What's wrong with 7? (vs. XP)

[cool_charac]

I'm already aware of two reasons why some of you guys don't like Windows 7, they are Aero and poor software compatibility (by the way, does AutoCAD 2006 work on 7?) but I'm curious to know if there are other reasons why you don't buy newer hardware with 7 on it.

I'm not talking about old pre-SSE2 hardware.

[OdysseyNeptune]

Um, Aero is great, i use Windows 7 all the time. I haven't found any compatibility issues. Although i miss XP

[JimOlive]

I'm already aware of two reasons why some of you guys don't like Windows 7, they are Aero and poor software compatibility (by the way, does AutoCAD 2006 work on 7?) but I'm curious to know if there are other reasons why you don't buy newer hardware with 7 on it.

I'm not talking about old pre-SSE2 hardware.

Are you talking about 7 or Vista?

[cool_charac]

I'm already aware of two reasons why some of you guys don't like Windows 7, they are Aero and poor software compatibility (by the way, does AutoCAD 2006 work on 7?) but I'm curious to know if there are other reasons why you don't buy newer hardware with 7 on it.

I'm not talking about old pre-SSE2 hardware.

Are you talking about 7 or Vista?

I was comparing XP to 7, and 7 is otherwise a very good OS, so I'm baffled at why so many XP users refuse to use it.

[gtgamer468]

There is Windows XP Mode available as well, but does require Windows Virtual PC and that itself requires Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate as Home Premium was not enough. With XP Mode, I was use a tightly- integrated Windows XP environment on Windows 7 even though it was virtualized.

[SistemaRayoXP]

It's not exactly as easy as you said: The remaining XP usrs around the world are (mostly) companies, which btw use specific software made by them for themselves, and as a custom software, most time these kinds of software are "hard linked" to the OS, that said, the program may not run the same on newer OSes since they change the forumla a lot (e.g. the Documents and settings folder is now the Users folder, and the company program trusts on the Documents and setting folder (The real one, not the NTFS link).

Also many times the hw doesn't gives up for more, I have a crappy 2003 PC which runs XP kinda slow, but acceptable. Once I installed 7 on it, and it run waaaay slow, so upgrading to 7 wasn't an option, and it happens that the people doesn't upgrades their hw, because they don't care that much about the PC, let's mean they don't use their PC a lot and they usually just check their email or they never connect the PC to internet, so there's no reason for them to move anything on the PC (Here applies the "If it works, don't touch it")

But AFAIK, many XP users already upgraded to 7 or even 8 or even trashed the old PC and bought a new one, so there's not really a lot of XP users who do not want to upgrade to 7. And IMO, the only thing that I could say against 7, is that it uses more Aero effetcs in the windows which sometimes slow the computer due to crappy integrated cards (And then switches the process of drawing the winodws to the processor, which slowdwns the rest of the programs)

[gtgamer468]

True, that the hardware that came in most PCs pre-installed with Windows XP was so old that you could barely run Windows 7. As an XP user, you would be getting performance hits and lags very frequently when running Windows 7.

[cool_charac]

I also heard some people saying "it takes more clicks to do stuff on 7 than XP."

It's not exactly as easy as you said: The remaining XP usrs around the world are (mostly) companies, which btw use specific software made by them for themselves, and as a custom software, most time these kinds of software are "hard linked" to the OS, that said, the program may not run the same on newer OSes since they change the forumla a lot (e.g. the Documents and settings folder is now the Users folder, and the company program trusts on the Documents and setting folder (The real one, not the NTFS link).

Is it even possible to install a new OS on embedded hardware?

[SistemaRayoXP]

Of course it is, on the PC it's always possible. Just backup all your data, and install as normal

[ATeamInc]

It's not exactly as easy as you said: The remaining XP usrs around the world are (mostly) companies, which btw use specific software made by them for themselves, and as a custom software, most time these kinds of software are "hard linked" to the OS, that said, the program may not run the same on newer OSes since they change the forumla a lot (e.g. the Documents and settings folder is now the Users folder, and the company program trusts on the Documents and setting folder (The real one, not the NTFS link).
...

In fact, there's a game that ONLY with Windows XP, and even Windows Vista dropped support for it, since it does rely on XP's quirks, much like other-era programs. (It's "The Godfather the Game"). And no, it doesn't have any backward compatibility with say, Windows 98.

True, that the hardware that came in most PCs pre-installed with Windows XP was so old that you could barely run Windows 7. As an XP user, you would be getting performance hits and lags very frequently when running Windows 7.

