What exactly makes Windows 7 THAT much better than Vista?

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AmongTheChosenX

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I'm running Vista x64, and I'm honestly not sure why windows 7 is so much better then vista.

I will admit I have not tried it, but I'm also not interested in trying it on my main machine (my test machine won't really run it that well).

Opinions?
 
It's actually the little things that end up making a huge difference. delvryboy mention probably the largest change in 7, which is the integration of libraries. For me it was the second largest change, which is the revamped taskbar. Also little things like the left/right screen docking and the instant fullscreen window ability were a boon to me. Not to mention toned down UAC and its ability to run on older hardware like ThreeDee said makes 7 a winner for me.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
I'm running Vista x64, and I'm honestly not sure why windows 7 is so much better then vista.

I will admit I have not tried it, but I'm also not interested in trying it on my main machine (my test machine won't really run it that well).

Opinions?
Click to expand...

The big thing is performance. It just runs faster. It has the visual pop of vista with the performance of XP. Vista ran like a pig on my laptop and when I put the Windows 7 Release candidate on it, I swear it was like getting a fresh computer. Even with the same graphical features like transparent windows, Windows 7 just runs better. My laptop just runs smoother, quieter, cooler, and faster. I swear, this laptop is generating half the heat it was generating with Vista!

Second, there are a lot of little touches that just make it a better experience. The taskbar has been totally reworked and it just is more intuitive and faster. Dragging windows over to the left or right edge of the screen expands the window to fill that half of the screen. Dragging windows to the top of the screen maximizes the window. There are a lot of little features like that that make a big difference.
 
for me its the memory usage.. when you can get an os like windows 7 to run on an old amd athlon xp-m 2400+ laptop w/ 512mb of ram.. and run flawlessly.. ya know its a good OS.. that was pretty much the selling point for me.. ive always hated vista and its interface.. still dont care for windows 7.. but its a compromise im willing to deal with to have dx10+11 support while still having plenty of ram left over to use..
 
The reason I am trying to get to win7 are the media center improvements and namely it being able to play more things in media center.
 
wow. if its that good i may consider buying. I'm not into trying beta releases on my regular machins.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
wow. if its that good i may consider buying. I'm not into trying beta releases on my regular machins.
Click to expand...

I'd say try it. How many people on these forums and elsewhere have you heard of that jumped to the beta/RC from both XP and Vista and never went back?

I know of lots, including Kyle.

How many have you heard that said "I tried it but I wasn't impressed so I went back"?

Sure there's a few but there's always haters, they're grossly outnumbered this round tho.
 
i've run 7 on various computers I own, and honestly, it isn't that much of a step up from Vista.... I'll upgrade, sure.... but thats because i wont be paying for it... from that I can tell, Win 7's biggest feature, is good PR.... something that Vista never, ever had.....
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
I'm running Vista x64, and I'm honestly not sure why windows 7 is so much better then vista.

I will admit I have not tried it, but I'm also not interested in trying it on my main machine (my test machine won't really run it that well).

Opinions?
Click to expand...
I'd try running it on your test machine, it might surprise you. I'm extremely happy with the performance on my wife's old P4 2.8GHZ Dell.
 
I booted to Vista today just to install SP2, first time since the 7000 build was released. While I am a Vista fanboy, it was painful after using W7 for so long.
 
painful in what ways?

why am i the only one who doesnt see this vast improvement in speed over vista? in my experience, win7 does NOT like less then 1gb ram (constant pop ups about low memory).

the biggest difference for me is media center. that alone is enough reason for me to upgrade... but for my pc's that just act as desktops and not media boxes- vista is just as good as 7 in those cases.
 
Boot and shut down times are probably about 70% faster to start.

Libraries, search, and taskbar make it more efficient to use.
 
Boots faster, I like the new taskbar, and takes less 'power' to run than Vista.... I also actually like that fact that you can put the gadgets whereever you want on the screen... I HATED the gadget bar.
 
