windows 7 ?

it comes out today , anyone going to download it today ? i bought a new netbook last mo. and it came with a free download . i am not sure how to do it . i was told to do a backup before installing W7 but i don't have a diskdrive so i have to use a online backup . i am worried about it , i have never installed a OS before , any help would be great !

Thom

Thom, get you a stick drive. Lots of people make them and you can get them at Wally World or WalGreens. They store up to 8 gig.

Let us know how the W7 install goes.

Ponch

I bought my wife a new computer a couple months ago and it came with a free upgrade to Windows 7. They are shipping me a copy of it this week. So I will be upgrading her computer but not through download.

My brother has been using a beta version of it for about a year now and loves it. He does do a lot of gaming and computer tweaking and such so it behooved him to get out of vista (at least that is what he tells me).

In terms of installing an OS, you do want to make sure you have everything backed up. A flash drive (stick drive, jump drive, whatever you want to call it) is a fine way to go for a temporary backup. And wally-world has some high capacity ones for dirt cheap.

If the installation goes like it is intended to it is always very easy to do - so I wouldn't worry about trying the install yourself. If you can read/follow simple instructions, you can install the OS.

Personally, I am fine with the version of Vista-64 I am running now and do not plan spending the coin on Windows 7.

rite now i am copying my c drive on a 60 gig external hard drive , it has about a 1 1/2 hrs to go before its done than i'll down load W7 and see what happens . it looks like W7 works better on the netbooks ,

Speaking about cheap drives, I just bought a one Terabyte 3.5" external USB hard drive (for use at work) for $150 .... wow!

"memory sticks" are dirt cheap nowadays ... 8Gig ones go for as little as $15 - $20

rite now i am copying my c drive on a 60 gig external hard drive , it has about a 1 1/2 hrs to go before its done than i'll down load W7 and see what happens . it looks like W7 works better on the netbooks ,

You would be well advised to also do a "system state backup" using Windows built-in backup utility.

Better yet, if you can find some kind of Imaging software on a bootable CD ... create an image of your HD. If things go wrong, you can simply re-apply the image and all is back to what it was.

all 4 for of my computers would not fill 1/2 of that !

Walley world here has 8 gige sticks for 20 bucks

At Costco yesterday I saw a 1Terabite external for $99. Gosh - cheap, I remember when memory was $100 a meg.

Been using 7 for about 6 months. Much better than Vista. They have hidden some things you get use to in XP as far as admins are concerned. But the average user will find it much better than Vista which was a joke. I still refuse to install it on any machine I own or work on which is around 250 of them. There's no upgrade path from XP to 7 though so you'll wind up reinstalling all you apps. So for those thinking about an upgrade from XP think again. You'll need another drive,do a side by side install, or wipe your current drive clean.

You can go to laplink.com and purchase a copy of there upgrade softwear and do a upgrade from XP to Windows 7 have already done it on 3 differt computers and all most all the aps work and also did't have to redue my license's took abot 2 hours:thumbsup2:

I'm curious about the minimum requirements of Windows 7 VS XP. Netbooks come with XP because they don't have the power or requirements to run Vista effectively. It may not be a good idea to go to Windows 7 unless there is enough Ram and processing power to run it without a big drop in performance.

Wayne

I'm curious about the minimum requirements of Windows 7 VS XP. Netbooks come with XP because they don't have the power or requirements to run Vista effectively. It may not be a good idea to go to Windows 7 unless there is enough Ram and processing power to run it without a big drop in performance.

 

Wayne

From Microsoft site...

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
  
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
  
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
  
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
  

Additional requirements to use certain features:

• Internet access (fees may apply)
  
• Depending on resolution, video playback may require additional memory and advanced graphics hardware
  
• For some Windows Media Center functionality a TV tuner and additional hardware may be required
  
• Windows Touch and Tablet PCs require specific hardware
  
• HomeGroup requires a network and PCs running Windows 7
  
• DVD/CD authoring requires a compatible optical drive
  
• BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2
  
• BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive
  
• Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on
  
• Music and sound require audio output
  

Product functionality and graphics may vary based on your system configuration. Some features may require advanced or additional hardware.

There is a light version of windows 7 for netbooks

Dell is putting onto them now.

Just ordered two netbooks last Sunday. with XP on them

and 2 days later there is a $30.00 upgrade to windows 7

Oh Well *lol* I hear 7 is pretty awesome. never did like

Vista. But I am still an old fan of XP pro. Dell says that

Microsoft will still do up-grades for the mini laps in the future.

