Win7 V XP - My opinion

[Rayny]

Currently I have Vista on my laptop and have never had a problem.

In my opinion I always stay with the OS that came with the computer, unless it is unstable or needs to be upgraded for compatibility with new hardware/software.

 

[Aoraki]

Currently I have Vista on my laptop and have never had a problem.

Have Vista on 1 laptop and 2 pc's and never had any probs in the last 18 months. Upgraded laptop to Win7, doesn't boot any quicker, doesn't look much different, does a few extra things, all in all, not much to right home about.

 

[CE230]

I've been using Vista Home Premium for about 2 years and after downloading a couple of programmes to get rid of the unnecessary stuff have had no problems. Sourcing a driver for my 5 year old HP printer wasn't a problem either.

 

[MD5]

It seems that Vista and W7 won't network with XP unless you reconfigure the whole established system to allow them to act as a server, unless I misunderstood the info given. Either way, it wasn't do-able as my Vista/then 7 upgrade couldn't discover other XP laptops through the same router. I am looking to go back to XP, as I haven't found one single improvement, and my HP DV6 has been a hugely disappointing purchase.

I thought W7 offered an XP facility, or did I imagine that?

 

[Merc Owner 2B]

It seems that Vista and W7 won't network with XP unless you reconfigure the whole established system to allow them to act as a server, unless I misunderstood the info given. Either way, it wasn't do-able as my Vista/then 7 upgrade couldn't discover other XP laptops through the same router. I am looking to go back to XP, as I haven't found one single improvement, and my HP DV6 has been a hugely disappointing purchase.

I thought W7 offered an XP facility, or did I imagine that?

Hi. There's no problem networking these systems but the common mistake is not putting all pcs on the same workgroup. By default all XP machines are assigned a workgroup name of MSHOME. Vista and Win 7 use another name, which I can't immediately recall. Anyhow, go through control panel to the SYSTEM icon and select the "Computer Name" tab. Ensure all machines on your network have the same workgroup name and they will all "see" each other.

Please repost if you have any problems. I'm out and about on a laptop at present so my typing is a bit slow!

 

[w124coupe]

Hi. There's no problem networking these systems but the common mistake is not putting all pcs on the same workgroup. By default all XP machines are assigned a workgroup name of MSHOME. Vista and Win 7 use another name, which I can't immediately recall. Anyhow, go through control panel to the SYSTEM icon and select the "Computer Name" tab. Ensure all machines on your network have the same workgroup name and they will all "see" each other.

Please repost if you have any problems. I'm out and about on a laptop at present so my typing is a bit slow!

Win7 defaults to "WORKGROUP" and XP to "MSHOME" - as you say, this is the main cause of initial difficulties.

Also need to turn on the various sharing options in Win7 - there's a good "how to" here: Share Files and Printers between Windows 7 and XP :: the How-To Geek

 

[MD5]

Hi. There's no problem networking these systems but the common mistake is not putting all pcs on the same workgroup. By default all XP machines are assigned a workgroup name of MSHOME. Vista and Win 7 use another name, which I can't immediately recall. Anyhow, go through control panel to the SYSTEM icon and select the "Computer Name" tab. Ensure all machines on your network have the same workgroup name and they will all "see" each other.

Please repost if you have any problems. I'm out and about on a laptop at present so my typing is a bit slow!

The network already has its own workgroup name, which could not be detected by the Vista/7 upgrade when plugged into the router. Thanks for the offer. I won't be re-united with the network for a few weeks now, but would love to resolve the problem, as I want to replace the duff DV6 I've bought, and have been put off W7 so far.

 

[w124coupe]

The network already has its own workgroup name, which could not be detected by the Vista/7 upgrade when plugged into the router. Thanks for the offer. I won't be re-united with the network for a few weeks now, but would love to resolve the problem, as I want to replace the duff DV6 I've bought, and have been put off W7 so far.

Could also be your firewall software? Kaspersky 2010 (for instance) defaults to setting all networks to "public" which hinders network discovery.

 

[timskemp]

Vista must really have been a crock of **** for MS to release W7 so quickly.

Not really, they just hung around with XP too long.

