Com-Central.net

As most of you know, I'm a person that likes the computer world, the gaming and the productivity of computing in general and from a business standpoint, Linux for me, works very well and without much mishap. Coming from a DOS world and coming up through the ranks of the many windows operating systems, sticking with Linux was a 'no brainer' as far as everyday working is concerned. We all know that Linux isn't a gaming platform despite the inroads made in the past couple years in that direction.

Since MS released Windows 7 as a beta, I downloaded a 32 bit copy to see if MS was up to the same old tricks or really did improve their flagship OS to something worth talking about. Being from a gaming background in the Windows environment, my first tests were going to be done with gaming in mind. I'm suspicious of MS and with good reason. Past history has taught us that MS has never cared about anything but profit and tossed to the wind trying to improve their OS to satisfy the many moaning and groaning clients and especially gamers.

1) Installing: Installing from a DVD is straight forward enough, but not enough advanced options on the initial install screen. For the most part, if you have more than one partition, you'll have to know the 'lingo' to get it on the right partition. If you only have one partition, Click Install and go. The install process went smooth as glass and under an hour. Not bad!

2) Initial Use: FAST and Snappy! I have to say this really impressed me. I like the fact that clicking on a program or installing a program was quick and easy. The menu system will take a bit of learning as MS has revamped this extensively, but as with anything new, there's a learning curve. I like it better, but it really is a matter of choice and opinion. Finding the Video Drivers isn't quite as easy as it used to be, but once you do find them, it's easy to get back. One thing I REALLY liked was the new Explorer icon at the bottom of the task bar. Any window you have open goes into the 'folder icon' and hovering your mouse over the icon displays all the thumbnails of the open windows.

Networking set up fine except 7 didn't see one partition I have set up with both Windows and Linux on it. Odd it didn't find it, but I'll keep going into settings and see if it's really a bug or a setting.

3) Gaming: For FS9, I could navigate to my 'gaming partition' and start FS9 right away. Frames improved over XP an average of 20% on my system. FSX didn't play quite so nice and required a complete install to run. After the install of FSX and Acceleration Add On, I noticed frame improvements of about 20% too. Immediatly, I cranked up the options in FSX until the frames dropped to approx. the same as in XP. I must say I was able to crank that baby up quite a bit, so the step up to OS 7 is worth it for these two games.

IL2 1946 started without reinstalling although I had to change my Video Settings from OpenGL to DirectX. In XP, OpenGL was smooth as glass as compared to DX, but not so in 7. In fact, it's the opposite. I'm not sure why that is, but DX works very well in 7.

Call of Duty 4 and 5 ran great with no issues but Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter cried foul and I didn't go any further on that game to figure out why. It's possible a reinstall would fix it however.

TeamSpeak ran well but had some display issues. For some reason, not everything displays well in the set up servers area. If you're familiar with the procedure you won't have any problems, if not, you'll be stumbling around a bit trying to figure it out.

4) Issues: Some display issues are apparent in IE8 as well as TeamSpeak, but it's not so terrible you can't live with it. For example, coming to com-central.net show tan around all the boxes in some themes and oddly enough, it's also the same brown/tan that hinders the TeamSpeak boxes. Could it be a setting? Maybe and time will tell if that's so, but for me, I think I'll give 7 more time and from first impressions, it's going to replace XP (much to MS' delight I'm sure) and especially Vista.

I'm sure older machines won't be able to run it as well as newer machines with too little RAM, but 2gb a ram is enough to run it well as long as you have a fast processor.

Since I'm not going to do my main work in Windows, I'll keep it as a gaming OS for now as it works quite well and I can't say how well business programs work, but AVG AntiVirus, FireFox 3.05, Spybot Search and Destroy and Glary Utilities installed without a hitch and runs fine.

Overall 7 IMO is worth looking into.

Doing a download now, I'll put it on my laptop for testing.

There can't be much interest out there as the 2.5 million downloads are still available.

I bin bit too many times.

Whispering...(Viiiiiiiiiista)...lol

Kit, let us know how you set up goes. One more thing I've done since I posted this was update the Vid drivers with the newest stable Nvidea drivers offered at Nvidea's site. I'm happy to report that using the J3 Cub, I was getting over 110 FPS at times with an average of around 75. I'm happy with those results for sure.

