[SOLVED] What advantages does 7 offer over XP ?

OK, I bought into the commercials and I upgraded. I had to buy new memory and an expensive operating system and I'll be honest I don't see a huge advantage.

Background: I upgraded (a little) to a used machine that came with Vista. I popped out that noisey 500MB HD and put in my old WD 1TB HD with XP on it. I was able to find drivers for everything but my sound but I was already considering 7 and the upgrade advisor said sure go for it - just 3 old programs will have issues.

So I took the plung and upgraded, and after about 3-4 weeks of tweaking and reinstalling everything I'm not sure I would tell anyone else to upgrade. I traded one missing driver for another in the deal, now I have sound but only a partially functioning trackball - I think I could have found a sound driver had I tried harder, Logitech told me flat out they are no longer supporting this trackball. Worst case I could have bought a cheap soundcard.

I think 7 boots a little faster but from what I've read, software like office naturally run slower in Vista & 7 than on XP. Aero is all show so no big woop to me. I formatted over my XP (I didn't read anything about dual boot till too late) but I'm honestly having second thoughts and if I knew offhand where my XP disk was I might downgrade.

I've never been one that needs the latest thing and I don't care if XP is 10 years old - if it's better than what they have today then Microsoft screwed up, not me, in wanting to keep it. I dislike the forced menu style, even in XP I used the classic 98. And the changes to Windows Explorer are horrid! The USB mouse/trackball stuttered (stops and reappears further along the path) so much that I had to buy an adapter to use the old PS2 port. And to get anything done I had to disable UAC and it still tries to tell me I don't know where my music, pictures, or videos are and that I must use the magic link to their location!

So, why 7 ? It's slower and has just as many driver problems! Is it worth it, because I have yet to see it ? What software is a must-have that will not run in XP ? I'm not a gamer but I would like to leave this discussion open to games as well, just in case. Constructive thoughts please. (But just because it's new or that XP is old is not an argument of any merit)

As far as installing it on an older computer (one that came with XP) no, it's not worth it. But on a computer built to run it, yes, it's worth it. I happen to have the last four generations of Windows OS's (2K Pro, XP Pro, Vista Home Premium and 7 (Pro & Ultimate 64 bit). It depends entirely on what you're installing it on as to the outcome of how the software performs. And I happen to like all four OS's, so my opinion is unbiased.

I find I'm using the quick view feature of the superbar more and more. I've enjoyed the eye candy of Windows 7 since the day I downloaded the Beta version over a year ago. Some of the features are still growing on me.

Change is something that is hard to get used too, and sometimes not until forced to change. If some of us was not forced into changing, many computers would still have Windows 3.11 as an operating system. Thats not advancing in technology when we as a whole refuse to change.

With that said, I am still finding it difficult to work with Wordpad when its "automatic word select" selects text that I didn't want highlighted. This was a feature I could turn off in XP. That forces me to use the arrow keys instead of the mouse to make my text selections. I'm not so much apposed to change as I am removal of options to modify features (There is a small difference between the two).

When you say the quickview feature, are you referring to the small window showing what is IN the actual window? If so that was a powertoy that could be added to XP although it would trigger in the center of the screen with the alt+tab to change windows (instead of by the task bar like it is in 7) - this was actually one of the programs that flagged as a possible problem in upgrade-advisor. The second was Partition Magic which has essentially been replaced with Win 7s Boot Manager (although Win 7 is not as friendly in handling moving live data areas or noncontiguous partitions). And the third program flagged was Nero 6 which is extremely old and much of the functionality is now native to Win 7, at least if I didn't have to disable it just to keep the DVD bay closed if I click the wrong drive letter in Windows Explorer.

I was referring to hovering over the superbar icon showing the thumbnails of all open windows with that app. Then hovering over one of the thumbnails to show the application window without actually making it the active application in other words bringing it to front. Then when you mouse off of the thumbnail, the active application you was working with comes back to display. This all happens without changing apps windows or clicking the mouse. Its all controlled by hovering the mouse in a specific way. Sometimes its annoying but once you get used to it, this feature does come in handy, depending on what you are doing.

It also has an unlisted and very useful feature. My indulgence in games is playing online Pool/snooker. I belong to Pool sharks. (No spam intended!). Of late, an irritating advert pops up over the list of playable tables. If you click the "x", it opens to the home page. I could not find any other way to get rid of it.
Then I noticed that it was also popping up, as a separate entry, on the supebar. Hover and right click - "Close window" did the trick!

If you noticed the little red X while hovering, you wouldn't need to right click. Hover and then click the red X.

Right. Thanks Cliff

There are numerous ways in which Windows 7 is quantitatively better than XP. It appears, however, that you've made up your mind. Why not just format back to XP and be done with it?

You can lead a horse to water...

If you can see it in the task bar then you can probably see it in the XP task bar and at the very least it would be in task manager so it can be killed in XP as well, therefore this is not a reason to stay with Win 7 or to ever migrate to it if you haven't already.

You might also try blocking the ads via your hosts file.
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
They update the list every other month or so and you add them to your hosts file and it gets rid of the most annoying ads. It's funny; I go to some sites where the people complain in the comments about the annoying ads and I have no idea what they are talking about. I love it on hula.com when it tells me it cannot display the ad and I should fix my ad blocking software - LOL, I would rather read that message for 30 seconds than hear an actual commercial.

Of course some sites won't give you what you want unless you do allow their commercial crapola, so you keep an empty host file in backup and you rename them back and forth (or create a batch file to do it). But usually I don't want it bad enough and I just go on to some other site.

Come on people! Convince me! Why shouldn't I just go back to XP? Why should anyone upgrade to 7 if they have XP working?

I heard all these horror stories about Vista, do not go to Vista, well from what I can see of Windows 7 it looks/works/acts like vista or worse! Atleast Vista allowed you to use some of the old style. The only thing I saw wrong with Vista vs 7 is Vista warns you you will have to give administrator power before it actually shows you a box to give it where 7 cut this down to just the one box - I suspect turning off UAC in Vista would have cured that as well.

NOTE: I played with Vista all of about 2 days before reverting to my XP HD and then after a few days w/o sound I upgraded that HD to 7. The old HD that I took out with Vista on it (my first noisey Hitachi for anyone familiar with the Noisey HD thread) went into a computer I refurbed for my niece and that too I upgraded to 7. This third case that I bought to resell came with Vista but I upgraded it to 7. So I have access to 3 computers with 7 ... no actually 4, the laptop I bought my nephew for Christmas is also 7. And for my niece and nephew 7 is fine - they aren't heavy users and the don't have old hardware I couldn't get going (I had to tweak my nieces to use her old printer but HP previded the workaround on their site).

But for me it comes down to one piece of hardware that I absolutely love and have had for 15 years ... my Trackball. It fits my hand perfectly and my hand doesn't cramp up like it does with some mice. I bought the new version from Amazon - it arrived today and I just hate it. I'm supposed to use two fingers to do right, center + scroll, and left buttons insted of three fingers which seems so much more natural. I tore it apart to see if I could move the guts of it into my old one so it would feel old but work new - not gonna be possible, very differnt inside. So now I need to return it.

I figured out what I need - I need an Ubergeek - someone I can feed Red Bull & Doritos and they pop out a 64bit mouse driver for a logitech trackman marble wheel in about 20 minutes !!! Hey Fire cat, what are you doing after math class?!? LOL