problems with Vista. That having been said, I missed out on the "free 7 upgrade" thing for Vista users by about a week of purchasing my laptop last June. (Thanks for informing me, Best Buy. ) For now, though, I'm sticking with Vista... at least until the OS goes all to hell as is apparently projected.

 

Also, random Windows 7 video from College Humor.

[spaceace12]

I don't have hardly an issues with Vista (when I used it on my old laptop) or 7 (which I have now).

[robbalvey]

^ & ^^ I think a lot of the people who don't have issues I'm also assuming aren't hitting the operating system that hard.

 

Like I said, I'll have programs like Premiere and/or Photoshop open. A couple of different IE and/or FF browsers. 4 or 5 external hard drives attached. And sometimes other things going on.

 

My gripe is that even with all of this Win 7 was *supposed* to be an improvement over XP. I'm running it on two machines right now - one new machine that is a much more powerful machine than what I used to run XP on, and another laptop which I upgraded from XP to Win 7.

 

I'd say I have equal amount of problems on BOTH machines and what this tells me is that the OS still has some major issues if you try to task it with too many things. My beefier machine *should* be able to handle everything better than my 2 1/2 year old laptop, but I'm getting pretty much the same results on both machine. Which are pretty much the same results as I did with XP on my less powerful machine.

 

Overall, WIn 7 does have some nice features, but it is by no means the vast improvement over XP that I was led to beleive.

 

--Robb

[squirrelnut1416]

Honestly, I've had less problems with Win7 then I have with any other win based OS... except for maybe 3.1

 

Win95 wasn't that bad, but it really drilled into your head what a BSoD is.

Win98 made it better and offered a lot more functionality (the quick launch comes to mind), but it could just be my inexperiences with operating systems at that point. Hell i was 14 and using AOL at that point. That was also when I downloaded everything and used Nortons *shudder*

WinME had so many great features that was incorperated into Xp and refined. It had a dedicated video viewer instead of I.E. displaying everything.

Now xp is when it gets confusing. Xp sucked when it first came out, it really didn't get too stable until sp2 from my experiences. One major difference though is Xp was built on the NT kernal where as win 98 was still running on the old 98 kernal? i forgot what it was called. I know that 95 was pretty much just a GUI interface for DOS.

 

Anyways, When vista came out, it was a brand new kernel again. This time though the kernel wasnt refined through Windows 2000/windows nt like it was for XP so it was the poor child trying to play catchup. Plus vista was a resource hog, I don't care what anyone says, Win7 really slimmed it down.

 

Now I am a faithful win7 user and recommend it to everyone... with a moderatly powered pc. Xp as of sp3 is about as stable as one can get. Win7 though has all the advanced functionalities that come at a price. That price being the need to iron out details.

 

I'm in robbs case though. I use my pc for everything all at once. As im typing this i have adobe premiere pro running while downloading the beach boys tv movie while watching a coaster video while syncing my zune while having aim, yahoo, msn, skype, xfire, wootalizer, google talk, hamatchi, firefox and whatever else i got running.

 

Sure my computer takes about 15 mintues to boot up, but on my barebones laptop i use as a media pc, it boost from post to desktop in about 2 minutes, incluing the time it takes for me to log in.

 

Alot of the problems though stemms from people doing upgrade installs as opposed to fresh installs/custom installs. It's always better to start with a clean slate when upgrading an operating system, especially Ubuntu, then try to pave over the old crap.

[robbalvey]

Ok, someone please help me with this because it's driving me freaking nuts!

 

How do you narrow down your search in Win 7?

 

In XP I used to have the search function on the left hand side where if I wanted to it would only search, for example, "files and folders."

 

So if I wanted to search for either a filename or a folder that contained "TPR Forum" for example, I would type that in and I'd get a list of ONLY file names and folders that contained those words.

 

In Windows 7, if I type "TPR Forum" in the search box in the upper right hand corner there is nowhere that I have found to narrow down my search so I get like a million results which are everything from documents that has the words IN them, photos, emails, and just tons of random crap I don't need!

 

All I want to do is search like I used to be able to in XP. How can I do this? It's really, really frustrating and I've even done Google searches on it and it seems like there just isn't any way to do this!

 

I did find some reference to something called "Search Builder" and so then I searched "Search Builder" in Win 7...and NOTHING came up!

 

I just can't believe how incrementally unimpressed and frustrated I am with Windows 7 each consecutive day I use it.

 

Every day it seems I find something that used to be simple that is now ass-backwards in a poor attempt to make the OS "Idiot Free."

 

It seriously is actually making me want to look into a Mac for my next computer.

 

--Robb "And yes, this was a fresh install...on BOTH of my Win 7 machines." Alvey

Edited April 17, 2010 by robbalvey

[robbalvey]

Oh, look.... Windows 7 is "Not Responding" again...what a shock. This only happens to me about 10 times a day....