Windows 7

[TheVirus]

I'm using it now at home and at work. It's great. Looks great and feels smoother than Vista. I like the new taskbar but I do miss the right-click context (move/restore/etc). All games run flawlessly and Windows 7 detected, downloaded, and installed drivers for every piece of hardware (including my GTX 280). Also found the RAID controller I use at work. I didn't have to download a single driver.

 

I love it. It is by far the best Windows release. It's like going from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, it's that good. There's a lot of performance enhancements and other tweaks but I don't want to get into all of that, there are plenty of articles that do.

[Guy]

Warning, windows 7 is buggy with ati hd4xxx series cards right now. I would advise sticking with the microsoft provided driver for ati cards at the moment

[Wrathek]

Warning, windows 7 is buggy with ati hd4xxx series cards right now. I would advise sticking with the microsoft provided driver for ati cards at the moment

 

i would advise with sticking with nvidia for forever (j/k)

[RedOctober]

i used it for gaming and it worked great. no problems with steam or downloading anything.

 

some games even ran faster because Win 7 uses less memory.

[Caution]

I've been running it for a few months now and I love it.

[Guy]

Make sure to run the 64-bit version if at all possible. supurisingly windows 7 runs best with 64 bit mode. if you have some 32-bit only programs, microsoft also has the virtual pc thing out for free, that puts a windows xp vm in your os (kind of like when macs had "classic mode for mac os X/9"

[Psyche]

Been using W7 for a while now, I might actually buy a W7 key so I can keep it.

[TheVirus]

i used it for gaming and it worked great. no problems with steam or downloading anything.

 

some games even ran faster because Win 7 uses less memory.

 

It's not that Windows Vista uses a lot of memory, it's that Vista is optimized to take advantage of unused resources. It might look like it's using 1.6GB/2.0GB, but the moment a program runs and needs memory, Vista clears it up. It's quite intelligent and a very smart move. Windows 7 does the same thing but it uses even less than Vista.

 

With Vista, I had about 2-2.5GB/8GB used at any given moment. In Windows 7, it's using 1.9GB currently. Granted, I have a shitton of RAM, but at work I only have 2GB and it utilizes about 400MB.

[Loganator456]

I really love the idea of Windows 7, but I'm going to wait a while for Microsoft to get some service packs and patches out before I move over completely.

[Psyche]

Preorders are availible at Amazon, the Home Premium upgrade pre-order is only $50 dollars. I just preordered it, while Pro upgrade is $100 and Ultimate is $220.