Computer Hope
Other => Other => Topic started by: Kurtiskain on February 20, 2009, 10:59:35 PM
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Who here on CH is using it and who isn't?
I installed it today, over XP, and so far it is nice, the interface lags slightly with the WMD Display drivers on my Radeon x700.
4.5 Windows Experience index...just poking around with it.
I know there are a few other threads about W7...but I want my own :P
What are other user's thoughts on it?
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I've been using it for a while... I got about 7 keys out of the website due to an error :D I think I'll just keep those around...
I love it! Its faster than Vista, but, has all the features I want and enjoy using every day.
I dont think that the Windows Rating thing says much, but, mine says: 3.0
(2GB RAM, 120GB HDD, 1.73 CoreDuo, 128MB nVidia GeForce Go 7000. This is a laptop)
Microsoft Wordpad and Paint scare me now...
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hey do? I haven't even looked at them :P
One gripe I do have...My RAID card is stuck in PIO mode, and I cant get ATi Drivers installed...so that means no frets on fire :P
mines 2.8 Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR2, 200GB Hdd, 128MB Radeon x700, desktop.
EDIT: Looked a them.....I too am scared! too many changes...to many changes...lol
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I use Wordpad, never Notepad, since I deal with too much non-Windows-standards text files, eg: Linux or weird HTML...
It was a bit of a shock.
You can always force install a Vista or XP driver...
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I tried...well...the ways I knew how :P it just kept saying failed or it wouldn't go anywhere
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...and who isn't?
Just so you know, I'm not. ;D ;D
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...and who isn't?
Just so you know, I'm not. ;D ;D
Me too.
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There are no "Editions" in the BETA so to speak...it's 32 or 64bit...
Testing both and so far i think they may have gotten Vista II off the ground...
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There are no "Editions" in the BETA so to speak...it's 32 or 64bit...
Testing both and so far i think they may have gotten Vista II off the ground...
Ahh ok I just noticed on bootup it specifically states Ultimate but meh...
Another thing I noted, after coming back from "shutdown" my RAID card drives disappear because the card doesn't run through BIOS again.
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I hope they choose to just eliminate versions when it actually comes out...
I'd like to see them get rid of "Home" and "Pro" versions as well. The only real difference seems to be advanced administrative tools, and support for domains... and a large price tag.
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I'd like to see them get rid of "Home" and "Pro" versions as well. The only real difference seems to be advanced administrative tools, and support for domains... and a large price tag.
Agreed, they really sunk their own boat with Vista...I admit, some users you would rather not have access to really powerful features - with great power comes great responsibility!
I have a plus on Windows 7! I used to need drivers for the multimedia keys of my keyboard, and even then, pushing play/pause would simply restart the song, now it works perfectly! :D
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You may need or want to install Vista drivers for that RAID card...then it will work normally.
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Where can I get it?
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I installed it today and thought it was pretty nice.
unfortunately I had a windows experience rating of "1" (my graphic card's fault) so I figured my PC is a bit outdated for it.
I've gotten rid of it but i never tried out paint or wordpad...which I really regret now.. :(
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You may need or want to install Vista drivers for that RAID card...then it will work normally.
It never had drivers to begin with though...Windows XP picked it us no problems and ran it just fine...
By the way it isn't running in RAID mode, just plain IDE mode.
I could always try find a driver though.
Where can I get it?
The only place you can get it now is torrent. I got the ISO when it was made publicly available.
You can still get Keys from here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx)
I installed it today and thought it was pretty nice.
unfortunately I had a windows experience rating of "1" (my graphic card's fault) so I figured my PC is a bit outdated for it.
I've gotten rid of it but i never tried out paint or wordpad...which I really regret now.. :(
Paint is now completely revamped...to look somewhat like the shapes tool in word / Word2007
And word pad looks like a cut down version of Word 2007
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(http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo57/kurtiskain/Computer/Wordpad.jpg)
(http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo57/kurtiskain/Computer/mspaint.jpg)
There ahalp ;D
That should scare you enough
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Oh wow... I really missed out... :o
Especially with paint...this is the first major update for it in how long... :o
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Oh wow... I really missed out... :o
Especially with paint...this is the first major update for it in how long... :o
Long enough :P
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windows 95.
