You know me, I am an old Linux fan, and an OS X fan since 2006.
These days I am moving my laptop from XP to Windows 7 RC (because of a funny BIOS my PC can't run OS X and the Linux NVIDIA driver works horribly).
I was pretty sceptical to start with.
But I had to change my mind. Windows 7 is everything Vista never was, it is Vista done right, and much more. I am simpy amazed by all the features. To mention just a couple, plug new hardware, and windows will download and install the driver for you! (it must be set to download drivers automatically).
Or, when you have a problem (for instance, my internet connection goes down quite often), a troubleshooter will open and it actually works!
The compatibility mode works quite well too!
The themes are quite beautiful as well, and overall the system feels snappy and responsive.
Now OS X definitely doesn't compare, IMHO. I badly wanted to love it, but I never really did.
The excuse that Apple hardware is so expensive also because of a great OS, will lose much credibility.
Alas Linux won't be able to compete either, especially with that piece of utter crap called KDE4. OK, it might be nice in the future, but for now I am hating most distributions for shoving it down my throat.
What else? Microsoft has got a new convert

Wow, that sounds promising. Would you mind reposting after, say, 2 or 3 months to see if it's still working OK?

Cheers,

hecker

I'm running both here and while windows 7 is the best ms operating system I've ever used it's still no where near as good as osx 10.5.6

I will. I am almost ready installing everything, and I have been able to solve every single software or drivers issue till now, especially thanks to the great compatibility feature.
I can only imagine that future releases will get better and better, as it has been the case till now.




a matter of taste and personal opinions. I need several days to configure OS X, it needs so many extra apps, most not free. And some applications I use are simply not there. And, having been used to the Windows and KDE way of doing things (previous to KDE4, that is), I find that OS X hinders my productivity.
But again, a matter of personal experience.

Hello, I've been using Windows 7 since build 6801, and I have to say it is extremely good. With Vista's look and XP's perfomance, this is certainly an excelent Operating System. I even have build 7000 installed in my Desktop, and games run better than they ran in Vista :D

Still, I'm not giving up Mac OS X in my laptop, I like when people look to an Asus A3F and see Apple's operating System running

According to this man:

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/win...MNL04302009STR1

Windows 7 could be released by then. And in fact this RC is a lot more stable than Vista final.
I can see only some driver problems if they release too soon. But you can install Vista drivers in compatibility mode and they work like a charm.

I've had Windows 7 installed on my desktop for quite some time, and am actually upgrading to the RC as I type this. While I do agree that Windows 7 is the best version of Windows to be produced in a long time, I'd have to say OS X and linux still take the cake. You can't beat Linux, it just is way too flexible; for instance, I can quickly write a nice shell script to do some menial task in Linux that would take millions of clicks in Windows; and OS X is just in a league of its own; But as you said, its a matter of taste. I'm just glad to see something that actually looks like quality work come out of Redmond. Although I do wonder why they let someone on LSD be the person to create their new backgrounds.

Albeit a long time user, and a person who likes to try as many operating systems as possible, I have never seen myself as an ubergeek.
Thus what matters most to me is usability.
As I have already explained, my laptop doesn't cope well with Linux or OS X.
But once I have my new desktop, in about 2 weeks time, I'll be triple booting again.
I have an Asus P5Q, and I understand that it takes some extra work installing OS X.
I mean, I used to have a Bad Axe 2, almost 100% compatible.
Lol at someone on LSD creating their new backgrounds, but I simply chose a British landscape, quite beautiful.

I totally agree.

After my Macintosh SE days in college, I followed the crowd until I switched back to Mac in 2005... before Vista. I had high hopes Vista would raise the competitive bar and I was more than disappointed when it, quite literally, stumbled out of the gate. Now, I actually find myself intrigued contemplating what innovations might come from their newest entry in the OS race. Honestly, I think OS X innovation really slowed without a worthy competitor.

I've been using Windows 7 for a while now in Parallels on a lowly MacBook. Even though it is running with only 1 gig of memory and without the benefit of all that Aero fluff, I have to give it to Microsoft. Windows 7 is definitely a much smoother and, dare I say it, more PLEASANT computing experience when compared to Vista running on the same hardware. My MacBook doesn't sound like a Boeing 777 powering up for takeoff, AMAZING! Same stale interface paradigm only slightly improved but the performance gains give me hope. If this really IS the last "Windows" OS, it won't be too shabby. No grand slam home run but a decent finish to an OS line that brought computing to the indiscriminate masses.

With Microsoft finally pointed back in the right direction and Linux really coming into its own, we should all look forward to some amazing innovations in security, usability, and reliability!

