• Most new users don't bother reading our rules. Here's the one that is ignored almost immediately upon signup: DO NOT ASK FOR FANEDIT LINKS PUBLICLY. First, read the FAQ. Seriously. What you want is there. You can also send a message to the editor. If that doesn't work THEN post in the Trade & Request forum. Anywhere else and it will be deleted and an infraction will be issued.
  • If this is your first time here please read our FAQ and Rules pages. They have some useful information that will get us all off on the right foot, especially our Own the Source rule. If you do not understand any of these rules send a private message to one of our staff for further details.
  • Please read our Rules & Guidelines

    Read BEFORE posting Trades & Request

Windows 7 is pretty sweet

Personally, I prefer the Vista start menu to both the classic and default XP ones. The application launcher is nice for a bundled feature. I'm used to good third-party launchers on OSX (currently Butler, although Quicksilver is nice too), and even in that company the Vista/7 launcher is surprisingly useful. The only reason we like the classic start menu now is that we've spent the last 15 years forgetting how shite it really was. IMHO.

Ghostcut, I got the sense that a more dynamic and better allocation of memory was a main focus for the developers this time around. Needing a lot of memory these days is acceptable if the OS knows how to make the right priorities. Vista truly sucked in that regard. I'm really impressed with how Snow Leopard handles multitasking. Microsoft has had a lot of catching up to do, but it seems that 7 is a massive improvement and not laughable next to OSX anymore, like Vista was.
 
I've got Windows 7 now. Had it a few weeks and didn't pay for it. It's a long story, but I took my old tower into PC World for a repair and also said they might as well put Windows 7 on it. Anyway, when I went to pick it up, they only charged me for the repair (£44), and so I came home with Windows 7 Home Premium in a nice green box. My wife went back to PC world the other day to buy some memory for her laptop. I waited outside. :-D

Anyway, I have been running it on a very old machine with a 1.6GHZ processor (Sempron), 128 MB graphics card (GeForce4 MX4000) and 1 gig of RAM, and it's been great. I've got a few programs running and right now the total RAM used is 480-520 MB. 100 of that is Firefox and all my add-ons.

I like to play games and I'm currently playing the first Far Cry on the low settings and it's all going well. The only problem I have is when I have used CS3 and opened up a few large images, the system froze on me the other day completely. Though I can still use it for small editing jobs.

I installed Classic Explorer to get a couple of missing functions back. You can use the installation to make the start menu like XP (my previous OS), but I prefer things how I have them. Oh, the first thing I did was go 'Classic.'

The absolute most annoying thing about moving to Windows 7 for me, is that my Cordless Philips Skype phone wont work with my computer any more. I've had to plug it into a laptop with XP on it.

A minor problem with Windows 7 letting me access one of my External Hard drives (Maxtor Basics), was fixed by adding a PCI card with USB sockets and plugging into that.

Another problem I've found is that I lost the 'Stereo Mix/What U Hear' function for recording. A problem with Vista too I've read. But I installed Total Recorder and that is no longer a problem.

If I had known more about it, I probably wouldn't have changed from XP, but considering I didn't pay for it, I'm happy with it. It basically looks like XP now anyway. I even exported XP icons from my old laptop and changed a few to those in Windows 7.

Having said all that, I am actually getting a newer, much more powerful desktop computer in a couple of weeks and so this machine will probably end up in the kids bedroom. But I just wanted to say that in my experience, Windows 7 is a good OS that can run on a crappy computer!
 
I played with the RC of Windows 7 and I was impressed enough to move back after being a Mac user for seven years. I really like it.
 
Metrostar - is this what you installed : http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ ?

That looks exactly what I've been looking for in Win7.

Then I have to decide on a mail client. And before anyone says Thunderbird - which I'd love to use, I'm afraid the lack of autoscrolling down to show the latest messages is far too irritating. So maybe Outlook it has to be.
 
It is. I installed it with the XP style Start menu first, then decided that I'd gotten used to the Windows 7 one. So I uninstalled and re-installed with just the Explorer features. No problems at all.

Screenshot of settings:

6f54efc5.jpg


Windows 7 doesn't have file size info at the bottom of the Explorer window. The main reason I installed this was to get that back.

739af49c.jpg


I know. But I just didn't want to live without it.
 
White, I haven't used Thunderbird for Windows in a while, but are you sure it doesn't autoscroll down to the latest message (or that there's a setting for it)? It sure does on OSX.

(Thunderbird 3 is amazing, btw. I used to use Thunderbird 2 despite all the clunkiness because of the cool features, but now at v3.0 I actually enjoy using it.)
 
theslime said:
White, I haven't used Thunderbird for Windows in a while, but are you sure it doesn't autoscroll down to the latest message (or that there's a setting for it)? It sure does on OSX.

(Thunderbird 3 is amazing, btw. I used to use Thunderbird 2 despite all the clunkiness because of the cool features, but now at v3.0 I actually enjoy using it.)
Click to expand...

No, it definitely does not and it's intentional as Mozilla don't want you keeping all your email in the inbox, as it might 'corrupt'. Now, I've used Outlook Express for years and kept everything in the inbox and it never corrupted!

I'm looking hard, but there doesn't seem to be alot of options out there without drawbacks.
- Incredimail - no news reader
- Eudora - old, now basing on Thunderbird
- Claws mail - no HTML function and can't find a way to import OE.
- Pegasus - sloppy, convaluted
- Outlook - slow
- Opera - browser based
 
If you ever find an answer let me know as i suffer from the same problem, used OE for so long I've got used to having everything in one place.

at the mo im using Windows Live Mail which is essentially OE for W7, and its just about bearable. i'd rather Windows Mail from Vista if i had the choice.
 
white43 said:
No, it definitely does not and it's intentional as Mozilla don't want you keeping all your email in the inbox, as it might 'corrupt'.
Click to expand...
Huh? That's just... weird. Like I said, it's not the default behaviour on OSX. This must be a config issue.
edit: I mean "issue" as in "can be changed by about:config", not that it's an issue on your end.
 
I installed 7 on a computer for a client and I had yet to try it out. I was very impressed with it. Yes things are moved around but I didn't have much difficulty finding where to. What impressed me the most was how easily it located drivers for everything and how good it ran on an older computer. This prompted me to give it a try on my home computer that less than a gig of ram and it runs really good. Sure I see a hang every now and then but XP wasn't any different. I definitely recommend it.
 
Yeah Dork313, on my 1GB RAM system at the idle state it was using not much more than 300 megabytes. Windows 7 really seems to manage memory very well.

I finally got my new computer the other day and have been busy setting it all up. I just wanted to tell you all about this very handy little add-on for Windows 7 Explorer:

There is no toggle for enabling/disabling thumbnails any more.
4ba50719.jpg


But not to worry, now I have this on the right click menu.
64fac48b.jpg


You can find out more about installation from here:

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/toggl ... windows-7/
 
Something else that XP network icon fans may want:

Animated network icon for Windows 7. I find the current one in 7 to be absolutely useless.

http://itsamples.com/
 
nice one D that was my only major gripe with 7 so far.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom