Provide Your Feedback on Windows 7

[Charmaine]

Hi All,

Microsoft would like your views & feedback on Windows 7.

So if you could put down your comments below that would be great. I can then pass them on to Microsoft.

Thanks :xsmile:

[Danno]

its great, seems to be their best one so far. i didnt really have any issues with vista but 7 just seems so much better.

[snakedoc]

Very Stable and fully functional OS out of the box. A pleasure to use with both modern hardware and some older laptops as well. Scales very well to your system. Good driver support from hardware manufacturer's and fairly compatible with older software. Virtual PC is a blessing when emulating IE6 or webdav. Performance is very good as drivers already seem mature unlike Vista's release which was plagued by driver problems and OS bugs.

Many of the features to me are simply gimmicks but I do like Jump lists and love the fading wallpaper effect. Aero shake is mainly useless to me as is document compare as I use two sceens. Media Centre is a big improvement over Vista although I find it quite annoying to see the gadget covered in Sky Adverts and would prefer this to be plain or only my recored shows. I would liek to see a functional Sideshow Gadget for this.

Home group could be useful to those with lesser ability, it certainly makes it easy to setup file sharing. I dislike the Games Explorer, it sometimes loses the icon images for games and you are unable to customise the Icons within, unlike Vista.

Much hardware works "out of the Box" with w7, such as obscure Bluetooth adapters and older TV cards. All in all a great experience and a pleasure to use most of the time.

I will add more when I think of it.

[Nox]

toooo big, toooo bloaty. :)

Down to 10 meg please.

Nox

[mrgoose]

Tried it and I have to admit it is quite good. However, we dumped Windows completely from all our business machines in 2007, following some very bad experiences with Vista (http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66&Itemid=58). Much to our surprise, we found that some of today's free, Unix-like OS's are very good. In fact, in some respects they are actually better than Windows 7, particularly in terms of lack of viruses, worms, trojans, spyies, keyloggers, adware, nagware etc.

Therefore to, persuade us actually to pay for an OS again, it would need to be a lot better than the free ones we are currently using. And the paid-for OS would have to be free from intrusive corporate spyware such as Windows Genuine Advantage. And I'd like the source code to be publicly accessible please. I prefer software whose source code is subject to continuous peer-review, that is publicly scrutinised for back-doors and other security exploits, rather than being forced to trust the PR and spin of a large and not-particularly-truthful American corporation.

Best wishes, G.

[Mr Grapes]

agreed with Nox...
although it is brilliant in most respects, it is too big and bloaty...
(i am still talking about ultimate edition from the RC version, so i don't know what starter/home editions are like from an install size point of view, but it would probably never fit on my wife's 16 gig netbook...)

[IainK]

i think windows 7 home premium on my dad's xmas present took up 10GB ish, so it would fit... just, doubt it'd run it very well though, i have a laptop with 2X1.7ghz and 2gig ram and i'm seriously considering downgrading from vista to xp

[snakedoc]

i think windows 7 home premium on my dad's xmas present took up 10GB ish, so it would fit... just, doubt it'd run it very well though, i have a laptop with 2X1.7ghz and 2gig ram and i'm seriously considering downgrading from vista to xp

it runs fine on my 1.25 gb laptop with only a single core. You will be suprised how well W7 scales.

[IainK]

fair enough, i'm guessing it's better in that respect than vista? vista seems a bit sluggish on the laptop.. maybe i'm just too used to desktops and should learn some patience...

[TheTranquilEye]

Been using all the Beta versions since release and now running Ultimate 64 bit which is all legal and above board. Now that says something as I haven't paid for an OS for 15 years...

All in all, a very good OS indeed. It has all the bells and whistles the modern generation likes to see and is easier and more forgiving to use on a day to day basis than Vista.

The backup solution is top notch, especially as now everyone and their dog has an external HDD.

On install, it found and installed drivers for all my hardware, including my Edimax wireless card that required a lot of Googling to find XP drivers for. In fact, the only thing it didn't like was an old PS/2 mouse I had attached for working in DOS from a boot CD.

Personally, I love it and the fact that it just whizzes along on an SSD is a joy.

TTE

[mrgoose]

i think windows 7 home premium on my dad's xmas present took up 10GB ish, so it would fit... just, doubt it'd run it very well though, i have a laptop with 2X1.7ghz and 2gig ram and i'm seriously considering downgrading from vista to xp

I know quite a few folks who have done that. Trouble is that MS Mainstream support for XP expired in April this year (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?C2=1173) (though you can still pay for "Extended Support" apparently). These days, I would have very serious concerns about running an unsupported OS of any type, but particularly one that has suffered so many security exploits over the years.

Besides, I would expect that from my (albeit limited) experience of Win 7, that it should scale to fit your hardware reasonably well. You'll just need to do some Googling & reading about the various apps & features you can remove.

Nevertheless, I feel that scalability is another area where the free Unix-like OS's really score over expensive proprietary ones, and MS is really playing catch-up. For example, Puppy (http://www.puppylinux.org/) & DSL (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) provide free, up-to-date and regularly maintained OS's, out-of-the-box, for kit that would barely run Windows 98 - let alone Vista or Win 7.

To make matters worse, some of our really old kit is worth less than it would cost to buy Windows 7! Like I said, MS really needs to do a lot better if it wants me to whip out my credit card, any time soon!

Best wishes, G.

[jonbanjo]

easier and more forgiving to use on a day to day basis than Vista

I'm curious, can you explain further?

The general impression I've had by reading (I'm unlikely to use it) is that W7 is a lot lighter than Vista (which doesn't do well on my dual boot laptop**) but I've not taken notice of anything else.

Has the interface changed much? For me, XP was a step backwards from my (of Win) favorite Win2K and Vista was an irritation...

Is more forgiving related to stability issues (if any) with Vista?

--
**
Never been sure if it's just me with Win but it didn't seem as bad at first. Sometimes it seems to me that once I've (just and only done - and not another slowdown I seem to get over time) put the latest SPs, etc. on a new install, performance has appeared to drop. I'm almost certainly wrong but it has made me wonder about "shortcuts" for speed in the "pre-patched" code.

[snakedoc]

I would say the interface and features have been discussed in length here in past threads. Have a little search around and see. Let's try and keep this on topic.