So I've been hearing from people that Windows 7 is pretty much godlike... I was just wondering what the XoO community thinks of it. Is it compatable with games? I remember hearing from someone that it took some tweaking for games to recognize it as an OS or something like that. I currently use XP, and Vista on my laptop. Also, what's the difference between 64 bit, 32 bit and any other bit that exists? I've never looked into that, since I essentially said to someone 'I dont know wtf I'm doing. What do I need?' sort of thing.
well, 64 bit vs 32 bit is really a non-issue till things are released in formats that will run better on 64 bit, but this is a hardware thing. the OS is just either 32 or 64 to match your board and chipset. most games are still 32 bit, so windows has a wow64.dll file that basically interfaces the requests to the other format along with a couple of other dll files. what this means to you is there's another step in the completion of processing... some games have patches to help run on a 64 bit etc.
Godlike? Well... that depends what you want out of it. Pretty much most people agree it's faster than Vista on the same hardware by some distance, but it isn't faster than XP by any means (not hugely slower, that said, either - although the memory requirements definitely are higher). As far as features go, I have to say I have liked quite a fair few things I've found. One hint though; if you're going to use the "docking" feature and have a multi-monitor system, do yourself a favour and look up the shortcut keys. They work better. Actually, you might want to look them up anyway since there are some nice time-savers in there. It is, I suspect, about as compatible with games as Vista is. Nothing seems to be overly broken. I needed to turn off desktop composition to get Diablo 2 to work right, but other than that no real drama. Now, 64 vs 32-bit. Basically, if your system has more than 4 GB of physical memory you will need the 64-bit version to get full use of it. (Actually, even 4 GB; one of the systems I have at work is running 32-bit Win7 and it can only address 3.5 GB of the 8 GB it has. I've still yet to get around to getting the drivers for the 64-bit bootstrap install thing to work, but that's not a concern most people will have.) If you don't have that much memory, it doesn't matter all that much - but keep in mind the 32-bit edition has lower system requirements (1 GB vs 2 GB, though speaking from experience, 1 GB isn't going to make your games happy anyway). 32-bit programs probably do run fractionally slower on the 64-bit version of the operating system as well, for the reasons Neptuno stated above. Generally, though, I don't think I'd want to go back to Windows XP after trying out Windows 7. It does a better job of organising files and programs, helps me to arrange programs on the screen (I run a lot concurrently and prefer most of them to be visible), still seems to handle the situation fairly gracefully when some program is eating CPU (on XP, it was always "good luck using the system, pal"), and a few other less important things. I'm not really so impressed that they dropped the sidebar, though, as there's no way to stop gadgets being automatically covered by other windows now... although Win+G is a reasonable compromise. It's also a pity that Windows Media Player still sucks (arguably more than it ever has, since mini-mode is gone, taskbar preview doesn't replace it well, and Live Messenger integration is broken), but I can always use WinAmp anyway.
for me, i went with the Core i7 processor when i built a new machine around christmas (which is only 64 bit, so 32 bit wasn't even a possibility). now, given what i know about the first couple of months in WoW, the first content patch after the i7 was on the market seemed to clear the major issues i had in game... im not really sure how much a leap the i7 really is over the available 32 bit models for 32 bit games since i didn't get the "best" i7 out there. my thought is that the 64-32 compatibility will be designed in most future 32 bits, and successful 32 bits will patch for it if they haven't already if they want to keep their game running as us gamers tend to do new systems more often than some.
i suspect you are right. people talked about how the beta was so much better than vista and fixed it's flaws, but its almost tradition for microsoft to beta test, then add features, then go direct to market.
You know nothing about what you speak - have you even tried it? If anything, Windows 7 is dressed down for the people who know what they are doing. It's faster, more user-friendly and easier to troubleshoot, (wow, I can't believe I'm defending a Microsoft product!) And it can stay shiny and pretty for the stupid people.
Okay, Windows 7 is still in beta, give it time, they still have fixes to make/not everything is released yet. Secondly, big difference between 32 bit and 64 bit, every game that is a 32 bit game is running your CPU in compatibility mode while you're running a 64-bit OS. That means once most games hit 64 bit mode, theyr'e going to run much better on our machines. Also, what was stated above is true, you need 64 bit for the more RAM and Quad Core processors. Personally I haven't tried 7, so i cannot make much of a say on it. Though, I do know that supposdely, thanks to our Mac friends, we will have a new OS from microsoft every three years.
QFT I've tried the Windows 7 Beta. I can say with certainty that Windows 7 is basically Windows Vista with a new UI and a few small improvements, and UAC crippled by default. When Windows 7 is launched, people will see it as a magical improvement over Windows Vista. In reality, the two main issues with Vista were poor drivers and low RAM. Vista has been out for a few years now so drivers have greatly improved, and since RAM is much cheaper, computers tend to ship with 2 or 4GB standard. Since that these two main issues have been resolved, and Windows 7 uses the same drivers as Vista, when 7 is released, everything will just magically work, and the uninformed will be amazed. To be honest, right now there is no reason to switch from Windows XP to Windows Vista or 7, unless you are running 4GB+ of RAM. (Even at 4GB of ram I'd argue that the .5GB you lose for running Windows XP is still better than the overhead of running Vista.) There is no reason to upgrade to Vista or 7 32bit, and there never will be. I'll probably upgrade to 7 64bit once 7 has been out for awhile and proven itself stable, or when Microsoft fully drops support for Windows XP.
I've been using it for a while now and like it. But then again, I ran Vista before it and was fine then too. I'm still on build 7077.. I have the newest version, but I can't simply do an upgrade.. so Im holding off on it for a bit.
To me XP is out-dated and lacking many, many features. It's almost 10 years old... XP is antiquated. I can't wait to make the jump to 7. Better versions of Direct X is only scratching the surface. There are many more new features that IT/networking pros will love.
7 has made it much easier for me to get to other files on the network, actually. Libraries are a godsend when the other documents folders are buried deep on another hard drive; even when they're a direct share it still saves mouseclicks.
I was going to make a post about 32bit vs 64bit. Been trying to read about it but can't find anything concrete. I'll be using probably 6-8g of RAM once I start buying my parts, hence therefore - from what I've read. 64bit will be my choice in order for me to maximize my purchase.
QFT. If your computer is old enough that you can't run Windows 7 64bit, then you are probably going to want to upgrade your computer before jumping ship from XP to 7. You could argue DirectX10/11 and upgrade your video card, but a processor that old is going to become a major bottleneck. After using the Windows 7 64bit Beta and then the RC for several months on my main computer, I've found it to be pretty stable. I plan on upgrading to RTM this weekend when it is released on MSDN. (I have a free subscription to MSDN-AA through college.) Note: For those who don't know: RTM - Released to Manufacturing. The final, ready-to-release build for Windows 7. MSDN-AA - Microsoft Developer Network-Academic Alliance.