Seven Windows 7 Questions (and Answers)

[Guest]

Add me to the list of those wishing to have the classic expandable menu! I really like the idea of creating the organized folders though. As for finding an option to turn on the classic start menu, I searched high and low in the beta and could not find it anywhere!

Having said that, there was a number of things I wanted to do but could not find where to make the changes. Way too many levels to access the simplest of things. A window with tabs is fast and easy when it comes to finding something.

I just wish Microsoft would give us the choice of working with our computers the way we want to. Sure, give us the nice flashy menus that make the nubies go "Wow!", but give the oldsters the option of doing it the old way. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I hope Microsoft learned that lesson with Vista. Probably not, but hope springs eternal

 

[Guest]

The advertizement on the side of the page makes this article unreadable and I can't close it.

 

[ace2056]

I like GooderUser's comment about the new windows feature Windows: "I love the fact that you can rearrange the order of running programs in the taskbar."

The problem is Microsoft is just so far behind on the times. I've been wanting to to that since 2000. Ya know, organize your stuff so your not searching for the 7 programs on your taskbar (sure it only takes a second to find it, but it's still annoying). I thought they'd catch on when Firefox had their tabbed browsing thing. I loved when they came out with Vista and Microsoft's like 'Hey look at this cool thing! It's called a Windows Sidebar! You can have all your cool gadgets.' I just sat there open mouthed saying "Google has had a sidebar and desktop search integrated for a couple years now.

Besides the ranting, I do have one big question. I love the classic windows style because I know where everything is and how to get there. I even use it in XP. Does Windows 7 Beta allow me to switch my appearance, start menu, taksbar, etc. to Windows Classic? Please say yes. I don't like that they changed Office 2007 permanently, but it works, but I like my windows classic view.

 

[ravenware]

Does Windows 7 Beta allow me to switch my appearance, start menu, taksbar, etc. to Windows Classic

You can change the appearance but general navigation doesn't realy change. The start menu behave like vista does.

I have had some more time wiht the OS today and so far i do like it.
In addition to my earlier cisco fiasco I have had issues with the running "The Suffering" and I can not access the speaker control properties for 5.1 channel surround on my SB live card.
These issues are minor however as "The suffering" is a freebie download game and I do not plan on running my old SB Live 5.1 card when Windows7 is released. I dropped in Doom3 and began a replay of the game and everything is runnning smothly and it still sounds good in stereo.

The interface feels fresh when compared to xp and more refined when compared to vista. The grouped taskbar programs kickass, makes browsing through otherwise cluttered windows simple.

Memory useage is still high, not as high but high. Nerly 3x what xp uses. This might a mute point in future as more and more desktops are going to be outfitted with larger ram capacities , considering how relatively inexpensive it is now.

Ieplorer8 is extreemely responsive and may give Firefox some competition in the speed area.

User Account Control as well as various other warnings are far less intrusive and easily disabled compared to early versions of windows.

The personlized display icon on the start menu still seems silly to me, I would like either get rid of it (possibly in the regestry) or perhaps MSoft could have it display some usefull information, like weather, mem useage or an RSS feed.

I still have some probing to do; I am curious as too what the "Gadgets" thingy is, it shows up in the desktop context menu above personalise.

 

[GreyFox_20]

I've been using the 64 bit version and there a few things that need to be straightened out. One nice thing is the control panel has a new feature. Very nice, because I wanted to use the NVidea Control panel and there it is already in the Control Panel.

 

[captaincharisma]

i could care less about the XP start menu coming back the search function is all you need to find your programs

 

[knightmike]

Thanks, Microsoft, for coming out with another OS so soon. I'm sure the price tag will steer even more people towards Linux and that benefits all of us.

 

[knightmike]

Thanks, Microsoft, for coming out with another OS so soon. I'm sure the price tag will steer even more people towards Linux and that benefits all of us.

 

[A Stoner]

Well, I spent three hours trying to install Daemon Tools on Windows 7. All I got was a revolving door of please reboot. I spent an hour researching online other peoples ideas on how to get it to install, all to no avail. Crysis refused to run in 64 bit mode. All of my drivers are fully up to date. my BIOS is new. Everything is perfect in my rig. I spent top dollar for windows VISTA ULTIMATE at launch, so I could play games in DX10, I uninstalled it and went back to Windows XP Pro. I was hoping that vista would have fixed some of the problems. I think the single biggest mistake on the part of Microsoft is the applefication retardation of a power users product. If I wanted and Apple, I would just buy the real deal. I want an operating system that I can use. Not an operating system that abuses me. How many times do I have to tell the OS that I trust software from a certain company? How many times do i have to tell it install a program? You have chosen to install a program downloaded from the internet, are you sure you trust the software? The software that you just said you trust is going to make changes to your system, are you sure you want to make those changes, even though we are not going to tell you exactly what those changes are going to be? In order to continue, please type in your administrator password. Can you verify that with a fingerprint scan? Ok, well, we are going to have to ask for a DNA sample, please slit your wrist to conintue. We are almost complete with this installation, in order to complete, please sign over your first and third born children to us. Installation complete, do you want to run the software you just installed? You are trying to run a program you installed from a file you downloaded from the internet from a company you trust and have many times before instructed us to run this software, but we have to ask one more time, are you sure you want to do this?

