[MP-Ryan]

For those of you running legitimate copies of Windows in Canada, the US, or Japan, Microsoft is presently offering a discount of 50% off on the Home Premium and Professional upgrade versions... meaning if you have a legitimate Vista or XP license and want Windows 7, you can buy it for potentially as little as $50 USD.

I just pre-ordered a copy of Windows 7 Professional from Amazon.ca and it came to $131 CAD... which, considering it will retails for $250 (for the upgrade version alone) in October, I think was well worth it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/buy/offers/pre-order.aspx

[BloodEagle]

Is Windows 7 any good (as compared with XP/Pro)?

[MP-Ryan]

Is Windows 7 any good (as compared with XP/Pro)?

Apparently it is everything Vista was supposed to be but isn't.

XP wasn't a bad OS but Vista did have some significant improvements, which Windows 7 has continued but also minimized it's memory footprint and "noise" as well (the much maligned UAC in Vista has been entirely re-worked for Win7).  There are reports of people running Win7 on older hardware and performing faster than XP Pro on the same hardware.

It's been in wide release beta testing since this winter (it was open to the public, actually) and I'm hearing nothing but praise.

Certainly, you will eventually need to move from XP to a newer OS in order to get full support for things like graphics hardware and firmware, so this wouldn't be a bad time to do it and skip Vista altogether.

[Galemp]

I still need a good reason to switch from XP Pro. Seeing as I turn off all the interface goodies anyway for performance reasons I don't think it's worth my Benjamins. Next time I buy a new PC, I'll upgrade.

[CP5670]

I'm interesting in upgrading to this from XP mainly because of the 64-bit memory support. I will probably end up configuring it so that it behaves similar to XP anyway.

I need to have a good workaround for unsigned drivers though, and hopefully the XP mode will have some form of 3D hardware support. I would otherwise have to keep an XP install around or get a downgrade in midi music quality for some old games, since the virtual midi driver I use won't work on newer OSs.

[Scooby_Doo]

I'm in 

[Ford Prefect]

Is Windows 7 any more demanding in terms of system requirements than Vista? I'm currently using Vista Home Premium.

[Scooby_Doo]

Seems to be quite a bit less.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Let's see with 10-12 computers that is still way to much for an OS update.  I'll stick with XP.  Maybe one day I'll install my copy of Vista that I've been using as a foot rest. 

I really wish someone would come out with a nice simple OS that only installs what you ask it to and nothing more.  When did an OS stat needing 50K files just as a base install?  No wonder so much goes wrong.  Not to mention the wasted space on backups. 

[High Max]

;-)

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Wait so you are saying that just because you have a faster hard drive with a new 64 bit OS that FS2 will be faster?  Did someone all of a sudden rewrite FS2 specifically for a 64 bit OS?  It was written for wind 95/98 so that means max 32bit with probably a lot of it still 16 bit.  That's a lot of 0 filling for the processor to do for all those 16 and 32 bit operations.

[Scotty]

Ehhh, Vista isn't too bad.  I still get a laugh out of some of the times something has to ask permission to be installed.  

"Badthing.blah is trying to access your computer, input administrator password to allow. "

Also, Love the new title Max.

[High Max]

;-)

[Spicious]

Most hard drives will not experience better performance with 3Gb/s over 1.5Gb/s.

[High Max]

;-)

[Fury]

Mechanical hard drives aren't really pushing SATA2 and won't benefit from SATA3. In most single user environments even SATA1 would be enough. SSD's on the other hand are a different story, but they are not cost effective yet. Let's see again in a year or two.

Back to the topic. Windows 7 does indeed deserve to be bought, it's that great an OS. For a Windows. I've been using RC1 since it was released to public. Just for the kicks me and my friend at work decided to try how little RAM Windows 7 RC1 needs to start without errors. Unmodified Windows 7 RC1 booted and worked with as little as 96MB RAM. Yes, you read that right, 96MB RAM. With 64MB RAM it wouldn't boot, but 96MB is very impressive already.

[Mongoose]

Wow...that's far less resource-intensive than I would have guessed.  Maybe after I throw some more RAM into this box, I'll consider getting an upgrade for a dual-boot just for kicks.  XP is still all I really need, but it'd be nice to have for future-proofing purposes.

[Ghostavo]

Just for the kicks me and my friend at work decided to try how little RAM Windows 7 RC1 needs to start without errors. Unmodified Windows 7 RC1 booted and worked with as little as 96MB RAM. Yes, you read that right, 96MB RAM. With 64MB RAM it wouldn't boot, but 96MB is very impressive already.

Hello, hackerman1!

[Fury]

Uh, no. I'm not hackerman1 Me and my friend made our tests using Virtualbox.

[colecampbell666]

My suggestion: Get Windows 7. It's a huge step up from Vista, and it doesn't need much more than XP does. I'm gonna pre-order it.