Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 73
 Windows 7 Upgrade obtained from Amazon November 5, 2009
James P. Howard (Colorado)
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
I gave it one but it should be a zero. First the instructions that are in the package are WRONG!!!!. The instructions state Step 1; Turn on your PC. Step2: When you get to the Windows desktop, insert the Windows 7 installation disc. Setup should launch automatically, if it doesn't just; click the Start button; Click Computer or My Computer; Open the Windows 7 installation disc on your DVD drive and then double click setup.exe Step 3: On Install Windows page click install now and follow the instructions. IF YOU DO THIS THE INSTALL HANGS UP AT 27% OF EXPAND FOLDERS AND DOES NOTHING MORE. What you need is a DVD Drive that is bootable and set your BIOS page accordingly. It will install then, however when I selected the start menu the whole computer froze up and I could nothing as nothing responded. I could not shut down the computer except by doing a hard shutdown. The computer would not restart correctly or from the Windows disc. I reinstalled Windows XP as I need an operational computer. This was a five days of frustration. Hopefully Amazon will issue a RMA. What I can tell this was worse then Vista. I will stay with XP until Microsoft get its act together. By the way, I did use Windows 7 Advisor and should not have had a problem. Dell XPS 600, 3G Dual core processor, 2G Memory, 1T Hard drive, got Laplink PC mover updated drivers for sound, and others were current. ETC.
 Great Product, Terrible Usage of the Word "Upgrade" November 5, 2009
B. Perry (Fairfield, Ca)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I will admit that I love Windows 7 so far. It has been absolutely rock-solid, nice to look at...but most importantly, it has corrected most of the issues I had with Vista. I also work in the IT-field and know computers inside and out, for the most part, and like to keep up with all the "latest and greatest" software. When Microsoft offered their "half-off upgrade promotional pricing" some months ago, I jumped on it to pre-order my copy of Windows 7.
My issue, at the time, was that I had Vista Ultimate...and the comparable version of Windows 7 was inexplicably not offered at any discount. I had felt that Microsoft was giving their biggest enthusiasts (or fools, depending on how you look at it) that bought a license for Vista Ultimate the shaft by not offering them promotional pricing on Windows 7 Ultimate (especially when one considers that Microsoft did not live up to their promises of the "Ultimate Extras" in Vista Ultimate). What appeased me at the time was when I compared the features in each version of Windows 7. I noticed that Ultimate had two features over Professional; two features I wouldn't miss. So I ordered the upgrade for Windows 7 Professional.
At the time, I was not warned that you couldn't upgrade from Vista Ultimate to a "lower" version of Windows 7. I found that out when trying to actually do the upgrade...and I was furious. As another reviewer put on here, you are absolutely allowed to upgrade from ANY version of Vista to Windows 7 Ultimate. That being the case, there is NO reason why one shouldn't be able to upgrade from any version of Vista to ANY version of Windows 7. It's a higher OS version no matter which way you look at things. And for those who would argue that the reasoning behind the upgrade-paths is based on architecture and whatnot, that all goes down the toilet when you consider you can upgrade from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate. Since Windows 7 Professional now goes back to the way the versions of XP worked (Professional includes ALL of the features of Home Premium), this becomes even more unacceptable.
In the end, I did a clean install of Windows 7 Professional because I had no intentions of spending over $100 more for the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade. I was able to get the OS and all programs, files, and settings installed within a day and things are working wonderfully. During the install, I was not asked for a single driver, although I did update to more current versions after the install of the OS.
Windows 7 is quite a bit faster than Vista. The boot time for my machine has been reduced by 1/3 and I now notice that my memory and CPU usages are both lowered by 25-40% vs. Vista. I love the new task bar styling and how you can easily pin items to it. I love the Jump Lists that allow you to easily pick common tasks or open documents you've recently used by right-clicking a program in your task bar. The Start Menu search bar is now much more useful in that it finds everything matching your search criteria very quickly. Another favorite of mine is Windows Snap. As a programmer, I often have to have two windows side-by-side for comparison purposes. Now, making them line up on the sides of my screen is very easy. Windows Shake is fairly useless...I honestly have no idea where that feature would actually be useful.
To summarize, I feel that Windows 7 is a terrific Operating System and one of the VERY few that I actually recommend upgrading to prior to the first service pack release. However, Microsoft and all retailers selling the Windows 7 line need to make it abundantly clear as to what "upgrade" truly means to the end-user. Sure, any license of XP or Vista will allow you to use the upgrade versions of Windows 7. However, the majority of casual users will assume the word "upgrade" means that they can pop the disc in and, when all is said and done, have all of their programs, settings, and files intact. Windows 7 is an awesome evolution of Vista (and what Vista should have been!), but those upgrading need to be better informed of what could be a painful upgrade process, especially if they are currently running XP.
