Engineering Windows 7

[PsychoFanatic]

I don't believe that will be the case. The number of 32 bit machines produced far outnumbers the number of 64 bit machines. Of course you've tossed in the incredibly nebulous qualifier "worth upgrading", which despite its ambiguity is probably also incorrect, assuming we're to believe the rumours that the modular nature of Windows 7 will potentially reduce hardware requirements depending on the particular configuration.

If you have any sources (or rumours even) that suggest the minimum requirements will be significantly higher, please post them.

you realize that all new computers are 64bit compatible as of like 2006 right?
if you mean printer wise and driver wise or something then maybe not now but in the future based around windows 7 release time? yes i believe there will be much more 64bit software.

never underestimate M$ and their ability to push their product if windows 7 is 64bit and they decide to push it expect to see good drivers and more software for the 64bit platform in general.

 

[Emission]

Vista is not bloated and in many cases runs software, even 32 bit, much faster than XP. I now have it on 6 machines and nothing MS has ever written integrates this well.

The real problem that MS has is pretty simple. My guess would be 9 out of 10 copies of Win2k are out there in use both in public and I know for a fact most big industry.

The major blunder was allowing XP to remain on the market so long it almost adopted an entire generation of users who can’t or don’t want change.

When Vista hit the market it wasn’t Microsoft’s problem about drivers, it’s not their job to write them. The problem was companies like HP, Epson etc who refused to write drivers even though they had ample time. Face it, who wants to pay for new drivers for under $100 and $200 printers, they are mostly throw a ways anyway.

Strange there are drivers for my HP-4P which has to be 15 or 20 years old, but that isn’t a throw away printer.

Worse are the companies who have written all that software to integrate with 2K or XP. No way are they going to replace or pay to have it re-written. The same thing happened with a ton of existing corporate software, the commercial companies simply refused to re-write it because they had no market.

Even if you fixed all those problems think in terms of the time and money lost to training. In this economy it’s just not going to happen.

Another MS blunder; they made products so that people expected service packs. What was the first thing you heard about Vista? “I’ll wait for the first service pack”. Well, the truth is Vista didn’t really need a service pack, still doesn’t however it did bring forth a bunch of sales when they added SP-1 to the box.

I don’t care if we get to Windows 19 it needs a market bigger than a few million home users. Oh, and it has to be realistically affordable as well no matter how many tricks it does.

You don't think it's crappy or bloated? Try being the tech guy that manages 100 Vista laptops for a local school that I know. Fast and efficient is the last thing on your mind.

 

[BinarySynapse]

You don't think it's crappy or bloated? Try being the tech guy that manages 100 Vista laptops for a local school that I know. Fast and efficient is the last thing on your mind.

There's your problem.

People coming to you to fix problems they cause on their own hardly qualifies Vista as a crappy OS. I've been using Vista for over two years now, I have to do far less maintenance on Vista than I ever did XP. Now other peoples computers loaded up with whatever "2000 Free Games" or "150 Free Screensavers" program they can find is another story for me on both XP and Vista.

 

[Emission]

There's your problem.

People coming to you to fix problems they cause on their own hardly qualifies Vista as a crappy OS. I've been using Vista for over two years now, I have to do far less maintenance on Vista than I ever did XP. Now other peoples computers loaded up with whatever "2000 Free Games" or "150 Free Screensavers" program they can find is another story for me on both XP and Vista.

Except they lack both "2000 Free Games" and "150 Free Screensavers". They have no install privileges and even the teachers' machines are crappy. Chalk it up to stupendously low hardware requirements that make operating it a pain. It should be a crime to install it on anything less than a 2.4 GHz C2D with 2GB of RAM and a decent video processor. No, I'm not talking about GMA 950.

 

[p4gs]

disable Aero and Windows Search Indexing service

+some performance

 

[BinarySynapse]

Except they lack both "2000 Free Games" and "150 Free Screensavers". They have no install privileges and even the teachers' machines are crappy. Chalk it up to stupendously low hardware requirements that make operating it a pain. It should be a crime to install it on anything less than a 2.4 GHz C2D with 2GB of RAM and a decent video processor. No, I'm not talking about GMA 950.

I've installed on a Athlon 64 4000+, a Celeron 520, and a Sempron 2300+ with no issues. Sure they weren't screamers, but they didn't have to be. For browsing the Internet, checking email, and doing a little work in Office 2007, they were more than capable. And Aero works just fine on a GMA950. My laptop (the Celeron 520) has been doing for nearly a year now.

 

[BinarySynapse]

disable Aero and Windows Search Indexing service

+some performance

Worst advice ever. Aero actually speeds up Vista since the burden of window rendering is put off to the otherwise completely unused GPU. And the search indexing doesn't have much of a impact on performance once it's completed the initial indexing.

Vista truly is an OS that does not require any tinkering to get the best performance from it.

 

[Cyrilix]

Except they lack both "2000 Free Games" and "150 Free Screensavers". They have no install privileges and even the teachers' machines are crappy. Chalk it up to stupendously low hardware requirements that make operating it a pain. It should be a crime to install it on anything less than a 2.4 GHz C2D with 2GB of RAM and a decent video processor. No, I'm not talking about GMA 950.

4400+ stock here. It's blazin'. I really don't see why you'd need more than a 4400+... ever, if you're not running intensive media-related tasks or Crysis. My computer is a little more than 3 years old. I think I can go for 6 years no problem.