I am a firm believer in NOT paying to be a beta tester for Mr. Gates however due to my recent computer issues, a question has been posed to me that I am hard pressed to answer.
If you had a choice to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 or Windows XP on your brand new hard drive, which would you choose?
Does Windows 7 offer issues with steam?
Windows 7, no doubt.
And there are no issues with Steam.
I have run into no issues. Windows 7 is as beautiful as vista, and as functional as XP.
James Kane runs 7. Just saying.
in b4 everyone ITT recommends 7
I’ve never tried 7 but I’ve heard that it’s very good.
As long as your PC has some good/decent hardware, 7 should be good.
If not, you should use XP.
Windows 7, no doubt.
I ran into many issues with XP over the years, but if your hardware is not very good(which it is quite good now), XP would probably be the way to go.
The one thing I would do in 7 is change the taskbar to show the sub-windows of the application and the titles of the individual windows.
I should note that through working a lot with windows 7 and with steam on those machines, I’ve notice that x64 win7 does have the odd problem with steam not shutting the process down when you exit. Simply ending the process is all it takes though. Other than that steam and windows 7 is great. I do think the new taskbar, while cleaner, is slightly less efficient. This can be changed easily enough though.
To be honest, Windows 7 is better than what you would think given Microsoft’s track record with Vista. They appear to have ironed out most of the bugs before it was released rather than after. Windows 7 runs a whole lot smoother and better than XP or Vista. I love the ability to see what screens I have tabbed from the taskbar without having to maximize them. All in all I have never had a technical glitch or error with Windows7. If a game or program that I am running crashes, I have always, with one exception, been able to close out the program with Ctrl+Alt+del and not cause my computer to crash as well. Tabbing out and back into a game works a million times better than XP. It works quickly and doesn’t crash your computer or the game. I have had no conflicts between Steam and Win7. I am a user that went from XP directly to Windows7 without making a stop at Vista, and I am quite happy with my decision.
One of my more favorite things to do with the personalization features is to find a game with amazing concept art, dump them all into a single folder, and tell Windows to cycle through all the concept art with a 15second transition between pictures for your computer’s background. It keeps your desktop fresh and gives you a good dose of the game’s awesomeness.
Edit: you could always partition your HDD and run Win7 on one and XP on the other unti you feel more comfortable with Win7, or just incase you don’t like windows7.
My vote also goes to Windows 7, I use it myself, just make sure, like said above, you have decent hardware.
And probably 3-4 GB of RAM minimum.
It’s not a beta test. Windows 7 is Windows Vista fixed and put under a new name so they could charge Vista users for their upgrade. Same thing with Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and I believe they did a similar thing for Windows 95 and Windows 98 (but I never really used 95, so I wouldn’t know).
Don’t worry about being a Windows 7 beta tester. That’s a paranoid generalization.
The beta was in late 08, early 09. Even from the beta Windows 7 has been one of the most stable OS you will use.
In fact, Steam was updated TO work with new Windows 7 features on the taskbar. Like jump lists (Click and hold the Steam icon on the taskbar and move the cursor up to see it. Right clicking the icon also works.)
Edit, I am actually still running the Windows 7 release candidate 1 (Build 7100) on my old Sony VAIO laptop. I don’t use my laptop often but it runs 7 fine. It has some basic 3 year old laptop specs. 1.6ghz intel dual core, 2gb RAM, Intel 945gm integrated chipset… Sure it may not run as awesome as 7 does on my desktop, but pretty much any computer from the past few years can run it.
Hah. Hahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Windows 2000 is probably the most stable version of Windows I’ve ever used.
EDIT: Holy shit, Elpants. I didn’t even know you could do that!
unless your one of those Linux/Ubuntu weirdos, Windows 7 FTW.
Works okay here 
Steam doesn’t shut down automatically everytime you turn off your pc so windows kills the steam process. I have the same issue with 32bit professional.
Windows XP ist too old. In 2 years your pc won’t be save anymore because there won’t be any updates then.
Windows 7 is a good choice, believe me, I’ve been using it for some time now, and it works like a charm.
What are you talking about? It runs fine with 2GB’s of RAM. Vista runs fine with 2 GB’s of RAM. The only game which had even the slightest problem with that amount is Dragon Age, and that requires an unreal amount in itself.
So yeah, Win7 provided you have 2GB’s. Maybe even less, I’m not sure what the minimum is.
If you want 64 bit win7 is the way to go. If you ever get the opportunity to install XP x64 DON’T!
The best thing the windows ever did was require all devices that want to be vista/win7 certified is that they MUST make an x64 version of their driver. Because of this win7 is amazingly compatible with all sorts of hardware. My computer didn’t need a single driver (exception being the special video driver I use instead of the normal one) Even if something isn’t working just connect to the internet and chances is windows update will find a working driver and install it.
I got Windows 7 Professional last month (since I’m a student I was able to get it for $30) and without a doubt it is Microsoft’s best OS to date. Just make sure you have enough RAM - I have 6 GB. 4 GB should still be plenty though.
Edit: I got the 64-bit version.
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