Installing Windows 7

[Steiner]

You can turn the UAC off in your User Control Panel. It will most likely require a restart.

It's f'n annoying and I turned it off within the first few seconds, I hated it on Vista as well. There is no good that comes of having it on that added security for something that does a bang up job on keeping itself secure.

If you're running on a full-admin account have the UAC enabled at any would be advised, even if it was just set to the bottom (yea In Vista it was either on or off, in W7 you have levels MUAH HAHAHA). Only because if a nasty virus gets in there... they type that can manipulate files... the UAC stops it because it won't let it edit system files... but if you feel secure enough in your own settings that it's damn near impossible to get said viruses than there is no harm in disabling.

[TonyV]

It's f'n annoying and I turned it off within the first few seconds, I hated it on Vista as well. There is no good that comes of having it on that added security for something that does a bang up job on keeping itself secure.

I don't really want it off completely, I just wish I could whitelist applications.  I want an option that says, "Don't prompt me about this application and its loaded DLLs again."  I wouldn't even care if, upon a patch, it recognized that the application and/or DLLs changed and prompted again.

Ideally, there would also be an option to only prompt you with the UAC when an application attempts to modify stuff outside of its own directory and/or registry key.

[Fleeting Whisper]

it handles system resources like XP does (meaning you don't need 2gigs of Ram to run it)

My laptop has 2G RAM, total. On both Vista and W7, letting the OS sit there and do nothing takes up ~50% of my RAM (~1G), so I don't know what you're talking about.

And part of that RAM usage is precaching, which exists in both Vista and W7, so the OS isn't actually using that much, it's just reserving some space since it's expecting you to use one of your most commonly used applications.

[Lady Thanatos]

Also, my G15 keyboard LCD is pretty much useless; the LCD clock app that is supposed to come with it apparently just plain doesn't work.  And they kept that stupid filesystem layout with the Program Files (x64) stuff.

G15 problems? *looks at her G15 clock & date display* After Win7 installed, I just popped the driver disc in there and it works fine again.

I find the Win7 file organization to be HUGELY SUPERIOR to Vista. Let's just say that after eight months I finally moved files off my external and onto the internal HD. That's how much I hated Vista's asinine sort system ("Let me [Vista] sort things how I think you [the user] should do it, not how you want to organize them!"). The double Program Files is a minor thing for me; I just put my game directories (and anything else I thought would constantly update) into Program Files and Office 2003/Adobe Suite into Program Files (x86).

I disabled the UAC for now. I may re-enable it to a low level to give it a try again.

The pin-to-taskbar option didn't cut it with me. So I re-enabled the Quick Launch bar and ignore pining. It works.    I also disabled IE8 and installed Firefox.

The only minor problem I have is that the computer thinks the external HD is the boot drive -- I realize I have to tweak that in the BIOS. I must've had the external connected when I installed or something equally dumb.  

I <3 Win7. It automatically setup my wireless adapter! It saw the wireless printer on the network and configured itself to be able to use it! (My husband's Vista machine could never print to the wireless printer but mine could. It was strange.) <3 <3 <3

-- Lady T

[SuckerPunch]

Yeah, just about everyone I know that didn't like Vista loves 7.  I'd say so far it's a 100% conversion rate, anecdotally.

[Shades29A]

i like 7 ...
got me 3 keys from school
1 for the computer at school, 1 is 32bit, and the last is for my (yet-to-buy) 64bit PC

[Steiner]

I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE I.E. INSTALLED? REALLY?

*BRAIN ASPLODES IN GLEE AT THE POSSIBILITY* ?

I'm going to assume you don't think this is great thing and you're just being a smartass (which I loled at, so don't think I'm coming at you, lol).

The reason I listed the fact that IE doesn't have to be on your computer in Win7, is because:
1.) Gets viruses easier than most other mainstream browsers.
2.) Unlike 90% of all the mainstream tabbed browsers, In IE7-8 it creates new instances of explorer and puts them into the main MDI window. So 5 tabs is the same as having IE open 5 times... resource stupid if you ask me.
3.) The file explorer in Vista was driven (and required) IE to be installed on your computer... meaning if you had anything wrong with IE (say a virus), browsing your files could potentially give the virus access to your filesystem! That scares the hell out of me for multiple reasons, but I doubt I'd need to go into description.
4.) IE SUCKS, always has, always will... and to have the option to say "buh-bye" is a warming feeling to someone who knows what hell IE has cost and caused web devs world-wide.

