[tlmck1234]

I believe you meant to refer to "public" beta because Microsoft Windows betas have been around since version 1.0. I know because I tested it. Calling it Windows was a bit of a stretch, but that is what Microsoft was calling it at the time.

There is, and always has been, a difference between RC's and gold copies. A lot of folks raved about Vista RCs as I recall, and look how well that turned out. The MS faithful will buy whatever crap rolls out the door. For me, I go with whoever makes the better mouse trap. For me right now, that is Ubuntu. If Microsoft comes out with something better, I'll buy it. However, you will forgive me if I do not hold my breath.

[tlmck1234]

"If you don't upgrade your hardware to match the software when required, then you are either cheap or foolish. Don't blame the equipment when it's user error."





Yes everyone. You are cheap or foolish for not jumping aboard the endless Microsoft upgrade train. Even though the new stuff does not surf the web or process words any better, we need the money. Ballmer is down do his last few billion! Help!!! Help!!!

[tlmck1234]

Do these number include the million of downgrades to XP? In other words, the folks who needed new hardware and were forced to adopt preinstalled Vista, and then forced to pay more to downgrade to XP? And as I understand it, the same will apply with Windows 7?
Way to treat your loyal customers M$.

[tlmck1234]

I wish I had been involved with Linux back then. I would still have my old AMD 386DX40. Still one of the best machines I ever built. But alas, I was seduced by Windows and the power of the Cyrix 200.

[bbvammy]

@quackadilly


>Why would you settle for living in the stone age? Get a decent computer so you can work and play without limitations.....<


Your computer is not decent enough for Windows 8, code name "resource hog".


My computer is decent. ]:)

[rasmasyean]

There is no way to measure the "XP downgrades" because that falls into "XP marketshare" (which is indistinguishable between original XP installs by the way they measure it).
Large businesses don't "downgrade to XP". They just "don't install Vista until they tested it" so Gartner, etc. will not have a statistic like that. And they don't survey the entire public to get an estimate. The best way is an internet traffic metric...while not perfect, provides a pretty good estimate. Because one can say that "work" computers are on the internet less than "home" computers (i.e. Macs) which bump down the Windows marketshare metric, etc.
There are ppl who buy new computers with Vista and some who downgraded it to XP. And there are those who upgrade from XP because from what they say about Vista, you can often tell they upgraded an old computer to Vista. For example, when many people complain about "Vista boot times", you know they upgraded an XP computer. Because Vista with the new hardware does not need to "boot" (unless the manufacturer ripped you off...but excluding "Vista Capable" upgrades naturally). It "sleeps" and "wakes" at EXACTLY where you left off! You can like click a mouse and the login will appear before your monitor gets bright and it will bring you back with all your previous windows and work OPENED! And it can be set to power-save and do this when you are afk for an hour, etc. There is no "booting" and people who "upgraded" to Vista never knew! So it wouldn't really be an issue if it takes 5 minutes to boot and load if you only have to do it once in a while to install something, right?
Anyway's I don't think this hardware/bios dependency will go away with Windows 7, so keep that in mind if you plan on "upgrading your XP" to Windows 7.

[quackadilly]

What makes you think my current computer won't run the next MS OS? My computer is actually fairly decent....I didn't spend gobs of money, but it does everything I throw at it.


Even if it doesn't now, $500 when W8 is out, I'll build one that can.....better than spending $2000 for the same stuff in a Mac right?



P.S.



A 16GB USB thumb drive is not what I'd call a "decent" computer......just in case you're wondering.... ;)

[bbvammy]

@quackadilly


>A 16GB USB thumb drive is not what I'd call a "decent" computer......just in case you're wondering...<


Thats exactly my point.


Windows 8 might required you to have 16 cores with 20GB of ram.


What are you going to do?


Build or purchase another computer?

[rasmasyean]

Not too long ago someone would have said...4 cores??? What the heck are you tying to do? Predict weather patterns?
Now it's a standard consumer product. Many laptops even support 4 cores.

[bbvammy]

@rasmasyean


>Now it's a standard consumer product. Many laptops even support 4 cores.<


You just make my point again.

[rasmasyean]

You should google (or bing, if you prefere) "XP phone". There are starting to come out.

[bbvammy]

@rasmasyean

Actually, I was thinking about getting a better smart phone then a netbook.

A WiFi smart phone.

I don't think I will get it in US, because I think Japan, Korea or Hong Kong might have better unlocked phone.

