Friday, June 26, 2009
W7 update - after the thrill has gone?
The arrival of something like a new smartphone, laptop or even car often means a splurge on extras, too - making sure the new baby is properly pampered in the thrill of the first weeks of ownership.
That's what I'm going through with Windows 7 - because to make the Release Candidate really useable I've installed my favorite software (a good subject for another blog post, perhaps). Under the skin it doesn't appear to be much different from its bastard sibling Vista, except that it runs faster, lighter, smoother...
Now it's up and running, and it's got enough software installed to be useful, I'm wondering: now what? How long before I hit problems? In fact, the first ones have already come up: something minor, which is that an old webcam doesn't work (big deal, rarely used that one), and something more major, which is that the Toaster (Netgear storage central) won't install properly.
Remembering all the aggro I read about in getting Netgear to update the software at all, I'm not exactly optimistic that they'll be rushing to update the toaster for 7. There must be plenty of other work-arounds, such as installing new NAS software on the drive itself. Further investigation needed.
To come back to the question, though: will W7 fall victim to the classic Windows slowdown problem after a few months? Will my drives get filled up with useless log files that record the time and date I opened, closed or resized windows? This is the sort of stuff that needs to be disabled by default - nice to have it, but you don't need it running.
One more thing: My XP virtual machine - which ran like molasses on Vista - is fairly hopping along with W7. No other changes, just the host OS.
That's what I'm going through with Windows 7 - because to make the Release Candidate really useable I've installed my favorite software (a good subject for another blog post, perhaps). Under the skin it doesn't appear to be much different from its bastard sibling Vista, except that it runs faster, lighter, smoother...
Now it's up and running, and it's got enough software installed to be useful, I'm wondering: now what? How long before I hit problems? In fact, the first ones have already come up: something minor, which is that an old webcam doesn't work (big deal, rarely used that one), and something more major, which is that the Toaster (Netgear storage central) won't install properly.
Remembering all the aggro I read about in getting Netgear to update the software at all, I'm not exactly optimistic that they'll be rushing to update the toaster for 7. There must be plenty of other work-arounds, such as installing new NAS software on the drive itself. Further investigation needed.
To come back to the question, though: will W7 fall victim to the classic Windows slowdown problem after a few months? Will my drives get filled up with useless log files that record the time and date I opened, closed or resized windows? This is the sort of stuff that needs to be disabled by default - nice to have it, but you don't need it running.
One more thing: My XP virtual machine - which ran like molasses on Vista - is fairly hopping along with W7. No other changes, just the host OS.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Windows 7 update
Installation complete: When it comes to Windows 7 I can see what the fuss is all about. It's a modern version of Windows that looks like Vista, but works like XP.
Having followed the debate about whether or not 7 should be "just a Vista service pack", I've had to wait until now to chime in. Logically, it's Windows 98 to Win95, but emotionally, it should be issued as a free service pack by way of apology to long-suffering Vista users.
Let's delve into the process of getting W7. As my system has dual hard drives, I didn't bother wasting plastic by burning a DVD, instead I used WinRAR to unpack the ISO to a spare drive, and then instigated the upgrade.
It didn't work. The upgrade process got stuck twice in the process of importing / converting all my files ... the rollback to Vista (couldn't it have been nice, and rolled me back to XP?) worked.
Next step was to create a DVD and boot from this, installing W7 on a different partition of my primary hard drive. This worked ... but be warned, you need a LOT of space - the initial 15GB was enough to get W7 installed but not enough for transferring my profiles. After adjusting the partitions (let Vista or W7 do this for you, it's the easiest way) I was ready to roll again with a 60GB "C" drive.
Installation takes about an hour, it's largely unattended until you pump in the licence key (this step can be skipped for the first 30 days too). Once the system is up and running, the differences are immediately clear. It uses less memory than Vista. It starts applications faster. It's cleaner, smoother, and perhaps more intuitive too.
The key tool is the transfer settings wizard, which has again been updated for the new operating system. It's now called Windows Easy Transfer and is almost idiot-proof, but thankfully there's a manual mode ... allowing me to select only the files from the soon-to-disappear Vista C drive for transfer. This tool works pretty well, transferring all account settings ... but not installed programs, which is a disappointment. I guess licensing issues put paid to that.
Our system is now dual-boot ... as both partitions are on the same physical hard drive. Windows gets confused if you have two bootable partitions on separate drives.
