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Windows 7 Informations, opinions, experiences

#21 User is offline   jjbrr 

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Posted 2009-October-21, 15:51

I can honestly say I've never encountered a problem with Vista. No blue screen of death or anything. Lucky? Am I doing it wrong or something?
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#22 User is offline   hotShot 

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Posted 2009-October-21, 16:29

jjbrr, on Oct 21 2009, 10:51 PM, said:

I can honestly say I've never encountered a problem with Vista. No blue screen of death or anything. Lucky? Am I doing it wrong or something?

No, but I guess you have a fast multicore processor, at least 3 GB-Ram and a reasonable 3D-Accelerated Graphic-Card.

Reducing the security settings, helps to get rid of the annoying dialogs to enter the administrator password.
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#23 User is offline   inquiry 

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Posted 2009-October-21, 19:54

The only problems I have ever had with Vista is that one program that works on XP will not run on VISTA (some programs I had to put in compatibility mode). For what it is worth, the program will also NOT run on MAC's OS or other versions of LINUX. The second one is that for a while HULU software (I guess a version of Flash) would have mild problem occassionally if I went to full screen mode where I could no longer control the player with pause or go back to regular window mode. Choices were watch to end (in which case it ended normally and control returned) or use control-Alt-delete and kill the hulu window.

The Hulu thing appears fixed, and I have hope the software might run under Windows 7. I will let you know how I like windows 7, I am going to install it.
--Ben--

#24 User is offline   jjbrr 

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Posted 2009-October-21, 20:40

hotShot, on Oct 21 2009, 05:29 PM, said:

jjbrr, on Oct 21 2009, 10:51 PM, said:

I can honestly say I've never encountered a problem with Vista. No blue screen of death or anything. Lucky? Am I doing it wrong or something?

No, but I guess you have a fast multicore processor, at least 3 GB-Ram and a reasonable 3D-Accelerated Graphic-Card.

Reducing the security settings, helps to get rid of the annoying dialogs to enter the administrator password.

2GB ram. I went with a very cheap model, to be honest.
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#25 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2009-October-21, 20:42

Possibly I will be buying a new computer in the not too distant future. I read about problems but I don't have all that many, not serious ones anyway. Of course word is no doubt a real pain in tha ass on any OS, but I don't seem to have OS specific problems. I am writing this on a Vista powered machine, I often use an XP Pro downstairs. I am guessing that the problems occur when people want to do more complicated things than I do. Here on some things I do on both.

email of course
bbo of course.
LaTeX
Word if I must
Excel if I must

Here are things that I do only on my older XP (the Vista really is my wife's, although she would probably laugh if she heard me say so).
Mathematica (installed on the machine)
Transferring files from a remote machine (using SSH)
Run Matlab via VPN (some part of the program on my machine, guts elsewhere)
Convert pdf documents to, say, html using acrobat, edit them, convert them back to pdf.

Mostly I have no problems. Since firefox installed one of its later updates my gmail has been a little weird. Sometimes it won't load, especially when we switch accounts, and I have to click on the firefox settings tab and then click on gmail. This fixes it. Annoying but not fatal. (This probelm is only on the Vista, not the XP).


So I guess my question is this: If I replace my old XP machine with a newer one, say with Vista since probably no one knows yet about 7, am I apt to have problems doing the type of things discussed in the second list or are the problems more for those of you who do a lot of serious programming? I don't much do that.

One worry about vista: Like with many things frm Microsoft it seems reluctant to surrender control. Recently I scfewed the pooch somehow on the XP machine so that I could no longer switch between the three users I had set up. It was not that tough to find how to just revert to previous settings. I am clueless about how to do that in Vista. (I didn't know how in XP either, but a little exploration got me home).