Thank you. ;)

[rasmasyean]

Lots of phones have WiFi nowadays. And Windows Mobile and some Symbians allow you in install router software and turn it into a 3G Hotspot tower, so to speak. And you and your friends can connect to it arround your phone. google (or bing) WMWiFiRouter.

[rgreen4]

rasmasyean said:

Because one can say that "work" computers are on the internet less than "home" computers (i.e. Macs) which bump down the Windows marketshare metric, etc.

This is very true. At the plant were I was working when I retired, only about 60 out of the 300+ PC's actually had internet access. There had to be a need for you to access the internet for your job in order to get access. In one way it was a disadvantage, as the computers that had access to the internet would go into sleep after 5 minutes without an input, whereas those without it would not go into sleep until 20 minutes without input.

It seemed like I was always signing on. BTW - I normally only signed on once a week - on Monday morning. I signed off and shut down on Friday afternoon. The rest of the time I just let it go into sleep since it took 15 minutes to boot because of the boot sequence and scans done at the boot sequence. The machines all were running Windows 2000.

[quackadilly]

"Windows 8 might required you to have 16 cores with 20GB of ram."


Lets be realistic for a second here.....

Windows 7 has these system requirements:

1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver





My computer now is complete overkill for even the newest OS.....


-----
But purely hypothetically speaking, if Windows 8 required a 16 core chip and 20GB of RAM, I'd build my own.
I'd build a computer like this:

* Quad 5.8 GHz 32 core Athlon 512-bit processor (Assuming AMD will still be around)

* 128GB of DDR9 6400 RAM

* 32TB of holographic storage

* DirectX 23 graphics processor

Plus, there's no telling what kind of new technology will be out by then.

In a few years this will cost around $700 so I'll be ok..... ;)

[kevinlovegrove]

No, let's be really realistic here :)

Microsoft "system requirements" are almost always bare bones. That's what it needs just to get the OS up and running. Start installing applications and it starts to look underpowered almost immediately.

ANY time I'm speccing a Microsoft Server that needs to run an application (MS or otherwise), I double Microsoft's requirements and add 50%. Otherwise it will not be long before it starts to slow down.

I want to go back and talk about how Microsoft have said that Windows 7 will be "Netbook Ready".

I've seen many posts from people saying they've installed it on their netbooks, and it's fine. It probably is if you've tried running Vista on the same box; that will make anything look fast.

But if you want to browse, email, IM, Twitter, or just the basics then only the most ridiculous Microsoft snob would tell you not to install the Netbook Remix of Ubuntu or any one of dozens of Linux builds that will do the same thing and much faster:

http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download

Don't get me wrong, anything that improves Vista has got to be a good thing; the apps I run would not slow down XP as much as they do Vista.

But anyone who thinks Windows 7 is anything much more than a slighty snazzier Vista Me is hallucinating.

Those of you fiercely defending Windows 7: Have you even tried Ubuntu? Have you even tried Windows 7 on a Netbook?

Unless you are tied to particular Windows applications (and there are many I really like, such as filmon, for example), you could at least do yourselves the service of taking a look. You could also then see both sides of the argument.

I have no major problem with Windows 7's functionality, I just think it's just a less bloated, inefficient beast than its predecessor.

On work machines I'm stuck with Microsoft because I know how much effort would be required to switch, and there is no real corporate will to do so.

But on my own PC, I prefer to use my experience and make my own choice.

Out of interest, Gartner are now telling large corporates that if they haven't upgraded to Vista, or they are on Vista and haven't upgraded to SP1, not to bother, but go for W7 instead.

And trust me, I hate Linux evangelists as much as Microsoft ones, everything I say is based on supporting MS products since their inception, and understanding that Linux, too, has its flaws.

Finally, on the market share front, it's in Microsoft's interest to try and hide statistics that show how much people hate Vista.

I know it's not going on any of the 2500 PCs I support, and I doubt I'm alone, which is probably why they've had to put so much into W7 as a slightly more viable alternative ,

But believe me, they are going to have a fight on their hands trying to force us not to stay on XP, and a significant part of the world's corporations feel that way, especially in the current climate. Microsoft have to demonstrate for a start that there is a compelling need to upgrade. And "having the latest OS" is not a compelling need.

[quackadilly]

"Microsoft "system requirements" are almost always bare bones. That's what it needs just to get the OS up and running. Start installing applications and it starts to look underpowered almost immediately."



That's why they are called "minimum system requirements"..... if you want it to be smooth, go with the recommended system requirements. If you want to make it so it never slows, go above and beyond.
-----
"ANY time I'm speccing a Microsoft Server that needs to run an application (MS or otherwise), I double Microsoft's requirements and add 50%. Otherwise it will not be long before it starts to slow down."



