What does Win7 do better than Vista? Seriously.

Scream And Fly

Scream And Fly

Gawd
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Nov 27, 2005
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I've been using Vista since launch, and I'm 100% happy with it. It's been fast (since SP1), rock solid, and reliable.

I was thinking of Windows 7, but I wanted to ask the experienced users here, would it be worth it? What exactly does Win7 do better than Vista? System in question is in sig.

Thanks everyone.
 
If you're quite happy with Vista right now (as I am), I think you'd see little to no benefit in moving to W7.
 
This is as loaded a question as you can get, because honestly whenever people start talking "better" it becomes and incredibly dangerous ground to tread upon.

The only person that can say with any confidence that Windows 7 is "better" than Vista would be you, after you use it, after you spend time running it on your current hardware that has Vista on it - and by time I mean about 2 weeks solid, anything less should be dismissed - and that's about it.

Windows 7 offers one thing that Vista never did: a trial version, although technically it's the Enterprise edition. Windows 7 Enterprise is for all intents and purposes Windows 7 Ultimate with a few other things thrown in for Admin and networking management but, in day to day operation it will function precisely like Windows 7 Ultimate does, and you can get the trial version at:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc442495.aspx

There honestly is no better way to ever find out for yourself which OS works best for you - and that's the only "best" that matters. "Best" is relative to a given situation, and computer operating systems should never be looked upon as "the best operating system" like Apple loves shoving down our throats about OSX. It might be "the best" for them, but it's not the best overall, not by a huge margin.

But, make an image of your machine and toss that Windows 7 Enterprise trial on there sometime, use it solidly for 2 weeks, not 1 day less, and then compare it with your Vista setup. Don't try this inside a virtual machine; it's gotta be your actual OS running on the bare metal hardware or you're just wasting your time with it.

If I had to say what I think from the heart, I would (and will) say this: Windows 7 is better - to me and for me - in ways that I cannot adequately put into words that someone else would understand. Hence, it's "best" and most certainly "better" for me.

You won't truly know what's better about it till you do.
 
I was a vista 64 user for a very long time, but last xmas I changed all of our home computers to win7 64 and haven't looked back. I can only give you my experience as a very happy vista user who converted to win7. I love win7. I would not go back to vista. There was a learning curve, and I'm even still learning short cuts to this day, but its just a better overal experience than vista for myself and my family members. I don't have any quantitive data for you, but I know that every computer is just plain faster with win7. Less lag in raids, large deathmatches, etc. The only thing I didn't care for was the whole email issue with win7, as it should have came out and stated it a little more clearly instead of just not having those functions. Otherwise, this is probably the best MS OS ever, and I have been using MS OS's since the first retail release of DOS...
 
If you're looking for real world experiences...

I was just Vista Ultimate for about 2 years before I just recently (2 weeks ago) pulled the trigger, backed up and got onto Windows 7. I honestly couldn't be happier with the OS, it just has all the little things that make me happy that I wanted in Vista that I didn't have:

1. A sweet ass new taskbar
2. Snap Feature
3. A blazing fast OS that efficiently uses system resources.
4. I feel the sleep feature just works better, this is mostly subjective though.

10/10 A++++ will install again!
 
For me the new hot keys for multimonitor and the new task bar are worth it by themselves, but as others have said Vista is fine if you're happy with it.
 
Win7 also uses a smaller footprint, and has lower system requirements than Vista. I absolutely love the taskbar and snap features, no issues with driver compatibility that I've seen, and programs take less time to load than when I was running Vista.

I have to agree with the above post though, if you're happy with Vista, stay with Vista. But if your Event Viewer starts showing some weird reports, and it comes time to format, think about 7.
 
Windows 7 isn't vastly different. Its an evolutionary step. Its the little things which make it more enjoyable. Not the least of which is the fact that it does run a little faster than Windows Vista did. Beyond that the snap to feature kicks ass. I use it virtually every day.
 
Dan_D said:
Windows 7 isn't vastly different. Its an evolutionary step. Its the little things which make it more enjoyable. Not the least of which is the fact that it does run a little faster than Windows Vista did. Beyond that the snap to feature kicks ass. I use it virtually every day.
Click to expand...

^ ^ What he said. I guess I diluted mine a bit more... :D
 
Scream And Fly said:
I've been using Vista since launch, and I'm 100% happy with it. It's been fast (since SP1), rock solid, and reliable.

I was thinking of Windows 7, but I wanted to ask the experienced users here, would it be worth it? What exactly does Win7 do better than Vista? System in question is in sig.

Thanks everyone.
Click to expand...
Windows 7 runs better on slower computers with low memory, and/or slow hard drivers. It is a little more lightweight (around 30 processes running out of the box) compared to Vista (which is closer to 40). So 7 does use (at boot) 2-300 MB less ram. My 7 install does quickly move up to around 1GB of ram usage after a few hours of using it so it's no better than Vista (memory usage) other than at boot. Also, 7's Superfetch service is less aggressive which mean it won't just grind away on your hard drive (as much) after boot to cache files. I recommend with Vista users to set Superfetch service to Automatic - Delayed, which gives the OS time to finish loading before it starts in with cacheing.