Windows 7 rc1 is indeed a nice OS and probably the best MS OS to date. I have both on my hack and before that used Vista x64 sp1 which wasn't that bad either. You can't make a fair comparison between Windows 7 and OSX on a hackintosh. On mine, they both run equally well but I give 10.5.6 a 9 and Windows 7 a 7 out of 10. There are simply too many goodies in Mac OSX to give it to MS

Free best in class Dev tools
BSD underpinnings
Rock solid reliability
Ease of use
Consistent history of ensuring legacy data gets upgraded with each new release/version (itunes, iphoto, etc)
Prettier Interface ( I think 7 is almost as pretty as OSX but give the consistency and usability to OSX still. You still have to go poking around for stuff more in 7 more than X)

I could go on but all in all I like 7 but will be sticking with OSX. I'll keep it on a HD for the occasional 3D game that doesn't have a Mac version, but my important data (documents, photos, music/media) will stay on OSX.

I've just finished upgrading from Vista Ultimate to the Windows 7 RC.

ASUS already has Windows 7 drivers for everything on the motherboard, including a complete Intel chipset driver package that I couldn't find on Intel's website.

It doesn't feel any different to me, everything runs the same way it did before!

Remember to disable Windows Defender if you use AVG!
File operations slow down to a crawl with both running at once.

They don't seem to have them yet for the P5Q Deluxe, though.

Alessandro, I couldn't agree more with your first post

It's P45 Express/ICH10R like mine so you can just go to P5Q-E downloads and get it from there.

It's a normal Intel Chipset Driver package dated April 22, there's nothing P5Q-E specific about it.

Here's a list of supported chipsets:

* Intel® E7210 Chipset
* Intel® E7220 Chipset
* Intel® E7221 Chipset
* Intel® E7230 Chipset
* Intel® E7320 Chipset
* Intel® E7520 Chipset
* Intel® E7525 Chipset
* Intel® E8500 Chipset
* Intel® E8501 Chipset
* Intel® 848P Chipset
* Intel® 865G Chipset
* Intel® 865PE Chipset
* Intel® 865P Chipset
* Intel® 865GV Chipset
* Intel® 875P Chipset
* Intel® 910GE Express Chipset
* Intel® 910GL Express Chipset
* Intel® 910GML Express Chipset
* Intel® 915G Express Chipset
* Intel® 915P Express Chipset
* Intel® 915GV Express Chipset
* Intel® 915GL Express Chipset
* Intel® 915PL Express Chipset
* Intel® 915GV Express Chipset
* Intel® 915PM Express Chipset
* Intel® 915GM Express Chipset
* Intel® 915GMS Express Chipset
* Intel® 925X Express Chipset
* Intel® 925XE Express Chipset
* Intel® 940GML Chipset
* Intel® 945G Express Chipset
* Intel® 945GM Express Chipset
* Intel® 945GMS Express Chipset
* Intel® 945P Express Chipset
* Intel® 945PL Express Chipset
* Intel® 945PM Express Chipset
* Intel® 955X Express Chipset
* Intel® 955XM Express Chipset
* Intel® 975X Express Chipset
* Intel® 5000 Series Chipset
* Intel® 3000/3010 Chipset
* Intel® 3000/3010/3100 Chipset
* Intel® 5000 Series Chipset
* Intel® Q963 Chipset
* Intel® Q965 Chipset
* Intel® P965 Chipset
* Intel® G965 Chipset
* Intel® 946GZ Chipset
* Intel® 946PL Chipset
* Intel® 946GL Chipset
* Intel® GM965 Chipset
* Intel® PM965 Chipset
* Intel® GL960 Chipset
* Intel® G33 Express Chipset
* Intel® G31 Express Chipset
* Intel® P35 Express Chipset
* Intel® G35 Express Chipset
* Intel® GME965 Chipset
* Intel® GS965 Chipset
* Intel® GLE960 Chipset
* Intel® 945GME Chipset
* Intel® 4 Series Chipset
* Intel® 5 Series Chipset
* Mobile Intel® 45 Express Chipset

Thanks for the info, Beerkex'd

I found it absolutely beautiful how easy it was enabling AHCI: one simple registry hack, enable AHCI in the BIOS, reboot, drivers automagically installed in seconds

http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ah...r-installation/

This means that I am waving old XP Goodbye!

Although I am an Apple freak for life, I have to say that XP was actually their best operating system, and there are a couple of reasons as to why I am not going to consider buying the 7 final when it premiers around the holidays this year.
A few things are:
Overly large taskbar (it takes up about 5% of the screen real estate in a goodly sized VM)
Doesn't run the same programs that I need, which ran in XP (Sheepshaver, Basilisk, some of my favorite games)
To run XP mode, I need an extra $200 for the XP license.

