Windows 7

The only major differences between the Premium and Ultimate editions are the XP compatibility mode and that Bitlocker crap, right? And about £100 in price.

Baffles me why there isn't just one edition with everything in it.

http://www.beyondtv.org/nato/crap/capitalismrocks.jpg

Anyway, with a bit of luck our next PC will have this on it and I can avoid having to live with Vista ever.

Amazed that Microsoft dropped the cutesy names and went back to plain ol' numbers. But retro-stylee would require it to be Windows 7.0, no?

I shall be getting a copy for parallels using the very attractive student offer they have going at the moment.

Windows 7.1 actually xp

I'm thinking about doing that too Ed but I'm worried that MS has snuck some anti-Mac compatibility stuff into W7

I've had no end of trouble with the UAC in Vista and Windows 7 seems to be just as bad.

Windows 7.1 actually xp

Windows 7 is actually version 6.1.

xp is 5.1!

Been using Windows 7 for nearly a year now as m main OS from one of the beta releases. Had some early compatiability issues with software and hardware, but sa far as I can tell everything is smoothed out now on my system.

Yeah, I've had the RC on my server since they released it, and it's been fine and lovely on there (the new version of media centre is especially nice). But I'm holding off using it on my lappy because it's not going to play well with the network at work, apparently. And sticking with XP on my desktop because of soundcard compatibility issues.

okay I just watched the video and wow

I should say, I watched about 2 minutes before I stopped it so I could go grab the Host Notes from the Windows 7 Party Website in order to prepare for my awesome Windows 7 Party

I'm pretty butthurt that nobody's invited me to one yet.

I've been using Windows 7 for a month or so - it's really great, like Vista with all the annoying shit taken out. The "drag window to the side of the screen to dock" thing is insanely useful, to the extent that it annoys me when I can't do it on XP. The sleep mode doesn't play nice with my nvidia graphics card, tho I think that's nvidia being annoying rather than ms. Getting etworking to go with my XP laptop is a pain tho. Win7 can see the Shared Docs folder on XP, but XP can't see anything on the Win7. V. Annoying!

wow that video makes me want to commit murder

that's exactly what they want

They don't even have a stake in your committing murder. Some operating systems just want to watch the world burn.

http://www.coated.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/windows-7-whopper.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcnpi_gM2Oc

Microsoft is hitting hard on the advertising theme that Win7 is simpler, leaner and faster. This is intriguing, but is it true? MS has been retailing Windows that are resource hogs since they put it on the market. It seems improbable that they would reverse field at this late stage and actually trim it down and optimize it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmiPzMY4nuE

I am on dial up. youtube urls are just an invitation to sit around for 30 minutes waiting fo it to load. that is an invitation I never accept. Could you be troubled to write 35 words of text on this subject for the youtube impoverished?

never mind, am0n. I can see now you have no useful information to share.

looool u mad?

for the dial-up stone age web surfers: youtube video of a commercial showing a doughy adult male proudly claiming he came up with the windows 7 ability to "snap" two separate windows together

So glad I switched to OS X a year ago.

And that commercial in the first post is unforgivable.

like snapping 2 windows together is some sort of game-changer in the OS world

hahahaha.

when I first started using OS X, I was surprised that everything actually, you know, worked. which shows how high XP set my expectations for operating systems.

have you guys seen what the new MICROSOFT RETAIL STORE looks like?

check it out: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/22/microsoft-stores

YouTube user VonHelp sums it up nicely:

Shameless, the floor, the way computers are arranged and the "Ritual" of high five. An excellent copy... well done Microsoft you are almost like apple, just fix the crashes, the virus, get an iPhone, iPod, and an Appstore.

eh i don't even want to get into mac vs pc. im just in it for the inept microsoft marketing lols

Windows is not 'bloated' anyone who thinks this is showing ignorance of OS's, what is bloated is the computers people get from OEMs which are full of trialware crap that helps to bring down the prices.

XP with SP2+ is a great OS, Vista had problems till SP1

The problem is MS needed to start getting it right from the get go.

Windows 7 is only superficially different to Vista, however it's Vista + a few service packs and a bit of polish on the UI.

Mainly a PR release.

From a user's perspective that is true although XP was getting gnarly from a sysadmin's point of view. There's a lot of under the hood bloat removed from Vista to get to 7 which should make it pretty good. I'm looking forward to installing it this week and finding out just how good it is.

Totally OTM about MS's need to get an OS right the first time for the majority of users.

7 is pretty good so far (I got it for free ^_^)

So when did Microsoft decide that the theme of "extreme Bible camp survivor" was the way they wanted their marketing to go?

A party?!

I'm a sysadmin with around 6000 users, XP has been amazing for us, Vista/7 promises to maintain that nice OS stability, the new management shit is great but then Group Policy Prefs was fine

I've been using 7 for around a month and it's great, but then Vista was fine also and XP was okay but you could tell the hardware was starting to outstrip it.

VMs have made the upgrade a non brainer, I can run anything I need to in my XP VM.