Small server or what? Have you checked out the requirements for server 2008? Pretty chillax..... I'd be speccing better than 2.5x the minimum if I were you......
-----
"I want to go back and talk about how Microsoft have said that Windows 7 will be "Netbook Ready".



If it installs, what can you argue about? "Netbook ready" means that it will work on a netbook..... Besides, netbooks are not the main target for Windows 7.
-----
Realistically speaking, you don't need a power house to run Windows 7. Most computers, if not all, are coming with dual core 1.5 GHz or higher with at least 2 GB of RAM...... Most users would at most need to add anothe stick of memory to meet the recommended requirements.



They will run Windows 7 just fine.

[BGG001]

You're right, system requirements are bare bones. Hence why they are generally referred to as Minimal Requirements; the requirements needed to run it. Generally you can slide by with a little less, but it's at a cost. Microsoft doesn't want people to have systems with the minimum requirements; I actually just read an article in Business Weekly that said both PC makers and Microsoft are pushing for people to buy mid-end/high-end systems rather than cheap pieces of junk like most people have.

Have I tried Ubuntu? I have it, and right next to it lies a bottle of Advil. Driver installations and sometimes software installations are an outright headache if they don't go through smoothly. Note, I do say if. Ubuntu's start up time is comparable to Windows 7, though I have never timed it...but it is by no means so much faster that I would consider that a factor in which is better. It took a good while to get everything set up the way I wanted it (never did get bluetooth to work correctly and reliably, so I have a second keyboard and mouse set up).

Ubuntu is fine and dandy, but quite frankly advertising it to the mass market cannot be done. You go tell someone to open task manager in Windows and set the affinity of a program to core 2, they won't be able to do it; go to that same person and have them work in a terminal? That's a joke.

[rasmasyean]

bq. kevinlovegrove wrote: Finally, on the market share front, it's in Microsoft's interest to try and hide statistics that show how much people hate Vista. I know it's not going on any of the 2500 PCs I support, and I doubt I'm alone, which is probably why they've had to put so much into W7 as a slightly more viable alternative <heh>, But believe me, they are going to have a fight on their hands trying to force us not to stay on XP, and a significant part of the world's corporations feel that way, especially in the current climate. Microsoft have to demonstrate for a start that there is a compelling need to upgrade. And "having the latest OS" is not a compelling need.
-----
Well...that sentiment is apparently not shared by the US Army who is in the process of upgrading 744,000 PC's to Vista as we speak... ;)
www.army.mil/-news/2009/05/20/21389-army-migrating-computers-to-vista/

[kevinlovegrove]

Ironically, I'm running W2K8 on a 3.4Ghz Pentium with 1Gb of RAM and the application on it just about works. Thankfully, it's only a short term measure though.

As for Ubuntu, I'll stress that it's Horses for Courses. Stick it on a Netbook and you have a travelling machine that will do pretty well all of what the average users wants without all the tweaking you describe.

Moblin, which isn't even out yet, is properly aimed at the Netbook and is crisp, responsive and user-friendly even in Beta 2.0. Linpus too appears to be gaining momentum from Netbook manufacturers. This is an important segment whether you like it or not. If people buy a Netbook with something preinstalled that works fine, they might just consider trying that OS on a more powerful computer from the same manufacturer (ASUS, Acer, etc.).

It would seem we are drifting off topic here, which is about W7 performance and how someone managed to tweak it onto an old box, albeit in a realistically unusable state..

Windows 7 is STILL a resource hog compared to other OS's, even if it is better than Vista.

It will NOT run on Netbooks or older hardware as fast as XP will.

Which leads us back to the old chestnut about having to buy a new computer to run a new OS, or a new OS to take advantage of your new computer. Those days are over my friend, people are fed up with having to keep doing this, and money is tight.

I predict Windows 7 will fall short of expections as Vista did, apart from being sold pre-installed on new PC that were going to be bought anyway.

It may not have as many people downgrading it as Vista did, but there is nothing in Windows 7 that mandates the average computer user needing to migrate, and in many cases, especially where people are on XP, Microsoft are going to have to do a lot of convincing to persuade people to change to something slower.

Lets quote our friends Gartner again:

"Gartner also says that 75% of corporate systems still run the eight-year-old Windows XP or the even older Windows 2000."

That should say it all.

The problem here is that if you are fully conversant with Microsoft OS's, there is a large amount you can do to speed them up, or even stop them slowing down.

But the average user can't do that. And frankly, why should he have to?