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Review by brainout
Microsoft products are all paranoid. They assume you are trying to pirate their stuff. So they are hard to install, understand, use. This paranoia began with XP, but the paranoia matured in Vista, and is full-fledged, in Win7. It’s positively manic, in Win8. So frankly, if you value your own sanity, never go beyond Win7. And keep your XP. I bought four more copies of XP Pro OS from DigiConcepts here in Amazon, because frankly I don’t want to use Win7 much. Will be dual-booting my XP machines with Linux, to protect against any internet exposure.
Add to this, the complication of whether you should buy a 64-bit or 32-bit MS OS. Opt for the latter, if you have old files. User complaints are highest with 64-bit MS OS, because they can’t install their old programs. They can’t install, because installation programs are 16-bit, which never works with a 64-bit OS. MS has not solved the problem with its ‘XP MODE’, which you can freely download with the 64-bit version of Win7 Pro. This is true even though 64-bit OS can run 32-bit programs; it’s INSTALLING those programs – as you always must do, to run them – which is the problem. So basically, if you’re on 32-bit XP now, don’t go to 64-bit Windows 7 unless you are quite informed about the ramifications and you KNOW the software you’ll use, is compatible with it.
So, I’m still thinking of buying a separate Win7 32-bit OS; but in order to decide, I bought a used computer at dellauction with Win7 Pro already on it, which cost me less than the software. I am and remain on XP. Have five XP machines, one Vista, three Win7, five Win98 machines, and 10 others which are still on DOS. Will be migrating to Linux, though for now I just use Linux Mint 13 and Fedora 17 on pen drives, saving time. The ‘Windows 8’ fiasco has cost me months of downtime just learning WHAT TO BUY. So I’ll try to give the most helpful review I can on Windows 7. That’s where you should stop, unless you love poking your tablet or cellphone. For Win8 is a glitchy, mysterious, pokey and childish interface, not fit for any desktop. Just read the Windows 8 upgrade reviews here in Amazon or elsewhere, to see why. So, your best option if upgrading, is to Win7.
UPSHOT: Win7 is supposed to be safer, but is not. It is a bit smoother, and it is enough like XP in operation, to not be too much of a transition. I do NOT recommend installing Win7 over XP, because no Windows ‘upgrade’ ever goes well. Microsoft has a philosophy of one OS installation for one machine, so if you put another OS on a machine, there are always unforseen glitches. That’s how I got into Windows, my first machine was one a guy threw out, because he couldn’t make a Win98 upgrade work on his Win95 machine. (I’m a DOS junkie, and always will be.)nnAlways just bite the bullet and do a clean install. CLONE your hard drive first with Clonezilla and an external drive the same size as the internal drive, so if you don’t like Win7, you can just boot up in Clonezilla (here at Amazon in CD for only $8) and copy your clone drive back to your internal drive, in like 20 minutes. (Depending on how big your hard drive: 20 minutes for 60GB.)nnAnd keep your XP machine, or at least that clone drive of it. Win7 is good as a companion, and it eases the transition if you keep your old XP machine. Can dual-boot, if you know how.
In PC World I did a review of ‘Vista vs Win7’, using this ‘brainout’ nickname (my pen name on the internet, aka brainouty in Youtube due to y typo). Other people made their contributions to the review also, which might prove even more helpful. Each post is feature-specific. So you might want to look at that for greater detail. I tested the main features of both Vista and Windows 7 versus the XP I had, since I bought two used computers with each OS – the other was Vista Business.
Both are 32-bit, but on 64-bit architecture. Here, I’ll just give highlights in alpha-topical order:nn* DVD writing, yes! Linux was long able to use a DVDRW with its full capabilities, but as you know XP never could. You had to settle for the buggy Roxio or Nero. Or, like I learned to do, use some ‘live’ copy of Linux to do file management including DVD writing and rewriting, then go back to Windows XP for the normal stuff. In Vista and Win7, you can finally write to your DVD+RW or DVD-RW as if it were a floppy. And the instructions on usage inside Win7 are superb. MS’ own online instructions about DVD writing, by contrast, will make you tear your hair out. It’s worth buying the OS for this feature alone, especially if you get a used machine. Very happy feature. Of course, they TAKE IT AWAY, in Win8! That’s MS for ya: always wrecking what worked, and replacing it with an inferior feature. So get Win7 while you can, either as an OS like here, or as a separate machine. The DVD function will prove important long-term, as they archive best. I’m not a fan of Blu-Ray drives, because they hold too much data and any CD/DVD can easily be scratched and rendered unusable (though someone claimed you can restore them with toothpaste, lol).