70% faster start time? so not 30sec, but like 10 sec? win7 boots in 10 sec!?!? i guess im completely wrong then.. sorry

and qwerty, you can put vista gadgets anywhere... "close the sidebar" and not "exit". it gets rid of the bar and keeps the gadgets.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
I will admit I have not tried it, but I'm also not interested in trying it on my main machine (my test machine won't really run it that well).
Click to expand...

ill directly answer your question... if you do try it, you will like it. its vista, better. $200 better? no. i would think of it like a 9800gt or gts250. if you already have the 8800gt, youre not going to see a huge difference. if you dont already have an os, then the newest is the best choice.
 
On the rig in my sig I found Win7 to be much more responsive with much better resource management over Vista. Both installs were the 64 bit. At the time I was running the public beta of 7 and have yet to install the RC. I went back to Vista because of a need for some software which wasn't yet running under 7 which was no surprise considering it was still beta.

Also, a buddy of mine tried out the 7 public beta 32 bit on his single core 1.6Ghz Turion laptop with 512 meg of RAM and it ran at least as good as XP. That actually surprised the hell out of me. He also put it on an old Dell P4 2.8 with 768 meg of RAM and it ran flawlessly on that as well.

I'm not a fan of pinning apps to the new taskbar but I have ways around that so it doesn't bother me. There were fixes to networking such as using a gigabit network with Vista and you would only get 100mbit performance out of the machine if you were playing any type of media. I believe MS finally fixed that in Vista with service pack 2 but I had to do other rooting around with the OS to get that turned off previously. I believe another thing fixed with 7 is the ability to run more than one type of video card. With Vista, all video cards had to be able to use the same driver. I haven't tried this out with 7 yet but I believe they fixed it so you can use different video cards and different drivers at the same time. For most people this isn't a problem but for me it is. I want to run a third monitor but don't have an extra PCI-e x8 or x16 slot for another video card. I do have spare PCI video cards and 7 should allow it even though I haven't checked it yet.

As stated, there are a lot of smaller fixes and features added mixed with better resource management which end up as greater than the sum of the parts.

 
SmokeRngs said:
I believe another thing fixed with 7 is the ability to run more than one type of video card. With Vista, all video cards had to be able to use the same driver. I haven't tried this out with 7 yet but I believe they fixed it so you can use different video cards and different drivers at the same time. For most people this isn't a problem but for me it is. I want to run a third monitor but don't have an extra PCI-e x8 or x16 slot for another video card. I do have spare PCI video cards and 7 should allow it even though I haven't checked it yet.
Click to expand...

U serious? I have ran multiple video cards from different manufacturers with Windows XP MANY MANY times.... You couldn't do it with Vista?? :confused:
 
Blackstone said:
The big thing is performance. It just runs faster. It has the visual pop of vista with the performance of XP. Vista ran like a pig on my laptop and when I put the Windows 7 Release candidate on it, I swear it was like getting a fresh computer. Even with the same graphical features like transparent windows, Windows 7 just runs better. My laptop just runs smoother, quieter, cooler, and faster. I swear, this laptop is generating half the heat it was generating with Vista!

Second, there are a lot of little touches that just make it a better experience. The taskbar has been totally reworked and it just is more intuitive and faster. Dragging windows over to the left or right edge of the screen expands the window to fill that half of the screen. Dragging windows to the top of the screen maximizes the window. There are a lot of little features like that that make a big difference.
Click to expand...

This. It's really not one huge feature (for me, anyway, though I would say libraries and the HomeGroup stuff are the biggest additions) but rather the culmination of many small fixes and overall usability.
 
QwertyJuan said:
U serious? I have ran multiple video cards from different manufacturers with Windows XP MANY MANY times.... You couldn't do it with Vista?? :confused:
Click to expand...

The new driver model in Vista (WDDM 1.0) would only allow one video driver at a time to be loaded. Windows 7 has WDDM 1.1, which allows multiple drivers to be loaded simultaneously. When you're scrapping an API and starting from scratch, you have to make some unpopular decisions.

spacetrader said:
70% faster start time? so not 30sec, but like 10 sec? win7 boots in 10 sec!?!? i guess im completely wrong then.. sorry

and qwerty, you can put vista gadgets anywhere... "close the sidebar" and not "exit". it gets rid of the bar and keeps the gadgets.
Click to expand...

just timed it on my computer, Win7 RC boots in 14 seconds.
 