So a more general question I guess would be: When people say Vista sucks, at what level are they talking about? What level user is apt to encounter the issues?
Ken
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#26 User is offline   blackshoe 

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Posted 2009-October-21, 21:29

inquiry, on Oct 21 2009, 09:54 PM, said:

The only problems I have ever had with Vista is that one program that works on XP will not run on VISTA (some programs I had to put in compatibility mode). For what it is worth, the program will also NOT run on MAC's OS or other versions of LINUX. The second one is that for a while HULU software (I guess a version of Flash) would have mild problem occassionally if I went to full screen mode where I could no longer control the player with pause or go back to regular window mode. Choices were watch to end (in which case it ended normally and control returned) or use control-Alt-delete and kill the hulu window.

The Hulu thing appears fixed, and I have hope the software might run under Windows 7. I will let you know how I like windows 7, I am going to install it.

I would be very surprised to find more than a few programs that would run, unmodified, under windows, MacOS, and Linux, or even any two of the three.
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#27 User is offline   inquiry 

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Posted 2009-October-21, 23:26

blackshoe, on Oct 21 2009, 10:29 PM, said:

inquiry, on Oct 21 2009, 09:54 PM, said:

The only problems I have ever had with Vista is that one program that works on XP will not run on VISTA (some programs I had to put in compatibility mode). For what it is worth, the program will also NOT run on MAC's OS or other versions of LINUX.  The second one is that for a while HULU software (I guess a version of Flash) would have mild problem occassionally if I went to full screen mode where I could no longer control the player with pause or go back to regular window mode. Choices were watch to end (in which case it ended normally and control returned) or use control-Alt-delete and kill the hulu window.

The Hulu thing appears fixed, and I have hope the software might run under Windows 7.  I will let you know how I like windows 7, I am going to install it.

I would be very surprised to find more than a few programs that would run, unmodified, under windows, MacOS, and Linux, or even any two of the three.

I simply meant that there was no alternative to run that program other than windows 95, windows 2000, or windows XP... It did run on a power mac using a windows XP emulator/thingee... at the moment, I don't remember the name of the program. The sentence was added to prevent the "windows sucks" use linux, etc response that sometimes comes along. I keep a windows XP machine just for that one program, and to try to keep my wife happy when I am no the real computer.
--Ben--

#28 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2009-October-22, 03:01

MattieShoe, on Oct 21 2009, 08:11 PM, said:

I will say it's almost never a good idea to install a new OS on an old machine -- Better to wait until you get a new one.

This may be true for Windows, but installing the newest Ubuntu on a ten-year old computer is fine.

My current laptop is from 2001. I bought it second-hand in 2006 for 120 Euro and the dealer had put XP on it but the disk and the ram were both too small to run XP smoothly. I put Ubuntu on it instead. It is running more and more smoothly for each Ubuntu upgrade so I have no plans of replacing it anytime soon. Oh well my work computer is from 2005 and will go on retirement this christmas so I will be allowed to take it home. If I can't find a charity that wants it I might as well keep it just in case my laptop crashes.

At work the IT dpt puts Ubuntu or XP on new computers, will replace XP with Win 7 at some point.

Ken, why don't you just put Ubuntu on your old computer instead of buying a new one? Doesn't sound like you need any microsoft stuff. But if you do you can always run it under VMWare, unlike Wine it is compatible.
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#29 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2009-October-22, 05:11

Walt Mossberg likes Windows 7. So does David Pogue. They're both pretty sharp and unbiased.

Quote

Mossberg: In recent years, I, like many other reviewers, have argued that Apple's Mac OS X operating system is much better than Windows. That's no longer true. I still give the Mac OS a slight edge because it has a much easier and cheaper upgrade path; more built-in software programs; and far less vulnerability to viruses and other malicious software, which are overwhelmingly built to run on Windows.

Now, however, it's much more of a toss-up between the two rivals. Windows 7 beats the Mac OS in some areas, such as better previews and navigation right from the taskbar, easier organization of open windows on the desktop and touch-screen capabilities. So Apple will have to scramble now that the gift of a flawed Vista has been replaced with a reliable, elegant version of Windows.

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#30 User is offline   MattieShoe 

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Posted 2009-October-23, 14:39

helene_t, on Oct 22 2009, 04:01 AM, said:

MattieShoe, on Oct 21 2009, 08:11 PM, said:

I will say it's almost never a good idea to install a new OS on an old machine -- Better to wait until you get a new one.