My laptop has 2G RAM, total. On both Vista and W7, letting the OS sit there and do nothing takes up ~50% of my RAM (~1G), so I don't know what you're talking about.

And part of that RAM usage is precaching, which exists in both Vista and W7, so the OS isn't actually using that much, it's just reserving some space since it's expecting you to use one of your most commonly used applications.

My GF has a 4 year old Toshiba Satellite M115-S1061.
Has an Intel Celeron M Processor 420 (1.60GHz, 1MB L2, 533MHz FSB) & 512MB PC4200 DDR2 and IT runs at 20% on idle, XP had her running 75% on idle (granted assume 3 years of bad choices for the XP %).

She's flying on that computer, and it's an honest POS... two weeks ago we restarted it and it wouldn't turn back on until I opened it up and cleaned the connections from they PSU to the mobo... (Post win7 install).

Her computer would be crawling if it had Vista installed... which is why I state, it's running faster than XP so there in-lies my reasoning for stating it handles resources as well XP (in this case better).

(Experience May Vary, lol)

[SuckerPunch]

2.) Unlike 90% of all the mainstream tabbed browsers, In IE7-8 it creates new instances of explorer and puts them into the main MDI window. So 5 tabs is the same as having IE open 5 times... resource stupid if you ask me.

Steiner, sometimes I really wish you'd think / research more before you post things.  The multiple-process thing is what Chrome does, and it's very much not a stupid thing.  If one tab crashed, you don't lose your entire browsing session.  You just lose that one tab, because you can kill it's single process without affecting anything else.

It's a very good thing and one of the more intelligent things the IE developers have added in.

[SaintNicster]

Steiner, sometimes I really wish you'd think / research more before you post things.  The multiple-process thing is what Chrome does, and it's very much not a stupid thing.  If one tab crashed, you don't lose your entire browsing session.  You just lose that one tab, because you can kill it's single process without affecting anything else.

It's a very good thing and one of the more intelligent things the IE developers have added in.

And Firefox is in the process of doing this as well.

[TonyV]

Oh, but you're leaving out the massively huge advantage of having one process = one tab:  If some stupid javascript takes forever and a day to complete, you're not just sitting there helplessly unable to do anything else.  You can browse other tabs or whatever.

At work (and some of you know in excruciating detail how I feel about our internally developed sites), that's particularly prevalent.  Everything locks up for sometimes ten to fifteen seconds. while some poorly piece of @#$! javascript code does whatever it's doing, and you're just stuck. 

[Steiner]

Had this nice long explanation, but knew no one would read it...

It's not a knock on the idea Dan, it's a knock on IE. I don't care if the better browsers do it, because they know what the hell they're doing. Microsoft does not.

IE has always been the splinter in M$ side they're just too oblivious to notice it's infected and when they should have pulled it out.

The system of multiple processes for Moz and Chrome (naturally stable/light-weight browsere (stock)) is a dream come true, however IE's attempt at this method leaves me with 5 tabs at ~5,000k each... where as Chrome... you're lucky to break 20,000k with 20 tabs. If you get my drift.

I never took the fact that IE sucks out of the focus... just someone always has to generalize things and this is not one of them they should be taken out of context. It was directed ENTIRELY on IE's attempt at this method.

[TonyV]

Had this nice long explanation, but knew no one would read it...

...

IE has always been the splinter in M$ side they're just too oblivious to notice it's infected and when they should have pulled it out.

Hey now, I would have read it...

And to MS's credit, IE hasn't always been a splinter in their side.

I remember back when Netscape wasn't free.  I mean, most people downloaded it and used it for free, but technically, after something like a 30-day evaluation of it, you were supposed to shell out 30 bucks to Netscape in order to continue using it.  IE was kind of nice in that it wasn't as bloated as Netscape, and it really was free.  (Well, free as in beer, in FOSS-speak, anyway.)  If you were a company, IE was the way to go, plain and simple.

It really wasn't until Microsoft made the boneheaded decision that IE would be required to run Windows that it became evil.  (Of course, when Microsoft does evil boneheaded things, they really don't mess around.)