By the way, I was installing with user account turned completely off. It still as asking if I was sure.

The retarded way they do the taskbar. I like having a quicklaunch bar thank you very much. Where is it? How about the wonderful clock zone. Says I can configure it to show or not show certain background tasks. Nope, does not seem to work. Every single thing I hated about VISTA still there. New things to hate, check. Something useful to make suffering through the crap? Sorry not there.

Microsoft is on a steep slipery slope down a path that will eventually lead to another company having an opening into the OS market. As it tries to out iPod Apple, it is going to leave the door wide open to another company, google maybe, to step in and take over what Microsoft built, which is a powerful OS that is capable, adapable, and most importantly user configurable.

Someone posted something about the difference between simple and easy. Vista and Windows 7 are certainly simple (stupid), but not easy.

Add on, I guess I can think of one thing that seemed improved over XP. When crysis crashed, it did not require a reboot. Then again, crysis just simply crashed immediately. Black screen, error in the background, but at least I could see task manager on the other screen and force kill it. Where when it dies in XP I have to hit the reset button, hear a a squeal as the built up hate is released through my speakers and wait for it to boot back up.

 

[Wizwill]

I was very pleased with the initial installation. Everything (and I mean everything!) worked first time, even my Audigy Platinum sound card. I did have to download a few drivers and some small apps (WinAmp).

I am somewhat concerned that I can't get into the folders remotely resembling "Documents and Settings" in order to add my saved bookmarks from Firefox. I'm unable to unlock that folder. I'm also concerned that it seems difficult to include the Windows 7 box with other computers on my home network.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well this thing ran on a 3.2 gig Prescott on an old 875 chipset mainboard with 2 Gb Of RAM and a 32 Mb Matrox dual head video card. However the truly amazing thing was that it found and loaded correctly on a parallel SCSI hard drive with no other drivers installed except what was built into the OS. Kudos MS

 

[A Stoner]

I agree with Wizwill. It did install very well. It also did not require any drivers for the raid, found my x-fi audio card. Unfortunately, that was pretty much where the honeymoon ended for me. The first thing I did was make sure everything was updated completely. Installed AVG. Then I tried to install Daemon Tools, and my hatred for Vista reemerged as windows repeatedly refused to install my software. Asked me repeatedly if I was sure I wanted it to do what I asked it to do, even after turning off completely the user account crap, rebooted my computer because it cannot turn it off or on for that matter, without rebooting. Then, after resorting to another virtual cd software I installed crysis, updated to 1.2.1 and was greeted with a black screen and a warning pop-up that it failed, that just so happened to be UNDER the black screen and would not come to the front. If the OS cannot do it's job, it is pointless to have it. The OS needs to be the base of a computer environment. That means capability, compatibility, stability and most of all enjoyability. While it aces stability, it barely passes on capability while it fails on compatability and and most of all enjoyability. If it was supposed to be frustratingly difficult, I would give it an A+.

 

[everygamer]

I've loaded the windows 7 beta, and other than some organization changes I felt i was using Vista. This feals like a patch, not a *next version* os.

I was also dissapointed with its performance and from what I saw some network and disc access delays. Im not running it on the best hardware but it was hardware shipped with vista. One would think that they had improved on the performance from vista to W7.

 

[captaincharisma]

what is with you people "waaaaaaa! my programs do not work in a OS that is supposed to be used for TESTING purposes only!" its the 1st beta people you know what a beta program is do you?

 

[Guest]

amazing how people blame microsoft for a game not working out of the box on a beta OS. lets see, beta, check, not all features enabled, check, well over 6 months till release, check, game developers that are commonly at fault for things not working, check.

Why don't you trying taking the average game, buying a Mac and/or a Linux machine, and then see how far you get? whats that, 95% of the games don't support one or the other, or neither, NO WAY... well, it's not beta software, have your tried installing it anyway? well, probably microsoft fault as well.