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exactly!
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I just had a fiddle around with Paint...there are even new brush types! Including a fun - but uselass "Paintbrush" that actually runs out of 'paint'...and you have to release the mouse, to get it to go again :S
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I wasnt Windows 95's biggest fan...
I remember using it.. in fact, the new version of Paint was one of the biggest things I disliked.
I liked the Windows 3.11 paint more...
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The only thing I missed from Windows 3.11's paint was the ability to erase in straight lines with shift.
I definitely didn't miss the "can't paste an image larger then the visible canvas" "feature".
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I miss being able to delete specific colors...
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oh yeah, the color eraser tool.
That could make some freaky images with dithering!
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colour eraser tool??
And surely you must still be able to use shift to erase in straight lines?
EDIT:.......nope...you cant
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colour eraser tool??
First column, third row:
(http://i531.photobucket.com/albums/dd355/BC_Programming/PBRUSH.gif)
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Wow that's mental...why would they decide to take that out!? it seems awesome
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just so you know the background was NOT part of paint LOL.
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I guessed :) I saw the program manager icon in the corner ;) I know a small amount about Win 3.11
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Interestingly this is NOT running in a VM like one might expect. real deal! DOS and windows was installed on this laptop in 1996, and it hasn't had any problems!
says something about stability back then... I blame the registry... ;D
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I was wondering about that ::)
Yeah I rarely had issues with my Win 95 either.
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95 introduced the registry though...
It was 98 where the real problems began.
Darn you, Active Desktop!
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Fully agree with the active desktop ;D
But what came first? Win 95 OSR2 or Win98? ??? Win95 OSR2 had active desktop too...
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No it did not,
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Sorry Patio...
Active Desktop is a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0's optional Windows Desktop Update that allows the user to add HTML content to the desktop, along with some other features. This function was intended to be installed on the then-current Windows 95 operating system. It was also included in Windows 98 and higher Windows operating systems until Windows Vista, where the feature was discontinued.
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Active Desktop debuted during the 1997 release of Internet Explorer 4.0 for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, as a feature of the optional Windows Desktop Update offered to users during the upgrade install. While the Windows Desktop Update is commonly referred to (improperly) as Active Desktop itself, it is actually an entire Windows shell upgrade from v4.0 to v4.71, or v4.72, with numerous changes to the Windows interface, resulting in an appearance and functionality level nearly indistinguishable from the then yet-to-be-released Windows 98.
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The installation of Internet Explorer 4 on Windows 95 (or the OSR2.5 version preinstalled on a computer) gave Windows 95 active desktop and browser integration into Windows Explorer, known as the Windows Desktop Update.
Okay so I guess I should say OSR2.5 but still...my Windows 95 disk still has OSR2 written on it...
And I guess that answers my question too...Windows 95 had Active desktop before Windows 98
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Active Desktop was technically part of IE4- you could install it on the original windows 95 release.
as far as the registry is concerned, i think it can pretty much be summed up with
it seemed like a good idea at the time
And now, Microsoft as always is bent on backwards compatibility and can't really dump the registry completely.
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I wish more people and businesses, including Microsoft, would start pushing for developers to quit using the registry, and switch to either a custom database, information, or XML file for settings...
Oh, bit random: Wordpad, in Windows 7, uses an XML format now.
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I wish more people and businesses, including Microsoft, would start pushing for developers to quit using the registry, and switch to either a custom database, information, or XML file for settings...
The registry almost solves the problem if INI file wandering, it just isn't as user managable as it could be.
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I wish more people and businesses, including Microsoft, would start pushing for developers to quit using the registry, and switch to either a custom database, information, or XML file for settings...
The registry almost solves the problem if INI file wandering, it just isn't as user managable as it could be.
A wandering .ini file is hard to come across, and surely te registry is so much harder to navigate
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I wish more people and businesses, including Microsoft, would start pushing for developers to quit using the registry, and switch to either a custom database, information, or XML file for settings...
The registry almost solves the problem if INI file wandering, it just isn't as user managable as it could be.
