Windows 7 How would you rate Windows 7

[Andrea Borman]

Windows 7 is the best. It runs all of the old software from Windows 95 and Windows XP. Well so does Windows 8 but there is a couple of things not working on 8. Windows 7 also has a start menu and is much faster than Windows 8. In short Windows 7 is better than Windows and and I don't know why they started Windows 8 as we don't really need it. Okay I can understand them saying that Windows XP is an older OS. But why should we upgrade to Windows 8 when there are some flaws in it and it does not run all of the software that Windows 7 does?

 

[badrobot]

The worst part is, MS killed XP so people will be forced to buy/upgrade to a new OS. It's all about the money.
I am still rooting for Win 7!

 

[Gene Depp]

I'd probably rate it a 9/10

My friend was egging me about buying it and she showed me the specs from Tek-Micro.Com

To be honest, I don't have much use for the new additions I'm happy with Office 2003. And yet probably the only reason I might get Office 2011 Home Business or something is because of the cool new graphical interface.

 

[ezra25]

Stayed with windows 7, no problem with it....

 

[Ankit Jaiswal]

Windows 7 is better option for windows xp and vista but 8 and 8.1 is better option for win 7. So i will give 4 out of 5.

 

[VsUK]

From Windows 95, 98se, 2000, xp, windows 7 & windows 8 I have to say windows xp is a close second but windows 7 rules. I really do hate windows 8 & how it dumbs down you're experience.

But I have noticed a pattern & I wonder if anyone else has noticed. Whenever Microsoft release a new OS, the previous release starts to develop new problems out of the blue? I keep my Win 7 upto date & all drivers. Then after win 8 came out I started to experience problems, nothing major but really annoying problems that never used to happen before.

Hung Process's that refuse to die & only a restart & often forced restart will fix.
Black screen with mouse cursor on desktop load up.
Stuck on Signing out when shutting down.
Apps, games minimising or crashing to desktop at random.
Watching full screen video's jumping back to boxed window mode at random.

I can go on, but none of the above I have ever experienced before with windows 7 & they only occur after updating all of microsoft's updates, install without updating I never get any of the above. So, are MS sabotaging older OS releases to annoy people into buying new ones?

 

[Fixer1234]

The timing is suspicious. I ran Outlook with no problems what-so-ever for years until recently and then it developed problems and got progressively worse over a period of months until I gave up on it. Every diagnostic said there was nothing wrong with anything. I'm convinced the problem is related to Windows and Microsoft updates for Outlook. There is an alternate explanation, thought, that does not involve Microsoft sabotaging Windows 7.

By the time Microsoft comes out with a major revision to an operating system, it has been around for quite a while and has been patched over and over. You can't take any complex software and patch it dozens and dozens of times without the likelihood of creating new problems. Even if Microsoft was not offering a replacement operating system, the odds are pretty good that users of Win 7 would be experiencing problems that didn't exist when it was new.

 

[Maniwar]

Windows 7 is the best. It runs all of the old software from Windows 95 and Windows XP. Well so does Windows 8 but there is a couple of things not working on 8. Windows 7 also has a start menu and is much faster than Windows 8. In short Windows 7 is better than Windows and and I don't know why they started Windows 8 as we don't really need it. Okay I can understand them saying that Windows XP is an older OS. But why should we upgrade to Windows 8 when there are some flaws in it and it does not run all of the software that Windows 7 does?

Coming late to this party, and perhaps others have said this. Window's 7 does not run older programs! Just to name a short few: I've used Homesite, an HTML editing program I purchased many moons ago, also programs like Paintshop Pro, Dreamweaver, etc, and I had a still capable and still one of the best printers ever made, an Epson Color Pro. The printer did many things the newer printers still can't do unless you want to spend a couple thousand dollars. None of the mentioned programs work on anything past XP. When XP came out, that was the start of Windows ignoring older software and programs to force you to purchase new, less favorable programs or products. Yeah for open source!