* EXPLORER is similar to XP, but now too much white space, and the insertion of added categories near the top of Explorer is disorienting. You might like these, though I don’t: Libraries, Contacts, with Favorites instead of ‘Desktop’ at the very top. ‘Libraries’ is a confusing repository of shortcuts to named categories you can’t change but can copy to. It’s just a house of locations elsewhere, but seeing WHERE those other files are, is not easy to do, within ‘Libraries’. ‘Contacts’ replaces your address book. Favorites remains the same in meaning. But that added topspace is annoying. One good thing, your ‘My Documents’ folder doesn’t have to auto-expand, anymore. (Big pain, in XP, always having to collapse My documents every time you open Windows Explorer.)nnIn particular, Vista changed file organization such that My Documents is no longer under Documents and Settings, but rather in a USERS directory. Vista’s EXPLORER is constantly annoying, as you’ll forever be clicking on Documents and Settings, but will be denied entry. That’s because the files are no longer really there, but in the USERS directory. Win7 preserves this organization, so it’s confusing. Solution is just to make a shortcut, put it in a Desktop toolbar, and keep that toolbar in the same place as your taskbar.
* HELP is far better in Win7. Actually makes sense for a change. They reorganized all the functions into central locations, yet at the same time preserved the dialogue boxes you’re used to seeing. Basically, you right-click wherever you are, and help related to what you’re on, will appear as an option. For example, as before, right-click on the desktop when not on an icon, and you get Personalize (instead of Properties), which gives you a more centralized method of changing the look and feel and interface of Windows 7.
Other HELP appears pretty quickly in other contexts.
* INTERNETTING is smoother in Win7. Not bad in Vista, either. IE 9 is useless, but so has been every IE since IE7. Firefox is most flexible, Chrome most buggy, and you can decide which browser to use. They all work more smoothly in Win7.
* INSTALLATION, COMPATIBILITY: when you install programs, they will still install to each Vista and Win7, or (as usual) there will be glitches. The reported glitches in the past, are largely and often solved by now: initially, Vista and Win7 lacked drivers and needed the Service Packs. But if you’re buying either version now, manufacturers and software houses have long updated their drivers and programs, so you won’t have as much hassle. Even so, don’t take any chances. CLONE FIRST. Then, do a clean install and reinstall your programs and files.
Compatibility is strange; I couldn’t install Adobe 6, but could install MS Works 2006, in Vista or Win7. Couldn’t install MS 2002 or prior in Win7 on my Win7 Optiplex 780, but was able to install MS Office 2000 and 2002 on each of my Dell Win7 laptops (Lat 6530 and 6510, respectively). So it’s hit-or-miss. Google on your must-have programs to see if compatible with Win7. Its compatibility advisor is useless. You can still run DOS windows in Win7 (and in Win8 32-bit), but you won’t be able to go full-screen, as you can still do in XP (even on 64-bit architecture, if the OS is 32-bit).
Programs most likely to be incompatible are: Norton products which work in XP, any anti-virus or backup, anything which on installation, changes the right-click context menu in XP (will cause Win7 to crash). For all such programs you need to buy the latest Win7-compatible version. So that right there, may warrant you stay on XP. No problem; just learn to dual-boot with some flavor of Linux, and do your internetting from Linux, long term (after April 2014). Use the XP for anything else. Linux is no longer so hard, but there is a vocabulary to learn. Better to learn the vocabulary and keep your mission-critical programs. To save you headaches, the more-easily-learned Linux flavors are Mint 13 (not 14), Fedora 17 (not 18), and Zorin 6 Ultimate.
* XP MAIL aka Outlook Express, is one of the incompatibles; it’s ruined in Vista and Windows 7, they gutted Outlook Express in favor of MAIL (Vista), then LIVE MAIL (Windows 7). So you have no backwards-compatibility with OE, essentially. If you ported your OE files into Vista MAIL, you lose them again in Win7, and lose them again in Win8. Solution? Get Thunderbird, but install it first on your XP machine, find out what file names the mailboxes become, then copy those files over to your Win7 machine after installing a second copy of Thunderbird to it again. That way you keep the OE-like interface. Thunderbird will not export, sad to say.
