Who goes from Windows 7 to Vista and likes it?

[Cytherian]

^ Wow... thanks for the link, whs. I feel like I've been in the Stone Age.

Well, $70 for a 60Gb drive is much more attractive than when I checked on SSD prices about 2 years ago (something like $350 for 40Gb). This is pretty amazing. I wonder if new laptop form factors will accommodate 2 SSD drives internally. That would be seriously powerful and cost effective (leveraging multiple units at lesser price, instead of one larger SSD for way more than double).

 

[whs]

Laptops with 2 disk bays are pretty rare and mostly 17". But a 120GB SSD for around $100 is in the cards ( Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ). The 60GB I bought was also a Mushkin. I think it is a good product. Other than that I have 3 OCZs, 2 Intels and 1 Crucial M4 to compare. A couple of those run with Vista and they run very nicely. A world of difference to spinning disks.

Half of my SSDs are in laptops, the other half in desktops. The wife runs her laptops with 60GB SSDs. But she keeps all her own files on 32GB sticks. On my desktops I have at least 1 big HDD for my own files. But I always keep all system files on the SSD. Only the hiberfile gets deleted and the pagefile is set to 2GB.

There is no way I would install an OS on a spinning disk again. I could not stand a boot time of 1 minute or more. Even my systems that run in a virtual partition of Virtual Box benifit from the SSD. Watch this little video that shows in real time how my Windows 8 boots in Virtual Box: Start Win8 in vBox1.wmv - YouTube

Warning: It may make your head spin - LOL.

 

[Cytherian]

That's a terrific deal! $100 for 120Gb of SSD real estate. I just read an article about how you can swap out your internal DVD drive and install a hard disk in its place. I was thinking of going with an external blu-ray/DVD RW device anyway. Put the SSD in the primary SATA slot, then put the old SATA drive in the DVD slot.

One glaring thing, though... I saw a lot of negative reviews with pretty much the same issue--premature failure, short as even a few days after use, some after 4-6 months. That's not too cool. Same thing reported on a Sandisk SSD model.

The only drawback is that I think my current system is just SATA. Still, it would probably a bigger improvement than bumping up memory to 8Gb.

 

[zuriat]

Hi guys,

Check this out. It fits into the palm of my hand and I use it to back up 500GB of my digital photos.

I have been using it for some time and found it is better than having a 2nd hard drive installed.
The USB 3 requires 2 usb ports.

Welcome to the Transcend Info Website - USB 2.0,USB 3.0

 

[Night Hawk]

Some of the latest SSDs are actually in the shape of video cards for the higher capacity models now being seen. With a good number of notebooks and laptops usually the larger models you can add in an expansion card for video where this type of SSD could work but see the higher price tags.

As for swapping the optical drive to add in a second drive that has always been the situation with many portables while the larger 17" and ablove as whs was pointing out may have that extra space to allows for the second drive slot.

For external drives you can opt for the usb or eSata type external HDs or go one better by going with a fan cooled usb or eSata capable enclosure. The problem initially seen with external drives was them simply ran too hot not having adequate air space inside the casings as well as no exhaust fan or cooling option

With the external enclosures however you can get some that handle 3 or 4 drives and are well cooled. They look almost like mini server cases since you can drop a few high capacity(1tb, 1.5tb, 2tb, 3tb) drives into them and call it a day!

As far as Vista lacking the Trim support that could even apply to 2000, XP while SSDs have actually been around but simply not known much about since the 90s. The high costs for the initial SMALL models would be out of the reach for most to start with certainly back then.

 

[whs]

1. In regard to reliability I think there is little difference between a SSD and a HDD. I can only speak for my own lot, but my oldest SSD is from 4 years ago and still going strong.During the same time frame one of my HDDs went south. I have, however, seen one OCZ model of a friend that was defective from the very beginning. That we had to return.

2. Regarding Sata2 versus Sata3 - there should be very little difference in real life. Sata2 can very well accomodate the transfer speeds of the most common OS blocks (4K). If you look at the measurements, the 4K blocks are way below the maximum and are well within the range of Sata2 (3Gb/sec).

 

[Night Hawk]

Well from first seeing the retail 7 as well as beta and RC builds go onto Sata II drives and later on the present build for the retail first Sata III and later the Sata II due to a need for another clean install I didn't actually find any boost as far as OS! 7 simply runs more responsive then previous versions to start with.