Jeff

it comes out today , anyone going to download it today ? i bought a new netbook last mo. and it came with a free download . i am not sure how to do it . i was told to do a backup before installing W7 but i don't have a diskdrive so i have to use a online backup . i am worried about it , i have never installed a OS before , any help would be great !

Thom

I hope it is as good as everyone says it is. I switched to a Mac 4 years ago and will never ever look back. 48 months not one virus , not one crash , not on hiccup , anti virus software? whats that. Hopefully Microsoft will get there someday. Switched all my kids (4 teenagers) at the same time and have not had to work on their computers ONCE. It used to be a nightly thing. The article I read said Windows 7 is acting alot like Mac's Snow Leopard , so thats a good thing!

I left Microsoft over a year ago. Went with Linux (Ubuntu release) and all the shareware (free, you can and should make a small contribution) and have not had one hiccup, freeze, or virus, period. I have convinced some other people (who's computers I was always working on) to switch and have not had to work on their computers either. They go to all the sites that generate lots of problems. All is free!!! Again, you should make a small contribution but do not have to. All the apps are there (free or make small contribution) office programs, graphics programs, games. everything you would want and most are Windows version compatible.

I am so happy no more microsoft in my life!!! I do not have to call anybody to do a re-install, can install the software on all my computers without any BS or more charges.

it is great!!

Jerry

I left Microsoft over a year ago. Went with Linux (Ubuntu release) and all the shareware (free, you can and should make a small contribution) and have not had one hiccup, freeze, or virus, period. I have convinced some other people (who's computers I was always working on) to switch and have not had to work on their computers either. They go to all the sites that generate lots of problems. All is free!!! Again, you should make a small contribution but do not have to. All the apps are there (free or make small contribution) office programs, graphics programs, games. everything you would want and most are Windows version compatible.

I am so happy no more microsoft in my life!!! I do not have to call anybody to do a re-install, can install the software on all my computers without any BS or more charges.

it is great!!

 

Jerry

Linux is a good choice. One question ... can you run Microsoft Office in it? Outlook, Access, Visio, custom Visual Basic apps...etc ??

The answer is.... yes & no ... a person has to install "Wine" in order to install/run Office apps and even with it, you run into compatibility and configuration issues and not all "Microsoft" apps are compatible.

Linux is good but only if a person does not have to run customized Office apps (such as a custom Access or VB application) or other specialized apps that are designed to run in a Windows environment.

A person wants to keep this in mind before making the jump to Linux. For the "basic" user, Linux is great but going beyond that, be prepared to learn a lot of "command language" (kinda like the old DOS environment)

FYI, I have experimented with Linux (off and on) for at least 10 years and currently run a server with it using SuSe Linux 10.0. This server acts as a file server for all of our Windows based systems. I am also testing it as a MySQL database server but have found a Windows server runs MySQL to Windows clients with less hassle.

Some of the other "tekkies" here maybe have more strength in knowledge of this than I do so the above is all from my point of view / experience.

right, cannot do programing in vb in Linux but everything else is good. I do not try to run windows apps in Linux, I run the Linux software and safe it in windows format. and (this is the biggy if your not trying to get to extravagant with the software) this works great. I did not have good luck running wine and then windows apps, too many problems. So far the people I interface with have not made any complaints about my portion of the projects. They are starting to get a little creative in the slide presentation program but so far everything melds.

I do keep windows XP on my laptop (just in case) but so far have not had to resort to that.

Jerry

right, cannot do programing in vb in Linux but everything else is good. I do not try to run windows apps in Linux, I run the Linux software and safe it in windows format. and (this is the biggy if your not trying to get to extravagant with the software) this works great. I did not have good luck running wine and then windows apps, too many problems. So far the people I interface with have not made any complaints about my portion of the projects. They are starting to get a little creative in the slide presentation program but so far everything melds.

 

I do keep windows XP on my laptop (just in case) but so far have not had to resort to that.

 

Jerry

I suppose a person could run a Virtual Machine with something like VMWare within Linux and run Windows and then the Office apps ... wondering tho how the connectivity across a network would be for that... hmmmmmmm I think I have some experimenting to do...

With Samba in Linux, files can be accessed from Windows across a network. Open Office is great and the current version even opens Office 2007 "x" files. We use Open Office on our "Agent" PC's here at work but run custom Access/Excel/Word apps as well so this is a "must have" thing for us.