Alternately, export your OE files to Outlook, but in Win7 you might only be allowed to use Outlook 2003 et seq. That’s a problem, because MS Office 2003 gets a TON of very annoying updates; one of them disables your ability to read older files, but they also derived a KB of two .reg patches you can download from MS to re-enable reading those files. Point is, though, you have about a bizillion ‘security’ updates to the MS Office 2003 suite, so you’ll have to put up with that. Moreover, Win8 is compatible with Outlook (though it told me only from 2010 forward, others report Outlook 2003 worked fine in Win8).
EXCEPTION TO THE MAIL PROBLEM: if you’re accustomed to sending and composing email online already, then Windows Live Essentials may prove helpful for you. Win8 has its own version of the same thing. I find online email utterly annoying, and compose and receive all email to my email client, which is Outlook Express (or Outlook, which is more confusing but also more powerful). So I don’t have to remember each online email’s own interface and commands (gmail versus Yahoo versus comcast, for example). I just use OE, which is like Word. So unless you are like me, you won’t find Windows Live Mail in Win7, a loss. You might even prefer it. You will still have to change if you upgrade to Win8, but the change is just like Windows Live Essentials, a sort of consolidation of all your email sources to ONE, but still online.
* MEDIA CENTER and New version of MOVIEMAKER, which now can make 1080p HD videos. Windows 7’s default LIVE Essentials (including its own retarded version of moviemaker) is not useful. By contrast, the freely-downloadable MS Windows Movie Maker 2.6 or 6.0 (latter allows HD, former is like old Moviemaker) is THE reason to upgrade to Vista or Win7. See my ‘Pixelan’ topic in PC World for details and download links. Moviemaker 6.0 is the best video editor I’ve ever used, and I make a ton of boring HD videos in Youtube. Like its predecessor, it will go into a hang if you’ve insufficient RAM. You really need 2 GB or more, preferably Core 2 Duo or i5, i7. This is especially true, if you’re remaking any Logitech webcam videos, since their bitrates are so high. Try the ‘Edge Detection’ effect in Moviemaker 6.0, a kind of white embossing effect. Can do wonders for face shots which didn’t turn out okay, in the webcam.
You will lose Media Center and your DVD and Movie Maker in Win8, so don’t upgrade to Win8 if you want the Media Center.
* MENUs, INTERFACE: if you’re used to the classic menu and even in XP you used it, Vista beats Win7 there. But you can tweak Win7 to get back most (but not all) of the classic ‘experience’, including how you organize and pin shortcuts to either Start Menu or taskbar. One bad thing about the new Start Menu is you can’t sort by name, and any additions you want go into specific sections of the left pane, with less ability to move them into other categories, versus the ease of XP. You can unpin (delete) them from the Start Menu, or move them only within the section they occupy. But you can still create any shortcut you want, put it on the desktop or the start menu.
MENU THEMES default is Aero, which is classy (and is GPU intensive, not CPU intensive, so might actually speed up your clock), but again you can change themes back to what you used in XP. What’s neat here, is that since the old themes do occupy your CPU instead of your GPU (the dedicated memory on your graphics card), you can switch back and forth between Aero and classic themes at will, after you create them. A tiled listing of your themes is kept, so it’s a one-click change. If you still use ‘Plus!’ from Win95, you can copy that entire folder into Program Files in either Vista or Win7, then run its theme.exe . It won’t wholly port over, but your sounds, pictures, font sizes etc. are all still customizable, so you can tweak it afterwards. Saved me a ton of time. Very much like XP, but in Win7 the themes are renamed themepack, so you can’t just click on a .theme file and have it install. Caveat: not all machines will work well if you use ‘Plus!’ theme.exe . So backup your machine before trying it for the first time.
Two key settings in Windows 7 ‘personalize’ (right-click while on the desktop) effectively turn Aero off and on: select Control Panel, All Control Panel Items, Performance and Information Tools, then ‘Adjust visual effects’. Then you see a dialogue box with ‘Enable desktop composition’, which if unchecked, turns off the Windows Color Aero effect, effectively returning it to default slate blue.
The other key setting in that same dialogue box, is ‘use visual styles on windows and buttons’. The latter, if unchecked, turns off Aero’s glassy effect, makes your Start Menu opaque like Win98, but dual-column, like XP. DO SAVE your current theme before you uncheck it, as the change forces that ugly ‘classic’ grey interface from Win 3.1. Then change the colors in Personalize, Windows Color, Advanced Appearance Settings, to access the XP-style dialogue box allowing you to change 3D Objects’ colors and fonts, etc. NOTE: if you later recheck ‘visual styles’, those colors you set are preserved in your programs. So you can have a hybrid of the glassy and the colors. It’s nice, the hybrid.
