OK, I need to set some things straight and clarify what some people have said.
I don't want to come across as a "know it all", but I've been playing around with PC's for about 20 years, been working in the industry for about 8 years, and I've been an "Official" Microsoft Beta tester (not these public releases they do now) for about 12 years. So I like to think I know a thing or two about PC's and have seen first hand the development of many an OS.
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Originally Posted by mithrandir
That means 8GB on this x64 box or the laptop. But with laptop 4GB DIMMs at over $1K each, in effect 4GB.
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I don't know where your getting $1K each from, that's WAY overpriced. Wholesale price inc GST for 1 x 4GB SODIMM is about $220 for DDR2 and about $500 for DDR3. Considering HP, Dell etc have HUGE buying power in comparison, they can easily do it for less.
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Originally Posted by leinad
Windows 7 has XP Emulation built in, so all your XP compatible programs should work without a problem.?
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Windows XP Compatibility Mode is a seperate download and is only available for
Professional and
Ultimate. Most people are going to go for the cheaper Premium so that will catch a lot of people out. Also, your CPU needs to support Hardware Virtualisation (Intel VT for Intel CPU's and AMD-V for AMD CPU's). Again unforunately, a lot of the cheaper CPU's don't support this. This feature is more marketed towards business users and "power users" (enthusiasts).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization has a list of CPU's known to support Virtualisation.
However in saying that, Windows XP Mode works great. It is basically a copy of Windows XP which is run within a virtual machine. Any program which runs on XP will run in there. And the beauty of it all is that any program you install within this Windows XP, will appear on your start menu in Windows 7 for easy use.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...s-xp-mode.aspx
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Originally Posted by Ian Robinson
I'd suggest holding off parting with your money until W7 SP1 is released as Windows OSs are always full of bugs and glitches when released.
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From my experience Beta Testing with Microsoft, I would have to say without a doubt that Windows 7 is the best operating system they have released as far as stability and glitches go. Right from very early in the testing stage (I'm talking way before RC), it was very stable and reliable, and this was a common feeling amongst fellow testers I've known for years. Trust me, I've seen my fair share of OS's to know this, and some really buggy ones (Windows Millenium says hi
). I've just never seen an OS from Microsoft so well polished so early in it's development in 12 years of testing!
If you said Vista, I'd agree with you.
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Originally Posted by luka
Windows 7 is something like Vista SP3... with fancy user interface and less memory hungry but basically the same deep down.
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Yes it's true, Windows 7 was developed from Vista code. The same could be said for Vista which was developed from Windows XP code. And in turn Windows XP which was developed from Windows 2000 code. I admit this is a bit of an oversimplification, as a lot of the code does get reworked, but this is what basically happens.
At some point you need to draw the line and have a seperate product. But perhaps we should instead call it Windows 2000 Service Pack 10?
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Originally Posted by dpastern
The earliest released snapshots were longhorn I believe. The name change to Vista was a decision made very late in the development process. I remember seeing screenshots from osdir many years ago (with longhorn).
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Codenames, like Longhorn etc, are just names they give the OS during it's development, they are never intended to be final.
As for my oppinion on the OS, it's great.
There's really not much more I can add to the positive things people have already mentioned about stability, speed, less resources etc. Whether or not you wish to go to Windows 7 is really up to your circumstances. If your happy with what you have, don't upgrade. It's really only people that enjoy having the latest technology who feel the need to upgrade. However if your in the market for buying a new PC, do yourself a favour and get Windows 7. You can't go wrong.