[WinTard]

Welcome aubanddi to our PCWorld Community.

>Sorry if I'm something of a newbie when it comes to understanding Windows 7, but, although there are to be several versions of the finished product, is there only one version available now for hackerman1 to work with? If so, has there been any indication which of the final versions that will represent?

Currently, the Windows 7 Beta Release Candidate, is of the Ultimate flavor, which means absolutely everything... That version is available for free evaluation by anybody, from Microsoft, and will function (albeit somewhat crippled with a nagging reminder this is a free temporary version) until June 30th 2010. It is available for download in both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions here:

Windows 7 Release Candidate

>I currently have XP Pro, which I really like, on a 5 year old Dell Dimension XPS Gen 3 (standard setup at that time, I believe, except for 2 hard drives instead of 1; not RAID). I've worked with Vista on my sister's machine, but haven't been impressed, so am waiting for Windows 7 to be released. I would like to buy one of the "XP Mode" versions, as I have nearly 300 programs, half of which I use irregularly but which I definitely need at times. I am concerned that many of them won't be compatible with 7. I have been told, however, that my Pentium 4E 540 won't handle XP mode. The article makes me wonder if I may have been misinformed. Just curious as to whether anybody definitely knows one way or the other.

My suggestion is you download and actually evaluate if the built-in Virtual XP-SP3 mode of Windows 7 will work sufficiently under your hardware conditions.

Any recent machine would basically make this virtualization transparent, but you require the 'beefy' hardware to start with.

For instance, you can get a 8 GB RAM 4-core 64-bit CPU for about $400 nowadays. Using recent hardware from the likes of http://www.tigerdirect.com/ or http://www.newegg.com/

Virtual machines require more RAM to simulate the actual hardware 'virtually' in memory. So if your system only has 1GB RAM, it probably won't suffice...

But it has been proven that a system with 96MB RAM can load the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate...

The best is to try IMHO. And if you do, please share with the rest of the community your findings...

Happy computing, and discovery!

~~~~~~~~~~
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.
~ Henry Ford

Negative thinking of any sort is a no-no. Focus your attention on the good things in the world -- there are still plenty of them -- and refuse to give in to gloom and doom. The world you inhabit is the one you create.
~ Sally Brompton

[aubanddi]

@ WinTard

I apologize for not replying directly to your post, but every time I mouse over a link, including the Reply one, your post disappears and I have to reload the page! Arrgh!!! :)

I wanted to thank you for your advice and the link, and I will try downloading the program sometime this week. I'll let you know what it does. Maybe by then I'll be able to reply directly to you! :)

[WinTard]

No apologies necessary or required. You are among friends here! :D

I hope you enjoy your Windows 7 experience. As a matter of fact, perhaps you might consider doing something like purchasing a hard-disk, and simply install onto that hard disk? So this way, you won't risk 'damaging' your existing OS and / or data?

That's always what I do. Nowadays, you can get inexpensive top-quality (1.5TB, 7200RPM Sata3, 32MB cache) HDD for around $130 at tigerdirect. Perhaps cheaper elsewhere. However, you might not have the SATA interface in your existing system? You might require PATA? Regardless, before you 'upgrade' or perform a bare metal pristine installation, make sure you have a way of backing out of what you are doing. The only way is to have a backup. (Could be onto an external USB drive?).

The fastest backup IMHO is simply to plug in a brand new HDD, and keep the existing one(s) as the actual backup. When the OS is installed, then simply plug back your existing drives (with existing data), and copy onto the new HDD. In effect the fastest and cheapest backup is your old drives.

Good luck!

BTW, you won't have that problem on PCWorld, if you use FireFox. I happen to prefer IE8, and do not experience what you describe, but there are javascript errors at PCWorld (the forums website), they need to fix that sooner or later... I repeat, it is not the fault of IE. It is a nasty bug in Jive Software's Clearspace...

~~~~~~~~~~
The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.
~ Vince Lombardi

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
~ Bernard M. Baruch

[rasmasyean]

IMHO, I think "Win7 for legacy" is just some crap MS decided to make for the potentially hot netbook market mostly. If you want to use Win 7 (or Vista) it's best to upgrade your computer to 64-bit supported hardware in both specs and principles. Otherwise there isn't really a point to pay for Windows 7 (or Vista) because you will be missing out on many of the aspects that go with the modern computer. You might as well stick with XP on your old machine if you don't upgrade the hardware or buy a new computer and all you really need are those old apps.

