The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Sam,
I'm going to have to do a Dual Boot on mine. I love XP-Pro 64 bit, but a lot of the programs I've added since I last used it, won't run on 64 bit! I need the programs, so I guess I know what I have to do tp have both! Check out my new temps in the OC thread, in a post to Sam!

Russ

 

this is why I didn't use XP 64-bit, there was loads of stuff incompatible, and it was far worse before Vista came out. Contrastingly there's little I find that doesn't work or can't be made to work in Win7 64-bit. I can only assume backwards compatibility actually got better rather than worse.

 

I only had trouble during the Beta testing. A google program wouldn't run. Since that point, I haven't had one incompatibility issue. Smooth sailing since then 7 is a godsend...
The retail edition is running even better. GTA IV is noticeably smoother this time around. It even installed quicker.

 

Windows 7 has far superior backwards compatibility to Vista or XP64. I do have the virtual XP thing installed, but 99.9% of stuff will work in XP SP2 Compatibility mode. So far, the actual fact of running 64-bit has literally never been an issue. Everything just works.

There have been a few small anti-virus incidents, but nothing I didn't knowingly cause. Stupid me

I remember using Vista and thinking at first, "Wow, this isn't so bad." But as I delved deeper I slowly got a sick feeling in my stomach. Windows 7 never did that.

The newer OS is always essential as computers advance. 7 takes much better advantage of higher end hardware than XP. Not only that but it seems to do much better at keeping from bogging down. Even with heavy use, my performance in everything still matches a virgin OS install. XP would eventually collect all sorts of little "errors". 7 actively keeps itself tidy and functioning properly. In this way, XP is more traditional. Versus XP, Windows 7 could almost be called a "smart" OS. It's been designed much more with the average slob in mind.

I think the best way to describe it would be "maintenance-free". I enjoy that

 

It even handles USB 2.0 better. I've seen quicker transfer speeds on all my flash drives. Heck, even my Sata Hard drives seem quicker than on xp No doubt updated drivers.

 

Actually SATA HDDs are faster in Windows 7. If you've ever looked at the transfer rates between two drives, Vista and 7 are about twice as fast as XP.

Like I said, 7 takes much better advantage of your hardware than XP. It uses more RAM because it's USING the RAM for something. Same should go for all components. I've gotta believe it's better in many ways that most people will never notice.

 

While I can't say I've noticed a huge increase in local transfer performance between XP and 7, being able to measure the speed at all is nice. What is, however, important is XP is limited to receiving 21MB/s through a network share on the system, host-side. i.e. You can usually download files by reading someone's network share at high-speed, but you can't, however write to the system from another PC using a network share at any greater than 21MB/s. Thus, if you mount any network drives to your desktop that are hosted on an XP machine, you can't write to them above 21MB/s. This limitation was removed as of Vista.

 

Estuansis,
Then the average slob is a brainless twit! He finds things in the control panel courtesy of all the cross linking of the control panel files! The whole Control Panel is a Cluster-F**k! I get so damn tired of having to google, just to find out where to go to do things that were so simple in XP. The Index is all but worthless, if you don't know what to ask for because all the terminology's been changed. Looking through that mess M$ calls a Control panel, things that should be simple, became so difficult. The brainless twits should have left the icon names and the icons themselves alone! Add new ones, fine, but leave the old ones alone. That's just simple logic and common sense! Attributes that are getting less and less common every day!

That's not so bad but there's a good bit of stupidity too. The biggest single complaint about Vista by XP users, besides all the BSODs and security, was the changes in the Control panel! Then they brought out Win7 with unfamiliar icons and more of them to boot! Now that's what I call stupid! Consider also, that these people who complained are the same ones that forced M$ to continue support for XP until 2014. I call that, really Stupid! As a Society, we haven't reached the point of letting someone tell us what we want, and then accepting it. Not yet, anyway! More than half of the up and coming generation can't read, write, speak or spell. They don't speak English, they speak Ebonics, so it's only a matter of time!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

My new (old) Vaio on XP MCE flagged about 17 a viruses within about 4 minutes of a full-format. Never had anything on my 7 64-bit machine.

And to be honest after using 7 for so long now XP has more then a few things that a proving a huuuuge pain in the arse. Silly things but annoying things that really ruin the (to use a horrid marketing term) experience. It's really starting to make me lose my rag but am stuck with because Sony have long abandoned the model. It's things like the inability to merge folders, move things on the taskbar about and the way my documents is mashed with EVERYTHING.

 

libraries are the best thing asbout win7 IMO.

russ what is it that you couldnt find?

 

The whole of MS are brainless twits because they changed something? I'm assuming you realise that sometimes things are changed not for the sake of change, but so that they better fit how computers have changed.
Think back to the hardware and functions used when XP was first released 9 years ago, to what PCs are like now. It seems immediately obvious to me that certain features/functions are no longer required, yet others will require much more than a cursory glance.
The standard control panel is rather confusing to someone who used the old system, which is why both are included. All you need do is change view from 'Category' to 'Icons' and it looks like the old control panel, with most things still in the same place. Some stuff has been renamed, which in my opinion is perfectly sensible as it incoprorates the changes that have been made to these sections since XP.
Keith: If you go online in XP with no service packs in ie6, the OS won't boot the next tine you restart, as it will already have picked up so many viruses it'll be unusable!

