Windows 7????

xp

xp

xp

xp

Although originally trained as a Win32 software engineer I have been exclusively using GNU/Linux since 2000 and I can sincerely say that even the idea of paying money to install *any* Microsoft product strikes me as absolutely crazy.  I know for a fact that proprietary software is, almost without exception, over-priced bloatware whose main strengths lie in only two things:

a) the billions of dollars spent in marketing campaigns to convince people to use them

b) a systematic policy of vendor lock-in.

It used to be that to install and use Linux you needed a PhD in information technology.  As for Apple products - they were frankly over-priced garbage.  This is no longer the case.

Ubuntu Linux is free and, frankly, much easier to install and use than *any* version of Windows.  it is secure out of the box (no need for anti-virus software or Norton utilities type of add-ons), it comes with something like 27'000+ free applications, and it is already used everywhere, from cellphone to the top500 most powerful computers the planet.

For those who absolutely want to purchase a box and give their money to a trendy corporation, there is Mac OSX which is based on the rock-solid BSD kernel and which comes with a range of pricey but very nice hardware.

All MS Windows version are inherently insecure due to a number of fundamentally unsound design decisions (Registry, APIs, etc.).  A Windows box *can* be made relatively secure, but that requiers a lot of very advanced skills which are way beyond the capabilities of most users.  GNU/Linux and Mac OSX are secure out of the box because both are based on kernels and operating systems which were designed "from day one" as truly multi-user (which Windows never was, and still is not).

And no - using CB is no excuse either: being the victim of a single-OS proprietary application which excels in vendor lock-in is hardly an excuse to be further victimized.  Get SCID - the latest version is every bit as good and in many ways better than CB - and be free!

I know that some will take issue with what I wrote and I don't intend to enter into an argument with them.  All I will say in conclusion is this: if you install any version of Windows on your computers you deserve all the pain which will inevitably come your way.

"Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over expecting different results"

Excellent post! Thanks for your insight!

7 is going to be good but i read that don't get 7 until a year has passed so that all the bugs have been ironed out and i do believe that vista was a prototype for 7 so they sent that out and waited for all the complaints to make 7 as good as possible

so you could give it a try if you want

"I resent any inference that people who have problems with Vista are not computer savvy or have problems with their hardware or software independent of the operating system."

And yet here you are attempting to run vista with 512mb of ram!!  Why would you ever want to do this (unless you wanted to just show yourself the obvious so you can feel better about using linux or some outrageously priced mac).  You cant even put together a computer anymore with this little ram or at least wouldn't make any kind of sense.  512mb when xp came out equates to about 4gb now, perhaps even more if you go by the standard amount computers are selling with, because ram is so cheap and it's easy marketing. 

You also seem to think that the cheap stripped down tat that gateway and acer are going to sell you in a box is somehow more likely to run smoothly than some carefully selected (by which I mean mainly not making ridiculous "compromises" like knobbling the graphics card or using some slightly cheaper but utterly crippled cpu) components assembled by someone individually.  If you're buying a laptop then you need look no further than the evil shiny screen to see they care more about selling you something than they do about selling you something functional.  It's really not hard to build a normal sensible/family pc that is zippy as anything with vista, and I'm not easy to please.  The slightest bloat or sluggishness really bothers me.  As I said before I believe the trouble is in the hardware people are selling when they sell laptops or pre-built computers.  Things have moved on, but customers want cheap computers, so that's what they get.  Windows 7 has been tweaked to be more friendly towards cheap/knobbled hardware.  It doesn't mean that it's suddenly ok that the computer manufacturers are still selling you this junk, or that this isnt the problem with your slow system.  Finally, I'm pretty sure people said xp was bloated and sluggish when it came out, but a few years later it's the greatest thing ever.  People have short memories when it comes to computers. 

P.S As it happens, the first time I encountered vista I was ready to just assume everyone was right and that it was some sluggish horrible piece of junk that should never have seen the light of day.  It was on a laptop.  I then built a pc for someone, preferring to use sensible components rather than saving every last penny.  Something like 2gb ram, e8400, and a cheap low-mid graphics card and it's way snappier than xp was back then. 

Excellent assumption, by the way. and even Microsoft realized this and did something truly unprecedented: they offered a DOWNgrade option from Vista back to XP.  Have you ever heard of, say, Apple offering a downgrade?  Or GNU/Linux?  Or Solaris?  Or BSD?! 

Now, it is certainly true that with pricey hardware you can run Vista or any other version of Windows in a not too sluggish way, at least initially. But then, the Windows memory management problems inevitably quick in, and the machine goes slower and slower and slower.  You get your first red "X" sign with some idiotic and meaningless error message.  You then feel that your machine needs some "cleaning" and you install all sorts of "utilities" which only make things worse.  At that point the ONLY solution is to reinstall Windows (as anybody who has ever worked in a computer repair shop will tell you, that is the *only* way to fix a crappy Windows system).  That is true for all Windows versions, by the way, even for Wk2 or XP.

