# Windows 7 Beta: Should I upgrade?



## Darkwing (Aug 7, 2009)

Recently I am hearing all of this hype about Windows 7, and about how fast it is, and I got a few questions about it:

1. Is it worth upgrading?

2. Do I have to backup my files before I upgrade, some people told me that you don't have to backup your files when your upgrade to Windows 7 through Vista.

3. How much of a performance boost does it give you?

Here is my specs:

OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Processor: AMD Athlon dual-core 1.9 GHz

Video Card: Radeon HD 3200

RAM: 2 gigs

160 gig Harddrive


So, for you to use as an example, I can run Crysis on Directx 9 mode @ medium settings at 640x480 resolution with an average of 25-30 fps, if I upgraded to 7, how much of a performance boost would that give me?


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## ToeClaws (Aug 7, 2009)

_1. Is it worth upgrading?_

If you have Vista, yes.  You may be able to even upgrade for free (which is a nice perk).  Vista is such a bad build, that it's easy to improve on.  Windows 7 is essentially Vista second edition with some MUCH needed tweaks and improvements, so definitely a step up.

_ 2. Do I have to backup my files before I upgrade, some people told me that you don't have to backup your files when your upgrade to Windows 7 through Vista.
_ 
No - it should just migrate your settings and environment.

_ 3. How much of a performance boost does it give you?

_Not a huge one, I would imagine.  Hard to say yet since it's still only a release candidate.  The one thing I would suggest is to wait for the real version rather than use the beta or RC version, cause if you do, then you're just going to have upgrade yet again to the real version of Windows 7 anyway.


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## Raithah (Aug 7, 2009)

Unfortunately, given my lack of experience with Vista, I can only keep to the facts without relative comparisons. In light of that, question *#2* you can look at [this chart] wherein 'Custom Install' means losing old files and 'In Place' means an upgrade without loss. Again, due to that strange cocktail of hardware and software components, no one can tell you with absolute certainty how anything will affect any other thing - however, for what it's worth, Windows 7 seems to be a bit snappier, so that 'may' translate to your games. In any case, it isn't likely to slow it down by much, if at all.

Edit: I don't mean to be rude, but people have this tendency to skip over my posts (and this time I actually have something to contribute!).



(apologies for the large-ish image)


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## Runefox (Aug 7, 2009)

Darkwing said:


> Recently I am hearing all of this hype about Windows 7, and about how fast it is, and I got a few questions about it:


It's slightly better than Vista in terms of speed, but I did an upgrade install. It seems to boot faster.



> 1. Is it worth upgrading?



That's up to you to decide. On that note, I don't think I'd go back to Vista if I had to flatten this thing (which I very nearly did about an hour ago due to filesystem corruption).



> 2. Do I have to backup my files before I upgrade, some people told me that you don't have to backup your files when your upgrade to Windows 7 through Vista.


It's _always_ a good idea to backup your files before an upgrade, and frankly, it's a better idea to flatten everything first (I didn't want to do that and decided to take the risk that things would be unstable; If you perform an upgrade install, don't expect it to perform the same as a fresh install). When I did my upgrade install, Windows 7 "forgot" to restore my user profile, and I lost pretty much everything until I figured out where it stored it all during install. You can copy everything yourself from there, but it's a pain.



> 3. How much of a performance boost does it give you?


Honestly, the benchmarks don't show much difference, but in terms of how the interface responds, things open up faster and it very rarely fails to respond, so it "feels" a lot faster than Vista or XP.



> Here is my specs:
> 
> OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
> Processor: AMD Athlon dual-core 1.9 GHz
> ...


You should really be running 4GB of memory for Vista/Win7. However, the graphics card and processor should be more than enough to run it well.


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## Aurali (Aug 7, 2009)

Darkwing said:


> Recently I am hearing all of this hype about Windows 7, and about how fast it is, and I got a few questions about it:
> 
> 1. Is it worth upgrading?
> 
> ...



1: out of my experience, you'd love it.
2: Personally. I'd back everything up and do a clean install. Makes everything run a lot faster.
3:I can't compare. I was running 32bit Vista and 64 bit windows 7


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## Darkwing (Aug 8, 2009)

Okay guys, I just got done installing Windows 7, and let me just say that I freaking love it already. I noticed the performance boost (I can finally set physics on high in Crysis  ). And everything is running much smoother. Windows 7 really helped give the boost I needed for my rig.


