Anyone here install windows 7 yet? [Archive]

mromero

10-26-2009, 02:39 PM

Windows 7 is a major overhaul.

Boots up faster, runs faster, gorgeous user interface, excellent support for legacy programs drivers - no looking back.

Here is a good review: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/12/windows-7-review/

Why does your printer need 64 bit drivers? Win7 comes in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Has anyone taken the plunge and installed windows 7 yet? What do you think?

(curious, waiting for printer driver (still) to upgrade to 64-bit, and holding off a bit until I have more time.)

Jeff

10-26-2009, 03:08 PM

Why does your printer need 64 bit drivers? Win7 comes in both 32 and 64 bit versions.
I'd like to have more RAM available to apps such as photoshop (and hopefully others if 64-bit finally starts to catch on with the world.) Stitching panos and such, I'm definitely hitting the limit with the per process max ram under the 32-bit. But with the XP and Vista eras, I couldn't get either driver or software support to take advantage of 64-bit. It's probably a lot to hope for a rapid 64-bit evolution with windows 7 though... probably more reaslistically it will take a year or two even if 7 does finally start to point a few more people in the 64-bit direction.

(maybe if SSDs keep getting faster, that will hold me over too.)

Kevin

10-26-2009, 04:23 PM

johnfl68

10-26-2009, 04:24 PM

I have been running the Windows 7 RC for a while now, and very happy. Can't afford to get the full release until probably after the 1st of the year.

Experts say 32 vs. 64 decision should be based on your existing hardware needs. If you have relatively new hardware, it should not be a problem finding 64 bit drivers. If you have older hardware, chances are 64 bit drivers are less than likely to ever become available.

Have you tried the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/upgrade-advisor

John

Jeff

10-26-2009, 05:37 PM

If you are running 64bit Windows then all of your drivers need to be 64bit. If you have hardware with only 32bit drivers then you can't go to 64bit Windows unless you want to give up that hardware.

I'm ready to drop a microtek scanner if I can't get a 64-bit driver now as I don't find myself scanning photos or slides any more (that was an additional hangup last time around, which seems like ages ago now, and yet...)

I prefer printers that don't need drivers at all :P
You'd think with everything ethernet and postscript, it wouldn't be an issue. You'd think. :EG::dunno::umm: I can go the pdf route, but then I lose the little functionalities that the native drivers provide such as variable data via impose, duplexing, and color settings such as whether to print black as plain black or rich black... it's frustrating in that I believe all the heavy lifting is done on the printers themselves, but EFI seems just horrible in keeping up with drivers for their Fiery controllers, though I'm not overly sold on the "easy peasy" networking and such - sometimes I find such wizardy more time consuming than older basic input "enter what you want and forget it" approach.

Also I hear that even though photoshop is 64-bit at last, plugins are still largely 32-bit. I guess I was too young and not have enough stuff to feel the 16- to 32-bit pain way back when.

It's not like 32-bit doesn't work quite well, but it sure would be nice to break out of the 2 GB / 3 GB / 4 GB envelope and not have to think about compromises like swap space to disk in photoshop at last. Windows 7 might be smooth enough to add a little extra time for workarounds and take the plunge, though I'm not sure looking at the nice looking screen shots yet whether I'll like the latest wizardry or whether I'll find it so "easy" that it turns out to be more time consuming than the oldschool "enter what you want" and it works approach. It does look pretty slick though from the screenshots...

mromero

10-26-2009, 11:58 PM

It's not like 32-bit doesn't work quite well, but it sure would be nice to break out of the 2 GB / 3 GB / 4 GB envelope and not have to think about compromises like swap space to disk in photoshop at last. Windows 7 might be smooth enough to add a little extra time for workarounds and take the plunge, though I'm not sure looking at the nice looking screen shots yet whether I'll like the latest wizardry or whether I'll find it so "easy" that it turns out to be more time consuming than the oldschool "enter what you want" and it works approach. It does look pretty slick though from the screenshots...

I believe one solution you may think about is to stick to Windows 7 32 bit and use a second hard drive as swap for Photoshop.

HD prices are ridiculously low and this approach will substantially speed up image manipulation while keeping compatibility with most any drivers. And you can use your second HD as a backup for images etc.

I know if you try Windows 7 you will say Hasta La Vista Baby!

Kevin

10-27-2009, 12:17 AM

I believe my printer will work on Windows using just the ppd file that I use in Linux. I wouldn't know though because I haven't found a productive use for Windows since the 90s and never bothered to setup my printer on my Windows box. The closest thing I can think of to something I would do on Windows that includes printing is Visio and I haven't done that in many years now.