I'm old school. Not in that I don't like advancement, quite opposite, I just like good working programs that aren't crap. I'll try to make a long response short and stay to the topic, but that's hard. Windows 7 is the best of the worst because:

1) People follow the masses. Most people are not power users in that they don't know much about PCs except to turn it on and off. Having said that, they follow the masses and the manufacturers to the next new shiny box item. Thus making the next new MS the in thing. Win8 is just so bad awful that Win7 is still the best choice for supported OS's.

2) MS Forces you to the next. Look how long it took for Windows 2000 to die. It didn't die till 2010 when MS stopped supporting it. In my opinion, as a power user, it has the fewest blue screen issues. It was the best stable OS from MS. And when you booted in safe mode you could actually fix things. DOS was truly DOS, and if you couldn't fix it in Safe Mode, then DOS was always an option. Windows 7 (which came after XP and Vista - so Win2k almost survived three attempts to kill it) launch, along with dropped support for Win2k is what propelled Win7. And by then people were tired of the other failed attempts, XP and Vista.

3) People change because their tired of bad products. Windows 7 in my opinion, is the best choice of the worst choices. XP was avoided like a plague for years, but because most follow the masses, when they got into XP and saw how bad it was, and how much worse Vista was, when 7 came out, they were happy to jump ship. That an the fact MS was trying to kill XP and anything before it back then with Vista.

Win7 compared to Win2k - I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
Win7 compared to XP/Vista/Win8 - I give it 8.5 out of 10 stars. (I liked the old start menu better. Principle!)

 

[Maniwar]

Forgot to also mention, at least so far, you can still get updates freely for Win7. I choose which updates I want to do...always have. MS is taking that option away from Win8.1. Kim Komando has the scoop Link Removed

So again, Win7 is the best of the worst. The worst are Millenium, XP, Vista, and Win8/8.1.

 

[Maniwar]

I have to make one more comment. I find it interesting that the below quotes were made almost 4 years ago, and yet MS has not only ignored many of the tech blogs and comments made by end users re: Win7, but they've gone even farther away from what people wanted or expressed through frustration with Win8.

As I said above, of Win7 is the best of the worst. I agree so much with what tanzanos and john3347 had to say. Many of the newer posts are a perspective from Vista or XP. I go way back to DOS and the control one had. I could control all aspects of my pc, startup/boot, GUI, etc, the way I wanted. Now I can't even rename a folder without running into issues. Just a few days ago, I couldn't rename a folder. I did not have the program open, or the file, but I couldn't rename it. I restarted, and most people don't know that restarting Win7 doesn't close all programs or clear cache. I had to exit everything I was working on to totally shut down to force Win7 to release whatever it was refusing to allow me to rename.

Win7 is the best of the worst! I can't say this anyway else.

Yes that is exactly what I mean. The same goes for all the new MS software like OFFICE. Why did they get rid of drop down menus? If I do not remember the specific name or number of a file I cannot even search for it! With XP set at classic menus; I could arrange the files the way that suited me. Now I have very little control and the damn mouse clicking is driving me crazy. 3 months now and I still cannot get a grip of the damn thing. I threw away OFFICE 2008 and reinstalled OFFICE 2003. At least I can find the print button with ease.

Win 7 is amazingly powerful and stable but it reminds me of the expensive game consoles; great for games but little else. I run 3d design software and have a lot of files that are arranged in the order I want. Sometimes I think of installing XP for the serious work and keep Win 7 for BF Bad company 2!

If MS had given us the choice of classic menus and drop down menus as they did with XP then win 7 would have been PERFECT! As is I give it 50/50

As always trying to talk to MS is like knocking on a deaf man's door.

Don't think so !!