But Vista was so amazingly bad that MS had to offer a DOWNgrade from the "amazing hell" of Vista to the "garden variety daily hell" of XP.  LOL!

Did you know that MS also offers a special application just to keep track of licenses?  Yes, their licensing schemes are so convoluted and illogical that you need a special application just to take care of that (at least if you want to be legal).  And even if you install that, you better keep all the fancy registration codes, EULAs, activation numbers, etc. etc. etc.

I still have to interact with Windoze boxes form time to time.  At the library, or to help out me friends and neighbors.  It usually takes me about 5min before I actually feel a buildup of stomach acid and a strong urge to use a sledgehammer on the damn thing.  This is what 9 years of using only Linux (and some BSD) did to me: I absolutely cannot stand interacting with Windows boxes and for the life of me I cannot imagine why anybody sane would do such a thing.

There are two thing for which I am deeply grateful to Microsoft:

a) in the past years I was  given 4 computers (two laptops and two desktops) which were declared as "totally broken".  In three cases the owner told me to take them "for parts".  Needless to say, all I had to do is repartition the hard drives and install GNU/Linux and they have been running without a single glitch ever since.

b) thanks to the bloated MS operating systems (and the rest of the proprietary bloatware out there), hardware quality is rapidly improving to keep up with the bloating of the software.  So GNU/Linux users like myself get to get "old hardware" for really cheap (say a Pentium III Coppermine proc with 512 of RAM) and run them at warp speed.  I even still have an ancient 450MHz laptop with 256MB of RAM which I regularly use to analyze chess games (yes, one of the two laptops which was donated to me for "spare parts"!).

A perfect example there of microsoft being damned if they do and damned if they don't.  Chances are the people wanting to downgrade were the people right when vista came out who bought really cheap crappy laptops full of preinstalled trial junk and wondered why they were sluggish. I pointed out in my previous post that you absolutely don't need pricey hardware.  You just need sensible current hardware.  This is hardly a problem.  If you're still running a 6 year old xp box for example then dont buy vista, you already have an operating system!  Presumably if you're buying vista it's because you're buying a new computer, ie current hardware.  If you buy the cheapest possible hardware you can get your hands on then it's hardly surprising that you dont have a great experience. 

Your point (a) likely involved computers used by computer illiterates.  The sort of people who browse the internet through a letterbox because of all the toobars they have installed.  The people who install every last piece of bloat bundled with the thing they actually want.  The people who let their machines get infected with all sorts of malware/bloatware without even noticing.  It's no wonder their machines needed wiping.  For these people the solution is simply to buy a new laptop because for some reason they assume their old one is 'broken' even though in reality all the hardware is still "fine".  I must point out though that of course the laptops would have worked fine had you installed windows after wiping them.  It wasnt windows that was the problem and linux the magic fix, it was the users. 

[edit - actually I thought I showed what a terrible assumption that would have been when it ran fine on sensible harware.]

no, it's either 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit

I agree.  My point though is that once I installed GNU/Linux on that laptop it ran just fine for the next 8 years and that even though it is truly ancient by now, I can still run the latest version of Debian on it with LXDE and SCID.

I would be curious to see your answer to the following 2 questions:

a) What  version of Windows could you run on a laptop with 450MHz/256RAM?

b) What is your explanation for the DOWNgrade option offered for Vista?  Have you ever heard of another operating system offereding a DOWNgrade?

a)  I really dislike laptops actually.  I've never owned one.  Honestly though, If I had a laptop with those specs maybe I wouldnt use windows.  But then again, maybe I wouldnt use the laptop either.  xp is just about tolerable with 256mb of ram iirc, but I think with 450MHz it would crawl.  Perhaps 2000 would run, I dont know.  You'd probably be stuck with 98, which really isnt an option imo. 

b)  I don't know the ins and outs of the downgrade offer.  At a guess it was because there was so much whining about vista and they wanted to keep people happy.  I suspect there were 2 parts.  First, the people who bought laptops scandalously advertised/marketed to work with vista when they were clearly not suitable, and second for people who had bought a new computer with vista but found an essential piece of software wasnt playing nicely. 

sstteevveenn wrote:

a) (...) xp is just about tolerable with 256mb of ram iirc, but I think with 450MHz it would crawl.  Perhaps 2000 would run, I dont know.  You'd probably be stuck with 98, which really isnt an option imo.

Exactly. W98 is ELEVEN YEARS OLD while Debian 5 is brand new. That has nothing to do with users, only with the operating systems themselves (and for those who do not know, Debian is not some low-end lame version of Linux, it is the largest, most influential, most stable and most capable version of Linux out there.  Ubuntu, which I would recommend to new users, is based on Debian).

b)  I don't know the ins and outs of the downgrade offer.  At a guess it was because there was so much whining about vista and they wanted to keep people happy. 

Exactly. And, as far as I know, Vista is the only operating system ever which had to resort to such a dramatic - not to mention embarrassing - method. 

