Vista>Windows 7

The issues that people have with suspend and hibernation are a direct result of shitty non-ACPI compliant hardware drivers, period. It's not the OS, it's the drivers. You have to have 100% support for ACPI across the board, no exceptions, or the power management functionality that ACPI is capable of (suspend states, hibernation, even shutdown and restart) will not work as they are designed to work.

As Microsoft doesn't write drivers, the fault lies primarily on the hardware manufacturers... this has been a known issue for over 10 years now, but it rears up with a "new" OS especially in beta testing.

Beta OS = beta drivers = shit fucking doesn't work.

As time goes by, as the OS hits RTM status, more solid and stable and fully 100% compliant ACPI ready drivers will appear and that's that.
 
othellomcbane said:
Most of the changes to Windows 7 are "useful" little tricks like the window snapping and taskbar and aero peek. But, to be honest, I think the real difference between the two isn't as noticeable on overpowered computers. Throw 7 on a skimpy laptop and you'll see why people are impressed--it runs extremely well on hardware that most people would have never considered putting Vista on. A lot of that was people just holding on to XP for no reason when Vista came out, but it is the main reason so many Vista haters are raving about 7. And honestly, with 7 on my Dell laptop with a 5400 rpm drive, and Vista on my main rig, things seem just about as "snappy."

Coincidentally, I'll be installing 7 64 bit on my main rig in about half an hour.
Click to expand...

you are absolutely right, i have the 7057 build on my Dell Mini 9 with a 16GB SSD and 2GB of ram, runs great.
 
You could install Windows 3.1x on a machine that didn't have DOS on it at all, yanno... :)
 
ryan_975 said:
C:\Windows only contains \Windows it's sub-items. C:\Windows.old contains the old C:\Windows and it's sub-items, the old C:\Program Files and it's sub-items and the old C:\Users and it's sub-items. That's why there's a difference.
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Gosh, I feel dizzy now. Why is that so complicated ?
My Windows 7 installation does show that as default:

windows7zjkc.png



... Also, Windows 7 is the official name and Vista was Windows 6 as XP was Windows 5.1. They sort of just went back to the original naming of NT (e.g. 4.0, 3.51, etc).
Click to expand...

So, the version after 7 will be Windows 8 then ?
Hmm, don't know about you, but to call their OS Windows 7 leaves a bad aftertase for me.
WIndows with a version number, that's what we had in the early days.
I would rather chose a different hobby then going back to Windows 3.11 tbh.
So it wasn't a bad idea to call Vista, Windows Vista.
 
dnottis said:
Well here's another big reason that Windows 7 is better than Vista. I have a netbook. I dont like Linux but it runs ok on the netbook. I dont want to run XP on it - obvious reasons. Windows Vista won't run on it. Windows 7 runs fantastic on a netbook. Another score for Windows 7 are netbook users.
Click to expand...

There's a ton of people that have managed to install Vista and have it run perfectly fine on their netbooks (www.aspireoneuser.com), you can't just do a stock install and expect it to work well though... 7 is just configured to behave itself better out of the box and they trimmed the install size and cut out all the fat, something you could easily do for Vista yourself if you put in a couple hours.

Memory usage is not that much lower either, they're both (7 and Vista) still using more memory than XP, and the gap between them and XP is larger than the gap between each other... As far as I've seen anyway... I don't think it's a huge issue regardless, most netbooks can easily be upgraded to 1.5-2GB of memory if you really need it for multi-tasking.
 
For those who think Windows 7 is not Vista Reclamation, especially for those who actually think Microsoft started from scratch with Windows 7, I have a great swamp reclamation deal in Florida I'd like to pitch to you!

Microsoft has never started anything from scratch...
 
Cov said:
So, if Vista really was so resource hungry, what have they done to speed up Windows 7 by so much without losing any features ?
Imagine this: Windows 7 runs on low spec computers while Vista won't even bother to install at all.

Or was it all a marketing trick from Microsoft ? With the intention to make people buy the follow up product in the first place ? Hmmm, we may never find out though.
...
Well, I thought an update in form of SP2 or SP3 could have transformed Vista into Windows 7 as well, but ... what if Windows 7 is really totally different UNDER THE HOOD ?
Then it would justify a new release I think, but ...
Click to expand...

