The thread wherein Windows 7 is discussed...

[Goreschach]

I was running XP. Now I'm on the 7 RC, and I bought the $50 deal on Amazon. The RC lasts a good deal past the release, so I don't think there's any reason to pick up Vista now, unless you just want an extra OS.

[Prospero]

I'd grab the pro version for 100. It lets you keep an XP install around for when an app isn't compatible with W7.

[Yegolev]

Dual-booting is a breeze, in fact I did it a few times by accident.  Or maybe it comes with a XP key?

I'll be buying something eventually since I have two Windows computers and one Windows key.

[funcro]

Screw it.  I'm trying the upgrade.  I absolutely refuse to in-place upgrade, so if it doesn't allow for a clean install it goes in the trash, but at $50, I'm willing to take the risk.  Worst case, that's one less crappy MMO I try for the included month this year.  It's almost like they're doing me a favor.

[Prospero]

I hate dual booting with a passion. As long as the performance isn't miserable, I'll gladly fork over 50 bucks to be able to run the rare XP only app.

[funcro]

Keep in mind that unlike recent versions of VirtualBox, the stripped down copy of Virtual PC included with Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate doesn't virtualize the GPU, so if the XP app you're hoping to run in XP mode is a game, you're very likely to be sorely disappointed.

[Prospero]

Say wha? Dumb fuckers.

[Salamok]

Interesting, I didn't realize that. A couple articles linked to the register:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/02/05/windows_xp_7_vista_upgrade/

Looks like it only supports clean installs, but who the heck upgrades in place?

I would also like to hear reasons we shouldn't be jumping on that $50 pre-order deal, because I'm going to find a way to scrape up some dough for it...

Main reason is because you should be jumping on the pro upgrade for $100.

[NiX]

Keep in mind that unlike recent versions of VirtualBox, the stripped down copy of Virtual PC included with Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate doesn't virtualize the GPU, so if the XP app you're hoping to run in XP mode is a game, you're very likely to be sorely disappointed.

I don't see how you could be disappointed. They've stated numerous times it isn't for gamers, it's for businesses who can't afford to lose functionality of apps that only work in XP.

[Prospero]

Not on their web site they don't. I haven't been following W7 all that closely. I saw some of the UI enhancements and I think I like what I see so far. Now I'm thinking it might not be worth update until they do something a bit more interesting. Snap and Aero Peek aren't worth 100 bucks.

[NiX]

They've only ever said it would support XP applications and on MSDN they've made numerous posts to say it's not for gaming. Of course not everyone reads MSDN, but I'm sure you realize that Virtual PC gaming is not anywhere close to a big part of their demographic.

[Prospero]

Nope, I imagine not. Nonetheless, for this particular customer, it would be lovely. I understand their reasoning completely, but it's a feature I'm sad they aren't going to support. Life goes on.

[Delmania]

They've only ever said it would support XP applications and on MSDN they've made numerous posts to say it's not for gaming. Of course not everyone reads MSDN, but I'm sure you realize that Virtual PC gaming is not anywhere close to a big part of their demographic.

Yep, the intended purpose of XP mode is to give business clients some peace of mind when going to Windows 7, because like all those horribly coppled Intranet sites that keep ie6 afloat, many business can't be bothered to rewrite their internal applications to run under the new kernel and whatnot. 

[Sky]

Main reason is because you should be jumping on the pro upgrade for $100.

That is not an acceptable reason. Telling me why I should shell out $50 for the pro version would be a reason 

[Salamok]

Main reason is because you should be jumping on the pro upgrade for $100.

That is not an acceptable reason. Telling me why I should shell out $50 for the pro version would be a reason 

XP Mode + Ability to Host a remote desktop session + Support for more than 16gig of RAM = worth an extra $50.

Over 16gig seems rediculous but if this OS ends up lasting me as long as XP did then it may actually be a barrier I wish to exceed, I have pretty much already convinced myself to purchase a copy of VMWare workstation in the next year or so and the ability to host multiple 8gb images may be nice if RAM continues along its current price/gb trend.  If the built in backup solution isn't total shit i'll probably even use that too.

[Strazos]

For the record, I have not, as of yet, had a problem running any programs at all. Including old XP stuff from around 2000.

