Can you add more memory? RAM is pretty cheap right now.
Crucial has a scanner you download(I’ve used it, no spyware or toolbars.) and it tells you how much you can add and recommends which RAM sticks to buy.
Used Vista for a bit. Hated it with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Seriously, Vista sucked monkey balls. Went back to XP until a couple of months ago when I upgraded to Win 7 64-bit and picked up some extra RAM. As runner_pat said, RAM is dirt cheap now. Cheaper than dirt. Like, dirt you got on sale or something.
Anyway - think of Win 7 like a better, faster, slightly slicker and more modern version of Win XP. If you liked XP, you’ll definitely like Win 7. There are some tweaks, almost all of them I love (although I also was initially annoyed at the ‘show desktop’ icon being on the far right). Networking is fast and easy. Photoshop/Lightroom are fast enough to be actually fun to use. Libraries are great once you get used to the concept (actually it helped that I was using Lightroom, which has catalogs, which is kinda the same thing).
The Hope Premium version should be just fine. If you absolutely have to upgrade, I think you can get an ‘upgrade anytime’ option that is cheaper than buying the whole version.
I’d recommend going to 64-bit. The vast majority of 32-bit programs work just fine, and I’d expect more and more programs to be 64-bit going forward, and it will allow you to take full advantage, especially if can pick up some more RAM. Don’t underestimate how long you might be using Win 7 - I (and many other people I know) have been using Win XP at home for the better part of 8-9 years. If you use any sort of video or photoediting software, going to 64bit should be a no-brainer.
If you do upgrade from Win XP, buy a big external hard drive (if you don’t already have one), because you can’t do a direct upgrade to Win 7, you have to do a full clean install (which is better anyway). Does create a bit of a hassle since you have to backup everything first. But you can use Microsoft’s Easy Transfer Tool to back up your files (not your programs, which will all need to be installed). I found the entire process pretty smooth.
Resurrecting this thread to say I got my new kick-ass computer (XPS laptop with 8G of RAM) with Windows 7, and I LOVE it! I gotta say Win7 is even more Macintosh-like than earlier operating systems. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
I also migrated from Outlook Express to Windows Live Mail and there are a lot of things I like about it, too. Everything is integrated better and all the pieces and parts mesh. VERY satisfied and I hope Microsoft will leave things well enough alone for a while.
I appreciate all the advice I got here.
What about the search function?
I really hate the Windows 7 search function.
In 95 I could search for all files like *.doc, created in the last 2 weeks, over 1 MB, etc.
How do you do that in Win7?
Just open up My Computer or whatever level you want to start your search from. Look at the top right side search box. You can do the search you described in a few seconds.
Windows 7 is a good operating system by any measure and I speak as an IT professional. If someone likes, XP better for some non very specific reason, they just aren’t taking a minute to learn because that is all it takes. You can do everything you always could and usually easier.
I have date modified but not date created - what am I missing?
I quite like it and have had no problems after a year of use (not one crash). I’ve run some fairly fat programs such as AutoCAD and ArcGIS 9.3 and it 7 jived well with both.
Actually, I’ve added more memory since that post, but I’d still rather run Win7 on more than 2GB, which maxes out my motherboard. And I’d also rather have a dedicated graphics card so I can get the benefits of DirectX 10.
I thought I was going to get a new Win7 laptop, but I decided to get a cheap WinXP netbook instead, so I could also get a new music keyboard. I wish they still had the beta, so I could just try it out on my 1.5GB.
Right click on the column heading - you will see a list of the column options that you are able to display (Date Created, Title, Authors and more…)
I went to 7 from XP and i’m more or less happy. The main thing that bugs me is that the task manager is far less stable than it used to be - anything that freezes your PC so that you have to open task manager to close it, is liable to also freeze task manager and require a full reboot anyway.
Other than that, no complaints to speak of.
Installing it for someone else I was amazed at how ineffably babyish the OS appeared. To my relief others have noticed this:
From then, Fisher Price licensed their “Unique User Interface for Children with Mental Problems”, the UUCMP, to Microsoft. And that’s where the famous Aero interface came from. The similarities got even bigger when Fisher Price released “Kid OS X Snow Rabbit”, which was adopted in Windows 7.
It probably works as well as most operating systems, and if I used windows I would upgrade to it for improved security.
To be fair, they are almost as unforgiving to OpenSUSE:
Before there was openSUSE there was SuSE Linux and before that there was S.u.S.E. . the name has changed over the years mainly because of threats from Linus Torvalds that if the name was not changed he would send tux out to kill the SuSE chameleon. There is currently a movement by Richard M. Stallman to force openSUSE to rename itself again to: GNU/openRichardStallmanisGod.