[rgreen4]

While I agree that the 64bit version of Win7 is the most desirable, that does not however, mean that the 32bit version is less capable. The 64bit version may run faster, and will certainly recognize more memory, and will future proof as more and more programs are released in 64bit versions, but the 32bit version does not lack any features found in the 64bit version.

[rasmasyean]

I suppose in a certain sense 32-bit and 64-bit are "feature comparable". But in terms of "power capability", which I assume is one of the most important factors for most ppl, you would not come close to 64-bit. 4GB of RAM is like $40. It's only going to go down in price as well as more powerful and smaller transistor RAM are made.
To me, time is money. The less you have to wait for your up-time (including time you have to manually launch stuff), the more time you save. On top of that, Superfetch only works if you have spare RAM.
Even if you are at a "family computer", and you don't have to "log off" and your family just wakes from S3 sleep, switches users to their pre-existing email, favorite sites, etc. you save loads of time which you can use to do other important things not even computer related. I wouldn't open up Photoshop with 40 pictures on edit mode and leave it, but for just the simplest things, it counts. And, just think of how many times workers forgot their spot after logging off over the weekend. They have to reacquaint themselves with what they are doing. That's loosing "up-time" and definitely is worth literal money.

[rgreen4]

When you download the .iso file, you will need to burn it to a DVD. If you have Nero or Roxio, you can use one of them to burn the ISO image to file. If you do not, I have used Image Burn with good success with both the Beta2 ISO and the RC ISO's for both the 32bit and 64bit verstions. Image Burn is a free download.

If you have a spare drive, or purchase a second drive, before you install the RC on the drive, disconnect the primary drive cables so that the drive on which you are installing the RC is the only active drive in the system. This prevents the installation making changes to the MBR of the normal operating drive. After installation, you can then reconnect the original drive and then use the BIOS setup to select the boot drive. On some machines, when the boot process starts you can use a function key to select the boot device This selection is only in effect for the current boot secquence, on a reboot the normal sequence then kicks in.

[rgreen4]

I will agree that the 64bit version is the more powerful and maybe even faster, but there may be circumstances where it is not the best choice. Within the past year the 64 bit version of Vista has become the default OS on most manufactured machines, and must now be considered mainstream. I am running Vista Home Premium on three machines, all of which are 32bit since the newest install is 18 months old. I was considering upgrading one to 64 bit, but will now wait until the release of Win7 at which time all three will be upgraded to Win7 x64.

From the tone on your previous tone, I took the inferance that the 32bit was less robust, but agree the 64 bit version will be faster and a better long term solution as long as the hardware will support it. Some legacy software that will run on the 32 bit version but not the 64 bit version may have to be upgraded in order to utilize the 64 bit version.

[kevinlovegrove]

In answer to a couple of the posts above:

- I use a 40Gb SSD, which is fine for Linux. It's not ideal for an 11Gb Windows 7 build. This will change as SSDs come down in price of course (I already have a faster, bigger one on order!)

- I'm running Windows 2008 on a Dell Desktop, not a server. Which is why I use that as an example of a decent OS running on relatively limited resources. (But I've got a nice quad core HP server coming to replace it <heh>).

- If you want a look at what's getting near to the finished product, Build 7260 is readily available

http://isohunt.com/t...?iht=5&ihq=win7

Personally I'm not going to bother touching Win 7 now until the release, I just don't see it as a major leap from Vista at all.

It's supposedly RTM at the end of July.

.

[quackadilly]

"I use a 40Gb SSD, which is fine for Linux. It's not ideal for an 11Gb Windows 7 build."



No doubt Windows 7 takes up a chunk of disk space, but many games are the same way these days. World of Warcraft uses well over 10GB of space....does that mean that the game is bloated? No.

Personally, I'd use the SSD purely for the OS. throw a couple 100+ GB HDDs for other stuff.
-----
"Personally I'm not going to bother touching Win 7 now until the release, I just don't see it as a major leap from Vista at all."



You're not willing to give it a try but you're passing judgement on it..... Just like all you Mac, Linux and Ubuntu fans say, "don't knock it till you try it".

If you had bothered to try it, you would see that it is a pretty decent change from Vista.

[kevinlovegrove]

Quackadilly,

Do you actually have anything to offer to this discussion other than whinging?

