Microsoft Windows 7 beta

[dfwmiket]

Well, this may be the exception you'll hear to the general rule, but so far, I've found Windows 7 reliable, stable, uses less energy/works on older hardware/etc. I'm running the full version on a couple of boxes at work (MSDN version) and have decided that I actually WILL upgrade my current boxes (one XP and one Vista) to 7 once the consumer versions hit the market officially.

This time it sure seems like Microsoft was listening and got a lot things RIGHT for a change. I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any stretch, but I'll give credit where it's due.

-Mike

[D.Hayden]

dfwmike.. isn't the MSDN RTM version supposed to be exactly the same as the retail release?

[larry cazes]

I am proudly at the very start of my 3rd year with MAC's and I have never had the "early version" problems with Apple products like I had with Microsoft.

I am NOT saying that everyone should go out and buy a Mac, I am saying that when a new computer purchase is in the books, it is a VERY good product

So, like when leopard had issues with randomly destroying data, intermittant keyboard outtages with older laptops, and other serious issues with leopard upgrades rather than fresh installs, crashing when viewing JPEGS with certain header data, iDisk syncing eating up hard drvie without bound, a bunch of time machine bugs, and other such fun tricks, they aren't bugs, but features, right? Or since it wasn't the first version of OSX, were those not "early version" problems. When some disk images made before upgrading to leopard didn't work, was that a new version bug with leopard, or an old version problem with tiger? Was the reverse polish notiation bug in the calculator in tiger fixed under leopard an early version bug, or simply reinforcing that reverse polish notiation is inhumane and should be banned by international treaty?

Of course, there was the bug with newer macbook pros (at the time) with the nvidia card drivers and playing quicktime causing the system to freeze and needs a hard reset. That's like both an early version problem AND a driver problem in one. And they managed to do it with a proprietary platform rather than millions of possible configurations.

Yeah, if you throw out your mac every time they come out with a new trendy look, and get a fresh new OS with it, you are usually ok, but not even then. Just because you haven't experienced doesn't mean they don't exist.

Lots of 3rd party developers had happy times with some of the 10.5.2 changes to OS X that caused their apps to stop working. (pathfinder lists, VMware, iPartition and idefrag to name a few.).

Of course you could try running OS X as a server for multiple users. Then the real fun starts.

Yup, Macs have no problems, right? Hey but the boxes are prettier for those who care

[larry cazes]

How is this release for SW Compatibility?

[Graham Smith]

If you are planning on upgrading, download and run the software compatibility tool. It does a pretty good job of ferreting out problems. I was actually quite surprised that some programs I expected problems with worked just fine. Just to be sure, I created a second partition on my hard-drive and installed the RC. In the tests that I ran, even some old 16bit Windows programs and a few DOS programs ran without a hitch.

[shred]

I've been running Win7 on every PC I could cram it onto since the beginning of this year... even in Beta it beat Vista by a mile. App compat is still a little tricky (especially around drivers), but the XP mode works sometimes.

[D.Hayden]

So far.. I have to say.. it's much faster than I thought it would be.. but this new computer has RAM to spare, it does seem to be a memory pig.

I've been using NT since the first Beta in '91 or so.. I thought I would hate learning something so different, but it's been pretty easy.

I used Vista very sparingly - so maybe this is old hat to some, but networking is a little more restrictive than previous versions I've used.