What do you think of Windows 7?

So its better than vista but seriously. Its what vista should have been in the first place so your just paying twice for it. Regardless its still the same OS. Just a os with minimal to 0 features. I too had windows 7 pre-installed on my netbook and while it was much better that before, it still came with nothing. So I wiped it and loaded latest ubuntu 9.10. runs even faster and TONS of stuff built in and ready to go

I like it but I don't feel secure as I can't get my zone alarm, commodo or any free firewall to work on it. The Windows firewall has inbound but no outbound protection and to be honest with you, I have no idea what the heck the instructions are talking about to set up outbound protection "rules". It certainly is not user friendly for the average computer user. I am failing the Leak Test and am very skittish about the lack of a firewall I can use and feel good about. I most certainly am not comfortable with the windows firewall outbound "setup".

Hopefully, the third party firewalls that I prefer will catch up to windows 7 too. I won't rest till they do. I really don't care to use other firewalls or security "suites". In the meantime, I know this machine is not as safe as my XP machine with Zone Alarm is. I don't like this feeling one bit.

Other than the security problem (which is on my mind constantly), I really like using 7.

Given that Windows 7 is really no different than previous versions of windows, I mean it still uses registry, and DLL's, and IE is still just as tightly integrated into the OS. I'll wait for the first service pack to come out, which will probably be sooner than most people think. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti MS. I'm just tired of being burned when I run out to get the early upgrade of the OS that's "going to fix all the problems from the previous OS" only to be just as disappointed. I currently use/have 4 different computers in the house. One running XP Pro, another running Vista Pro, Ubuntu 9.1 on another and my Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard. Of all of these I'd say that Mac is the clear winner when it comes to hassle free computing, Ubuntu would be a close second. I want to believe that Windows 7 is going to be everything that MS and all the fanboys say it will be. But, it's like being cheated on by your lover over and over, should I take her back this time and believe her when she says, "I promise it's going to be different this time".

Windows 7? Frankly I don't care if it is a million times better than Windows Vista. I don't trust Microsoft anymore past the crap called Windows Vista.

I recognized the crap that Vista was and did not pay for it. I won't pay another cent for any Microsoft product again as long as any activation technology is present, and this includes Windows and Office.

Goodbye, Microsoft. I had been a long term Windows user from 3.1 all the way to XP. But no more. When XP reaches its end that will be the end of Windows on my computers, except as virtual machines.

whenever I hibernate or reboot, the wired network connection drops. I have to disable and enable all the time to get it working again.

google "windows 7 internet hibernate" and you'll find it's a common issue - MS please fix it!

every other windows OS has been pretty piss-poor until at least SP1 - considering that it hasn't as yet got a Service Pack released, and already it's as good as XP SP3, Win2K SP4, and heaps better than Vista SP1.
I guess that they had to get it right - another fiasco like Vista, and that would've meant the virtual end of M$

Actually, I like Vista fine. I use a computer for word processing, spread sheets, surfing the net, storing and viewing my digicam photos, syncing with my Smartphone... and thats about all I do on my laptop.

My laptop orginaly had 1GB of memory and Vista (Business 64 bit) worked but was slow. Replaced one dimm of ram, now With 2.5GB of RAM Vista works fine, although I did turned off the gadgets (since I don't like it) but I did leave Aero on.

Vista has been stable (I started using Vista in June 2007... I think by that time there were updates out already). It has never crashed on me. I like it fine. I love the faster search function. I like Vista fine. I am satisfied with the product.

I still use XP on a netbook, and I do not miss anything when on the netbook except the faster search. I guess I am a user who has low demands from his O.S. I like XP fine too.

I used Red Hat Linux (Bluecurve) back in the day and like that too. After Red Hat dropped that went to another Linux distro, but I do not like a O.S. where it seems like there are 10,000 chefs and everyone's idea was incorporated.

I see no reason why I won't like Win 7, despite never having tried it... I do not see any reason to get it though until it is bundled in a new lappy.

I use K/Ubuntu for most of my machines. I repair computers so I must have various versions of Windows installed. It isn't that I want to, it's that I have to in order to keep up to speed.

I snagged a free copy of the Win7 Ultimate (btw, anyone buying Ultimate is getting ripped off). I had the RC for a long time. What I can say positive about Win7 is that it is better than Vista, by a little. But, it is essentially the same product. It really seems like a service pack more than anything else. I wouldn't encourage anyone to purchase Win7 unless they are set on Windows and are considering Vista. Otherwise, stay with what you have. It is best to not fix your system if you don't need to, or you enjoy pain.

Win7 is missing drivers for half my peripherals. It doesn't seem too optimized and it doesn't really have many new features. The live essentials are extras, baiting the consumer to install facilities into their system, in order to cut into Google's share of certain markets. Don't install it unless you need it. If you are after free software Linux has more than you can ever imagine; and then some.

After the first few days of Win7 all the novelty has worn off. There's really nothing behind that new task bar. Much of the new features are tied to add-ons and not part of the OS, meaning those can be provided to earlier OSes if there's enough demand--essentially there's nothing driving any new sales other than pure marketing hype.

