Official Windows 7 Discussion

[Six Flags Enthuseast]

I'm not completely set on getting Windows 7. My mom would like to do it because a lot of hardware/software we have that worked on XP doesn't work on Vista, and Windows 7 fixed some compatibility issues. However, reading this thread, like ^, it doesn't sound like it's perfectly great.

 

As with^, I was planning on getting a gaming computer (although I wasn't so sure what program I'd use). Can anybody give some advice for a good program for gaming?

[Band-Aid]

Well, I didn't really care about Windows 7 at first. When my previous computer broke, I got this one (my previous one was an old one anyway) which came with Windows 7. Although I don't really pay attention to the major differences, I can surly say that it beats the hell out of XP.

Edited July 14, 2010 by Band-Aid

[Sir Clinksalot]

Just ordered my MIL a new computer and it comes with Windows 7 so I'm a bit leery ... but it can't be worse than the one she's replacing which is I'm not sure how old (Robb, how old is that computer you gave me in what ... 2005) ... yeah, still that one.

 

She just uses it for email, etc ... so I'm sure it will be fine.

[chadster]

One thing you should keep in mind is that no operating system is perfect, even the MAC's. That being said, Win7 is better in many ways over XP, and not in others. The stuff the home user or office user will see and user will be leaps and bounds better over XP, the behind the scenes stuff, management, deployment, etc are more complicated. The kernel in Win7 is based off of XP's kernel so while some seem to have stability issues, there is a good chance that you won't. The causes of a computer to crash are complex and are not always the OS's fault, sometimes it's a hardware issue, such as compatibility with the mingling components, or drivers. Win7 is 2000% better than Vista and doesn't require a truck load of RAM to operate which is good news for makers like Dell and HP as they no longer need to offer a standard 3 or 4gb of ram, they can go back to two, (i reccommend 4gb with 64bit OS as a good basic everyday user, it will perform like a champ).

 

So all in all Win7 isn't the death to computing, and each situation is unique. But always a good rule of thumb is to make a complete backup(image) of your computer to external drive or spare HDD before doing any upgrade, you don't want to get caught with your pants down!

[robbalvey]

Found this funny today - been using the Macbook Pro for the past week or so now without a single problem for everything you've seen us do on TPR since I got it.

 

Today I needed to print up a few RAW DVDs so I went over to the laptop with Windows 7 on it.

 

Within 5 minutes.... CRASH!!!

 

Amazing...

Hi Windows 7 - I just remember why I dumped your sorry ass for your much more stable competitor...

[chadster]

hmmm, I see your problem, it's AIM

 

I don't recall, what version are you running, I know it's 64bit, but don't recall what flavor? I'm running professional and enterpise, zero issues with Nero 10 and CS5.

 

If its Professional, I would offer to send a copy of my image your way just to see what happens. Actually, if my store order hasn't been shipped off yet, and you have a pro license, I'd say send me a blank HDD and I'll image the sucker and send it back, I know my sysprep'd (yes, I said sysprep world, I have conquered it!) works on our stuff, but I know your over it now and all, I just can't believe you are having such trouble. I have 50 highly complex nodes running it and many server 08 nodes and zero issues. I even have autocad running a machine for our little secret enterainment complex that's being designed, again, no issues.

 

But I am glad the MAC is working out, I will admit for photos and graphics they have a better package, I still like my Sony Vegas for the PC tho.

[CommanderLock]

Today I needed to print up a few RAW DVDs so I went over to the laptop with Windows 7 on it.

Within 5 minutes.... CRASH!!!

Amazing...

Literally 30 seconds of googling "CD/DVD Label Mac" brought up quite a few positive hits:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=CD/DVD+Label+Mac

If Win 7 really left a bad taste in your mouth, you might as well go all the way.

[Wes]

^ Robb uses a special printer that prints the label directly onto the surface of the disc. The printer has its own software and drivers that might not exist on the Mac, so it's not nearly as simple as what you're suggesting.

[robbalvey]

Today I needed to print up a few RAW DVDs so I went over to the laptop with Windows 7 on it.

Within 5 minutes.... CRASH!!!

Amazing...

Literally 30 seconds of googling "CD/DVD Label Mac" brought up quite a few positive hits:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=CD/DVD+Label+Mac

If Win 7 really left a bad taste in your mouth, you might as well go all the way.

