Windows 7

I am in the market for a top end laptop and I am considering Alienware m17x.

Trouble is it now comes with windows 7 as standard, are there any plans to make SL windows 7 compatible, (or is it already) as most of my online time is in SL and I wont buy a new laptop if I cannot access SL.

I don't have Win7 but I've read numerous posts here from people running Win7 and loving how SL performs. Try Search.

I'm starting to believe that SL was Win7 compatible before it was WinXP compatible... Performance gains have been so amazingly impressive that I'm running out of bad things to say. (^_^)

I gotta get out of the RC though... I have the Ultimate box sitting right here telling me "Back up your stuff! Install me! INSTALL MEEEE!!" (>_<

Thanks your replies were very helpful.

I will likely go ahead and get my laptop with win7 and see what happens, although I am also looking at new top end graphics card, (I am moving to China next year and I am trying to get as future proof as I can afford).

If SL is just not working I can stick with the PC and let my partner use the new laptop 'till SL catches up.

What about Windows 7 support for drivers and such? have you had any problems updating your motherboard/video card or whatever?

I've just upgraded to W7.
I ran SL happily with XP using an ATI Radeon card but when I upgraded although everything else looked fine SL knocked me back saying my card was substandard.

After some swearing and righteous indignation I went to the ATI website and downloaded the Vista driver for the same card and although I had to get it from the archive section as they tell me my card is so old (2 years max) it's no longer cutting edge I'm back to running SL with no problems.

I am running the Windows 7 64 bit version and sl runs better that it did on Vista 64 or XP Pro.

.d

I've read it's possible but not simple, to upgrade XP to Win7 - do you think it's worth it?

I gotta get Windows 7 soon and just install it on a clean hard drive. The old one (not that old really) started having CHKDSK issues and I lost some of the registries. Doing a system restore did some weird things and many programs don't show up any more or behave strangely. For instance Winamp steadfastly refuses to play tracks at random.

I've been so disgusted with Vista anyway I'm almost convinced it came on newer machines just to ensure people will buy Windows 7, so much better by comparison. Crapware as a marketing strategy.

I'm glad 7 runs SL so well. I may go ahead and take the plunge though caution tells me I ought to wait a few months for the inevitable patches and fixes to come out.

I have been advised not to attempt an "upgrade" from XP - but make sure Win7 is installed as a completely new build. That should work very easily, I am told. (It will have to be easy, if I'm doing it!)

Nvidia drivers are all up to date. My Killer Xeno Pro NIC drivers are good. iPhone, iTunes, camera, and Wacom drivers were all Windows native. And, I'm waiting on M-Audio to finish their beta cycle for my 2496. (^_^)

As for applications; Blender, 8 flavours of SL, Jasc PSP, GIMP, Open Office, Firefox, Audacity, ACDSee, YIM, Gtalk, Winamp, GIMP, WinRAR, Shoutcast DNAS, BitMeter, and a bunch of other apps I'm forgetting to name have all installed and run without a single issue. (^_^)y

Impressive.

@ OP: The base GPU on the M17x is an Nvidia GTX 260m. I'm running the same card using Windows 7 and the latest Nivdia drivers, and everything works well.

@ Deira: If you purchase an upgrade disc of Windows 7, it will check that XP is installed on your system and then offer a "custom install" which involves wiping the hard drive and making a clean install of Windows 7. Back up your data to an external drive first, and you will end up with a clean copy.

lol, if you really want performance boosts, try a Linux distro in combination with SL.

But on topic, i heard it too, that win7 *yikes* runs smoother with SL (in terms of startup speed of the viewer, once logged in, there is not much difference though.)

but that's only for the SL viewer.... and since the official version of win7 is very new (just released), better be careful to use it as production machine (Vista anyone?!? )

Besides numerous tests have proven (not home baked tests, but by professional testing labs), that Win7 is equally fast as Vista in most usage. (startup times are not what really drives an OS in terms of speed.. it's the speed when using it, once it has been booted )

I operated in Win7x64RC as my primary OS for nearly half a year now and as of yet have seen nothing but performance gains over XP, Vista, and Ubuntu... My three primary OSes from the past. Compatibility has also been no problem. So, right now, I'm transitioning from Win7RC to the Win7 release. All have been rather seamless moves. (^_^)y

And, yes, Vista was a dump... After a bit over 2 months of use, I HAD to kill it with fire. Vista was made of absolute pure fail. (>_<

A couple of caveats about Win 7--which may not matter to most people.