For me, it was the task bar and the fact that my pc boot much much faster than on Vista. That, and the fact that it seems that ram usage has been optimize better. Overall, it's just the general feel of the OS makes it a worthwhile upgrade from vista.
 
ryan_975 said:
The new driver model in Vista (WDDM 1.0) would only allow one video driver at a time to be loaded. Windows 7 has WDDM 1.1, which allows multiple drivers to be loaded simultaneously. When you're scrapping an API and starting from scratch, you have to make some unpopular decisions.



just timed it on my computer, Win7 RC boots in 14 seconds.
Click to expand...

from when to when?

if you go from after bios post to 'enter your password' my vista hp install is 18sec. so 14 vs 18 is a 70% difference...

i then looked up what other people think, a whole 1 sec difference for them.
http://lifehacker.com/5082336/windows-7-vs-xp-and-vista-boot-time-benchmarks-updated
 
spacetrader said:
from when to when?

if you go from after bios post to 'enter your password' my vista hp install is 18sec. so 14 vs 18 is a 70% difference...

i then looked up what other people think, a whole 1 sec difference for them.
http://lifehacker.com/5082336/windows-7-vs-xp-and-vista-boot-time-benchmarks-updated
Click to expand...

I don't count BIOS since that wholly depends on what hardware you have and the settings you've picked, and MS has absoulutely ZERO control over that. From the time the screen blanks after POST until my password prompt pops up was 14 seconds. The BIOS screen itself was only a second or two, maybe five.. maybe. I type in my password and my desktop and icons are nearly instantly visible and I can get to work.
 
QwertyJuan said:
Well... wow... you learn something new everyday! :eek:
Click to expand...

aw heck i only found out about it on accident. i was just playing around and wanted my gadgets anywhere, so i dragged them and it worked. 'cool' i thought.. then at the time i closed the sidebar because i was low on ram. when i hit 'close sidebar' thats exactly what it did, leaving the gadgets on the desktop, and at that point i started to wonder what the purpose of the sidebar itself was at all. then when win7 beta hit the market, i understood that microsoft didnt even know why the sidebar was there to begin with:D
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
I'm running Vista x64, and I'm honestly not sure why windows 7 is so much better then vista.

I will admit I have not tried it, but I'm also not interested in trying it on my main machine (my test machine won't really run it that well).

Opinions?
Click to expand...
This subject is tough because you have to wade through the fanbois and get to the truth. Performance wise, on high end PC's, there won't be much difference but on lower end systems with only 1GB of ram, 7 uses a few hundred MB less, and it's less aggressive with caching so systems won't grind to a halt with 7.

The feature set is a little more tweaked and 7 makes nice use of Explorer by adding libraries which is actually pretty damn sweet.

There are also various other system tweaks and features but if your happy with Vista and have a higher end machine, other than wanting different features, there really isn't a reason to switch to 7.
 
My Vista boot is around 35-45 seconds from power off to welcome screen, depending on which computer it is. W7 is about 10-15 seconds respectively.

Not at all my reason for switching, just an added benefit.
 
bigdogchris said:
This subject is tough because you have to wade through the fanbois and get to the truth. Performance wise, on high end PC's, there won't be much difference but on lower end systems with only 1GB of ram, 7 uses a few hundred MB less, and it's less aggressive with caching so systems won't grind to a halt with 7.

The feature set is a little more tweaked and 7 makes nice use of Explorer by adding libraries which is actually pretty damn sweet.