A wandering .ini file is hard to come across, and surely te registry is so much harder to navigate
your missing my point, which is driven home by your admittance to never using windows 3.1
You could never tell were a program stored settings back then. COuld be their own INI file, could be in win.ini, and if it was their own INI file the program could put in anywhere it *censored* well felt. C:\Windows\ and C:\windows\system and of course the app directory itself. And due to the 8.3 limitation on filenames it was likely that in the process of using a lot of programs more then one might try to use the same name. Confusing matters further.
The registry was an attempt to consolidate the settings of all application into a central store, rather then little INI files strewm about the disk.
I think it works quite well. Most problems people blame on the "registry" are actually caused by a change to the settings in the registry. The same problem would occur if changing that setting had it existed in an INI file of some sort. This essentially means it isn't the implementation of the registry itself that causes the problems but rather the lack of any user-oriented tool for changing settings on an application basis.
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Ahhh I get it now :) yes those are very valid points
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The funny thing is, if we go back to XML configs, we're basically using bigger versions of INI files; but common users won't be able to edit XML files as easily as INI files, which almost defeats the whole purpose of having it as a separate file. And then what will happen?
Giant XML files in the system folder... The registry, in XML format!
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Giant XML files in the system folder... The registry, in XML format!
Can't wait to see this alternative in practice...i sincerely hope no one took this as promising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML)
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What I said about Wordpad using an XML Format:
Somewhat incorrect.
It still defaults as .rtf, however, it has the option of saving as OOXML Document.
As for the registry being efficient:
I think its fine for Windows, however, if a program just puts the ini file in its own directory under "Program Files", thats when I would be happy. Its horrible when they end up all over in system folder, and windows, and under other ini files.
My biggest problem with the registry is the sheer fact that if part of it is lost, it can render an even larger part useless, which makes it more susceptible to corruption.
Also, its loaded at startup, and on older slower computers, that can take a while.
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What I said about Wordpad using an XML Format:
Somewhat incorrect.
It still defaults as .rtf, however, it has the option of saving as OOXML Document.
As for the registry being efficient:
I think its fine for Windows, however, if a program just puts the ini file in its own directory under "Program Files", thats when I would be happy. Its horrible when they end up all over in system folder, and windows, and under other ini files.
My biggest problem with the registry is the sheer fact that if part of it is lost, it can render an even larger part useless, which makes it more susceptible to corruption.
Also, its loaded at startup, and on older slower computers, that can take a while.
Programs are not allowed to write to the "program files" directory or any subdirectory from Vista onwards. They can read from it, and writes will succeed after a UAC prompt.
if part of the registry is lost- the computer won't boot. there is NTUSER and NTSYSTEM (hkey_classes_root is really just an alias to somewhere in HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (can't recall exactly where) and HKEY_CURRENT_USER is simply an alias to a subkey of HKEY_USERS\ depending on the current user's SID.
I've partly solved this settings problem with my in-development settings library. I found it a major PITA myself to save and read from the registry, since I wanted some more user-configurable stuff.
So, it allows for XML,INI, and Registry, and they can be ordered in any way. IE: load a value via the library, and it will check the registry first, if the value doesn't exist, try loading XML, if that doesn't work, try INI, and only then go to default. Writing on the other hand would write to all locations.
Of course they can even be removed completely- meaning for example just using XML is an option as well.
And the only code change from all three would be during initialization...
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What I said about Wordpad using an XML Format:
Somewhat incorrect.
It still defaults as .rtf, however, it has the option of saving as OOXML Document.
As for the registry being efficient:
I think its fine for Windows, however, if a program just puts the ini file in its own directory under "Program Files", thats when I would be happy. Its horrible when they end up all over in system folder, and windows, and under other ini files.
My biggest problem with the registry is the sheer fact that if part of it is lost, it can render an even larger part useless, which makes it more susceptible to corruption.
Also, its loaded at startup, and on older slower computers, that can take a while.
I was going to say about the XML in Wordpad...
anyway Yes I could see huge advantages to keeping separate .ini files.