[Mrbloodworth]

So, is there an ETA as to when this drops?

[Trippy]

October 22, 2009.

[fuser]

All retail editions of Windows 7 will ship with both the 32 & 64 bit DVDs.

Thank god, must mean retail keys are now interchanagable, wonder if OEM is the same.

[Ray]

So, with my new system, I'm going to be using the 64-bit OS with 6 gigs of DDR3 Ram.  Do I not need to worry about the page file?

Highly doubtful.  You can watch your RAM usage for shits-n-giggles and decide, but if you end up using that much RAM I'd say you might actually know what is consuming it all.  Or close a few dozen apps.

RAM doesn't actually work that way in Vista or 7 or 2k8. The OS will cache RAM for frequently used programs and internal tasks and release it back as available when something else needs it. Having almost-full memory usage is not a problem in those operating systems.
Free RAM is wasted RAM.

If you have enough RAM, you won't need a pagefile.  No, really.  It's meant as a cheap overflow for when you run out of expensive (meaning $$$) RAM.  Hell, I had not had one for some time and I only have 3GB of RAM, but now that I'm using a 64-bit OS I figured I should implement one again.  As for solid-state disks, it would be cheaper and easier to install more RAM and leave out the pagefile.

Ugh this is wrong. Some programs will completely break if you don't have a pagefile and the OS will use the pagefile for certain internal things even if you have all the RAM in the world. Disabling the pagefile is never a good idea, even if you have a shitload of RAM. There's no real benefit, but there's some very real downside possibilities. I say possibilities because there's a lot of people that run with no pagefile and haven't had any issues, but they haven't had any performance benefits either...so why risk it?

[Engels]

What is the risk, other than a random BSOD? If you're just playing Call of Duty, who cares? Sure, its not healthy to risk your machine faulting on a dime, but at the same time, if its a gaming rig, you probably don't want to have -too- valuable unreproduceable data/programs/config on it in any case.

[NiX]

I'd imagine there's no serious risk outside of lack of memory errors from the Windows processes that demand a page file. Would it gain you any performance? Slight, but only in the case that a lot was being put into page file while you were doing something.

[rattran]

Sacred 1 is the only thing that has given me grief for not having a page file. Everything else is fine, and windows7 just throws up a 'you are running low on available memory' box if you open enough things to be using all the ram.

[Morfiend]

So, with my new system, I'm going to be using the 64-bit OS with 6 gigs of DDR3 Ram.  Do I not need to worry about the page file?

Highly doubtful.  You can watch your RAM usage for shits-n-giggles and decide, but if you end up using that much RAM I'd say you might actually know what is consuming it all.  Or close a few dozen apps.

RAM doesn't actually work that way in Vista or 7 or 2k8. The OS will cache RAM for frequently used programs and internal tasks and release it back as available when something else needs it. Having almost-full memory usage is not a problem in those operating systems.
Free RAM is wasted RAM.

I just want to second this. Running Vista, it looks like its sucking the majority of your RAM, but it will release it as soon as another program needs it.

Screw it.  I'm trying the upgrade.  I absolutely refuse to in-place upgrade, so if it doesn't allow for a clean install it goes in the trash, but at $50, I'm willing to take the risk.  Worst case, that's one less crappy MMO I try for the included month this year.  It's almost like they're doing me a favor.

The upgrade does allow you to do a clean install. I also would never do a "in-place" upgrade.

I preordered the Home version as I couldnt see anything in the version chart that required me to get Pro or Ultimate.

[Yegolev]

Good to know Windows is catching up.   Not that I've had any trouble other than running out of memory.  My observations is that my machine doesn't actually use RAM as fs cache, but then I haven't done a whole lot of observation so maybe I just have not seen it happen yet.  Right now, after using my machine for various things, this thing has 2GB free out of 3GB... so all I can say is that it doesn't seem to behave like a OS that caches files.  Even if it did, I don't care about file cache much so I'd rather not it be reported.

I'm totally not interested in learning about Windows performance to that detail.  I am pretty sure, however, that programs relying on a pagefile is stupid.

[fuser]

For the record, I have not, as of yet, had a problem running any programs at all. Including old XP stuff from around 2000.