BTW, my old Umax SCSI scanner does not support any OS newer than Windows 95. They did release a Windows 98 driver for it but it required a newer version of the firmware which they refused to provide. Works just fine in Linux though of course.

Have you tried the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...pgrade-advisor
I tried this after you posted it. It requires .NET which I have been refusing to install for a long time because it is known to screw up FireFox (not that I even use FireFox on Windows). Well, I decided I would go ahead and try it anyway despite the risk. First I wanted to backup the Windows system just in case .NET screwed things up. After that 5 hour adventure (there is no good way to backup a Windows system) I did the .NET install. The advisor tool still didn't work. It claims I am not connected to the internet (so how did I get the tool?). I haven't found anything that the .NET install screwed up but then I haven't looked at the box since it gave me the nonsense about not being connected.

Kevin

10-27-2009, 12:31 AM

OK, I am an idiot. I forgot that you have to reboot Windows every time you sneeze. After I rebooted the computer the advisor tool does work.

However, it doesn't provide much useful information. It says it doesn't know about either of my disk controllers and the only installed application that it says is compatible with Windows 7 is the tool itself.

skolnick

10-27-2009, 01:18 AM

How does the upgrade go? Is it a clean start or a real upgrade? I can't imagine trying to reconstruct all the applications I have running on my Vista 32 boat computer.

Jeff

10-27-2009, 02:40 AM

I believe one solution you may think about is to stick to Windows 7 32 bit and use a second hard drive as swap for Photoshop.

HD prices are ridiculously low and this approach will substantially speed up image manipulation while keeping compatibility with most any drivers. And you can use your second HD as a backup for images etc.

I know if you try Windows 7 you will say Hasta La Vista Baby!
The hard drive approach is what I did for my last upgrade when I went from XP 32-bit and stuck with Vista at 32-bit - since more RAM wouldn't be utilized under 32 bit nor was CPU my bottleneck much any more, I spent my money a in 2008 with a RAID setup of 8 sata drives for main storage and 15k SAS drives for OS & SWAP. An additional 15k for swap would help now and I might toss another in or raid-1 a swap partition now that I'm doing more stitching, but I've been eyeing the SSD drives for an OS partition for the next upgrade which would give me the 15k drives as spares for a swap partition - the ssds are still quite pricey for the performance write speed and over 60 GB which I don't think I could fit under any longer for the OS partition for windows :confuz:

Overall I will have spent a lot of money on the storage system because I'm leaning on it heavily due to lack of a software solution. It would really be nice if in the next couple years we can utilize ample RAM and even have an operating system/software smart enough to do things like multiple-image prefetching when you open one of a series to really buffer from the slower IO system, no-fuss RAM drives to print spool to, save instantly to and then have it buffer in the background, etc. unless hardware outpaces software and SSD drives provide us with nearer RAM speeds before software gets smart enough to use RAM to buffer so we no longer see the slower disk IO speeds.

Jeff

10-27-2009, 02:41 AM

How does the upgrade go? Is it a clean start or a real upgrade? I can't imagine trying to reconstruct all the applications I have running on my Vista 32 boat computer.
Also curious how an upgrade from Vista goes. I haven't been brave enough to try a windows upgrade instead of a clean install since windows 95 :blah: I've just treated 2000/NT/XP/Vista as opportunities to do a major upgrade and start 100% clean...

Jeff

10-27-2009, 02:48 AM

I believe my printer will work on Windows using just the ppd file that I use in Linux. I wouldn't know though because I haven't found a productive use for Windows since the 90s and never bothered to setup my printer on my Windows box. The closest thing I can think of to something I would do on Windows that includes printing is Visio and I haven't done that in many years now.

BTW, my old Umax SCSI scanner does not support any OS newer than Windows 95. They did release a Windows 98 driver for it but it required a newer version of the firmware which they refused to provide. Works just fine in Linux though of course.

I have one of those umax scsi scanners in the attic -- great scanners, but as you say, the drivers ran out so the hardware became a brick. I can't remember, but I may have figured out how to run mine under NT4 off a 2940 scsi controller back in the day, or else, maybe it was one of the bits of hardware that had me dual booting into 95 to scan... reboot to use the images... That got old fast and may have been when I got the first agfa scanner. I remember back then for a few months I had to reboot into windows 95 to plot to the old designjet; it was a great moment when they finally released NT drivers!

