Is windows 7 worth the 119.99 bucks (+tax)

[Deleted]

Is it worth the 119?

Also any advice/tips are welcomed.

<Snip>

win 7 are a great OS.more stable than vista and "lighter"... you will have to re install nothin except from gpu drivers. save wow to an external , no need to re install.

[Typhus]

If you end up getting it, do a complete reinstall, dont just upgrade you'll end up with a bunch of unnecessary crap slowing down your comp and taking up space.

[LGalucard]

If you end up getting it, do a complete reinstall, dont just upgrade you'll end up with a bunch of unnecessary crap slowing down your comp and taking up space.

thats what i thought, however at this point all ive been told is that the only upgrade im getting is a new shiny interface and the obvious bonus of a fresh start. That does not warrant 120 bucks.

[Hulrique]

I never paid for windows and I'll probably never will.
it's not worth it.. I mean it's not an option you need windows.. but 200+$ is way to expansive

free keys with school ftw

[Badpaladin]

Just because irony seems to love me these days, as I was typing a little thing about how Windows 7 is awesome, my computer completely froze and I can only access Win7 through safe mode. After troubleshooting I figured out that it's going to require a clean install. I'm very happy I make backups of all my important school stuff on my Ubuntu partition, which has always worked fine without a hitch since I installed it.

I guess I've just come to expect windows to fail on me for no apparent reason, unless Avast!, MSE and Windows Firewall all managed to fail at picking up something off MMO-C.

I guess that's a no for me.

[soulbound]

Just because irony seems to love me these days, as I was typing a little thing about how Windows 7 is awesome, my computer completely froze and I can only access Win7 through safe mode. After troubleshooting I figured out that it's going to require a clean install. I'm very happy I make backups of all my important school stuff on my Ubuntu partition, which has always worked fine without a hitch since I installed it.

I guess I've just come to expect windows to fail on me for no apparent reason, unless Avast!, MSE and Windows Firewall all managed to fail at picking up something off MMO-C.

I guess that's a no for me.

Root is hard to get at via defualt profiles on Windows 7. It takes know-how to get on root on win 7. im not pointing fingers. perhaps you were accidently on your root whilst cruising the http/email?

[Badpaladin]

Root is hard to get at via defualt profiles on Windows 7. It takes know-how to get on root on win 7. im not pointing fingers. perhaps you were accidently on your root whilst cruising the http/email?

I doubt it, wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary and nothing popped up or required me to click something. I've just accepted it as "one of those things" that windows seems to do every once in a while with computers, even if there is some perfectly good explanation somewhere.

[AlamarAtMMOC]

You will never get BSOD unless you use outdated hardware. So my brilliant solution to you is: Don't!

<cough>bullshit<cough>

The wife and I just bought brand spanky new PCs, and were having BSOD's pretty much right away, and obviously, on a fresh install... Removing the auto sleep functionality seemed to help...

However, the previous quote/post was also pointless, as hardware/drivers, aren't actually an OS issue... And if a manufacturer is messing up their drivers for one OS, it's likely they're doing it for others, so doubly moot : )

-Alamar

[Deleted]

unless Avast!, MSE

Urm, are you running two anti viruses at once?

Anyway - complete system failures are quite often caused by the software designed to protect against viruses. There were multiple incidents just last year (2010) where an AV update would destroy the hosting operating system. The affected amount of systems do count in millions, despite these updates generally only being up for 1-3 hours before they're pulled.

[Cryostasis]

Lately ive been feeling like im behind , for not switching to 7 already. But still the damn upgrade is 119 bucks and ive yet to find anything to justify the cost or the hassle of reinstalling WoW and everything else. Im currently running vista 64 bits , havent had any major issues so far.

So what i want to know is :
What will i gain from upgrading?
Is it worth the 119?
Also any advice/tips are welcomed.

Absolutely nothing wrong with Vista when all service packs are applied. Save the money for something else. Get an oem license with PC /or dsp license (usually significantly less) when you decide to buy new PC or upgrade a mainboard/cpu/ram at a later date.

As for the comment about Ubuntu linux, no comment. Backups are good, but putting backups on the same PC or on another partition on the same drive (hope you at least had the sense to use a different drive) are well... silly.

My IT business has sold and installed thousands of Win7 PC's and the stability is superb on all those except those with hardware/bad driver issues. It is, in my opinion, the best MS product to date. Also, it has the compatibility with most of the hardware industry to back it up. Lack of techies that know Linux well (in my country) makes TCO too high from a business standpoint. Too many people out there that "think" they know linux and because there installation "appears" to work without errors, think it's the best thing since sliced bread - until something goes wrong. Commercial, supported linux - different story.

EDIT: BadPaladin - why on earth are you running two Antivirus systems? System must crawl. I'd opt for MSE if you don't want to buy something like ESET.

[Badpaladin]

Urm, are you running two anti viruses at once?

