From XP - 7 and most likely back

I know I aint blogged for a bit, but I gonna post for the sake of it so apologies for that, but now I do have a thing or 2 to say so sit back and read on :)

So the system was sluggish, format was imminent so I decided I'd try out Windows 7 Pro as thats the version I have a key for.

M$ and the media have been claiming for so long that Windows 7 is the system to drag us away from our beloved XP. I use TinyXP which is my fav flavour of the ones about, but anyhoo, where was I.

Right windows 7 is the XP sucessor and will welcome us into the new generation of OS, but I had my doubts that with hardware I have in 1 or 2 of my machines that this would really be the case so I decided to find out for myself.

I use an XP generation laptop, a HP Pavilion zd8000 series since "the accident" I won't bore you with the details anyhooo.... The install went very smoothly and I was impressed with the very little input needed to get windows 7 up and running, it was a promising start and I was pleased, however the sweet soon turned sour. It took a good while and some trial and error to get my mobility x600 up and running. I eventually opted for some DNA-ATi 8.9 drivers I found on guru 3D.com but using a simple performance comparison of the bubble screensaver before and after the DNA drivers were installed it's clear to see that Windows 7 is not friendly with this XP hardware and the same was true for vista when I tried that a while back using the same simple test. I'm pretty sure there are later drivers out than the ones I used so it could just be a bad choice on my part and the newer drivers work fine. If you know which drivers would be best for the mobility x600, please let me know. Performance wise in comparrison to my sluggish XP install it's still behind and multi tasking really takes it's toll on the cpu alot more than it did previously. I tried the different performance options from the bells and whistle effects to none at all (which I prefer) but the performace increase wasn't that much and certainly didn't help out with the mulititasking issues I have.

As more knowledge is gained I expect so will the quality of drivers but it feels as though my laptop just doesn't have the needed oomph to run windows 7 well and with on par performance I get with XP so I don't see any validity in this "you'll join us" attitude as if the hardware is out of sorts on a new generation OS why would you opt for lower performance for a bit of eye cand?. (Side note: If you really want the best eye candy a tweaked Ubuntu can't be beaten anyway imo)

I will be looking to purchase a new system in the near future as I need a more powerful setup anyway since "the incident" and will see how the new offerin from M$ fares in the right generation, but if XP has alot more performance to offer with older hardware I'm sure it's gonna be the same story for the new.

I'm dissapointed that M$ don't seem to be able to usher in a more visually pleasing OS without having the consumer completely upgrade there systems, theres no meeting half way and as the OS does run on the older hardware for the most part it makes you wonder why they couldn't give a real option for the older XP users instead of just isolating them with what they currently have as it doesn't seem that much of a stretch to acomplish.

I'll be using 7 until I've had a good play with the features, but I don't see it being a long term arrangement and will huntung down that TinyXP disk soon I'm sure.