Official Windows 7 Discussion

[abstruse]

I just think that the things we do hit the operating system a lot harder that the "average" user. ... I really get the feeling that Windows 7 is really made for your average person that doesn't do anything "outside the box" with their systems.

 

I think, of all things, this is its biggest problem. Isn't Windows 7 made for the "average user," like you said? So I'm assuming, anyways. You are far too demanding of the OS, considering.

[Ace Of Spades]

Sorry if this has been mentioned, but out of curiosity, which version of 7 do you have Robb?

[chadster]

Robb, given what you just said about inserting the graphical line, I would say you hit the nail on the head with it being a freak(hmmm, is that the right word, or should way say typical MS f%$^up?) I'd say several of my users copy paste regularly, thou not from paypal to gmail, usually from banking and investments sites into spreadsheets, outlook, and whatnot, a fair amount of scanning and file copying. I know that most people think government workers don't do anything, but I can contest that they really do!

 

I should also mention that we bumped everyone up to ultimate x64 on quad's with 4gb memory (enterprise for us, same thing as ultimate, only it lets us use one key instead of multiple). Our graphics designers have 8gb memory with quad's and use Adobe CS5 and Hiedelburg (printing press plate rendering) hardcore, so far, so good. I will admit that you probably hit your boxes way harder than most users with video renderings, dvd burning, etc. I remember Dell telling customers 5-6 years ago when they had faulty boards and people were tearing up their machines that they just used them too much, LMAO!

 

I learned in a recent cert class that the professional version of Win7 is like home premium with XP, which surprised me, and after comparison, its true. It's hard to say if getting the upgrade key and applying to your OS would do anygood or not as basically the features are already there, just locked out. Applying the key opens the other options.

 

The tech inside of me would roll back your machines to before patch tuesday, or to before whenever it says it last installed updates, and then, when windows attempts to re-install the updates, deny them. However, given your understandable opinion of Win7, I would bet you'd rather take it out back and set it on fire.

 

Curious, are you still having the Adobe issue?

 

*Edit: Just tried to copy from my paypal account to hotmail on same version win7 as you, wouldn't copy, but would copy to word. So I must agree 100% that MS screwed it up.

 

**Edit2: see if you can change from rich text to plain text in gmail, got it to work like that in hotmail, (don't have a gmail account)

[netdvn]

If IE is giving you problems, I’d recommend switching to Firefox or Chrome. I quit using IE after IE7 because it would unleash virus after virus on my machine, the program would crash/freeze every 20 seconds, and I wasn’t able to install Flash on my machine through IE.

 

I’ve been an avid Firefox/Google Chrome user ever since. Both browsers run fast, are very secure, are stable, and can be customized to your liking (FF more than Chrome).

[FeelTheFORCE]

^ I agree. I stopped using IE years ago. It's such a horrible and slow browser that creates so many unnecessary problems, in my opinion.

[robbalvey]

If IE is giving you problems, I’d recommend switching to Firefox or Chrome. I quit using IE after IE7 because it would unleash virus after virus on my machine, the program would crash/freeze every 20 seconds, and I wasn’t able to install Flash on my machine through IE.

While I hate Windows 7 I have never really had a problem with IE. In fact, I honestly can't stand Firefox on the Windows platform. I think Firefox may have been a preferred browswer when it had tabbed browsing and IE didn't, but today, I find Firefox just as slow and buggy with lots of random memory leak problems. I'll be using FF and out of the blue it just slows to a crawl and I have to re-start it. Did a google search on it only to find that the memory leak is a legacy known issue. How lame is that?

 

The ONLY reason why I use Firefox on the Mac as opposed to Safari (which I certainly prefer over Firefox) is that there is not an Alexa plug in for Safari. And as a website owner, I kind of need that!

 

But as far as the IE vs FF argument. Personally I think they have about an equal amount of strengths and flaws, and people should just use whatever they find more comfortable.

 

As far as TPR goes, we still see 74% of our members use IE to view the site, so we have to give preferential support to that browser.

 

--Robb

[FeelTheFORCE]

I prefer Chrome. It's faster than any browser I have ever used (although I've heard the new Opera browser is now faster...I've yet to try it), and has yet to give me a single problem after using it for over a year and a half now. The only downfall is that there are still a lot of things out there that aren't compatible with it yet (i.e. various forum features on sites...Xbox's forums come to mind, my University's online data storage system, only to name a couple). When it comes to compatibility, IE is no doubt number one.