You'd think with USB/ethernet things were supposed to get easier.

With the printers now, it's not the big things, like what's actually on the print; it seems to be the little things like which drawer to print from or whether to duplex or use the finisher to staple that I end up waiting forever for the proper driver to come out to support. Ironic, since you'd think these simple "control" commands would be quite easy to program.

Well, at least it looks like Xerox+EFI will be a lot better than Canon+EFI as at least Xerox has windows 7 on the driver menu (though blank of drivers yet) whereas canon probably has no plans to support the machines still under lease with new drivers for 7 :grr:

Kevin

10-27-2009, 02:58 AM

In Linux with a PostScript printer I only needed the ppd file for full control including the duplexer.

Jeff

10-27-2009, 03:10 AM

Interesting -- well that sounds downright logical and simple :) With an OS that simple you'd even have spare time or, gasp, just get your work done without these fun diversions / tests of will ;)

One of these days I'll have to do some exploration; xerox gives us the ppd, but I've only had the xerox Fiery for a year so haven't upgraded my workstation OS before the full driver package came out yet, but canon who seem to have no desire to keep up with the postscript drivers for windows 64-bit or windows 7 give us no ppd files, though I see they do provide a PPD for mac but not windows (I never looked under the mac section before to see it there.)

Kevin

10-27-2009, 09:50 AM

A ppd is a ppd. It doesn't care what the OS is. They just put it in the Mac section because the printing system on the Mac is probably similar to other *NIX systems.

I never tried it but I was very surprised to see that the CD that came with my printer used a Windows port of CUPS which is what I use in Linux to talk IPP to the printer.

Mandi

10-27-2009, 02:30 PM

I've been playing with RC1 in Virtual Box for a couple months, and I really liked it. When my husband's 32-bit Vista box ran aground on registry errors AGAIN this summer (ARRRRRGHHH) I left it dead until he got back very recently from deployment abroad, and talked him into both a RAM upgrade (8 gB, max available on that board - up from 4, obviously only 3 being utilized under 32-bit) and 64-bit OS, with the idea that we just wait until Win7 was released. (He has a laptop to use as well.) I did the setup on Friday (full setup on a bare, zero-filled drive .. . I didn't want any traces of the old junk around, and I don't believe you can upgrade 32-bit to 64-bit anyway.) It was the single easiest setup I've ever done, and it's been rock solid since then (though five days is admittedly not a certain testing ground LOL!)

He's using Home Premium edition. When I decide to plunk down the dollars, I'll get Ultimate for myself . . . but I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-bit (with maxxed out 8 gB RAM) already, and that's been super steady for me. No rush over here, except for the "ooooh . . . ahhhhh" factor, and I can just play with his PC for that.

McDuff

10-29-2009, 10:57 AM

I bought a new Acer Travelmate 7730 two months ago. Pre-installed Vista business but with it came a "downgrade to XP pro" set and the option to replace Vista with W7 as soon as it it out.

I installed W7 RC as dual boot with vista on that machine. Seems to react a lot better and quicker than Vista on that machine or on our other laptop. For the rest, on our main computers we still use XP, so I don't have that much experience yet. Maybe the time has come to switch to W7.

For XP a clean install is necessary. Officially, for Vista not, but many sites mention it is worth the extra hassle to kick out Vista completely and do a clean install even if it is a bit more work. On my laptop, I will definitely do so!

Mandi

11-06-2009, 06:40 AM

Two weeks up now, and it's been perfect. I wanted to add a tip for anyone with several systems to upgrade - Costco has the Home Premium Family Pack (3 licenses) for about $120 (more or less, I'm sorry I don't recall the exact price!!) - less than NewEgg ($150), which has the pack on backorder at any rate. It's perfect for us - in addition to that initial 64bit desktop setup, I need to do 3 laptops. I've already done one, and it went very nicely (Vista 32bit --> Win7 64bit, plus a RAM upgrade to 4gB.)

The family packs ship with both the 32bit and 64bit DVD's. I'll get to the kiddo laptops as they wander back from college in coming weeks! Those will both be XP --> Win7 32bit upgrades . . . both are just 2 gB max systems (and have that onboard.)

I have a long standing New System Install habit of combing through and turning off unnecessary services once everything's in place. (I like this guide (http://www.blackviper.com/).) With Win7, I'm finding only one or two things I want to shut down . . . it's shipping smarter than it used to, for sure . . . and for the unsavvy end user, that's going to feel like a speedier system. (Well, also for the savvy user LOL . . . but at least I know why it's like that.)