Yes, thank you. I know how to use Google. If it was that easy I would have done it myself.

[robbalvey]

So Windows 7 rears it's ugly head once again. Can someone please help me with this problem?

 

I've been able to use the windows image preview tool just fine with any .jpg on my hard drive...until today...or even until this past hour. It worked fine this morning, and now, when I try to open any .jpg file I get the error below. PLEASE HELP!

[chadster]

hey robb,

 

try running this from a command prompt

 

sfc /scannow

 

this will scan to make sure the file structure is intact, and if not, will fix it.

 

If that doesn't work, I may have a few more tricks up my sleaves...

 

Can you open .gif .png, or other picture file types?

 

**edit - are all of your files in the same folder, i.e. "tpr" if so, may need to "take ownership" of the folder and then check the box that says do it to all files and subfolders. I can give you a few screen shots if need be.

 

**edit 2 - if you hadn't already turned off user acount control, might not be a bad idea, I've found it screws up more things when it trys to protect you from yourself more than it acutally protects you from yourself.

wow, storms moving in, windows shaking, hope they don't call me back to work

[Foxy Roxy]

My only complaints with Windows 7 is that it causes my laptop to heat up a bit more and it can end up going over 100 degrees celsius. I've found it to be a little bit more user-friendly that XP.

[robbalvey]

Sorry guys, I figured it out. I just needed to re-boot Windows and it all worked again.

 

--Robb "Windows 7 being stupid..." Alvey

[chadster]

^ I figured that would've been the first thing you tried, that thought did come to mind, but then I said, nahh, he knows that, rookie

[robbalvey]

Once again the stupidity of Windows 7 rears it's ugly head.

 

I'm working on a video for the new issue of TPR:TM which I made on the mac (and have had zero problems with, BTW).

 

I copy that file over to my Windows 7 machine. Nothing. I can't get it to play. Copy it over to my Win XP machine. Works just fine.

 

W! T! F!!!!

 

All my other MP4 files seem to work, but this one. Why can I get to work on XP, but not Win 7????

 

So I take the portable hard drive over to one of my other XP machines. Works.

 

Take it over to my laptop with Win 7... DOESN'T WORK!!!!

 

HOLY FUCKINSHIT!!!! I'M SO SICK OF HOW FREAKING LAME WINDOWS 7 IS!!!!

 

I'm seriously now *THIS CLOSE* to selling my PC based deskstop for an iMac.

 

I've had ZERO PROBLEMS....like ZERO! NONE! NADA! With my Mac since I bought it, and EVERY SINGLE DAY I run into something annoying and stupid that Windows 7 does.

 

It just sucks that still have programs where I need to use Win 7, but trust me anything I can do on the Mac, I will.

 

F**K WINDOWS 7. NOTHING BUT GARBAGE!!!!!

[jray21]

It definitely is garbage. On one mac I have Windows 7, and on the other I have XP, and I have much better success with XP. My Windows 7 machine never works right, if it even works.

[chadster]

since other mp4''s play, i assume you encoded it the same way as the others, so all I can offer without seeing the file/behavior is to set the permissions on the file to "everyone", win 7 is figity on file security, so much so it drives me crazy, but, I don't have much of a choice, I have to deal with it, XP is EOL in 2 years.

 

*edit* or reboot....3 times

[robbalvey]

*sigh*

[chadster]

^ love the graphic, that's classic. I just ran a slew of updates for cs4 on some of my client nodes, i assume you have all of the latest updates?

[robbalvey]

^ Yup. In fact, the Adobe updater thing is another bit of constant annoyance with Windows 7. It seems to crash the operating system every time it runs. I can't figure out how to turn it off or how to set it to manually update.

 

So as soon as I see it pop up, I quickly have to go save whatever it is I'm working on as I usually have about 40 seconds before the entire operating system comes to a halt.

Edited September 9, 2010 by robbalvey

[chadster]

seriously tho, check this out if you haven't already, item #3 may be your culprit, that and turn aero peek off.