For file transfers and a few things you may notice a difference with the S3 drives at times however when strictly used for storage/backup purposes where you wouldn't see any active processes tieing a drive up besides Windows Explorer when going to browser for a copy and paste.

SSDs are the big rave while not so new afterall. As far as reliability I haven't actually run into any WD drive fail with any sata drive while someone else's ide drive let go on an old XP case. The only problem seen so far was when removing a WD Green Power drive from the external HD casing it came in to use internally during the beta and RC testing for 7.

Each install of either 32bit or 64bit would run into numerous unexplainable problems due to the type of energy conserving methology over the WD Caviar SE(older ide models), Caviar Blue, Black edition, or RE Enterprise models intended for OS use. Depending on how much wear and tear a drive faces and under what conditions determines how long it will last in normal use. High temps will kill any drive being another factor regardless of what type of drive.

 

[garrysome3003]

Even I liked it, vista is really handy than window 7.

 

[d0m0]

Well I installed vista on my laptop as a second OS to see how I like it.

Well so far it seems just slightly slower than 7. Other than that, I don't think I find it that different.

I like the thingie in the vista where you click the button near start and it pans all your windows in 3d. (LOL.. don't know what it is called.) Anyway can I have that effect in 7?

 

[Night Hawk]

That's still seen in 7 there too! (see attached image) While you don't see things like you do in Vista like the side bar, Window Mail, gadgets go directly on the desktop in 7 by the way over the need for the side bar in Vista, and of course other things these can be re-enabled in 7. Look over the SF tutorial section. :D

For the Windows OS Vista despite the delays and obviously larger size as far as all background services, etc. was still a great OS but met with disappointment when MS understated the need for at least 2gb of memory actually the same as where XP would start running smoother as well. But Vista surpassed XP especially with SP1 and later SP2 on in stability as well as being the updated more secure OS.

As far as being slower the value for one registry value being the "WaitToKillServices" of course as mentioned earlier in the thread saw 20,000 = 20 seconds for shutdown in XP and Vista alike. In 7 the 12,000 for 12 seconds is the default while 8 now sees 5,000 for 5 seconds if you can actually expect any version to simply shutdown that fast. I give each version a few seconds here or there depending on how you are running.

 

[whs]

I like the thingie in the vista where you click the button near start and it
pans all your windows in 3d. (LOL.. don't know what it is called.) Anyway can I
have that effect in 7?

You can do that in Win7 also:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2694-switch-between-windows-flip-3d-shortcut.html

 

[d0m0]

Thanks Night Hawk and whs, I never knew about this in Windows 7

 

[Night Hawk]

That's why I mentioned looking over the SF tutorial section to see what can be done in 7. As for the screen there I was making a screen capture of another screen capture of another and so on to come up with some involved screens with the 7 beta and then 7 RC builds back in 2009.

Here's another pair of screens I made up when first toying around a little with the 3D Flip at the time. This is one other thing I have to look at in 8 there to see if as I suspect can still be seen.

 

[solarsoftware]

I like Windows 7. But, I use Windows Vista, and VIRTUALLY run Windows 7 with these files:
P.S. I also attached UniExtract, so you can bypass UAC. :sa:

 

[Night Hawk]

Well hello there solarsoftware Welcome to VistaForums!

You can find a good number of tweakers for making XP look like Vista, Vista look like 7, and likely won't be finding to much to make 7 look like 8 however! Plus other addons can make the newer somewhat like the older version like seeing the Classic menus brought back into 7 as well as the side bar and Windows Mail.

It's the other things however that will tend to make or break an OS! With Vista Fat support was removed and then returned with 7 due to new external hard drives seeing exFat as well as the popular use of usb flash drives which come with Fat 16 by default. With Vista a program is needed to mount any Fat volume as a logical drive and why you a readi boost or some other app included with a new external usb or eSata drive.

In every edition of 7 while only seen in the Ultimate and Corporate editions of Vista you also see the option to create a full system image backup of your main and even another drive or two. In 8 a new drive problem repair tool is likely to be seen while many will turn away from the Metro UI and other changes.

You can literally find things in each version you will or will not want if you look over each newer version closely.