Windows 7?

dodgechargerfan

dodgechargerfan

In a 55 gallon drum, floating down river, and
Staff member
Who's gonna bite?

I did. I got mine delivered today.

I decided that I want to switch up to 64 bit. So, I started looking into what that'll take.

I knew that my motherboard could handle it and Windows Vista says I'm 64-bit capable, but I wanted to look into what processor would work with my board and max things out.

Well, I can put in an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 according to my motherboard specs. So, a shopping I do go... Best price I can find for just the CPU: around $250 US on eBay. Best price I can find local and in stock: more like $350 CDN.

What the hell? I can buy a brand new barebones kit with quad core, 8GB, 1 TB drive, 500W power supply and shiny new case for about 100 bucks more... So, now I'm shopping for a barebones kit.

I'm leaning towards an Intel Core i5 based kit with 4 GB of faster RAM, 750 GB HD at a faster RPM, 750W P.S. and a case.

The thing I'm wondering: can I upgrade my Vista to 32 bit now and then upgrade again to 64 bit when I get the new gear...
I'm doing a scan right now to see if I can go to 64-bit right now. Even though my system says it can, I'm doubtful. If this scan comes back with a yes, then I'll do it now.

I'll let you know what I find.

Am I sucker? Maybe.

If you don't hear from me for a while, send a search party.... ah sorry, that one's been done. :D
 
*peeks up from trashpile that is his garage, prairie-dog style*

When you find out, do tell...

Does anyone make a welder's beanie with a propeller? :hmmm:

*dives back into garage*
 
I've been reading about 7 on overclockers.com, and it appears that 7 is way way WAY better with lower power systems than vista. In fact, one guy put it on a netbook and it ran better/faster than XP. He did a pretty detailed writeup on it. Now, I'm not saying that 7 would run faster than XP on your typical desktop setup-it probably has some features geared towards netbooks, but I can say that he started out very skeptical and ended up glad he tried it.
 
Yep. It's more than lipstick on a pig. According to what I've read so far, the pig is no more. I can accept that relative to Vista, but I'll hold out agreeing with it completely.

My challenge will be comparing 32-bit Vista with 64-bit W7. It's not a fig newtons to fig newtons comparison.

I did confirm that I can run 64-bit on this system. The catch is that it won't be a straight upgrade. It has to be a custom install. Which means, I backup (I do that anyway), install W7 clean, and then re-install all of my programs. Fun. Fun. Fu...
I grabbed a copy of PC Mover from LapLink that is supposed to make the whole process as painless as possible. We'll see.
 
So, I changed gears a bit. I started a full backup of my PC and while that was running (and failing) I went and upgraded my wife's PC from XP to W7. Doing so requires the same custom install and there are some gotchas. But follow MS' instructions and all should go fine. The only problem I ran into was that the settings for Outlook (real Outlook not Express) didn't make it through. But the upgrade process takes a lot of stuff and puts it in a folder called windows.old and I found the Personal folders file there. So all is well.

Overall impression: much faster. The SOP for that computer was turn it on and walk away for a half hour, then it'll be ready when you come back. Now, you can get up and running in a minute or two. I didn't use laplink's PCMover for this one because there is very little on the PC to worry about. The only program I needed to re-install was MS Office. Everything else was junk anyway. I upgraded a photo program instead of re-installing the old one. I will, however, be using PCMover for my PC.

Caveat/disclaimer: In the process of preparing for the upgrade, I cleaned up the system completely. Defragged the hard drive; defragged system memory;defragged and compacted the registry;cleaned out a malware infection; etc. The other significant piece is that the security software that we use doesn't run on W7. So, that's gone now too. I still have things covered with something I already have: iolo's System Mechanic Pro 9. Works great and keeps the system all tuned up for me. So, while there are some valid reasons for the system to be faster - outside of the upgrade to W7 - I do notice some differences in speed that I didn't notice just after cleanup and before upgrade. We'll see how stability fairs over time. Usability should be interesting because I basically just changed almost everything about the PC that my wife is used to..
 
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Done!

PCMover Upgrade Assistant is definitely worth the 20 bucks. The only sucky thing is that it's 20 bucks per PC migration. I suppose that's fair, but I'd have paid, say 30 bucks for a family pack type deal.

Anyway, it made things pretty painless. The biggest part was "moving back in" I started that and went to bed. Woke up to a a"congratulations!" message. A reboot later and I was up and running with all of my apps, settings, and files.

There's a step where you can exclude applications from the migration process. I liked that a lot. There was stuff that showed up that I though was long gone. I chose not to migrate it and now it IS long gone.

Overall impression Windows 7: definitely faster!! There is less crap running in the background. Opening Task Manager used to be a 15 second ordeal and a crap shoot at best. Now it's instant.

A few irksome quirks:
The W7 version of my security suite - provided by my ISP - is not yet available. I went through the same delay with Vista. Then, I bought the Pro version right from F-Secure. I got almost a year out of it before my ISP made it available for free. I'm gong to wait this time.
I was planning on using the AV and firewall built in to my tuning suite, iolo's System Mechanic Pro, but those two features are not available for 64-bit OS'. I did use them on my wife's PC, though.
So, I've got Avast and Window Firewall (way better than before) for now.

Another quirk is that there really isn't any 64-bit Internet browsers out there that I've found. Apparently, you can compile Firefox in to a 64-bt app, but before I put the beanie prop in to overdrive, I got to thinking: what do I need 64-bit browsing for?
So, I'm not going to worry about it.

Other than that, I've got a few web building apps that I still need to test out, but the stuff I need to get through the day works fine.... and faster.
 
Less stuff running in the background is good... that's why I've been running Mike Lin's StartupCPL for about 8 years now. Until I got Stretch's PC a little over a week ago, I've never had Task Manager take more than a second or two to pop up.

I knew all the registry tweaks to defeat that stuff, but StartupCPL was just a whole bunch easier.

I'm still running W2K, and it's faster and more streamlined than I've experienced with XP or Vista. After disastrous encounters with both (particularly XP; not that much experience with Vista) I decided to hold off any further "upgrades". I'm seriously considering this one.
 
i hear ya on 2k doc but from gaming and other issues 2k falls short and xp fixes it...but id ONLY run xp if its pro or corprate....otehrwise stick with 2k

as far as 7 goes...ima stick to my guns im not going to even glance at it till a game comes out forcing my hand...even if there is a disc sitting her for me
 
I ditched Windows on my home PC last year and switched to Mandriva Linux. At work I deal with Red Hat Linux and QNX4 and it's all kind a new to me so this helps keep my chops up. Other than some issues getting my NVidia graphics card to work right, the installation was a breeze. I don't do much with the box other than websurfing and poking around on the console.

The wife's PC runs XP and it's been pretty decent. It still needs cleaning from time to time, but other than that, no real problems.

My company laptop runs XP Pro. I beat the snot out of that thing running a dozen apps simultaneously at times. Outlook is always running, then I'll have 1-4 instances of RS Logix running with RS Linx, add a Telnet client, QNX's Phindows, and some MS office apps, and you've my typical day.

I have an Xbox360 for games.
 
QNX... I used to work with stuff that ran on QNX.. Damned if I can remember what it was now. Jeez.
 
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