If you read what I've posted you'll know I've installed Windows 7 many times on many different configurations. I have to decide when is an appropriate time to roll an XP replacement out to 2500+ desktops, so I have a vested interest in seeing what Win 7 offers.

So do me a favour, if you have nothing to say apart from indignant bluster, then don't comment at all.

Just leave us grown ups alone, eh?

[WinTard]

Come on everybody, let's all get along together. I like what quackadilly has to contribute to these forums. His acumen is spot on!

[dfschmid]

The title of this article suggests to readers that Windows 7 is losing popularity. Yet the article talks about something completely different.
So, PC World is really desperate to give XP users another reason not to upgrade to Win 7?
I'm tired of XP. I want to move on.
As for the content of the article, let's be realistic. How many people out there are actually going to sit down and spend the time and money to install Windows 7 on ancient machines from the 1990's? Two or three people? What about the rest of us?
So would you really want to take an OS designed to use processing power and hardware on new machines and install it on a machine you can do little with except turn it into a glorified word processor? Get real! Leave the old OS on old machines and give them to people who only need to do basic tasks.
I agree, however, with WinTard's earlier remarks. :-)

[rasmasyean]

It's more like...PC World is looking for random chances of traffic for AD's.
Anything ot catch bored ppl's attention and generate some massive off-topic threads so they can say to Microsoft:
"Hey Look! Last month we had 100,000,000,000,000 visitors! We'll display a Bing banner for the low price of $10,000 per day...per page!

[smax013]

WinTard said:

BTW, you won't have that problem on PCWorld, if you use FireFox. I happen to prefer IE8, and do not experience what you describe, but there are javascript errors at PCWorld (the forums website), they need to fix that sooner or later... I repeat, it is not the fault of IE. It is a nasty bug in Jive Software's Clearspace...

The forum software does not like "span class" coding that some people's posts have (generally from copying and pastes from something like Word supposedly, but I believe it might be due to other stuff). As a result, I try to remove that "span class" coding when I find it...it is rather annoying to have posts move up on the page (they do not actually "disappear").

There is new forum software in the works, which will hopefully be up and running in the next couple months and will hopefully deal with such quirks.

[rasmasyean]

I think I might have caused that before, but then I changed the Word to HTML mode and it appeared to not happen anymore.

[smax013]

rasmasyean said:

I think I might have caused that before, but then I changed the Word to HTML mode and it appeared to not happen anymore.

It happens a decent amount...I usually find about two or so per day.

And they are VERY annoying in IE (they do not move with Safari...some of the more "annoying" ones I actually have to use Safari to edit as I cannot reach the "edit" button in IE after they move...I do not recall what happens with Firefox as I generally only use Firefox with the site on my Mac...only use Safari in Windows with the site when I hit one that I cannot fix with IE).

[rasmasyean]

Well for a pretty decent traiffied site, they oughta fix it. This site is actually one of the worste I've been to. Sometimes you can't see your post and then you post it over again and it dupes it. You occasionally see ppl fall into this trap as they have like 3 or 4 posts of the same thing.

[smax013]

rasmasyean said:

Well for a pretty decent traiffied site, they oughta fix it. This site is actually one of the worste I've been to. Sometimes you can't see your post and then you post it over again and it dupes it. You occasionally see ppl fall into this trap as they have like 3 or 4 posts of the same thing.

While I do not know for sure, I have the impression that the forum software company has been less than responsive to some issues that have been raised.

Regardless, as has been mentioned various times in various places, there is new forum software in the works. Hopefully it will be up and running in the next couple of months.

As for the post delays, when you post, it CLEARLY says that it might take a few moments for the post to appear...but many people choose to ignore that or are just too impatient.

From after I posted this: "Your message was posted successfully, but there will be a short delay before it is viewable in the thread."
Message was edited by: smax013 - added note from post-posting message

[quackadilly]

Again with the "holier than thou" attitude? You maintain 2500+ computers for a living. That doesn't mean you know everything. My points are just as valid as yours, or anyone elses. People like you discredit others' opinions that differ from yours, thats is flat out ignorant.


All I'm saying is try it before you voice your opinion. If you start rambling about 7, good or bad, and have never tried it, your arguments have absolutely no base to stand on.



You, sir, grow up and learn to take ideals other than your own gracefully. I'm not saying you have to agree with everyone else, just don't force your opinions.