A review of TechNet forums (and others forums, including this one) during the first 9 months of 2009 will clearly disprove this theory. Most polls during this time showed between 30% and 40% of Windows users prefer the full classic interface (our own poll showed roughly 1/3 of Windows 7 Forums readers preferred the classic interface - including start menu.) The really frustrating aspect of all of this is the fact that Microsoft has yet to offer their users any explanation for the need - or desire - to abandon the classic start menu. Their general attitude displayed in their own forums to this question was, "It's gone, get over it!" Well, I, and most of the rest of the 300,000,000 to 400,000,000 Windows users worldwide who prefer the classic interface, find the lemon a bit less sour if we have a legitimate reason WHY we must accept this unpleasant change rather than being shown the attitude by the almighty Microsoft that "We wanted to eliminate it and you have to accept it." Just a legitimate reason is all we were even asking for and we have never, to this day, gotten even that!

"That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it"

 

[CHIMPANZZZEEE]

pretty good

 

[mikedesigner]

Its the best OS from MS so far in about 95% of it's features.

 

[sorgum]

50-50 is the best I can offer. Many frustrations from older OS's have not been addressed and many new frustrations have been added that didn't even exist in (YUCK) Vista. Windows Explorer is just getting more mixed up and disorganized with each new edition since Windows 98. Libraries was supposed to fix the screwed up Vista Windows Explorer, but only added to the disorganization. (Thankfully, Libraries can be disabled.)

What is it with the Microsoft developers' vocabularies? Once upon a time, we had Internet Explorer and Program Manager. Program Manager was -- guess what? -- that was where you managed your programs. That apparently was too simple and too appropriate a name, so they renamed it Windows Explorer so we could all keep it confused with Internet Explorer. Now, with Windows 7 they have come up with a nice unique naming farce called Windows Explorer FAVORITES. Now don't confuse this with Internet Explorer Favorites, which was confusing to begin with, because everybody else called them "Bookmarks". I will not even discuss the joke called "search". It often will not find documents that Windows itself decided where to hide. The ability to disable all multi-user functions would greatly benefit millions of users worldwide who are the sole users of their computers.

Well, these are just a sampling of reasons that while Vista rates a solid "F" as an operating system and XP gets a "C", Windows 7 certainly rates no better than a "C+". Windows 7 gets the "+" because it is the most stable system recently; second only to the rock solid Windows 2000 in stability.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!

----------------------------
Your reply and others on this forum who take note of the wrecked Win7 file system and "libraries" are in my view some of the few people who are really paying attention to the loss of direction and clarity of purpose at MS. Why the management and code monkeys at MS can't see the mess they are making out of a once concise OS is astonishing. I wrote a huge psycho-rant about this and diagnosed the lack of rational file system as narcissistic kiddie coder answer to job anxiety - a kind of "Federal Bureaucrat syndrome", a compulsion to complicate an issue to create job insurance inside a useless bureaucracy. DOS had a file system that was totally customizable and easy to navigate and it has gotten worse with each round of "helpful automation" ever since Win95.

Starting with the "My Files" naming convention, the direction at MS seems to be a way of compensating for the utterly uneducated graduates of HS and Univ who have never held a job or organized an office file cabinet. No parent or teacher has ever explained simple banking and finance, business organization charts, hierarchical filing, cross referencing or file naming, database normalizing etc. So MS has to make up for organizational illiteracy with the My This and My That and then topped it off with with the penultimate expression of administrative stupefaction - Libraries. "LieBerrys" is the abdication of any responsibility on the part of the user to organize his computer life. LieBerrys is to the well ordered household or small business what anarchy and destructionism is to politics.

Oh yeah, I do miss my old Win2K system - what a beauty that was.

 

[sorgum]

50/50 for me

being an eye candy is not good enough

navigation in general too much splattered all over the place and partly too deep sub-levelled (network management/control panel)..a mouse clickers' heaven for sure!