Yep. I only have one real-time scanner running at once, so it's perfectly alright.

[breath]

Lately ive been feeling like im behind , for not switching to 7 already. But still the damn upgrade is 119 bucks and ive yet to find anything to justify the cost or the hassle of reinstalling WoW and everything else. Im currently running vista 64 bits , havent had any major issues so far.

So what i want to know is :

What will i gain from upgrading?

Is it worth the 119?

Also any advice/tips are welcomed.

I'm answering your question cause few others did.

Win7 is an improvement over Vista, it's worth it's price. I would never use win xp or vista over win 7. Win xp is viable only if you got a really old machine.

[soulbound]

I doubt it, wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary and nothing popped up or required me to click something. I've just accepted it as "one of those things" that windows seems to do every once in a while with computers, even if there is some perfectly good explanation somewhere.

its hard to crash windows via the app layer. some apps will lock up your RAM and force a hard reboot, but to corrupt the OS to the point that it cant boot in normal mode requires user (kernel) intervention.

[haxartus]

Usually if it boots in Safe Mode, you can fix it. Just find what is causing the problem and remove it.

[Musta Kyy]

@ OP

From my personal experience it is worth it upgrading to 7, I had XP a year back and I did a fresh install of 7 and loved it. And my friend upgraded from vista to 7 around the same time and he has not regretted it

Vista and 7 look like the same, but once you actually use it, you'll see the difference.

Also my installation on win 7 took about 30minutes, and I kept my WoW and all steam games on my portable hard drive. You should be fine unless you have absolutely no clue about computers.
With WoW you can just copy the whole wow-folder back and make a new shortcut from launcher to your desktop/whatever.
With Steam you can just copy the game folders (not the whole steam folder) inside a new install of steam after installing 7, and the Steam wont download it all again (but if you have a fast connection, it wont even take long, and fast enough is over 10megs (1mb/s download), you could just leave it downloading over night).
One more thing, you dont really have to worry about installing new drivers for everything, windows 7 supports a lot of stuff, only thing I had to install was logitech drivers for my keyboard to be able to use all the buttons it has.

[soulbound]

Usually if it boots in Safe Mode, you can fix it. Just find what is causing the problem and remove it.

thats usually the problem. logic provides (etc etc)

[vesseblah]

What i can gather from the replies is :
-That it wont benefit me gaming wise in a noticeable manner
- And the only upgrade comes from the lighter , faster , more "fun" interface.
Am i correct?

100% correct there.

If you have a dx11 cabable graphics card and a dual or quad core computer , upgrading to windows 7 will give you a mentionable fps increase in WoW, since w7 can manage the cores better and has dx11.

Wrong. Vista has DirectX11 support also, XP does not.

The simple fact is that Mac OS is better, but I can more or less guarantee you you're using it on hardware that is worse than a PC of the same price.

Better how? Also in semipro video editing it really does not make a bit of difference if you use Adobe Premiere and AfterEffects in Windows or Mac, the CS5 versions are identical across platforms. Only real difference is that Mac mouse has only one button which is crap for usabiity. And if you're talking about really professional video editing, Final Cut Pro is still considered to be a toy compared to Avid workstations that run exclusively on Windows.

[soulbound]

its hard to crash windows via the app layer. some apps will lock up your RAM and force a hard reboot, but to corrupt the OS to the point that it cant boot in normal mode requires user (kernel) intervention.

although, i will recant based on previous experince. what size hard drive do you have? i cant explain why,(because i dont know) but [unpartionedl] drives over 100 gig will cause problems. i know that defraging will keep your machine healthy. but any drive over 100g on oldschool hardware should have a partition on it.

[LGalucard]

well if i do a fresh install on my pc of win 7 (i assume this can be done with the retail windows 7 upgrade) and do like you say copy wow and steam games into a portable hard drive then copy them back in, wont i have registry problems or something? How will the machine know they are installed? Sorry to ask but ive never installed a new OS.
?

[vesseblah]

well if i do a fresh install on my pc of win 7 (i assume this can be done with the retail windows 7 upgrade) and do like you say copy wow and steam games into a portable hard drive then copy them back in, wont i have registry problems or something? How will the machine know they are installed? Sorry to ask but ive never installed a new OS.
?

It varies from program to program. WoW will work perfectly well and fix the registry for itself if it detects it has been moved, but I don't know for sure about steam. You should ask from their support on how to move your account and games from computer to computer. I think steam is more tied to the account, and it might just work by logging yourself in from the new computer.

In theory if you do upgrade of 64bit Win7 over 64bit Vista all your programs and settings should work exactly like before, but in practice there still might be problems and taking backups before OS upgrade is always recommended.

And once more: there is not going to be any magical performance increase to games from vists->7 upgrade, so don't expect one if you decide to spend the money on it. I wouldnt' unless you can get the student discount version.