C
Canuck57
Well, I tried Win 7 today and here is what I did.
The system is a HP with AMD quad proc, COTS from BestBuy. Came with
Vista Premium and is new, runs Vista OK after I turned off the power
conservation sleep mode on the system. Turns out sleep/wake on Vista
isn't always that reliable and messes up with Wireless LAN drivers and
the TV PVR card. But setting the CPU to never sleep fixed all that.
I added a second disk, using a newer SATA disk, unpluging the primary
existing disk as to preserve it. Using the recovery media I made
earlier, I recovered the Vista OEM image to the new disk. Always like to
know if those OEM recovery things really work. And I will say this, it
is better than other vendors as it properly restores the recovery
partion too.
Next to upgrade the system to Win 7 picking a clean install. I like
clean installs as it doesn't carry the garbage forward including
possible old driver issues. And it should give the OS a fair chance to run.
Then installed drivers for the stuff Win 7 didn't recognize. Really it
was just the keyboard and the PVR. Let the system settle in as Win
7/Vista have a propensity to do stuff in the background, waited until
that seem to subside.
Next to go through a bunch of tests. Previously I ran many of these
tests with Vista Premium. Not really scientific, but close enough for a
feel.
First impressions were the Aero interface seemed much faster as did boot
and shutdown. Boot and shutdown were tangibly and noticibly much
faster. But on closer inspection Areo while being faster seemed choppy.
Faster yes, but at the expense of being smooth. Likely just less
frames being pushed to give the Areo feel. Got annoying to see the
unsmooth flicker.
Started to copy over the 600GB video libary. The network is 1000BT so
it should go like smoke. Yawn, it was stupidly slow. Pulling out the
performance meter it was about 25% utilized. Then after a few minutes
it jumped to 75%, just to fall back. One CPU was pegged, so I turned
off the differential compresion crap and tried again. A little less CPU
use but the same eratic and low end network performance. Win 7 is
clearly sub-par in this category. Even Vista faired moderately better.
I found huge difference between pull copy and send copy. Pull is where
you mount the other systems disk and copy in. Push copy is where the
other system mounts a ahare to copy in the files. Pushing seemed twice
as fast but still below par.
Tried disk to disk copy. Slower. Big F here. My 5 year old AMD X2
running XP now using the same physical disk type as this system makes
this Win 7 look like a pig.
Memory uses was about 35% lower. Which is good because if you have a
challeged PC in the 2-3GB range, free memory helps. All my quad
machines have 8GB and 64 bit.
Seems like the system has bugs too. The gadgets to the right, some
combinations overlaped. While unlike Vista which is automatic spacing,
you can waste space by spacing them something like the desktop and they
allign wasting space. This is a step backwards from Vista.
Menu choices have been reorganized again. Seemed more simple and much
better organized. This part should have been in Vista. But now that I
am used to Vista, just another UI change to learn to deal with.
Good part is Vista and Linux on the first primary disk have no problems
removing Win 7 partitions on the second drive to get the space back.
Conclusions
Win 7 just got kicked off the disk as it isn't ready yet. Needs a
service pack or two. And for business use in tough times, Win 7 will
have the same issues as Vista. But it will get acceptance more so, only
because it is being force fed to new purchasers and XPee driver issues
are starting to be an issue.
Win 7 is Vista regurgitated and needs more work. Can't say overall
anything has really improved much if at all. Maybe even digression as
some new code to learn how to deal with and wait for patches.
Win 7 sure isn't going to hurt Ubuntu and Mac acceptance.
The system is a HP with AMD quad proc, COTS from BestBuy. Came with
Vista Premium and is new, runs Vista OK after I turned off the power
conservation sleep mode on the system. Turns out sleep/wake on Vista
isn't always that reliable and messes up with Wireless LAN drivers and
the TV PVR card. But setting the CPU to never sleep fixed all that.
I added a second disk, using a newer SATA disk, unpluging the primary
existing disk as to preserve it. Using the recovery media I made
earlier, I recovered the Vista OEM image to the new disk. Always like to
know if those OEM recovery things really work. And I will say this, it
is better than other vendors as it properly restores the recovery
partion too.
Next to upgrade the system to Win 7 picking a clean install. I like
clean installs as it doesn't carry the garbage forward including
possible old driver issues. And it should give the OS a fair chance to run.
Then installed drivers for the stuff Win 7 didn't recognize. Really it
was just the keyboard and the PVR. Let the system settle in as Win
7/Vista have a propensity to do stuff in the background, waited until
that seem to subside.
Next to go through a bunch of tests. Previously I ran many of these
tests with Vista Premium. Not really scientific, but close enough for a
feel.
First impressions were the Aero interface seemed much faster as did boot
and shutdown. Boot and shutdown were tangibly and noticibly much
faster. But on closer inspection Areo while being faster seemed choppy.
Faster yes, but at the expense of being smooth. Likely just less
frames being pushed to give the Areo feel. Got annoying to see the
unsmooth flicker.
Started to copy over the 600GB video libary. The network is 1000BT so
it should go like smoke. Yawn, it was stupidly slow. Pulling out the
performance meter it was about 25% utilized. Then after a few minutes
it jumped to 75%, just to fall back. One CPU was pegged, so I turned
off the differential compresion crap and tried again. A little less CPU
use but the same eratic and low end network performance. Win 7 is
clearly sub-par in this category. Even Vista faired moderately better.
I found huge difference between pull copy and send copy. Pull is where
you mount the other systems disk and copy in. Push copy is where the
other system mounts a ahare to copy in the files. Pushing seemed twice
as fast but still below par.
Tried disk to disk copy. Slower. Big F here. My 5 year old AMD X2
running XP now using the same physical disk type as this system makes
this Win 7 look like a pig.
Memory uses was about 35% lower. Which is good because if you have a
challeged PC in the 2-3GB range, free memory helps. All my quad
machines have 8GB and 64 bit.
Seems like the system has bugs too. The gadgets to the right, some
combinations overlaped. While unlike Vista which is automatic spacing,
you can waste space by spacing them something like the desktop and they
allign wasting space. This is a step backwards from Vista.
Menu choices have been reorganized again. Seemed more simple and much
better organized. This part should have been in Vista. But now that I
am used to Vista, just another UI change to learn to deal with.
Good part is Vista and Linux on the first primary disk have no problems
removing Win 7 partitions on the second drive to get the space back.
Conclusions
Win 7 just got kicked off the disk as it isn't ready yet. Needs a
service pack or two. And for business use in tough times, Win 7 will
have the same issues as Vista. But it will get acceptance more so, only
because it is being force fed to new purchasers and XPee driver issues
are starting to be an issue.
Win 7 is Vista regurgitated and needs more work. Can't say overall
anything has really improved much if at all. Maybe even digression as
some new code to learn how to deal with and wait for patches.
Win 7 sure isn't going to hurt Ubuntu and Mac acceptance.