Ok for those of us waiting for W7 a few questions of you beta testers.

[Locut0s]

I've been happily using Vista now for some years without many complaints. I've suffered few of the growing pains that others have mentioned. In fact I've been happy with Windows in general since the days of 2000 and xp. I've been hearing some good things about 7 from blog posts and rumours. But I see very little that is new from a Vista perspective. So enlighten me for those who have been using the Betas what will I notice?!?!

 

[Aberforth]

First thing you'll notice is the performance, it feels light and fast. Rest you can read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7

 

[Billb2]

When I used Vista, it was always "Aw crap, I'll have to fix that."

With Windows 7 it's "Wow, that works great."

Just one example:
The installs (1st beta and 7068, both x64) recognized my dual video card/dual monitor set up (and not the sig rig below) and not only downloaded and installed the latest Nvidia WAQL drivers, but extended the desktop to both monitors on first boot. That would be twenty minutes of screwing around with XP or Vista.

As stated above, aside from the obvious technical and speed improvements, there is a much better "feel" to Windows 7.

I have had a XP/Vista dual boot installed, figuring I'd just naturally migrate over to Vista. Well, after a year it didn't happen. When the boot screen came up it was always "Why do I want to deal with all that crap? I'll just use XP again.".

Now, dual booting XP and Windows 7 it's "Oh boy, I get to use Windows 7 again!".

Pretty much, Windows 7 does everything Vista does, just better, faster, and nicer.

Only let down so far is no DreamScene on dual monitors.

 

[lxskllr]

I like Vista better. I won't be upgrading.

 

[Mem]

Having used Win7 beta 7000 and 7068 build I can say I won't be upgrading my Vista PCs for quite awhile,really nothing new there that I need or see,speed wise its the same for me ,only if you got an old PC will you notice the speed improvements,anyway once Win7 wow factor dies down we all be waiting for Win8.

 

[loup garou]

2 big things I really like are the new taskbar and new windows easy transfer.
The taskbar still needs some tweaking, imo. It's too hard to tell when you have multiple IE8 windows open as opposed to tabs. It would be nice if there was some sort of indicator of that on the previews. Wouldn't be such a problem if IE8 worked like Chrome and you could drag tabs between windows, though.
Easy Transfer is really improved, I love the new granularity of it and the reporting features, so you know exactly what gets migrated.

That said, I didn't find W7 to be faster than Vista in my testing. As a matter of fact, it (7000, 7068 and 7077) runs like a dog on my MSI Wind desktop. Vista was OK, not great. XP is fine on that box.

Oh and libraries...love the libraries.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I like Vista better. I won't be upgrading.

This made me chuckle... And so it begins...

 

[yinan]

It is kinda funny.

 

[Andrmgic]

For me, it has been a better experience.

I much prefer the new taskbar to the old one, some configuration options have been moved into places that make more sense and I like the new aero theme with the adjustable transparency on the taskbar.

Homegroups are a nice feature for folks with multiple machines on their network, and the ability to stream my music and video over the internet through WMP and to any other device on my network has been great.


Using my bluetooth adapter has been much, much easier... it just worked out of the box.. no need for a special driver.

Seeing as I never purchased Vista, I feel as though Windows 7 is a worthy upgrade. I can see how some people might not care about the new features, or care enough about them to buy a new OS, the upgrade is definitely worth it for me.

I actually dislike using the old taskbar now.. it seems so useless by comparison now that I've adjusted.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I like Vista better. I won't be upgrading.

This made me chuckle... And so it begins...

I don't have anything against Win7, but they changed a couple of things I like with Vista, and haven't added enough to make it worth the trouble. I also don't like the 3 year release schedule. 5 years is a good spread between O/S releases, so I'll upgrade at Win8.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I like Vista better. I won't be upgrading.

This made me chuckle... And so it begins...

I don't have anything against Win7, but they changed a couple of things I like with Vista, and haven't added enough to make it worth the trouble. I also don't like the 3 year release schedule. 5 years is a good spread between O/S releases, so I'll upgrade at Win8.

And I wasn't really laughing at you, you were just the first of the 'I like the Vista I won't upgrade' crowd. I expect a good round of those that claimed they'd never run Vista over XP to shortly be saying the same thing about 7.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I like Vista better. I won't be upgrading.

Me too... and me neither...

I posted some quotes from a ZDNet article in another thread...

The title of the article said it all: Vista/7 [blah, blah, blah]

I had just awoke and had my first cup o' black magic - took me a while to catch it...

Vista/7

We all knew it - the "beta testers" - but the media is finally catching on...

Really, the most exciting part of W7 (for me) was the "Easter Egg Hunt" - finding the key, before someone else did. The rest has been a snooze...

Maybe this sense of 'snoozing' is the greatest benefit of W7 - after 3 years of grappling with Vista, night n' day, you know?

W7 is lighter, faster, "just works"...

Vista was a nightmare from hell, for many ppl!

While Vista/7 may be a catharsis for some - it ain't my cup o' tea... sorry!

 

[KeypoX]

I can't tell a big difference but a few things are not working on my laptop. Hopefully they figure it out.

It does use less ram which is nice i guess. I dont like the new taskbar, it is less efficient but im getting used to it. Wish they stuck with their plan to implement multidesktops.

