My rant on Windows 7

[roadbloc]

I had a cracked copy of XP on Parallels just for the occasional Windows program like LeafDrums.

I saved up for driving lessons (it's about time I learned) and received a CD-ROM with a lovely bit of software with a theory test and other stuff to help me with my driving test and lessons. It was for Windows Vista and above.

Well, I tried several WINE and Cider based emulators with no success, so I decided it was time to go completely legal and buy a copy of Windows 7.

After looking at the Microsoft website, I decided that Starter Edition would be the best option, the most lightweight on RAM and HD usage and the cheapest.

Today it arrived. I have now installed it onto Parallels. What can I say. I am very disappointed.

For the most featureless OS, it uses a lot. I had XP under 256mb of ram. To say Microsoft said that it will be able to run on an XP machine, it struggles on 512, and I had to increase it to 726 to get it running near useable. And this is only the Starter Edition! I'd hate to see what Ultimate needs to run with all it's transparency, effects and additional features. And I am sorry, but 10GB of hard disk space is totally unnecessary for an OS I can't even change the desktop background on.

I was under the impression from the world that Windows 7 was a success. To me it seems like Vista. And Vista was the reason I moved to mac in the first place.

[/RANT]

 

[DoFoT9]

wow that is a rant.

could you not torrent a version of win7?

i run win7 off of 1GB RAM, it seems to run nicely.

"run off a xp machine" is more of a marketing scheme, you can never trust that!

im somewhat happy with win7, more so then vista for sure! but yea, osx ftw

 

[stomer]

In a VM, Win7 clearly uses more resources than WinXP.

I'd like to run Win7 instead of XP, but I have to increase the VHD and I have to give the VM much more memory, otherwise things slow to a crawl.

 

[Corrosive vinyl]

 

[aki]

windows 7 64bit runs great (subjective obviously) under parallels 5 (imac 3.06 4gb ram). it's not like I feel all the time "oh wow this is vritualization" or anything. runs like a normal PC (for what I do with it anyway)

i think you just have to make sure you have reasonable hardware. but performance is great. windows 7 is definitely an improvement over vista (tho to be honest I didn't loathe vista as much as everyone else seems to have).

oh and i say this as a complete mac-phan

 

[mavfan11]

win7

Like the chart above says, the requirements are 1GB for 32bit (1GB is the same as Apple sets as it's minimum requirement for Snow Leopard).

I've run Win7 on my MBP (4gb RAM) splitting it 3/1 in favor of OSX and 2/2 on parallels 5 and it runs very well. I had also tried win 7 on my MBP using bootcamp and it's fantastic. I also have Win 7 home premium running on 1GB on a dell mini 10 that dual boots jolicloud and both run great.

It's hardly a legit rant to say Windows 7 essentially failed when you failed to supply it with the minimum RAM the manufacturer said was necessary.

Windows 3.1 and DOS require less RAM too, that doesn't mean Win 7 fails because it needs more.

 

[mslide]

Really? You're bashing an OS because it doesn't run well when run inside a VM that is only assigned 726MB of RAM, and because it uses 10GB of hard drive space? You've got high expectations. As others have said, perhaps next time you should look at a piece of software's minimum hardware requirements... even then don't expect it to be very speedy inside a VM. I wouldn't expect the starter edition to run any faster than ultimate. The difference is really how many bells and whistles there are. The core OS is most likely the same and will probably run the same.

BTW, what kind of Mac are you running? How much RAM do you have? Don't forget that when you run win7 inside a VM that you are taking ram away from OSX and that can slow down your computer a lot as well. Those who say win7 runs great in a VM often times are using a modern processor with 4GB of ram.

Given the proper hardware, windows 7 runs great.