Advice needed thinking of upgrading to Windows 7

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I'm thinking of upgrading my PC to windows 7 home premium, i'm currently using XP with service pack 3, so i would like to know would the jump be really worth it ie advantages or indeed any disadvantages what does it do that XP doesn't ? i never really liked vista (i have it on my laptop) also what is the difference in the 32 bit and 64 bit versions, and how many PCs laptops can i install it on ? i'm also probably getting a monitor calibrator for Xmas so i would want to know if it would be compatible with W7, all feedback greatly appreciated :)
 
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You will find it starts up and shuts down much faster.

Other than looking a wee bit different, that's it!

64bit works much faster.
 
XP is not supported with MS or is not going to be supported long. W7 is a smooth OS and works great. Had it for a long time now and would never go back to XP. Vista was a waste of money for those that bought it.
 
legarm said:
Vista was a waste of money for those that bought it.
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There wasn't actually much wrong with Vista, and MS fixed the issues pretty quickly. I used Vista for over 3 years, and it was a massive improvement over XP. Granted 7 is an improvement over Vista, but the improvement from XP to Vista was far bigger.
 
I still install XP on my own computers as i find it much quicker to navigate round, im not one for all the flashy graphics and even have the visual effects on XP turned off.
Id ask yourself what benefits 7 would give you, if their arent any id say stick to XP.
 
Before you leap from XP to Windows 7 you might want to check that there are Windows 7 drivers for your PC's components and all your other accessories. Most things do work fine, but you may find a few things that don't have W7 drivers.

Don't bother with Vista, go straight to W7.
 
as said XP support will be coming to an end soon. to be honest i wouldnt necessarily let this force you down the road of upgrading, SP3 is rock solid stable these days for starters.

if youre not missing anything that W7 can offer you then id save my cash personally. the only real reason for the average user to switch to 64bit is going over 3.5gb memory as anything above is not recognised in 32bit.

as for vista, i was running vista 64bit before moving to 7 64bit.. differences? not much. just as stable, driver support is about the same. slightly tweeked interface..
 
W7 (and vista) are more "dumbed down" than XP, in the way that they've tried to make everything very easy to get to etc, however this makes it a pain sometimes to customise things. W7 has DX10&11 support though, which is the main reason I upgraded (I game :D)

The main difference between 32 and 64 bit, is 32bit can only access a maximum of 4GB of memory, 64bit can use a lot more, so if your doing things that require large amounts of RAM, I would suggest 64bit.
 
I upgraded the main system a few months ago from Vista 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit and it starts up in a heartbeat now :D

It's all very nice and quick whilst navigating, everything works fine including drivers etc, Photoshop CS5 64-bit and Lightroom 3 64-bit run like slippy stuff off a shovel and I've yet to experience a crash. Vista ran ok but nothing compared to this - although the 64-bit part could have something to do with it.
 
I like W7 because it's recognised everything I've plugged into it and sorted drivers automatically

none of the other OS's did that on my PC's
 
Lets set the scene so folks know where I'm coming from.

I have years of experience of using XP, used Vista on and off for a about a year and just recently (ie a couple of months) got a machine with 7.

IMO Vista is the most annoying OS I have used - slow, intrusive and definitely not an advance over XP.

I had read that 7 was the OS Vista should have been, but in my limited experience of 7 is, that yes, it is much better than Vista, but it still seems to "get in the way", if you see what I mean.

Support for XP may be on the way out, but I think it is an excellent OS.

What I want from an OS is it to be in the background, just getting on with things and XP does this very well.

I'm running an XP (SP3) PC with 2.66GHz dual core cpu with 2Gig of RAM and it sycthes through everything. In what must be close to 8 years now it had never crashed.

In my view it will be a sad day when the plug is pulled on XP.

Dave
 
hollis_f said:
WinXP = 1 BSOD per week.
Win7 = 1 BSOD per year.
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Windows ME = BSOD per minute hehe

I found XP pretty damn stable to be honest and very fast. Vista was a bit of a pig though and Windows 7 does seem to have the stability of XP with the interface of Vista.
 
Vista is Windows 6

Windows "7" is actually Windows 6.1

So I don't get the hate for Vista, but love of 7 from some people, when they are pretty much the same. Vista did have initial problems but they were sorted pretty rapidly, after that any issues you had with Vista were probably not Vista's fault. I used Vista from 2007 when it came out - I did benchmarks and compared early Vista to XP, and early Vista won. Once Vista's issues were sorted, it was fine operating system.

I used to have renew XP installations about once every 12months, but Vista lasted two years before it need a reinstallation.
 
redddraggon said:
any issues you had with Vista were probably not Vista's fault
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I agree, it's the users who are at fault because we don't have a clue. ;)

I'd say it's down to user experience, some get lucky and some don't. I do the same with my computer now as I did when I used XP so I'd say Vista was the problem for me. :)
 
I have XP 64 on my machine and Win 7 64bit on the wife's.

Yes, hers is a wee bit quicker (definitely so in the stop and start dept.) but a lot of that is down to 939 V AM3 and a lot faster memory.

However the speed difference, in the two OS, is certainly not anything to shout about from the rooftops!
 
neil_g said:
you have a driver and/or hardware issue with XP then ;)
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Indeed. XP is stable, as was 2000. 7 has proved stable as well, although Vista had "issues". Given the driver model implemented from Vista onwards where the drivers run at ring 3 it should not have been possible for a badly written driver to bring the OS down (BSOD), but it happened.

