Windows 7

**Stirton.M** · 12-29-2010

I've been using windows 7 exclusively since day one release, and prior to that, was one of the beta testers. At first I did not much like it because of some of the changes made in search and other tools I was accustomed to in XP...but after much mucking about learning how to manipulate it, I have come to the final conclusion that this OS is by far superior to XP in many ways. The biggest being stability. I have yet to encounter the BSOD as often seen with XP. To date, I have only reinstalled Win7 once on my primary computer, and that was simply to accommodate a new hard drive arrangement. I'll be doing it again sometime in the new year when I put in a pair of 3TB drives in RAID 0, along with a new case I've been drooling over these past couple months.

XP, that OS, I found I was reinstalling the OS far too often for issues that could not be resolved easily, relatively speaking. Time consumed trying to fix often could be dealt with in a fraction of the time by simply doing a reinstall. Even less when I image the OS to a backup drive using Acronis...half an hour at the most. I have a backup image of the current setup but have yet to use it.

There are a lot of hidden features to the OS that many users, including me, have had trouble reconciling, but once you get to know these hidden features, the OS shines brightly. I cannot say I've liked XP half as much. Gaming is not an issue either. Aside from one old game, Mech Warrior, I have had no issues with this OS when installing the older ones. And as for Mech Warrior, I installed Virtual PC and had installed an image of XP which allows me to play that game within the environment, with no noticeable lag seen with games inside a virtual environment.

The only thing I can recommend to others when getting this OS, spend the extra coin for the Ultimate release, the others versions lack many features that can be a pain to dealing with. My old Netbook which the parents have now, came with windows 7 starter, that version does not give DVD playback, a third party program is needed. And if you have the RAM for it, get the 64 bit version.

I recently bought a new Acer Aspire Notebook with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on that machine and it rocks...not as powerful as my desktop, but still respectable. The only thing I don't like is, compared to the netbook, the battery life on it sucks, but that is understandable considering the hardware in it.

**Stirton.M** · 12-29-2010

I'm still trying to get past the part about a power user buying a Dell....

**NeoMatrix** · 12-29-2010

Yes I'm still getting the windows7 navigation down pat. Windows7 seems to be a more stable platform. """"TOUCH WOOD""""

XP is the work environment that most customers are still using to date, so I will be stuck with the slow upgrading associated
with most of our customers still using XP.

**mrwho** · 12-29-2010

Originally Posted by Stirton.M

I'm still trying to get past the part about a power user buying a Dell....

Or buying an assembled PC at all - since my first PC, I've always assembled my own machines.

**JustManuals** · 12-29-2010

Originally Posted by Stirton.M

I'm still trying to get past the part about a power user buying a Dell....

What's wrong with Dell?

**rthonpm** · 12-30-2010

Dell at least gives the option of configuring your machine unlike the other big players in the game (HP, Sony, Acer, etc). My biggest gripe is the lack of restore media these days. I'd always take a Dell and wipe out the pre-installed image and do a clean Windows install and then install useful software as opposed to the bloatware. Now that all your restore functions are built into your hard drive, what if the drive goes bad? Sounds like a money making scheme if ever I've heard one.

Oh yeah, Windows 7... I tried it virtualised on an XP box and liked it. I upgraded all of my PC's to it back in September doing the three step route for two (Vista machines downgraded to XP) of XP upgrade to Vista and Vista to W7. For the other one: I have a 2003 Dell desktop with 512 MB RAM. Installed two new hard drives, and loaded Windows 7 Ultimate and it ran faster than it did with XP! It has more RAM now though. As the equipment we're connecting to the OS gets newer, problems will go away.

**charm5496** · 12-30-2010

bought a new laptop around Thanksgiving with Windows 7 and working through the differences I like the way everything operates. Plus if you use a program on XP that doesn't play nice with Win 7 you can always install the virtual XP mode and run those programs there...I love that feature!

**Stirton.M** · 12-31-2010

Originally Posted by manuals4you

What's wrong with Dell?

