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08/20/09
08/17/09
gotta spend hours burning my music files to cd.... cos the store that i bought the music from has gone kaput.... :(
is there a program to mass convert my WMA files to MP3 without burning to CD first?
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
Navigate MS's poorly designed website, wait for the long download, install it.
Waste of time and space.
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
I miss the old days when you could just put in the previous versions media to do an upgrade.
08/17/09
All you have to do is change csversion.ini in the sources folder to read MinClient=7000. It takes like 2 seconds.
08/18/09
I also was not clear about missing the old days, I wasn't talking about RC to Release. I was talking about when you were able to install Windows 95 or 98 from scratch with the upgrade media, you just needed to provide the previous versions media to do it.
08/18/09
08/18/09
I haven't done Windows upgrades in years, at work we just wipe the system and start over from our imaging server and at home I run linux.
05/16/09
I may experiment with Windows 7 at some point, but to be perfectly honest, though I'm sure the OS runs nicely on a netbook, I'll bet dollars to donuts that XP is still the better choice for running the older apps (especially games) that are most ideally suited for these low-end machines.
05/16/09
Really? Really? Are you seriously saying that the steps outlined in this article is the easy way to install Windows 7 on a netbook? No way. No fucking way.
Now, this is NOT meant to start a flame war--although undoubtedly somebody is gonna jump in and rant--so first a full disclosure. I am a Mac user unfamiliar with Windows installation procedures. So when I read all these (what sound to me to be) bizarre steps, I'm serious when I ask, is this REALLY what it is like for a Windows user--Terminal? diskutil? device node? sudo, dd if=? compact.exe d:\*.* /c /s /i? Crap almighty, what in the hell are you talking about? This sounds to me to be far from easy.
Please somebody tell me this is not a normal procedure for Windows installation. And if there is a HARDER way to install Windows, I really do not want to know about it.
05/16/09
05/16/09
And given that such drives are priced starting way under $100--as little as $65-ish--why would you not just buy a USB DVD drive? Seems to me to be a required "accessory" for a DVD-less netbook.
05/16/09
Create a second partition, download / install Daemon Tools or Alcohol, download the iso, mount it in the virtual drive, tell it to install on the second partition... wait ~30 minutes... you're done, you've now got a dual boot XP / Win7 netbook.
A lot of people with the budget netbooks aren't going to have USB optical drives, even at $65 that's still a fairly significant portion of the <$300 cost of these systems. Also keep in mind that this is still a Release Candidate, not the retail product, this isn't really meant for average users, it's meant for techies who aren't afraid of jumping through a few hoops and possibly having to do some troubleshooting.
03/26/09
I've downloaded and are happily using the Win7 beta in one of my computers; I know this beta will stop running by the end of july. If Microsoft isn't selling Windows7 by then, does that mean I'll have to go back to Win Vista for a couple of months? Will us betatesters get a beta copy of the final RC?
By the way, I say betatester because I'm running a beta and because I've sent tons of e-mails to microsoft reporting bugs/issues/ideas. I have yet to recieve ANY kind of answer for my e-mails, I'm not sure they're getting them! :D
Tx
03/26/09
Don't count on automatically getting a beta of the RC.
Don't count on ever hearing anything back on your bug reports.
03/26/09
03/26/09
03/26/09
03/26/09
03/26/09
03/26/09
03/26/09
03/26/09
@Curves: To be honest, I have two PC with Vista.
My original one, now semi-retired a P4 2Ghz runs Vista Premium. While it's previous XP Home had 5 years running without a re-built (re-install) to speed it up, it's CPU run at 25% load all the time because of all the things I run in it (server soft, remote VPN's, etc..) I was not able to load Vista as a new install because the old DVD drive I had was the only thing that was not Vista compatible (was already a 10 yr old hand-me down) So I went ahead and did an upgrade only from XP. (XP loaded Vista in the HD and then installed - as opposed to have the Vista loader trying to read a non-compatible DVD reader to load the OS in a fresh copy).
So my Vista install had crap of 5 years, it run slower than the XP 5 year old build. Instead of 25% CPU load, it run at 30~ 40% load at idle...
Yet, for many thing Vista is faster than XP on that PC because Vista learns what you mostly use to speed thing up.
My new PC has less than 6 months, it's a quad core but runs at 1% idle. Once I get around to clean the old one (to become a Media server) I'm sure that a new build from a fresh start will increase performance considerably.
The moral of the story... A clean install on 100% compatible hardware with Vista runs just fine on a P4, 7 yr machine.
Most likely will swap to Win 7 when it's out.
03/27/09
03/17/09
03/17/09
03/13/09
03/14/09
As your post does not contain any flammable material it will not count towards your post count and shall be posthumously deleted.
03/13/09
03/13/09
03/13/09
03/13/09
Example: Stacks [OSX] made the dock much more useful for quicker access to documents without filling up the dock. Windows 7 seems to have taken that and improved it with its new Aero Peek and jump lists.
03/13/09
03/13/09
03/14/09
03/14/09
03/14/09
On a similar note, Apple ripped off Konfabulator (I believe was the name?) for their Widgets, which made it mainstream and eventually lead MS to rip it off again with their awfully named Gadgets.
03/13/09
i really want you to be my OS lol
03/13/09
03/13/09
Hey i can't afford a mac dude lol
@diabolusunknownTheSecond:
I think an intelligent person would have read my post lol
It froze and crashed way to often for my liking.
Plus itunes didnt work, neither did my anti-virus.
Its def not ready for mainstream so im hoping the Release Candidate is better.
Here i come windows 7 :)
03/13/09
Anti-virus obviously won't work (a little common sense should suffice there) because they are very OS specific, due to the low-level nature of the AV software. Some may still operate but certainly aren't to be relied upon until released for the specific OS.
03/14/09
03/15/09
@Linux Chief hardware engineer:
It seems more likely that it's a sound card driver issue. Win7 was able to detect the majority of hardware I threw at it (and I gave it some wacky stuff). In other cases, when it couldn't make heads or tails of it, Vista drivers worked just fine. Granted, there will be some oddball hardware that just won't play well yet, but so far it's been heads and shoulders above Vista, or even the XP launch.
Hardware tested ok so far included an X-Fi, an Audigy, a Turtle Beach, Realtek onboard audio on an Asus motherboard, and Conexant audio on the laptop.
So far maybe only one or two application crashes, despite running Adobe CS3 pretty hard with video rendering and some heavy transcoding, as well as routine Photoshop fun. The OS caught them, closed them and everything else continued smoothly. The OS itself hasn't locked, crashed or stopped responding, ever. I'm very impressed.
03/13/09
03/13/09
I blame Nvidia for all of my issues with Vista, not Microsoft.
03/13/09
Did nvidia tell microsoft to make a bloated OS,
then lie about the requirements and screw over millions
03/13/09
03/13/09
03/14/09
Yeah and just like Vista, we're kind of bloated too so what's your point?
02/26/09
Easily part of it is the killer machine I'm running it on, but STILL, WTF man?
It's only a new version of Windows after all, and will surely have stuff to piss me off in time.
It's just that Vista hasn't drawn me in like this, and I have machines I can tinker with at work all day if I like.
I don't get it myself to be honest.
Regardless, keep up the coverage Gizmodo. It's appreciated.