AutoCAD r14 

Simply will not run in Vista 64bit, but works fine under 7's XP mode 

[Mrbloodworth]

Anyone tried multi-tasking with software other than games? I'm talking about with photo shop, illustrator and a few other creation programs open, with a few items loaded?

[Yegolev]

Well, nothing as "serious" as an Adobe product, but I usually have more than one thing open.  I almost always have Firefox open with seven+ tabs, plus whatever else.  I have alt-tabbed out of games to run Paint.NET many times, sometimes with PowerShell running in &.  I also use IE to manage my router.  Several times I have had Steam and Impulse running/updating at the same time.  No perceptible problems with how W7 handles things.  The one time I ever had a problem I could pin on the (RC) OS was when I ran out of memory at the end of a Demigod match, and that was because I had forgotten to turn on my pagefile so it wasn't actually an OS problem.

I have found that the Sysinternals pagedefrag tool does not work on W7.  Hoping for an update eventually.

[funcro]

HotHardware claims no clean installs from Windows 7 upgrade editions.  There's enough confusion surrounding the matter that I've cancelled my preorder.  OEM editions won't be hugely more expensive, and the ability to perform a truly clean install onto a just-zeroed partition is worth the premium to me.

[Salamok]

HotHardware claims no clean installs from Windows 7 upgrade editions.  There's enough confusion surrounding the matter that I've cancelled my preorder.  OEM editions won't be hugely more expensive, and the ability to perform a truly clean install onto a just-zeroed partition is worth the premium to me.

Pretty sure they are interpretting this wrong.  The fact that they don't cite an official source makes it tough to tell for sure though.

[Ray]

What is the risk, other than a random BSOD? If you're just playing Call of Duty, who cares? Sure, its not healthy to risk your machine faulting on a dime, but at the same time, if its a gaming rig, you probably don't want to have -too- valuable unreproduceable data/programs/config on it in any case.

I'd imagine there's no serious risk outside of lack of memory errors from the Windows processes that demand a page file. Would it gain you any performance? Slight, but only in the case that a lot was being put into page file while you were doing something.

Random BSODing is potentially disastrous. I'd say that it's a pretty big risk.

There is literally no performance gain from disabling the page file, because...

Your OS (particularly Vista and 7!) know how to manage your computer's memory much better than you do. Disabling the page file will not magically force the OS to use physical RAM instead.

[Yegolev]

HotHardware claims no clean installs from Windows 7 upgrade editions.  There's enough confusion surrounding the matter that I've cancelled my preorder.  OEM editions won't be hugely more expensive, and the ability to perform a truly clean install onto a just-zeroed partition is worth the premium to me.

Pretty sure they are interpretting this wrong.  The fact that they don't cite an official source makes it tough to tell for sure though.

They also seem to think you have to do a fresh install using the RC as well, which you don't, so I'm suspicious they cannot be trusted.

[Yegolev]

Disabling the page file will not magically force the OS to use physical RAM instead.

Surely you phrased that incorrectly.

[JWIV]

Wish I knew what version I need to pick up.  I've got a XP key, but I've had to build/rebuild/modify my computer using the key often enough that if I so much as sneeze at my computer, I have to go through a phone call with a person to reactivate.      I'm currently using the Windows 7 RC1 with no problems (other than a volume that loves to flip to read-only for some stupid ass reason), so I'm obviously going to be buying something come October.  Just no damn clue if the upgrade will actually work or not.

[fuser]

I've got a XP key, but I've had to build/rebuild/modify my computer using the key often enough that if I so much as sneeze at my computer, I have to go through a phone call with a person to reactivate. 

Sounds like an OEM key as they are very touchy to activate with hardware/os rebuilds.

 Shouldn't be an issue on an upgrade tho as it "converts" to a windows 7 key if you bought the retail upgrade. Bascially microsofts logs the xp key and i think will stop WGA activatations of that key again. I cannot see them blocking an OEM upgrade because its a whole level of support/media it dosen't need. If you have a WGA valid key it should work.

 The question is what the end key would be, and it would be really amazing if it came out as retail key. I'd say the new 7 key thrown out tho will be bound to your new hardware (the same as if you call about an XP oem activation) as a new OEM key.


Technet discussion on the same problem.