<! :#FF8C00--> "color:#FF8C00"><!--/ >First things first. For those editorials I've read where they think that Windows 7 is essentially ready for sale / distribution . . . YOU ARE WRONG!!! (I do not refer to anyone here on the forums, just the tech sites I frequent)

Possibly some of my instability is due to the default video driver I let Windows install, and I won't use the updated driver that Windows Update offers, because if it's one thing I've learned over the years of using Windows you NEVER get Creative, ATI or nVidia drivers from Windows Update (unless you like hosing your machine).

This is a dedicated PC. My system specs are:
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz
Memory: 4 GB Corsair DDR2 800
Storage: C: 750 GB Seagate SATA D: 320 GB Seagate SATA
Video: GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB
Monitor: 20" Dell UltraSharp widescreen (1680x1050)
Speaker: Cambridge Soundworks 250D THX . . . some of the best speakers you could ever connect to a computer

Just like Vista, installed games are automatically added to the "Games Explorer."


However, a new addition for Windows 7 is that they are also added to the "Games" folder in the programs menu.



As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm rather anal about organizing my Programs menu, so none of the default game install folders remain. I move the shortcut into the games folder and then delete the folder structure left by the default installer. The only gotcha with this is when Windows automatically puts the game shortcut in there. You can tell the Windows version from one that was installed by hovering your mouse over it. If the shortcut has a path (i.e. c:\Program Files (x86)\ . . .) then that's your shortcut. If the shortcut simply has the name pop up, then that's the one Windows puts there, which is also the one I prefer to leave in there. The reason being that if I ever uninstall the game, Windows will do the house cleaning in that folder for me. ALTHOUGH, with the taskbar the way it is, the start menu / programs menu begins to seem a bit superfluous.

When I tried to install Steam it wouldn't install. By default, it wants to go into C:\Program Files\, and Windows will feed it the C:\Program Files (x86) because it is a 32 bit app, HOWEVER the Steam installer doesn't like the characters in there. Since the Windows 7 beta is so very new, I haven't been able to find any good information on how to correct this, so I just installed to C:\Steam\ and there has been no problems since.

Blue Screens I got my first one today, but it disappeared before I could make note of any of the verbiage contained in it. When the computer restarted AVG was malfunctioning. I tried to do a repair install, which wouldn't work. I tried to uninstall, which wouldn't work. After another reboot, I got another blue screen and then was presented with another AVG error. At that time, I removed AVG from the startup processes. Given that I can't uninstall it, I just tried to delete everything in the AVG folder. For whatever reason, I am unable to clear one .dll file (even in Safe Mode), but I feel certain that AVG is no longer a problem.

Crysis installed .net 1.1, which I later uninstalled. Windows 7 comes with 3.5 SP1 Beta 1 (I think that's the exact version), so blowing past the install a second time has not seen a return of it.

- - - Games - - -
(small note, most games are played for only 5-10 minutes with as many transitions and effects as I can figure to try before I'm satisfied that the games are issue free)

Games that ran perfect (no glitches or noticeable problems to speak of): Medal of Honor, No One Lives Forever, Tron 2.0, Unreal Tournament 2004, URU Ages Beyond Myst.

Beyond Good and Evil: Runs better than in Vista (Vista had audio / video sync issues). There's still some flickering textures in the HUD, otherwise it runs very well considering its age

BioShock: Opening videos play audio, but BioShock isn't using a full UE3 engine (more on that later). Otherwise BioShock runs find / perfect. I would venture a guess that it runs better than in Vista, but I didn't do framerate comparisons to verify.

Crysis: Pretty much the same as Vista in performance. Like BioShock, it may be a bit faster, but I'll have to get further into the game to know for sure. No graphical glitches or issues thus far. I only put a few things on high.... models, shaders and water... everything else is on Medium

Mass Effect: Some graphical incongruities (textures set to "Ultra," but wall textures looked muddy. Changing area seemed to fix it. This game was known for slow loading / popping textures. Dancing back and forth between a few areas saw the problem eliminated and reloading I didn't see it again, so I'm assuming it's a "these settings won't be applied until you restart the game" although I don't recall seeing that kind of a warning.

Midnight Club II: Front end loads, but the game won't run

Myst IV: Runs fine, although the 4:3 resolutions stretch on my 16:10 monitor at 640x480 and 1024x768. 800x600 has proper vertical letter boxing. That's probably something that would be sorted with a newer video driver.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: Won't run at all. I believe this one ran in Vista, but neither Vista or XP compatibility mode allow it to run. There is no hint of the problem, it just disappears.

Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2: 95+% fine, intro movies have no sound and some in-game movies have no audio, otherwise they both play and run fine. The first game was a bit hard on system hardware and remains so, although I can get away with higher resolutions than I could in Vista.

Unreal Tournament 3: Same intro movie issue... I'm not sure if it's something to do with the engine or some choice Epic made, but either way I see it in 3 out of the 5 UE3 based titles I run. Otherwise this title ran perfectly with no issues to speak of, even at max settings at full native 1680x1050 resolution.

That's all my gaming impressions so far. I haven't thrown too many apps at Windows 7 aside from Steam, MS Office 2007, Pidgin (multi IM client), Firefox, Nero and the Skype beta. All behave predictably, so nothing to report there aside from the issues with AVG.

I've had enough issues and problems to definitely place this well into the beta status and I've sent a good amount of feedback relative to these issues. As with many things your mileage may vary. <!--colorc--> <!--/colorc-->

Interesting report! Thanks much.

