Win 7?
erco
Posts: 20,256
MicroShaft ends WinXP support in April. I like Win8, but the wife non-tech so hated her Win8 "upgrade" last year that I swapped her XP drive back in. She's happy, but I need to do something before April, probably get her Win7. That seems to be the preferred OS now: from what I hear, Win7 is outselling Win8. (Vista would probably work for her as well, but that will get phased out before Win7). I see Win7 is a "temporary measure" to ease her into Win8. IOW, she will use it as long as possible until it gets phased out!
There's actually a booming business on Ebay, people selling used Win7 DVDs. Some include a motherboard to comply with Ebay policy. Still $60-100 in most cases, hopefully from reliable sellers. But from what I hear, some copies/keys aren't legit. They may activate but stop working after 6 months. I found this download-only site for $70, probably the way I'll go unless anyone has a better suggestion or some good dirt on Discount Mountain Software.
http://www.discountmountainsoftware.com/miwi7hoproem.html?cmp=nextag&utm_source=nextag.com&utm_medium=cse&utm_term=Microsoft+Windows+7+Home+Premium+OEM+32-Bit+DOWNLOAD+ONLY
There's actually a booming business on Ebay, people selling used Win7 DVDs. Some include a motherboard to comply with Ebay policy. Still $60-100 in most cases, hopefully from reliable sellers. But from what I hear, some copies/keys aren't legit. They may activate but stop working after 6 months. I found this download-only site for $70, probably the way I'll go unless anyone has a better suggestion or some good dirt on Discount Mountain Software.
http://www.discountmountainsoftware.com/miwi7hoproem.html?cmp=nextag&utm_source=nextag.com&utm_medium=cse&utm_term=Microsoft+Windows+7+Home+Premium+OEM+32-Bit+DOWNLOAD+ONLY
Comments
There is no point in buying a "used" copy of Win7. The serial number won't be any good if it's been activated.
Fry's sells OEM versions of Win7. You can do better mail order, but if you want to have the feel-good of a walk-in store, the few extra bucks is not bad.
JINKS Gordon! ..... ha! niceeeee
I use Windows 7 Ultimate, Home Premium, and Enterprise 64 bit. The ultimate version, for whatever reason, seems to be bulletproof for me. It's what I have on my personal laptop and I am not kind when it comes to installing or uninstalling software, tweaking the registry, or modifying windows settings. Even so, my Win7 Ultimate still runs flawlessly after 2+ years.
I would recommend that you spend the money to make sure you are getting what you want. (or more specifically, what your wife wants.....)
(My Laptop at home runs Win7 Home Premium 64bit)
Windows Vista?
Wouldn't want it to happen to my worst enemy...
And, Yeah, stay away from used Licenses.
I'm normally an early adopter of Windows versions. I used Vista from early Beta, and got Win7 pre-release also. However, Win8 is not going on my machines.
Update: Microsoft tends to alternate a good release followed by a train wreck. Windows 8 is the train wreck release because it's a desktop OS designed for touch screens which is a silly idea.
What does your non-tech wife use her computer for? What programs does she run? Maybe Linux Mint or some such would ease her woes and free her from the yoke of Microsoft! Mint looks a lot like Windows...like a Windows that works!
I will go to a local computer shop and have them build a custom PC configured with WIN7 - probably 64 bit version.
Not sure of the advantages/disadvantages of 64 bit vs 32 bit (drivers for older hardware, etc)
The driver issues are mostly gone, unless you have some really old and offbeat hardware. Most likely any decent new computer (bought or built) will have 8 GB or more of RAM, in order to use it all you need the 64 bit version.
When doing a clean Win7 or newer) onto a machine that had WinXP it never hurts to check the SATA settings in BIOS.
switching over to AHCI may yield up to 20% performance increase on the disk system...
As RDL2004 says, 4GB is the max of what 32bit Windows understands.
Thanks Rick! Kinda forgot about the memory limit aspect. Since I'm planning on buying a new PC, upgrading won't be an issue - it will be a "fresh" install...
Technically we're using Linux when we use Android, but it isn't a desktop variant of Linux.
I tried using Linux as a desktop OS for a period of three years from 2008 through 2010. It worked OK for simple stuff like email, web browsing, word processing and running Eclipse. But there were constant gotchas that eventually made me abandon it as a desktop OS. One big problem was hardware support. There would always be something I wanted to interact with that wasn't supported by Linux drivers. Video cards and WiFi being a huge problem as sometimes the manufacturer would produce a closed source driver that would only work on one specific release of the kernel. But even the Basic Stamp and Propeller were problematic compared to using them on Windows.
The other problem is that when things went wrong with Linux you're in for a treat of poking around config files and search Linux forums for obscure answers. My sound would stop working after Ubuntu shipped some bug fix or other and I was perpetually trying to fix it. When Ubuntu went with their hideous new GUI (hideous compared to Ubuntu which is saying something) I just gave up and bought Windows 7.
