[ssmit132]

There's also the direct shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Escape.

I didn't know that. Thanks.

[Mika]

I guess Vista has been a failure from Microsoft's side. I'm just waiting for most of the people to do the beta testing of the Windows 7 and then replace my aging XP - or wait for 7lite version of it. It is good news this computer can still run Windows 7, though.

Mika

[spaceranger]

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. 

All I need is for all of my 3D modelling/art tools/audio software/games to run on Linux and it's everything you asked for above plus everything I've asked for.  Linux is ready for this, the software isn't.

[High Max]

;-)

[jr2]

Vista, aaaieee!!!

Just thank your lucky stars you didn't try ME, which was worse.


Yes


It was.

Worse. 

  Don't ask.

[JGZinv]

I'm not sure... I used ME for a couple years after 98se, then went to XP.

Vista after 25 minutes of fixing someone else's machine, makes me want to throw it
off a tall cliff, record the video, stick it on YouTube, and change to a Mac.

[Triple Ace]

What about poeple with OEM versions of Vista? If it is just an upgrade disc, will another copy of Vista be required to reinstall 7 if the mobo fries?

[High Max]

;-)

[colecampbell666]

These are UPGRADE discs, designed to UPGRADE from Vista.

[Scooby_Doo]

Or XP or 2K, or even win 7.

[Triple Ace]

These are UPGRADE discs, designed to UPGRADE from Vista.

Yes, but because its an UPGRADE disc, would Vista need to be reinstalled to REUPGRADE to 7. I have an OEM Vista which is locked to my current motherboard. Eventually it is either going to die or I'm going to swap it for a better mobo. I'm trying to figure out if the upgrade would be fine for me and allow me to reinstall 7 as many times as I want with whatever mobo I have, or if I need to buy the full retail disc for 200 dollars or whatever it is to be able to do that.

[High Max]

;-)

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well when XP first came out as an upgrade it was the full version but you had to either have a previous version of Windows installed or the original bootable CD or floppy before you could install it.  So upgrade doesn't necessarily mean it will use any of the files from Vista but it might check for the existence of them. 

BTW ran ME for years without any real problems.  Not as stable as XP but I found it better then 95 and 98se.  Only real issue I had with it was that dang mapped network drives didn't allow you to shut down problem. 

[Fury]

Common sense tells me most likely you would need Vista since that upgrade disk might depend on already installed files from Vista since it is an upgrade disk. It must mean it only contains files to put Win 7 on top of the existing Vista OS and therefore won't include all required files or that many from the Win 7 OS disk itself. This tells me that Win 7 must use Vista core files as its base and is basically Vista, but with some additional stuff added and some modifications and is called Win 7.

The only difference is the upgrade validation check and cheaper license. Otherwise both versions are identical.

[S-99]

Windows 7, everything vista was supposed to be but with the hardware requirements of xp and the very nice improvements of vista.

At 50$ for preorder, and free upgrades to 7 if you run vista. It's a good deal. If you run windows, get 7. If you run xp, it's defunct, old, showing its age, and you'll be left out in the cold real soon with it.

Get the cheap newest version of windows that'll run on old hardware while you still can.

Other than that. I don't give a rats ass. Microsoft is still no longer an innovator, despite improvements their quite stagnant, and windows 7 only really exists because of netbooks.

The only reason people still go for windows is because it's familiar. Who cares that all of the notifications, dialogues, and prompts that treat the user like a retard because the user base can't get with the times because they run as admins all the time.

Windows was only truly good with win2k and xp. After that they got into the mood of we can sell our customers **** and they'll bite it up.

So......when the many of you who have microsoft update/windows update set to automatically update the system....how many times does windows still tell you to "click here" to install updates regardless. How many times does windows tell you that you need to either restart or remind you later to restart and apply the updates because microsoft happily doesn't include a "don't remind me anymore" button. How many times does windows remind you that you may have no antispyware/malware/antivirus software on your computer despite having it or not everytime you boot up?

**** windows, i'm not a retard, it's really one hell of a bull**** platform these days.

[MP-Ryan]

Common sense tells me most likely you would need Vista since that upgrade disk might depend on already installed files from Vista since it is an upgrade disk. It must mean it only contains files to put Win 7 on top of the existing Vista OS and therefore won't include all required files or that many from the Win 7 OS disk itself. This tells me that Win 7 must use Vista core files as its base and is basically Vista, but with some additional stuff added and some modifications and is called Win 7.

The only difference is the upgrade validation check and cheaper license. Otherwise both versions are identical.

To clarify even further:  You can install an upgrade version onto a blank drive.  You will also need the license key (maybe) or original disc (usually) from a previous Windows version to verify an existing license during installation.

[S-99]

Windows upgrade discs are really the same thing as the normal install disc with the difference that it either looks for windows pre-installed on a computer that it allows to be upgraded from or do a fresh install and it'll ask you to toss in your older version of windows disc to verify that you really are moving from an older version of windows to the new one.

That's how i installed xp on my computer back in the day. Bought the upgrade disc to perform a fresh install, and when it asked to toss in an older version of windows to verify i was moving from an older version to xp, i just tossed in the years old win98 emachines install disc (it probably would've worked with a win95 disc too). After it scanned the win98 disc, spit it back out, and put the xp upgrade disc back in and went on with my fresh install.

Before you buy a windows upgrade disc of any kind. Read to find out what versions of windows it'll let you upgrade from. That'll decide whether or not you should purchase the cheaper upgrade disc. Depending on what versions of windows you can upgrade from with the windows 7 upgrade disc...hopefully it'll let you do the cheesy thing i did for upgrading.

Hell, someone should check out if you can use the windows 7 upgrade and upgrade from a trial version of xp or something like that.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Heck the older 98 upgrade disks even worked with either an MS dos floppy or a Win 3.1 floppy.  Of course that doesn't mean they won't make some kind of crazy change it is Microsoft after all.

[jr2]

As far as ME goes, I've heard it was either it worked great, or was horrible (like a 50/50 chance).

[FUBAR-BDHR]

As far as ME goes, I've heard it was either it worked great, or was horrible (like a 50/50 chance).

As long as you enabled dial up networking whether you used dial up or not it seemed to work just fine.  Used it on literally hundreds of computers.   Well that and the before mentioned mapped drive shut down thing but I think 98 had that too.  You did have to reboot once or twice a week or you would eventually run out of memory but that was every version of the 9x series.  

Of course that said I never really did much multitasking.  If I wanted to run 5 different major apps I used 5 different computers.     If I think about it I kind of still have a habit of that.  Core2Quad is slowing breaking that habit