Convince me !

thank you :)

srq2625 said:

I used to think like you ... That there's little chance that MS would be able to much improve on what WinXP x64 already made available. But, I was wrong. There's more than a few reasons to look at Win7:

• Better memory management. I actually got it to install and run on an 8 year old Toshiba S3000 Satellite with only 800MHz proc, 20GB HDD, and 512MB memory. Didn't run real swift, but it ran and didn't crash. Oh, and didn't eat all the memory in the box. With IE 8 running, there was still some 200MB available.
• Eye-candy - OK, obviously not your thing, but it might be for some.
• Drivers ...
  
  • Video driver on the Toshiba, not so good
  • On my desktop (see system specs), everything was supported right off the DVD once I had refreshed the MBO BIOS. Video and network drivers where updateable from the H/W vendor. Nvidia works a treat. The NIC, from Asrock ... no issues.
  • On my Acer lappie - The only thing I have yet to get a driver for is the integrated video camera. I never used it before and I doubt I'll ever use it in the future. So not a big deal for me.
  
  
• Faster/slower then XP? My experience is that every application is running at least as fast on Win7 as it ever did on XP.
• Better power consumption. Under XP, I never did figure out how to get the i7 920 to "throttle down" when the system was idle - the CPU was always cranking away at 2.6GHz (+/-). I'm not talking about CPU usage as reported by the Task Manager - that, as expected, would always drop to near zero. Under Win7, it's like the various cores go to sleep until they are needed - presumably lowering power consumption and heat generation.
• Vista drivers? There's only one piece of hardware I have for which Win7 doesn't have a driver - a monitor color calibration device. However, the vendor website has software designed for x64 OS. This software runs on WinXP, Vista 64, and on Win7 x64.
• Does it use more memory, when idle, than WinXP. Ummmm .... yes, but so what. The memory management is sooo much better that when/if you run an app that needs more memory, Win7 seems pretty compliant about releasing some of the memory it's using so the app can get to it. Win7 seems to use what it needs (makes it run faster as it's not always going to disk for stuff) until such time that some application needs it. On my lappie (with only 2GB), I've never run into a situation where there wasn't enough memory to fit just one more thing in ... and that without a lot of page swapping. On the old Toshiba ... that's another question entirely :)
• Stability? When first released, WinXP was not a shining example. It got better with SP2, but really didn't come into it's own until SP3. Win7 seems to have avoided much of those problems and nearly all of the problems encountered by early adopters of Vista. The various Win7 builds have been getting better and better. The RC (7100) was solid, but 7229 is so much more so and some who have it say that 7232 is better yet.

May I, humbly, suggest you install Win7 and see for yourself - dual boot maybe? I think maybe that experience will change your outlook a bit.

Well put..if that doesnt convince him, nothing will lol
I got 7229 too..thought x86..and love it

Barman58 said:

When XP first came out I remember downgrading hundreds of PCs pre-installed with XP to Win2000 and NT for reliability/compatibility reasons.

Yeah, I hated XP when it first came out just like I hated Vista when it first came out (and still do). I like Win7 much better, but I'm still having a hard time making the transition even with all the praise coming from you guys.

And not to forget its free! Till medio next year :)

Get 64 bit, its the future :)

For me XP has been comfortable and stable enough. It was not any serious crash in few years. I have skipped Vista becouse my laptop 5 years old, with 1.25 GB RAM is not able tu run it and most comments on Vista was not encouraging. Now I use Win 7 RC and I noticed that it needs less RAM then XP with the same set of application I ususally keep open (550 vs. 850). It boots much faster and is stable. Installation was smooth and almost all devices work from the start. The only problems are my CD card reader (I think because of special driver covering in my case both PCMIA and card reader - solved so far by external usb reader) and still no solution for wake up (old graphic card and lack of driver for catalyst control).
What is actually big advantage it is ability to recover if I go too far with experiments I do every day. Two weeks of my experience with Win 7 convinced me that this system is an interesting improvement.
What can be serious obstacle to apply it next year is the price. I am not sure I am ready to pay 250 $ for it.
Maybe better solution will be to buy in future new notebook for some 800 $ with this system. It will be difficult to go back to XP when RC expires in March.
regards,
bjs

If you dont have any problems with XP then stick with it. I am not sure if you are using XP x64 or not but thats a very solid alternative.

If you are looking for the latest and greatest and are a gamer etc etc then I think you might like Win 7 esp with DX 11.

There is no doubt Vista was a fail but it has gotten a LOT better after SP2 got released. Still I think Win 7 is great considering i jumped ship from XP 64 to Win 7 a few weeks ago and have not looked back. It just works!

srq2625 said:

My experience is that every application is running at least as fast on Win7 as it ever did on XP.

Boris said:

Get 64 bit, its the future

The following screenshot shows my experience.