[AJClarke0912]

^Same. I can't stand IE now. And FF and Chrome are great. I usually prefer Firefox (WAY more add-ons and themes for my liking) and has less bugs than Chrome, but Chrome is slightly faster and is more simply designed. I just don't understand why people still like or even use IE anymore.

 

Well based on this discussion, W7 sounds like it can still be sketchy, but then again I heard HORRIBLE reviews and problems with Vista, and I've had this Vista computer for years and it's never had a problem at all! Call me lucky.

[ginzo]

I find Firefox just as slow and buggy with lots of random memory leak problems.

 

Even though I use Firefox, I agree 100%. It's had serious memory leak problems for the last several versions. Their new strategy of starting a new process for the plug-ins, plugin-container.exe, is interesting, but I'm not sure it has improved performance much.

[netdvn]

I think Firefox may have been a preferred browswer when it had tabbed browsing and IE didn't, but today, I find Firefox just as slow and buggy with lots of random memory leak problems.

 

I had the same problem with my FF browser, but I realized it was because I was running Flash player in the background a lot (primarily mp3s and videos). So I switched to Chrome (which tends to run more stable when it comes to Flash), installed Flashblock, and limited any Flash use on FF.

 

As for IE, IE has a habit of freezing when I log onto some websites and the add ons provided don't seem as versatile as the ones for FF/Chrome (at least the last time I checked). My mom's been having some speed troubles with her IE8 as well.

 

IE9 and FF4 look promising though...

[davisal771]

^^^ Add me to the list of people who never had a problem with Vista. I've had my vista laptop since March 2007... never a problem.

[Vekoma Fan Boy]

I find Firefox just as slow and buggy with lots of random memory leak problems.

 

Even though I use Firefox, I agree 100%. It's had serious memory leak problems for the last several versions. Their new strategy of starting a new process for the plug-ins, plugin-container.exe, is interesting, but I'm not sure it has improved performance much.

 

 

I can't stand it. Between Firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe, Firefox EASILY eats 300,000+ Kb of memory after 30 minutes of browsing. And lately I've been taking a distaste to Chrome because it opens a new process for EVERY tab used, also a memory eater. I'm downloading the new Opera browser now to see how that performs.

[ginzo]

I can't stand it. Between Firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe, Firefox EASILY eats 300,000+ Kb of memory after 30 minutes of browsing. And lately I've been taking a distaste to Chrome because it opens a new process for EVERY tab used, also a memory eater. I'm downloading the new Opera browser now to see how that performs.

 

I haven't noticed Firefox eating up any more memory now that they use the separate process for the plug-ins. It would easily get to ~300M before.

 

Google considers opening a new process for each tab to be a design feature. That way one tab crashing doesn't kill your other tabs.

[Vekoma Fan Boy]

^I suppose, but giving every tab its own process just seems to eat away at my computer's resources.

 

As for the new Opera.. Its alright. It definitely doesn't suck down very many resources, (I haven't seen it go over 25M of memory usage EDIT: Jynxed myself, right after I posted this it over doubled to 51.7M! ) but its really buggy and laggy. Namely, whenever I go to a YouTube channel, it tells me my flash player is out of date, even after I update right then and there, and can watch all the videos I want when I'm NOT on a channel. When I'm on a channel I can't do a thing, look at their videos, watch any of their videos, nothing. And quite frankly, its extremely aggravating.

[Ace Of Spades]

Count me as a Firefox supporter, actually. I've somehow managed to squeak by with maybe five crashes at all in the time I've been using it (two years by now), and I've never had a problem with it slowing down my machine (which is a rather weak HP laptop, mind you).

 

That's not to say I don't like Opera, Safari, Chrome, or IE though...wait, I hate Chrome and IE, what am I saying?!

[AJClarke0912]

^So no browser is good!

 

I'm fine with Firefox. It's bazillion add-ons keep me happy and I don't really care about whatever-kb it takes to run it. My computer has never suffered from it, so I'm fine.

[comicsans101]

I prefer using google chrome to firefox and internet explorer.

 

Internet explorer 9 - slow at times, and lags alot.