Frustrating limitations November 5, 2009
J. Knowlton
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
After going through the install and trying to enter the supplied product key, I was told the key was invalid...45 minutes of research later I discover that this Win 7 upgrade can't be installed on a formatted drive. Microsoft's solution (sic) is to reinstall Vista and then run the upgrade from that install to install Windows 7. So user beware, if you format your drive (or try using a new drive) you'll have to install an OS THREE times (Win 7, reinstall Vista again, reinstall Win 7 again). Furthermore only Win 7 will properly align your partitions as required for SSDs, so keeping/installing Vista first is a non-starter. Thanks Microsoft for making it harder than ever to try to be your customer.
Not Ready Yet. November 3, 2009
G. Norton
17 out of 25 found this review helpful
Unless you are a PC professional or your recreation consists solely in fiddling with computers (and you're not sure whether there is an opposite sex or not), you'd be better off staying away from Win7.
You will be doing Microsoft's integration testing and final QA. And you will pay for the privilege. I've been using Win 7 Beta since it first came out, and the Windows 7 Release Candidate (supposedly frozen code) for the last 6 months. Both were generally good OS packages, and fast, but the purchased version has features (and "inconveniences") not in the Beta or the Release Candidate. My guess is the code was frozen a few minutes before the first product disks were made.
Win 7 is a big improvement over Vista. But then, XP is a big improvement over Vista. Win 7 is much faster than Vista, it may be faster than XP. But it has big-company computer management clunkiness, not what I want in my very-own personal PC.
And Win7 is not ready for Prime Time. Nobody but Microsoft could get away with releasing such untested software.
Networking among Win7 computers is totally different from the Workgroup networking of 98 and XP. You will have to forget all you figured out over the last decade and start over. Vista concepts may be carried forward, but as I studiously avoided Vista, I don't know how Vista to Vista networking works.
If you understand and are competent with XP, you will find Microsoft support clueless. They can help first-time computer users set up Win7, but beyond the basics they are lost. Good, friendly people, eager to help, but in over their heads. And second-tier (higher level) technical support is buried. Not a good sign.
After 30 hours of trying to get Win7 to do what I could do with XP, I reloaded XP. This review is typed on XP. I'll wait for Win 7 service pack (SP) 2 in a year or so. I suggest you do the same.
More details and explanation
I had Win 7 Beta in a heterogeneous network with XP. When I upgraded my XP computer to Win 7 things changed - particularly networking.
I've been using Microsoft products since the beginning, and have advanced through Win 95, Win 98, and XP, with home networks since networking became native with Win98. For me a computer is a tool to do work. Computers are not hobbies, entertainment, nor my profession. I try to get computers and networks to do what I want (sharing printers and files, backing each other up) and have generally succeeded, but fiddling with them is not entertaining.
Win 7 is a big improvement over Vista. But then, XP is a big improvement over Vista. I replaced Vista with XP on my laptop when I realized the 3gigaherz dual-core laptop with 2 gig of memory running Vista was slower than my desktop which had a 500 megaherz Pentium, half a gig of memory, and ran XP. Eight times the processing power, 4 times the memory, and slower. Vista is a pig.
But then, Win 98 is an improvement over Vista, as was DOS 6 and Windows 3.0.
Overall Approach.
Windows 98 was for personal computers - your computer, you managed it, you (and only you) used it. It was your computer with your OS, your configuration, your file structure, your networking, and your software.
Windows NT and Win 2000 were for corporate PCs. The computer belonged to corporate IT. Corporate IT managed and controlled the computer: its configuration, networking, software, available services, etc. A Windows 2000 computer was just a terminal into the big distributed corporate computer, a terminal that had local storage for your personal work, but you, the user, were not to control it.
An environment (and need) that emerged about 10 years ago was the multi-user PC: your spouse, your kids (of varying ages), the baby sitter, your brother, and anybody else who happened to be in your house would use your PC, surf the web (porn sites), download software, introduce malware, and make changes that messed forced you to rebuild.
