When will you upgrade to Windows 7?

[Adcadet]

Anybody else wondering when they'll upgrade to Windows 7? Are most waiting a few months (or a SP) to let MS iron out the wrinkles? Are you already running 7? Planning on upgrading immediately?

I'm starting to plan my migration. As noted elsewhere, I can still get Home Premium for about $30 so I've ordered my disks (didn't see the point in trying to get a better version given what I do). I suppose my upgrade speed will depend on when my employer supports VPN access in Win7. Then I'll have to decide if I keep WinXP around, install a version of Linux to play with, and then upgrade my wife's PC.

 

[Chewy509]

My work laptop will be upgraded once I get a copy of our corporate Win7 license. (Which should be any day now).

My home PC will continue to run Solaris.

 

[ddrueding]

Never. I'm over MS, and am pushing hard to get all our major apps ported to the web (cloud or local web server) soonest. I've already gotten assurances from our major software vendors that they are going in that direction already. I have enough XP licenses to hold me over until they are ready. Their slowest ETA is middle of next year (I've already been pushing this for a year), and I'm expecting it by the end of next year.

 

[LunarMist]

When it is necessary to support apps that won't run in XP. That may be 2011on the dekstop. I may need to get as notebook in 2010 and that would probably be W7 without any other choices.

 

[Fushigi]

Current Vista machines:

1. Wife's new laptop: Upgrade right away (Vista HP to Win7 HP) since it is new enough to qualify for the free upgrade.
2. Work laptop: Probably December or January when things typically quiet down at the office (year-end change freeze period). I also need to confirm my app suite including VPN client and midrange access app will run before it can be upgraded. Corporate license; will be Win7 Ultimate.
3. My main desktop: No rush; Vista runs fine. Will wait to see about Windows Family Pack or some other upgrade option. It's on Ultimate, though, so I'd rather not lose the $ spent for that version & move down to Home Premium. I had originally planned on using Bitlocker to keep it encrypted but never bothered to set it up and it no longer makes much sense to encrypt since most of my data is on WHS.
4. Spare machine #1: No rush. Also has Ultimate. It's powered off most of the time. I don't see any reason to spend on it.
5. Spare machine #2: Started with Vista Basic, currently running Win7 RC. Also not powered on all that much so upgrade will wait.

Current XP machines:

6. Wife's desktop: If she likes Win7 on her laptop I'll upgrade the desktop to 7HP; otherwise it'll stay XP.
7. Old work laptop: Probably not beefy enough for a satisfying Win7 experience (2GHz Pentium M/original Centrino, 1GB RAM) so it'll stay XP. Actually I'll probably just turn it back in to work & get rid of it as I plan on buying my own personal laptop in the next few months.

All desktops are quad-cores w/2-4GB RAM and decent graphics cards so they have the horsepower.

 

[jtr1962]

Whenever one or more of the following comes to pass:

1) I need apps which won't work on XP

2) I upgrade to a setup with more than 4 GB of RAM, and therefore need 64-bit support

3) Hell freezes over

 

[Pradeep]

Whenever one or more of the following comes to pass:

1) I need apps which won't work on XP

2) I upgrade to a setup with more than 4 GB of RAM, and therefore need 64-bit support

3) Hell freezes over

At least with regard to 2), XP 64 bit edition will work just fine once you hit the >4GB level.

 

[Will Rickards]

When? I've already upgraded my wife's laptop.
My home desktop will be upgraded just as soon as I get the license I bought when they had the $50 sale.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a desktop and a notebook on Win7 right now, but the notebook will probably revert to something I actually like in the near future.

I'm building an i7 with Server 2008 R2 in the near future (technically, that OS is even newer than Windows 7) but again, that's for home use, since I can't find anyone who actually wants Server 2008.

I don't see a compelling reason to upgrade on the desktop, and this after spending most of the last eight month with at least one Windows 7 system.

I have 10 system builds to do before the beginning of October and none of them want any OS but XP.

 

[Mercutio]

My work laptop will be upgraded once I get a copy of our corporate Win7 license. (Which should be any day now).

My home PC will continue to run Solaris.

My volume license numbers were available a couple weeks ago.

 

[Chewy509]

My volume license numbers were available a couple weeks ago.

The company got them a few weeks ago as well, but haven't distributed them outside of head office yet. Last time I checked, the DVD + key were in the mail, as they say.

