News Item: : Windows 7 Released!
(Category: Events)
Posted by DHAJ
Thursday 22 October 2009 - 09:57:35
It's finally here (officially)! Windows 7 is officially for sale starting today. I've been able to run the retail version of Windows 7 on my work laptop for a little over a month since my company is a Microsoft Certified Partner. All in all, I haven't really found anything horrible about Windows 7. If you're upgrading from Windows XP, it's a huge difference. Going from Vista to Win7 isn't all that bad, but there are some new and nifty features they've added. My favorite is the window previewing. You can hover your mouse on any icon in the taskbar and it will show you a small preview (like Vista). Unlike Vista, you can then hover your mouse over the small preview and it will show you the actual window. If you move your mouse away, the big preview goes away. If you click, it brings the window to the front. Also, most Vista users will be glad to see that the UAC box can be completely disabled. Anyone who has used Vista for more than 5 minutes has seen this annoying menu. With as little as 3 clicks, this annoyance goes completely away.
Since this is a gaming website, it'd be silly to make a whole newspost about a new Operating System and not mention the gaming aspect. So I installed Windows 7 on my home PC... my main gaming PC. Installing took less than an hour, and it was right about at the hour mark when I finished installing drivers for my system. The setup detected everything (and I mean everything), but I wanted the official nVidia drivers for my motherboard since I'm doing RAID. At any rate, I installed all my games and fired up CS:S. My wife's computer is almost identical to mine so we both ran a video stress test in CS:S. Our scores were extremely close. So going from Windows XP to Windows 7 has no performance loss (at least in CS:S). I've played a couple other games just to see how it handles. I don't really notice any difference except one... my video card temperatures are lower. And I don't mean by a degree or two. My idle temperature has dropped over 10 degrees. I'm not sure if that's an issue with DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 being more efficient, but the driver reports them as running cooler. I actually expected them to idle at a higher temperature since Windows 7 has more graphical stuff when changing windows and opening files and stuff. Like with any other major upgrade, there's the possibility of games and other programs not being compatible. So, if you're curious, here's a list of games that users have tested on Windows 7.
One last thing. If you're a college student, I believe you can get Windows 7 at a discounted price if not for just a few dollars. Check with your university and see. Everybody else can hop on over to Microsoft's webpage and get the Release Candidate if you just want to test it out.
This news item is from Christian Gamers Network
( http://www.christiangamersnetwork.com/news.php?extend.196 )
(Category: Events)
Posted by DHAJ
Thursday 22 October 2009 - 09:57:35
It's finally here (officially)! Windows 7 is officially for sale starting today. I've been able to run the retail version of Windows 7 on my work laptop for a little over a month since my company is a Microsoft Certified Partner. All in all, I haven't really found anything horrible about Windows 7. If you're upgrading from Windows XP, it's a huge difference. Going from Vista to Win7 isn't all that bad, but there are some new and nifty features they've added. My favorite is the window previewing. You can hover your mouse on any icon in the taskbar and it will show you a small preview (like Vista). Unlike Vista, you can then hover your mouse over the small preview and it will show you the actual window. If you move your mouse away, the big preview goes away. If you click, it brings the window to the front. Also, most Vista users will be glad to see that the UAC box can be completely disabled. Anyone who has used Vista for more than 5 minutes has seen this annoying menu. With as little as 3 clicks, this annoyance goes completely away.Since this is a gaming website, it'd be silly to make a whole newspost about a new Operating System and not mention the gaming aspect. So I installed Windows 7 on my home PC... my main gaming PC. Installing took less than an hour, and it was right about at the hour mark when I finished installing drivers for my system. The setup detected everything (and I mean everything), but I wanted the official nVidia drivers for my motherboard since I'm doing RAID. At any rate, I installed all my games and fired up CS:S. My wife's computer is almost identical to mine so we both ran a video stress test in CS:S. Our scores were extremely close. So going from Windows XP to Windows 7 has no performance loss (at least in CS:S). I've played a couple other games just to see how it handles. I don't really notice any difference except one... my video card temperatures are lower. And I don't mean by a degree or two. My idle temperature has dropped over 10 degrees. I'm not sure if that's an issue with DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 being more efficient, but the driver reports them as running cooler. I actually expected them to idle at a higher temperature since Windows 7 has more graphical stuff when changing windows and opening files and stuff. Like with any other major upgrade, there's the possibility of games and other programs not being compatible. So, if you're curious, here's a list of games that users have tested on Windows 7.
One last thing. If you're a college student, I believe you can get Windows 7 at a discounted price if not for just a few dollars. Check with your university and see. Everybody else can hop on over to Microsoft's webpage and get the Release Candidate if you just want to test it out.
This news item is from Christian Gamers Network
( http://www.christiangamersnetwork.com/news.php?extend.196 )