(18 votes, average: 4.44 out of 5)
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Did you skip Windows Vista waiting for Windows 7 with bated breath?
Let’s call out the “white elephant” in the room: Gamers have resisted Windows Vista in favour of Windows XP. I have to admit, I was one of those gamers, just didn’t see the benefit vs. cost to upgrade my OS, especially given my usage model which was mainly gaming at the time.
Fast forward a year or two and it’s a totally different story, I still game, but I also am doing a lot more video consumption and creation (albeit creating n00b videos of my kids). It also helps that I have had early access to Windows 7 prior to the RC being publically available. This has completely changed my view and opinion on when (not if) a user should embrace and get excited about the upcoming release of Microsoft’s newest OS, Windows 7.
So, I expect the flames in the comments, and I am happy to have the debate. Maybe I am a lone voice in the world, perhaps I am drinking the kool-aid. I had a discussion the other day with a friend of mine, a hardcore gamer and content consuming machine, a true AMD enthusiast. This guy lives, eats and breathes AMD, and during this discussion he basically called me out as being a n00b for running Windows 7 on my main home PC and work laptop, he actually laughed. This made me start to question the experience I thought I was having, which by the way has been awesome, flawless and very favourable in terms of recommending to others to adopt. I questioned myself until I came across a Facebook post from another friend who is a true enthusiast – former AMD’er, now with the world’s largest PC OEM – a working dad, video editing guy and casual gamer, he summed up his experience with Windows 7 nicely, I thought I would share it with you:
So the debate will rage on, sides will be taken, lines will be drawn, artillery will be engaged and the battle will ensue. It’s funny how something as simple as an OS evokes such emotion in the PC enthusiast. MAC users will gush over the superiority of the “chosen ones” MAC OS X Snow Leopard, PC users will throw daggers at Redmond in hopes they will listen, the penguin community will continue to garner more and more OEM wins and mainstream adoption, but at the end of the day we have one major OS option and this time around, it’s a really good option!
Would like to hear from the community, how has your Windows 7 experience been so far? Please post in comments.
Cheers!
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
#1 by Mark Davis - July 15th, 2009 at 15:04
I’m an early adopter, i jumped on XPx64 when it first came out, then Vista, and now Win7. I personally never had a MAJOR problem with any OS, mainly because i can find workarounds or fixes. Win7 has been as good to me as Vista so I’ve already pre-ordered win 7 from Best Buy and am now waiting to install it and pair it with a new DX11 ATI GPU ;D.
#2 by MariusX2 - July 15th, 2009 at 16:14
@Mark Davis, Exactly same here, XP x64 -> Vista x64 and now Windows 7 x64.
By the way, i’m waiting for Windows 7 family pack, so i can upgrade all of my PCs – 150$ for 3 Home Premium licences!
#3 by Nick Jones - July 15th, 2009 at 18:57
I also moved from Vista x64 to Win7 x64 RC on my work notebook. The experience is refreshing from the return of the bubble for ejecting hardware (read: person who thought that was a good idea should have been fired), better wireless support, speedier hibernation on a large amount of memory, and just an overall more polished feel. One “experience” issue was the brightness controls acting a bit funny, but I would chalk that up to incomplete software support at the time.
I would still be using it today over Vista x64 if the physical drive had not died.
#4 by Mark Love - July 16th, 2009 at 00:20
I’m running win7 64bit on my desktop, and 32bit on my laptop. No problems at all, and the desktop feels qiucker under win7 than it did under XPPro. And a good thing too, as a couple of days later my XP install declared itself illegal, which is more the kind of thing I’ve come to expect from Microsoft.
#5 by Randy Fisher - July 24th, 2009 at 03:13
I have been using windows 7 and have no problems so far. It runs so well on my pc.
#6 by Leon Helmink - July 24th, 2009 at 14:29
I am now using Win7-64 RC as my main OS and have pre-ordered the full version. I’m impressed by the way it performs, especially since it’s a work in progress. I didn’t dislike Vista, been happily using it for about two years, but it (and XP) was the 32bit version and I felt it was time to move on and make the most use of my system.
The only Vista hardware “problem” I ever had was with my “old” HP 3400 scanner but managed to work around that by forcing the install of XP drivers (Works for Win7 aswell). Not really Microsofts/Vista’s fault but more HP’s laziness to provide propper Vista drivers.
Overall, I’m impressed with 7 and looking forward to the full version ‘come October.
#7 by Louis - July 25th, 2009 at 12:05
I have been running Windows 7 (64-bit) since the selective early beta and I must say it’s been working a charm. Although I haven’t tested everything I have on the OS, I’ve been gaming thoroughly without any problems. I haven’t had any bugs or issues and I’m not getting frame dips that I may have done on Vista with a couple of games.
I, myself have never really had such a big problem with Vista, which has always made me chuckle to myself considering the amount of complaints I hear and read on the OS. But I do notice while monitoring my computer, it tends to be a memory hog when it doesn’t need to be even when there are very few applications running when I compare it to XP or W7.
I’ll throw a few more applications at W7 at some point to give a full conclusion, since I do a lot of 3D modeling and graphic work which I haven’t tested out on W7 due to them no necessarily being supported (even though I’m sure they’ll work just fine since it works under Vista).
I’m curious to see how DX11 turns out since DX10 was meant to be one of the selling points to Vista and to encourage gamers to upgrade, but it had nothing to show for it.