 

haha. Well I formatted from the recovery partition which came with SP2 but I was slow to get SP3 that's probably what done it.

I'm slightly confused as to what the problem with control panel is. XP had category mode and yeah stuff will move and stuff will change it's like complaining the stereo in your new car is different from the old one. so? It's not hard to get use to and doesn't really make all that much difference.

 

The control panel in win7 is very similar to how I remember it being in XP if you don't use category's.

 

Sam,
I'm not complaining about what they added, so much. Just things they shouldn't have changed, and putting familiar things in unfamiliar places. You shouldn't have to google to do simple things things because some idiot decided that there's a better (?) way to do things. Things like changing the resolution are good examples. Why did they have to change "Display" in the control Panel to "Appearance and Personalization", complete with a new and unfamiliar icon? It's been "Display" for over 20 years! What was the point in changing it to Appearance and Personalization? There must be some reason that there are over 600,000 "How To" posts on google, just for the Win7 control panel alone. It's like they went out of their way to make things more difficult to do! Adding an additional 20 or more icons to the control panel, doesn't help the situation either! Maybe if they hadn't changed the control panel functions so much, they wouldn't have to offer all the alternative places to look, when you do click on something. You can spend hours going through all the garbage in the control panel trying to find things, that by now should be very easy to do. I am well aware of the "Classic" menus, and they are almost worthless. I'm not saying that Win7 is not a good OS, I'm saying that it would be a much better system if they had used a little more common sense and logic in the layout and in the form and function department.

Then there's the Software issue! That nice $400 program you bought last year, will not work on Vista or Win7! Why? I can understand if it's 64 bit, but I can't for the life of me understand why 32 bit programs shouldn't work. The answer is pretty simple! M$ is trying to help out their software developer Partners increase their sales! I keep hearing that it's the required hardware changes that cause this! Maybe that's true for games, but what does that have to do every day apps? I crashed Vista 64 ultimate Edition beyond redemption by simply installing Power DVD 7 on it on my Acer laptop. it gave me a message that PDVD "may not be compatible with Vista"! I don't call that a very informative warning. I figured I would install it, and if it didn't work properly, I would remove it. Instead, I wound up having to buy a Recovery Disk for $44, just to restore the system, as it wouldn't boot up after installing PDVD7! Things like that shouldn't happen! I have Power DVD 9, which will run on Vista, Win7 and XP, but I don't much like it. I prefer PDVD7! There's no technical reason that it doesn't work, it's just that M$ doesn't want it to work! After all, you can't support your Software Development Partners sales of new software by allowing older software to work now, can you? It's all BS and politics! All designed to lighten your wallet!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

keith1993,
The difference is there aren't hundreds of items to consider. The controls are still familiar, and it doesn't blow up the Stereo if you adjust something improperly! There isn't a sound system in the world I couldn't adapt to in a matter of minutes!

I will give M$ some points for the improvements they have made in Win7's classic menus. They are much better than the ones in earlier versions, and light years better than the ones in Vista. I saw sam's comment to you about ie6. All I can say is if you use ie6, you get what you deserve. I only open it if I have something that requires it to work, and I have to have! I've rarely used any version of IE because of virus problems, and even then, only when I was forced to do so!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

If a software company charged you $400 for a program that they didn't update to Vista/7 for free, then it's them you should be moaning at, not Microsoft. How on earth are they meant to guarantee compatibility between a completely new Operating System platform and every bit of software ever released?

 

Sam,
I didn't say backwards compatibility for everything. That would be nuts given all the hardware changes. It's not like I have an old tech computer that's lacking in modern hardware either!

In most senses, it's not a completely new OS either, but rather a new interface with better integration. Code is still dictated by the CPU, so you still have to use the same calls! There's no reason that a lot of software that runs on XP shouldn't run with Win7. It's just that M$ dictates what will and won't run with Vista and Win7. Most modern XP programs should run on 32 bit Vista and Win7, but they don't, only because Micro$oft doesn't want them too!

I'm just glad there's still XP support for the next 3 or 4 years. I couldn't begin to afford to replace all the software I have and use, that won't run on Vista and Win7. It's nice to see that even though M$ is the only viable game in town, XP users still had enough clout to force M$ to continue with XP for a few more years. We would still be having Vista shoved down our throats, otherwise, and there would be no Win7, at this time.

Russ

 

Oh... ddp you know that answer.... MONEY!!! Forces you to BUY another product and produces more revenue in M$ corner. I personally think it's POOR marketing and has caused serious problems for M$ over the years... they still get their product out there but it sure makes people want something different.... well it does me at least. ROFL.

 

ddp,
If it wasn't for the huge amount of support for XP, None of this would have ever happened. Everything would be Vista by now. Win7 would be way down the road. That's what happens when you piss off enough people, until they do something about it!

Russ