I've noticed this, but it takes less time than screwing around with windows. And when I finally get a solution for a linux issue, I learn something.
Now, I run Linux Mint 16 petra with the Cinnamon Gui. I run any remaining windows as a virtualbox instance.
there is a learning curve, but it seems productive.
I would be really hesitant to limit a PC to 3GB of RAM. I find Windows 7 with 4+ GB of RAM to be great, under that and multitasking can be sluggish.
Given the size and performance of today's hardware, free VM software and flawless boot managers, the only correct Win vs Linux answer is to have both.
I would plan on $99 for Home Premium, otherwise you're buying left over volume discount codes that could have been used.
OEM means one computer and one computer only. If a significant hardware change is detected it will not re-activate.
This is where M$ is a rip off comes into play, the best option for someone is the retail version.
This is where I get all my Windows 7 -http://www.evaluesoftware.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1963&t=product_overview
Ultimate is going to include easy to use encryption, which to me is very worthwhile.
What do you expect when you put a flamethrower on a Matchbox 4WD? Some things are bound to get singed.
Most people will never change their hardware enough to require reactivation, but if you do, Microsoft usually only requires an actual phone call in place of the automatic online activation to get a code. If you just like to re-install periodically for maintenance reasons (like I do) using the same basic hardware, it's just a couple of files you need to backup and replace and you don't even have to fool with the online reactivating.
Oh, and you can legally download and burn your own install DVD, you still need a valid CoA product key to activate it though.
Surprisingly few people are aware of the embedded versions. MS is reported to supporting XPE until 2019 and W7E until 2020.
They don't need activating, are granular, are less expensive, include HORM (hibernate once read mostly) and EWF(enhanced write filtering)
Down at the bottom of product description it says ***Promo Version***. What does that mean?
I've never seen an embedded OS in a workstation/home PC scenario. I specialize in terminal server environments so I deploy tons of thin clients. Embedded systems work forever, by far the lowest TCO. MS can support them forever because they don't require much support.
I have never thought about trying to run an embedded OS on a workstation though. That's an interesting thought. The only program I ever need to run is remote desktop. I'm going to try installing Win CE on an old workstation. Security software licensing costs so much these days, embedded OS is a good solution, I don't know about home use though.
Edit: Also I LOVE write filtering! WYSE write filter is really easy to use, and stops people from renaming desktop icons!
It means you cannot legally resell it to someone, however if it's installed on a PC, you can sell that PC.
I would not touch this with a ten foot pole. Something about "Not for Resale" just looks suspicious to me.
The BSA offers up to a million dollars! http://www.pcworld.com/article/147448/article.html
Sorry to here of your difficulties with Linux.
Hardware support is an issue. It's not the fault of Linux so much as the device manufacturers but it's an issue anyway.
Having been Windows free since 1997 I do feel the pain. A few comments:
Video has not been a problem since the old 3dfx Voodoo cards back in the 1990's. Now a days I would go Nvidia. They just work.
WIFI for sure was a big pain. Not so much now. I have some anonymous WIFI dongle in this machine as we speak.
Programming the Propeller was a problem until the arrival of HomeSpun and BST etc.. Thank goodness Parallax has seen the light and supports open source, cross-platform, tools now. This can be true. However the same applies to Windows. Everyone I know who runs Windows has a "guru" somewhere that they call when things go sideways. Ah, now I see. I think Ubuntu is about the worst thing that ever happened to Linux. What you describe happens all the time. Canonical takes a perfectly good Debian Linux and breaks it in so many ways- And last I heard they were even asking for money to do this. I don't blame you.
I do wonder though how long we are prepared to put up with this situation. Having our entire computing lives and a lot of the worlds computing infrastructure dependent on a single corporation which for most is in a foreign country. Is the world supposed to just pay them, forever?
And that is why I said "No", back in 1997.
I love Linux for what it's worth, text only, most of the boxes I build don't have anything plugged into them except for power and network, SSH access only. Webservers, DNS/DHCP, Proxy, Chat, SSL VPN, NAS, etc. apt-get $$$
Are you using PCI video cards or on-board VGA?
Odd, I haven't seen that resolution since last century. Even a default install of Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi gives 1920x1080.
Turns out to be a good question because I have no idea what resolution the screen in front of me is displaying and I have no idea how to query that.
The machine I am typing on is a ancient AMD Athlon 4000+ with some old NVIDIA graphics on the mother board. For sure I'm seeing more than 1024 by 768.
Most other machines in our office have more recent NVIDIA graphics cards. All I do is follow the set up instructions here: https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDriversWhich for Debian Wheezy is about five minutes work.