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30 Jan 12 - 08:31 AM (#3298969) Subject: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Richard Bridge I have acquired cheap and second hand a dual core Athlon machine, Dell. It will be part of my second line, along with my Mac G5, after my Athlon quad core that I built a year or so ago. Alas it runs Vista. I was going to wipe it and run XP - not least in that I know all my peripherals work with XP. However, a fiend of mine is trying to tell me that 7 is a better bet, and will be faster. Well, I checked, and the minimum spec for 7 is more demanding than the minimum spec for XP. So I reckon that XP will be faster (much as if you put 98SE on a modern machine you just gasp at how fast it is until it falls over). What does the team think? Will 7 run quicker on a dual core than XP? Next question. Not that long ago the conventional wisdom was that trying to get anything other than cutting edge peripherals to talk to 7 was a waste of time. Go 7 and buy new printers, scanners, external drives, etc, etc, etc. I'm particularly concerned about my big laser printer/copier - Canon IR2000, but also my colour multifunction (Brother MFC 8860CN) and three external USB drives - one of which, a Seagate Freeagent, has already demonstrated that it won't talk to Vista. Has 7 now achieved backwards compatibility? |
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30 Jan 12 - 09:01 AM (#3298999) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: GUEST,999 I hope someone who knows what the hell you're talking about comes along real soon. BTW, you have two same threads in the music section posted two minutes apart, fyi. |
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30 Jan 12 - 09:15 AM (#3299016) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: EBarnacle I now have 7 on 2 of our 6 machines. It works quite well and seems faster than XP. When there is a problem, it can be set to emulate earlier versions although this has not occurred on our machines. I am rapidly becoming a fan of 7. For you, the key is whether the RAM is large enough for 7. You need at least 1 Gig. As the machine was running Vista, there should be no problem with an upgrade. I took this machine to 7 Ultimate from Vista. The mini came with 7 intro version on it and I have seen no reason to upgrade. If you wish to use Internet explorer 9 you will need 7 or Vista, as there are compatibility issues with XP. I got my copy of 7 Ultimate from Discount Mountain [advertised here] and was very happy with their service. |
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30 Jan 12 - 09:29 AM (#3299027) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Richard Bridge Yes, thanks Bruce, I thought the page had fallen over and redid, but it hadn't. |
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30 Jan 12 - 09:31 AM (#3299030) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Richard Bridge PS, I use Chrome, or Opera, not, for choice IE. |
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30 Jan 12 - 09:45 AM (#3299042) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: GUEST I have Windows 7, and when I had XP it sure got to be a chore at times. The only compatibility issue I've experienced (and am experiencing) is with Java and occasionally a Skype program which I think conflicts with Chrome somehow. |
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30 Jan 12 - 10:58 AM (#3299086) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Greg B 7 "feels" faster than XP on the same machine. I run it on a netbook that came with XP, one that barely meets the minimum spec. It feels faster because they paid attention to not getting the machine into a mode where it won't respond to your inputs. Also, if you you have a dual-core machine, 7 will take better advantage of it. Overall, it manages resources better. |
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30 Jan 12 - 10:59 AM (#3299088) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Greg B P.S.: Microsoft has a Windows 7 readiness analyzer that will check if you have any devices that won't work with Windows 7. |
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30 Jan 12 - 11:38 AM (#3299108) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Richard Bridge Ah, now that's a useful bit of info, Greg, thanks |
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30 Jan 12 - 01:36 PM (#3299176) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Baz Bowdidge Windows 8 is to be released later this year to compete with Apple. ~Baz~ |
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30 Jan 12 - 01:53 PM (#3299185) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Bert I use Windows 7 but it still retains some of the faults of Vista. |
