New Windows 7 Professional I bought

Well I finally went out and bought Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit , to see what it is all about. I am happy with it so far and many of my 32 bit programs work just fine with it, thankfully. I had an Athalon 32/64 bit processor for 2 years now and wanted to see the difference with the 64 bit system.

 

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I wonder how many % of the users actually buy an OS. After 15 or so years of computing, I never bought one.

Sometimes it is cheaper/simpler just put an extra 1-200 bucks into the deal and buy a new computer...

 

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Installed Win 7, replacing Vista. It's pretty much exactly the same, with some features turned off and some badly implemented features gone altogether.

It's Vista SP3.

 

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Good luck with it. I bought Windows 7 two days ago, installed it and then removed it after less than 12 hours. I had more total system lock-ups in the time it was on my hard drive than I'd got from XP in the last year.

PS anybody wanna buy a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium?

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That was what I was thinking as well..

 

About 2 years ago I updated and upgraded my PC with a Athelon 32/64 bit processor and new Asus mobo after having the old stuff for over 5 years. It was getting tired and slow. That , along with the Win XP Pro did a nice job but I wanted to see how much difference the 64 bit processor worked along with a new Win 7 64 OS. I had to upgrade both in order to gain the benefits, if any, or just stay with the 32 bit Win XP OS and never get to utilize the 64 bit processor. So I just went out and got Win 7 Pro and so far I can use all of my 32 bit programs still without any major problems. There were a few hiccups along the way but I resolved them with help from the Microsoft Techs. All in all I'd say it is a system equal to Win XP, not allot of improvements, just minor tweaks here and there.

 

Microsoft had a Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor program which will test a computer to see if it's up to spec with Windows 7. I gather it's suppose to eleviate some problems.

Windows 7 however is a little bit awkward if you want to connect to a LAN Domain server, as for some reason it requires Windows 7 Professional for the XP emulation and on top of that it requires Active Directory Server (Windows server 2003/2008 etc). I haven't currently worked out how to get it to work with a *BSD os'd BIND server, so it's a bit of pain. Obviously it's the old "tighten Security, lessen Functionality" problem.

Most home users however will likely not have to worry about any of this.

Obviously being a new kid, it doesn't like to play well with the other kids on the block.

 

I just used that now: apparently it passed with flying colours. Which doesn't explain the persistent (every 15 minutes or so, seriously) lock-ups.
Everything else passed, but I did find out that there's currently no support for - and no way of using - the Palm Tunsgten PDA USB drive. At the moment I'd rather have my PDA than some "slightly spiffier" interface.

 

I tried the Win7 RC last summer, and was very pleased with it. I bought two copies in the pre-order deal that was offered, and installed Win7 Pro soon after receiving it. It has been working flawlessly ever since. The main advantage I've found is the 64 bit OS can use all of my four gigs of system memory. And I can add even more memory if I like. But it's also pretty, and has many small improvements over XP.

I'd never actually paid for an MS operating system before, but I told myself a long time ago that I would actually buy whatever version of Windows I replaced XP with. And so far, Win7 has been worth the money.

Sadly, the generic scanner I had wasn't supported, and I had to buy a new one.

Windows XP is still a perfectly good operating system, but there will be ever increasing reasons to move on to Win7. XP 32 has the memory limitation, and XP 64 was never popular enough to have mainstream driver support.

 

Can someone summarize quickly the advantage of the 64 over 32? Why do a normal user ever need 64?

Holy crap, I just looked up the 7 Pro is $270. You can buy a new desktop at Walmart for $300 with 7 Home. It is not Pro, but basicly for the same price you get the OS AND the new computer, which in most cases is better than the old but upgraded computer.

By the way the most expensive OS at Amazon isn't the 7 Ultimate for $290, but the XP Pro for $500, and they even charge for shipping!

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In the future, the battle between 64 bit vs 32 bit processors will inevitably yield the 64 bit processor as the victor, but this transition is going to take some time.

First, I’ll talk about the pure mathematics and structure of the processors that are involved here. I’ll keep this part short and sweet.