I must say, initially, slightly impressed.

Installation: 30 minutes from power on to a usable desktop.

I get the impression that it's a slightly cut down version of Vista, I maybe wrong.

I play a lot of CoD2 with my sister so that was the first program to be installed, normal installation failed due to a compatibility issue know to Microsoft, so then I installed it using the administration option and it installed OK with just a warning again at the end.
Patched up to 1.3 and played a game on the net and also joined my CoD2 server without a problem.

Installed Avast antivirus without problem.

Came to Com-Central and checked Bushy's points about theme's. I have non of those graphical error's. I started at the top of the theme's list and selected each in turn, I encountered two problems, not with the colours but with the layout, one theme didn't display the centre panel correctly, it was displayed after the side panels had finished, possibly a centre panel overflow problem?
The last theme. ground pounders, that's when the trouble started, it crashed the laptop, BSD.

The computer now boots up till the Avast registration page then crashes when clicking through the registration process, after a couple of times doing this, it now boots to desktop normally. Maybe I should have had an extra reboot after Avast install.

Avast seems to be struggling to initiate so maybe it's an Avast issue...

More testing required. I'll put Teamspeak on next and see what my results are...

*edit*
The theme with the display problem is comcentralNT. all the other theme's display OK.

*edit*
Just checked with firefox and it displays OK and OK with IE6, maybe it's an IE8 'feature'.

Just out of curiosity, on the gaming aspect, I expect Windows 7 is using DX10? There are compat issues with some DX9 games and I know you can install DX9c in Vista and it's supposed to add the functionality or DLL's that DX10 (and DX9L) doesn't provide, but that still leads to issues with some DirectPlay games (such as, ahem, CFS3, which acts as if it can't bind to a socket with Vista, DX10 and DX9c even added on). I'm wondering what running "dxdiag" might show you in terms of a network tab or not (the network tab for dxdiag is not present in Vista/Dx10 since DX10 is "deprecated" from DX9).

In other words could ya do me a fave and run DXDiag and see if there's a network tab like there is in XP and DX9c??

Yep Kit, the display issues are IE8 as FF displays all themes correctly.

Stoopy, 7 is using DX10 and I've had the chance to run FSX in both XP Pro and 7 and there's no question that 7, DX10 and the newest Nvidia drivers are at minimum a HUGE improvement in game play frames. Example: FSX in XP Pro average around 45 fps. In 7, they're close to 80 FPS with exactly the same machine and hardware.

I spent all day yesterday building a new server (4 times faster and 4 times more memory... :D) and getting all the software to work like it's supposed to and after I finished, I decided to start up 7 and a funny thing happened. It no longer shows any of the other computers on the network like it did when I first installed it. It connects to the net just fine, but no other partitions or files on the other machines show. I looked for a long time for the answer and while some things in 7 are very cool, MS also hosed some easy settings really bad. Example: Windows 7 Firewall. The good news is it's very configurable, but for the life of me, I couldn't find a way to shut it off. There's times when you need to do that as a test.

I never did get the network computers to show and mixed with the lack of firewall shut down, I'm not too happy with networking settings. In XP and Linux, all the network folders are there and accessible, so it's something in 7.

I'm extremely happy with FSX gaming however but FS9 is starting to 'hang'. I'm not sure at this point if I need or want to install 7 again to 'fix' those problems, we'll see how it goes after more testing and reading.

I'll try CFS3 tomorrow and see how that works in 7 as well as see if DXDiag runs.

It connects to the net just fine, but no other partitions or files on the other machines show

Wonder if is like vista where each computers on the network must be logged on with the same user name and password?

Wierd.
After installing 7 I set it up to access my private network, everything shows, all the 'shares' on the other computer and the NAS drive as well.

*edit*

Just ran dxdiag on the laptop.



No networking tab.

But CoD2 still gives me the option to run as either Dx7 or Dx9.

Thanks Kit! DX11 eh?

Yeah I'd bet it contains elements of DX9 just as DX10 in Vista does, what it calls "DX9L".