The product has a good amount more spyware installed into it from Microsoft that Vista. The DRM infection at the heart of it is far too many steps beyond what most of us consider acceptable. No DRM should be in any product, period. Adopting Win7 is a leap toward the continual lock in that Microsoft constantly chains you with.

K/Ubuntu are very good and solid products. They are marvelous products which give you a future free of DRM and other suckerware that ties you to Microsoft's profit engine. Most people don't need more than a browser, email, the ability to write and print letters, and some multimedia. All that can be had under Linux in excess without tying you to vendor lock in.

Anyone that compares any Linux distro to Windows 7 is a douchebag.

If you have only ever used an ms operating system and you had a bad experience with vista, you will think w7 is the greatest thing since slice bread. I used xp at work and later played with w7rc. W7rc gave me less advantages than with linux. A step backwards from using linux, The only real difference between xp and w7 for the casual user might be the multimedia capabilities and continued support. You can get xmbc for xp and do just as well. I have used many operating systems and prefer linux. To go to ms windows 7 would have required hardware upgrades that is just not in the budget. I could not see w7 doing anything as well as what linux already does. Besides with linux there is no phone home product key crap, having to deal with viruses, spyware, and etc. There is more software available to me via open source than will ever be on the retail shelf for proprietary systems like microsoft. I do have one token xp machine to run the magicjack.
Though I spent years supporting Microsoft as an admin and a tech. I will take linux anyday over anything else.
Windows 7 = Fail.

First of all: I have always been a Linux geek (Debian, Slackware, RedHat, SuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu) since 2001 (miserable release of shitty Windows XP)

I have been using Windows 7 for more than one year (since build 6801 pre-beta) Even this early build was much more stable and responsive than Vista.

Since then, I have updated it to the current build several times.
It always got to be more and more responsive and stable. I am using RTM since 14th of July. I must admit, this is the first real hit from MS since Windows NT 4.0. It lives peacefully
next to my Ubuntu 9.10 partition :)

its ok. i've been using it for few days.
Much much better than Vista, but i am not loosing XP for nothing.

I'm still waiting to upgrade the hardware to make the switch, even though I have a copy sitting on a shelf (50% off deal with preorder on Amazon.com). The rest of the machines in my house will benefit from the free licenses from the MSDNAA program of my school.

So far it runs nicely on my notebook and my netbook. My only complaint was when I slimmed down the RC (using vLite) to put on one machine, and removed the parental controls from it. Unfortunately some programs detect the parental controls being "deny all" and games won't play. Lovely.

Oh yeah, for those of you who hate the ads on the INQ: add

127.0.0.1 ad-incisive.grapeshot.co.uk

to your HOSTS file ( /etc/hosts or Windows\system32\drivers\etc)

How to run with unsigned drivers: hit spacebar at the loading screen for Win7, and hit F8 to select the alternate boot. I have yet to see if I can modify the boot to permanently allow unsigned drivers.

Its obvious from reading these posts above me that the majority haven't used it or don't know how.

I been using it since beta and aside from a printer driver problem that was fixed in rc1, i haven't had a crash or bsod and it certainly hasn't slowed down. I'm usually a big tweaker so for me not to play with the innards yet says something about this os.

I didn't care for vista and made it a point to shout that to everyone that made the mistake of asking.
This however, will get my money because it is worth it.

If vista is me2, then 7 is the new xp.

For those of you going waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over the top about an os? I have a recommendation.

Get yourself a girlfriend, women are not mythological creatures. They are real and fun to play with, i highly recommend you get yourself one or more.

So to answer the question, yeah i like it.

I play with the other oses as well but this is a hobby for me not the alpha and omega of my life.

"Oh and I'm currently on Windows 7, so whatever Linux insults you're going to throw my way, don't bother.

posted by : BuckMySalls"

I've not insulted anyone its a irrefutable fact

I have installed Win XP on my PC which has Adaptec ultra SCSI 19160 card and SCSI hard drives without any difficulty. For upgrading to Win 7 I purchased Vista 64-bit SP1 that came with free upgrade option. Vista installed itself effortlessly and runs up to now without any glitch. But when I tried to install Win 7 with the Microsoft supplied OS DVD, it refuses to install - it asks for signed driver for the Adaptec card which is not in its bundle and is not available anywhere. Adaptec says that they will not bring out Win 7 driver for that and all of their $$160 cards, although they are selling these SCSI cards ! In the web I found many others have struck the same hurdle and there is no resolution in sight.

I ran Microsoft's diagnostic program before buying the OS for checking the compatibility of my hardware with Win 7 and it gave absolute clearance. It seems, I have burned my fingers for going after the Win 7 upgrade. Amazingly, Win 7 will not even accept Vista 64's driver for Adaptec 19160 ultra scsi card.

@John

"That is the question so why do the Linux geeks have to spam everything when we don't care what they have to say about an operating system they can't give away!."