This may be true for Windows, but installing the newest Ubuntu on a ten-year old computer is fine.

My current laptop is from 2001. I bought it second-hand in 2006 for 120 Euro and the dealer had put XP on it but the disk and the ram were both too small to run XP smoothly. I put Ubuntu on it instead. It is running more and more smoothly for each Ubuntu upgrade so I have no plans of replacing it anytime soon. Oh well my work computer is from 2005 and will go on retirement this christmas so I will be allowed to take it home. If I can't find a charity that wants it I might as well keep it just in case my laptop crashes.

At work the IT dpt puts Ubuntu or XP on new computers, will replace XP with Win 7 at some point.

Ken, why don't you just put Ubuntu on your old computer instead of buying a new one? Doesn't sound like you need any microsoft stuff. But if you do you can always run it under VMWare, unlike Wine it is compatible.

Yeah, I was talking specifically about windows and MacOS. I have Ubuntu on my old laptop, works well :-) The only issue I've had is trying to make it play nice with an old USB wireless ethernet adapter.
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#31 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2009-October-23, 15:15

Suppose I wish to try my hand at the following:

I have a computer with XP, and another with Vista. I also have an older computer, maybe from the year 2002 or so, that is a disaster area. Is it possible to do the equivalent of waving a magic wand and remove everything that is on it and then start afresh with, say, Ubuntu? Just for the hell of it to see if I can do it?


History, if relevant:

1. I got this computer for $300 when a company crashed. I knew one of the guys and got what at the time was a very good computer very cheap. Windows 2000 on it.

2. I retired five years ago (college prof). A colleague entered the hospital and I agreed to take his class for a while, no charge. But he died so I got his class for the rest of the semester. I got a university owned computer to use at home and the school never asked for it back. That's the XP.

3. My wife used the old one and it got slower and slower. I took it in to school where a guy was to clean it and put on XP. He did, but it is now even slower. The state is going through a fiscal meltdown and the guy got laid off. He is gone.

4. If relevant, there may have been problems totally cleaning it. When I bought it for the $300, it was "as is" which seemed to include some encrypted data. I never figured out how to delete it. Also he seemed to have downloaded an enormous number of symphonies (no wonder the business went bankrupt, the engineers were all listening to Mozart!) that seemed to require deleting one by one. I never got around to it.

Think of this as something to keep Ken busy, not as anything essential. But if it is not too tough I may give it a try. I can imagine pitching it out, but I have a fondness for it.
Ken
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#32 User is offline   hotShot 

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Posted 2009-October-23, 16:06

If you are able to burn a CD-Image to an empty CD on one of your computers, you can download an ubuntu Cd from: here.

Pick the 32-bit version, it should run on any hardware from 2002 without much trouble.

The installation is not difficult, if you don't want to keep anything that is on the harddisk.
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#33 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2009-October-23, 16:19

Thanks, I will give it a shot/
Ken
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#34 User is offline   pigpenz 

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Posted 2009-October-23, 19:40

kenberg, on Oct 23 2009, 05:19 PM, said:

Thanks, I will give it a shot/

or you can load up virtual pc which is free from microsoft and run ubuntu in virtualization mode in xp or vista or win 7
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#35 User is offline   TylerE 

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Posted 2009-October-23, 19:42

When the problem is "PC too slow" I don't think Virtualization is the answer...
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#36 User is offline   mycroft 

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Posted 2009-October-27, 13:54

If you're comfortable in Linux, and have a really old machine, there are "minimal installs" that stay up to date. I have had good experience with DSL (D*** Small Linux) on a Pentium 150 "netbook" (old toshiba, back when they were called "subnotebooks" and sold to executives as $3000 desk organizer replacements), except that it didn't at the time handle the weird (1024x600 I believe, so I ran it 800x600) resolution of the beast. But it ran, and was a good browser/note-taker without overweening delays (certainly faster than the Win98 that was on it). Took minutes to boot, I will admit.
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