[Chantelle]

following on from the previous thread

RC1 is coming soon.. not sure if I can be bothered to try it BUT

much more in it that beta 1, PLUS they are now confirming things like IE, media center/ player etc are no longer integral hence you can actually remove these .. bit like on linux where you have your own..

[Melissa]

whens it out?

[Chantelle]

Just in case anyone cares.. have been running a test of this at work

Going to try putting it into a live use so on the domain and give it plenty of apps see how it rolls..

It does seem very vista ish.. I don't have sound yet, some driver problem there. However it feels more refined from Vista and a lot sharper.. There are newer features yet not got around to it all yet..

Its Touch screen facility looks good but I don't have one to try it!

[Akimoto]

How is the layout? Does it look awesome? Does it run faster compared to vista? Bigger HDD space required for base installation?

Screenshots?

[Phoenix]

How is the layout? Does it look awesome? Does it run faster compared to vista? Bigger HDD space required for base installation?

Screenshots?

Layouts good. It looks very Vista like, so base your on judgement on that. Yes, it runs much faster and no it requires less HDD space than Vista.

FYI i've been running the beta 1 for about a week now- so far i'm very impressed. I'm also running it on a netbook with only a single core (1GHz) processor, 2GB ram, onboard graphics and it runs flawlessly. It even runs aero fine, which suprised me considering the graphics chip is aweful and struggled running iTunes virtulisations in XP.

So far i'm very impressed, but it'll be interesting to see how the RC1 holds up.

[Chantelle]

Visually a lot of 7 at least at the moment looks like Vista. There are a lot of tweaks and it does use more Aero affects I suppose.
It performs extremely well. Seems a lot crisper than Vista and probably say on a par with XP. My Home Vista PC runs fine but my Work Vista laptop does have the occasional lag.
Disc space also so far seems a lot less than Vista
Some features I haven’t been able to try at all, it has complete touch screen ability, but I don’t have touch screen monitor.
The Sidebar is as expected gone but the gadgets remain and you can have them wherever you wish and can attach them to the side / top/ bottom expanded or contracted as you wish.
The Task bar has been overhauled and works differently folders seem to pin in groups, now you open the group and a ribbon displaying all the windows open by hovering the mouse over it brings the windows to forefront and transparent the ones in the background using Aero Peek. I seen on the videos this is something useful with the touch screen.
Since it’s a work PC I am trailing it on I have not really had the opportunity to fully use the New Media centre. It looks cool though. There is also a Gadget for it now
On top of that there seems to be a lot of other smaller changes like calculator more things for writing recognition etc, the Security centre is now rehashed a lot as is the Desktop Themes where you can now get it to change background and some themes have built in schemes in
Compatibility wise I haven’t had issue with the stuff I tried so far;
Joined network, VPN client (which vista did need a new version for) I even tried an old office (xp) all integrates fine. Anti-virus from network.
I have it unplugged on the test bench at min anyway as I have a test server on it at the min so I cannot get any screenies.
Screen shots won’t really show anything wow.. but it doesn’t have a Wow factor visually.. it’s just solid and good, very very refined over previous versions.

[Akimoto]

Looks very good! How ever, will it run Xp/Vista PC games?

[Chantelle]

I cannot be 100% sure since I havent tried any and probably am not going to. BUT

given its compatability to everything so far and the fact its probably built using everything from vista and on.. I imagine most things if not everything which did work on vista will work on 7..

Can't be 100% but I think its very likely..

From what I see most people have been able to test games on it..

Early bench test on beta 1 shown games ran better on 7 than Vista..

However do bear in mind its still RC1 stage... released copy is likely to have better drivers..

[Melissa]

do either of you have any driver issues on either copy

[Wolferion]

We've tried out Windows 7 on one of two computers ( slower one ) . It's definitely sharper and demands less ( speed increase was really noticeable ). I haven't found any driver issues so far , as we tried just music and video. Haven't tried games out yet.

[Aayci Warrick]

It will honestly help a ton if you guys just youtube or google it, there are tons of amateur and professional reviews that cover many different areas and views as you go through different videos

So far I have heard nobody have any problems with any game on Windows 7, only a few people had lag on large games like Crysis, but that was before betas were even released, so obviously there were many bugs and issues fixed since then. Another fun bit is that there's a feature which will allow you to run XP only programs in a window on your desktop, so it appears as if your XP only program is running on Windows 7, but is actually running a quick virtual PC of XP, useful but after enough of the world gets over XP and switches to windows 7, it won't be too useful anymore

There are finally animated desktops that eat up very very little memory, though Windows doesn't give any samples with the releases so far.

I think the greatest part about windows 7 is that you can customize it a lot, just like XP. If you don't like the new "icons and folders" taskbar sort, you can switch to the normal text taskbar and everything

But I wouldn't get overexcited, Windows 7 is just Vista done right, it's still slower than XP, and it's not really revolutionary, it's just the way it should've been done before, (but yay that Microsoft finally faced the reality of the monster they created called Vista and fixed it)

[Chantelle]

Yes there are reviews but I am testing it for the professional environment. here. Need to know what does and does not work here and in reality to our infastructure.

Id say if you stripped out aero and the aesthetics so it was on a level field as XP id say it was the same if not faster, they cleared out the crap. For a start 7 will be able to take much better use of the hardware now.

Game bench tests though are not that good to gauge yet, no optimised drivers yet

Yes I agree 7 is what Vista should have been just as 2000 is what ME should have been. But Vienna or 7 is also an incremental and 8 will be along within about 2 years

I have a single chipset driver which is missing, however since this is an Optiplex 760. That is a Dell specific I think

[Akimoto]

Looks like I will have to pay alot of money again :s

[Melissa]

OEM copy should still be cheap..

although why not get a copy of RC1 yourself if you wanna have a go.. see what you think..

I might do it myself If I get chance, but like wise for me ill do it on a spare work box..

[Chantelle]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... nload.aspx

get a copy here you need to reg for a testers licence key