QED.

Guess what?!  I just came across this article which claims that MS will allow Window 7 to DOWNgrade Vista and even WXP.  More details here, including a MS spokesman admitting:

This is not the first time that Microsoft has offered downgrade rights to a version other than its immediate predecessor

Amazing, no?  Windows 7 is not even out yet, but they are already planning the downgrade option....

If that does not trigger all sorts of questions and alarm signals in your mind, nothing will.

schahgeek, the first personal attack that I can see is you suggesting I have made a personal attack.  I have done nothing of the sort to my knowledge.  Perhaps you have misinterpreted something I have said.  Certainly nothing personal was intended.  I haven't labelled you as incompetent so there's really no need to argue otherwise.  I already assumed you knew how to use a computer. 

Common sense dictates that you do not test beta software that expires in three or four months on your main PC, and I tested Windows 7 on a free computer that was rescued from the e-waste bin.

Common sense dictates that if you want to test it meaningfully you test it on suitable hardware. 

Furthermore, if you are testing an operating system's claim to run faster and leaner, you don't test on a machine with 4gb.

Here I think we've got a bit lost along the way.  I thought we were talking about vista being bloated, not windows 7.  I simply pointed out that of course it was sluggish if you used it on some ancient machine with 512MB of ram.  I didnt intend to get into precisely how lean an operating system is, and how many things you can turn off and trim away and get into some contest about what's the worst hardware you can run it on.  There are people who do that for fun.  Each to their own I suppose.  You really shouldnt be getting a pc these days with less than 2gb of ram, so test it with 2GB and see if it's sluggish.  Don't test it with 512MB discover what you already know - it's sluggish with 512MB of ram, and proclaim it to be bloated crap. 

Oh and by the way, Neither Vista or Windows 7 will recognize 4gb of RAM unless you have the more expensive 64 bit version.

I'm aware the 64GB version is required for 4GB of ram.  This was common knowledge long before even xp-64bit.  Regardless, when I was looking the 64-bit version was cheaper.  Not only that but I think you'd be pretty silly not to get it anyway unless you have a specific reason not to.  It would be like buying an AGP graphics card a year after PCI-E came out.  Sure PCI-E was an unnecessary "advance" at the time making things unnecessarily difficult for loads of people, but if you were putting together a pc there was still nothing but down-sides to stubbornly sticking with AGP. 

Customers don't just want cheap computers, they want cheap computers that WORK. They want cheap computers that are durable. They want cheap computers from manufacturers that stand by their warranty (and I can name a few manufacturers who do not honor the warranty, but that's best saved for another thread).

For me, a computer that is so sluggish you want to throw it out the window rather than use it doesn't "work".  The majority of customers couldn't care less.  I pretty much agree with what you say here, but I was making a point.  Put in a slightly more long-winded manner, if one company makes a zippy, responsive laptop for £600, and another makes a sluggish one for £500 because they've used cheaper parts, the cheaper one will far outsell the more expensive one.  What's more, probably the majority of the customers will be happy with their purchase.  This is the point I was making.  I certainly didnt mean that a customer would be happy if they bought a computer and it went up in smoke. 

About apples, yeah, serious pain with the price.  Stupidly expensive even for the same hardware for what most people want.  I expect they have their place, but I certainly don't think it's any normal user. 

And if those vendors don't pay Microsoft to get their drivers "certified" those drivers can end up being blacklisted so they won't run with Vista or Windows 7.

Yeah, I agree, there's a lot of nonsense going on.  I can't say much about drivers not working with vista or windows 7 because I've never experienced it.  Presumably everyone paid their protection.  I remember in xp though for ages I used to be warned that nvidia hadn't certified their drivers.  Still worked in xp.  I'll have to take your word for it regarding vista/7.  There's lots of things companies do that are stupid/immoral/unfair etc, but they don't really belong in a description about the products themselves. 

I think probably the reason for your last point regarding bugs was touched on earlier in your post, ie the gigantic number of possible hardware and software configurations from various manufacturers, all trying to play nicely together. 

Do you really think though, that the insane volume of complaints by people about vista is proportionate to it's problems?  I really don't think it is, and actually it appears anyway to me that a significant fraction of the complaints come from people who aren't even windows users. 

wow, I sure regret responding to you seriously!

I really don't get what point you are trying to make.  You just agreed with everything I wrote and then put QED at the end.  Well done. 

um i am currently running 7. ALl i can say is i would reccomend it. However, avoid some of the optional updates, as they have a tendency off crashing the windows 7 install. Though you do need to have at least 2 gig ram, and 2 gig processor. I am  running the 64 bit version. This version is not as back compatiable as the 32 bit version but works nicely. All chessbase items work on both system, as does all distributions of office. The essentials work and work well. :D

OK cut out the filler that nobody cares about like "office" and tell us the essentials.  Does it play solitaire?

haha it does. haha. :D Anything else you would like to know about?