Thread: Windows 7

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Then you're going to love Windows 7. Just on performance alone it beats the crap out of (even a heavily tuned) Vista.

I'll never understand why someone has to tune an OS to get good performance.

Originally Posted by Fondles

WAT ???

What ?

Originally Posted by Wallalai

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Then you're going to love Windows 7. Just on performance alone it beats the crap out of (even a heavily tuned) Vista.

I'll never understand why someone has to tune an OS to get good performance.

Tuning is down to features. You can tune Windows to perform optimally depending on your hardware and the applications you run.

The main reason for having that capability is that if you wanted an OS to automatically adapt, install drivers for any hardware and all the applications on the planet, you'd need about 1,000 DVDs

What advantages/disadvantages are there to installing the 64bit version of Win7 as opposed to the 32bit version?

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

What advantages/disadvantages are there to installing the 64bit version of Win7 as opposed to the 32bit version?

You can use more RAM. And I believe it will support more cores or processors. 64 bit software and drivers (of which there are not a lot yet) will supposedly run faster.

But realistically, unless RAM is an issue for you with a specific application, then don't bother - yet.

How much more RAM?

I know XP only supported 3Gig, but my mate has just got 4Gig and installed the 32bit version.

^ Ta muchly.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

You can use more RAM.

right, and you need more RAM to surf TD, read your emails and watch porn ?

all you need at most is 256MB

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

You can use more RAM.

right, and you need more RAM to surf TD, read your emails and watch porn ?

all you need at most is 256MB

Well that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I'm running two different browsers, flashget, spider solitaire, Outlook, a load of gadgets, a load of open explorer windows, and I've got *plenty* of change out of 2Gb - which is why I said forget about 64-bit!

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

and I've got *plenty* of change out of 2Gb

That's something I've never understood about Windows memory management. Why does it start using the swap space when the RAM still has space free?

On my iMac at the moment I am switching between FireFox with ~12 tabs open, Open Office with a doc and a spreadsheet, Mail.app, TextEdit, iTunes, Skype, a terminal instance, Transmission is chugging away uploading something, iPhoto is open, Activity Monitor is open, AppZapper is open, X11 is open, GIMP is open but minimised, Calculator is open, Temperature Monitor is open and the ClamXav installer is updating me to a newer version.

The menu bar has DropBox, 5 Temperature Monitor sensor indicators, Fan control, and indicators for the UPS, Bluetooth, ClamXav sentry, network, time machine, wifi, language and time on top of all the the other normal background processes like launchd that OS X runs and the machine is completely ticking along fine.

Uptime is 17 days and this thing has 2GB RAM, a 2 GHz CPU and a pretty feeble graphics card with a 128 MB Radeon HD 2400.

It should be stressing out at these fairly low specs but it isn't, and my swapfile usage is being reported at 38%.

^ you should have tried that under MacOS 8 with 2Gb RAM and you will have cried for Windows instead

not fair comparison, it's a unix system, even if Apple fucked it up

[quote]
That's something I've never understood about Windows memory management. Why does it start using the swap space when the RAM still has space free?[quote]

A good question, because people who use SSD devices wanted to know if it was safe to just turn off virtual memory.

Perhaps this article will confuse you as much as it confused me.

I think the phrase is "suck it and see"

So I am sucking it and seeing. I've just disabled the paging file on my Netbook and I'm rebooting it. All Windows said was disabling it means Windows may not be able to properly record error information or something.

I'll let you know how it goes later.



Oh and here's some reading for you.

Virtual Memory in Windows XP

Interesting.

I've loaded Outlook and Word 2007, Firefox, MPCStar, and VLC media player, and it's still not gone over 1Gb of RAM used.

I think I'll leave it like this and see how it plays.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Tuning is down to features. You can tune Windows to perform optimally depending on your hardware and the applications you run.

The main reason for having that capability is that if you wanted an OS to automatically adapt, install drivers for any hardware and all the applications on the planet, you'd need about 1,000 DVDs

Rubbish. Why would you want to install drivers for any hardware in a computer ?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Virtual Memory in Windows XP

very interesting link actually,

sounds like memory management under Windows might be more optimized than Unix or MacOS

actually, I noticed that Linux is taking more and more RAM in the same fashion as Windows, so maybe they have copied the MMS from MS after all

Glad I have friends at MS! It was next to free for me but it is time to build a new faster box...

Wallalai asked (or rather, sneered): "Rubbish. Why would you want to install drivers for any hardware in a computer ?"

Well, at a guess, because that's how it works in the Windows model, and that's the subject of this thread?

BTW, I am having no problems with no pagefile at all. I have to say that is another rather nice bonus of W7, especially given the (admittedly not as bad as people think) SSD "wear" issues.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I noticed that Linux is taking more and more RAM in the same fashion as Windows

What do you mean? Linux will always use up all the system RAM before it starts thrashing out to the swap file, Windows does it even when RAM is still available.

There was an interesting article about Mark Russinovich discussing the Win 7 kernel at The Reg today:

Windows 7's dirty secrets revealed • The Register

This quote: "The problem is that the operating system is full of internal dependencies, and as Russinovich admitted: "We don't really understand those dependencies" stands out and I like Russinovich. He knew more about Windows than MS before he even went to work for them, but it shows how MS are still bolting patches and work-arounds onto something that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Still, the MinWin thing sounds interesting, if a little familiar!

Just stumbled across this link, some free apps from Microsoft for Windows &.

24 best free Windows apps from Microsoft | News | TechRadar UK

Originally Posted by slackula

That's something I've never understood about Windows memory management. Why does it start using the swap space when the RAM still has space free?

It's a paradox, wrapped in an enigma... Left hand not talking to the right hand and all that...

Originally Posted by Butterfly

sounds like memory management under Windows might be more optimized than Unix

ANy updated opinions on the quality of Windows 7? Just curious if the satisfaction is still there.

I'm happy with it. My laptop struggles a bit now, but it needed more RAM and a larger HD whatever OS it was running.

I'm still using it on my Netbook, and I've never had a blue screenn or a freeze. It's fine and I'd recommend anyone on Vista to switch to it.

I've tried installing it on older PCs (3+years before its release) and in some cases there is no support for the onboard hardware, although in fairness if you go to the website for the manufacturers, then tend to tell you which they support and which they won't.