I turned off everything except the antivirus program and wireless. I seemed to be that fast. I might have been off in my timing.

Another reason why W7 seems more polished than Vista it's becaues software developers in general have got more polished themselves. For example, lots of games used to write things in "Program Files" (save files, download updates,...) but the problem is that "Program Files" is a place where only installers were supposed to write, so that in Vista forced a lot of games to run under administrator privileges. That doesn't happen anymore, developers have gotten used to write in less restricted locations (although now they like filling "My Documents" with a lot of crap instead of using App Data and User Data... But at least is an improvement).

My thoughts:

Yeah, the shell doing that is pretty silly. Win7 fixes that.

Although that won't fix individual apps that are locking up. Firefox still locks up badly on my system.

It didn't bother me so much, but it's good to know Win7 improves it a lot .

There's no going back to nothing, though - a ZDNet blogger got hit with some malware on XP that very likely would not have been able to install itself with a system with UAC on.

I agree. A lot of nice, wonderful tweaks have been added to Windows 7 that really makes it better than XP and Vista. It makes my work flow much, much better.

Another thing they changed was they went to great lengths to allow you to go up in the address bar. Which I like, because frankly I really missed the up button in Vista when they removed it. I still miss it, but this is an okay compromise.

I really love what they've done with the system tray button. That arrow in XP/Vista was totally annoying. I'd expand it, go to what I want, and it would just contract again, making the icon disappear. It's noticing and fixing even small things like that that really makes me love 7.

BUT - if you put a Stardock skin in, you know it's a XP/Vista skin when the arrow is pointed in the wrong direction . Hopefully skinners will be smart and make Win7 versions of their skins.

Agreed.

I never really noticed that until somebody pointed it out in some blog somewhere. Maybe it's because the pixel edges on my CRT tends to be a tad softer than an LCD.

I notice that blue is used a lot in general with UI stuff. I guess it's considered a "safe" color to use.

Agreed, just another layer on the networking heirarchy that wasn't really needed. I am so glad the computers are visible at the base level instead of going through a bunch of sub-groups that nobody uses anymore.

While I'm technical enough to use the Device Manager, this is certainly a plus for people like my mother who would just be confused by all of the strange stuff in it.

A nice feature to have for those worried about backwards compatibility, but I honestly don't have any software that doesn't work.

. . . and frankly, Microsoft should've really included it in all editions of Windows instead of just Pro. Backporting to Vista would be a nice consumer confidence boost too, although I doubt they'll do that.

Yeah, well that's because VMs generally don't do hardware video acceleration. Their target market is businesses for the most part, and businesses don't play games.

However: VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems does in fact have hardware video acceleration, and may work with some games. Haven't tried it with any games, though.

• After you expand it with the arrow, it collapses when you try to move over to the icon you want. That behavior was 1000% annoying. Win7 puts the hidden icons in a popup that doesn't disappear as fast and stays open as long as the mouse is in it.
• It was very chatty. Popups from nearly every program that thinks it's so important for you to know it's still working. Win7 allows you to suppress them.
• Many alerts have been moved to the Action Center in Windows 7, which is far nicer and allows you to address issues on your own schedule.

It's not an entirely new OS, no. But it soooo improves a lot of the small little annoyances previous OSes had!

Personally, I've been using a C:\GAMES folder since the days of DOS . . .

I've switched back and forth a couple of times, but in the end I think that a separate folder for games is usually a good idea. Less headaches.

Win7 on a desktop is fantastic. It's better, no doubt.

Win7 on a netbook? I'm a bit split. Some things seem faster, but it does seem to act a bit as if there's not so much memory available. A lot of paging it seems. But when the largest software is closed and there's not so much paging, it's faster than XP.

Fuzzy Logic: Frankly, I gave up on "All Programs" as early as Windows 95. I never liked it. I always shoved the icons into folders in a Windows 3 fashion, and I definitely loved Fences when it came out . I gave up a long time ago trying to organize it.

And meh - window resizing hasn't worked in any of their OSes since Windows XP. XP forgot window positions, Vista forgot window positions. They've never worked.

Windows XP mode is designed for companies, not for normal users. That's why it doesn't really matter it doesn't support graphic acceleration or why it doesn't come in all editions of W7.

The main problem of Vista was that it wasn't used as the desktop for computers in companies (no way to run XP/IE6 apps/web apps easily, resource usage, drivers,...).

Well, the place to install programs is "Program Files", and that's where most users install their apps, so programs should play nice with that folder restrictions.

I've always installed games off the OS drive...and in a folder called 'games'....reson being that in most [not all] instances you don't even need to reinstall the game when you change your OS or its install.

That helps massively when you have add-ons to games such as GTR2 numbering in the Gigs.....so far, 15,270 files or 6.297 gig....

BTW...installed in XP Pro...P4 3.0 32bit....now running in Win 7 Ultimate....i7 920 64bit.