XP adapted to the multi-user PC environment, giving you, the owner, some control and giving each user his own logon and file structure. This changed where files were stored, even if you were the only user, pretending that the file system actually began with the Desktop (a la Apple; Bill Gates has a serious envy problem relative to Steven Jobs) rather than with the hard drive, the actual root. XP wants to force all your work into the "My Documents" folder which is OK, I guess, unless you want to put your work on a hard drive or partition other than C:\. My Documents is, of course, actually located at C:\Documents and Settings\\My Documents, right next to where the Desktop actually is: C:\Documents and Settings\\Desktop. Everything Windows Explorer (Microsoft used to call this program "File Manager", when you were expected to manage files rather than simply explore) shows above "My Computer" is a fiction.
Win 7 combines the Win 98, WinXP, and Win 2000 approaches into one single package. Now, its may be your persona PC you bought from Dell, you may be the only user, but there are some things you can't do unless you are the Administrator. This is to protect you from people who won't be using your computer anyway and to ensure you use the PC in a corporate-approved way. If you follow Microsoft's advice and set up an Administrator account in addition to your user account, you will discover that, when you turned the computer on while you were making coffee, it didn't boot all the way up, but only half-way and waited for you to tell it who was going to use the computer: you or the Administrator (which is, of course, you). After you give it an answer, Win 7 will finish launching while you waste time watching it.
If you want your laptop to be ready to do work when you come back with coffee, don't set up an Administrator account. Just make sure you have all administrative privileges (easy to do) when you set up your user account during install. Or straighten everything out with the Users program in Control Panel. Vista is the same way, so if you've been suffering with Vista you already know about it.
Operating without full privileges actually makes sense in Linux, where you can accidentally do some serious damage very quickly, and when IT doesn't want you do change your PC, but it is unnecessary for a personal PC. (It's sad when PC no longer means "Personal Computer," so you have Corporate Personal Computers and Personal Personal Computers.)
Still, you will regularly be told you can't do things you want to do unless the Administrator approves. Click a button to approve (or turn the protection off, I don't remember how) as it is an opportunity to think twice before doing something really stupid - like installing and running eatsyourdiskforlunch.exe which you accidently downloaded).
When upgraded from XP, I discovered that I didn't have permission to install some of the utility programs I'd downloaded (and paid for). The upgrade conveniently saved the install files, but I couldn't run them. Changing the file ownership (file ownership - another new "feature") didn't help. Fortunately I'd copied all these programs to another disk and I could run them from there. Why Win7 would save an exe file then not let you run it is another entry in the growing list of Redmond Mysteries.
Networking
Somewhere along the way (98 or XP) Windows made networking a native feature of the OS and introduced the concept of Workgroups. Workgroups allowed you to set up logical subnets on your router so I could keep my computers and their associated storage and printers separate from my kids computers. You can give your workgroup any name you want, though the default was "Workgroup". You added individual computers to one workgroup or another. Certain resources could be shared among workgroups. Each computer selected files and folders for sharing, with or without passwords, and it was all pretty powerful; at least it did everything I ever wanted it to. Firewalls on individual computers provided added protection and flexibility.
Rather than building on the familiar, Win7 introduces a totally new concept: Homegroup. In a heterogeneous network (e.g., Win 7 and XP on different computers) Workgroups still exist, but became inoperative when I upgraded my XP to Win7. Now everything is "Homegroup". All homegroups are named "Homegroup". You can put in security and passwords, but you can't change the name. Perhaps that's not true, but Microsoft support doesn't know how to do it.
If it is possible to set up separate logical subnets on a router - with different passwords and sharing - and I'm not convinced it is - all the homegroups will have the same name: "Homegroup." Worthless.
Support.
The Microsoft website is about as organized as a library with all the books misfiled. There is a support Chat function, if you have the Win7 ID number (the one that appears in Computer Properties, not the unlock key that comes with the disk) you can "chat" with friendly, responsive people who seem to know less about Win7 than I do. I've been into chat 3 times, each time it took me 30 minutes to find it, and each time I somehow got there a different way. It isn't easy and obvious like other support sites like Dell and Computer Associates.
Like much that comes from Microsoft, the web site makes sense only if you already know so much that you don't need to go to the web site.
I spent 4 hours with three different first-level support people (nice folks) doing goofy things as they tried to figure out how Win7 networking worked. Microsoft is so inundated with Win7 problems that the second-level technical support is backlogged at least 24 hours.
When support is buried, you know the product has lots of problems.
Gotta upgrade November 3, 2009
Brian L (Brookfield CT)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I went from Vista to 7 and the upgrade was pretty easy, did take a while to perform, so be patient. It has some nice new features on it, but I already have recieved windows updates, but that is to be expected. Seems to run a bit faster than Vista, but could be from the indexing function.
Showing reviews 26-30 of 73
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