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## WaffleTheEpic (Aug 8, 2009)

Hmm, really?

I lag when playing TF2 because of my graphics card (NVidia Geforce 6150SE, which is strange because I play L4D on the highest settings... Too bad I got hacked and lost L4D)

and I'm thinking about it myself.


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## Aurali (Aug 8, 2009)

WaffleTheEpic said:


> Hmm, really?
> 
> I lag when playing TF2 because of my graphics card (NVidia Geforce 6150SE, which is strange because I play L4D on the highest settings... Too bad I got hacked and lost L4D)
> 
> and I'm thinking about it myself.



Why haven't you reported this to Steam?


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## WaffleTheEpic (Aug 8, 2009)

They recovered my password but had no record of me owning L4D.

Which was quite frustrating :L


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## Rel (Aug 8, 2009)

Tbh, i have windows 7 ultimate (build 7100 RC) on my old 1.6 dual core laptop right now, and it has significantly increased its performance than vista. I could hardly load vista, and on this laptop, it loads at least 2x faster (With a bit of msconfig tweeking). 

The only thing i really dont like about windows 7, is that when i upgraded to RC, it totally messed up all of my programs (i had to reinstall all of them), driver files went unassociated, and i lost alot of data. Other than upgrading 7, it works like a dream.


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## Shino (Aug 9, 2009)

I've been using the 7 beta ever since they released the PDC build. (Yes, it was a licensed copy. Geez, BitTorrent freaks...)

I've gotta say, it's been a _long_ time since I've had an OS that I actually _enjoyed_ using. Vista wasn't bad, but there were a couple *exasperated sigh* moments while using it.

I don't mean to sound like a Microsoft marketer, but it runs faster, is more stable, and as has a better feature set than any Microsoft OS to date. That, and there's better multi-touch support in 7 than any other OS in existance, and I'm counting the iPhone OS in that statement.


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## Runefox (Aug 9, 2009)

Shino said:


> I've been using the 7 beta ever since they released the PDC build. (Yes, it was a licensed copy. Geez, BitTorrent freaks...)



Why did people even torrent this, anyway? I got mine at RC/Build 7100 legitimately for free from Microsoft with a nice fast HTTP download that didn't require me to seed afterwards.  And I can use it until June 2010. Sweet.


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## Shino (Aug 9, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Why did people even torrent this, anyway?


Back before the beta went public and they released the first beta build at the PDC on traveldrives to the attendees, everyone was like "I want has!" and torrented the 6100(?) build that a few of the attendees posted, even though is was only intended as a technical preview, and not a day-to-day runnable OS.
Then the first public release (7000) came out, and people still torrented because they didn't want to register with Microsoft to get a _free_ key. Instead, they spent massive amounts of time cracking their copy instead.

I never said these people were intelligent...


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## WaffleTheEpic (Aug 9, 2009)

Shino said:


> Back before the beta went public and they released the first beta build at the PDC on traveldrives to the attendees, everyone was like "I want has!" and torrented the 6100(?) build that a few of the attendees posted, even though is was only intended as a technical preview, and not a day-to-day runnable OS.
> Then the first public release (7000) came out, and people still torrented because they didn't want to register with Microsoft to get a _free_ key. Instead, they spent massive amounts of time cracking their copy instead.
> 
> I never said these people were intelligent...



That happened with me and this one game I found; was free on Steam but I had read somewhere that it coated 20$ so I torrented it and cracked it only to find out Steam had it out for free :/


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## Rel (Aug 9, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Why did people even torrent this, anyway? I got mine at RC/Build 7100 legitimately for free from Microsoft with a nice fast HTTP download that didn't require me to seed afterwards.  And I can use it until June 2010. Sweet.


Yeah, i did the same thing, but for some reason i have like 5 different keys.  lol

The only thing i dont get is that build 7100 RC is ultimate right? I haven't seen an ultimate for sale (when it comes out), but then again, i only looked at bestbuy. (it doesn't really matter either, since i bought a computer there and I get home premium for free)


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## Runefox (Aug 9, 2009)

Ultimate is indeed one of the SKUs available. Technically, you could have installed any version of Windows 7 when you first went to install it, but not going with Ultimate would be pretty dull.


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## Rel (Aug 9, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Ultimate is indeed one of the SKUs available. Technically, you could have installed any version of Windows 7 when you first went to install it, but not going with Ultimate would be pretty dull.


