Windows 7 Beta Reviews

Vista32 is waste of time imho. Vista64 works great and runs really smooth with i.e 6 gigs of memory. Its amazing that they are still making a 32 version of w7. They should drop the support allready and concentrate on 64 version.

There is still compability issues with 32bit programs on 64 bit windows. That's why.
 
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I have about 20 GB free on my C: do you think I should create a partition and install it(win7) there or try it on virtual?
Anyone????
 
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Dear Green Place
The real one.... maybe you should join it.

I said "by the time it's released", and trust me, I know many people that already have 4 GB right now. Those people are enthusiast of course, but even the average PC in retail stores right now has at least 1.5-2 GB of RAM.

That's what I'm saying, I think there is a high chance that they will release it this year, and I don't see the average RAM/computer to increase too much. It's close to 1GB now, may be 1.5 by then, I don't even see myself having 4GB, and I'm a "game enthusiast"
(that's why a 32 bit version is still perfectly valid, the 64 bit version probably sucks with less than 2GB)
 
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Anyone????

If you have to ask, install it on a separate physical drive. It's beta software, it's an operating system, things can go wrong. You don't want to risk your data or your working system configuration just to try something out.
 
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That's what I'm saying, I think there is a high chance that they will release it this year, and I don't see the average RAM/computer to increase too much. It's close to 1GB now, may be 1.5 by then, I don't even see myself having 4GB, and I'm a "game enthusiast"
(that's why a 32 bit version is still perfectly valid, the 64 bit version probably sucks with less than 2GB)

The 64-bit version isn't any more resource-hungry than the 32-bit version. It's marginally faster, but you're unlikely to see any difference in practice if you "only" have 2 GB RAM.
 
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The 64-bit version isn't any more resource-hungry than the 32-bit version. It's marginally faster, but you're unlikely to see any difference in practice if you "only" have 2 GB RAM.

That's odd, I remember once considering installing XP 64 bit in my computer, but when I read about it, it said it required a lot more memory than the standard XP. I assumed the same would hold for Vista (and Vista SP2 a.k.a Windows 7)
 
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Right. Downloading now.
 
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That's odd, I remember once considering installing XP 64 bit in my computer, but when I read about it, it said it required a lot more memory than the standard XP. I assumed the same would hold for Vista (and Vista SP2 a.k.a Windows 7)

Technically, 64-bit executables require more memory than 32-bit ones, because they use 64-bit pointers. In practice, the overhead isn't very big; you're unlikely to notice any difference unless you're running very close to the minimum memory requirement (which you shouldn't be).

You did well not to install XP x64; it had terrible driver support and ended up orphaned. But with Vista, x64 is definitely the way to go, and you should have at least 2GB of RAM, preferably more. Not because Vista needs it, but because all your apps, especially games, will benefit from it.
 
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If you have to ask, install it on a separate physical drive. It's beta software, it's an operating system, things can go wrong. You don't want to risk your data or your working system configuration just to try something out.
I only have C: (around 20GB free) and D: (30MB free),I think that I won't get the full potential of W7 if I try it with Virtual PC,but I don't know if installing in C: is worth it.
 
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Dear Green Place
I would simply go out and buy another hard drive if I were you, it sounds like you need one anyways. As cheap as they are now, there's no excuse to have so little free space in your rig.
 
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I brought W7 up in our ACM meeting yesterday and one guy installed it using VMWare. He had good things to say.

I interjected (and I realized this after my last post) that since Windows is considered a microkernel OS (that is all the important bits are isolated in a stripped down kernel and other functions are handled in "modules" this kernel interacts with. *Nix flavors are considered monolithic OS's and don't use modules. The result is a much more optimized OS that is less portable and theoretically less secure. That's how it was explained to me in class anyway) it sounds like W7 is pretty much that microkernel with a reduced number of necessary modules.

The thing is, over time as more software is loaded on W7 will it get as slow as any previous flavour as they load needed extras that don't come with?
 
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Really? From where I'm at, a 25 MB kernel doesn't really count as "micro."

The irony is that Windows NT started out as a microkernel design, whereas Linux started out as a monolithic one -- yet it's Linux that's been ported to a much wider range of hardware. From what I've gathered, Windows 7 is also a hybrid, although they've taken out a bunch of stuff from kernel space and put it into user space. (They did this in the Vista iteration too.)

Microkernel OS's sound like a really great idea, but in practice they're really hard to do well. I can't think of any true microkernel OS that has really been an unqualified success. Apple's OS X probably comes closest, but of course Apple just died, and it's also not a pure microkernel; it's a hybrid based on Mach.

Edit: for comparison, the smallest Linux kernels I know of are around 450 kB. That's *kilo* bytes. And yes, they're monolithic.

