Windows 7 upgraded - very neat and clean upgrade

Got my Win7 upgrade on 10/22, just like Amazon promised.  I decided to upgrade first, back up my Media Player files, then possibly do a clean install.  However, the upgrade was amazingly clean.  I even ran HP update and found everything current.  Might as well not bother with the clean install.  One thing that's not clear is that Win 7 has to be registered.  When I was rummaging about in My Computer Properties, I noticed a blue warning note.  It was very quick to click on the line to register.  I thought by installing while online and typing in the keycode, it had registered. 

Interesting, MS had 162mb updates to this brand new installation.

The Quick Launch bar is replaced by a Taskbar.  Supposedly the Taskbar has more functionality, but it's not as organized, with the launch buttons and open program bars mixed together.  It's much more complicated than the old QL bar to make file and folder shortcuts. The shortcut properties have to be edited before they are dropped onto the bar.  There is a way to replace the new Taskbar with the old Quick Launch bar, which I may do someday.  I figure I should give the new system a chance.

--pat

 

Congrats and good news. Just curious, what are the specs for the computer?

I read an article where an IT guy in a medium-size business said they are calling Windows 7, "Vista Lite" - it is basically Vista without the bloat and with a cleaned up interface that is not so demanding on hardware.

I've been toying with moving from XP to W7, but then my Adobe CS2 suite won't run on it (or Vista.)  At this point, there is absolutely no practical reason for me to move away from XP - it cannot be justified, but there is the geek factor  

I downloaded from Microsoft a program called Windows7UpgradeAdvisor.exe.  it analyzed my computer and explained what compatibility issues I might have.  Everything seems fine.  I threw away the packaging with the specs on it.  Just kept the strip with the key code and the two disks.  Could have dumped the 32-bit disk, too.

It seems easier to upgrade from Vista than from XP based on the upgrade instructions.  I think XPers have to do a clean install.  I notice the performance has improved with Win7.  Must be the Vista Lite interface.  Other IT people are saying don't spend the money.  For me, upgrading is entertainment. 

I have a touch screen.  I notice the mouse arrow disappeared now and then, and the only way to select whatever I was trying to click was by touching the screen.  I found in the Control Panel mouse settings a check box that says "allow themes to change mouse pointers."  I deselected that.  Hope it fixes the problem.  My screen's too large to position close enough to use the touch feature. 

--pat

I've basically finished upgrading my laptop from Vista to W7. I had run the Upgrade Advisor and was not notified of any issues for the upgrade. After running the upgrade, something hadn't clicked and the system was in a boot/Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)/shut down/reboot repetitive cycle. Calling MS Help, my overseas technician basically had  not enough training yet in the W7 install and spent a lot of time checking with supervisors. I was finally handed off to a higher level technician who then walked me thru a clean install upgrade. While I was unhappy about losing all of my programs and settings, I was able to get back to where I wanted to be since I had all of my critical program install discs and all the hard drive data files were copied to a folder named windows.old in the W7 installation. I also use a Firefox add-on called Foxmarks which can synchronize bookmarks, favorites and passwords between 2 or more computers. Once I added Firefox and Foxmarks, all of my bookmarks, favorites and passwords which had previously been synchronized to our desktop magically appeared on the laptop.

Overall, the only negative of the upgrade was the lack of good help from MS, once I got around that it wasn't bad. I do like W7, it seems to have taken the good improvements in Vista and added more, a lot better environment.

Once Marlene and I figure out what programs and data she has on the XP Pro desktop that come over easily (Windows Upgrade Advisor shows no significant issues; wants an upgraded driver for the scanner), we'll run the new install/upgrade for her. There are a lot more programs, and older ones at that, with very large files on the desktop, so I anticipate it will be a somewhat more extensive/intensive process. Also, I picked up another 4GB of RAM very inexpensively so we'll be installing the 64 bit OS. Not sure how that will fly with the old programs, all of which were 32bit.

Methinks I'll stick with XP and Vista or our computers. Win 7 can wait until the next PC purchase.

Upgrades vs. clean installs from scratch can be nightmares and I never do them anymore preferring to buy an OEM version of whatever Windoze it is I'm installing.  With disk partition deletions, then new formatting, you clean up a lot of junk that invariably accumulates over time.

I have used Foxmarks for many months and I can't imagine life without it since I want/need my bookmarks shared among several desktops/laptops.  My standard suite of Firefox add-ons consists of Xmarks, AdBlock Plus, and Flash Block.

My opinion is that Vista users should seriously consider moving to W7 since W7 is everything Vista was promised to be.  XP users - I see no reason to change.

Bernie, all your 32 bit programs should run fine on 64 bit Win 7.  If you have any 16 bit programs, they won't.

John Canfield said:

My opinion is that Vista users should seriously consider moving to W7 since W7 is everything Vista was promised to be.   XP users - I see no reason to change.

Click to expand...

John

I'd say the opposite. My laptop had Vista, the desktop has XP PRO. I spent about half my time on the laptop and half on the desktop. I preferred working with Vista and had little in the way of issues, and when I did, felt it easier to work out of problems in Vista.

Ned

AFAIK, all of our programs now are at least 32 bit, thanks for the warning tho.

I'll probably do a clean install one of these days.  Win7 worked hard at retaining old stuff that I know and love.  It even put the photo resizer in the right click menu (I found one online for 64-bit Vista and Win7).  

One thing I noticed in one of the Start Menu Programs folders were a few shortcuts to programs since deleted or installed elsewhere.  It seemed as though Win7 scoured the Registry and accounted for old undeleted junk, just in case.  Since this is a relatively new computer, it wasn't too crammed with old stuff.  

