Journal jawtheshark's Journal: First impressions on Windows 7: Oh, $DIETY, why? 20
A bit of context. I borked a BIOS update on my brother computer and we decided to build a new one. I'd participate the price of an equivalent machine he had (as much as possible) and he'd pay the rest. We went with a 6 Core AMD and 16GB RAM just because we could and it isn't all that expensive anyway.
Of course, 16GB RAM implies a 64-bit OS and since he games, it has to be Windows. So I bought a systems builders Windows 7 Pro 64-bit for him. Completely legal: I'm the system builder, he is the customer.
My first impressions of Windows 7 are.... sub-par. I can only say: What were they thinking?
First of all, it insists on creating a 100MB "System partition". No way around it. No clue for what it's good and it's completely invisible from within Windows 7. Good, let's call that one
Second, after the installation procedure it booted up in.... a black screen with only a cursor. Yay! Way to go Microsoft! Sure, just resetting the computer did away with that, but really? Resetting a computer after a fresh install doesn't inspire confidence.
Now, comes the kicker. I usually try to make different partitions, one for the operating system, one for applications, one for data. This time, I was willing to take the simple form: operating system and applications on one partition and data on another. Well, as a matter of fact, it would not be partitions but separate disks. The old computer had a 250GB disk and we bought a 1TB disk. So, I thought it would be nice to have the 250GB for system and programs and the 1TB disk for the user profiles. Only moving "My Documents" would also have done it, but since now "My Documents" doesn't contain all documents (On XP "My Documents" had the subfolders for pictures, music, etc... This is not so in Vista or 7), moving them one by one is a huge hassle. On XP it's just right click, change location and move. Done. Here... Well, ehm... No.
So moving the C:\Users to D:\Users seemed the logical thing to do. Well, that doesn't seem to be possible on a existing Windows 7 install. Nope. Not possible, from what I Googled, it seems you have to specify that during the installation using the unattended options. Not nice.
Basically, I have the impression that you have to use one disk, one partition and that's it. In the day and age of SSDs for binaries and spinning disks for data, this seems to be an unacceptable situation. Yes, I know, we don't have a SSD, but it was just to have a separation and it's simply easier to backup a separate data disk/partition. Especially when the OS borks itself.
I already had very negative impressions by using the OEM Dell install on my dads Alienware laptop (Recent example: Wireless just renaming themselves because I changed the gateway IP address... WTF? What's up with the stupid choice beteen Home, Work and Public network anyway?) This really doesn't help.
The whole system is so opaque, that London in the mist looks like a clear sunny day. Sure, blame my Windows 7 expertise, but I've been using Windows systems for ages and none were so prissy as 7. Yes, I know I seem to go against common slashdot knowledge that Windows 7 is nice, but I really do not like what I see. In that aspect Vista was a master strategic move: make it so crappy that anything slightly better would be accepted as "saviour".
I fear, I'll have to simply resign... Remove the 250GB disk and use only the 1TB disk. At least that will simplify my life. Too bad, I have no other option than Windows 7 for this machine.
Not fond of Windows 7 (Score:2)
I bought a laptop for the family earlier this year and it came loaded with Windows 7. I think I am one of the very few people on the planet that actually prefers Vista to Windows 7.
That said, I would still rather have Linux loaded than either Vista or 7.
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Amen! Hugs his old Ubuntu laptop :-)
With that kind of rig... (Score:2)
...you could have installed Debian and still have enough beef to run the games in a VM or WINE. :-P For example, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 looks photorealistic on my dual-core with a nice graphics card.
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It's not special in any kind of way. If you target longevity, you should always buy the best gear you can afford. Since we could re-use the graphics card, optical disks, card reader, harddisks and the case (Nice one, bought a few years ago because the OEM rattled too much), it was just a few hundred euros. I think I contributed 150€ and he spent 500€, including the Windows license. That's not all that much by any stretch of imagination considering the power you get.
While my brother is a power
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If he's a gamer, give him Windows. If he only games occasionally, WINE seems to support lots of games just fine, and you can set them up for him via ssh from your home desk.