Umm, it was neither a marketing trick nor was it some miraculous efficiency improvement in Windows 7... Do you realize when Vista came out? Late '06. The first ASUS EEE PC netbooks didn't come out 'till the following year, and nobody, absolutely nobody, not even ASUS, expected the category to be such a big hit... Thus there was really no reason to trim down the install size or worry too much about memory usage in Vista when 500GB drives were becoming commonplace and RAM prices were plummeting. You can't even blame MS of not looking towards the future given the surprise hit netbooks were...

As I said, you can get Vista working wonderfuly on a netbook if you put some work into it, doesn't require a massive amount of tinkering... Just install it w/vLite to trim some of the crap and nuke some of the extraneous processes and it'll run just fine.
 
Boot off the MS-DOS boot floppy, but don't run the installer. Fdisk and format a partition, then sys c: to transfer the system over (it's just the io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com obviously but I don't consider that to be the entire damned Disk-Operating-System). Once that's done, boot off the Win 3.1x first floppy and run with it...

Semantics aside, this process doesn't install DOS, but it does install enough to get the machine bootable - just not with all that "bloat" on the 3 discs... ;)
 
Cov said:
Gosh, I feel dizzy now. Why is that so complicated ?
My Windows 7 installation does show that as default:

http://www.abload.de/img/windows7zjkc.png




So, the version after 7 will be Windows 8 then ?
Hmm, don't know about you, but to call their OS Windows 7 leaves a bad aftertase for me.
WIndows with a version number, that's what we had in the early days.
I would rather chose a different hobby then going back to Windows 3.11 tbh.
So it wasn't a bad idea to call Vista, Windows Vista.
Click to expand...

Depends on what they decide to call Windows 8. But it'll be the 8.0 version of Windows NT regardless of what they call it, just as 2000 was 5.0, XP was 5.1, Vista was 6.0.
 
Joe Average said:
Boot off the MS-DOS boot floppy, but don't run the installer. Fdisk and format a partition, then sys c: to transfer the system over (it's just the io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com obviously but I don't consider that to be the entire damned Disk-Operating-System). Once that's done, boot off the Win 3.1x first floppy and run with it...

Semantics aside, this process doesn't install DOS, but it does install enough to get the machine bootable - just not with all that "bloat" on the 3 discs... ;)
Click to expand...

Well, to be fair, io.sys and msdos.sys contained the entirety of MS-DOS's operating system functions. The C:\DOS files were just tools and utilities that made things more useful. So you still have to have the MS-DOS system installed to run Windows versions prior to 95
 
Why is XP considered 5.1 anyway? It was at 'least as much of an improvement on 2K as Vista was on XP, I mean, it was their first major consumer release since 98 (some would argue 95) and it unified their separate OS (or rather, shifted everyone away from the DOS/95/98 core for good and unto XP along with all the businesses using NT/2K).
 
By the way guys, do we still have the 640kB barrier ?
I mean, excuse me for being a supernoob now, but I was around since the 486 machines and all the horror stories were the naked truth at that time.
Never looked deeper into it, it's just such a damn dry subject and not many seem to know anyway.
But have we overcome all the stupid burdens of the past yet ? Just in case anyone knows though ... otherwise please ignore me.
 
Umm, yes, it's a thing of the past, long long ago. Gonna ask about Y2K as well while we're at it? :p
 
Impulse said:
Why is XP considered 5.1 anyway? It was at 'least as much of an improvement on 2K as Vista was on XP, I mean, it was their first major consumer release since 98 (some would argue 95) and it unified their separate OS (or rather, shifted everyone away from the DOS/95/98 core for good and unto XP along with all the businesses using NT/2K).
Click to expand...

There's not a whole lot of difference between XP and 2000. Luna was the biggest noticeable difference, and application compatibility with non NT programs. Even then, there were quite a few 9x applications that wouldn't work right with XP, because it's still NT.

Cov said:
By the way guys, do we still have the 640kB barrier ?
I mean, excuse me for being a supernoob now, but I was around since the 486 machines and all the horror stories were the naked truth at that time.
Never looked deeper into it, it's just such a damn dry subject and not many seem to know anyway.
But have we overcome all the stupid burdens of the past yet ? Just in case anyone knows though ... otherwise please ignore me.
Click to expand...

The 640kb limit was a DOS limitation. It does not exist on any Windows NT based OS.
 