A bit is short for “binary digit.” It is basically how a computer stores and makes references to data, memory, etc. A bit can have a value of 1 or 0, that’s it. So binary code is streams of 1’s and 0’s, such as this random sequence 100100100111. These bits are also how your processor does calculations. By using 32 bits your processor can represent numbers from 0 to 4,294,967,295 while a 64-bit machine can represent numbers from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. Obviously this means your computer can do math with larger numbers, and be more efficient with smaller numbers.

Now see, that description wasn’t too bad, but the question is how does this affect you, the average PC owner? The largest benefit will go to academic institutions and private companies, where large calculations are being performed, huge databases are being accessed, and complex problems are being solved.

Everyone that doesn’t fall into that category will see some benefit of using 64 bit processors over 32 bit processors, but not much in today’s marketplace. The AMD Athlon 64-bit processor is completely backward compatible, meaning you can currently use it with 32-bit operating systems and software programs. You will see some benefits by using this setup, but because the programs weren’t written to take advantage of the extra power, they won’t use much of it.

The true benefits of this set up don’t come from the amount of bits, but by the improved structure of the 64 bit vs 32 bit processor's older structure. A 64-bit processor is made with more advanced silicon processes, have more transistors, and faster speeds. This is currently where the true benefit of switching to a 64-bit processor lays.

The problem is when you run 32-bit software programs in the environment of a 64-bit operating system. Many programs won’t work properly, such as Adobe Acrobat and Windows Media Player, for example. Another issue is RAM. You really need about 4 GB of RAM to take full advantage of the capabilities offered by a 64-bit processor, while most PC owners have less than 1 GB under their computer’s hood.

So, the question now is should you buy a 64 bit processor now, or wait?

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...zNipCw&usg=AFQjCNGynkymIA0p-gjYO1mZFl3tHWU3Fw

 

cosmic,

Thanks for the interesting explication.

I'm in the process of info-gathering the system I'm going to build to replace my current, 5 yr old XP Pro frankenstein.

I have to say that, so far, what confuses me most is the nomenclature used in specification for chipsets now. Once upon a time, even if you were comparing Intel vs. AMD, it was clear: the bigger the number, the better. Now? I'm confused as all hell.

 

I assumed Microsoft make most money selling to companies, who HAVE to be legit.

 

OK, so in plain English, there is no point for an average user to use 64 bit and actually it can be bad because I assume most game is for 32 so there is a good chance the game wouldn't even play correctly on a 64 bit machine.

Did I get it right?

P.S.: Thanks for the detailed explanation Cosmic, but sometimes less is more.

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@Syzygys

 

Mostly we are talking about memory management. 64bit breaks the 3.2GIG ram barrier.

 

What is compelling you to upgrade? What are your present system specs? Do you just want a faster machine? Are you satisfied with XP?

Many people who buy new computers would be just as happy if they replaced the hard drive in their present one. Hard drives are analogous to tires on a car - they eventually wear out. Time slows them down, while continuous development increases the speed of new ones. A new hard drive, with a fresh installation of XP, might give you all of the upgrade you want. It only requires a basic technical ability, though that is enough to put it beyond many, many people I've found.

Moving to Win7 might be worthwhile as well. Dywyddyr's experience is atypical from what I gather, and my own experience upgrading a couple of machines to Win7 has been good.

 

You also said:

"The problem is when you run 32-bit software programs in the environment of a 64-bit operating system. Many programs won’t work properly, such as Adobe Acrobat and Windows Media Player, "

So a clear conclusion is that PC games made for 32 bit probably would have problems running on 64.....

 

I dunno you guys but Windows 7 Home edition I am using is sweet thing. The key here is to use their windows 7 updates program.

here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/windows-update

because it fixes all the bugs and sorts.

 

Anyways for those of you who want to run a 32bit program on a 64bit system, use DOSBOX.

Also there is a way to get around: use an emulator system that allows another system to be installed on your windows 7, install linux, use wine (it simulates an older windows 95 on Linux).