Gee, I guess it's because it might have something to do with the fact, that the reverse also happens. I've seen quite a number of Linux articles, where you Windows zealots come out just to bash people for using Linux.

So answer me this; what gives you the right to do this to people who use Linux, but whenever somebody does it to you, you throw a little temper tantrum?

Oh and I'm currently on Windows 7, so whatever Linux insults you're going to throw my way, don't bother.

After using and tweaking Vista for a few years I have come to realize that it actually is a very good OS. The problem is all the additional crap that comes installed by default.

If MS had simply streamlined everything and had an installer that allowed you to add/remove anything in it Vista would have been awesome.

My Vista is tweaked Ridiculously fast and stable as hell. But it takes a week to remove the crap and modify all the settings and registry.
Win7 requires signed drivers.....that breaks it for me, I'll wait till win7 is hacked to pieces and people know how to make it do what they want before I buy it.

Hopefully developers use OpenCL instead of DX11 for the new shinys.

As for Ubuntu 9.10. yea it is very good. only thing I can't get past is the buggy flash. But that may simply be because I'm stuck using a 7900gs ATM. But I really like it. I think the next version will really start to move in on windows if Wine compatibility improves.

I see three types of people in the article:

First there are those that installed Windows 7, ran it for a few days/weeks, and are giving their honest opinion on it. Some of these are positive, sticking to the OS even now, others are less so, preferring to go back to their favored system, but all are still insightful points.

Next, there is a group that seems to be focused on promoting Linux in the usual zealous manner associated with this OS; I cannot fault these people too much, as they are obviously passionate about their cause, but once they admit to not installing Windows 7, I have little choice but to to dismiss their opinion out of hand. The purpose of the article is quite clear, and I cannot respect those who cannot appreciate that. At least have the decency to use it for a bit, before promoting your OS of choice over it.

Finally, some go further, by saying they tried it, and hated it, while giving reasons that make it clear any sort of "trying" they did took no more than 10 minutes. I would even go as far as to classify this group in the same category as trolls. In most cases, the underlying theme is the same as the people in the second category, but now instead of not even trying the OS, the find a few default features that they dislike, and use that as a basis for argument. Before posting a review, at least give the OS a chance for a few days, and explore the customization options. If this is too much work, then stick to the second group. At least their goals and drive are respectable.

To finish off, here is my own review: Windows 7 is quite a solid OS. It fixes a lot of problems with XP and Vista, and provides a pretty intuitive interface, and introducing nice features, such as libraries, though not without a bit of a learning curve. The control panel is a lot better this time around, and the default nag screens are less intrusive. Drivers are also much further along than their last offering, though there is still room for improvement. Not all is rosy though; they still do not have 64-bit support perfected, the theme system does not allow you to change all the colors you might want to, and there are issues with a few 3D games. I also wish they would get off their asses, and support at least a few of the common Linux file systems, though that is more likely a business decision than anything else. Overall, an enjoyable system, with a much cleaner, more consistent, and customizable interface than any other OS I have tried to this point.

I've still yet to try 9.10, so I may enjoy that even more. Unfortunately, I have lost a lot of faith in KDE and Gnome due to their constant "improvements" making features I like obsolete, and taking a long time to replace these with something working. I still plan to spend a week in 9.10 soon, in case it might change my mind.

I also appreciate that Microsoft has finally realized the benefits of giving out free trials. If you are open to change, I really suggest that you grab that, and give it a serious try for a week or two. If you really do not like it, then the most you have to pay is knowing that you used Windows for a week.

Windows 7 is like Windows Vista. Useless. Hi-res icons, another shape of start button and gadgets, gadgets gadgets....

There is simple question about W7 - which new feature is wroth $1 to pay?
Do you have one?

Windows era is going to end, Microsoft is not able to create anything better than Windows 2000.
XP is enough for another 3 years waiting for ReactOS or Ubuntu/Wine worth to switch.

Okay, I've got Windows 7 installed now (funnily enough it's not asked me to Activate it yet, no doubt it will start nagging me sooner or later).

So, installation on a blank hard drive was quick, VERY QUICK, quicker than XP and Vista and much quicker than Ubuntu 9.10. I think it took all of about 20 minutes from booting the DVD to get to a basic desktop (yes I know, I don't get Office etc which I would with Ubuntu - before anyone says this, you're preaching to the choir!).

I was a bit disapointed to find that my video card wasn't supported out the box, it's an ATI Radeon X800 so I half expected some sort of support. I tried ATI's site only to find they have stopped supporting the card and they suggested Windows Vista drivers which didn't work.

A Windows Update later and I managed to download a driver from Microsoft. It also picked up my printer and offered to install drivers, but I'm going to check the manufacturer as it's an all in one laser/scanner/copier.

One annoying feature that is possibly going to bug me (until I build a dedicated media PC) is the fact that I can't output audio via the analogue speakers and SPDIF output at the same time. In XP I could output stereo audio through the desktop speakers and through the home cinema system, or output just AC3 and DTS via SPDIF to the home cinema system. It appears now it's been 'fixed' so you can only choose one or the other as a default audio device. That's using either the built in driver or the latest driver from MSI.

