Review: Windows 7 strong, but don't pay to upgrade

I know my cpu is, but the internet card I have for my laptop WASNT compatible with windows 7 until today. Which is funny because it worked 3 days ago, worked 2 days ago, then yesterday it didn't work. Luckily I found a site that had the drivers needed to fix the issue since compatibility mode wasn't fixing the problem either. Anyways long story short, I guess Altell/Verizon got enough complaints they got the new drivers up this morning.

 

The more I mess with 7 the more I like it. It also works fine with everything I use (granted that's a limited amount) DB I can give you a headsup that Copilot 11 works flawlessly.

 

I installed Win7 Pro 64-bit (upgrade) two weeks ago. I didn't want to lose my XP yet, so I installed the Win 7 onto a blank hard drive that I loaded a fresh, bare copy of Win XP onto (in order to satisfy the "upgrade version" of Win 7.) Windows 7 then wiped everything on my fresh XP drive and put all of the user files and settings from that OS into a folder called "windows old" on the new drive. Everything went flawlessly with the install and Win 7 recognized all of my hardware and put in working drivers.

Next I went to the web sites for my video and motherboard companies because I wanted to see if they had newer drivers for those devices than what Win 7 put on and they did. I installed all device drivers that I could find for all of my hardware even though Win 7 had put on their versions which appeared to be working fine.

Now I've been playing with Win 7 for two weeks and really, REALLY, like it so far. It boots very quickly and looks fantastic (very Mac-like now in its features and appearance.)

Side note: CoPilot Truck 11 and every other older program that I have tried so far works fine in "XP MODE" on Windows 7 so far - EVEN though I installed the 64-bit version (too cool.)

But caution - you only get this "XP Mode" with the PRO an ULTIMATE versions of Windows 7.

Another note: I have since found a legal registry hack to install Windows 7 "upgrade" versions onto a blank hard drive too. Microsoft says that for this hack to be supported you must own a full or OEM previous version of Windows XP or Vista.

 

This is what I did. I completely wiped my hard drive with one pass zeros. So when I installed Win7 it would not activate because there was no previous version to detect. So I called Microsoft and they actually walked me through the registry hack. There's also instructions on Paul Thurrot's WinSupersite for Windows website.

 

I don't know about registry hacks, but I have it on ummmmm good authority that there are fully operational cracked versions of 7 already out on some sites.

 

Update.

First hitch. (of course it's a driver issue.) No drivers yet for Netgear USB wireless interface device on one of our systems. Lots of people complaining about it. Win 7 recognizes it and installs some drivers but the internet speed dropped to a crawl ever since. Confident that NetGear will get proper drivers up before too long but I'm bummed that a company that size had not been prepared for this.

Other than that - still loving Win 7 Pro.

 

Note - Always do a clean install, upgrading can allow the old to bork the new.

I would also recommend "ghosting" your old system so you can go back if you get backed into a corner.

 

Have a Toshiba Satellite X205-S7483 and did the upgrade over vista. Everything seems to working so far.. HP printer and Air card... AC595U from Verizon and my WD external drives. (3)

Only thing that bugs me is when you drag a window too close to the top it goes full screen....

Everything else seems okay... love the pin-ups at the bottom...

Boots up faster..

only thing I need to do since it upgraded on 32 bit is find some time and copy the drive over and then install the 64 bit version..

I got the family home edition... you get a 32 bit and 64 bit disks..plus 3 licenses... about $150.

 

I' was running Windows 7 on my laptop since closed beta. It was a huge improvement over Vista, let me tell ya. Much smoother, less resource intensive, and had some very nice features. Surprisingly, I had very little driver issues even from beta.

I'd say if you are using Vista and are unhappy, it may be worth the update. If you are happy with Vista, and some people are, don't bother.

Me, I rolled the laptop back to XP Pro. It came standard with Vista, but I know XP inside and out, since I dealt with it in corporate for years.

The specs on my machine are Core 2 Duo @2ghz, 2gb RAM.