But we aren't what Windows targets as "normal users"

Well, it's about a month in and I've had my first hiccup with Win 7... it got as far as the logon screen and hung indefinitely after typing in my user p/w.  Can't think why, no changes had been made since the previous boot (Id just checked my emails and WC) and the shutdown was normal, so it beats me.

Anyway, I performed a startup repair from the installation disc and all was well again... though it remains a mystery.

They should, yes. And newer software generally does.

But a lot of older software doesn't. This is especially true for games, as most games are not maintained indefinitely. This is in stark contrast to regular apps, which are updated on a fairly regular basis.

It's very unlikely I won't update an application - I'll generally get the new one that follows the rules.

But when it comes to games - I still like to play old, classic games. Many of them were created before the new restrictions were in place. So yeah, I still have a games folder.

I also use it for MMORPGs. Unlike an application, which may be updated once in a blue moon, MMORPGs are updated constantly. So if you dump them into "Program Files," you're in for a lot of pain as they like to change themselves very often. Being as they like to update themselves so frequently, and being as they're not in any way, shape, or form vital to the functioning of my system, I'm fine with putting them in a folder with less restrictions.

I won't lose any sleep if something messes up a game. The restrictions of "Program Files" are there to protect things like Word, which are a lot more important than a game.

I don't dislike vista much, I obiviously waited one year before get it so to avoid completely the driver compatibility issues.

To me it looks like all those points brought up in the first post are just minor or simply aesthetic issues (except the driver one), which all goes by a subjective perspective of the user rather than effective usability of the os. I for example like to see all the tray icons without having to expand a menu and obiviously disable the "hide unused" things from the first minute after the install.

Some of them could also easily got around with 3th party software like nvidia/ati drivers (and you need them anyway) to change the resolution from the tray icon with two clicks, or by setting the os options to how you like more.

I'm surprised you didn't mentioned the "sxs" folder, that would have been what I consider a valid point since they don't tell you before installing that this folder is going to eat your free space on the system partition as a everhungry monster, with little to no counter options to get around that (mine is ~14gb now..).

What's important in a os to me is that it is stable and my Vista64 sp2 is almost rock solid, even with overclocking, and it's far more better than xp (even if maybe worse than 7).

I discovered that adaptability could get you more far than complaining what you can't change when it comes to it, I'm...satisfied and I won't change to 7 unless I'm forced to by games&apps, or an year has passed since its release.

Lo

Starker - I've never seen my W7 hang there. I don't use passwords though.

Hi I'm a previous Vista user and I'm a bit dissapointed in using it, it's so slow and I can't finish work on time. Then the time came when my computer crashed so I decided to install Windows XP. Now it's whole lot better than using Vista and my computer is a bit faster than before. As for Windows 7 I still haven't used it but I hear positive reviews with it.

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I've been using Win7 since the public beta and I've not seen hangs during logon.... at any time, for that matter, so I'm mystified as to why it happened.

It was suggested that maybe I'd picked up a nasty from one of my emails, but I didn't actually open any as there were no new ones I needed/wanted to read.  It may have been a Windows Update I didn't notice, perhaps?  I've heard of that sort of thing happening after updates.

Oh well, it's all good now.

The PC of mine will not let my redo the performance score. It gets to the end then has an error.

Runs out of puff?....

Or was too embarrassed by the results of the first one?

Nah, seriously, that may be due to hardware error/malfunction.  If the WEI assessment runs through ok until the last hardware component's test, its producing an error could be indicating something iffy with that component... or Win 7's ability to communicate with it.

I hope not, and I can't think of another logical explanation, but I hope not.

It is the part of the WEI that tests the hard drive. It ran fine the first time. I got a 4.0 overall. Not the best but I'm happy. I've known I need to replce this drive for some time so no big deal.

I had a feeling it may have been something like that... a hardware component, possibly a HDD producing an error.  There are programs that can/will attermpt to repair HDD errors, but if you've known for a while, you're probably better off just replacing it.

It's basically a compatibility feature found in XP. I think Vista/7 do something a bit differently? Not sure.

One of the big, big issues with older OSes is something called "dll hell." In the early days, when the system files weren't so bolted down, you could modify them - and every app in the world decided to do so. That created a lot of issues, especially when more than one application would overwrite the same file, or even replace a newer file with an older one.

It was, as the name indicates, hell for the user. A major source of a lot of bluescreens and crashes.

I think that folder is Microsoft's answer to the problem: Instead of overwriting the file, create a copy of it in the sxs folder and fool the software into thinking it was writing to a system file when it really wasn't.

Strange it should get so big, though.

The folder that usually gets big for me is "System Volume Information" which includes the "system restore" feature of Windows. Allows you to roll back the state of the OS and retrieve old versions of files.

@Jafo: Nah, complicated commands, like "net stop uxsms"

@starkers: I've tried the RTM, MS havent fixed any of the bugs that annoyed me.

When I said WindowBlinds runs like a dream I forgot to mention that it's terrible at skinning the DWM (i.e. Extended borders, like in explorer and Windows Media Player 11)