Currently in the process of trying to download, the green circle keeps circling, but meh, I'll wait.

Anyway, just curious as to what people's opinions are on this, I've used the BETA in the labs at college a bit, actually really liked it. Can't remember what revision, but it had a 7 in it Anyone reckon I should just to a clean install on my HDD, or try a dual-boot, last time I tried that at home it didn't work, at college? I fubard a drive somehow (think it was faulty...lol), or maybe what it on my laptop, might try that actually. See how it goes.

Anywho....opinion? Discuss?

*edit*

BTW, I had a look for a dedicated Win7 thread, couldn't see one, if there is, feel free to move/delete/merge

loved the Beta wil get around to the RC at some point.

Well, I've got it downloading on my laptop atm, finally got it going, for some reason Chrome doesn't like download java applet, nor does IE, and Firefox just simply refuses to work on my desktop, going to have Win7 as my primary OS on my laptop, then get it for my main PC when it's released, provided I like it

i'm in the process of shoving it on a flash drive so i can do an upgrade

I've just installed the 64bit version onto my spare HDD, and I must say it's brilliant!

So much faster out of the box than Vista, and doesn't have all the useless junk on it that just clutters the HDD up. It looks so much cleaner too, and I installed it in about 15 minutes flat. Didn't even have to install any drivers (except for the wifi dongle) as they were built in. Even the 9600GT ones!

So yeah, well happy.

Well, so far I absolutely love it!! The task bar where it's clumped all the same windows together is pretty slick. Much better than Vista IMO. Although saying that, I think I'll wait a bit longer until it goes on my main rig. If the RC does that is. I may wait for the retail to come out.

Overall? It gets a thumbs up from me!!

the task bar will take a little getting used to, it reminds me of the osx dock... which i'm not overly fond of...

other than the upgrade/install taking an ass-numbing 2 and a bit hours it's quicker [to start up at least] and takes up a fair chunk less hard drive space... and so far nothing is broken or missing so all is good...

the uac seems to be 'ask once and leave you alone' affair now... which is good... no more [or a hell of a lot less] uac windows bugging you... it'll ask you the first time you try and do something but not for everytime you do something....

I'm trying it out just now.

As somebody who has never used Vista, it takes some getting used to. I'm liking what I see so far though.

The only problem I'm having is finding drivers for my X1950. I've looked at other forums and the consensus seems to be that my card is too old to warrant a driver for Windows 7. Seems a bit weird to me. Its not that old, and can run the Aero interface effortlessly.

especially as the nvidia windows driver supports everything from the 6-series onwards

have you tried using the vista drivers?

Benchmark time...

Gave Cinebench a whirl and this is what it scored on a q6600 [at stock], 4GB OCZ 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM and a BFG GTX280 OC

[scores are: single cpu, multi cpu, openGL]
Vista SP1 - 2797 - 9987 - 3772
Win 7 RC - 2775 - 9718 - 3754

so while the multi cpu score is a touch [a fairly negligible 3%] lower... on a whole they're about equal... pill posts CPC and 3dmark score if/when i do them

Yeah. They didn't seem to install correctly. I may try again though. It is a bit annoying.

*edit*

FFS!! Now my audio, which was working fine the other night, seems to be borked.

I absolutely love the new RC although I can't see much different over the Beta, I guess its all under the hood stuff.

Try installing the drivers in Vista compatibility mode. I've heard some things on other forums about my Auzentech sound drivers needing compatibility mode, then some more hacks to get to work with ALchemy. I don't know, I think Creative just released some Win 7 drives so hopefully Auzentech will make some adjustments, compile it properly then release it.

Joe

I'm actually REALLY liking it, it's really slick, just love it. May end up using it as my main OS soon, only time will tell though.

I'm adapting to it nicely.

I solved the GPU driver issue by (somewhat counter intuitively) using an older version. The Vista 8.11 catalyst drivers seem to do the biz, so if there are any X1950 Pro users out there, they're the ones to go with. For some reason the X1950 series of cards seem to be the fussiest. For any other X1*** type card I suspect you may find a more up to date version that works.

The only other issue I've had with it so far, is that Windows insists on installing Realtech sound drivers, that are clearly not compatible with my X-Fi. Every time I install them, I lose sound. Every time I uninstall them, Windows keeps nagging me to reinstall them again. The best way round this seems to be just to install them, then disable them in device manager. Not a big problem really. Just weird. The beta drivers from Creative seem to work just fine and dandy.

All in all, I'm very impressed. My system isn't exactly bleeding edge, yet it copes admirably; despite its CPU of yesteryear.

If anybody is interested, I'm running it smoothly and without incident on the following hardware:

AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (Socket A) CPU
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2 MOBO
HIS X1950 Pro 256MB AGP GPU
2x512MB Corsair XMS LL RAM

Your GPU issues may be due to the processor. I have an XP 2500 / A7S and can't use the most recent nVidia drivers because it doesn't support SSE2 or some such. It's very annoying.

How do you find the video performance when playing HD? I had issues with the AGP support under Vista which resulted in very high CPU usage.

Your Realtek issues, isn't that just the on-board sound? You'd need to set the X-Fi as the default sound device, and then they'd both work.