Not a biggie but it's going to get me grief from the wife when she gets no sound (I'll have to show her how to change the settings).

Apart from these issues, I am really impressed. The Aero interface is nice, and I love the fact it will automatically switch my desktop wallpaper for me, I would love that feature in Ubuntu :-)

So, so far, not too bad, I think it was worth the £30 my other half paid on the student offer and I would recommend it over Vista any day. It's not going to make me switch from Ubuntu on my laptop, but hey I know a few people who don't get on with Linux and are still using XP who might just well benefit from an upgrade (if just to keep getting support from Microsoft).

Rob

and Linux is my ideal. I have been with Microsoft for a long time and this time I am not doubling down. Linux certainly needs getting used to but we all had to do that from DOS to W3 to W95 to W2000 to WXP. That is where the journey ends for me. I tested W7 and Vista but it never fulfilled the innovation paradigm it was set out to do. Instead it enforced DRM, bad performance and basically Microsoft owns your computer strategy. Microsoft was built on the slogan of innovation. It does not do that anymore.

I've been using it for a while now. After the initial install it seems to free up more of the power of your pc, the slight UI upgrade was pleasant, but once you've got all your apps on and a descent anti-virus the pc slows back down and you're back in the last of vista once again. Everything takes an age to come up when you click on it and the minor UI upgrade seems to be the only improvement. The boot up seems to be quicker, but you can't actually use any apps until all the deferred start-up routines are complete it just displays the desktop before it’s actually finished booting. Windows 7 is all smoke and mirrors, Vista with a little fat trimmed... with a couple of nice buttons thrown in to complete the illusion.

Just a service pack applied to Vista .
A Linux person myself and seeing Google is poised to release a OS in 2010 , I will wait and see what happens .
Heck I am more excited about the Droid phone coming to Verizon than Windows 7 .

It is still Micro$oft and crammed full of crappy DRM. I'll use it, Vista, and XP when pigs fly out my @. Geeze, does Bill and/or Steve own my PC? I must have missed that when I shelled out the $$$ for it.

I bought Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack (3 licenses) for $133.00 w/free shipping from www.buy.com on October 22nd. What do you mean by pricey? I love the Media Center integration in Home premium, sure Vista had it but you couldn't pay me to buy Vista! I have a desktop that I set to record TV shows and I can access the recorded content anywhere in my home on my laptop. Love it!

"What do you think of Windows 7?"

That is the question so why do the Linux geeks have to spam everything when we don't care what they have to say about an operating system they can't give away!.

I've been a fairly happy dual-boot OS X/Windows Vista user for a long time. In fact, i even have a WIndows Vista VM that I run on the OS X desktop for a couple applications, mostly becuase my network printer isn't Mac compatible. Keeping in mind that my "Mac" is a Hac. Still, OS X is a great OS and there are quite a few functions I really enjoy.
With the Windows 7 release, I replaced the Windows Vista dual-boot with Windows 7 Ultimate, but kept the Vista VM. I also have Windows 7 Home on laptop. For a couple of minor reasons, I find myself booting into 7 more these days.
While i was never plagued with "problems" under Vista, I just think 7 is a far better product. The new GUI is quite slick.

Ever since Microsoft released the RC versions all I've heard about the OS is good as far as windows OS is concerned. I've heard it's stable, faster and less of a resource hog than vista, which is good and makes me want to try it (And I ultimately will have to since I'm a visual studio developer) but I'm just too comfortable using ubuntu.

Not the recently released 9.10 which was sort of a broken experience to me, but the more efficient and proven 9.04. (and everytime I post this, I await a lot of heat for that from Linux zealots)

But all in all it seems good, it's only that I have no reasons to abandon xp yet.

I installed Windows 7 x64 from Vista x64 (Both Home Premium) 4 days ago and it seems fairly stable.

I've got it running on a q9550 (standard clock) GTX280 2X Raptor (mode 0) and 4GB DDR 3 ram.

I've always had problems getting sharing to work with my Xbox but it worked straight away on 7.

I like being forced to use the new interface I'm pretty stuck in my ways using the old 1995/98 style GUI.

I think its all very pretty though.

Vista was using 2.5Gb of Ram of my system with services cut down to minimum and not too many background programs.

I thought 7 would be less of a system hog but straight after install it used 2.8GB of RAM which was alarming so I turned of Superfetch and Windows Search services and went down to 1.8GB which is better. I've only tried 1 Game so far and that's Borderlands and that runs very smoothly.

I've had no crashes but I have had a few applications go "not responding" usually when i was trying to tell it I had 5.1 so maybe its ASUS's blackhawks fault.

Video seemed better for some reason (smoother and more vibrant) is it my imagination or have they done something mind you i hadn't updated my GFX drivers for a while)

I first tried upgrading Vista to 7 but it failed several times, so in the end I had to go for a clean install.
The install was pretty fast though

For some reason it labelled one of my partitions on my secondary drive a system partition which caused a few problems.

