I have been using Windows 7 Ultimate x64 for quite some time now. I think the only thing that really sucks is that many people ARE switching to x64 because of their processor supporting it but there's not a lot of stuff out there being made for the x64 bit architecture. Because in order to do so game companies would in fact have to program for both variations and it would require a lot of working hours to do so. So it isn't cost efficient for businesses to design around the x64 bit operating systems. I also feel ripped off as a PC user because processors since what, 2002/2003? are all 64-bit processors and 6 to 7 years later there isn't much out for the x64 bit architecture in programs. So here we are paying x amount of dollars for a processor that really serves the home user no advantages. It is basically made primarily for business users and companies. But this is all semantics once again. To each their own. Personally, I'm about to re-install Windows Xp Professions due to the lower footprint on my memory and the compatibility to the games that I play that are from that generation of operating systems. I currently play Battlefield 2142; which generally does work with some tweaking on Windows 7, but occasionally I've had to re-install the game as 7 seems to add some compatibility code into it and it won't load anymore. I also play a MMO called Final Fantasy XI which was primarily coded for Windows XP and while it works great on Windows 7 now meh. There was a lot more support for Windows XP x32 bit and there continues to be a lot of companies supporting it even now. I think I'll just go back to Windows XP since my primary desktop was built in 2005 with XP in mind. However when I get a newer rig at tax season this year; I'll definitely install Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on it. Phenom 2 processor and latest ATI card I should be ready to go for future released games and also be good for a couple of years down the road at running games in high setting. To each their own though in the end. If you still play a lot of games that were built around XP, use software that was built around XP; I say dual boot method or just keep XP. Buy a new rig for 7 so you know everything that comes inside of the rig was tailored to work with 7. If your rig originally came XP or Vista; just stick with XP. Windows 7 is amazing but it's a lot of eye candy too. There's a lot of difference but they're mostly usability differences. 7 and XP remain the same in a lot of regards. Kudos to whatever you choose.
like most have said....i like xp 64bit used it for ages but win 7 64 bit just works...no diggin for drivers..just works leave xp in the box give 7 a go
I want to put my two cents in..... If your a person that plays old game more then new games and like to have your eax sounds then stick with xp, I know creative has the eax program for vista and windows 7 but it doesnt always work. and some programs that are old dont behave in vista and up my only grip about windows xp login is slow compared to windows 7 but every game I have works in xp without taking a day to get it to work if your a basic user the whole 64bit thing is over rated
I have seen comments like this on almost every forum i go on and elsewhere and never get a straight answer but my question once again is this " How do you know you don't have a virus or any other malicious program without an antivirus or relevant program or scanner?" I'm pretty sure that not all viruses give evident signs or symptoms. Even with good browsing habits and etc that doesn't make you immune to viruses etc, especially if you are connected to the net or use flash drives etc
If you have an older computer, or a computer from 2 years ago (or even last year) that is truly low end, the stick with XP. By truly low end, I mean in reality, not what people think of their computers! If you have a truly decent/high end computer in the last year or so, or about to get a new one, you definitely should go Windows 7 x64, no offence but you're an idiot if you had a recent medium/high end computer and still use xp! Despite what people say about x64 versus 32 bit, Windows 7 32 bit is a waste of time, by people using it they're only prolonging the lazyness of programme developers to make x64 versions of programmes. Fact is, x64 versions of programmes are faster than 32 bit. Two cases: - Lame mp3 encoder (the 3.99 builds for example). They're highly optimised on 32 bit, but on 64 bit there is no assembly used. 64 bit is still 25 percent faster! it would be much greater if it were optimised. - x264 (h264 encoder), the same applies as with mp3 encoder (but requires a 64 bit avisynth and filters). Can be run standalone now for the last week for video only (decoders built in). Main reason why no 64 bit optimisations is until a week ago it essentially required an input such as avisynth, which is 32 bit and has 32 bit filters. You can't mix 32 and 64 bit programmes directly In short, once x64 apps become widely available, and once they are optimised, it would be a very good thing! but on a side note, 32 bit programmes run slightly faster on x64 anyways
I triple boot Win 7 Ultimate 64bit, XP Pro 32bit, and Mint 8 64bit. I like em all, although I find I'm using XP less and less. Slightly off topic, it seems Vista is a dead duck now, I'm glad to be rid of it. My local computer store hasn't sold a single copy of Vista since Win 7 came out, but they are still selling copies of XP.
