LightB
May 6th, 2009, 04:53 PM
Since I had nothing else to do, I went ahead and installed [Windows 7 RC] aka Vista SP3 RC. This is how it went.
First I tried installing it on a really old spare hard drive. That didn't work. The installer first detected it, then when it reached 100% of "expanding archives" or something like that, it vanished off the system. The drive vanished. I don't know if it died now by coincidence after years working on an old PC, or if there is some minimum size for the installation that it didn't match, who knows, that's conjecture. I haven't bothered to check the drive again.
Ok, I grabbed another old drive of 30GB and it did install there. Going through the process, the fact that it's Vista really does come through.
Once everything was done and I was in the desktop, I just think it's another flavor of the Vista fugliness (http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/9572/74700204.jpg). At least mode 1400x1050 was working, which is nice. The panel is a mix of static icons that double as 'window items' ala OSX, with a mix of asinine windows list (http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/2151/37761038.jpg).
Great, some updates have been applied (http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/6413/10186873.jpg). Same old "restart for everything" Windows stupidity. Not shocked, just saying.
At least the latest and greatest IE8 (http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/7126/79236692.jpg) is included. If you look around the status bar, Protected Mode is on! Get this right away, this is the safest thing ever created in existence. Well since I would be one of those self-destructive types, I went ahead and tried out installing Firefox instead. At least it did install, but it's slow as always compared to the safe and great IE8. You can be sure WoW nerds will not and should not put up with slow loading clan blogs on Firefox, which is why it's fail and IE wins by default. But I digress.
Then it was time to restart and the resolution was screwed. I know Windows 7 'is awesome', but I just can't keep up with it's enlightened, new-age, widescreen resolution recommendations (http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/9629/95916163.jpg) on a 4:3 monitor. As you can see, my desired resolution had disappeared. To be fair, it's probably ATI's fault for failing to release proper drivers for this latest MS buttbaby, but oh well, resolution is gone regardless. 1280x960 should be good enough according to the updates (http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/6196/44621173.jpg).
Well, that was fun. In closing, I thought it had some really nice wallpapers and a spiff little animation during the slow startup with 4 lights flying together to form a glowing Windows icon. If that's not worth the same performance on faster hardware for several hundred $, I don't know what is.
First I tried installing it on a really old spare hard drive. That didn't work. The installer first detected it, then when it reached 100% of "expanding archives" or something like that, it vanished off the system. The drive vanished. I don't know if it died now by coincidence after years working on an old PC, or if there is some minimum size for the installation that it didn't match, who knows, that's conjecture. I haven't bothered to check the drive again.
Ok, I grabbed another old drive of 30GB and it did install there. Going through the process, the fact that it's Vista really does come through.
Once everything was done and I was in the desktop, I just think it's another flavor of the Vista fugliness (http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/9572/74700204.jpg). At least mode 1400x1050 was working, which is nice. The panel is a mix of static icons that double as 'window items' ala OSX, with a mix of asinine windows list (http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/2151/37761038.jpg).
Great, some updates have been applied (http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/6413/10186873.jpg). Same old "restart for everything" Windows stupidity. Not shocked, just saying.
At least the latest and greatest IE8 (http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/7126/79236692.jpg) is included. If you look around the status bar, Protected Mode is on! Get this right away, this is the safest thing ever created in existence. Well since I would be one of those self-destructive types, I went ahead and tried out installing Firefox instead. At least it did install, but it's slow as always compared to the safe and great IE8. You can be sure WoW nerds will not and should not put up with slow loading clan blogs on Firefox, which is why it's fail and IE wins by default. But I digress.
Then it was time to restart and the resolution was screwed. I know Windows 7 'is awesome', but I just can't keep up with it's enlightened, new-age, widescreen resolution recommendations (http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/9629/95916163.jpg) on a 4:3 monitor. As you can see, my desired resolution had disappeared. To be fair, it's probably ATI's fault for failing to release proper drivers for this latest MS buttbaby, but oh well, resolution is gone regardless. 1280x960 should be good enough according to the updates (http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/6196/44621173.jpg).
Well, that was fun. In closing, I thought it had some really nice wallpapers and a spiff little animation during the slow startup with 4 lights flying together to form a glowing Windows icon. If that's not worth the same performance on faster hardware for several hundred $, I don't know what is.