1. Win 7 does not come with any email client installed. If you use POP email you may have more or less difficulty getting Win 7 to recognize your email client as the "default email program", depending on how old your preferred client is. Fortunately you can hack the registry to set up HTML "mailto" calls to use an older client, but the MS instructions (including registry changes) for getting older clients recognized as the "default email program" for other purposes don't necessarily work.

2. My RTM copy threw a major error (shut down Explorer.exe) every time I tried to access the screen for setting file type associations.

3. Win 7 will not fully join an NT 4 domain. With some registry hacks you can make it say it has done so, but you won't be able to log into the machine with a domain account. You can, however see the network and set up persistent mapped drives on domain resources when logged into the local machine. It just takes a bit more work since the domain services aren't there for you. It is supposed to be able to join a Linux/SAMBA 3-style domain; we're evaluating that now.

As an added caution, you should never "upgrade" one OS to another. Always wipe and reformat the drive and install a new OS from scratch. "Upgrades" always produce problems.

I find Win 7 to be much faster than Vista except when initially accessing network resources (perhaps because it can't really join the domain). The UAC is much less intrusive. It supposedly has better backward compatibility with software and drivers than Vista does, but I haven't had enough time to evaluate that. Aside from the email issue, it does run older software quite well.

Or even better use this as a time to upgrade your OS HD. That way you will always have that missing piece of data that you were SURE you had saved prior to doing the clean install.

I'm sure it has trust issues when connecting to a VIC-20 as well ....
OK, that was a tacky attempt at a joke, but Microsoft dropped support of NT4 in (quick google here) 2003. That is a long time with no patches. You might want to look at upgrading your DC for security if nothing else. Win Server 2K3 is still a good OS. 2K7is also solid and has been in real world environment for some time. However, for now 2K3 Small Business is the most practical (read 'cheap and effective') home domain server OS.

Well yeah--but...

My IT consultant says that in his experience Active Directory servers only run about 3 years or so before they have to be replaced. This NT 4 installation has been running problem-free for over ten years.

Our network is not open to the internet, so the security issues that some places have with regard to domain controllers just don't occur here.

Since I can see. access, and permanently map network shares without the domain login, (once I manually give Win 7 a login and password for each resource) I don't see where any great "security" benefit is being conferred by Win 7's setup. All it's doing is refusing to give me the convenience that domain logins automatically provided in handling that stuff without me having to enter it manually for every resource.

I also suspect, MS claims to the contrary, that some combination of local security policy tweaks would give me the ability to use the domain login on Win 7, but I don't have the time or patience to try to figure that out. I imagine somebody will eventually do so and publish their findings.

We're a not-for-profit, and we don't have the money to switch out hardware and software every time MS starts a push to sell new product. We don't replace stuff until it no longer works. We try to be good custodians of the taxpayers' money.

We're looking at a Linux/SAMBA 3 machine for our next domain controller. Win 7 at least allegedly can handle that. I'm not a deep-level geek but as I understand it, that's an "NT-style" setup--so if security is the big deal, why does MS support that but not one of its own products?

Easy answer, of course, and it has nothing to do with security: because if they continued to support NT, I wouldn't be in a position to be persuaded to buy another server OS from Microsoft.

I've been running 7 since January and it really is the best OS i've run since windows 98.

For those who are using RC, it is possible thought a quick file change to update to your retail copy, I've done it with no problems. Going from XP is not possible, you have to backup your data and do a full install (which is what they are calling the limited upgrade). So far i've found everything installed and ran fine, and drivers if they were not windows 7 yet, the vista ones installed fine (sometimes like with logitech web-cam you gotta right click and use compatibility mode to make it think it's vista).

Windows Vista and Windows 7 are ment to be used with server 2008 as the AD. That's why the small hacks are needed. You will find with Linux/Samba 3 unless your just doing basic shares and not trying to do AD replacement it still won't work without small tweaks to lower the security levels. At our store I had setup Linux/Samba3 with a full LDAP back end to try reproducing AD as much as possible, and still Vista needed registry tweaks before it could use it. In the end we went back to server 2008.

Thanks for the heads up on that. I'll pass it on to the guy who's testing all this with some VMs.

/me makes the sign of the cross.

LL doesn't officially support Windows 7 yet because it was in beta until a few days ago. That said, many of us have been using versions of Windows 7 (first the beta, then the release candidate, and some people had advance access to the final version) for quite a while with no problems. Two things to watch out for:

1. Make sure your video drivers are current. You may have to go to the manufacturer's web site to get the right ones rather than taking what Windows Update offers you.

2. Install the 32-bit version of QuickTime even if you have the 64-bit version of Windows 7 (as most computers with 4GB or more RAM do); SL needs it to play media.