It picked up my hardware very easily and my Dlink wireless 802.11n adaptor worked straight away with no drivers installed which i was impressed with.

I still need to test out how it plays Blu-ray Discs but it's seems over all better than Vista.

I agree with others though. Vista uses should have been given this for free. It's almost a service pack with a new GUI.

I bought the upgrade version but at no point during install did it ask me to insert an old OS disc or supply an old key

Windows 7 is just Vista cleaned up, nothing more - and maybe some advertisement dollars...

... there are still the problem with drivers.
Especially for the 64 bit version.

One case is point is Logitech.

I have an expensive QuickCall USB speakerphone. The 64 bit Vista driver does not install. I called Logitech support, they promised to get back to me and never did. An expensive (and good) piece of hardware is sitting there, unusably. Bloddy Logitech.

Dell is not much better.
Touting W7 aller over the internet shopping site, but when I go to the product support page, there is no choice for the W7 operating system at the drivers download section.

Overall I am happy with W7, maybe I should say I feel relieved that I could escape from Vista finally.

Maybe, just maybe,
it is still a good idea to stay away from a new version of Windows until SP1 regardless. If you want to have a smooth transition.

Paid my money got vista business to windows 7 business student upgrade 5 days later still not got it to run, fails the upgrade even after taken off all programs that it say it might have a problem with. another weekend lost to MS again. Going to apple i think.

A bit more choice in the poll would be nice as there's no middle option between "Love it" and "Don't see what all the fuss is about".

Personally, I like Windows 7 and it's a big improvement over Vista and is finally (IMO) a better OS than XP. However, I don't love it and it definitely isn't perfect.

So yes. A bit more middle ground between "OMG wow" and "Meh!" would be nice next time please!

When I got a new laptop about 18 months ago it came with Vista Home Premium. Because it is the heart of my music studio, it needs to stream realtime audio glitch-free. I repartitioned it and set up an XP partition so it would dual-boot, having chosen the machine in part because it still had XP drivers as well as Vista drivers for everything.

Then I installed all the software in both partitions and started doing some testing to see how well my audio applications (primarily Cakewalk's Sonar and Cockos Reaper) ran.

However, once I had 'decrapified' Vista by disabling dozens of useless services, and removed all the junk startup entries, I found to my surprise that Vista actually ran better than XP on the same machine. (i.e was more efficient and certainly very stable and did not use significantly more memory). In particular suspending and resuming the laptop was much less likely to cause my audio interfaces to stop working. I have never had a BSOD or any other glitch at all under Vista. This was never the case with XP, where the same software ran, sure, but strange issues arose on a pretty regular basis.

I've kept the XP partition - if the OS ever dies, it's really useful to be able to boot into an alternate partition. But on the desktops (one for me, one for my partner), to be honest, I'm finding myself using Ubuntu more and more. Compared to XP, in particular, the latest release of Ubuntu really makes it look primitive; the fonts are much smoother, all my devices; printer, bluetooth dongle, scanner, wireless dongle etc. were all detected automatically with no rummaging around for driver CDs, and my wireless connection worked immediately and flawlessly (something that has, admittedly, taken an ark full of Ubuntu animals to achieve, but we're there now).

So Win 7 would have to have something pretty compelling now, like 30% better performance (yeah, right), although of course I accept that my music studio apps will never run on Linux so I will, presumably, have to upgrade at some point. But its quite possible that my laptop vendor won't provide up-to-date drivers for Win 7 - who knows - so this is waay in the future. And very likely some of my older gear won't have drivers. That's not going to be a problem under Linux because of the way drivers are developed. Vendors do it once, the community maintains them from then on.

For the other machines in the household, therefore, which are getting old but perfectly serviceable, the future is definitely Linux, I think. There are no compelling reasons to stay with Windows at all when XP finally becomes obsolete. If XP was needed for some piece of software, I'd probably just set it up as a virtualised guest inside Ubuntu and boot it when required.

PS: and, interestingly, my AMD 6400X2 desktop runs much cooler under Linux than Windows. I have no idea why this is so, even after installing the Cool'N'Quiet driver under Windows (I did nothing in the Linux installation).

So, frankly, Win 7 looks more irrelevant than compelling. Vista, decrapified, is actually a pretty good OS. Win 7 is pretty much the same kernel with some of the crap removed. Linux is starting to make Windows look primitive, and finally, I'd rather spend the money on hardware, not software.

After the nightmare of Vista I had my doubts but I am impressed. It is quick, detected all my hardware and set it up with only one exception (old onboard sound which was quickly fixed), unobtrustive, and no crashes or slow downs.

It also works with every piece of software I have thrown at it. A couple of old games I had to turn off the Windows visual effects to get to work but that's it.

It just works for me and works well, exactly what an OS should be like. Thumbs up from me.