Having just been to TechEd '09 Australia, getting the HP Netbook and having a play with Win7, I was impressed with what MS has done with Win7, especially after what happened with Vista.

 

[MaxBurn]

Still running the public beta. My official disk comes when newegg gets it out the door. Vista is likely the shortest time I have used any OS at less than a year.

 

[RWIndiana]

From what I've seen of 7, it's somewhat more tolerable than Vista. Although it's similar enough to me it's more like a Vista SP3. Though with a much better name. I am triple booting with Vista, 7 and Kubuntu. I may use 7 rarely for the occasional game (it seems to work better with older games than Vista, which is cool). When I am trying to get actual work done or be connected to the Internet for any reason I'm going to do my best to stick with my Linux. 2 of the 3 computers in our home office run Linux exclusively.

If my mom needs to upgrade her computer, I think Win7 will work. Too bad Macs are too pricey.

 

[udaman]

Never.

When Winblows ver 8 is a better clone of Mac OSX, I may get it for my next Mac laptop.

Right now, since my laptop can't run OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard (that which Winblows 7 tried to be) I'm sticking with OSX 10.5.x.

I'll get a new Intel CPU'd Mac laptop...in a few years, after decent OLED's are standardized and higher quality (Samsung's PR says they'll ship next year, but I doubt I'll be impressed). Only then will I have the latest OS, because it came with the machine I bought

Maybe by then SSD's might come down in price enough I'd pay for one.

I really want a 17in 4k OLED screen laptop, resolution independent OS, don't think we'll see those for about 5yrs though...Steve-O might be dead by then.

 

[LunarMist]

At least with regard to 2), XP 64 bit edition will work just fine once you hit the >4GB level.

That is fine for the most part, but I'm sure XP application and driver support will eventually dwindle. I am dual-booting XP32 and XP64 for now. My secondary system still has Win2k.

 

[Howell]

I'm running 64bit Vista at home and 64bit 7 at work. One thing that is nice about 7 is you get a license for "virtual XP".

 

[CougTek]

7. Old work laptop: Probably not beefy enough for a satisfying Win7 experience (2GHz Pentium M/original Centrino, 1GB RAM) so it'll stay XP.

False.

I installed the public beta and used it for two months on a Thinkpad R50p with a Pentium M 1.73GHz and 1GB of RAM. It was very tolerable. XP still is faster on that machine, but not tremendously. I re-installed XP because Win7, like Vista, doesn't allow one application I need on the laptop. Otherwise, I would have installed the RTM today.

 

[mubs]

I must be the biggest doofus on the planet. I bought Vista Home Premium 64, PS CS3 and 2 new HDDs in the last quarter of 2007, but they are all still in the box. And now Win 7 is already out! The money on Vista and PS CS has been wasted. I will probably end up needing to dual-boot XP and Win7, the latter primarily for large memory support. Which means I may need the newer version of PS. At least I helped the economy a bit (looking at the only bright side of this whole mess).

 

[Mercutio]

If my mom needs to upgrade her computer, I think Win7 will work. Too bad Macs are too pricey.

If you're reasonably careful with hardware selection, a Hackintosh can be pretty easy to set up. Working from a Dell Mini 9 or MSI Wind U100 is very straightforward, as is going from from most Gigabyte i965 boards + a geforce 7300.

 

[Fushigi]

False.

Well, it's already almost intolerably slow. Not sure what it is. I think it's just tired. Or the corporate McAfee is slowing it down. Or something. But it's just an absolute slug compared to everything else in the house even though it does have a 7200 RPM disk.

 

[Fushigi]

I bought Vista Home Premium 64, PS CS3 and 2 new HDDs in the last quarter of 2007, but they are all still in the box. .. I will probably end up needing to dual-boot XP and Win7, the latter primarily for large memory support.

I'd say try Vista before you cave in and spend on Win7. They aren't that different and Vista has the large memory support you're after.

 

[Tannin]

The big news is that I might upgrade to Win 7. I'm not saying I will, and I certainly don't have any time frame in mind, but it is in fact possible that I'll run Windows 7 on one or more of my machines one day. And I could never have said that about Vista.

But don't hold your breath. If I do (and it is an if, not a when) it will be a good long way off you'd think. At present I can see no benefit whatever in Win 7 over my current systems. But I can imagine that there might be a reason to switch one day. If htere ever is one, I'll consider the proposition on its merits.