As for longevity of systems, screw that. As you've noticed, we're at "comfortable speeds" since the P IV. Nobody updates computers any more except for storage (volatile and non-volatile). So you can build a new computer for under EUR 200 that will last five to eight years without any need to upgrade.
As for being a "power user", I'm defin
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Longevity is important in the sense that adapting to a a new computer every X months is painful. You need to transfer data, eventually learn a new OS, you may lose features you had which you got used to and can't take over (A certain card reader in your old computer isn't there in your new one and can't be transferred), you need to reinstall your applications and many many other downsides. In all, moving to a new computer is pure pain. You do not want to do that on a regular base.
He's not into recent gam
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Longevity is important in the sense that adapting to a a new computer every X months is painful.
I agree! What I meant is that you can buy well in the low end of the market and still get a machine that will last 6, 7, 8... years. We've talked about it, I find the Mac you bought for your wife completely crazy. It's going to be *high end* for several *years* compared to the bread-and-butter computers, and probably seriously overpowered for anything the two of you can think of *together* until its EOL. Given Apple's pricing of the high end machines, you could have bought a MacBook for every room of your p
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I disagree and I agree. Yes, this machine is going to be high end several years. That's the whole POINT! However, I disagree the system is "crazy" and I'll tell you why: It's a bog standard iMac with the expection of quadrupled RAM from it's standard configuration. That's the only thing that makes is somehow special. You know what were crazy configurations?
c.a. 1996, Pentium Pro 200MHz with 32MB R
Observations and suggestions (Score:2)
I've never seen the setup-time black-screen-with-cursor issue you're talking of, so my best guess there is you've got some kind of weird hardware issue going on.
Yeah, Microsoft (or, at least, some very poor teams there) likes to assume you're going to use one disk for your OS. Just read up on some of the problems with MSI [virtualdub.org]...
That said, something you might try. Format your larger volume, and then set it up to mount at C:\Users. I've got a 200G drive I have mounted at C:\Projects, that I use for my projects an
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The cursor on black screen seems to be related to NVidia hardware. The hardware is fine, so it's not that.
The problem with no "easy" way to switch the partitions (once C:\Users exists, you can't move it.... It's locked because you're logged in, even in safe mode) is that this is not my machine. I can cope with special configs and stuff like that. The user is my brother and I've always set up Windows machines my way but transparent to the end user. Anything that requires user discipline or the users kno
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Mm.
The weird thing here is that all of those things should be able to be reconfigured while the system is offline, but it'd require intimate knowledge of the registry to automate and not screw up. It's the kind of thing Sysinternals might have written.
Ah well.
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Yes, it should be... I tried it, because I knew the techniques in NT4 to XP and there it does work. (Copy data, modify registry, reboot, delete original directory, done.... It's even possible on a LIVE system.) However, even in Safe mode, the registry is loaded. Yes, the safe mode with command line only. No, I'm not kidding. It's insane.
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Sounds like you already know what you need. Boot a live CD environment like BartPE, and do it that way?
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BartPE can open and edit the Registry?
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There are tools designed for opening and editing the hive files. I don't know if BartPE comes with them in the default configuration, but I remember being presented with a *huge* number of options the last time I went through the build process for building a BartPE disc.
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Nice... Still, sad you have to resort to 3rd party apps for normal operating system functionality.
I used libraries instead (Score:2)
Created new folders on my external drive, added them to the relevant library sections, moved data over. In that respect, they actually got something right for a change.
-MT.
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I saw this "Library" thing. It was completely unclear to me what it was which is a very bad thing since I'm a seasoned computer user.
Still, as I understand now you can add data sources to the library and use them as if they were your home directoy. That's fine, but what happens when you add new users? Do they get access to that library too? Especially with a USB disk, where assumingly the user rights aren't set correctly. (And can't be as, having NTFS on a USB disk makes it hard to move it between comp
Windows 7 (Score:2)
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Yes, I noticed these weird things too. I'm pretty convinced they tried making it more idiot-proof and due to that less flexible. I feel more and more as it's "Microsofts way or the highway". Of course, I haven't been doing much Windows. I know XP pretty well, but basically, I skipped Vista and have no need for 7. My Windows knowledge is pretty dated by now, and I somehow have no urging need to update it.