Firefox - sometimes have the same problem as internet explorer

 

Chrome is fast, even with extensions. Plus the simple user interface makes it my no 1 choice.

[chadster]

I'm thinking we need an official web browser discussion thread...

[MrMorgan]

I realise this is the Windows 7 thread, but I couldn't find an iMac thread, so I thought I'd start by asking here since a lot of the discussion has been a comparison to Mac anyways. I am this (holds hands a few millemeters apart) close to making the switch and investing in an iMac, but wanted to get an answer from someone who may have experience doing the same things with their computer that I like to do. So, here goes:

 

Is an iMac with with an

 

Intel core i3 processor

3,06 ghz / 4mb cache

Ati Radeon 4670,256 HD grafic card

4096 mb ram

 

really going to be enough for editing HD video? The price of that machine is as much as I can afford at the moment. Or, I could stick with a Windows machine and get way more power for the same price, save a ton of money on replacing software, but still have all the annoying problems I already have and not get anymore work done. I realise, the decision kind of makes itself, but I thought I'd ask anyways.

[jray21]

^It hould be able to handle it, but it will depend on how big your projects are, and the quality (1080 v. 720) Also, since Mac doesn't support Blu-Ray, to actually get HD quality you will have to get a program like Toast and a burner. While they are not too expensive, you can get some hangups. But still not nearly as often or bad as my Windows computers. My laptop can handle it as well, but it does run a little slow. When I am traveling I do my HD videos on my laptop, and burn them on my Mac Pro when I get home. Here's my laptops hardware profile (closest to the imac):

 

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 4 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s

 

And my video card:

 

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M:

 

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 512 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x0a29

Revision ID: 0x00a2

ROM Revision: 3560

gMux Version: 1.9.21

 

I don't do a ton of video though, so Robb would definitely be the best to ask.

[Rydel]

^^The new iMacs are great for video. We use Final Cut on them at work all the time and it runs perfectly.

[MrMorgan]

Thanks for your help, guys. I'm typing this on my iMac right now!

 

Next question: how long is it going to take me to learn Final Cut??? (That is not a serious question, but I do know a few hours tonight is def not enough). And, is there an easy way to edit footage from my Canon 550D without having to convert it all first with some other program? I've read some info in other forums, but thought I'd ask ya'll, too.

[jray21]

It really depends on your experience. There is definitely a learning curve, but if your very familiar with other programs like Adobe, a big part is learning the different terms for the same thing, and the button combos. I do recommend getting a reference book. It took me quite a while (I am still learning it), but I am a beginner when it comes to advanced video programs like Final Cut. I used to use iMovie and that was really easy to work with.

[Vekoma Fan Boy]

Okay, I just got a new computer with Windows 7 on it for Christmas, and overall, I am pleased so far. But there is one little thing that is bugging me about Windows Media Player on Win7 that you may be able to help me with. My copy of Follow the Reaper by Children of Bodom got scratched, destroying three of the songs on the disk, and leaving the other seven in tact. I copied these seven songs off of the disk and onto the computer, and got the remaining three from my friend who has the same album, however, his are in mp3 format, and mine are in wma. When I put them into WMP, they show up as being part of the correct album with the correct track numbers, however, AS a different album. So now in WMP, I have two copies of Follow the Reaper, one with tracks 5, 8, and 9, and an mp3 label pasted over the album art, and one with tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 10, and a wma label pasted over the album art. This is quite frankly annoying as hell, and I would like to know if there is any way to consolidate these tracks into a single album regardless of file format. Anyone know how?

[King of Ka]

^I've found most of these sort of troubles with WMP are due to disorganized or different info for songs. WMP is a little less liberal with file information than iTunes, and so file info is more important. Personally, I have a very organized file architecture for my music, I have one large file for all music, divided into artist folders, divided into album folders with the tracks for that album. It's a bit of work, but is really rewarding at the end.

 

To solve your problem, I would make sure that all the tracks for that album are in a folder just for that album, to eliminate some of WMP's album art quirks. After that, right click on each file, go to Properties, and make sure that all its artist and album information is exactly the same, and maybe reenter it for all the MP3s or vice-versa. They should now show up in WMP as one album. Now go on Wikipedia or Google Images, find the album art, copy it, and then in WMP right click on it as select "Paste album art." Hope this helps!