Jeff

11-09-2009, 03:19 AM

Mandi

11-09-2009, 05:56 AM

Welllll . . . I can't see it. I habitually delete links to those sorts of programs upon setup, reflexively (LOL!) . . . so I can't say that I did or didn't do it with these setups. However, I also don't see it as an option to toggle on/off in Control Panel/Programs and Features/Turn Windows Features On or Off, which makes me think you must be right. I will pay closer attention when I do the last two laptop setups, one will be this coming weekend.

Bob

11-09-2009, 12:12 PM

Is it true that windows 7 doesn't include an outlook express / windows mail type mail client built-in? I wonder if this will finally start to push more people (the masses ;)) to using thunderbird, etc. for mail... (if they're not using web based for everything.)

That is correct, Windows 7 has no built in email client.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10048142-56.html

Windows mail is now under the Windows Live umbrella...
http://download.live.com/wlmail

-Bob

McDuff

11-18-2009, 05:16 AM

Had a very nice virus infection on our main network computer (virut variant), really nasty, hard to clean. :surrend: So I decided to do my first real clean XP OEM reinstall (format and install). Went well, more simpler than I thought, only the drivers for graphic and net took a bit puzzling. Bottom line: it's doable for an interested layperson and my computer definitely is quicker again. I will do a clean reinstall for W7 as well.

W7 upgrade. For the non-profit or educational organizations amongst us, have a look at www.techsoup.org (http://www.techsoup.org/stock/product.asp?catalog_name=TechSoupMain&category_name=Operating+Systems+MS&product_id=LS-44406&Cat1=Microsoft&Cat2=Operating+Systems+MS&CatCount=2&visit=1). They have a good very cheap software donation program, and now have a special on W7: the Enterprise version will set you back a staggering NINE US dollars :ytecstat:. (but apart from my laptop I cannot use it on our Czech computers :wah:)

Email program: how often do you really need your old emails outside your home or office or away from your laptop? I run pegasus mail on desktop, with a synchronized copy on laptop. PMail with its own build-in spam filter is still the best setup, period. No one comes close.

When I need to check or answer new emails on the road, I just use my laptop or on public computers go into questmail. Works a treat.

mromero

11-18-2009, 12:13 PM

Email program: how often do you really need your old emails outside your home or office or away from your laptop? I run pegasus mail on desktop, with a synchronized copy on laptop. PMail with its own build-in spam filter is still the best setup, period. No one comes close.

When I need to check or answer new emails on the road, I just use my laptop or on public computers go into questmail. Works a treat.

We used Pegasus many years ago but dropped it mainly due to its clunky interface. I see it has been re-coded but has a couple issues with Windows 7.

How does it compare to Outlook, Thunderbird or The Bat which many claim is the choice of power users?

Kevin

11-18-2009, 01:07 PM

Jeff

11-18-2009, 07:01 PM

I suspect this will mean at least a little bit larger market share for other mail programs. With gmail still being far more popular than live for those who want webmail, the "geek-prefered" mail clients should spark interest if someone goes to search for a program to use (instead of so many just using whatever is preinstalled - unless windows now leads them straight to live - that must be the push; having dominance of the free email client doesn't really get them anything I can think of, whereas getting users to live has a market benefit so I guess this makes sense. Maybe a win-win.)

McDuff

11-20-2009, 01:05 PM

Now that the Windows install process is fresh in your mind grab a spare box and do a Ubuntu Linux install on it and see how much easier that is. I am betting you will be amazed if you haven't seen it before.

Would like to do that but have absolutely no experience with linux. All our cheap non-profit computers and software runs on windows OS with office 2003 (standard set-up and OEM installed in Europe).

I do have some unused computers laying around, maybe I will try, but appart from curiosity, what's the advantage in our situation (honest question, seriously don't know).

Kevin

11-20-2009, 01:12 PM

Would like to do that but have absolutely no experience with linux. All our cheap non-profit computers and software runs on windows OS with office 2003 (standard set-up and OEM installed in Europe).

I do have some unused computers laying around, maybe I will try, but appart from curiosity, what's the advantage in our situation (honest question, seriously don't know).
I helped my dad pick out his very first computer (a laptop) about a week ago. I played with it for a few minutes to make sure all the hardware was working and compatible then I handed it to him and told him to install Linux on it. He figured out how to do that before he figured out how where the power button was. It really is that easy.