Windows 7 RC feedback thread

Been using Windows 7 64-bit on my E1705 since the day of the public release. So far I have no problems to report at all. The only thing that did not install from the getgo was the Ricoh drivers (for the SD card reader, xD reader etc.) but they were picked up by Windows Update on the first linkup. The only compatibility issues I have encountered are the typical 64-bit issues, like Notebook Hardware Control not working (yet).

I give it 2 thumbs up as far as stability, compatibility and fluidity of functions go. BUT - and there is always a but lol - No matter how much I dig and dig and dig... its still Vista. Its a prettier, more functional Vista. How about, its what Vista should have become after polishing and updating. I can't see anything here that I feel like dropping another 200-500 dollars on, being I have 4 licensed copies of Vista (2x 32bit, 2x 64bit) already. I would have loved to see M$ bring something truly new, something truly groundbreaking to the table. This... well, this just isn't it.

Will I eventually obtain a fully licensed copy of Windows 7 in the future? Perhaps if I can get it by using the Windows Feedback Program again like last year, but that would be the only way I could justify it.

My system specs are -

Inspiron E1705
Core 2 Duo T7400
Nvidia GeForce 7900GS (at GTX clockspeeds)
1920x1200 WUXGA Glossy Display
TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-L632D
FUJITSU MHY2250BH 250GB Hard Drive
Dell Truemobile 355 Bluetooth + EDR
Gigabyte GN-WS30N 802.11n mini WLAN Card
Sigmatel STAC9200 Audio Chipset

Thumbs up for themes creation, as mentioned in Djembe's post. Many Vista drivers can now also be used with "no rejection"/incompatibility, especially on the old reliable comps (HP ZE4427WM, Toshiba M55).

Never had issues with standby.

cheers ...

RM Clock works with W7? cool!

cheers ...

been working mostly well for me. my desktop was randomly locking up at first but I think it was finally disabling my NIC that fixed it, been solid since. only other problem ive run into is a problem I had under Vista as well, with trying to set up my 360 as a Media Center Extender completely hardlocking the machine.

my notebook had a problem with the keyboard and touchpad not being connected every other boot into 7 Beta, haven't used 7 RC much on there so far but it seems that problem is gone

11.5GB before any update's and driver's...sigh.

Boot's much faster than Vista,slower than XP or ubuntu.

Very pretty and snazzy look's,which mean's zero to me.

Make's one cpu core sit at 27-30% usage the whole time,haven't found out why yet,but make's notebook a bit hotter to use on lap.

Haven't used it that much yet,but I'm about as excited as I was for vista or XP when released.

Was kinda hoping MS would go the way of a modular OS,but I guess not.

still having the every other boot problem on my notebook. and actually its picked up the graphics now too so it wont engage the video card properly either and be low resolution on the unusable boot

I installed W7 on my Desktop, It recognized all the components of my PC but... I had video issues with an older game: C&C Tiberian Dawn (yes!, I'm a "retro gamer", hahaha), so I had to come back to XP, hehehe. But speaking seriously I believe that W7 will be a great O.S. and (finally) a good successor for Windows XP.

Agreed. I love the speed improvements. The new task bar stuff is fun, but in reality - it should be Vista SP2. Its the LEAST they can do for Vista's early adopters. Furthermore, hopefully they wont ruin the netbook version. Rumors had it that they were capping it to 3 application max (which they just got rid of), but other useless restrictions will just annoy Microsoft's loyal customers. It gives them more and more of an incentive to switch to Linux, Apple, or bootleg.

GIVE US VALUE MICROSOFT!

Have been running both the beta and RC versions on my precision 6400, so far stability and performance seem fine.

Only pain is the unsigned driver issues have seen the comments on RMclock - will give it a try as I have not been able to OC the video card - have been using ready boot to load unsigned drivers but nothing has been working yet.

Loaded the 32 bit version onto my mini 9 and it actually seemed to go OK so think they have fixed the issues with Vista just upset that they won't release this to everyone who is stuck with vista - should at least do a discounted form of upgrade.

Does anyone know if Microsoft will be adding an upgrade feature from Vista to Windows 7?

Doubtful if you are an early adopter.

Perhaps they will offer it for OEM system builders and only if you purchased your system within X months of Windows 7's release.

The free upgrade will only be for units purchased within a discrete timeline - similar to that of vista when OEM's were still shipping XP.

Personally I think 7 is pretty good, the 64 bit version seems rock solid and doesn't bog he system down. But if your sticking to 32 bit I still think you can't go past XP - now SP3 is out it is still a dam good OS compatible with everything and a certain amount of freedom which 7 won't have in relation to drivers and backward compatibility.

XP just lacks the pretty features that 7 & Vista have - however in saying that XP has a limited life time now realistically 3 - 5 years after the release of 7 as the newer hardware will focus on 7 compatibility not XP and drivers will start to become scarce plus I still fell the push for 64 bit will now come harder as ram is so darn cheap hardware providers will start specifying 4 - 6 gig ram by default and we all know you can't access that in a 32 bit OS.

Does anyone have any suggestions for getting my 1280 x 800 screen resolution to work? I am at the default resolution size, 1024 x 768(or something like that). My specs on my lappy are, HP ZV6000, AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 2 gigs of ram, and this is the problem, a 128MB ATI Xpress 200m video card(dedicated graphics). I searched ATI(really AMD) to locate the Vista drivers and see if those worked, but to no avail. I came over from WinXP.

Any thoughts are much appreciated. Thanks.

Give this a shot:

http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php

cheers ...

No problems here so far

There were two issues I had with the Beta. The first and biggest was that after coming out from Standby, sometimes the USB devices would not function (including the mouse and keyboard), prompty a complete restart of the PC. I'm glad to say this was fixed in the RC. The other issue I had was with the desktop wallpaper slideshow. The beta would constantly forget which images were in the list, and end up showing the same ones over and over. I haven't yet tried to see if it works better now, but the default images are working without a problem in the RC.

Other than that, I'm happy to say that Win 7 is living up to be better than Vista (I only booted into Vista once since I installed the RC, to back up some files), and as was said above, is really what Vista should have been.