It really depends on which Dell...if you bought an Alienware Dell...that would be one thing, but outside of that, as mrwho pointed out, is an assembled PC...which strictly speaking on the scale of performance, you could have spent that coin on a custom machine you build yourself and get something that is truly a power user machine. If it was a laptop, that is something else entirely...pretty hard to find custom hardware to build yer own laptop. I have an Acer Aspire 5542-1340 similar to the one in this review which is just a 5542 without the hyphen number...not sure of the difference.... http://notebooks.com/2010/05/07/acer...hnology-video/

Don't get me wrong, Dell puts out some ok machines, but most are not built for high performance. A discussion I had on another board at length with several other people on that particular subject, the case leaves a lot to be desired for expanding the machine beyond the factory specs it was released upon. Cooling being the primary concern. Another fellow bought a Dell, and complained about overheating problems when he tried to populate the case with a high performance video card, and blamed that on the newly released Civilization V. Upon closer inspection of what kind of Dell he had, I noted that the case only came with one case fan, a small one at that, and that it did not allow for a larger, let alone additional case fans. The PSU that came with the thing was also only 300 watts, woefully inadequate for the video card he tossed into the unit, a nVidia GTX275.

The thread to that conversation was here... I stop playing until they fix the graphics overheat problem - Steam Users' Forums I am graywolves in that thread.

He finally revealed the type of Dell he had on page 12, at which point I was able to find specifics to his problem.

This is not to say you will ever have this issue...dunno which Dell you got...for all I know, you did get a top end one, like the Alienware brand I previously spoke of...just going by what I know about OEM builds...they are built for stability and cost saving methods, which often more than not, compromises on things that take it out of the power user realm. As I said, I hardly would consider any Dell a machine worthy of the expression. But all is not lost on those machines. Gut the thing for the primary components, trash the case and PSU, and put in a custom case and higher watt output PSU and the Dell will start to enter the realm. Add a higher power video card, high performance RAM, SATA RAID 0 and then we're talking power user. But that is simply a pipe dream I think, discussions I read elsewhere indicate that OEMs like Dell and HP use proprietary motherboards with the standoffs located in different places, preventing a new mainboard being installed in the case, or the existing hardware going into a custom case, at least, not without some modification.

But as I said, Dell does a good job of building decent computers, so I'm not poking at that aspect. Just teasing ya about being a power user who chose to buy a Dell, instead of a custom rig.

**Stirton.M** · 12-31-2010

Originally Posted by rthonpm

Dell at least gives the option of configuring your machine unlike the other big players in the game (HP, Sony, Acer, etc). My biggest gripe is the lack of restore media these days. I'd always take a Dell and wipe out the pre-installed image and do a clean Windows install and then install useful software as opposed to the bloatware. Now that all your restore functions are built into your hard drive, what if the drive goes bad? Sounds like a money making scheme if ever I've heard one.

Oh yeah, Windows 7... I tried it virtualised on an XP box and liked it. I upgraded all of my PC's to it back in September doing the three step route for two (Vista machines downgraded to XP) of XP upgrade to Vista and Vista to W7. For the other one: I have a 2003 Dell desktop with 512 MB RAM. Installed two new hard drives, and loaded Windows 7 Ultimate and it ran faster than it did with XP! It has more RAM now though. As the equipment we're connecting to the OS gets newer, problems will go away.

I recently bought an Acer laptop before Christmas, it also did not come with any disks. The restore software pushes the end user to create their own rescue media. That Acer, I ended up with 4 DVD recover disks, the fourth disk contains the OEM drivers and installed bundleware. Disappointing to say the least. A netbook I bought last January came with a recovery DVD, but apparently this is a thing of the past. I think the point was to prevent the OS from ever being installed in another rig, though that is merely speculation.

But like you, I also dumped the contents of the disk, formatted and installed Win7 Ultimate x64...it came with Home Premium x64. OK for home use I guess, I bought this for work, I need the stronger network tools that Home lacks.