 

**edit** to disable updater:

 

1.Using Regedit.exe, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe

2.Create a new key in this folder named "Updater"

3.Create a new DWORD value within this key named "Enterprise" with a value of "1"

Edited September 9, 2010 by chadster

[robbalvey]

^ To be honest I'm just sick of having to do research, or check this out and check that out. All I want is for an operating system to "just work." I simply do not have the time to go chasing down little issues here and there that should have been sorted out in testing prior to the operating system's public release.

 

Again, I just want to go on record that I've been using Snow Leopard every day now for a couple of months for pretty much the same tasks I've been using Windows 7 for (HD Video editing, Photoshop, web browsing, DVD production, etc) and I have yet to have a single program running under OSX crash on me. Not even once.

 

Windows 7 - I still get annoyances every day. And if I only get *one* per day, I'm lucky.

 

I still have 9 windows based computers that I use on a regular basis, but I'm finding that I'm switching more and more of what I do over to the Mac. The Club TPR publication, for example, is all done using MS Publisher, so I do everything for that on one of my Windows 7 based PC's. And normally I just do all the Photoshop work on the PC since it's just easier (in theory) to do everything all in one place...except of course when you're in the middle of doing something and CS4 just decided to randomly crash. And in the time it took CS4 to finish crashing, close, and re-start, I actually swiched over to the Mac, make the edit in CS4 there, and then copied the file over to the network to the PC.

 

It's just really sad how much of a HUGE step back (in some ways) Windows 7 is from XP.

 

--Robb "I feel like I'm using a beta release of an upcoming operating system." Alvey

Edited September 9, 2010 by robbalvey

[chadster]

^ I completely understand, don't get me wrong, I get frustrated every day fixing windows issues that should have been tested and too wished it would "just work". I'm not a win7 fan boy in anyway, if I detailed all of my troubles, I would run out of memory on my box.

 

The one thing MAC has going for them is they limit and control the creation of software for their OS's ensuring that the programs are tested, retested, and certified for use. I can say that model has worked well for them, but in someways limits the ability of people to make stuff for their computers. You would know the answer to this better than I, but I don't see many MAC high-end games on the market, I could be wrong and not searching for them, but it seems the PC world has that locked up for the time being. If that is the case, that just shows all of the quality checks they put into their software, not to mention control of their O/S. XP, Vista, 7, all have to many backdoor methods of hacking the system and screwing things up. Microsoft relies on their vendors\software makers to make a product that will work with their OS and could give 2 sh!ts if it works or not.

 

For what its worth (and money is what its amounts to) Crapsoft makes a version of office for the MAC, is a couple hundred bucks, I have it running on two macs here and users seem happy with it, or, at least they haven't complained to me about it.

 

I'll be in Cali the end of October, if by that time you are still relying on Win7 to do things in and are still having issues, I could carve an hour or two out of my schedule to look at it, swear at it, and maybe even p!ss on it if need be.

 

Chad "trying to help a brother out without seeming like a win7 fanboy" Carter

 

*edit* if you want to disable the updater, its up a post, that might help you out some.

[robbalvey]

You would know the answer to this better than I, but I don't see many MAC high-end games on the market, I could be wrong and not searching for them, but it seems the PC world has that locked up for the time being.

I've been making PC games for years (going as way back at 7th Guest) and every publisher I worked for has always had the same strategy for Mac - and that was to evaluate the game versus the marketshare the Mac has and then decide if it was enough to publish the game on that platform.

 

The first game I think I worked on that was published on the Mac was 7th Guest and then the last one I worked on was one of the Call of Duty sequels. I'd say just about every "major game" is available on OSX - Call of Duty, Starcraft II, Sims 3, WoW, etc. You can get a better idea HERE.

 

Most kids games are now both PC/OSX on the same disc. For example, all the Nick and Sesame Street games we buy for KidTums have both installs on one DVD.

 

The reality is that computer gaming as a whole is declined significantly over the last 10 years. In fact, I don't think I've worked on computer game since 2005 now. It's been all game consoles and handhelds.

 

So really, I think almost any game big enough to be on the PC, you'll find is going to be on the Mac as well.

 

--Robb

[chadster]

^ Your point on pc based gaming declining over the past decade is dead on, me being a classic example of not knowing the cross platforming of pc based games to the mac and their popularity. Of course, I don't have a gaming console either, but considering getting a Wii in the near future. I'm sure its not as cool as a XBox or PS, but I think it will suit my desires, and the best part, its not microsoft.