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#1
Seven questions
I suppose this is the correct section to post this - if not, please feel free to move it...
First, I have not loaded the Win7 Beta anywhere yet... I am on Vista x64 on all my machines currently.
Q1: Am I correct in assuming that if drivers are available for Vista x64, the same drivers should work for 7 x64?
Q2: Same question as regards programs/installers and such - if it works OK in Vista x64, will it work in 7 x64?
Q3: I also assume there will be an upgrade possibility to install 7 directly over Vista... Will this be advisable, or will it be better to start from scratch? I HATE the idea of re-installing everything, but I'd rather go that route than have problems later. I remember from 98 --> XP it was advised to do a clean install.
Q4: I am currently having a bunch of small niggling problems with an HP laptop preinstalled with V x64U. The problems are not life-threatening, just annoying. I was thinking about trying to re-install Vista (without all the HP junk) as I have a commercial disc as well, but... I thought if I'm going to go that route, I might as well be adventurous and install 7 instead. I would probably wait for the public RC. Either way, I guess I'll need drivers for most of the hardware. Can I assume 7 will have drivers for Mobo, HD etc, or do I really have to find EVERYTHING? Again, will the Vista drivers provided by HP work here?
Q5: If I go with Q4 and install the RC - will the RTM version be able to be installed over the RC, or will it need another clean install...?
Q6: Since I haven't done any Beta testing... I hear that they have made 7 "leaner" in terms of its consumption of resources. Currently the two biggest consumers of RAM I have are sidebar and svchost. Both seem to have "memory leaks" in Vista whereby the longer you run your computer without a shutdown/restart, the more memory they consume. Currently I have sidebar at almost 375 megs (and only 3 items running, all MS official), and one instance of svchost can also get over the 300 meg mark if I leave it long enough. Looks like sidebar is gone in 7, and the gadgets can just run on the desktop - which I already do with Vista - but has any of the memory-eating phenomenon with these guys been addressed in 7?
Q7: Am I correct in assuming that 7's handling of display stuff (DirectX, OpenGL, etc) is pretty much the same as Vista's (i.e. what works in Vista should work in 7)? I use a lot of 3D CAD apps. Vista's dropping of support for OpenGL in favor of DirectX was a disaster for most major 3D CAD apps - the vid card manufacturers didn't manage to keep up with their drivers either - so there was quite a lag before some stuff actually ran acceptably under Vista. Some apps still have problems, but by now I would say that it is the manufacturers fault for not re-writing their stuff to work under Vista. I get the impression a number of them had hoped that Vista would just "go away"...
I haven't got any more questions for the moment... But I would just like to extend a large thank you to all the people in here and in the Vista forums who post great info and give help/advice... What an incredible resource!
Last edited by Barman58; 21 Mar 2009 at 18:45. Reason: Text too small