Multicore/SSD etc all better with W7/Vista

for the dial-up stone age web surfers: youtube video of a commercial showing a doughy adult male proudly claiming he came up with the windows 7 ability to "snap" two separate windows together

― am0n, Sunday, October 25, 2009 10:38 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

There's a freeware program called Gridmove that's been doing that for years. It takes up about 4mb of RAM and it's great, and they should sue the ass off of Microsoft. Sue the doughy guy too.

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/07/28/9850416.aspx#9852298

In the taskbar, click the button for the first window you want to position, then hold the Ctrl key and right-click the button for the second window. Select Tile Vertically. Bingo, the two windows are positioned side by side.

Why u guys r hating ,,, u didnt hate apple when they did these ads about microsoft ,, so microsoft had to fight back ... plus 10 yrs ago u guys wouldnt even know what apple is ,,i do not hate apple ,, well i love it .. but i still respect microsoft for everything they did to the computer world ... and i think microsoft entered the history ,,, but apple didnt and will never do coz everything they did it was a copy of something else but with nicer design and featires.

anyone try this out on vmware fusion on a mac yet? does it run any faster than XP did (XP ran okay)?

Microsoft is hitting hard on the advertising theme that Win7 is simpler, leaner and faster. This is intriguing, but is it true?

In my recent experience, it does run much better on older hardware than Vista did. I have a 4-5 year old HP workstation with a 3.2 Pentium 4 and 4GB of ram. Not terrible specs, but Vista choked it to death, and 7 runs just fine.

Does it run better than XP?

Speed-wise, yes. Though it does have trouble with my network connections in a way that XP doesn't.

I mean, speed-wise, about the same. The machine was "Designed for Windows XP" as the little sticker says, so I can't really do better than XP for sheer performance.

Please to fix Windows Explorer, thx.

Doesn't refresh, so if you delete a load of files from a folder they still show. Sometimes even after you hit F5 a load of times. Have to click on another folder and then back on the original folder.

"folder not found" error-displaying after I deleted the folder so no shit it's not found

also really annoying - highlight a few files in a folder, click to sort a column e.g. modified date, the files are no longer highlighted. XP used to keep them highlighted if you change the view/sort

Some of the other problems I was having turned out to be "features" I could turn off, so if anyone knows how to stop the above from happening I'd be much obliged.

Opening a legitimate text file on a network directory can let someone gain access to your computer. Good job Microsoft. Affects XP on up.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms11-071#section1

good to see everyone stoked for windows 8

http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/windows_8_BSoD.jpg

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that"

Opening a legitimate text file on a network directory can let someone gain access to your computer. Good job Microsoft. Affects XP on up.

It must be fairly rare for someone to access a file from a network directory that a hacker would have access to, unless they'd already compromised the network, I'd think.

Amazing new features in Windows 8! Including Task Bar and Reset!

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/374587/30-best-features-of-windows-8

It’s possible, for example, to download the ISO of a Linux distribution or another piece of software to the desktop, double-click to “mount” the file, and run the setup executable without having to physically burn the ISO to disc.

o brave new world that has such features in it

Tapping in passwords on a tablet, even using Microsoft’s excellent soft keyboard, is hardly ideal. Picture passwords are an inventive alternative.

Select a photo from your library, make three gestures with your finger on the chosen photo – tapping each of your children in alphabetical order, for example, or swiping across three letters in a picture of fridge magnets – and that becomes your Windows login. Picture passwords can be used with both touchscreens and mouse controls.

this is like a rejected MS Bob feature. "no, that's too insecure, let's just reset the password after 5 failed attempts instead"

tapping each of your children in alphabetical order

Does anyone know any good 3rd part media streaming software for Windows 7? There's a PS3 in the house and I'd love to just stream my movies/tv/music folders, but I don't want to drag everything away from their custom folders into the Windows Libraries stuff. If there's a way to just add folders or shortcuts to WMP, I haven't found it.

I mean, the most customizable thing about WMP is that I can choose it to sort stuff via genre or stars or other such BS. I want to just say "This folder, D:\My Music, stream the damn thing!"

ps3 media server works pretty well

The little icon for Windows 10 has appeared at the bottom of my screen. I have Windows 7 Home Premium right now. I've never done this before...should I upgrade? I'm generally content with what I have.

I've read, on a couple of standard tech news sites, that we have a year for the free upgrade, and should wait a while, because lots of bugs currently. I'm satisfied too, so will wait a little while at least, for thorough reviews.

Sounds good. I don't want to be stuck with something I don't really understand.

Right now you are content because you have the right drivers for your hardware and your software does what you need with no issues of compatibility. If your setup works for you, I'd be wary of an upgrade until I knew I could run my current software and get the drivers I need. Personally, I have some old peripherals, like a 10 year old scanner, and old software like Word 2002, I have no intention of replacing, so 7 works just fine for me atm.

Yeah, generally you shouldn't upgrade unless you have a good reason to do so.

I'm gonna stick with windows 7 for a while. I'll let other people test windows 10.

This tells some of the Win 7 goodies not on Win 10 (I already use the suggested free VLS instead of Windows Media Player, usually; much more reliable) At the very end there's a hands-on Windows 10 video:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8696949/windows-10-feature-loss

Yeah I've used VLC for around 10 years now, never going back to WMP.