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30 Jan 12 - 05:33 PM (#3299287) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: JohnInKansas We have migrated to Win7 on our two primary machines. (Our Vista machines (3 of them) died unpleasantly.) As mentioned above, one key to satisfactory operation on Win7 is sufficient RAM. The actual "recommended minimum is 4GB, not 1,although I'm not sure what minimum Microsoft claims the OS will "limp" with. (Even WinXP was rather sluggish with 1GB, unless your use was strongly on the wimp side. I had 4GB in my last WinXP machine, but that was what you needed to install to get the maximum usable, about 3.7?, for XP - or for 32 bit Vista.) With both Vista and Win7 there is a very significant difference between "Home Basic" and "Home Premium" versions. The Home Basic omits nearly all of even the most rudimentary of "tools" necessary to keep things running. (Home Basic, I believe, even omits the "backup" functions, and has very limited capability for importing programs and settings from another computer.) I have not seen a retailer in my area even offering new machines with less than the Home Premium Win7, or with less than 4GB RAM. Most, even of the cheaper machines, have Home Premium and (claim to have) 8GB RAM. Since the cheaper machines usually have "motherboard integral graphics" up to about 2GB of the 8GB they claim to have installed may be reserved for graphics, so you only expect about 6GB to show in SysInfo if there's 8GB on board. Sellers here also are not stocking any 32 bit Win7 machines. Microsoft indicates 32 bit Win7 "runs" but strongly encourages using 64 bit only. If you run 32 bit Win7 you may have the same 4GB RAM limit (~3.7 usable) as for 32 bit Vista/WinXP. If you're really concerned about compatibility with older programs and hardware, you probably would be well advised to go to the next step up from the Home Premium versions, which is necessary to get the "virtual machine" functions necessary for full "run as" function. Home Premium allows you to install older programs in "run as" mode to emulate earlier OS versions, but even though the programs will run, the security features in Win7 mean that you'll be constantly "giving permissions" for everything many older programs try to do. (Manufacturer's Certificates do expire, and Win7 is very fussy about the "current certificate status" of anything you install.) I believe Microsoft still has the site up that will "examine" your computer and tell you if it's suitable for upgrade to Win7, but I suspect the machine has to have some operable OS in place in order to be probed. There are definitely Mickey sites with long lists of compatible/incompatible programs on display. Moving from Vista to Win7 we haven't experienced any difficulties with printers, scanners, and the like; although the Win7 setup may have loaded new drivers when it found the devices. Win7 appears to include some "generic" drivers if it's necessary to replace an old incompatible one, and the one or two we suspect might have been installed seem to work reasonably well. Our printers/scanners are mostly recent models with Win7 compatibility assumed, although one 12 year old Canon that wasn't even "certified" for WinXP didn't see a problem. The device builders should be able to tell you if their existing drivers will work with Win7, and/or if there are driver updates for them; but that can get to be tedious to search out if you have quite a few to check. John |
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30 Jan 12 - 05:43 PM (#3299292) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Greg B Well, I'm running Windows 7 on a couple of netbooks that have 1.6 or 1.66 32-bit "Atom" processors and 2Gb of memory. They're not half-bad, and better than they were on XP. The windows 7 "experience" index is fairly low, but again, subjectively I find them to be fine. And that's running the fancy desktop features as well. One of them is running quite a few things in the way of services, as it's being used as a "mini" web dev environment for PHP and ColdFusion along with MySQL. |
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30 Jan 12 - 05:50 PM (#3299295) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Abdul The Bul Bul My PC with XP died over Christmas and now I have a new one with Win 7. All was OK except it wouldn't talk to the external hard drive that I keep ALL my work on. Took a while and lost a lot of work to find this problem that manifested itself by not saving anything that it was asked to save. Works fine with my Brother DCP-6690CW. Al |
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31 Jan 12 - 03:39 PM (#3299833) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: Greg B Abdul, the path of least resistance might have been to obtain a USB to IDE enclosure (I assume the drive inside the external case was IDE) install the hard drive in the enclosure, connect it up to a USB port on the Win 7 box. |
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31 Jan 12 - 06:29 PM (#3299925) Subject: RE: Tech: Windoze 7, faster than XP and?drivers?? From: JohnInKansas When USB starts failing to recognize devices, the usually recommended procedure is to go into Device Manager and delete all the USB drivers, then restart the computer and force it to re-recognize all of them. If you can figure out which driver goes with which device, you can delete just that one and reboot, or you can go through them one at a time. Note that if you're using a USB mouse and keyboard, getting a clean reboot after you delete all the drivers can be tricky. (Hint - unplug one of them and plug it back in, and it should reattach itself.) Win7 has essentially the same USB device recognition as in earlier OS versions, so it should work if you can freshen the setup. The USB external drive should work okay unless the "USB identity" of the drive has been lost. You might be able to get a fix by finding a closely similar drive and copying the "driver" file(s) from the new one onto the old one. Nearly all external USB HDs I've seen come with a bunch of junk preloaded, but some of what's there may actually be of some use. Once the drive has been attached and recognized, you shouldn't really need those files on the HD, unless you lose what got loaded the first time, or want to attach to a different computer, in which case ... you have engaged a cylinder with an appended helical attancment .... John |