Though big companies and school will not ;) particularly in places you aren't 'able' to install a program (there's a simple way around it if the program runs on 98/me) because if the registry is locked, big whoop, they can still install the program to their own folder, so they will have full rights, and use it with no issues, i.e the installer won't stop saying it cannot write to the registry.
but that's only one side of many.
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a well written installer will verify that the account it's running on has installation priviledges- MSI installers do this automatically.
The file system is just as controlled as the registry.
Additionally- only programs that store there data in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE should encounter errors during install of the nature described. In which case they should be storing data in HKEY_CURRENT_USER...
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Yeah...u just set the compatability to 98/me and 90% of the time it doesnt check
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Yeah...u just set the compatability to 98/me and 90% of the time it doesnt check
And as a bonus if the application works on 98/ME with different libraries you get the libraries for 98/ME which don't work in newer windows versions! hooray!
Specified entry point not found....
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never come across that problem ???
I want to cause it now
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I want to cause it now
LOL
mostly with dev tools- like regmon and Filemon.
they work properly in all version of windows, but if you set the compat mode to 9x, it will try to install a vxd driver... not sure what happens then...
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oh ok interesting ;D
Anyway, anyone tried using the remote desktop features of W7?
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Heres something interesting:
It remembers settings for your speakers and headphones...
Eg: My headphones are at 50% volume, my speakers are at 80%.
Currently, there are no headphones plugged in. Its set to 80%. I plug them in, and, amazingly, it switches my volume to 50%, I unplug, back to 80%.
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my X-Fi config does that, but only with the actual headphones plug on the rear of the machine.
Since I just plug it into my speaker system- it doesn't know the difference.
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windows RC is going to be coming out soon. Microsoft is jumping from beta to RC directly as I heard. Is windows vista better than windows vista memory-wise? Probably still uses about same amount of memory but better allocation so your PC is more optimized?
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Is windows vista better than windows vista memory-wise? Probably still uses about same amount of memory but better allocation so your PC is more optimized?
hehe im not so sure about visra, it mite use less than vista ??? ::)
Mine uses between 800-1100MB RAM, 800 at boot, 1100 with firefox, outlook, msn etc open
haven't tried the headphones thing :) will soon though
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headphones thing? Last time I tried my earbuds on a friend's laptop loaded with the win 7, it was working as intended.
And yeah you can turn off internet explorer so you never have to see it but I'd keep it on in case ie tab in firefox or something don't work, like when a activeX or something needs to be allowed.
but at least windows is still bundling all the good apps but giving you the easy path to turn off all the rarely used of said good apps.
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True true. yes you can unpin IE from the taskbar and such, as well as WMP, evn though I don't know why I want to, the WMP in W7 Beta is great! it even plays my DivX movies without codecs...
I wonder what ill happen to those who beta tested it...
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Without codecs? I bet it's that Microsoft finally decided to include codecs into WMP so that you don't have to go picking up one.
Unpin from taskbar, you can do that for internet explorer for any normal windows operating system. What I meant was you could go to features and disable it so that your PC will never use internet explorer and that there's no sign internet explorer exists unless you renable it.
Unpining from taskbar I think just removes the icon but PC can still access internet explorer, you can still find it and whatnot
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I was thinking about it for a bit, but I think that Microsoft originally started including IE with Windows for more reasons then to increase it's browser market share- I mean, think about it- if you don't have a browser- how can you go an download one? You would need to go and buy one or download one somewhere else and bring it home, much easier with a built-in browser.
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I was thinking about it for a bit, but I think that Microsoft originally started including IE with Windows for more reasons then to increase it's browser market share- I mean, think about it- if you don't have a browser- how can you go an download one? You would need to go and buy one or download one somewhere else and bring it home, much easier with a built-in browser.
Hmm, if you have working internet i think you can download firefox without internet explorer. Check out this links below:
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/installfirefoxwithoutie.html
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Firefox-2-0-in-Windows-Vista-without-Touching-IE7-or-Any-Other-Browser-74724.shtml
That requires CMD and some little code :)
But in a reality, your computer should work right out of the box so that's that.
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If you have a Linux live CD you have a browser.
