Windows 7 - Color me impressed..

[W4GPL]

I maintain a Windows gaming machine (Wintendo) which I primarily use for Flight Simulator & Civ 4.. it's been running Windows XP for years now, but I've had an itch to see just how much better DirectX 10 would be in Flight Simulator. So I did a fresh install of Windows 7 Premium and it's not nearly as icky as I expected.

The install was painless, though after all these years, you'd think they'd ASK ME if I want my MBR over written, but hey.. reinstalling grub isn't that difficult. I found it interesting that let you do 95% of the install process before asking for a key. The activation was easy too, no hassles though my install is legit -- can't speak to people who get that semi-legit copy. ;) I was somewhat surprised that there was no upgrade path from XP to 7, though I probably would have done a fresh install just the same.

Compared to XP, the performance is astounding. I'm not sure if there was something wrong with my old installation or perhaps my hardware was too new for such an old OS? Either way! Wow. I can easily get 40fps in Flight Simulator and Alt-Tab in and out of the game like lightning. Maybe it's just the fresh install..

The interface is a bit Candy Land-lite, but I guess M$ is trying to keep up with Apple's over simplified UIs? It has a bit of a "Mother May I?" feel to it. Though it's a configurable 'feature', the damn thing asks permission to do everything. I immediately turned that crap off.

It pains me to say it, but Microsoft has put together a solid operating system with Windows 7. It's sleek, feature filled, and very much on par with Apple's plug and play philosophy. It's funny how Microsoft is developing a pattern of producing bad/good/bad/good operating system. Vista, the Windows Me of the 21st century?

Just some ramblings about my new OS. Have you taken the Windows 7 plunge?

[KC2UGV]

Winderz 7 is the first Winderz OS I've liked in a very, very long time.

[kf0rt]

I've been using it at home on my main machine since it was released. ($49 pre-release special from MS.) So far, I rather like it -- it does seem like the UI between Win7, OSX and some Linux front-ends are converging. Never did use Vista much, so it's mostly XP -> Win7 here. I really need to spend more time learning the differences from XP, but I'll give MS points for making the transition relatively painless. Don't need to learn much to get back to where you were with XP.

What're you running for hardware, Jeff, and are you running 32 or 64 bit Winders? Curious about your Flight Sim response. I'm kind of a noob to Flight Sim X -- fun toy! This machine is almost 2 years old; 2.4 GHz Intel quad-core (Q6600?) CPU with 4 GB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT graphics card (2 monitors). I get intermittent crashes in Flight Simulator of the type that aren't related to my poor piloting skills. Just installed the FS service packs, and that seems to have helped a bit, but it still crashes. Probably a video setting or something I haven't discovered yet. I don't seem to be getting the performance you describe. Think I need a better joystick, too.**

**Yeah, yeah, that's what SHE said.

[W4GPL]

I was running Windows XP 64 bit and now I'm running Windows 7 64 bit. As for my system, it's an Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHZ (E8400), 4GB, Nvidia 9800GT (512MB). I've been running Flight Simulator since the DOS versions and it's always been a finicky app in terms of performance.

It's really important you have the latest driver from Nvidia, I presume that card is DX10 compatible too? Another thing I do is run it in a fully maximized window, rather than default mode where it actually does the adjusting of your monitor's resolution on its own. That's also useful for looking at charts on various websites and whatnot while you fly.

Though it seems counter productive, I also set the frame rate to "unlimited", that seems to help too. Reducing the AI (other planes in the air) doesn't hurt either. Because all those little tiny textures you see on the ground while flying are actually individual files, making sure your disk isn't fragmented (http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/) is ideal.

Not that it tells the whole story, but what does Windows rate your performance at under Performance Information in Control Panel? Mine is a 5.9, with memory and disk transfer being my weak areas.

The fact that it's crashing is strange, SP2 makes it pretty damn stable -- I can't recall the last time it crashed on me and I must have 20 add ons and modules running with it too. You might want to focus on that and maybe it'll resolve your performance issues as well.

On a related note, you should check out VATSIM (www.vatsim.net) sometime, it's an online flying simulator where you fly with other people and there's also live air traffic controllers. It's superbly geeky and free!

[n6hcm]

at home i've been on win7 (x64 when possible) on all my windows environments. i'm good with it.

however, if you think win7 is substantially faster than xp then wait'll you see office 10 ... it's shockingly fast!