Windows 7: A rebadged, much better Vista?

[Jared Twomey]

Yes, but from what I have seen, each time a new Mac OS X is released there's something new added.

I see Windows 7 as Vista Second Edition.

Not this year, Apple has pretty much said that Snow Leopard will be Leopard, just polished and sped up a bit, pretty much the same thing Windows 7 will be to Vista.

I have used Vista since early on, and it had its issues. It runs pretty solid now though, and I actually hate working on an XP machine. It seems so dated and old.

I installed the 7000 build of Windows 7 a few days ago and have pretty much made it my production machine. It runs very very well for a beta, and there are some great new features. It runs faster and less compute intensive than Vista and boots much faster. And I have installed every program and application I have on my Vista partition, including a few that it warned me there may be problems with... and I haven't had a problem yet.
What I was really impressed with was that it recognized ALL of the hardware in my laptop with no problem.

I'm sold, its solid and will hopefully only get better from here.

 

[navychop]

I assume 7 will not be solely 64 bit. Our accounting program, and some others, will not run on Vista 64 bit.

 

[Jared Twomey]

I assume 7 will not be solely 64 bit. Our accounting program, and some others, will not run on Vista 64 bit.

I'm using 32 bit Windows 7

 

[Gib4500]

I'm using windows 7 beta right now. I am dual booting vista and the new windows. Windows 7 seems very snappy. Bootup is very fast compared to vista. I have a quad core q6600 processor and 8 gb of memory.

 

[meStevo]

64bit has now leaked, and it's expected a public beta is going to be announced tonight.

 

[The Insider]

I was just about to buy a new pc, I wonder if I should wait.....

 

[Neutron]

Anyone download the public beta yet?

 

[Pepper]

Their servers are swamped. Earlier, I could sign up then it would take me to an error page. Now it just says server is too busy.

 

[navychop]

I was just about to buy a new pc, I wonder if I should wait.....

It's going out beta. Could be a year or two before it's sold retail. It's anybody's guess.

 

[meStevo]

Given how solid build 7000 is and the dates the beta expires, the dates for the upgrade program in the other thread... we'll see Windows 7 this fall.

 

[Jared Twomey]

It's going out beta. Could be a year or two before it's sold retail. It's anybody's guess.

Steve Ballmer did say in his Keynote at CES that it was almost finished. I would be really surprised if they didn't start shipping it later this year. Its not like its a totally new OS, its a cleaned up Vista, and from using the Beta (which I am using exclusively, deleted my Vista partition), it is pretty much ready. It is solid.

 

[Art7220]

Let's say you downloaded it from the MS site. How do you get the keys?

 

[Jared Twomey]

Let's say you downloaded it from the MS site. How do you get the keys?

From the MS website. Supposedly that is all part of acquiring the beta... sign up, download, get keys.
Hopefully the servers come back up soon.

 

[Pepper]

Signup pages and keys might not be available yet but here are the DVDs.

x64 http://download.microsoft.com/downl...0_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO

x86 http://download.microsoft.com/downl...00_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

Supposedly can install without a key, hopefully you can sign up and get one before the 30 days runs out.

Note: get these patches before you attempt to play any media (mp3 etc)
x64 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c56bf3c-9370-4fda-b4c8-5dc63d55626d
x86 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a754008b-d574-4e39-b4ba-67b859a242b7

 

[TheForce]

I needed a much more robust OS for editing HD (Blue Ray) video projects. The level of video called for more than 3Gb of RAM to be able to edit HD video in real time. So, that meant Vista 64 on a system with a dual Quad Core, 8Gb of fast RAM and triple SATA hard drives in RAID for speed. Now I can edit two streams of 1080p x 1920 video in realtime playback with effects easily and the rendering is faster than real time.

The only issues I had with VISTA 64 has been the security headaches where when I tried to install the 64 bit edit software along with a 32 bit version. There was a mistake I made in the first install registration and it caused me to screw up the ownerships. There was no easy way to fix it so I spent two days reassigning ownership and admin privleges on 132 files in a number of folders before the problem was fixed. So, that one issue, I can't blame on VISTA.

My two printers work fine with 32 bit driver sets. One is an 11 x 17 MFC Brother inkjet and the second one is a MFC Color Laser by Brother. I also installed Adobe CS3 Production premium pack and have no problems with those. The Ultra II vector keying software crashes when I try to render with video source from a single SATA hard drive but with a RAID dual stripe data drive it feeds the frames of video fast enough to not tie up the renderring engine.

My second Vista is a recently purchased Dell XPS laptop I bought for my wife. It is Vista 64 with 4 Gb Ram as well. The only issue she reports repeatedly is that it loses wifi connection often and needs to be rebooted to re-establish the connection. While I'm here, she called me and said this time the wifi would not connect after several reboots. I told her to plugin an ethernet cable to the ethernet jack on the wall in the KItchen and it connected instantly. I'll need to check that out when I get home as to why the wifi is no longer working.

So that's it. What bothers me is after what, 2 years with VIsta now, people are jumping on the windows 7 in the belief that this beta release will be less buggy than the current Vista?
I don't see that as even possible.

So is it windows 7 a version?

Windows 1, 2 and 3
Windows for workgroups
Windows Mellinium
Windows 2000 or Windows NT
Windows XP
so that tells me that Windows 7 is like version 8.0

Then we also had tghe 64 bit versions of Windows XP and Vista

I'll just believe Windows 7 is just a name and has nothing to do with a version.

 

[Neutron]

Windows XP = 5
Windows Vista = 6

Windows XP should be Windows 4.5 or something to that effect, as it's Windows 2000 with a new GUI.

Windows Vista should be Windows 5.

Windows 7 should be Windows 5.5 or something to that effect since it's Vista redone.

 

[Pepper]

not quite...

Win2000 = NT 5.0
XP = 5.1
Vista = 6.0
"7" = 6.1

so yes, "Windows 7" is just the name of it, not the actual version number.

 

[Bulldog]

Windows 7 will make Vista a short lived operating system like “ME”; It’s no wonder that I as well as others have referred Vista as “ME-2”.

Maybe Windows 7 will make those corporate people that have been Vista hesitant finally make the transition from XP.

 

[charper1]

Windows 7 will make Vista a short lived operating system like “ME”; It’s no wonder that I as well as others have referred Vista as “ME-2”. Maybe Windows 7 will make those corporate people that have been Vista hesitant finally make the transition from XP.

They are basically the same, a few changes but same NT kernel; Vista is 6.0 and Win7 is 6.1

 

[tnsprin]

Windows 7 will make Vista a short lived operating system like “ME”; It’s no wonder that I as well as others have referred Vista as “ME-2”.

Maybe Windows 7 will make those corporate people that have been Vista hesitant finally make the transition from XP.

We don't know the planned release date. But based on when the betas came out, this is typical spacing for microsoft NT operating systems.