Impulse said:
There's a ton of people that have managed to install Vista and have it run perfectly fine on their netbooks (www.aspireoneuser.com), you can't just do a stock install and expect it to work well though... 7 is just configured to behave itself better out of the box and they trimmed the install size and cut out all the fat, something you could easily do for Vista yourself if you put in a couple hours.

Memory usage is not that much lower either, they're both (7 and Vista) still using more memory than XP, and the gap between them and XP is larger than the gap between each other... As far as I've seen anyway... I don't think it's a huge issue regardless, most netbooks can easily be upgraded to 1.5-2GB of memory if you really need it for multi-tasking.
Click to expand...


Vista runs like shit on my laptop, but it runs Windows 7 great. Memory usage on Windows 7 is alot lower for a machine using 1GB or 2GB ram - since my laptop only holds 1 GB ram and the netbook max is 2GB I cant upgrade either any further. Windows 7 on a clean boot is at about 450MB ram usage, whereas Vista SP2 on my desktops is already at 1.2GB memory usage. I can have multiple apps running on my netbook and still be under 1GB memory usage. Memory usage on windows 7 IS that much lower, your facts are just wrong. Do you even have a netbook that you've test this on, like I have... cause it sounds like you dont actually have any first hand experience with this.
 
As far as gaming goes, XP worked tremendously better than 2K did... I dunno if that was due to the drivers more so than newer versions of DirectX or what have you, but there were issues w/2K and gaming right up 'till the end. Just saying, even if technically it wasn't the biggest improvement (again, neither was Vista), as far as mainstream consumer adoption it was.
 
dnottis said:
Do you even have a netbook that you've test this on, like I have... cause it sounds like you dont actually have any first hand experience with this.
Click to expand...

I have an Acer Aspire One, 160GB/6-cell version... Never bothered to bump up it's ram from 1GB either.

dsc00053rns.jpg


dsc00062y.jpg
 
Nah, but we get this all the time... the thread title is simply wrong for the comments, that's it. Should be a bit more specific instead of just creating threads to spew personal opinions... it's a discussion forum, so... we're discussing it, what's the big issue?
 
ryan_975 said:
Depends on what they decide to call Windows 8. But it'll be the 8.0 version of Windows NT regardless of what they call it, just as 2000 was 5.0, XP was 5.1, Vista was 6.0.
Click to expand...

and 7 is 6.1

....... which is y i hate the name of windows 7.....

hell... even calling it 6.1 is good enough... even for marketing purposes
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
and 7 is 6.1

....... which is y i hate the name of windows 7.....

hell... even calling it 6.1 is good enough... even for marketing purposes
Click to expand...

Right now it's 6.1 because it's based off of Server 2008 code. which is also v6.1. If I remember right, Vista didn't get it's version bumped up to 6.0 until the Beta2 or RC1 phase. When Windows 7 is sitting on the shelf at the store, it'll be version 7.0.
 
I have two HDDs in my system.
Windows Vista x86 on one and Windows 7 x64 on the other.
Received recently a DVB-S card and the first things I did was ...

installed drivers, then installed DVB-S player ... on both OS.

Funny things happened:

1. on Windows 7 - driver installation did not work but the player installed fine.
2. on Windows Vista - driver installation worked fine, but the player didn't install.

Anyway, I then started the player within Vista by navigating to the folder on the second HDD, where 7 is installed on.

windows7situation-nosozmpg.jpg


Funny problem ?
 
Looks like it's just missing codecs no? Or should they part of the driver/program install? Still funny nonetheless.
 
ryan_975 said:
Right now it's 6.1 because it's based off of Server 2008 code. which is also v6.1. If I remember right, Vista didn't get it's version bumped up to 6.0 until the Beta2 or RC1 phase. When Windows 7 is sitting on the shelf at the store, it'll be version 7.0.
Click to expand...

i have zero evidence at all, but i'm pretty sure win7 will stay with a version 6.1-2 kernel....

just a hunch :)
 
Another question regarding installing an OS in general ...

My plan is to get a small SSD drive, maybe 64 / 80 or even 120GB - just for the OS and leave the 1 TB HDDs just for main data storage.
Have read recently an article about how SSDs really work and was rather puzzled I have to say.