#8 by Diego - July 26th, 2009 at 22:20
I have been using Windows 7 too.
I have only ONE BIG problem here. I Don’t have support to my X1950 from ATI…¬¬
#9 by David Oshea (MCP) - August 9th, 2009 at 14:23
@Diego,
I have the ATI X1250 that is older and it supports that, please checkout any updates in Windows Update, I’m sure it will be supported
#10 by Top secret ^^ - July 29th, 2009 at 12:30
I am using windows 7 now, and I love this OS!
On my PC, it’s faster than Vista and XP, I didn’t have any problem with it. There are a lot of beautifull and useless functions, but I love it
I don’t really like XP, I just like Vista and I love Windows 7!
#11 by Mark Love - July 30th, 2009 at 08:57
I’m using Windows 7 64bit, and I reckon its pretty good. In fact, if they make another 10 years of vista to 7 type improvements, they might almost be as good as Amiga’s workbench. Anyone else remember the days of OS’s that didn’t need weekly patches?
I’m also keen to get back to the days when a 2GHz AMD is faster than a 3GHz Intel. Those were good days!
#12 by WaltC - September 11th, 2009 at 13:20
@Mark Love,
I loved the Amiga, too, but come on…;) Amiga was pre-Internet so there were no “security update” concerns at all for the Amiga OS to concern itself with. But the Amiga had other problems and lots of really great virus scanners to deal with them (remember VirusX?) In terms of raw hardware support, the Amiga OS can’t compare with Vista/Win7–and rightly so, considering how long ago it was that Commodore stopped supporting the Amiga OS–the hardware supported under Win7 hadn’t been invented yet. In those days you didn’t get “weekly patches” because there was no Internet to distribute them, and because OS R&D at C= was glacier-slow by today’s standards. Amiga OS had tons of unresolved bugs when C= folded. Still, I have nothing but splendid memories of those days.
Would I want to go back to those days, however? Not on your life…;)
#13 by mark - August 1st, 2009 at 15:21
i already have vista, vista will get DX11 and thus there is no reason for yet another upgrade.
as vista runs everything windows7 does, probably quicker also (real world).
#14 by Mr.E - August 6th, 2009 at 23:47
I can say windows 7 is light years apart from Vista in my experience, I for one am glad to leave behind driver signature enforcement. I put 64 bit Vista on a dual xeon machine, total nightmare. Win 7 is a dream.
#15 by David Oshea (MCP) - August 9th, 2009 at 14:21
I think Win7 is the best OS from MS the only problem I have is my AMD Turion64-bit processor wont support VM so I can run old WinXP programs, I hope they fix this some how. DEATH TO VISTA, I agree with Bill Gates that Vista was released too early and he admitied that Vista was a failure.
Good luck with Win7 “Cheers, to a happy future together, Well Done Microsoft”
#16 by David English - August 10th, 2009 at 18:44
My All-in-Wonder HD is running great on Win7 – at least the graphics card is – but I am alarmed by the notice on the AMD download site that there is no support for the TV tuner under Win7. Will this be yet another product line abandoned?
#17 by shrimp - August 28th, 2009 at 19:38
I have tested it on my laptop with some problems, all though most features run great. A big step from windows vista.
my blog
#18 by Ian McNaughton - September 3rd, 2009 at 15:53
I checked out your blog – got to get some content up there…
#19 by Martni Walker - September 1st, 2009 at 16:01
Been running Windows 7 on my spare PC and laptop for a while now. Using release RC 7100. Th\s thing runs great, not one crash or major problem in 2 months. I did move to Vista and had no problems but 7 is a big improvement. I set up Win 7 on my HP netbook and the performance greatly improved from XP. From what I’ve seen so far I will recommend and upgrade all my machines.
#20 by Ian McNaughton - September 3rd, 2009 at 15:47
I have XP on one last PC at home, otherwise I am almost 100% Win7…
#21 by Papisco - September 5th, 2009 at 08:21
wow.win7 64 bit is absolutely and obviously the very best among every other OS.my ati radeon graphic card which was 5.9 on vista is now 7.5.gaming is realistic now with FPS fixly on 60 frame.Omg we all have to cheer up and say congratulations to our winner:MICROSOFT.kisses to all fan of ATI RADEON wich is the best graphic card i won’t exchange with any other one.
#22 by headbuzzard62 - October 21st, 2009 at 09:34
Previous comment meant to add that been using window 7 since begining of the year..Love alot of things with the OS, but for some reason at times my laptop will just shut itself down, or crash. I’v reported this to microsoft a few times with no reply, my question is has this happened with anyone else..Thanks.
Ron M
#23 by JBond005 - October 26th, 2009 at 13:07
I’m impatient to install W7 on my new laptop. I didn’tt skip Vista simply because it was pre-installed on my older laptop, which was the best for that price at that time, even taking into account the cost of Vista. And then I simply learned to tolerate it . Vista kills the productivity even with the most powerful laptops and occasional update errors are somewhat irritating. I still have Vista only because i don’t often perform tasks demanding too much resource + improved security compared to XP.
#24 by Juan Acai - November 11th, 2009 at 23:11
Hi,
I just installed Windows 7 on my HP laptop and, knock on wood, all is going well. I am upgrading from Vista – so anything would be an improvement over that! Just been a day with Win7, but it does seem faster and no crashes or viruses…yet.