There are also various other system tweaks and features but if your happy with Vista and have a higher end machine, other than wanting different features, there really isn't a reason to switch to 7.
Click to expand...

well the other computers in the house are pretty low end.

my system is in my sig
sister 1 has an E2180, Geforce 7100 board, 4GB's of RAM, Vista x64
sister 2 has a Celeron 430, Geforce 7050 Board, 3 GB's of RAM, Vista x86
Sister 3 has a Celeron 430, Geforce 7050 Board, 2GB's of RAM, XP x86
Mom has an Athlon X2 3800+, AMD R740 chipset, 4GB's of RAM, Vista x86

Mom's copmputer runs horrednously slow at times, which im not sure why. could probably be windows.

what will the upgrade pricing be?
 
So far we have people wanting to pay $200+ for faster boot times and a better media program.

Any real reason to purchase 7 if you have Vista?

For me it would have to be substantially
1. More stable
2. More secure
3. Faster

And please spare me that argument that it's more secure or stable because it's newer. New software is not necessarily better than old software, whereas with hardware, newer generally does equate to better.
 
QwertyJuan said:
U serious? I have ran multiple video cards from different manufacturers with Windows XP MANY MANY times.... You couldn't do it with Vista?? :confused:
Click to expand...

Nope, you can't. I was used to being able to do it in XP as well although it had been a long time since I had last done it. I didn't think anything of it when I went to toss in an old PCI video card for a third monitor with Vista and it wouldn't do anything with the video card. It didn't ask for drivers, it didn't load generic drivers for it, nothing. It was at that point I did a bit of searching and found with Vista you cannot run more than one video card at the same time unless the video cards all use the same driver. I was not a happy camper.
 
ScretHate said:
So far we have people wanting to pay $200+ for faster boot times and a better media program.

Any real reason to purchase 7 if you have Vista?

For me it would have to be substantially
1. More stable
2. More secure
3. Faster

And please spare me that argument that it's more secure or stable because it's newer. New software is not necessarily better than old software, whereas with hardware, newer generally does equate to better.
Click to expand...

Translation: I didn't read the thread and I want to be a prick and try to start a flame war.

Please ignore the troll everyone.
 
1. Windows 7 feels faster to me
2. I like the small UI changes like aero snap (great for dual monitor setups, too.)
3. the new taskbar, I am now used to having all of my apps accessible in the same place whether they are open or not and I really like the look of the adjustable taskbar color and transparency. The UI behavior is wonderfully consistent. The newest program windows are always displayed on the right, and the others are displayed from left to right, oldest to newest, always (under each icon grouping) and tabbing between windows is as simple as win + taskbar position (win + 2 for tabbling between windows explorer windows, shift + win + 2 to open a new instance, etc.)
4. Libraries are extremely useful for me at the office.. I have vmware virtual machines spread across 3 different hard drives and 4 different partitions for performance reasons and they make it easy to aggregate them in one location.
5. Driver support is better, the generic microsoft bluetooth driver is excellent.. it allows my HP bluetooth dongle to handle I/O functions without the need for its own driver software.. and allows perfect pairing with my apple keyboard, something which took over an hr with XP and Vista in trying to find a compatible bluetooth driver. Windows 7 also allows me to install my HP dongle's bluetooth driver for use with A2DP, etc. without interrupting the Microsoft generic driver's handling of my bluetooth input devices.
6. On my home machine, I used to get a few bluescreens per week on shutdown with Vista, but I get none on Windows 7 RC, it is more stable for me.
7. Built-in codec support for the most common codecs in video found on the net. Having subtitle support and thus being able to watch anime fansubs (and foreign films) in HD in windows media player without anything more than a couple of codec files is excellent. (Matroskasplitter and VSFilter)
8. Problem Steps Recorder - Quite possibly the best troubleshooting tool ever, records user actions step by step with exactly what the user did and screenshots for everything the user clicked on with the click target hilighted, great for creating tutorials, too.. all compiled in a handy .mht file and it supports slide-show display :D
9. Improved remote desktop - greatly reduced latency,, it is possible to play high resolution video over a RDP connection with no audio or video skipping or dropouts.

This is, without a doubt in my mind, the best operating system Microsoft has ever created.
 
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I've used vista since beta 2 and while it's come a long way (although i stopped using it in Jan), I'm in love with windows 7.