The timeline is a bit like this:

Windows launched 1985
Windows 2 1987, 2 yrs
Windows 3 1990, 3 yrs
Windows NT (think of it as the beginning of 32 bit) 1993
Windows 95 1995, 5 yrs
Windows NT4 (NT with the 95 front end) 1996 (3 yrs from NT) (just retired an NT4 server, 12 yrs of service)
Windows 98 1998, 3 yrs
Windows 2000 2000, 4 yrs, internally Windows 5.0
Windows ME - 2000, 2 yrs
Windows XP - late 2001, 1 yr after ME and 2000 where NT and the 16 bit line merges and the end of 16 bit windows, version 5.1. NT type windows becomes the mainstream after 16 yrs of 16 bit
Windows XP 64 bit for Itanium- 2003
Windows 2003 (server only) - 2003
Windows XP 64 bit for x64 - 2005
Windows Vista 2006, 5 yrs from XP, same time difference as Windows 3 to Windows 98, launched in 32 and 64 bit simultaneously
Windows 2008 (server) 2008- also 5 yrs from server 2003 though there was a 2003R2 with Vista codebased stuff in it
Windows 7 - 2009, 3 yrs from Vista. Also Windows 2008R2 based on the 7 codebase, aligning desktop and server. 64 bit becomes mainstream after 8 yrs of 32 bit mainstream

So the shortest lived was Me, Vista lasted as long as 3and 95, longer than 98 and ME.

Vista is OK - but 7 is much more efficient. Got 7 on a netbook here, gonna replace the desktop PC soon with a 7 box as well.

 

[crockers]

I upgraded my copy of XP Pro SP3 (32bit) to Windows 7 Pro (64bit) on my Macintosh (in VirtualBox) and all has gone well so far.

I run Office 2007 Enterprise (my wife uses Publisher) with ease.

It's still not as good as OSX Snow Leopard, though.

Updated both vista laptops to 7. Much better. But snow leopard on iMac boots up far quicker. Still feeling my way around it but am wishing I had made the switch to mac years ago now.

 

[MD5]

Could also be your firewall software? Kaspersky 2010 (for instance) defaults to setting all networks to "public" which hinders network discovery.

I did wonder about that, as the laptop came with Norton 360 installed. That said, I thought I had disabled if sufficiently so as not to interfere. I even had the company's IT guy have a look, and he come up with the suggestion in my first post here, having looked on the MS website.

 

[w124coupe]

At home we have 4 x XP SP3 machines, 1 x Vista SP1 and 1 x Win7 64bit all happily sharing NAS storage, seeing each others shared docs and sharing iTunes libraries - all using the MSHOME network so I know it all works OK. All are patched up to date and run Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 (with the local LAN set to "trusted" and the web set to "public").

The linked site shows the setup needed - in particluar the password protected sharing stuff and the need for accounts if you set it (our LAN is secure so we didn't use it).

To keep it simple for the older machines, make sure you are using the traditional networking and not the new Win7 "homegroup" stuff (which I think you are implying you looked at using).

We just access files on Win7 via the computer/network interface or set up shortcuts for the links used often.

I like Win7 - so far no issues at all and pleased to see our HP wireless printers supported "out of the box" by Windows rather than the need to load the HP "bloatware" DVD and then uninstall all the rubbish to leave just the drivers. We have all sorts running on the machine including lots of old programs in Compatibility mode and it all works really well.

 

[Dryce]

Not really, they just hung around with XP too long.

You could add some additional variations to your list: Win386, WfWG, NT MIPs and Alpha ports, NT 3.5.

However I'd suggest the problem wasn't that they hung around with XP for too long - the essence of the problem is that XP is very good and therefore a hard act to follow.

 

[s500colin]

Hi my old evesham running on xp died a month ago I have just upgraded to a new specialist computer with Windows 7 generally it seams really easy to use but begining to find a few glitchs mainly only 80 percent of the music I transfered from a external hard drive back up will play the other tracks get a red cross spring up and when you click on the cross it states there is a problem but nicrosoft don't know what the problem is

 

[Gawdi]

You could add some additional variations to your list: Win386, WfWG, NT MIPs and Alpha ports, NT 3.5.

However I'd suggest the problem wasn't that they hung around with XP for too long - the essence of the problem is that XP is very good and therefore a hard act to follow.

Microssoft has similar problems in the past when the large companies refused to upgrade from win 95 until xp came along.. Why? it was quite simple really, having spend all the time and investment in rolling out win 95 why should they change in such a short time scale..

I think the same arguement is valid with XP and vista..

That said, at home I have a 2 yr old dell xps laptop that works fine with vista... my 5 yr old dell dimension running xp has expired with old age so replaced with a flashy acer running 64 bit Win 7...

Which is great.. win 7 is very good and quite stable and has some very nice features... but i think 1 of the keys to its wide scale adoption is in those little letters '64 bit' which, given so much of the software developed these days is 64 bit - then it will be a success...

btw and slightly off topic - i took the advantage of reviewing my software and decided on going for free software rather than upgrade exisiting software..

10/10 so far for:

Open Office - superb, stable and a joy to use..
GIMP - who needs photoshop
AVG Free - Ohh so much better than the latest paid totally bloatware version of AVG that I have on my old pc..

Also for those of you not using firefox or thunderbird yet - check them out...