Good question, and I do scan periodically (VERY Periodically) with programs such as Malwarebytes and the such (both to verify that no infection exists and for proof)..I have not had any infections not intentionally put there. I meant by the comment, that I do not have any programs installed, nor do I scan routinely..Of course I realize that even this quality utility will not find all of them, but I do not use a "real time scanner" on my machine... As of late, I have had the M$ security essentials installed as a tester, for footprint and utility..I have been very impressed by this program. The main reason I have not used AV programs in the past is bulk, and I have to say that the M$ program is fairly lightweight...Fairly effective also..
Ditto this. Personally, for me a resident scanner is just a waste of CPU cycles and memory. 99% of the time (for me), it's catching false positives, wasting memory, slowing the system down, and just plain annoying. This doesn't mean I don't use a scanner; I do have an on-demand only scanner handy, and more often than not I'll use the send-to dealie that VirusTotal provides for the smaller stuff. The best anti-malware, again for me anyway, is plain common sense. I use safe browsing habits. (Firefox, AdBlock Plus and NoScript) Every download that's from a non-trusted source gets scanned and run in a sandbox environment; Sandboxie is absurdly good for this. In the rare case where it doesn't like a sandbox, well then that's what a VM is for. If it blows it up, oh well, I copy over my backup and move on. Never, ever assume a download is good just because some random person said it was. My previous XP installation was aprox 5 years old, crapware free the entire time. And I've downloaded quite a lot of "stuff". Quite a few attempts to infect, never caught one though on my base system. Back to the original thread though; rare cases aside, it's time to retire XP. A few quirks aside, it's rock solid. (Hey XP was buggy at first too; remember people swearing they'd stick with Win2K or 98?) Faster, much more efficient, and just a lot more pleasant to use. I can understand the EAX thing; I used to use a Creative Labs card myself; after the whole Vista driver fiasco, I dumped that turkey into another machine and went with something a tad more compliant... I'll never buy a Creative Labs product ever again. Compatibility wise, I've had 99.9% success rate. The only thing I've had issues with is ye olde 256 color games and a corrupted palette. That's it. Everything else has been flawless.
being a human of 2010 i prefer windows 7 windows xp is also good until now but if u have good machine then u shud install 7 xp is for low-end pcs......... the thing which microsoft shud consider is the ability of windows to work on low end pcs.... xp wins the war in this criteria as u see aero effects of vista and 7 requires good graphics card this thing stops so many peoples to upgrade theri systems from xp to vista or 7 thats why xp is still no- 1
I use Windows 7 since October 2008 (Build 6801) and i could NEVER go back on XP or Vista! Windows 7 is the best OS I ever used.
In my book, XP is the BOSS... still is and always will be! Easy to use straight foward and gives you what you want with out beating up you or your resourses..It will be a sad day when the people with the big ideas and big bucks destroy a great system.....
That's exactly why I'm wondering why people are having a hard time with 7. Once the system is up and running idle I'm noticing my installation uses about exactly the same amount of memory as XP, sometimes significantly less when it offloads a lot of the inactive services and such, where XP will keep them all loaded. It also handles resources a lot better than XP did as well. The only time I saw intensive CPU usage from the OS itself was when it was building it's indexes for your files, which really only happens right after a fresh install or you dump a bunch of new files into your home directory. (And if it irks you, you can disable that, but really not necessary as it's out of your face once it finishes.) The only spot where XP was lighter is the size of the installation on disk, and with the size of the typical hard drive nowadays.. it's really a non-issue unless you're installing on a junker laptop from the 90's that has a 5GB drive or something. Versus Vista, absolutely, I agree with that argument, one of the reasons why I hated it. But 7 is very well behaved when it comes to memory/CPU. Ease of use, sorry but again finding 7 to be better in that department. Personal preference there of course, but between the refined start menu and the new file manager.. XP can't touch it.