I could continue on, but I feel that this is sufficient for a 9th-almost-in-10th grader, who explainably, does not have a job.

Hold on. You need an extra license to run in XP mode? What about the XP license you were using until now?

Oh, and I think that the compatibility mode works better in 7, too. I have office programs (Esp. DATAEASE) that won't run worth a care in Vista (with compat), they run fine in XP, and with compatibility mode in 7.

AppleFreak, I cannot see why you can't get programs to run in 7? Did you even try to mess around with the compatibility settings? I have a feeling you didn't.

And yes, you can reduce the taskbar size and even change it back to Vista-style, though it does look nicer in 7.

That is simply not true:

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/pa...-windows-7.aspx



But of course you'll have to buy at least Windows 7 Professional.

In any case your games should run even without XP Mode, as it has already been said. I haven't come across a single compatibility issue till now.

Here's my experience with Windows 7:
It is the best Windows avalaible even if I get better fps on Windows XP, but Windows 7 doesn't support my Asus my Cinema tv card and the "sleep mode"! Even Ubuntu supports them!

PS: the ext3 driver doesn't work

I'm currently running Windows 7 RC 64-bit.

After the someone-needs-to-get-fired fiasco that was Vista, I can't believe it... 7 is exactly what Vista should have been. UAC can be adjusted or turned off, there's new useful features, it seems to run smooth and fast, it looks nice overall (... for Windows), and they've changed some of the organization of the OS to make it more efficient (the new "Library").

But ultimately... I can't help but feel that a lot of my contentment stems from how crappy Vista was and is. If Vista hadn't come out, would we be so impressed with 7? I'm going to propose that were it not for the craptastic terribad Vista experience, 7 would be just an update. Now, thanks to that laughable joke of an OS that we called Windows Vista, 7 looks and feels like a million bucks.

Yeah... I like Windows 7. I like where they are going. Unfortunately for Microsoft, I still feel that there's too many reasons, OS itself included, for me to stick with OS X as my main. I love Expose to death, can't live long without it now. I also cut videos on Final Cut, and I'm not going to switch anytime soon. I love the Dock, despite it not being a "poweruser's tool."

So, here's to Windows 7 getting better and better... I hope.

1. U can disable new taskbar and make it as slim as it was in XP
2. From my experience there isn't many games that don't run on Vista or Win7...
3. U can buy Proffesional edition or use XP U have now

Totally agree.

Apple should take notice. Windows 7 is going to be great. I've played around with it awhile ago and even for a little virtual machine with 1 gig and 1 cpu enabled it was fast

everything worked right out of the box even in that setting

I might just make a switch to Windows if this keeps up

lower prices, good OS...

Been using Windows 7 since last December and I'm loving it. Almost no bugs since the beginning and no bugs with RC1 at all. Great compatibility and ease of use.

OSX I keep it for the challenge of making things work and showing off to my friends.

There is a sale for Windows 7 pre-orders at major online retailers such as NewEgg. $100 for a Win 7 Professional Upgrade copy

7 is a Vista killer.. that's about it.

I paid £100 for a Win 7 Professional FULL copy (Amazon.co.uk)
But you can't buy an upgrade in Europe. OTOH £100 is a lot more than $100.

I like Win7. Overall, I like it better than OS X. It'll replace WinXP as what I use in a VM and dual-boot for some stubborn games that don't work in Wine (yet).

But I will never go back to using a non-Unix-like OS for my main system. Cygwin and MSYS can't make up for this. I have been absorbed too far into the shell (Terminal for you OSX peeps), and MS's PowerShell is too little too late.



I'll be keeping my current/planned setup, with Arch GNU/Linux as my main OS, Hackintosh in a VM for messing around with, and Windows 7 x64 Ultimate on another hard drive and in a VM (VM uses the raw hard disk). Other OSen that might eventually find their way onto my PC permanently are FreeBSD and Linux from Scratch (my own extremely sucky distro as it develops from copied LFS install directions into its own thing... or not).

I've got Windows 7 on my Windows desktop, and truthfully - my opinion is MEH.

Now the thing is still not released yet so it may be unfair to judge a release candidate, but to me it looks like a dressed up Vista, and not even in a good way. The way they implemented the new taskbar just feels clunky on a Windows system. The search is now atrocious - by default (and it's a default that I had to search for the better part of an hour on how to change it) it only searches indexed locations. There is no advanced dialog like in Vista to just search non-indexed as an option. My system also has had serious problems with it. For instance the .NET Runtime Optimizer service was getting tangled up with something and was normally eating 90-95% of the system RAM, making the system nearly unuseable. I finally disabled that service and it's came back under control, but it was aggravating until I tracked down the issue.