 

[Mercutio]

Well, it's already almost intolerably slow. Not sure what it is. I think it's just tired. Or the corporate McAfee is slowing it down. Or something. But it's just an absolute slug compared to everything else in the house even though it does have a 7200 RPM disk.

When I tried Win7 on a Celeron D 430 notebook with 2GB RAM and a 5400rpm hard disk, I found performance to be more than adequate. Certainly better than the copy of Vista it shipped with. Things weren't quite faster but Windows overall seemed a bit more responsive or at least less aggravating.

So, yeah, if I had to guess I'd say that corporate AV software probably is killing it. That is the most usual culprit.

You could try disabling it without uninstalling, and if necessary you could load ClamWin for simple, low-impact protection.

 

[Mercutio]

At present I can see no benefit whatever in Win 7 over my current systems. But I can imagine that there might be a reason to switch one day. If htere ever is one, I'll consider the proposition on its merits.

Mainstream support for more than 4GB RAM is nice, but short of machines that manage VMs or large databases I don't see a reason for it.
The Libraries feature is nice if you have crap spread all over network drives like I do at home, but mine is already organized appropriately without that.
Jump lists on the taskbar are sorta handy if you're lazy or really big on automation.

For someone who does all his work on a single notebook and probably lives in basically a web browser and a couple of graphics apps and content editing, probably not anything that interesting.

 

[ddrueding]

I've heard at least two people say something along the line of "7 is slower than XP, but faster than Vista, so I'll be switching" WTF? XP is faster on any hardware than 7. Why consider switching at all?

 

[MaxBurn]

Why consider switching at all?

For me it pretty much comes down to media center. Also now that I am used to things I like some of the UI stuff too.

 

[Handruin]

I'm running Win 7 64-bit on my new desktop and I just upgraded my laptop to the same. I've only run vista for a few months but can already tell a difference after upgrading. The reason I don't stick with XP is I have a need for more than 4GB of RAM and I don't want to use XP 64-bit and I didn't want to pay for server 2003 or deal with some of the complexities that software brings when running a server OS.

Also, Windows 7 adds a few features for my new Lynnfield CPU such as Core parking. It'll also have that TRIM feature for whenever I get around to getting an SSD.

 

[CougTek]

XP is faster on any hardware than 7.

I'm pretty sure that's false. On a high-end system like your main computer, I quite certain that Win 7 would manage memory and task-switching a lot better than XP 64. It would feel snappier. I know it did on my modest main computer (C2Q Q9450, 4GB RAM - now significantly set-back compared to yours).

 

[LunarMist]

The big news is that I might upgrade to Win 7. I'm not saying I will, and I certainly don't have any time frame in mind, but it is in fact possible that I'll run Windows 7 on one or more of my machines one day. And I could never have said that about Vista.

But don't hold your breath. If I do (and it is an if, not a when) it will be a good long way off you'd think. At present I can see no benefit whatever in Win 7 over my current systems. But I can imagine that there might be a reason to switch one day. If htere ever is one, I'll consider the proposition on its merits.

You'll need it eventually for PS and DPP, unless you freeze in time.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm pretty sure that's false. On a high-end system like your main computer, I quite certain that Win 7 would manage memory and task-switching a lot better than XP 64. It would feel snappier. I know it did on my modest main computer (C2Q Q9450, 4GB RAM - now significantly set-back compared to yours).

In the end, there's still the single huge issue of UI responsiveness, and in that department, Win7 is taking a back seat. Furthermore, no matter how many synthetic benchmarks are done that show newer Windows kernels have x000% faster performance for some obscure event (something that happens in picoseconds), all the real world stuff comes back as "Well, it's almost as fast as XP!"

My biggest frustration on my current Win7 notebook, which has a top of the line 2.8GHz E9600, 4GB RAM and a 64GB SSD in it, is that at times it can't even keep up with my typing. I'm not talking about the "crappy SSD can't keep up with I/O"-pause, I'm talking about the "Winword.exe is the only thing open and Merc can type faster than Windows can put letters on the screen when Win7 is doing whatever the fuck it's doing that's not putting letters on the screen"-pause.

And that's shit.

 

[Adcadet]

Merc - I agree! My middle school friend, circa 1993, bragged that his PC could keep up with his mother's typing. If only computers these days were as good as they were in 1993.

