Windows 7, Should We Bother?

[pdilley]

Well I gave it a good workout with the only game I have that kept me on Windows (XP thought). Dungeons and Dragons Online.

It ran in full screen, but then something windows popped open (dialogue) and the fullscreen was merged onto the normal desktop and I could not click or close the D&D Online. All the mouse input mappings were screwed up so I could not click on buttons on the screen and by the time I got the hang of the off centre pattern to get to the buttons at the bottom of the D&D screen the mouse would have to move off the bottom of the windows desktop passed the taskbar... grrr!


I then gave up and ran D&DOU in a window mode. Windows had to disable Aero on launch as doing games and Aero at same time must be a big incompatibility to do for windows 7. This worked for about 4 hours.

Then my window for D&DOU went black and I could not see anything. I left it for a few more minutes and made a cup of tea and the window had quit and it looked like the window had quit.

I relaunched D&DOU and logged in. It went to launch the window and... and.... nothing! not running. grr

I relaunched 5 times joining 5 different world servers, each failed on launching the window.

I set Aero off and manually onto Basic mode. Launched 5 different world servers, each failed on launching the window.

I reboot the computer twice and tried launching, failure again.

I used task manager to kill off processes and restart, still failure.


I am dead in the water. I am not a happy camper! If nothing works then I'm going back to reinstalling Windows XP.


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Welcome to Linux.....Unfortunatly we dont have those problems...

At least when you update Linux, compatabilty stays.. B)

 

[peas_and_corn]

You can run programs under as if they are under an earlier version of windows- right click the executable and go to properties. Just change the compatability mode to XP rather than default Vista.

 

[pdilley]

Have changed compatibility to XP mode. Did not work.

Have changed to run as Administrator. Did not work.

Have created a completely new account with default settings. Did not work.


Am no longer wasting time with this as more than half a day screwing with the Operating System trying to make what was once working work again is not my idea of what I want to spend my life doing.


Cheers for the help though. Its just the same old crap all over again, just different window dressing.

Brewer Pete

 

[RdeVjun]

Welcome to Linux.....Unfortunatly we dont have those problems...

At least when you update Linux, compatabilty stays.. B)

+ 1 Stu, and what's got me stuffed is that folks pay a hundred- odd dollars per licence for the privilege of all this?? :blink: And that's just the OS, not to mention all the other extortionate 'productivity suites', so- called 'security' etc.

Never bought an OS in my life, probably never will either. Seriously, take the 7 disk back (say the EULA is oppressive and you don't agree to the terms, see if they'll refund), go grab a Linux live CD (there are dozens to choose from, Ubuntu would be a good place to start) and give it a try, you don't have to install it to try it out (that's the 'live' part), and they work, even wireless networking on laptops etc.

 

[Maple]

Broken Promises ad.

 

[mwd]

:icon_offtopic: Reference: The best article I have seen offering a totally unbiased appraisal of Linux ( Ubuntu 8.04 ) with all the pros and cons identified.

Quite good if you are undecided either way.Anandtech Linux

hint its a huge article the best way is to 'print article' then just 'save page as' to read at your leisure.

 

[DJR]

If you have XP, don't bother is my call. Unless you want to get a new PC or update to 64 bit for whatever reason (I need 8GB of ram for running VM's and coding stuff and 32bit only supports about 3.5GB on my system)

Especially since you have to transfer everything off and re-install which might just be a bit much for a lot of users.

I use Ubuntu and 7, Ubuntu for server stuff and 7 as the workstation/laptop. I'm an MS partner so i got it as part of my subscription, wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

Performance wise it is a fair amount faster than Vista and has some nice productivity features (i like that i can use windows + left or right arrow to "maximise" a program to use only half of the screen, handy on the laptop in single screen mode when i am used to having dual desktop going) but on the whole nothing really compelling people to go upgrade.

OEM editions are about $120 or so for the Home version and a bit more for Pro which isn't bad, retail pricing isn't that good.

 

[Bizier]

I am running it. With problems. Beats Vista... but still has problems.

I had Win7 with 100% CPU resources being used (not attributable to a process) every boot and decided to clean install... backed up everything I could think of via a boot disk... except Beersmith save files are conveniently stored in: C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\BeerSmith
I found that out after I had zero-ed my free space to create a disk image. You live you learn, even if you wish you hadn't.

Man I am over computers. I also just had a 400GB HD spectacularly fail... there goes the un-backed-up neighbourhood.

 

[kram]

If you have XP, don't bother is my call. Unless you want to get a new PC or update to 64 bit for whatever reason (I need 8GB of ram for running VM's and coding stuff and 32bit only supports about 3.5GB on my system)

64 bit is the main reason I've been using it for a few months, dual boot XP & 7 on the PC, laptop has those and Ubuntu.

If you don't need more than 3.25/3.5 GB of ram or 64 bit then I wouldn't see the need to upgrade for the sake of upgrading. Sure it's 'prettier' than XP, but too much software is heading in this direction instead of focusing on the important stuff and it's shitting me to tears.