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]Rome57[/nom]Why windows 7 dosen't work with Punkbuster software???[/citation]
Correction: Punkbuster doesn't work with Windows 7.

Better yet: Punkbuster doesn't work.

[citation][nom]Siffy[/nom]They do not sound the same unless you are pronouncing one incorrectly. If it were a pun, the word beta should have been followed by [sic] to denote that it was misspelled intentionally.[/citation]
Uh-oh, the grammar nanny is on the loose.

 

[ravenware]

[citation][nom]Doby[/nom]amazing how people blame Microsoft for a game not working out of the box on a beta OS. lets see, beta, check, not all features enabled, check, well over 6 months till release, check, game developers that are commonly at fault for things not working, check.Why don't you trying taking the average game, buying a Mac and/or a Linux machine, and then see how far you get? whats that, 95% of the games don't support one or the other, or neither, NO WAY... well, it's not beta software, have your tried installing it anyway? well, probably microsoft fault as well.[/citation]


Not sure who your comment is directed towards as my interpretation of the os is positive. I immediately noted an issue playing a game because I am gamer but also noted that another (more professionally developed) game ran smoothly with no issues.

But not sure how much you can real blame a developer for making a game that isn't compatible with an os that didn't even exist

 

[Guest]

"But not sure how much you can real blame a developer for making a game that isn't compatible with an os that didn't even exist"

Could be that they used a work around exploiting something in older OSs which was subsequently fixed in the new OS. Chances are if the programmers followed proper procedure in all cases they would be 100% backwards compatible with a new Windows OS. Not saying this is always the case, but game programmers will generally use any exploit or loophole they can to improve performance, even if it means doing it in an insecure way.

 

[A Stoner]

Windows 7 is supposed to be pretty much 99% if not 100% driver compatible with VISTA according to most reviews I have seen out there. The typical statement is, "if your hardware has working drivers in vista, those drivers will work in windows 7". That is from professional reviewers who are paid to check out software.

I had every single one of these problems with Windows Vista Ultimate and the games were MADE FOR WINDOWS VISTA. The failure to be able to install programs. The failure to get installed programs to function reliably. The impossibility to access functions that were available on Windows XP because Microsoft decided that a single setting was all every single person on the planet would ever need, and that they would be the gate keepers on that setting.

If that is the direction Microsoft continues on, then I will stick with Windows XP until some other software comes along that is actually better than XP. It is not Windows 7, it is Windows Vista with a new paint job. If anyone would like to tell me where there is any real difference between Vista and Windows 7 outside of aesthetics, please feel free to edumacate my retarded ass.

Windows 7 is Vista with a paint job. The reviews certainly seemed to say that Windows 7 removed many of the most hated features of Vista, but I can not tell the difference between the two, outside of the less user friendly taskbar.

 

[Fungo Batte]

I agree about MS leaving out 'oldsters' and power users. The changes in Vista looked nice, but actually made the OS way more tedious to work with, especially for heavy users. Win7 doesn't seem to reverse that trend in any major way.

MS used to recognize that features needed to be a) discoverable, AND b) efficient in the long haul. Now it's like they just don't care if anyone can become efficient or not, as long as they go "Oooh!" over the flashy new features for the first five minutes.

I'm still waiting to see something that makes Win7 look like a more compelling "upgrade" from WinXP than Vista was. "Less broken" is NOT a strong recommendation...

 

[e_sandrs]

[citation][nom]A Stoner[/nom]I agree with Wizwill. It did install very well. It also did not require any drivers for the raid, found my x-fi audio card. Unfortunately, that was pretty much where the honeymoon ended for me. The first thing I did was make sure everything was updated completely. Installed AVG. Then I tried to install Daemon Tools, and my hatred for Vista reemerged as windows repeatedly refused to install my software. Asked me repeatedly if I was sure I wanted it to do what I asked it to do, even after turning off completely the user account crap, rebooted my computer because it cannot turn it off or on for that matter, without rebooting. Then, after resorting to another virtual cd software I installed crysis, updated to 1.2.1 and was greeted with a black screen and a warning pop-up that it failed, that just so happened to be UNDER the black screen and would not come to the front. If the OS cannot do it's job, it is pointless to have it. The OS needs to be the base of a computer environment. That means capability, compatibility, stability and most of all enjoyability. While it aces stability, it barely passes on capability while it fails on compatability and and most of all enjoyability. If it was supposed to be frustratingly difficult, I would give it an A+.[/citation]

You did check the Daemon Tools forums and see that the developers have specifically stated that it doesn't run on Windows 7 and they will not fix the issue until a final version is released?

Maybe you should direct your complaint to the software vendor instead of the OS manufacturer...