Bush, I'm betting that CFS3 will rum like a striped-ass ape, but won't have any success with network connectivity. For instance, if you also install GameRanger, it will choke when trying to either host or join a game (you'll get an "Aircraft Mismatch" error when trying to join, even though your aircraft are fine).

It's a long story but goes to an issue in Vista and/or DX10 which simply doesn't support the DirectPLay method(s) that CFS3 is using. You can safely install DX9C, which will only install components that aren't already provided in DX10, but it's still blocked, as if intentionally filtered out (very strange). There have been some workarounds and interestingly, renaming the CFS3.EXE to something else tends to make it work for private IP games (have done it myself on the Vista machine we have here) but then GameRanger won't call it since it's fixed to look for CFS3.EXE only. I wrote a simple wrapper executable to make GR happy, which then calls the renamed CFS3, but then it blows up in a different way with errors from one of the DLL files although it launches well, connects, and even passes the aircraft mismatch checkpoint. It's a mess I tell ya, a confounding, interesting mess at that. Been spending the last two-three weeks mixing and matching and watching with ProcMon, and yanking out my nosehairs one by one in frustration.

So, jus' curious....

- RM_bizkid

It connects to the net just fine, but no other partitions or files on the other machines show

Wonder if is like vista where each computers on the network must be logged on with the same user name and password?

Just had a play with 7's network ability.
7 can see and access all the shared XP folders without problem once set up for your own network.

To access 7's shared files/printers etc XP must identify itself to windows 7 before access is granted, easily enough done by using the drop down box for name and password when trying to access 7's shares.

State of play...
7 can access all of the XP shares on any computer and the NAS drive.
XP, any computer can now access 7's shares without problem.

Easier to set up then Vista IMHO, I'm a happy bunny.

Wonder how long before there is an upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit available? (Guess one should wait til there is an SP1 lol) I installed Vista 2 weeks ago and can't wait to get rid of it. And I thought Windows ME was a dog!

LOL Biz...

Kit, here's something new to add. I reinstalled 7 and from that point on, I could see all my other Computers on the network, THEN....

MS sent a notice about updates. I updated 7 and can no longer see the network folders. I can see my own 7 install folder, but that's it, so I'm thinking it has to do with the update. Did you update your install yet?

Also, another update on the FS9 game. It seems as if 7 doesn't like windows mode. The game locks up. If you resize to full screen mode, all is fine again. Odd...

DXDiag displays in 7, but not like it used to. The interface has been changed and to me, not for the better. It does show DX 11 however just like the pic Kit shows above.

I haven't done anything with CFS3 yet, but I will.

Yes, mine updated from the net not long after it was activated. Just checked the net now and it says windows is up to date.

Re CFS3.
I installed CFS3 on the laptop along with Gameranger, and true enough trying to join an XP hosted game produces the aircraft mismatch. I installed DirectX9.0c but to no avail, I also tried to run CFS3 in compatibility mode but still had the aircraft mismatch.

Thanks for the update on CFS3 Kit...

After the updates, I was trying to open a file and the browse for file button came up. I clicked on that button to my amazement and seen all the network computers which I quickly mapped. I can now 'see' my network computers.

Also, that weird color display went away for IE8 and TeamSpeak. All's fine now. (Other than the usual IE issues..lol)

Here's something to think about...

I was getting so many different installs of Windows on my differnt partitions, I decided to clean house. I formatted a couple of partitions, cleaned out a bunch of files and reclaimed some new space, but listen to this...

Since I put 7 on partition 4, I formatted C or my partition 1. I restarted the machine with XP Pro and installed it on C: (partition 1). Upon rebooting, the GRUB menu was gone, no surprise there, but XP overwrote the 7 boot record. Hmmm...

I restored my GRUB menu and yep, Linux and ExPeee was on there so I choose Windows and it booted into XP, so...

I put in the 7 DVD and found a nice feature on the dvd that will let you restore the start up partion of 7. Fast and easy to do, I then restarted the computer only find a good and bad thing. The GRUB menu was still in place (woohoo) and even though it showed ExPeee on the menu, it booted into 7...

I'm stopping for now. I have Linux and 7 booting fine and I'll tackle the 7 and ExPee problem again later.