I've had it for a few days now, it's not that bad. I hear it has a lot of internal improvements over Vista, and from my usage of the OS I've noticed my boot time is a lot faster than Vista. The features from the theme seem to give it a sluggish feel though. Fresh from the installation it's not as intrusive as Vista, which is nice. I think the way they designed the UI this time around is an improvement, but I usually end up disabling a lot of the Aero stuff. The beta seems promising, but I still prefer XP. Note that my preference for XP isn't due to Vista or Windows 7, but because XP does what I want an OS to do.
If you install Windows 7 under Advanced, and format it over your old XP drive it will save your Programs and Documents (under "Drive:\Windows.old\"). You'll still have issues with re-activating programs with serials because of the format though, since the registry is void of old entries.
EDIT: Also, is there any other official word on the Audio? I haven't read up on Windows 7, but it seems to be improved even with the same drivers as Vista. Speaking of drivers, Windows 7 automatically detected my audio/video/NI cards and downloaded their corresponding drivers.
One thing to add. Windows 7 comes with IE8 Beta preinstalled. I could not run FFR on IE8 Beta because it would lag a lot. FF3 worked great though. I'm sure IE7 would work as well; haven't tried it though.
It must be a compability issue between Windows 7 and IE8.. i have the Beta IE8 on my computer and it runs perfectly, especially when it comes down to ffr. And another thing too, IE8 is a major improvement on Microsoft's behalf related to Browsing.. IE7 would lag an awful lot when you'd open more than two tabs at the same.. but then again it all depends on the specs of your computer.
And yet another great feature added in IE8, the compability fix. Now you can run websites in a compability mode with IE7. FFR was originally one of them, i had to fix it because most of the links would open, and couldn't post on the forum. But now everything is great. IE8 kicks ass.
And it's about time Microsoft fixed one of their biggest mistake of last two years - Windows Vista.
God seriously, the audio processing is far improved. I actually feel the music now. It sounds so clear. You can actually hear the minute details placed in music, the silent sounds I couldn't hear on XP as well. I'm gonna go with the highly improved audio clarity as my favorite feature of W7 so far.
so this is exactly what I thought Windows 7 would be.
Vista with less crap running.
I'll probably switch to this one if they make it to so you can disable any features you want.
Got Win7 working as a dual-boot with WinXP on separate drives. My old data drive now has a folder where all the original stuff on it was put into, along with the Win7 OS. Everything's working perfectly, both XP and 7 boot just fine and can access all of my files. Now if I ever want to get rid of Win7 I can just delete everything in that drive that isn't the folder with all my crap in it.
Programs are working perfectly, loving the new task bar, the UI is fantastic, and everything seems a lot smoother. I'll be testing some older programs in a bit, to see how things are going, but right now everything has worked without a hitch.
I've ran a few comprehensive tests with some programs to try and find bugs:
3DS Max 9: Works perfectly, renders simple to complex animations without error, no errors on installation, simply runs smooth as ever
Maya 8: Same as 3DS.
Various Adobe Software: All work without error, installation went smooth.
Games:
All Steam games run at higher FPS at higher quality strangely enough and I love it. They installed without a hitch.
Black and White 2 installed perfectly and runs smoother than used on XP.
Battlefield 2 installed perfectly and runs at higher FPS at higher quality.
WoW installed faster and more smoothly than ever was achieved by my XP OS. And the game runs at HELL OF A LOT smoother on this OS. My frames went up by 1/4.
Tried old games such as Age of Empires II, Starcraft, Diablo and diablo II, all installed and worked without error or mishap.
Again the audio on everything has a far greater clarity than XP or Vista seemed to have and what's really nice about W7 is it auto-installed all of the drivers every hardware and device my computer needed. Even my external devices like my webcam was updated.
Final conclusion, W7 is going to be the new flagship OS for Microsoft. It simply runs perfect. The animations are fluid, the resources are not heavily utilized especially by Aero like they were in Vista, the UI is FAR greater in visual stimulus and user-friendliness, and the layout for everything is simply awesome and easy to access.
I give major props to Microsoft for this OS. It will dominate the OS market.
That's the bulk of my equipment. Nothing is overclocked, everything is running at stock speeds. The only limitations I was overcome by was the maxing out of my graphics card and CPU while rendering a complex animation a friend made.
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