7 runs OK on 1 GB
Vista needs at least 1.5-2 GB to not feel sluggish.

If you have a high end system, you will not notice any significant performance increases moving to 7. If you do notice something, it's likely that simply reinstalling Vista would of fixed whatever issues you were having (corruptions/infections, etc.) I have a mid-ranged system and I bench marked Vista/7 and saw only a 1-2% difference in my game FPS.

So the reality is, mid-high level systems will not notice a boost but you may want to consider the features. I got real sick and tired of the 'folder forget' bug that Vista suffers from, that no matter how many times I reinstalled the OS it would still forget my folder settings eventually. I also really like Windows 7 Libraries the overall cleaner GUI.
 
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If you are happy with what you've got, they why change?

My own experiences; 7 is better behaved with a computer's resources than vista was. With Vista, my harddrive would start thrashing and would keep thrashing for up to an hour sometimes, completely interupting what I was doing. Games? No bueno, might as well find something else to do until it finished up with...whatever it was doing.

Same system, except with 7? No thrashing. System is always ready to go, no resource over-utilization issues causing delays.

That's my experience with it, but again if you aren't having issues then I wouldn't worry about it.
 
One thing that comes to mind is Trim support for SSDs, I don't believe that was included in Vista.

But to a large extent many of the improvements to Windows 7 over Vista were ultimately rolled into Vista anyway via service packs and windows updates (DX11, WDDM1.1, etc).

The new taskbar is cool but the first thing I do on any Windows7 machine is re-enable the quick-launch bar so going back to a Vista box still feels pretty normal for me.
 
Thanks everyone. I'm thinking when I format my machine next I'll give it a go on Win7. I appreciate the feedback. :)
 
Win 7 is lighter on resources, it feels snappier than Vista to me. I never liked Vista, it just felt bloated and half baked. I had to use it and deal with it for clients but I stuck with XP on my own machines. I run Win 7 full time now on my main system and I like it a lot, kind of feels like XP on steroids but I know there's been many changes under the hood.
 
Oh man I think many here could write a book about this one.

I don't even know where to start. Well I do, it's just.. I just woke up I need my coffee before I write a whole tabloid...
 
Everything.... just saying. And no, not being a smartass.
 
using vista and 7 at the same time and little to no difference in day to day stuff that I do. not worth the upgrade unless you get it it cheap or on a new pc
 
Kangg said:
Everything.... just saying. And no, not being a smartass.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:

Again, I ask the same question of everyone that talks up 7 and bashes Vista... What did Win 7 magically fix??????
Nobody's really given me a good answer to that.

There's some nice UI changes (Taskbar is great), features (Snap is awesome, I use it often and get TO'd when Vista won't do it), and notebook support is obviously a big improvement.

But for the vast majority of uses, 7 didn't change much.
 
TexUs said:
:rolleyes:

Again, I ask the same question of everyone that talks up 7 and bashes Vista... What did Win 7 magically fix??????
Nobody's really given me a good answer to that.

There's some nice UI changes (Taskbar is great), features (Snap is awesome, I use it often and get TO'd when Vista won't do it), and notebook support is obviously a big improvement.

But for the vast majority of uses, 7 didn't change much.
Click to expand...
Resource prioritization and usage is improved.
 
"Improved"- yes.
Enough so to call Vista crap because of it? No. That's my point.

Generally, every OS "improves" something. 2000 "improved" NT. Did it make NT crap? No, just outdated is all.
 
The very best thing Win7 has over Vista (and to MS's benefit) is the vastly improved public perception.
 
TexUs said:
"Improved"- yes.
Enough so to call Vista crap because of it? No. That's my point.

Generally, every OS "improves" something. 2000 "improved" NT. Did it make NT crap? No, just outdated is all.
Click to expand...
Here's the difference; I preferred XP on my home workstation because of Vista's resource usage. XP ran my shit faster and with less stutering. 7 finally represents an "upgrade" to xp.

Maybe it was my particular usage patterns which confused the hell out of vista, but that 7 seems to get right. Who knows. My preference reflects my usage at home. In a work environment, Vista was perfectly fine.
 
My favorite thing with Windows 7 besides a slew of others compared to Vista, which I might add that I used Vista since the first day of retail release, is the fast login with programs running from the start-up. Windows Vista was excruciating slow, you could go and make a sandwhich before Windows Vista loaded up everything. Windows 7 loads the same programs fast!

That to me says that Windows 7 is more than a "cosmetic" change from Windows Vista.
 
My favorite feature by far is jump lists; it has helped my productivity quite a bit.
Most of my frequently used documents are stored in each application's jump list (in my case - Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Acrobat). I no longer have to search for those files.
 
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