Linux is a good choice. One question ... can you run Microsoft Office in it? Outlook, Access, Visio, custom Visual Basic apps...etc ??

 

The answer is.... yes & no ... a person has to install "Wine" in order to install/run Office apps and even with it, you run into compatibility and configuration issues and not all "Microsoft" apps are compatible.

 

Linux is good but only if a person does not have to run customized Office apps (such as a custom Access or VB application) or other specialized apps that are designed to run in a Windows environment.

 

A person wants to keep this in mind before making the jump to Linux. For the "basic" user, Linux is great but going beyond that, be prepared to learn a lot of "command language" (kinda like the old DOS environment)

 

FYI, I have experimented with Linux (off and on) for at least 10 years and currently run a server with it using SuSe Linux 10.0. This server acts as a file server for all of our Windows based systems. I am also testing it as a MySQL database server but have found a Windows server runs MySQL to Windows clients with less hassle.

 

Some of the other "tekkies" here maybe have more strength in knowledge of this than I do so the above is all from my point of view / experience.

I run Windows XP64 at the office, and Linux/Ubuntu at home. My 800Mhz 1GB 5-year old home computer feels more nimble in about every way compared to the 2.39Ghz Core 2 Duo office workstation with 4GB RAM. My 3 year old kid's computer with the 1.2Ghz processor and 2GB RAM runs circles around this IT-bloated P.O.S. XP64 machine.

All the other computers were running Linux except the kids'. They felt they needed Windows to prepare their reports for school. They also felt they needed to run Limewire and other malware. When they begged me to buy them a new computer, I bought a new hard disk, made their existing disk the second drive, and installed Ubuntu. They were amazed how much a difference there was in speed. They use and like OpenOffice (to replace MS Office), and they like the music player better than iTunes. They even like the screen saver better. There have been -0- complaints, and it runs for months without rebooting. I don't recall needing to go to the command prompt, even though I am an command line guy from CPM and DOS times.

All that set aside, like I said I am running XP64 here. It is like Vista64 but with none of the benefits. I have to hack everything to get it to work. For example, iTunes refuses to install because it does a version check and XP64 just fails. So I hack the installation script to let it install. I search for half a day to find a printer driver whenever they change printers.

Is there an upgrade path to Windows 7 from XP64? I might ask my office to let me go outside the normal channels and be their Win7 tester. That will be a tough sell, since IT knows so much more than me and they have a fortress mentality. But I also have one of the handful of 64-bit machines out of 30 or 40,000 computers.

Dave

Hey, Don't be too hard on MS. They keep a lot of us busy..and employed:bang head:

Hey, Don't be too hard on MS. They keep a lot of us busy..and employed:bang head:

OH YEAH !!! the last 20+ years of my life I owe to Mr Gates and his comany.

I wonder if Windows 7 will recognize my HP Scanjet 4100c scanner. Neither Microsoft (in Vista) nor HP will build a driver for it so rather than going out and spending another $100 for a compatible scanner, I run a dual OS on my home PC. WinXP and WinVista (Vista mostly coz it came with it and I wanted to thoroughly check it out). When I need to scan something, I reboot into XP. XP runs off a separate HD so I swap the 1st boot drive in the BIOS to do this.

I wonder if Windows 7 will recognize my HP Scanjet 4100c scanner. Neither Microsoft (in Vista) nor HP will build a driver for it so rather than going out and spending another $100 for a compatible scanner, I run a dual OS on my home PC. WinXP and WinVista (Vista mostly coz it came with it and I wanted to thoroughly check it out). When I need to scan something, I reboot into XP. XP runs off a separate HD so I swap the 1st boot drive in the BIOS to do this.

When I take my work computer home, I boot into Linux using an external drive. Can XP boot off an external? That's easy. Sometimes at the office when I need to do things like burn DVDs (yeah, our corporate licensed DVD software doesn't have a version for XP64 so I am S.O.L.) I use a flashdrive.

Dave

Got a up on the W7 upgrade , when i bought the acer netbook the lady said it comes with a free upgrade , she told me that the smaller did not but the new bigger acer did so i bought it , yesterday i copyed my c drive , took 2 hrs. went to the acer upgrade site , put in the ser# and got red lettered ! the free upgrade is not for vista basic that is installed on the netbooks , in short i'll have to pay 119.99 to upgrade . i am not a happy camper !