At J'nathus's suggestion, I've also been experimenting with Win7. I'm hesitant to put it on my main (Vista) PC, so I installed it on my spare work laptop. The installation went very smoothly, with no glitches to speak of. This laptop usually runs XP, and I always max the monitor to its native resolution and use "ClearType" to smooth the text. Win7, like Vista, must use a much more sophisticated display format. All text is crystal clear, and overall, imagery and colors are quite sharp. I was very impressed with how good Win7 made my laptop look! It's probably three years old, and nothing fancy, but the display in Win7 was superb.

I took some time to explore the new format, and found it pretty simple and intuitive. You can add gadgets to the desktop as in Vista, but they appear with no "sidebar" as such. You can open and tweak the gadgets in the same way, but again, they appear independent of any sort of sidebar.

In fact, I had only one problem to speak of... and unfortunately, it was a showstopper. I downloaded Live Messenger from the Microsoft website and installed it. That's when the laptop hung. And after forcing it to shut down, any attempts to restart it resulted in an instant lockup as soon as the desktop appeared. Looks like the only way out of this is to reinstall... or try to start in Safe Mode and uninstall Messenger. I haven't had a chance to get back to it yet, but I will soon. J'nathus mentioned in a PM today that Win7 includes some sort of messaging app, so maybe Messenger won't be necessary; or I can take his approach and use Pidgin.

Gotta go...

Mowog

<! :#FF8C00--> "color:#FF8C00"><!--/ > Nonononono! There's a download suite of programs that includes Messenger linked on the Windows 7 site. I think THAT is what you need, not a Messenger program that isn't specifically compatible with Windows 7.

Researching your problem, I found this:

"Disabling Windows Live Messenger from starting while in safe mode using msconfig prevented the system from hanging the next time I booted into normal mode."

If you want Pidgin I'd recommend 2.5.2, as 2.5.3 has issues even in Vista. If you so choose, I can E-mail you the installer for the 2.5.2 version.

Anthony, have you had any success with WLM in Windows 7?

edit: I installed Windows Live Mail today as Windows 7 doesn't come with "Windows Mail" like Vista does. I wonder if this is a hint of Windows 7 being less expensive than Vista when released. Either way, I find Windows Live Mail to be comparable if not a bit more slick than Windows Mail of yore. <!--colorc--> <!--/colorc-->

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Nonononono! There's a download suite of programs that includes Messenger linked on the Windows 7 site.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Ah! I stand corrected. (Said the guy with the new orthopedic shoes.)

I'll check that out this evening. I'll also fire up the wee beastie in Safe Mode and see if I can uninstall Messenger.

TGIF,

Mowog

<! :#FF8C00--> "color:#FF8C00"><!--/ >Heh, Friday is the beginning of my work week. <!--colorc--> <!--/colorc-->

Ah well. Strike Two.

Fired up in Safe Mode... tried the uninstall, and found that that wouldn't work because the original MSN installation apparently never completed properly.

So I reinstalled Win7, and this time I went to the Win7 site and hit the link that J'nathus mentioned earlier, to download the Live suite for 7.

Downloaded, installed... everything looked sweet. And then it locked up again during the final stages of the Live installation. Same story.

So I'm not sure where to go this time. Again, 7 seems to function flawlessly until I try to install Messenger, etc. I'll try the Safe Mode uninstall again, and failing that, reinstall 7.

Cheers,

Mowog

<! :#FF8C00--> "color:#FF8C00"><!--/ > James (JWPJ) had the same experience.
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I've read up on this issue some and found that the issue is most likely due running XP drivers in 7. If you are try installing the lastest vista drivers for your GPU and see how that goes.

THough I have but a mac, and cannot use bootcamp to install this beta, I have changed my desktop as a way of commemorating the WIndows 7 Beta release:

 'color:#000000;background:#000000'> 

Good now its time for you to start debugging! Because thats why you grabbed a prefinal peice of software, correct, to help them hunt stuff like this down. I would say most likely a driver issue as you are running boot camp and Apple has not release a win 7 version.

<! :#FF8C00--> "color:#FF8C00"><!--/ >The personalization part of Windows 7 is improved over Vista and it's much more self explanatory.

Here's the Vista version:



Text is nice, but it doesn't grab you immediately.


Here's the Windows 7 version:



Notice those "Windows Themes?" Built into Windows 7 is a wallpaper rotating ability, and those themes have a selection of wallpapers that are automatically rotated.



Additionally Windows 7 provides selections in the backgrounds area for the same purpose or you can select a folder of your choosing. I have a friend who will love this functionality.

And finally, there's a larger selection of default color options for the window transparencies:


<!--colorc--> <!--/colorc-->

Those customization options are nothing compared to linux customization, we can change ANYTHING

But after reading a lot about windows 7 on different sites I'm starting to hope it's going to be very expensive, cause it won't be so easy anymore to convert win users when this comes out, but linux (and especially ubuntu) is still a lot better of course

Update -

I'm running in Win7 as we speak. This time I didn't mess with the Windows Live applications installations, and so far, things are running very smoothly.

I was able to get Skype installed, although it was necessary to grab the Skype beta. On my first attempt to install Skype, I got a message stating that Skype was incompatible with Win7, and a button to click to go to a solution. That's how I ended up with the Skype beta. No problems so far, but I haven't really tried to use it yet.

I also downloaded and installed Firefox. No problems as yet.

As mentioned earlier, this particular laptop is a few years old, although still very capable. It doesn't have a dedicated video card, and the onboard video isn't permitting the transparent window frames, etc, that I can get in Vista. (I know there's a name for that, but I'm drawing a blank.)

Mowog

Its the DWM, if you can find the driver for vista for that card most likely you will get your glass borders back.

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Its the DWM, if you can find the driver for vista for that card most likely you will get your glass borders back.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Oh, interesting! Thanks, I'll try that when I get a chance.

Mowog