Is Win7 honestly worth upgrading to?

At the moment, my comp's running on XP. Has been since I built it two years ago, because I outright refused to install Vista from day one.

Since Win7 came out, people seem to have been singing its praises quite a lot compared to Vista, but I'm sat here, still not convinced about shelling out £170 for a new OS that may or may not be worth the plastic it's burned on. I'm a cautious git, so sue me.

Actually... don't. I rescind the invitation to sue or otherwise run me into the ground through violent or non-violent means, etc etc etc.

So, anyway, if it's any help (which I doubt majorly) my system is as follows:

Motherboard: Biostar TPower I45
CPU: Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (pending possible OC sooner or later)
GPU: BFG GeForce 8800GTX OC (768MB) (pending possible upgrade)
RAM: 4GB OCZ brand DDR2 (Yes, I know XP won't see it all, but Ubuntu 64-bit can, so I whapped that last stick in)
Hard Drives: 2x Samsung HD501J, 500GB each. Mind you, one's holding Ubuntu while the other holds XP. I wasn't comfortable partitioning at the time.

Oh, and before anyone starts, please don't suggest I start going i7 or anything like that. I can't afford to rebuild right now.

I recently upgraded to 7 after running XP for the past 3-4 years. I wasn't going to run Vista either. 7 seems very stable and not nearly as bloated as I was afraid of. I am probably going to buy the 64 bit version of 7. (running an evaluation copy at the moment)

I say go for it. Coh runs fine and I havent encountered a single problem as of yet.

Quick answer: Yes.
Long asnwer: Yes. But it's not something you need to rush out and do right this second. It does take care of many things people complained about with Vista (UAC is nowhere near as intrusive, it's got pretty good performance, etc.) and even some of the stuff that might sound like "so what?" features (Aero Snap/Shake, for instance) I've found myself really missing when I go to an XP machine. It's the only time I've run an OS in beta and said "I'd buy this *right now.*"

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Yeah, I'm also one of those ran XP for years and then switched to windows 7, haven't found any problems and theres a lot of features I like. Also seemed to go faster because XP wasn't using all of my ram.

I'm completely "meh" on the upgrade to Windows 7. I have run into more problems than it's worth, and COH-related, several utilities don't work as well as they do on XP (the herostats overlay doesn't seem to work, and a certain file format viewing utility doesn't work at all). My next system reinstall is going to be to go back to XP, but I'm indifferent enough about 7 that I'm not rushing to reinstall XP right now.

There's nothing about Windows 7 worth rushing for. If you're happy with XP, you have no reason to migrate to 7.

My only issue with CoH on Windows 7 has been with alt+tabbing out to other windows. In XP, it brought up a little window with icons letting me know what I was selecting, but Win 7 has me jumping blind.

I'm actually really liking Win 7 though. The only other issue I seem to have is that every once in a while (but still several times a day), a mouse click gets read as a two rapid clicks (yet not a double-click, for some reason). This usually occurs when browsing on the internet, and will occassionally send me back TWO pages instead of one when I hit the back button.

I'm not a huge fan of the new graphical effects on the windows (Aero), so I set it to a classic theme and changed it around a bit. Now it looks more or less like Windows 98!

... Yes, yes, I'm strange, I know... ._.;;

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Literally the only problem i've ran into so far is the windows 7 64 bit nvidia CoH crash, which I recently fixed by just switching to an older driver (until/if the crashes get fixed.)

Oh, and of course theres alot more permission crap you may need to deal with, just run everything as administrator and it'll shut up.

"Yes"!

I went from Vista Business x86 SP2 to Windows 7 Professional x86. IMHO, Win 7 is what Vista was supposed to be.

- Stable.
- More compatible (tried a lot of legacy hardware and Win 7 never failed)
- Faster than Vista (on par with XP).

Next time I reformat my drive, I will switch to the 64-bit version (same DVD, same license)

I'll have to disagree with all of the above, and say "no".

Win7 is a significant improvement over Vista, but assuming you're reasonably competent with computer security, it doesn't offer any "must-have" benefits over XP yet. Sooner or later, somebody will start providing software you need that doesn't work with XP, but until then, I'd wait.

As a side note, you say you're dual-booting Ubuntu? Be sure you back everything up before you upgrade: the Windows installer doesn't play nicely with other operating systems.

Is that just in Full-screen or does it affect windowed mode as well? :\

I usually only play in full screen, so I did not try to reproduce in Windowed mode. I'll set it to Windowed mode now and next time it crashes, I'll post.

Leandro's Issues I have not encountered and I run Win7 64 Bit with an Nvidia GTS250 1GB OC in full screen mode.

I tab between programs very easily (course I tend to use my window key so it brings up the taskbar) and as long as I run CoH as Admin have no real problems with it.

The onyl real "must have" feature is going 64 bit IMHO. Just so you can use all the memory you have.

So you know my machine is:

Athalon X64 Dual Core 4200+
4GB Memory
BFG GTS250 OC 1GB

I also have it running on a laptop and again, none of the issues listed here.

XP will get most security updates from here on out, unless it is something that requires too much work (as seen recently for some older OS's still in extended support).

As far as running everything as Admin, I only run what needs to be as Admin. If I don't ahve to, I won't just for security sake (Imagine running everything on Ubuntu as Root, and you will understand why).

The XP Mode feature is nice if you have the right type of processor to be able to use it, but it does not support 3d graphics and is intended for productivity software for business.

As far as OSes go, Win7 is nice. 64 bit does not work with unsigned drivers so you will be stuck a bit there (gotta wait for MS Approval) but doing that does tend to make the system a bit more stable.

That is my thoughts on it overall.

Have it, love it, but if you don't need to upgrade, don't. GR won't require anything that XP can't provide; neither will most other games. I wouldn't upgrade until you want to or you get/make a new computer, really.

Worth it? Its really up to you, for me it was. As a college student i was able to get windows 7 pro for $30. At school is the only place where I find myself using windows XP and while the extra features windows 7 adds don't seem that great i find myself missing them when not available. I will say after running windows vista ultimate 64, windows 7 runs much faster. I haven't had any CoH related issue with win 7 like i did with vista. Really the only thing you have to lose (in my opinion) is the money it costs to upgrade. But if you really aren't interested in some of the new features stick with XP for a little while till the price goes down.

Memphis, I couldn't get it to work either on a E5300 (dual core) nor a Q8200 (quad core, which is very high end here). When a quad core processor still won't run it, I call it high end... though you're right, I hadn't seen that table. Intel did make a mess of things. I haven't used AMD since the Core2Duos were released.

Also, take into consideration my geographical location. We're hammered with huge import taxes and a weak currency here. Most systems don't have anything past a Celeron 530. A computer with the E5300? $1600, equivalent to two months average salary. An AMD X2 240 is only slightly cheaper, at $1550. My system is considered "high end" here, as things like the Radeon HD 5770 are luxuries; it costed me $1060. I can count the number of Core 2 Quad systems I've sold or maintained with one hand. They are "extreme high end", here.

If you are talking about the Virtual XP Mode found in the Pro and higher versions of Win 7 be aware that there are multiple hardware requirements in the CPU and Motherboard (BIOS).

For Intel processors, the majority of inexpensive Intel Core 2 based CPUs don't have the necessary hardware support. This includes the E2xxx, E4xxx, E5xxx and E7xxx dual core and the Q8x00 and most Q9x00 quad cores.

Doesn't matter anyways because the Virtual XP mode doesn't have 3D video support so no 3D gaming.