Know if You're Ready for Windows 7? Now You Can
Windows 7 is all the rage recently, and rightly so. The soon to be released operating system is considered to be what Windows Vista should have been.
However, Microsoft admittedly has done a lot of listening as of late, paying a good deal of attention to users across the board. One of the biggest concerns for Windows 7 isn't whether or not it'll solve Vista's problems, but also whether or not it'll run on existing systems efficiently. Chances are that if you bought or built a computer within the last five years, you'll be ready. If you're running Vista right now, you'll be ready.
If you're not sure though, fear not; Microsoft has released its Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. The small utility can be download and run to check your hardware, drivers and installed software for compatibility. The utility will also check attached devices, so make sure you connect things like printers, scanners, and other accessories you regularly use.
According to the Windows Experience Blog:
Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor examines a PC’s processor, memory, storage, and graphics capabilities, identifies known compatibility issues with installed software and devices and finally provides guidance on how to resolve those issues if possible. Please also note: as previously stated on the E7 blog, Windows XP users are required to do a clean install of the Windows 7 RC as well as the final product. Only PCs with Windows Vista can be upgraded to Windows 7.



This is really annoying
This is really annoying
It's being worked on.
Fixed.
the guy with the 1.2 processor probably only has a 100 Gb harddrive as well. forget aero.
Why wouldn't it work? It works fine for me.
http://www.pretentiousname.com/misc/win7_uac_whitelist2.html
Is there a place we can all go to monitor user feedback and bug reports on Windows 7? Or do we have to keep searching them out?
I have a Brother network printer that has been working flawlessly between 2 computers one running Win 7 x64 and the other running Win 7 x86 (32-bit). It worked flawlessly through all the beta builds I ran, and it is working flawlessly with the RC.
Media Center is a very nice app, though without a working audio card it won't allow for watching TV on my TV tuner card. The Leadtek tuner card Vista drivers do work on W7.
They should. Go to the properties of the driver install .exe file and make it run in Windows Vista compatibility mode. In my experience almost every device that works under Vista will work under Windows 7 as the driver architecture hasn't changes significantly.
However, be sure to use the Vista drivers and not the XP ones. Trying to install XP drivers on Windows 7 can sometimes lead to serious BSOD issues as the architecture between XP and Vista/7 has changed quite a bit.
I wish they'd write a damned 64 bit driver for it!
Yeah...so annoying to have to read the first post that is all of two lines long.
How I wish my life could be so unfettered as to warrant complaining about something so trivial.
Uh, NO! If the Vista Capable vs. Vista Ready debacle showed us anything, its that most of Intel's chipsets leading up to the Vista release aren't going to work. Unless you don't mind a Windows Experience score of 1 because you can't find drivers for your Intel GPU (and thus no hardware acceleration whatsoever), then I guess Win7 will work fine.
Otherwise, even a P4 2.6GHz w/ 512MB ram and 14GB hdd (primary partition) was enough to intall and run Win7 RC.
I will use Vista, and then Win 7, when I build my next one.
1Ghz is just a marker. You'll probably notice a decline in speed below machines equipped with DDR2 RAM, especially when they only support less than 768MB of RAM. Many processors starting from 1Ghz had faster ram. I guess that the RAM factor is more important here than the CPU factor.
when running 7 on a single core @ 1,6Ghz (in a virtual environment)it's still pretty snappy.