IMPORTANT: the themes you save without Aero, don’t convert well when you go back to Aero, the first time. Windows doesn’t fully ‘remember’ until you switch AGAIN to a non-Aero theme and then re-select an Aero theme. So if switching back and forth from a non-Aero theme back to one in Aero, do the selection twice, to fully reflect the theme.
MENU TOOLBARS: Sadly, you cannot use separate toolbars at top and bottom (or on the sides), but can aggregate as many toolbars as you create, in ONE place (top bottom left right). If you use MS Office, use the Office Shortcut bar to create added toolbars you can place elsewhere (i.e., at the top of the screen).
You can use your old classic themes, even from back in the Win95 days. There’s a special trick to it in Win7, so again see my review in PC World (on ‘Vista vs Win7’); I linked to a Windows 7 forum where that tweak is listed. It’s fast.
* OS INTERFERENCE with computer program changes, housekeeping: Vista is an even bigger pain than XP, as Vista is way overly protective, the so-called ‘User Account Control’ function assumes you DO NOT have the right to change your software or your machine, even on such a little thing as FONTS. Win7 on the FONTS problem is the same, but otherwise it only keeps on reminding you that you’re making changes, and you can disable its annoying reminders to some extent, too. So Win7 beats Vista there. Win7 also beats Linux there, because Linux is even more anal about permissions than Windows 7. (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora will all prompt you for permissions as much or more, than Vista, so you have to type the root password each time; the other Linux flavors either prevent you outright from a lot of normal functions, or make it too easy to screw up. But Linux always puts a copy of itself in another section of the disk, so if you shut down afterwards, your screwup might not be preserved.)nn* RAM – Vista and Win7, like XP, operate much better if you have more RAM, but 2 GB works well, and 1GB is quite acceptable. 4GB is far better, and today’s low RAM prices mean you should get that much RAM, if you can.
* REFRESH/RESTORE – forget it. MS never gets backup/refresh/restore correct, and the first week I had my Windows 7 machine it crashed. Only way I could restore it was via Clonezilla, and that only because I cloned the drive with Macrium 5 Reflect Pro. But you can buy Clonezilla’s FULL backup/clone program right here in Amazon (get the CD, not the USB stick). So use Clonezilla instead. NEVER USE WINDOWS TO BACK UP OR RESTORE WINDOWS. Keep only one restore point, too. Cloning is a LIVE COPY of your drive, and you can boot from it, as well as access any files without having to restore. Daily, one hour a day or less, CLONE your machine. Or at least, use third-party incremental backup software, like Macrium. I would never use the backup programs which come preinstalled on external hard drives from WD or Seagate, etc. They all stink. Just delete them.
* SEARCH is much better, in Win7, but is confusing to use, at first. Click on the Start Menu and just start typing, if you don’t want to look through what’s there. While you’re typing, you’ll see entries show up; but when you hit ENTER, you get the full separate Search Screen you’re used to seeing.
* TWEAKING – I highly recommend TuneUp Utilities with Windows, as there are a number of functions you’ll want and need, which it can do to customize and improve your experience with the machine. It is a kind of successor to Norton System Works, and I use it on all my XP machines. See my reviews on it, here in Amazon. It works with Windows 8 as well (2013 edition only, which you must download); but Win8 is the Hound from Hell, which I can’t recommend to anyone.
Win7 will be around for a long time. This product here, is the retail version, which means you can install and uninstall and reinstall as often as need be, on only one machine at a time. Never get an OEM version: the term means a copy sold to the firm manufacturing the hardware, and is specific TO that manufacturer; so since you are not the manufacturer, count on it, your copy will be glitchy or won’t work on the machine to which you install.
CAVEAT EMPTOR: Be sure that whoever you’re buying from, is selling you the RETAIL version, not OEM. ‘System Builder’ is a ‘master’ copy of the software, but it too can only be on one machine at a time. RETAIL is best, as it’s geared to an average person (versus SB, which is full of jargon and annoying to use.)nnDid I miss something you wanted covered? Yell at me. I learn best by writing stuff out and answering questions, so am not adverse to questions, criticism with substance (rather than mere rants), etc. Thank you for your time, and I hope this review helped!