"Only a Linux blowhard would answer the question "What do you think of Windows 7" with the above. If you haven't used it, you have no opinion, so why bother posting a reply?"

Huh? Am I missing something? Show me where the person you quoted stated that they've not used Win7. They said they SWITCHED to Ubuntu. Don't make silly assumptions, otherwise people will do likewise to you.

I could say that only pathetic blinded Windows zealots would bash anybody for prefering Linux.

As for me, I'm enjoying Win7, although having a few probs with FireFox and IE both not working correctly. I'm on the RC, so hopefully when I get the retail Windows7, these issues will have been addressed.

I am using Ubuntu for a while and Karmic seems to be kooler :)

But am hoping to try out Windows 7 sometime soon...

On a decent PC, there really isn't much difference in performance. I don't like the default layout of the taskbar, but this can be changed.

I loved Vista. It just got a bad name because people tried running it on slow harddrives and they couldn't figure out how to turn off UAC.

Windows 7 does perform a bit better on slower drives and the UAC is much better.

Both Vista and 7 are lightyears ahead of Ubuntu. As much as you fanboys might go on about it, it really isn't anywhere close.

I've been using Windows 7 RTM 64 since august and I'm quite happy with it, it uses less RAM and its slighly more responsive than Windows Vista Ultimate 64, didn't notice a huge difference because it was running on a Q9650 @ 3.80GHz, 8GB of DDR2 @ 1,06GHz and a RAID 0 setup, plus I'm using Kubuntu 9.10 on a Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT with 1GB of RAM and I'm even more surprised by the difference in performance and usability compared to the previous 9.04. The eye candy is awesome and is easier to work out and Firefox works awesome on it.

Yeah it was ok, I liked having my desktop as a slideshow. Apart from that I didn't really notice the difference except, -HD movies that played back smooth in XP didn't play back smooth no more. My framerates were hitting single digits and I tried every player and decoder known to geekdom. Nada. That particular computer just barely made it in XP -but it did make it(core 2 1,7ghz no 3d). I guess the DRM overhead was enough to kill it. I'm reinstalling XP.

I've been using Win 7 for a few days now but I don't see any difference from Vista, even the sound scheme is the same. It should have been named Vista II only. I can see small changes here and there from the original Vista but that's about it...

maybe it's not 7 but rather the catylist drivers but video is suffering a bit compared to vista. the new start menu is cool. i did upgrade version and upgrade was very smooth price was right at 50 bux.

Seems like a lot more people would be happy with Windows 7 if they didn’t have to pay the prices Microsoft is demanding for it.

Every time windows announces somthing big I install a linux distro, somewhat by habit and somewhat to see how far the new MS offering is ahead of the linux offering in terms of software compatibility.

Fedora 5,6,8,10, Open Solaris, Ubuntu 7 and now Ubuntu 9.10.

After trying W7 I felt like my best friend had been shot and someone was walking around with parts of him on their body to look familiar. I don't like the new start menu, taskbar and I hate the ribbon interface. I tried to like them but I simply couldn't. The normal menu system is simply too efficient, an option to change sure but taking away the 'file menu' *sigh*.

After trying Ubuntu 9.10 it feels like most my old grips are gone I get reasonable memory usage which means I can run a WXPSP3 VM should I need to use Groove etc. but otherwise I love it.

So I think W7 is good but it could have included more options to fall back on. As a result I'm now running U9.10 on 2 laptops and a desktop.

Real men use Mandriva!

Seriously though I'll use Win7 for games,work requires a serious OS sorry Microsoft your relegated to the kiddy table.

NOTHING.
I don't use it, don't need it, and have no plan to use it ...

I have been using XP since 2002 ... by now it is a fossil (I got sp2 slipstreamed) but there was no way I would even consider "up-grading" to Vista (tried it and had way too many problems with it)... I don't know about Win 7 but it seems to be too similar to Vista (for my taste anyways) and it is still made by the same corporation so I doubt that they have suddenly changed their ways ... spyware like reporting back to Redmond, DRAM, hardware upgrade limitations etc (I go through a lot of hardware, and need an OS that is quick and efficient to install as well as one which does not give me grief about having changed a graphic card, SSD, CPU or all of the above from day to day) ... for the past few years I anxiously have been watching Ubuntu get more and more polished ... the 9.10 is quite nice ... I got it installed on my laptop and love it ... everything works just right after the install, no fussing about ... I am by no means linux savy, but this time around 90% of all the basic things are totally GUIed and dead simple to use. There is however a rub ... I do a lot of PhotoShop and Raw conversions in a color managed XP environment ... that I have been unable to set up on Ubuntu ... Once that is possible (to just plug in my colormeter and make an .icm profile for the monitor) then I am 100% with linux ... well, I also would like the GIMP to be truly able to handle 16bit TIFFs to be able to get away from PS too ... so I guess I will have to wait a bit longer until I can finally ditch the vole's bastard child:-)

Honestly, I didn't find anything really worthwhile in the months that I tried various releases, from pre-RC up to and including the RTM. What immediately put me off with the gui was ... no classic start menu. Since XP this is the very first thing I enable whenever I log in to a new account. Basically I saw no reason whatsoever to switch from Vista to 7. The seperate boot partition is an improvement though. I didn't test it but this should make it possible to delete any Windows partition in a multi-boot configuration, because none of them contains the BCD stuff.
Yet oddly, in the end, I have come to like Windows 7 for, because I initially hated it so much and knew Vista will die swiftly now. Microsoft couldn't afford to waste XP. They wish Vista will become a bad memory asap. So at last I finally did succeed in what I've tried and failed to do for so long: switch to Linux (Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty). Although jaunty might be the first and last version of Ubuntu I'll run after having tried Karmic, I am actually now free to choose.

