The Real Deal 183: All about Windows 7
Seth Rosenblatt joins the Real Deal to answer all your questions about Windows 7 so you can be prepared for October 22.
CNET Download.com's Seth Rosenblatt joins the Real Deal to answer all your questions about Windows 7 so you can be prepared for October 22.
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Episode 183
1. What’s new?Home group
Aero peek, other UI tweaks
Device stage
WMP
2. What’s missing?
A stable browser
Well, a browser that’s fast. speed is more of a problem with IE than stability.
Performance
3. What’s better?
Sleep mode, UI, more fun customization options
More secure
Drivers
4. What’s worse?
5. Who should get it? Will it be on Netbooks?
Anybody who has Vista
Yes it will be on Netbooks
6. Licensing of an upgrade. This will be the first time some people have upgraded an OS. What do they need to know?
Step 1: Backup
Rafe: Don’t authorize until it’s solid
We have lots of questions about upgrade paths so let’s save that discussion for the email questions below. We’ll also take live calls about Win 7.
EMAIL QUESTIONS
***********How will the Windows 7 upgrade work for Vista users?********************
Hey Tom and Rafe,
I bought a new Gateway desktop in late July and I registered for my free windows 7 upgrade. How will this work. Will I get the entire OS disc or just an upgrade? How easy will it be to upgrade, I have windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit. How long will it take to upgrade? Basicly tell me everything about upgrading to windows 7 from vista.
Thanks for the help,
Nathan Kottler
A: You will get an OS disk that is coded to be an upgrade version. But the whole OS is there. If you’re upgrading Home Premium 64 bit to Win 7 Home Premium, you can do it in place. Speed of upgrade will depend on speed of computer and hard drive and other factors. Allow 30 min at least, possibly more, depending. We’ll know more when the product hits wide distribution.
*************How will Windows 7 upgrade work for Windows 7 RC 1 users?******************
Hey Tom and Rafe,
Thanks so much for an awesome and fun podcast! I’m so glad you are
doing a Windows 7 episode because I and others need your help.
Just like many others I jumped on the bandwagon and installed the RC
version on my “production” machine amd have been loving it. Problem
though- now that it willbe end of lifed with the official launch I
will need to upgrade but msft says we will need to do a new install.??
There was a hack where you could upgrade from Beta to RC and
everything went fine – how can we do that for RC to official status.
Needing to do a clean install would stink amd I have some “one
install” program licenses that I want but don’t want to pay twice
for,etc. Any thoughts??
Thanks
Craig
A: MS was clear about the upgrade path from RC to Released. There isn’t one. Best bet for happy computing down the line is to bite the bullet and do a clear install. For program licenses, you’re going to have to examine them case by case, to see if uninstalling a program releases the license for future re-use, or what. In some cases you will be ok re-using a license. It depends on the software.
************When should I upgrade to Windows 7?*******************
Hey Guys,
I pre-ordered Windows 7 for an old XP machine back when it was only $50, and I am supposed to receive a free upgrade for the new PC I bought. My question is when should I actually switch over from Vista & XP to Windows 7? Is it just a matter of making sure that I have updated drivers, or is there some other milestone that I should be watching for?
Thanks,
Ben
Los Angeles, C.A.
On the new machine you should be fine. The older XP computer *should* be fine too, since Win 7 ships with a boatload of drivers. I upgraded a two-year-old homebuilt and it got everything by itself. But my advice would be to create an image backup first, just in case, or do what I do when I’m doing a major OS upgrade. Get a new HD and put the new OS on that. Then you have the older HD as a backup, and once you determine everything is fine, you can use it as extra storage if you need it, or as a backup drive.
Seth: You really need at least a gig of RAM, 20GB of HD. Use the MS eval utility. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1B544E90-7659-4BD9-9E51-2497C146AF15&displaylang=en
************How I upgraded XP to 7 without issue*******************
Hello Real Deal,
Like the show great job educating people. I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate edition on my 4 year old HP Presario DV2000. Works great just wanted to clarify some confusions I have been reading on the Internet saying that you need a clean install to run Windows 7, which is totally a myth. All you need to do is partition your hard drive pop the DVD in, chose the advance option when the wizard runs and select the partition that’s empty.
My HP runs both win XP and 7, I can even run programs installed on my XP partition (if I really want to) just by locating the .exe file in Program Files.
PS: I even forgot to back up my files and nothing was affected.
Thanks
Prince
Good solution, but this isn’t technically an “upgrade.” I run Vista 64, Vista 32 (which I don’t use, I just keep is as a backup), and Win 7 RC. It’s kind of a mess but you’re right, if you have extra space you can do it this way. Once Win 7 arrives for me, though, I plan to retire the other partitions.
************How clean should my clean install be?*******************
Hey Tom and Rafe,
I'm going to do a fresh install of Win7 from the Win7 Release Candidate, as soon as my preorder ships.
I'm tempted to use the File and Settings Transfer Wizard (or whatever it's called) as a convenient shortcut during the install.
(For me, I'm running Win7 on my tabletPC, and I really don't want to lose the handwriting recognition files.)
But the superstitious part of my believes that the "cleanest" way to do a clean install is to NOT carry anything over from the prior setup, including settings. Am I being conservative or paranoid?
Thanks!
Rich the Recruiter
Los Angeles
Rafe: I’m with you. I believe in clean installs. Seth, Tom?
LETS DO THE CLAY Q AFTER THIS?
**************How can I share folders between Windows 7 and my Mac?*****************
Hey guys,
I’ve got a Windows 7 computer and a couple Mac OSX Leopard computers.
How can I do folder sharing so I can drop files between the two? Even
better would be automagical syncing but that’s not really needed.
As a bonus question how about screen sharing from the Mac to the PC?
From Mac to Mac it’s easy but I haven’t quite figured it out for Mac to
PC. Don’t really care for PC to Mac on this on as it’s so my wife can
eaves drop on me from time to time as a sort of accountability for me.
Thanks
Clay J
Sugarsync. I use it and love it. Free account has limited space, if you pay you get like 60GM
Alternative is Dropbox.
For screensharing: LogMeIn Free. And see a marriage counselor.
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