 

[Handruin]

My biggest frustration on my current Win7 notebook, which has a top of the line 2.8GHz E9600, 4GB RAM and a 64GB SSD in it, is that at times it can't even keep up with my typing. I'm not talking about the "crappy SSD can't keep up with I/O"-pause, I'm talking about the "Winword.exe is the only thing open and Merc can type faster than Windows can put letters on the screen when Win7 is doing whatever the fuck it's doing that's not putting letters on the screen"-pause.

And that's shit.

Maybe a hardware or driver problem? My notebook with a T9600 with Win 7 and word 2007 has no problem with writing text. Even if I mash the keys as fast as I can, it types faster than I can. It doesn't have any pauses even if I type for a few minutes straight.

 

[Fushigi]

My original Zenith Z151 PC clone (8088, 704K RAM in multiple banks of 8K socketed chips) would go from power switch to A: prompt in about 4 seconds. This was late 1984. That's a BIOS load & load of MS-DOS 2.11 from floppy. I'm still waiting for something that will do better. It seems the faster computers get the more we wait on them.

And I wouldn't argue that today's PCs are all that more productive either. With TSRs like Sidekick & Superkey you could have more than one app loaded and switch at a mere keystroke. Things are prettier now but I'm not really convinced that they're actually better.

 

[Mercutio]

Maybe a hardware or driver problem? My notebook with a T9600 with Win 7 and word 2007 has no problem with writing text. Even if I mash the keys as fast as I can, it types faster than I can. It doesn't have any pauses even if I type for a few minutes straight.

It doesn't happen in XP or Server 2003. Different driver base but it drives me insane.

 

[Handruin]

Are you an insanely fast typer? I tried to type as fast as I could (even garbage stuff) and I could get any pausing to happen no matter how fast I entered text into word. What graphics card are you using? Does the CPU spike in task manager when the pause occurs?

 

[Mercutio]

Are you an insanely fast typer? I tried to type as fast as I could (even garbage stuff) and I could get any pausing to happen no matter how fast I entered text into word. What graphics card are you using? Does the CPU spike in task manager when the pause occurs?

80 - 85wpm maybe?
I've observed the same behavior on Vista and on different hardware than my T61, and it's the whole system that pauses, not just my word processing app (Word or OO.Write or Kompozer). I believe ddrueding has complained about the issue as well.

And yes, I've run the system with both its SSD and with a 320GB 7200rpm spindle.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm pretty sure that's false. On a high-end system like your main computer, I quite certain that Win 7 would manage memory and task-switching a lot better than XP 64. It would feel snappier. I know it did on my modest main computer (C2Q Q9450, 4GB RAM - now significantly set-back compared to yours).

Not a chance. This exact same hardware went from XP64 to Ubuntu to 7 and back to XP64 within a month. 7 beat a completely untuned Ubuntu install, but for everything from startup to app launching to shutdown to game performance, XP64 was faster in everything. By a long ways.

 

[Tannin]

Lunar and Merc have my uses down pat: yup, browsers, two or three graphics apps, a slew of small, fast utilities such as a programmer's text editor, and a few ancient 16-bit DOS or Win 3.1 apps that are still better suited to my purpose than anything written in the last decade or two. That's about it. Sooner or later, I imagine that I'll upgrade beyond Photoshop CS3, but Adobe's prices are so high that I've completely skipped CS4 and will think about CS5 when the time comes, maybe go for it, maybe not. And (correct weight, Lunar) it's likely Photoshop that will force my next Windows upgrade. Or else replacing my 3-month-old Thinkpad with a new one in 3-4 years time, and discovering (a) that XP is not supported, or (b) that Windows 7/8/whateverversionisoutthen is doing OK on it.

But +4GB RAM is not an issue: that would mean giving up all my 16-bit apps, and if I'm going to go that far, why stick with Windows at all? If htings get that radical (and soner or later they will) it might make more sense just to go to something completely different, presumably some form of 'nix. But all of this is years away. XP on the laptop, the netbook, and my home desktop; W2K on two of the office machines, OS/2 on the office server ..... everything works, so why change stuff?

 

[Tannin]

Also ... what Fugushi said.

 

[Tea]

Things are prettier now but I'm not really convinced that they're actually better.

Tannin certainly isn't.