The next steps: giving everyone a chance to get used to W7 and enjoy the greater speed and functionality ... usability is improved because it does respond way faster than Vista could ever manage. I've also got to ponder the Office 2007 licensing issues ... is it worth installing and registering the suite on my RC version of W7 only to have to then re-install and re-register when (if) I buy a license for the full version?
Questions, questions.
Having followed the debate about whether or not 7 should be "just a Vista service pack", I've had to wait until now to chime in. Logically, it's Windows 98 to Win95, but emotionally, it should be issued as a free service pack by way of apology to long-suffering Vista users.
Let's delve into the process of getting W7. As my system has dual hard drives, I didn't bother wasting plastic by burning a DVD, instead I used WinRAR to unpack the ISO to a spare drive, and then instigated the upgrade.
It didn't work. The upgrade process got stuck twice in the process of importing / converting all my files ... the rollback to Vista (couldn't it have been nice, and rolled me back to XP?) worked.
Next step was to create a DVD and boot from this, installing W7 on a different partition of my primary hard drive. This worked ... but be warned, you need a LOT of space - the initial 15GB was enough to get W7 installed but not enough for transferring my profiles. After adjusting the partitions (let Vista or W7 do this for you, it's the easiest way) I was ready to roll again with a 60GB "C" drive.
Installation takes about an hour, it's largely unattended until you pump in the licence key (this step can be skipped for the first 30 days too). Once the system is up and running, the differences are immediately clear. It uses less memory than Vista. It starts applications faster. It's cleaner, smoother, and perhaps more intuitive too.
The key tool is the transfer settings wizard, which has again been updated for the new operating system. It's now called Windows Easy Transfer and is almost idiot-proof, but thankfully there's a manual mode ... allowing me to select only the files from the soon-to-disappear Vista C drive for transfer. This tool works pretty well, transferring all account settings ... but not installed programs, which is a disappointment. I guess licensing issues put paid to that.
Our system is now dual-boot ... as both partitions are on the same physical hard drive. Windows gets confused if you have two bootable partitions on separate drives.
The next steps: giving everyone a chance to get used to W7 and enjoy the greater speed and functionality ... usability is improved because it does respond way faster than Vista could ever manage. I've also got to ponder the Office 2007 licensing issues ... is it worth installing and registering the suite on my RC version of W7 only to have to then re-install and re-register when (if) I buy a license for the full version?
Questions, questions.
Friday, June 19, 2009
W7 redux
A while back I wrote about abandoning the Windows 7 beta, because of the obvious flaws of running it in a virtual machine on Vista.
Since then, our home PC has been getting cranky running Vista. The main problems are that the cooling fan is running more and more - and disk usage is up ... classic signs of an aged Windows installation that needs attention. The fan blades are clean, the heat-sync connection is good, and the disks are well defragmented. I've also cleaned out all unnecessary files and still my 18-month-old Vista installation has slowed down.
The inevitable solution is usually a clean install ... but really I can't face it this time. The machine has five user accounts on it, all five are used, and it's a heck of a lot of work to rebuild five profiles. All are backed up of course, but even so ...
Therefore - and probably against my better judgment - I'm going for the Vista-to-Seven upgrade program this time. It's a mighty slow process: one hour in, it's still only 63% of the way through gathering files, settings and programs: I'm informed that there are 585,000 of these! However, at least I don't need to do anything apart from sit and watch (and write this post).
I was going to have to reinstall Vista (or perhaps XP) anyway. That's how I'm justifying this little experiment.
Since then, our home PC has been getting cranky running Vista. The main problems are that the cooling fan is running more and more - and disk usage is up ... classic signs of an aged Windows installation that needs attention. The fan blades are clean, the heat-sync connection is good, and the disks are well defragmented. I've also cleaned out all unnecessary files and still my 18-month-old Vista installation has slowed down.
The inevitable solution is usually a clean install ... but really I can't face it this time. The machine has five user accounts on it, all five are used, and it's a heck of a lot of work to rebuild five profiles. All are backed up of course, but even so ...
Therefore - and probably against my better judgment - I'm going for the Vista-to-Seven upgrade program this time. It's a mighty slow process: one hour in, it's still only 63% of the way through gathering files, settings and programs: I'm informed that there are 585,000 of these! However, at least I don't need to do anything apart from sit and watch (and write this post).
I was going to have to reinstall Vista (or perhaps XP) anyway. That's how I'm justifying this little experiment.
Labels: Windows7
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