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I was thinking about it for a bit, but I think that Microsoft originally started including IE with Windows for more reasons then to increase it's browser market share- I mean, think about it- if you don't have a browser- how can you go an download one? You would need to go and buy one or download one somewhere else and bring it home, much easier with a built-in browser.
And other thin is, I know it is microsoft's browser and microsoft probably wants to use its own products but WHY IE? Couldn't Microsoft not have installed/coded IE into the system and simply gave you some options so you can choose the browser you want instead of having to open up IE the very first time your computer loads to get to the web?
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I use IE For three reasons:
1. I'm in Windows 7, and a lot of sites dont accept my user agent string, and Firefox's user agent tools are a bit funky, and they wont allow you to install addons. I use IE for getting past these issues.
2. I use IE when some website is really goofed up, and just wont display in FireFox.
3. Most important, I use IE to download FireFox on a fresh install of Windows.
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Win 7 is not at the RTM stage, so i'm gonna say all the programs have not been developed (or should i say formally tested) for win 7.
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I have to say:
I will never go back to Vista.
Windows 7, I have been using since two weeks before this topic started... I think I've done all the testing I can, and theres only one major bug I have encountered, when I plug in a second monitor, my computer crashes....
Also, the Sims 2 wont run, but, I researched this, and I seem to be the only one having this issue, it probably just requires a reinstall.
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Without codecs? I bet it's that Microsoft finally decided to include codecs into WMP so that you don't have to go picking up one.
Unpin from taskbar, you can do that for internet explorer for any normal windows operating system. What I meant was you could go to features and disable it so that your PC will never use internet explorer and that there's no sign internet explorer exists unless you renable it.
Unpining from taskbar I think just removes the icon but PC can still access internet explorer, you can still find it and whatnot
Yes that is true, sorry.
And I shouldn't say without codecs...I mean I don't have to find any myself.
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When I Was talking about integrated browsers- I was specifically referring to Windows 95.
at the time the main two browsers were IE and netscape- I don't believe netscape was free when 95 was released to MS just used their free browser.
I might also note that 95 wasn't exactly feature-packed as far as network tools were concerned.
Obviously your solution to avoid IE works great for XP and up (probably W2k and NT4) but really they (except NT4) include IE already, so may as well just browse to the FF download page.
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Someday, maybe Microsoft will just start putting FireFox on Windows computers...
Someday...
Maybe...
BC_Programmer:
Did Windows NT 4.0 come with any sort of browser?
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Did Windows NT 4.0 come with any sort of browser?
Not that I'm aware, at least not on any of the fresh installs I've done... which is only one, admittedly.
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which is only one, admittedly.
I doubt you would have wanted to do a bunch of those though...
I remember my school had a few NT 4.0 computers, they were a pain, yet, still fun to use. They were mainly used for library catalogue computers.
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the most intriguing NT would have to be 3.51. I mean, it's win32- but at the same time- it has the windows 3.1 look! In fact, AFAIK Visual Basic 5, Office 95 and 97, and other newer programs will actually run in it- some of them look very strange with the old window style...
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3.51?
The highest of the 3 series I have ever heard of is Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, my favorite OS.
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Windows NT 3.51, yes.
Windows NT was a separate line from the get-go, with NT 3.1 being the result of Microsoft's broken dealings with IBM regarding OS/2. NT 3.5, and 3.51 followed.
This is originally how the whole separate lines started- they had 3.1 and it's predecessors for "consumers" and NT mostly for corporate environments.
This was a Pain in the but for everybody- MS had to maintain to distinct codebases, and programmers had to try to keep track of all the subtle nuances between the two implementations of the API. And once windows 95 was released there were two completely separate implementations of the Win32 API. Even now every single function in the API that accepts a string has both a Unicode and an ANSI version, except for those newer API's released in Vista.
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You could install win32 for 3.11 though ::)
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win32s is essentially useless.
Aside from a few trivial programs the only program that I got to run with it is the freecell program included in the setup; nothing useful- Office 95 would probably install, office 97 is iffy, and I wouldn't install either because that laptop has office 4.2 and it works fine... Oh and also the CD-ROM drive is broken.
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I was merely stating it existed ;)
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I was merely stating it existed ;)
ok.