I have everything thoroughly and doubly backed up and will do so just before the clean install.  HP has some gadgets in this computer I don't want to lose, but I can always restore factory settings and reupgrade.  I don't mind, except losing a few shortcuts I always have to redo.

--pat

Just installed my Windows 7 Home Premium over my Vista 64 bit without one solitary hitch...PIECE OF CAKE!  I love the shake feature, the new toolbar with the Pin feature, and the home network new feature.....this OS ROCKS! 

I have been using W7 all  year long and Frontrange is correct, it rocks. I never do an upgrade, always a clean install.  Clean installs are so much cleaner.

I'm sticking with XP.  I'm almost ready to buy my wife a new netbook (she loves my MSI Wind U100 and wants her own), but I was not overly impressed with the Win7 "starter edition" that the Toshiba netbook I tried out yesterday at Best Buy came with.

I suppose it would have been too much to ask for Microsoft to just keep refining the best OS they've ever come up with (XP).  I'd much rather stick with a known quantity.

BernieD said:

John - I'd say the opposite. My laptop had Vista, the desktop has XP PRO. I spent about half my time on the laptop and half on the desktop. I preferred working with Vista and had little in the way of issues, and when I did, felt it easier to work out of problems in Vista.

Click to expand...

[OT]
Bernie - I'm not here to bash Vista, that has been done much more eloquently by others.  I do have some experience with Vista - I ordered a Toshiba Satellite Pro a few months ago that came with Vista Business (or Pro, or whatever they call it) but had a downgrade option for XP Pro.  I was anxious to give Vista a thorough check-out since the easiest thing to do was to use the Satellite the way it came from the factory.  After using the Satellite for a few weeks (its primary duty is laptop nav and for VMSpc in the coach), I was really disappointed at the way it performed.  I can't give you specifics since I didn't make notes, but using it with my extended desktop (a 9" monitor for VMSpc display) was an exercise in frustration - it would never behave the same way twice.  I used the Toshiba XP Pro DVD and installed XP on the Satellite and life has been good for many thousands of miles.

I thought the user interface (Aero) was quite nice, but Vista came with way too much bloat and extra baggage.  (Some IT shops are calling W7 "Vista Lite".)

Jane's Acer Micro-tower came with Vista Home and I was amazed at how slowly everything happened when doing anything.  I installed Linux on it and it was like I added more memory and a faster CPU.  I expected a performance improvement, but I was totally blown away at how much faster Linux was over Vista.
[/OT]

I do need to play with W7 - can't help it - it's in the genes  

John Canfield said:

I thought the user interface (Aero) was quite nice, but Vista came with way too much bloat and extra baggage.  (Some IT shops are calling W7 "Vista Lite".)

Click to expand...

I used Vista for several years from beta to finished product. I am dual booting between Vista and 7 on my current laptop. Vista doesn't have bloat and extra baggage, it is all the crapware loaded onto computers now a days that bogs it down. Every single piece of crapware has one or more programs running in memory to update that program. The typical laptop comes with 60 to 90 running processes. I eliminate them and get it down to less than 30 running processes and it screams. Both Vista and 7 on my machine run exactly the same speed since there is no crapware on either OS.

Tom - My Satellite Pro came with *none* of the typical home machine crapware (crapware is a real problem as you state.)  Speed was not an issue since I ordered a fast machine; the big issue was unpredictable performance. 

Speaking about performance...

Vista for a fact is a dog on PCs with only 1 Gb of memory.  I am the Harper, Texas public library volunteer IT guy and responsible for six library Toshiba laptops (five of which have have 1 Gb of memory), the laptop I upgraded to 2 Gb performs fairly good.  The five laptops with 1 Gb of memory are p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow - for me I would consider them functionally unusable.

Linux is very  happy with 1 Gb of memory.

We now return you to the W7 discussion..

Makes sense to do a clean install of Win7.  There's all sorts of junk that comes with HPs.  Much of it I uninstall upon receipt.  Be interesting to see how this works with just Win 7 as a start.

--pat

John Canfield said:

Tom - My Satellite Pro came with *none* of the typical home machine crapware (crapware is a real problem as you state.)  Speed was not an issue since I ordered a fast machine; the big issue was unpredictable performance. 

Speaking about performance...

Vista for a fact is a dog on PCs with only 1 Gb of memory. 

Click to expand...

John - Unpredictable performance can be a problem if you don't disable the automatic defragging and the automatic indexing. Once you do that the performance is very predictable.

I ran Vista on a laptop with one gig for the first years I used Vista and it screamed. No performance problems whatsoever. I could run Photoshop, Lightroom and Adobe Audition all at the same time and still had no performance issues.

BernieD said:

I've basically finished upgrading my laptop from Vista to W7. I had run the Upgrade Advisor and was not notified of any issues for the upgrade. After running the upgrade, something hadn't clicked and the system was in a boot/Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)/shut down/reboot repetitive cycle...

Click to expand...

Does your laptop have an AMD processor?  I think the last XP service pack caused problems on machines with AMD processors by installing a file for Intel processors that it shouldn't have.  I got into that problem with my sister's PC when I was rebuilding it after a drive failure.

John

I ran VMSpc on my previous laptop with XP Pro and then on my next laptop with Vista (before the W7 upgrade). I didn't notice much difference between the two, maybe a little more stable in Vista. Not trying to argue, just hardware and software environments can provide different results.