Edit 2: A more typical size for a Linux kernel is 3-5 MB, and if you compile in absolutely everything, you can get it up to 50MB.
 
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There is still compability issues with 32bit programs on 64 bit windows. That's why.

If somone still needs old 32bit programs he could always run xp or vista. There are still companies that run old dos programs even from the nineties but they dont need support for it in the newest os.

I havent really seen any problems with programs in vista64. Som old 32bit didnt work but there were 64bit versions available so I just used them. But I guess I cant blame ms for selling 32bit os if people want to buy them.

Most people I know who have bought 32bit vista have moved to 64bit. The support is good enough easily. Theres also a noticeable performance difference between 3gb and 6gb 64bit vista:
The end result of Corsair’s test was that overall performance increased noticeably when the system was configured with 6 GB versus 3 GB. Most enthusiasts will do anything to squeeze extra performance out of a system, and this looks like a smart move. As 12 GB kits are not readily available at the moment, its hard to know whether performance would change as much as it does when jumping from 3 GB to 6 GB.

Moving to larger system memory arrays of 6GB will require users to move to the 64-bit platform, as 32-bit platforms do not support over 4 GB of memory.

http://cphardware.blogspot.com/2008/11/core-i7-3gb-vs-6gb-memory-benched.html
The test was done with tri-channel ddr3 (on corei7) though. You might not get the same results with 4gb vs 8gb ddr2.

That's odd, I remember once considering installing XP 64 bit in my computer, but when I read about it, it said it required a lot more memory than the standard XP. I assumed the same would hold for Vista (and Vista SP2 a.k.a Windows 7)

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/corsair-triple-channel-ddr3,6614.html

XP64 lacks proper driver support. Vista64 is the first good 64bit windows.
 
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@zakhal
[offtopic]I've read that i7 had some problems with ddr3.Are they still present?[/offtopic]
 
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Dear Green Place
Do I have to waste an empty dvd to install this?
 
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@zakhal
[offtopic]I've read that i7 had some problems with ddr3.Are they still present?[/offtopic]
Theres only one rumour I heard about problems with i7 but it was false:
A rumor was going around today that the Intel Core i7 series of processors have a TLB Errata much like the first AMD Phenom processors did last year. Legit Reviews has contacted Intel about this nasty little rumor today and confirmed that it's nothing to get worked up about and was fixed via a BIOS update way before they were launched.
Ive used i7 for month now and this has been the most problem free pc I have ever had.

There never was any reason for intel to release buggy hardware. They lead the market with previous generation allready - they were never in a real hurry to release corei7.
 
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I finally decided to install win7 but when I try to boot from the DVD I get :
Cannot BOOT from the CD Code: 5
any ideas?
I burned the image @ 2x using ImgBurn.
My .img file is 2.43GB is that correct?
 
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Dear Green Place
I finally decided to install win7 but when I try to boot from the DVD I get :
Cannot BOOT from the CD Code: 5
any ideas?
I burned the image @ 2x using ImgBurn.
My .img file is 2.43GB is that correct?

Mine is 3.16GB. There might have been problem when burning the iso file. Try again.

I installed the beta last night, spent 25 minutes for OS installation alone. In my case the creative xi-fi extreme gamer didn't work, although other peoples found the OS installed the driver without problem. I downloaded latest driver and luckily solved the problem.
 
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Windows 7 64-bit seems able to run 32-bit programs in compatibility mode or something, it installed them into separate Program Files x86 directory than its own Program Files directory. Below are several 32&64-bit programs that work well on Win7 so far:

a) AVG Free - Work without problem but the scanning process take longer than on 32-bit Vista (it took 4 hours to finish). Probably also because i have 3 hard disks...

b) Faststone viewer - working well.

c) Foobar2000 - no problem.

d) Google Chrome - the browser freak out on Win7 so i uninstalled it...

e)D-Link DW-110 - i can't find the 64-bit driver on official sites (both its international & regional websites). I pushed 32-bit driver several times but win7 refused to even detect the wireless adaptor (no problem on Vista 32bit), then i installed 64-bit driver from different D-link model DWA 120, 130, WUA 1340 and still no go. Later, i uninstalled the default generic wireless adaptor, install again 32bit&64bit drivers but Win7 spat out message "the program unable to run on this platform". After a restart somehow the wireless connection able to function.

f) Both Logitech G15 k/b and G5 mouse 64-bit drivers work fine on Win7.

g) Creative X-fi extreme gamer driver 64bit work okay.

h) Win7 recognised my nVidia GTS 8800 512 well, even automatically update the graphic card driver.

2009-01-25_2235032.jpg


2009-01-25_220734.png
 
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