7 seems to have got rid of all the annoying stuff in Vista, although disabling UAC also made Vista a lot more useable. Plus the calculator application in 7 is very good now if you use binary.
 
gman said:
I agree, it's the users who are at fault because we don't have a clue. ;)
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I'm not necessarily saying it's the users either. Some manufacturers of components, either made shoddy drivers or no drivers whatsoever for Vista, which caused some of the issues.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Plus the calculator application in 7 is very good now if you use binary.
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Ooooo, I just tried that and it's given me a headache! lol


redddraggon said:
I'm not necessarily saying it's the users either. Some manufacturers of components, either made shoddy drivers or no drivers whatsoever for Vista, which caused some of the issues.
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Good point, but then can't these same manufacturers make shoody drivers for Windows 7 as well?
 
7 makes much better use of decent hardware - I dont get these people who build multicore systems with loads of RAM and cutting edge graphics cards and then install XP on it - XP's thread management is a joke by modern standards, and makes poor use of RAM, and cannot use modern graphics cards to their full capability.
7 is also more secure than XP, and in my opinion much nicer to use.
 
Win 7 64bit was a big improvement over xp in my experience except in one area. I made the mistake of buying the home version when I needed to network various pc/laptop/printer combos and found that home has very basic networking capabilities. If you take the plunge go the whole hog and buy the ultimate version.
 
Steep said:
Win 7 64bit was a big improvement over xp in my experience except in one area. I made the mistake of buying the home version when I needed to network various pc/laptop/printer combos and found that home has very basic networking capabilities. If you take the plunge go the whole hog and buy the ultimate version.
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Or save some cash and get the Pro version. Unless you need Bitlocker or multiple-language support.
 
Windows XP with SP3 is, hands down, Microsoft's best operating system to date. It is fast becoming the "NT4" of today, and probably will be for another 10 years at least. I still run it at home and I will for as long as I possibly can - apart from Windows 2000 being a close second, I've never used such a good, straightforward OS, that just does what it's told and doesn't confuse the hell out of the user.

I use Windows 7 at work and while it's fairly trouble free, there are always niggles from time to time. The fact that it often bugs out when a VPN fails as well is annoying.
 
As of today I now have a new PC built by my son. A small drive holding the operating system and a two terabite (sp) drives which are a mirror to provide a back up. A change to windows 7 and google chrome has me feeling my way about tonight but it will be worth it if it provides the stability and piece of mind when processing my pictures. If the above doesn't make sense to anyone, I apologies, but I'm not the techy in the family. I mean I thought raid was something that the police did when searching for drugs. :D
 
neil_g said:
you still have another copy other than on the mirror too though? using raid as a single point of storage is not a good idea.
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I honestly don't know. All I know is I have three drives. One with the operating system and two (terabite) drives one of which provides a back up to the other:shrug: I told you, I'm not a techy:lol:
 
It provides redundancy, not a 'real' backup. You shouldnt rely solely on RAID for backup.
 
So, what Gazza is saying is that you really should get a large external drive and make regular backups of your OS and data to that drive. A 1TB USB drive will do it, albeit slowly.
 
neil_g said:
out of interest how so? not come across that one before
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If the VPN fails to connect on "verifying username and password" it will just hang. When you press cancel, the dialogue box will go away, but you won't be able to dial out any other VPNs because clicking the network icon in the bottom right doesn't do anything. You have to force quit Explorer and then re-run it from the task manager to get it going again.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com...k/thread/92bf993e-8811-4fc0-8e01-fca7ba1c659e

VPNs and Windows 7, at least where I work, are a total nightmare. It's times like that I still wish I had an XP box.
 
hollis_f said:
So, what Gazza is saying is that you really should get a large external drive and make regular backups of your OS and data to that drive. A 1TB USB drive will do it, albeit slowly.
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I can't see what a difference there is between an internal and an external drive TBH. I'm probably missing something though.:thinking:
 
Doog said:
I can't see what a difference there is between an internal and an external drive TBH. I'm probably missing something though.:thinking:
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It's all about how doom-laden you are.

If you have a backup external drive at a different address and your house burns down, you will still be OK as regards your data.

Personally, I have 6 backups throughout my house.

If the house burns down, I will have a heck of a lot more to worry about than 90,000 photos!
 
trencheel303 said:
If the VPN fails to connect on "verifying username and password" it will just hang. When you press cancel, the dialogue box will go away, but you won't be able to dial out any other VPNs because clicking the network icon in the bottom right doesn't do anything. You have to force quit Explorer and then re-run it from the task manager to get it going again.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com...k/thread/92bf993e-8811-4fc0-8e01-fca7ba1c659e

VPNs and Windows 7, at least where I work, are a total nightmare. It's times like that I still wish I had an XP box.
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genuinely not come across that.. :thinking:

Mikesphotaes said:
If the house burns down, I will have a heck of a lot more to worry about than 90,000 photos!
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true, its all about priorities.. photos arent replacable by insurance mind :)
 
My biggest gripe with windows 7 is the lack of support for outlook express, I hate windows live mail and don't do too well with thunderbird either :bang:
 
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