Yeah, Ultimate has all of the bells and whistles, but to be honest, I really don't need them. But if I did, i could probably get some 3rd party program to do the same thing.


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## Runefox (Aug 9, 2009)

Rel said:


> Yeah, Ultimate has all of the bells and whistles, but to be honest, I really don't need them. But if I did, i could probably get some 3rd party program to do the same thing.



BitLocker = TrueCrypt
Remote Desktop/Terminal Services = VNC (meh, not quite as useful, but does the job)
Media Centre = XBMC Media Centre (I cannot stress how awesome this is)
Windows XP Mode = VirtualBox (Seriously, Virtual Windows XP is actually VirtualPC running XP, desktop and all)
Domains = No replacement.
Language Options = No replacement?


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## Rel (Aug 10, 2009)

Runefox said:


> BitLocker = TrueCrypt
> Remote Desktop/Terminal Services = VNC (meh, not quite as useful, but does the job)
> Media Centre = XBMC Media Centre (I cannot stress how awesome this is)
> Windows XP Mode = VirtualBox (Seriously, Virtual Windows XP is actually VirtualPC running XP, desktop and all)
> ...


Lol, thank you, but I don't need most of those. I''m sure ill be happy with a free copy of 7, and not having to pay for features I'm not/i'd rarely use.


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## Darkwing (Aug 10, 2009)

Runefox said:


> Windows XP Mode = VirtualBox (Seriously, Virtual Windows XP is actually VirtualPC running XP, desktop and all)



Wait a minute, what is Virtual box/Windows XP Mode? Is this a feature on Windows 7 I don't know about


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## Runefox (Aug 10, 2009)

Darkwing said:


> Wait a minute, what is Virtual box/Windows XP Mode? Is this a feature on Windows 7 I don't know about



Windows 7 has a feature called "Virtual Windows XP". It runs a copy of Windows XP Professional 32-bit in an emulated machine, connected via Terminal Services. No 3D acceleration or anything, but it'll run virtually any app that XP can run, so it would effectively get around any incompatibilities in Win7.

VirtualBox is a free program that does pretty much the same thing, except you can run virtually any OS in it, and supported OS'es actually have OpenGL 3D acceleration support. You do need a copy of Windows XP (or whatever OS you want) to run it in VirtualBox, however, but it additionally supports "Seamless mode", which makes the desktop of the virtual machine disappear and integrate almost perfectly with your real desktop.

Virtual Windows XP requires little setup on the user's part; VirtualBox is like running a computer within your computer, including the OS setup.


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## net-cat (Aug 10, 2009)

Runefox said:


> BitLocker = TrueCrypt
> Remote Desktop/Terminal Services = VNC (meh, not quite as useful, but does the job)
> Media Centre = XBMC Media Centre (I cannot stress how awesome this is)
> Windows XP Mode = VirtualBox (Seriously, Virtual Windows XP is actually VirtualPC running XP, desktop and all)
> ...



More like...

BitLocker = TrueCrypt
RDP/TS = Business/Professional
Media Center = Home Premium, 7 Professional
XP Mode = VirtualBox (Although 7 includes the XP license.)
Domains = Business/Professional
Language Options = I think Business/Professional might have these too, but I'm not sure.



Darkwing said:


> Wait a minute, what is Virtual box/Windows XP Mode? Is this a feature on Windows 7 I don't know about



http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx



For the record, I don't see what the big deal about Win7 is. I ran it on my laptop for a couple of weeks. No tablet support (on my model) and wasn't actually any better than Vista Business in terms of performance. Will probably give this one a miss 'til my next computer.


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## Runefox (Aug 10, 2009)

I was more talking about the third party programs to fill in functionality between Home/Professional/Ultimate.


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## net-cat (Aug 10, 2009)

I figured. But the implication was that those features are only available in Ultimate, which is false.


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## Duality Jack (Aug 10, 2009)

Blaaahhhh! Windows,


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## Runefox (Aug 10, 2009)

net-cat said:


> I figured. But the implication was that those features are only available in Ultimate, which is false.



The language bit (referring to the ability to "Switch between 35 different languages") is actually Ultimate-only, as is BitLocker. Unfortunately, that's all the Microsoft is saying is different between it and Professional; There's really almost no reason to get Ultimate if that's true.


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