All of us have noticed the win7 hype when it got leaked at the very beginning. And I too was pleasantly surprised when I got to play around with it. Sure, there's still work to do for win7, but that was also the case with xp. Lets wait and see what win7 will bring us after a few sp's. I'm convinced it WILL BE the best m$ os ever sold untill now. And I have used DOS 5 and 6.11, win 3.11, win95, win98, millenium (what a crock), 2000 (rock solid), xp 32 and 64, vista (another crock, I mean what a mess), and now win7 32 and 64 (Also used NT4.0, 2000 Server editions, 2003 server editions and 2008 server editions, but they are not really comparible here), and I'm being really honest when I say that this is the first os I liked using FROM the START. Like many others, I have also experienced the urge of "sticking to what you're used to" every time I started using a new os. I didn't like it cause I was used to the predecessor. Exept for win7... With it's improved prefetch and superfetch functions it is very efficient at mem management, untill now I've had 100% success in software AND driver installations, ease of use has been exellent from the start, compared to vista (which I used for about 1 week and simply hated it) there are some improvements in explorer (both the file manager and the underlying architecture). Indexing and search has improved greatly, services and policies are easier to manage, improved security allround, better homegroup management (especially compared to the old "workgroup" concept). Win7 isn't demanding at all regarding hardware requirements and compatibility (I have installed and used win7 flawlessly on machines like an AthlonXP 1600+ with 256mb ram and 10gb hdd, and it litterally flied). Installation is allmost completely unattended and is completed very fast. It looks better then all other m$ products. Improved power management, maintenance, parental control,... I can keep on going on the improvements, but you get the picture Some downsides off course : New start menu isn't something that everyone comes to love. I just ignore it and use other means to get to the stuff I want, which is evenly pleasant. 2D/3D accelleration isn't up to speed yet, due to driver incompatibility (which will get fixed over time btw...) Quicklaunch has been removed, which has it's pro's and cons. I happen to like the new way of pinning stuff to the taskbar. When used to it, it actually is more efficient in daily use. Bootloader is different from vista's and xp's, which can cause issues when multibooting (and especially removing a dual or triple boot). I have been messing around with win7 for some time now, doing everything I could to f**k things up (tweaking, hacking, modding, styling, ...), and have had one issue untill now. yes, ONE, which is that when deleting a multiboot, I had to move the bootfolder and bootmgr to another partition. And even that went rather smooth thanx to bcdedit. As for xp, most ppl want to stick with it cause they are used to it, and don't like big changes. That's personal preference, so opinions about it will always be divided... But win2000, xp and win7 are the only os'es I loved using for many years. Millenium and vista on the other hand I threw out the window immediately. Does that say enough ? So even if win7 isn't nr.1 yet, it will be in a while, so stop holding on to an os you allready know inside out, and take a little leap now and then. Try and get used to something new, cause in the end you WILL like it, no doubt.
I like both, WIN7 certainly has improved vastly on Vista which is good. However, even though I have a legitimate version of WIN7 Ultimate ( thanks houseparty ) I am using XP at the minute as certain things work on XP that don't on 7. I do have a pro version of 7 installed on a partition for testing stuff but XP is getting used more, but TBH both are rock solid IMO.
Windows 7 is a great improvement over Win XP SP3, its faster and much more stable. However some specialized older applications wont run om Win 7 even in the VM XP mode. Best solution is 2 hard drives one with XP for when you need it the other for Win 7 everyday use.
ahhh, I use win 7 x64 99.9% of the time. I do dual boot w /xp though. Occasionally I boot to xp for problem solving or rare outdated proggys. Since most ppl whose computers I end up straightening out run XP and I know my way around it better, I'll keep it for a long while I suspect, especially since HDD space isn't an issue.