Not really that bad, anything that has a Core2 chip from '06 and newer should be able to run Windows 7, and if you are lucky, even get aero.
For example, I have a Toshiba Tecra A8-S513, which has a very old and early core 2 chip (@1.6Ghz), and Windows 7 plays very nicely with it. I even get aero, which is a tiny bit slower than what I am used to.
Actually, under Windows XP, the computer was randomly crashing and doing weird stuff (for example it might suddenly freeze the taskbar), and using VMware 6.5 to play around with DCE on Longhorn 3718, VMware crashes .

[SistemaRayoXP]

Offtopic Comment

Well, the problem could also be that your specific XP installation was messed up somehow, so it would not work properly, but a simple clean XP reinstall could have fixed your issues

[cool_charac]

Now I see. You can't upgrade all those old computers working fine to newer operating systems, which have way too high system requirements. Vista is probably to blame for that.

Offtopic Comment

I just installed Vista x64 on vmware with one core. When I added a second core the uniprocessor HAL started wasting my cpu cycles (even going back to one core still wastes cycles). How do I properly change it to multiprocessor HAL? The Microsoft docs instructions don't seem to work.

[MrBurgerKing]

While 7 has a higher bar, it runs surprisingly well on older hardware - my Prescott machine was shockingly useable. While 7 also has an impressive ammount of compatibility with xp hardware, the tricky part is proper drivers.
The problem is how slow old silicon is at modern workloads: ad & javascript bloated websites, hd video streaming, multitasking, etc. This makes old computer obsolete to everyone but the most extremly basic users. So why even bother upgrading? Anyone who cares about 7's benefits (stability security software etc.) would rather get a whole new machine with a later version of Windows, while anyone using a XP machine doesn't care enough to install something different.

[Dibya]

While 7 has a higher bar, it runs surprisingly well on older hardware - my Prescott machine was shockingly useable. While 7 also has an impressive ammount of compatibility with xp hardware, the tricky part is proper drivers.
The problem is how slow old silicon is at modern workloads: ad & javascript bloated websites, hd video streaming, multitasking, etc. This makes old computer obsolete to everyone but the most extremly basic users. So why even bother upgrading? Anyone who cares about 7's benefits (stability security software etc.) would rather get a whole new machine with a later version of Windows, while anyone using a XP machine doesn't care enough to install something different.

I can't believe your words.
On a core 2 duo laptop, 20fps -30fps framedrop in Windows 7.
System became much slower.

[Wheatley]

While 7 has a higher bar, it runs surprisingly well on older hardware - my Prescott machine was shockingly useable.

I can certainly corroborate this, as even my old Northwood Pentium 4 machine (I think the CPU was running at 1.8GHz) with 2GB of ram and a Radeon 9600 was quite usable for light browsing and XP-era games back when it was still my main machine.

[...]

I can't believe your words.
On a core 2 duo laptop, 20fps -30fps framedrop in Windows 7.
System became much slower.

Frame drop in what? It seems to me that you pulled this statistic from nowhere. And yes, obviously XP can run faster on a lot of hardware, but countless tangible improvements made in versions after it require some performance sacrifices on older hardware...

[DragonWars]

[...]

I can't believe your words.
On a core 2 duo laptop, 20fps -30fps framedrop in Windows 7.
System became much slower.

Frame drop in what? It seems to me that you pulled this statistic from nowhere.

he is right, for example windows 7 will never work smooth (especially in games) on a laptop like dell d620 (core2duo, 4gb ram, old nvidia quadro)

[yourepicfailure]

And on my Latitude XT, Vista outperforms 7 dearly.

[Wheatley]

he is right

He might be, but where's the evidence for his claim? How was the framerate of this mysterious program measured? What even is the program, and what exactly is the "core 2 duo laptop"?

for example windows 7 will never work smooth (especially in games) on a laptop like dell d620 (core2duo, 4gb ram, old nvidia quadro)

Well yeah, a machine that was never intended for gaming doesn't play games smoothly, who would have thunk it. But for lighter use, nearly any Core 2 Duo laptop can still be "smooth" enough on 7 and even 10, especially if you upgrade the RAM and install an SSD. I know because I used a Core 2 Duo machine for years with those upgrades.

[SistemaRayoXP]

He might be, but where's the evidence for his claim?

You use a Radeon 9600, he probably used a shitty integrated graphic card, and 7 became something like a game, where you need a minimal graphic card in order to run the system smooth (In fact, this comes since Vista with Aero). I can comprobate that a P4 runs 7 nice, the issue here isn't with the processor, Windows 7 requires a minimal of 1 GB of memory in order to run questionably usable, but in order for the system to be fast, you need 2 GB of RAM, and a basic DirectX 9 graphic card. Also having a good disk speed increases the system load times