endlesszeal

My Dell 700m with 1.6 penti m and 1.25 GB was getting long in the tooth and needed a reformat. Ive been hearing great things about Win 7 and since its not my main rig, I didnt mind having a RC on my laptop. Well, Im excited and disappointed at the sametime.

Win7 is fast. XP fast. And it consumes only 500+/-15mb of RAM vs Vista SP1 which consumes 900+/-50mb. Both clean install and nothing loaded and superfetch on default. For reference, XP SP3 is 300+/-20mb. It also installed everything on my laptop except the video driver. This great because my laptop is 4-5 years old and I didnt have to rumage to drivers working properly. And its very pretty

Now for the bad part. I spent 2-3 days trying to force my video driver to work but no avail. Per Intel, they are not planning to release ANY drivers to support Win7. Vista had a WMMD driver for the Intel 825/855 chipset but it has yet to appear on Win7. Also, Win7 is shy of a couple months of RTM and then retail in Oct. Thus, those with this particular chipset are doomed to be SOL as of the moment. There are a couple of hacks and workarounds but its a hit or miss and mine was a miss.
It defaults to a 4:3 ratio and video play back is choppy. My laptop is widescreen so about 1/8th of each side is blank.

Anyway, just an FYI for those who are using an older machine and my experience with Win7. Im crossing my fingers for a driver release to fix my video because I really like Win7 so far.

corvetteguy78

why is that surprising...they don't build new O/S's to work with older machines and older technology....new O/S's are for newer machines with newer technology...they are trying to move forward not backwards...

while they may try to retro fit old shit to work...thats not the main goal of building a new OS

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Drake

Have you tried using Vista drivers?

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TurboMirage

vista drivers are your best bet to get it up and running proper.

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See what is done to the little Evo5.

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endlesszeal

yup tried loading vista with xddm drivers and using drivermax to export and then load them onto Win7. still doesnt like it very much.

and obviously people dont understand the market much or know too much about tech. windows has made two huge mistakes that have cost them greatly with their OS's expecting what corvetteguy expected. new os = new and faster machines.

example 1: when vista released, MS was hoping everyone had at least 2GB of RAM, dual core and direct x9 video. they were dead wrong. most people where buying budget machines with single core celerons, 1gb of ram and grossly underpowering onboard video. then even had lawsuits against them because they were certifying everything intel had as vista compatible with aero but couldnt enable it.

example 2: windows mobile. they kept bloating it and expecting machines to get faster and faster. my PDA from 2004 has an intel Xscale running at 575mhz. however, even in 2008 my new smartphone has a limpy TI OMAP 200mhz processor, as many other phones because they utilize the old tech that is cheap and has high yields already. as a result, win mobile is sluggish as hell at best in todays smartphone.

So for new OSes the best approach is to code for OPTIMIZATION for today's gear and have it be able to scale for tomorrows and not bet on everyone upgrading the the latest and greatest. That is what Win7 has done. In addtion, a major part of laptop sales has been going to the so called "netbooks" which contain an 1.6ghz atom equalivent of a celeron processor running at 900mhz. It would be stupid of windows to let that market go or keep supporting windows xp that will be 2 gens old.

TurboMirage

my netbook rocks.... not slow at all with 7 and a ton of apps on it.

__________________
Home of the RPW built 2000 Lancer CC Coupe.

See what is done to the little Evo5.

"If you don't like what I've done with my car, I will gladly refund all the money you put into it."

kriz

I think you misunderstood. You are talking explicitly about hardware here, whereas the issue at hand is with your software. Put blatantly, nobody is going to go back and check to make sure that their OS is compatible with every computer driver going 4-5 years back. Its just not worth it.

Aside from that, did you try installing Vista drivers in compatibility mode? I know it sounds stupid but I've gotten that trick to work for me with my sound drivers more than once (Creative drivers suck ass at best).

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endlesszeal

im not bitching about windows 7 not working with my laptop because i know its older hardware and xp is just fine with me. im just saying its unfornuate because i really like the new os. in addition, i was just pointing out that OSes or programs for the matter,not be coded for future products but for hardware now and scale up. shoot talking of progression, a lot of programs are just barely starting to utilize more than 2 cores.

also, like i mentioned earlier, a lot of people are still hanging on to hardware that is 4-5 years old and even intel is hanging on releasing netbooks with OLD OLD 945 chipsets from 2005. i just minwin will come to fruition.

lastly, i tried everything under the sun to get it working and its a hit or miss. turned off uac, integrity checks, running as admin, running in 2000 compat., safe mode, god mode, please just work mode and ive given up. but no big deal, i stll like xp a lot.