I haven't tried much of the library or networking features and I don't use windows media player (i'm pretty much all VLC or iTunes). Having said that...

Sometimes vista would sit around and just wait (or so it seamed). It was really annoying. In Windows 7, stuff seems faster, there aren't random slowdowns, readyboost seems to work better. It's snappier as my osx friend would say.

First boot is pretty good. Everything was installed save for my AirPace and my X-Fi.

It's also got native biometric support which is nice (as the Lenovo app doesn't work with Win 7 yet).

I really like the gui with the aero peek although if they could reduce the hovering time before it shows up, that'd be great. So the new taskbar is nice too.

It's also easier to resize windows. You can grab the top and pretty much throw it to the top of the screen to maximize and grab it again to change it back to the normal size.

I like how the wallpaper can be set to change every x amount of time. While that's a simple change, for me, it makes things more interesting.

I'm a hot key person so i really like the start+left arrow, start+right arrow, start+up arrow, start+down arrow. That makes things easier when i'm watching videos and watching movies.

As for MCE, i like how you have native QAM out of the box.

And i like how you can hide your notifications. That reduces the clutter.

The WiFi networking feature has been improved and is easier to use.

Not a huge fan of gadgets.

I'm sure there's more that i like, but i can't really think of it.
 
Lets see.

1) Media Center is much, much better. It finally supports QAM properly and a bunch more file types. I would buy Win7 just for this.

2) Task bar functionality. Once I got used to it, it is much easier to manage and really increased my efficiency. There are many times that I have 20+ things open and this really helps.

3) I'm running a i7 system, so I never had problems with speed. That said, Win7 is still faster and snappier on my system. Everything is more refined and functions correctly.

4) Having a UAC slide bar vs the on/off for Vista. This is a huge benefit over Vista.

5) My documents/My music/et al functionality. Being able to have my My Documents take files from several folder is great.

6) Having every codec that I need and want install out of the box. No more messing with codec installs.

7) Too many things to list here. There are dozens of little things here and there that just improve the overall experience. All together it makes for a huge improvement.

8) Free fully licensed Virtual PC Windows XP install that supports USB devises.

I really liked Vista, but Windows 7 just blows it out of the water. I can install it onto my main machine and it detects and installs drivers for everything. This is the first version of windows I have ever owned that works with everything I have out of the box, including having all the codecs I need.
 
spacetrader said:
70% faster start time? so not 30sec, but like 10 sec? win7 boots in 10 sec!?!? i guess im completely wrong then.. sorry

and qwerty, you can put vista gadgets anywhere... "close the sidebar" and not "exit". it gets rid of the bar and keeps the gadgets.
Click to expand...

Holy crap I never knew that...Thank you
 
Native TRIM support for SSD's is a biggie for me, in fact it's the primary reason I was upgrading until I read this thread :) :eek: .

(For those who don't know what TRIM is, basically it keeps the SSD running like-new instead of having performance degradation over time).
 
ScretHate said:
So far we have people wanting to pay $200+ for faster boot times and a better media program.

Any real reason to purchase 7 if you have Vista?

For me it would have to be substantially
1. More stable
2. More secure
3. Faster

And please spare me that argument that it's more secure or stable because it's newer. New software is not necessarily better than old software, whereas with hardware, newer generally does equate to better.
Click to expand...

but win7 'seems' more optimized... it 'feels' like it boots faster... even though tests show possibly a 10% boost in startup times at VERY BEST, it just 'flows' better as an OS and you can tell it makes vista seem like crap
 
yeah win7 looks alot like vista, but it has a better inside. they're supposed to have fixed the windows os for good. i hope so, or i'll be the 1st abandoning pc's. and getting an imac.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Native TRIM support for SSD's is a biggie for me, in fact it's the primary reason I was upgrading until I read this thread :) :eek: .

(For those who don't know what TRIM is, basically it keeps the SSD running like-new instead of having performance degradation over time).
Click to expand...

Like you would notice that anyway *chough*
 
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