Floppy drive not working (AMD 770 chipset, Vista same box no issues), my Microsoft 3000 usb keyboard had a bad compatibility issue (no boot menu/USB device problem on startup) which was fixed month later by Gigabyte with a system bios update. Another compatibility issue, never to be fixed, no usb mouse/keyboard power on feature. Especially AMD got a fistful of Win7' driver compatibility issues. I wonder how much longer they are going to survive that deep quagmire.

Win7 a good job? nope, it was a rocky road right from the start

------------------------------------

Your reply and others on this forum who take note of the wrecked Win7 file system and "libraries" are in my view some of the few people who are really paying attention to the loss of direction and clarity of purpose at MS. Why the management and code monkeys at MS can't see the mess they are making out of a once concise OS is astonishing. I wrote a huge psycho-rant about this and diagnosed the lack of rational file system as narcissistic kiddie coder answer to job anxiety - a kind of "Federal Bureaucrat syndrome", a compulsion to complicate an issue to create job insurance inside a useless bureaucracy. DOS had a file system that was totally customizable and easy to navigate and it has gotten worse with each round of "helpful automation" ever since Win95.

Starting with the "My Files" naming convention, the direction at MS seems to be a way of compensating for the utterly uneducated graduates of HS and Univ who have never held a job or organized an office file cabinet. No parent or teacher has ever explained simple banking and finance, business organization charts, hierarchical filing, cross referencing or file naming, database normalizing etc. So MS has to make up for organizational illiteracy with the My This and My That and then topped it off with with the penultimate expression of administrative stupefaction - Libraries. "LieBerrys" is the abdication of any responsibility on the part of the user to organize his computer life. LieBerrys is to the well ordered household or small business what anarchy and destructionism is to politics.

 

[sorgum]

So windows 7 has been out for a good while how would you rate it. Do you love it, like it, 50/50, dislike it or wish I never installed it. So far I have had few too no problems with 7 it is so much better than vista I have to say i love it.

I'd give it a 6 rating out of a possible 10. Stability and security are greatly improved. The confusion in the file system ruins what could have been a superb accomplishment. The compulsion to complicate the file system in a misdirected attempt to simplify the end users organizational thought problem is, in my opinion, a disaster. Disabling Libraries does not really clean up the junk pile of unwanted unnecessary folders. I've experimented and created a restore point, disabled Libraries and started erasing unwanted folders and the systems becomes unstable, Win "Exploder" breaks and will not run. This is worse than the registry catastrophe. At least with the so-called "registry" the end user rarely has to cross the swamp.

 

[Nency Willims]

I will rate Windows 7 50/50 it was better to other operating system...

 

[Billy Bell]

I rate Windows 7 50/50

 

[kurteb]

I like Windows 7 better then XP, but Internet Explorer 11 has been a real problem of late, I tried to reinstall it all the way to 8 to try to get it to work with Windows 7 properly, even tried a clean install of Windows 7 to get rid of the problems, got the same results, using MSE, Winpatrol, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (Free) and every update for Windows. It hangs up my Gmail for 30 seconds or more just to open my mail, with a 65.19 Mb/s download speed. Facebook takes about that long, too. I run a perfectly tight machine, and Chrome and Opera open the same tabs much faster. Windows 7 on the whole is a much better O/S, more stable and has much better drivers at that. My Facebook doesn't allow any editing with 11, nor does it even allow the posting of any pictures. The only things in IE that I run are Evernote, Shockwave from Adobe, and AdBlock Plus, which have never caused problems before. Opera and Chrome both work fine. http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3688600848

 

[Carson Dyle]

Under the hood, Windows 7 is great. As far as the user interface/experience goes, absolutely nothing special. If anything, it's a step backward in usability from XP.

What never ceases to amaze me is how similar, more than different, 98 and XP and Vista and Win7 are to the earliest versions of Window 95. Microsoft has made ridiculously little progress in the user experience. Maybe that's what Window 8 was ... a wild ass attempt at something/anything different, and a horrible fail.

 

[wilhelm1]

With a "smidigen of contact" with Win 8, Win7 is a Jewel.