I thought the xp to vista was pretty awesome. Vista to 7 not as much, but some improvement.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: VinDSL


We all knew it - the "beta testers" - but the media is finally catching on...

Really, the most exciting part of W7 (for me) was the "Easter Egg Hunt" - finding the key, before someone else did. The rest has been a snooze...

Maybe this sense of 'snoozing' is the greatest benefit of W7 - after 3 years of grappling with Vista, night n' day, you know?

I was the same way. I enjoyed trying to get a key, and a working download link. It was like trying to get a Bag Of Crap from Woot.com :^D

After using it, I just wasn't impressed. I don't care for the look of the new theme with the flat glass. They used that in WMP11 in Vista, and I really dislike it. Vista looks elegant, while Win7 looks utilitarian.

They got rid of the sidebar which is one of my favorite Vista features. I always used Google Desktop, but their sidebar was buggy, and most of the gadgets lacked polish. Vista's was very well done.

I don't like the new taskbar. It may work well for some people, but the classic taskbar works well for my computing style. I clean up after myself as I go, so I don't build up a crapload of open windows. Having shared icons might work well for others, but it slows me down.

I started using Vista at RC1, and I could count the problems I had on 1 hand. It was a great change from XP, and everything felt fresh, and new. Vista to Win7 feels(is) more like an XP style service pack. Some minor tweaks here and there, and some small gui changes, but nothing ground breaking. It always amuses me when people who were historically Vista bashers, jump on the Win7 bandwagon like it's the second coming. They're almost the same in my experience :^D

 

[jmagg]

The latest Win 7 evaluation is very good.
Vista is a big improvement to XP and 7 is better yet.

Aero snap is a super productivity tool, improved search, named previews.

There's no going back

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: jmagg
There's no going back

Next stop, FreeBSD 7.1 - I'm downloading the iso in the background right now.

LoL!

If I get BSD working satisfactorily, there's no going back for me either...

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I like Vista better. I won't be upgrading.

This made me chuckle... And so it begins...

I don't have anything against Win7, but they changed a couple of things I like with Vista, and haven't added enough to make it worth the trouble. I also don't like the 3 year release schedule. 5 years is a good spread between O/S releases, so I'll upgrade at Win8.

And I wasn't really laughing at you, you were just the first of the 'I like the Vista I won't upgrade' crowd. I expect a good round of those that claimed they'd never run Vista over XP to shortly be saying the same thing about 7.

The year is 2015. The newest Microsoft OS is Windows 9 and people will still be clinging to XP. Them thar damn whipper snappers and their fancy 3D OSes with tactile feedback and total emersion technolgy. Long live XP.

 

[Modelworks]

For me 7 is better as far as applications accelerated running inside windows.
One of the major problems for me with vista was running applications that use opengl or directx inside windows on the desktop. Programs like Maya or 3dsmax had serious issues with viewports.
When I saw 7 coming out I contacted Autdoesk to become a tester and made sure that the applications work right this time. So far I am pleased. I still get the "This application has stopped responding" problem every now and then , but it runs better than vista and almost as good as XP x64.

 

[IamDavid]

I liked Vista allot. I like Ubuntu allot. I really like Win7. Look like Gates and team have figured out how to get a couple more bucks out of me.. Maybe Ubuntu 10.1 will be released before Win7 and it'll prove me wrong...lol

 

[Tempered81]

Im still using XP. I'll probably upgrade to Win 7 when the final is out, and they discontinue support for XP.

So far people report that win 7 does okay performance wise on the dell mini's.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Originally posted by: Aberforth
First thing you'll notice is the performance, it feels light and fast. Rest you can read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7

I didn't know about the TIFF iFilter, f***in' sweet.

 

[SickBeast]

What's new?

Beautiful artwork, I would say. The themes are gorgeous and the wallpaper automatically changes throughout the day.

I like the new start menu personally but others don't. There are a few other small interface improvements as well.

Performance is the main benefit, but I have a feeling that Vista on the latest service pack on good hardware will perform pretty similarly. The only place you'll see a really dramatic difference is on older hardware. You will definitely notice the difference loading programs and stuff in Windows 7 though. Everything is faster by a pretty good margin.

 

[Modelworks]

One other thing is the included codecs. After install you no longer need to download codecs to play the main media types, xvid,mov.

 

[ahenkel]

I agree the codec thing really helps. I don't know how many computers I fix cause someone goes and downloads some Codec pack that hoses everything. The one other nice thing is the 7 beta seems to be stable enough that I feel safe using it as a primary OS means free Windows for my second computer for at least a year.

 

[Psynaut]

I've never been nostalgic or one to cling to the past. I liked Vista way better than XP, and I like W7 better than Vista. I have fewer problems with UAC control. I like the new task bar and the way I can preview what is open in a diminished window before restoring iand also the new tray. Yes the sidebar is gone, but you can still use all the same gadgets, and now you can put them anywhere on your desktop that you want. I love the sleek look and feel of W7, the customizable colors for everything and the way the windows open. I really like being able to make my Desktop background a slideshow; that is one of my favorite features even though it is just fluff. I don't know if it is faster than Vista, I can't really tell, but it certainly is not slower in any way. There is probably quite a bit more but that is what springs to mind instantly while I am looking at the desktop.