I also never upgrade to a new version of an OS when it first becomes available, and generally wait until SP1 is released. With WIN 7, I downloaded the free WIN 7 Enterprise 3 month trial first, then upgraded to WIN 7 Pro on my x64 capable computers. But decided to upgrade my Vista laptop to WIN 7 Starter as it was an older 32 bit core duo, so didn't really see any benefit with paying more for the other versions. Still kept WIN XP on a separate drive, and would go back and forth while doing the upgrade as not to interrupt access to my applications when needed.
Quote: Not being backward compatible, W7 has killed some of the SW I've used for years, a few costing thousands of dollars to upgrade. That soured me on W7 and consequently I have no interest in W8.
I feel screwed.
Ditto this comment for me. "Upgrading" from XP to win7 was one of the worst decisions I've made.
Quote: I have not found a program yet that will not run on windows 7.
Well I found a bunch. A software development suite I use for business work won't run on win7 (this is a 64-bit issue) and my backup program won't work, so I was supposed to buy a new version of that, too. And my somewhat old version of pkzip won't work, as well as older but still perfectly useful versions of Office. In win7 Microsoft ruined the email client, and the search function in explorer went from fairly good to useless. Most users probably don't have enough disk partitions to trigger the new-and-improved dynamic volumes. They're a royal headache, too, and I ended up reformatting and reinstalling to get rid of them using the command line fdisk utility. Then there's the old Kodak viewer that used to be standard in Windows, won't run correctly on win7, and a new version isn't even offered. If you have data files using the viewer's file format, well, tough bananas for you. Compared to xp, win7 is a loser.
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Never ever buy a windows product until SP2 comes out. By then there will be less problems and good objective evidence as to wether or not it is worth it to buy.
Garrett
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I am now quite confused as to the W7 32 and 64 bit issue .
Posts in this thread conflict as to whether hardware and software from 32 bit XP will flawlessly work on W7 (not W7 Pro w/ the XP window).
Would my new Canon AIO printer do a simple plug and play. What about the photo processing programs that came with our panasonic camera and also one from the printer.
Also, am still using good ole Office '97 - will W7 run this?
burlmart wrote: I am now quite confused as to the W7 32 and 64 bit issue .
Posts in this thread conflict as to whether hardware and software from 32 bit XP will flawlessly work on W7 (not W7 Pro w/ the XP window).
Would my new Canon AIO printer do a simple plug and play. What about the photo processing programs that came with our panasonic camera and also one from the printer.
Also, am still using good ole Office '97 - will W7 run this?
I have 64 bit and W7 runs 32 bit apps in 32 bit mode. No problems with my software on W7.
I would hope your newer software would be OK but check with the mfg. Office 97 is antique and I'd guess you would be fortunate if it ran. MS is not in the business of supporting outdated software. But there are mostly equivalent free versions of Office.
Quote: XP is great but getting very long in the tooth much like W2K which believe it or not I still have clients that run.
....believe it or not, Win XP is still being used by many of the largest corporations on Earth (I think 1492 linked to statistics showing just how many enterprise-level entities are using XP today, and it is staggering!). Reiterating earlier posters: XP will continue to be supported and patch well past the so-called "official support end date".
burlmart wrote: I am now quite confused as to the W7 32 and 64 bit issue .
Posts in this thread conflict as to whether hardware and software from 32 bit XP will flawlessly work on W7 (not W7 Pro w/ the XP window).
Would my new Canon AIO printer do a simple plug and play. What about the photo processing programs that came with our panasonic camera and also one from the printer.
Also, am still using good ole Office '97 - will W7 run this?
I have 64 bit and W7 runs 32 bit apps in 32 bit mode. No problems with my software on W7.
I would hope your newer software would be OK but check with the mfg. Office 97 is antique and I'd guess you would be fortunate if it ran. MS is not in the business of supporting outdated software. But there are mostly equivalent free versions of Office.
Is your mention of "32 bit mode" a reference to the "XP window of W7 Pro" that has been mentioned, or is it something that standard issue W7 automatically does to run older hard/software.
If the latter is the case, why shouldn't W7 just wun Office '97. Office '97 has far less bloat and boots way faster (on my XP, anyway) than the Open Office Suite. And I've not seen where OO significantly improves wordprocessing or spreadsheets.
I quit using Office 97, but Office 2000 works on Win 7.
As far as any other hardware working on Win 7, just contact the vendor either by phone or on their site/forum. One other thing that has worked for me in the past is to do a search using the UK google site instead of the US google. For some reason, some vendors update in Europe but not here.
As far as plug and play goes, again that is kind of up to the vendor and MS to work together I think. But also, search their site and see if they have an updated install software. My XP printer from Epson works on Win 7.
Wayne: So you have software that doesn't work, such as backup program and pkzip? There are at least 5 free backup programs that work extremely well in Win 7. Pkzip? there are at least 3 free zip programs that work extremely will in Win 7. You don't like Win 7 search, try one of 2 excellent free search programs.
Email issues? I don't the situation there, but I use hotmail (windows live) and thunderbird and both work well for me.
As far as bought programs, that is kind of an issue between you and the vendor isn't it? I know of many programs that the vendor doesn't want to do an upgrade and instead wants you to buy the a new version. After all, that is the way they stay in business. This happens to all OS's, MS, Apple, and Linux versions. Of course on Linux, a lot of their software is free so there is no cost for upgrades.
My friend that had an Apple bought a new printer that wouldn't work on his system, and after some other issues, had to buy a new Mac. That is life.
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