Oh wait, one good feature is it actually allows 32-bit COM components to run on windows 3.1. The components inevitably weren't tested on win32S and likely crash very hard when trying to interface with the 16-bit version of Word's OLE, but hey, it's something :P
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I loved Windows 3.11, and I still do, and, believe me, if it could run MSN, FireFox, and my email client, I would still use it.
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hmm... the farthest back you can go and still be able to run almost everything you need would be windows 95. But getting a lot of programs running on there takes a LOT of hacking; there was a site I saw somewhere where somebody described how to get all sorts of new applications running under windows 95- firefox, office 2003, etc. Google fails me though.
makes one wonder if one could tweak Firefox to run under win32s...
It's fun to go back to windows 3.1 on modern or semi-modern hardware, like a pentium 2. the moment I press enter on my other PC with windows 3.1, Program manager is started by the time the video mode changes- Less then half a second, that is.
One of the things I don't like about Windows 3.1 as a main OS is that the memory model is not exactly robust- while it runs in "protected mode" all windows processes can stomp on each other without regard, which makes debugging with MSVC a bit annoying since the program might perform runaway memory writes onto the debugger itself. Not a pleasant result, either.
Another annoying limitation is the IMO opinion stupid decision to allocate all GDI and User handles on the Heap- a limited 64K segment of memory is used for storing all GDI and user Handles. So of course, a leak of handles results in another set of less-then-pleasant symptoms.
Although not a problem with any amount of memory the developers could foresee, windows 3.1 was limited to a certain number of memory "selectors", or handles. with 8MB, 16MB, and 32MB of Ram, all of were prohibitively expensive at the time, this was way more then enough- but once you factor in today's even old computers with 128,256,512, and even GBs of RAM running windows 3.1 (although it only detects up to 512, I believe), you cannot even use up all the RAM, since aside from the selector's running out user and GDI resources usually go below 10% around 64MB of used RAM.
The neat part is, Windows NT 3.51 by all appearances looks like a "super enhanced" version of Windows 3.1!
And we get all the tools we are familiar with nowadays, perhaps with fewer features, such as Disk management. And imagine my surprise, since all versions of Windows NT appear to use the same Display dialog as that used in Windows 95- asmall image of monitor and the ability to dynamically change color and resolution combinations, whereas 3.1 required a reboot for either.
Quite an intriguing OS. even more intriguing is that a prerelease of NT4 was really a "option pack" for 3.51, but they decided to package it as a new OS because of the massive UI tweak. (After all, it's easier for a program to check the OS version itself to determine shell capabilities then digging through obscure OLE and COM dlls checking version numbers).
Unfortunately it also does away with the safety net of a DOS prompt for when windows crashes.. on the bright side we have blue screens!
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Windows 3.11, when windows crashes, you would get a blue screen...
And a prompt that would say: "Press ENTER to close the application that has failed" and things would, in my case, almost always go back to normal.
One thing I really miss about earlier version of Windows (3.0 and before), was CTRL+ALT+DEL would just restart the computer... this could be very handy. I had an older laptop that FN+ALT+DEL would do an instant reset...
It's fun to go back to windows 3.1 on modern or semi-modern hardware, like a pentium 2. the moment I press enter on my other PC with windows 3.1, Program manager is started by the time the video mode changes- Less then half a second, that is.
Just wait until Vista is like that.
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Windows 3.11, when windows crashes, you would get a blue screen...
And a prompt that would say: "Press ENTER to close the application that has failed" and things would, in my case, almost always go back to normal.
windows 3.1 would blue screen when you press control+alt+delete, and offer to terminate the foreground application. I wouldn't call the windows 3.1 blue screen a BSOD, since it was (ideally) always user invoked via Control Alt del. the few times I've had it crash hard was because of some EMM386 protection error; but it wasn't on a blue screen.
I never did get the Control+Alt+Delete force terminate to work properly. Usually ended up freezing my computer.
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For us, what would happen, we had this weird program that would play Chrismas music through the speakers, and it had some Chrismas games on it, it was pretty fun. Anyways, it would crash, a lot, and Windows 3.11 would bluescreen on its own.. pressing enter for close the application almost always worked.
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oh yeah! a UAE!