"Went with Ubuntu 9.10"

Only a Linux blowhard would answer the question "What do you think of Windows 7" with the above. If you haven't used it, you have no opinion, so why bother posting a reply?

On the point, my experience has been great. One glitch with the new taskbar is a little annoying (I put my icons into groups; 7 forgets the group heights when I reboot), but otherwise, very solid and good performance. Much prefer it to XP. Skipped Vista.

...did have one head scratcher.

The build on my GF's PC that had 7 on it started to lose the internet and found an 'unknown network'. Restarting the ethernet port sorted it but thats not really a suitable solution.

Turns out the gulty puppy next to the pile of poo is the Bonjour services that Adobe and Apple use. Simply switch it to 'delayed start' and that fixes it.

It's an operating system.

It wont keep you warm at night.

It wont snuggle on the couch.

It wont make you feel like like you're 30yo stud when you're really 2x30 and on the little blue pill.

It wont help you cope with sadness.

It wont wag it's tale and think you're still the greatest stick-thrower alive.

It wont call you dad.

It wont call you on your birthday.

It wont grow old with you and share the pains of getting there.

It wont sit silently next to you when a cherished friend dies and you lack the words to say how bad you feel.

It wont hold a complaint silent because it knows you're doing the best you can.

It's a operating system. It's nothing but a tool in the life of those with family, friends, and cherished pets.

..it's alright I suppose.

You know we forget its just the thingy that we use to run the actual apps we want to use.

XP does feel really slow though after using Vista/7. Desktop performance is glacial on XP now. You dont see it till you start using more modern operating systems.

Dreamweaver CS4 needs some serious patching with 7 64bit though.

The day that Magee left, you had to click on an HP advert to read the main story.

At that point, the poor little lost lambs of Broadwick Street sold their credibility up the river.

But, then again, you are talking about the 'publishing geniuses' that managed to terminate What PC, PC Direct, PC Mag and PCW - so they should be able to make light work of l'Inq

Fourth - Over the top with these ads. I know that it is needed, but this is being pushed a little to much here ...

I love it! I use Red Hat, XP, and Vista at work. At home I use Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10. It is a great OS! It is everything that Vista should have been! I wish that Ubuntu had some it its features and that Windows 7 had some of Ubuntu's features... sigh. Haven't had a blue screen yet... wow!

Thirded, RSS feed into INQ is painfull, and windows 7 is great ;)

First things first, I voted the first option (installed it and loved it) and it's been like that since the beta in January...

The question I have though is why are there so many polls around Win7 in theINQ?
Why did you not do the same with Snow Leopard? (I sound like a fanboy, that's because I used to be one up until a year ago). [It's because 5% market share is hardly of any significance stupid...]
Why are you trying so desperately to spoil Microsoft's success (we don't know if win7 will sell or not, but it's a good OS). There's so many things they've been doing wrong to pick on, why win7?

Windows 7 it's an ok OS, it lets you do your work and doesn't get much on your way.

Yet I can do things faster, and easier with MAC OS X.
It's just true, MAC OS X is just a great time saver!

I installed Windows 7 64bit as dual boot to my original Vista 64bit installation. I still have to move over a lot of programs but haven't yet.

I don't see what's so special about it. It boots faster and a bit more responsive, but a lot of that is probably due to the fact that it's a clean install... Meh.

Well first impressions before installing, hmmm... Meh. My other half bought the Student edition of Windows 7 Home Premium for 30 quid. Now I wasn't expecting much for 30 quid, but I was expecting an ISO to download and burn straight to disk, not some stupid executable archive file to download and then unpack so it can build the image. Why Microsoft? Why?

So for starters I've had to free up enough hard drive space (my plan for Windows 7 was to stick in a new drive as the current one runs really slow.

I'm also a bit miffed about the hassle I'm going to have to go through too to get it installed. Previous Windows upgrades I've done have allowed me to just insert the previous Windows CD to prove we're eligible for the upgrade but now I see I have to install Windows and upgrade from there (having XP I can't just do an upgrade).

I must admit though, after trying the Windows 7 Beta, I was impressed with that and it did run well so I'm hoping that the experience should be similar with the final release (albeit on a different machine - OC'd Pentium Dual Core 2160 @ 2.96Ghz, 4GB Ram, 200GB SATA hard drive).

I'll report back when it's installed.

Rob

I did have one Gotcha with Win 7. It requires signed drivers, which meant I can't use atitray tools or rivatuner without jumping through hoops. Ideally those two software packages will make a version using signed drivers soon, but if you use an app that requires an unsigned driver be prepared to have to make some lame system changes to accommodate it.

Oh and now that I think about it, VMWare Infrastructure Client also needs some manual work to get it running on windows 7.

But the good news it only 2 apps caused me problems, both can be made to run, and both aren't extremely common apps that affect lots of people.

I've been running Win 7 for months now. After a short time with it, I turned off all the eye-candy and use it like my old Win XP, without all the frills.
I dual boot Win 7 and Ubuntu and switch regularly between them.
Both operating systems are stable and work well, but any Microsoft OS is going to be a target for hackers, so I have to use Kaspersky Internet Security when on Win 7 ...
Overall, i'm pretty happy with Microsoft's latest effort.

R.

I installed Vista (32 and 64) on several machines when it first came out. The new PC's ran it great and it worked well, the laptops sucked. So I reverted to XP on the laptops and kept vista on the new pc's and it's been fine.

I've installed windows 7 64 bit on several core 2 (1.6-2.5 ghz) class pc's, nothing special and I've been very impressed. Everything has worked 100% out of the box on all the machines, I didn't have to hunt for drivers for anything and it has felt fast and responsive. On a core 2 duo/quad or better I think vista with all the updates is almost as good, but I upgraded my remaining xp boxes to 7 pretty quick.

Also those mac commercials saying there isn't an easy way to upgrade xp to 7 are not entirely true (surprise surprise). 7 comes with a migration app that takes all your documents and application settings, favorites, etc from windows xp and imports them into 7. I tried it and it worked well enough for me. You still have to reinstall apps, but if you use ninite.com you can get 99% of your common apps installed in about 5 minutes. Certainly you still have to reinstall some software but I found it pretty easy.

Also windows 7 Media player works nice with all my divx content. I picked up a remote from ncix.com for $30 + shipping and the media center stuff works great with my samsung 52". Nothing to it all, plug the ir sensor into a usb port, driver installs automatically, press media center button on remote and you're done. that easy.

I'm going to try ubuntu 9.10 though on a machine. I tried 9.04 and it wasn't quite there, but it sounds like 9.10 is pretty polished. I doubt it'll displace any of my windows 7 machines but I have some linux servers I'll try it on.

I second that. I have found the same issue using FF & noscript. D$#@# those ads & the Ink for attempting to use them...

Explorer crashes equally as much as in Vista and I even had one blue screen in Win7 never had that in Vista.

on a positive note I like the easier way to go directly to a certain folder with explorer. (right click select folder)
(I hate the default my documents folder)

Very nice but now your business will need Server 2008 R2. MS should have given 7 free to Vista users for doing their beta testing!

you can play games that use dx11 on vista 64 (as long as you have dx11 video card (actually dx10.1 will do, but speed may suffer a bit) and you keep your system current/updated).
now my opinion on w7 is somewhat positive (can't agree with forcing new gui on the user but i can live with it), i did performance comparison on my system and in general there's too little difference to justify paying full price for upgrade, hibernation file seems optimized - smaller size, shorter time from login screen to desktop (but not to the login screen), really the same memory footprint for the base system (caching seems different). also one of my systems (on acer laptop) seems less stable that RC (few times so far i had to power cycle it during regular internet/file browsing). not sure what's the cause as system event viewer can't provide meaningful details

I think nothing of Windows 7; I don't use it, I haven't tried it. At work I use Windows XP because my employer orders me to use it, at home I use Ubuntu. And yes, I do like Ubuntu 9.10.

While I've bashed Ubuntu in the past for not being 'ready for prime time', the latest release, Karmic Koala, finally made me switch. Reasons: Stable, secure, easy to use, feature-rich, easy to maintain, comes complete with many useful apps, and it's free (something MS can never ever do).

I'm very pleased with Ubuntu 9.10. I can't imagine forking hundreds of greenbacks for Win7 when you can get a free operating system that's as good as Ubuntu is.

I'm still using Ultimate Vista 64 which I was forced to buy over home premium since I ran a multiple processor PC at the time of its release. I'll continue to use vista until someone comes up with a good reason for me not to. Maybe some DX 11 games, or maybe I finally get fed up with trying to stream .mp4's with WMP11. Either way I haven't had any problems yet so until I'm forced to or I have a good reason it's vista for me.

It was about time Microsoft launched a decent OS after the Vista Headache editions...
My pc got a lot more responsive, the same system with vista took ages until being usable (core 2 duo @ 2.53 4 gb ram)

It's interface is good, and very similar in some aspects to mac

Samteck

windows 7 is great. what isn't great is your new crappy ad system when trying to get into an article via your rss feed. i've not seen anything like it anywhere else and it's really turned me off INQ which i used to visit all the time per article. poor show guys. sort it out.