Did you know that writing once works pretty fast and if you use SSDs for reading only (like an ODD) then you wouldn't have any issues at all.
But once cells then have to be deleted BEFORE you can overwrite, then SSDs seem to have a MASSIVE HUGE handicap cause deleting and writing over SSD cells takes multiple times longer than on any HDD.

I was pretty disappointed when I read it, uhm ... should i look for the link ?
 
You're probably referring to Anandtech's article, it's a pretty in-depth look at the status quo of current SSD models in the market...

If you read it carefully you also might've noticed that even after that performance hit thru frequent use, the SSD still comes far ahead of any conventional HD, and that it's pretty much an unavoidable fact of SSDs, though there's a lot of ways to mitigate it. Some SSDs with poor controllers take a much bigger hit and do end up slower than regular HDs, right now you get what you pay for w/SSDs, and you pay a pretty large premium for one that's worth it ($300+ for reduced capacities, etc.).

Windows 7 will contain some improvements in this regard, supposedly.
 
XP was good, Vista IS good as long as you have the system to run it, and 7 WILL be good end o story.
 
Impulse said:
You're probably referring to Anandtech's article, it's a pretty in-depth look ...
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's the one.
Had emailed the author of that article: Anand Shimpi

Hi Anand

I have read your article from 18th March 2009 about how "SSDs work".

It was very interesting and disappointing at the same time.

Interesting, because now I have an idea how it all works and diappointing, because the writing handicap sounds really bad to me.

How could they mess up this I wonder ?

The new generation of SSds gave me so much hope and I was even willing to spend an unreasonable amount for my first SSD.
Have read good things about the SanDisk G25 3G ones which have been said to become available this year.

Have read good things about the Intel X25-M (80GB) one too, and after reading your report I googled for prices again.

I really do hope that the manufacturer will come up with a better solution then that.

When using the Intel as a boot drive for the OS, aren't the frequent writing actions, which a OS does non stop, like contra productive suddenly ?
I mean, I can hear my normal HDD grinding CONSTANTLY, so why should a MLC SSD be left with less writing operations ?
Sure without noise, but the (SSD) LED does flash all the time to indicate being busy, doesn't it ? Same like my HDD now.

Let's hope for the best in regards of SSD development, and please keep us informed of this issue.
Everything related to it is highly interesting, and I dare to say, it's the most exciting hardware to discuss about at the moment ... for me at least.

Thank you very much for the very good article again.

With kind regards
Click to expand...

He replied:

Thank you for your email. Do keep in mind that the best MLC SSDs have controllers that are intelligent enough to work around the constant writing to your drive by your OS, it's the more unusual access patterns that will cause them to slow down unreasonably.
Click to expand...
 
Going forward, the best approach for years to come is still gonna be a mix of regular HDs and SSDs, hopefully the OS and other apps become intelligent enough to know which they should use for certain tasks so it's not up to the user to micro-manage it...
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
i have zero evidence at all, but i'm pretty sure win7 will stay with a version 6.1-2 kernel....

just a hunch :)
Click to expand...

i remember reading they were going to keep the '6.1' or whatever label for win7, even if it is a 'new' kernel, to keep compatibility seamless. this is part of the reason vista drivers work in win7 so well.
 
I'm skeptical of this "keeping version 6.x for compatibility" thing. What, Microsoft are never going to change the major version number of Windows again now? There is already a compatibility system which can lie about the version number in order to keep fickle programs happy, and Vista drivers work fine with it because there are few low-level changes from Vista.

NT 6.1 makes sense because that is exactly what it is - it's a modification of Windows Vista, NT 6.0, on the same basic platform, in just the same way that Windows XP was NT 5.1 and based on the Windows 2000 platform. NT 4.0, NT 5.0 (2000) and NT 6.0 (Vista) all have major changes to the system architecture, whereas NT 5.1 (XP) and NT 6.1 (7) do not. "Windows 7" is a marketing name, but it doesn't make sense from the point of view of the system.
 
Mithent said:
I'm skeptical of this "keeping version 6.x for compatibility" thing. What, Microsoft are never going to change the major version number of Windows again now? There is already a compatibility system which can lie about the version number in order to keep fickle programs happy, and Vista drivers work fine with it because there are few low-level changes from Vista.