I don’t want to sort on it I want to search on it. Really if I’m forced to use a search function with less granularity and then sort the results and look through them I don’t consider that an improvement. It really seems the old search function was superior. It allowed for easy selection of options like “Case Sensitive” with a simple interface. Is there somewhere Win 7 provides that?
Sorry, I missed your question. I found a response on the Windows Seven forums. It seems you can actually type advanced options directly into the search box.
Thank you for your help!
I still contend however that this is a huge leap backwards. It may be easier for a sysadmin or IT pro but for ordinary users - not so much.
I’m considering installing a new mobo/chip combination in my primary PC (a box that started out life as a Dell Pentium desktop but has been incrementally upgraded so many times I now call it the Frankenputer). Most newer chip designs from both AMD and Intel are multi-core designs, something XP doesn’t appear to get applications to use very effectively (or so I’ve read). So that means I’m considering Win 7.
I have been resisting any new MS OS since XP for multiple reasons. XP is stable and by SP 2 had all the major bugs worked out of it. I rarely experience downtime with this box, and mostly even then it has been because of hardware issues. So I’m understandably hesitant to change OS’s, especially with the fiasco that was Vista. So far, it sounds like the best that can be said about Win 7 is that it isn’t as bad as Vista was. Hardly what I’d call a ringing endorsement.
In XP, I like that the OS is (mostly) an OS. Commercials for Win 7 have focused on all kinds of extraneous stuff like photo editing and TV watching. I don’t really want that in an OS. If I want to do those things I’ll use an application that does those things. How much boatware is in the actual OS with Win 7 and how much can be avoided with a clean install?
In XP I can find Windows Explorer easily without hunting for it. I never liked the “My Computer” nonsense and I hate, hate, hate the way Vista does folders. Can I still easily open up an old-style explorer window and see two panes and a tree or do I have to muck around with the hunt-and-peck folders?
In XP I can get to a command line easily if I need to. Can I do that in Win 7?
XP drivers are stable and adding hardware hasn’t been a problem for years. Vista drivers are a total crapshoot and installing hardware ranges from painless to pulling teeth. What is installing hardware in Win 7 like? Is plug-and-play an aspiration or a reality?
Those are some of my biggest Win 7 concerns, and I’d love anyone’s input.
I think a lot of the consumer apps like Movie Maker are available as an optional download (Windows Live?), not part of the basic OS. Disclaimer: I bought a retail copy of Win 7 Pro and installed it myself, so there was no extraneous system-builder adware or anything on it.
Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer. Same as XP. Mind you, the Explorer window opens showing a “library”, but the tree is at the left, and you can navigate to the C drive and then it looks the same. (I’ve got Win7 up in a virtual machine on my Mac, and XP running in a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine on Win 7, so can check. 
)
Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt. Same as XP.
I’ve also enabled the “Windows Classic” theme for the desktop (Right click on desktop -> Personalize -> Windows Classic) which makes it look like [del]XP[/del] Windows 95.
I’m not sure about drivers – both Apple and WMWare provide drivers for Win7; Apple for if you’re installing it on the Macintosh hard drive to dual boot, and VMWare for if you’re installing it in a virtual machine. The VMWare drivers also allow you to drang and drop from the Mac desktop to the Windows desktop, and allow access to the Macintosh filesystem.
I setup my new pc dual boot between XP and Win 7.
Works out nicely. My older software runs on XP. I use Win 7 for everything else.
I did try Win 7 virtual mode first. It was ok for simple programs. I needed to run Adobe Premiere 1.5 and felt it used too many resources to run well under virtual mode. Also, I discovered you can’t install devices under virtual mode. My MicroTek scsi scanner won’t work under Win 7. I need XP.
dual boot is easy to set up. XP should be installed first. Then Win 7. That way the boot manager configures properly. I have each OS on a different physical drive.
And here’s a tip if your startup takes a long time: You don’t have to shutdown to switch between OSes. You can just hibernate (unless Microsoft really messed things up.)
I’ll give that a try when I get home. thanks
The little search box they added to the Start menu is actually pretty handy. I have always sucked at organizing the start menu. Or I’d organize it once then never again.
Anyway, at first I figured out to type “cmd” in the “search programs and files” box, which would bring up cmd.exe as a program to choose. But then I realized I can right-click and either “Pin to start menu” or “Pin to taskbar” and now it’s easier to get to than it was with XP.
I ended up doing that with a couple of other programs that didn’t warrant a slot on the taskbar, but were used frequently enough to “pin”.
Still haven’t done it for Excel, tho. I always search for it