Windows 7

[doctorhardware]

Can't wait to get the windows 7 upgrade disks that I bought. I got one from newegg and the other one was free from HP for the laptop that I got.

[cynthia]

Installed it yesterday and it pretty much looks like Vista under the shell. What I really like is not directly related to 7, but it's running a 64 bit OS and be able to use more RAM than the old limit. That makes it really fast.

[UncasMS]

got my copies yesterday and installed one 64 bit version so far

as i only have 4gb ram on all machines it did not see any difference to the former xp on this machine

i skipped vista entirely and now i'm mad at the rediculously high amount of ram usage running win 7 / 64bit

1.5gb ram used and hardly any demanding job running is insane and really pisses me off - c.f. attachment

on another machine i had xp with way more programs running (handbrake, firefox, total commander, filezilla server, qip and a few more) and hardly 600mb ram were used

have gone thru services now and will check how much that helped after next restart

+++

btw: does anyone know how to make the mousewheel act as a third mousebutton in win 7???

i am so much used to have the logitech mousewheel assigned to the "browser backward" command that not being able to use this click is driving me nuts

setpoint does not work properly (it only shows "extras" tabs but not a single configuration is available in setpoint here) and the good old and reliable mouseware driver cannot even be used and the win 7 driver does not provide this long-used options of assigning certain commands to the mousewheel as a click option

[UncasMS]

getting closer:

only ~1gb ram usage after disabling a couple of services which i dont think i want/need

[cynthia]

Been used to Vistas memory hunger so I added 8GB in this one.

Also 1.5GB used for just running it, as you have experienced. My first PC had 128 KB RAM. Those were the days.

[MilesAhead]

From Vista onward the ram usage can be a bit deceptive. It looks like they adopted the Linux approach(not that Linux invented it but I've seen it there for a long time) of caching everything in ram including the kitchen sink. There's some algorithm to try to predict your usage. If free ram is needed for a new app that's not in the cache, stuff in the cache is just dumped to make room. I know when I first started using top in Linux I was alarmed because I had hardly any "free" memory. But it just cached everything.

I believe there's a setting to keep Superfetch from caching processes while still allowing it to cache boot files. This site has a lot of excellent tutorials how to work around Windows quirks and Explorer foibles:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/

[UncasMS]

thanx for the infos, miles, and the link

as i have only installed win7/64 yesterday i cannot speak of real-life-data

will take quite some more days to install a couple of things and then i will start photoshopping and the like and see how they behave

(trouble is 64bit version of PS will hardly be uesed here as most plugins are only available in the 32bit version)

[doctorhardware]

I have not received my copies of windows 7. The one that I have an UPS tracking number, it has been stuck at the Des Monies IA sorting facility since Thursday. Also I am waiting for HP to ship the other my other copy of windows 7 upgrade.

[UncasMS]

i finally solved my "mousewheel problem":

the setpoint version which i (successfully) installed before did not let my configure anything and behaved a little weird.

found a setpoint 4.80 64bit for vista and now my mousewheel has its "backspace" function assgined again.

[doctorhardware]

I finally got my upgrade to windows 7 upgrade, pro edition and will be upgrading the HP laptop.

[MilesAhead]

Are you going to try the update preserving all apps or are you going to do clean install? I saw some blogs claiming there's a registry hack that lets you do an install to a clean partition without using the Vista "double install" trick.

I don't know if it's guaranteed or not but the blog is here:

http://www.winsupersite.com/

[doctorhardware]

No I am not doing a clean install because I want to keep the recovery partition. I have another tower that I am using windows 7 on. That way if I mess up the computer I don't care because I don't have any thing on it that is important.

[MilesAhead]

I see. I'm thinking when my trial time is up I may go with the OEM disk. I'm curious how much crapware comes with. But I figure it has to be cleaner than preinstalled. I could just put Vista back on but that damn thing won't take SP1. Probably because it has hacked dlls to use themes I don't know. I guess there really isn't any reason why I need ultimate edition anyway. The Home Premium editions seem to have the stuff I'll use.

[cynthia]

I got the OEM disc and no crapware (except Windows) on the disc.

[doctorhardware]

Well I could not do the upgrade, I had to do the full installation of win 7 pro. It is faster then vista is.