NT 6.1 makes sense because that is exactly what it is - it's a modification of Windows Vista, NT 6.0, on the same basic platform, in just the same way that Windows XP was NT 5.1 and based on the Windows 2000 platform. NT 4.0, NT 5.0 (2000) and NT 6.0 (Vista) all have major changes to the system architecture, whereas NT 5.1 (XP) and NT 6.1 (7) do not. "Windows 7" is a marketing name, but it doesn't make sense from the point of view of the system.
Click to expand...

application compatibility isn't perfect. I've had a few installers,*particularly those that just decompress and run another installer) choke on the 6.1 version even with Vista or XP compatibility mode enabled.
 
Maybe there's a very clever 7 of 9 marketing campaign in the works that we're not aware of? :p
 
Thought this might qualify as on topic ?

Sure you notice that when posting pictures / links, you first have to allow scripts to run temporarily.
That's quite annoying and I never sorted it until I found a solution only the other day:

1. From the menu select Tools / Internet Options
2. select the security tab and clicl on custom level
3. in the scripting section (almost on the bottom of the window) enable "allow websites to prompt for information using scripted windows"

There's no security risk and should actually be enabled by default, like in Firefox etc


PS: don't tell me everyone on hardforum knew this already anyway ?
 
Yeah good job OP.

I don't understand all this buzz, ive installed Beta on top of beta for windows 7 and I keep coming back to my matured vista OS. Maybe it runs better on low end system, but my mid and high end rigs seem the same..other than the reduced start up time. But hibernate completely voids this.

Is it just a marketing victory for Microsoft with Win7
 
Mithent said:
I'm skeptical of this "keeping version 6.x for compatibility" thing. What, Microsoft are never going to change the major version number of Windows again now? There is already a compatibility system which can lie about the version number in order to keep fickle programs happy, and Vista drivers work fine with it because there are few low-level changes from Vista.

NT 6.1 makes sense because that is exactly what it is - it's a modification of Windows Vista, NT 6.0, on the same basic platform, in just the same way that Windows XP was NT 5.1 and based on the Windows 2000 platform. NT 4.0, NT 5.0 (2000) and NT 6.0 (Vista) all have major changes to the system architecture, whereas NT 5.1 (XP) and NT 6.1 (7) do not. "Windows 7" is a marketing name, but it doesn't make sense from the point of view of the system.
Click to expand...


its because win7 is basically vista, period. in the past, when they had such similar kernels, they changed the basic label number and it was a pita for regular folk to get things to work. this time, they are just doing the opposite in hopes of keeping more people off the customer support lines. of course they will change the number in future windows releases- they will be much different from win7 and vista eventually. but, for now, this next os release is just a refresh of the last one, like it or not.
 
Tylerdurdened said:
You need to understand 7 is a refined Vista.

Microsoft uses tick/tock method. They make one new OS, and the next they improve on it. Rinse and repeat.

For example: DOS and 3.1

95 and 98.

Me (and somewhat 2000) and XP

Vista and 7
Click to expand...

hmm, more like

Windows 1.xx (new shit) and Windows 2.xx (revised shit)
Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1x
Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 4.0 and WIndows 2000
Windows 95 and Windows 98

noobman said:
Speaking of which... does anybody know how to edit Vista's hosts file?
Click to expand...

system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Vista and 7 are both different to earlier Windows OSes at how they handle security and permissions on system files so you'll need to edit them before you can modify the file ;)

Joe Average said:
You could install Windows 3.1x on a machine that didn't have DOS on it at all, yanno... :)
Click to expand...

Other than your method, you could also install it on non-MS DOS systems like DR-DOS, FreeDOS, even inside DOSBox.

Cov said:
... why hasn't Windows 7 got a proper name ? hmm ? Come on, Windows 7 ! How does that sound ?
Following that trail, Vista should have been named Windows 6 then, right ?
Click to expand...

Think of it this way. Windows 7 is still based off of Windows NT. Windows NT 3.1 didn't really have a proper name either as it was the first Windows NT release. If Microsoft released every NT workstation version using natural numbers instead of x.y or silly names it would go:

Windows NT 3.1 --> "Windows 1"
Windows NT 3.5x --> "Windows 2"
Windows NT 4.0 --> "Windows 3"
Windows NT 5.0 or 2000 --> "Windows 4"
Windows NT 5.1 or XP --> "Windows 5"
Windows NT 6.0 or Vista --> "Windows 6"
Windows NT 6.1 --> "Windows 7" ;)

So Windows 7 is the 7th workstation release of Windows NT.
 
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