IF they'd finally gotten WinFS working then I'd probably change my mind, but they haven't (really, I think a database/metadata-driven filesystem is the next big thing waiting to happen - I see lots of possibilities with it).

Truthfully, I view it as a minor step DOWN from Vista (which in turn I viewed as a minor step down from XP). For people who like Windows, it's more Windows. For most people who like OS X or Linux, it doesn't really offer anything new.

Naturally it has it's strengths too - namely the GUI is snappier than Linux's and playing back media/video files I've always found to be fastest and most convenient on a Windows system (VLC on Mac is good, but still doesn't compare to Media Player Classic on Windows).

Still though, after a month or two of fiddling with Windows 7 I'm back to mostly using my Hackintosh for my day to day tasks. When Linux improves it's GUI speed (DirectFB shows promise there) and gets iTunes (hey I can dream) then I'd likely look at switching to it instead.

PS: Not sure how many developers we have here, but the new Visual Studio 2010 (that is sort of a companion piece to Windows 7, given that most software for 7 will be developed with it) is TERRIBLE. Not from a UI design standpoint - there it actually shines, but they tried to redo their interface in Silverlight or something and it's just gotten so slow, buggy, and clunky that I can barely use it. I was playing around with 1 C# project just to test the waters a bit and after 3 weeks of working on it i eventually abandoned the whole project to avoid the pain of the development environment. Not being much of a fan of Xcode, I'm actually now just looking into using Simultron + wxWidgets on my Mac to try out some cross-platform development.

7 is great, but right now it's hit and miss with performance in games, and other programs. It's about at Vistas level of performance right now(Which is really good considering it's just the launch of the OS), but it has so much more room for improvement compared to Vista. I don't doubt that Vista will get better than what it is now, but it'll never be as good as 7 is if 7 is done right. Which so far, it's great.

Would I call it an Os X and linux killer? No. Think of it like this.

The majority of people really looking forward to Windows 7 besides business, are gamers. I love Mac, and like to mess around in Linux, but how many games are released the same time as a PC game? Or released at all? People who look at 7 are not the same as people who look at Os X, or Linux. so, it's really not fair to compare them really. I can conclude it with this though.

They both have their strong points and weak points. With 7 RC being available for free until 2010(I could be wrong on this), this could be a top free distro people would look at seeing that windows is the most commonly used OS. Mac, yes there are a lot of osx86 boxes out there, but much compared to windows and PC. And a lot of people don't have money for a decent Mac. For Linux, face it. Not a lot of people use linux, know about linux, or aren't smart enough for Linux.

I totally agree. Both OS X and Linux could use a strong Redmond contender to spur on innovation.


I think Microsoft has finally hit on a brilliant strategy. Instead of telling people Windows 7 is better... SHOW them. I can't help but think this LONG "beta" release is Microsoft's way of saying "God, we're sorry! Give us another chance! PLEASE!"

It's certainly still Windows.. the same general clunky interface everyone knows and loves... just a little bit "better." My MacBook certainly doesn't freak out and try to levitate itself off my desk by revving the fan speeds up to 7,000,000 RPM as it does with Vista. Like Windows XP, I believe this version of Windows will gain a wide endorsement from consumer and corporate advocates alike.

With Redmond finally gaining some ground, I look forward to Cupertino kicking it into high gear once again!

Windows 7 is a good upgrade, but i like Snow Leopard more!
Please don't compare Windows 7 with Leopard but with Snow Leopard, that's fair.
Snow Leopard is a good operating system that boot up in 12 seconds, Windows 7 x32 Home Premium is 20 and is a SSD killer, it use more of the SSD than Snow Leopard.
SL doesn't use my SSD almost.
In Windows 7 you have Drive letters and that's worse worse worse, if you bought an new External HDD you can change all drive letters or the programs on your first external HDD doesn't work any more.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard doesn't use that ever.
Also SL is full 64 bit and 120 bucks, new full.
W7 Ultimate 219!!!!
Now an other important thing:
Backup.
Windows 7 have a Simple backup utility that almost won't work, but SL have Time Machine, and thats the best you can get.

Windows 7 need's a Virus Scanner, SL not!
SL works faster relaxer and it works fast for u, stacks dock, perfect network, better control pannel, and more.

So i say:

Snow Leopard, u win.

Eh i dont find stacks useful at all, and I think Explorer is much better than finer. I do like the OS X control panel more.