Discussion on:

Five super-secret features in Windows 7

Original post:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=3120

After enabling the touch screen feature that I found thanks to your article, I now have a cracked LCD screen from pressing too hard to make it work. And to think, it's not even April.

that you have to buy into with MS Windows, as they're never compatible with anything more than a year or two older than the release candidate.

This information was not due to be released to the public until the Service Pack 1 is announced on the 23rd of October !

Why am I reading this crap? It is a waste of my processor cycles. I'm outa here

extreme difficulty in meeting advertised release dates and frequently slip by significant periods.

and yet you use processor cycles to respond to this . . .

Because folks like You are posting without substance, as in "Why am I reading this crap?"
So, with your question you've just added more Crap to the thread. And you're blaming the rest of Us? Goodbye, we Won't miss you.

This is the 23rd of October which will be the second tuesday of that week.

I heard that Microsoft is going to release 7 SP 2 before SP 1 because you need some features in it to install SP 1 properly.

Ha!! You funny guy. You go get job at Comedy Club. Give up tech writing. You make big bucks betcha.

you try loading and running any of the Windows OSs on any hardware that's more than a year or so older than the release date of the hardware. Also, MS deliberately change the command sets every now and then, simple to break the usability of existing drivers and third applications so they can force the hardware makers to pay them more fees to authorise and digitally sign drivers. The companies don't see the expense of drivers for the older hardware as being worthwhile, so guess what, you got to go out and buy new hardware just so it will work with your new Windows. All due to the MS replacement strategy.

Sorry, that post was meant for Jason not you.
I completly agree with you.

I installed 7 on a 9 year old laptop. It found everything except the NIC and a couple of other things. I used the XP NIC driver and it worked and Windows Update found the rest. Of course, it runs a bit slow...

On my other (newer) systems which are still 3-4 years old, it runs just fine. I didn't even have a problem with the old video cards, 7 found and correctly identified them. And my scanner and printers all work. I did have to use the XP drivers for the printers.

I agree, they do try to make it difficult so you will give up and buy newer stuff.

on it, but had the devils own time getting the graphics to work, ended up having to get a new video card to get it work in anything but 600 x 800 16 bit. Many of the peripherals don't work, either, nor does much of his software.

He does like it for Internet based gaming, now he has a good graphics card working.

That's odd. My system is Dell Optiplex GX620. I'm not sure how old it is as I inherited it a couple of years ago so I'm guessing it is 3-4 years old. It came with 4GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon-something with 128MB of RAM. Everything went on just fine 7-wise (about a month and a half ago - MSDN version). Windows experience was at 2.0 until I installed an nvidia card with 256MB of RAM, then it went to 4.7. Still had Aero with the old card, though.

My son has an older Dell (2.66GHz I upgraded to 3.0GHz). I haven't put 7 on it yet, but based on tests with similar and older hardware, I expect no issues there either. He games a lot and I don't yet know how those will be affected.

All in all, excluding the clunkers for testing, I have 7 on 7 systems at home with no issues. And one of those is x64. All my old software worked (except for ZoneAlarm and that will be updated soon). I've never had an upgrade go so well. I did fresh installs by the way (the old systems were XP as I skipped the Vista-pig and even then, I would not have upgraded). I really liked the way it found my wireless network and asked for my key during the install. Saved me the trouble of dealing with it later.

Sorry for being so long-winded.

I'm glad your Win 7 is working for you, but it doesn't work on my used dell that's only a couple of years old, but Dell do supply a good quality range and a poor quality range, mine might be from the poor range while you've got a good range one - not sure which is which.

I don't miss Windows 7 anyway, tried Vista and gave it the heave, and I gave XP the heave because I got fed up with the reactivation BS - seems MS think all versions of XP upgrade sold through MS Australia to students on the student program as seen as pirates after you move them to a new box because you upgraded hardware (switching it over to a new box is legal, despite what MS would like you to think - here in Aust it is).

I switched to Linux and found I really didn't need to go out a buy a new scanner or printer, they wouldn't work with XP and I couldn't get drivers for them, so did without for a couple of years - lack of funds to buy them. But when I tried them with SimplyMepis Linux, they worked perfectly - thank you Linux, saved quite a few bucks with that.

My son's system he put Win 7 on had a crappy built in graphics, so he installed a 128 MB nVidea card, Win 7 didn't like it and would only run as 600 x 800 16 bit - the card was only four years old. Switched to a two and a half year old 256 MB nVidea card, Win 7 didn't like that, checked, no Win 7 or Vista drivers for either. He went to buy a new 512 MB graphics card and found several of the new cards did NOT have Vista or Win 7 drivers - ended up having to buy the latest range of 1 GB graphics card to make sure it would work with Win 7, he likes the graphics now.

Funnily, the graphics in Win 7 is very good, but really awesome in XP. Some of his older games won't play in Win 7, even in XP mode, but play great in XP itself, so he dual boots. Why he doesn't stay with just XP beats me, but it's his system and he can do what he likes with it, even if I did buy it to start with, he pays for its upkeep now.

Either way, I see no advantage to me, and what i use the computer for, to use Win 7 over XP - if I want Windows. I've a six year old laptop with XP I still use too, it came that way. But my main machine is Linux and it does all I want quicker than XP used to, so I don't care, I'll stay away from Win 7 and worrying about updates, reactivation etc.

I installed the Business version on a 8+ yr old compaq evo n160 notebook. Save for a 1.5 minute boot to full desktop, it runs great...The installer found everything on board. Too bad the battery is shot...

I installed 7 on a 4 year old clone and didn't need to install a single driver.
Was muchos impressed.
When I get my act together I'm upgrading my own 5 systems.
7 rocks hard.

How could you use Xp mode on a old computer. The mother board and cpu have to support Virtualization and 8 or 9 years ago that wasn't even a dream yet.

Vista drivers work in Windows 7. If your "installation program" won't install them, it's because the person who create the install elected to enforce OS versions. You can use 7-zip or the Universal Extractor to get at the drivers (.inf files) and install them using the add devices wizard to bypass the "Install Shield" installer. Most companies will have the official Windows 7 drivers available (which might take advantage of newer features) when Windows 7 is released.

Maybe it's because the system came with XP SP3, and something inside XP said "Screw it, I don't wanna work properly anymore!".
It's quite possible if it's a XP pre-build GX520 from Dell.

It's always a thought as sometimes Windows of different versions get tetchy if you've got a old one already there (example: XP) and install a newer one on another drive/partition (example: Win7) and it takes a lot of coaxing to get the older one to start working again after long periods of no-use.

Just a thought mind you. *shrugs*

never happens - but, I don't really believe them any more as they kept saying my old XP Upgrade copy MUST be a pirate - until I gave them the receipt details. Most Windows code is very buggy, so anything may be the case.

I have loaded Win 7 on old desktop and laptop equipment. Desktops; Dell GX-780, 2 GB ram, have my office apps, AV, etc, loaded and running. No problems. I have an old 1.9 Gh PC wih 1.5 Gb ram that runs fine as well. Also have a Dell D-520 with Win 7 and my apps installed. All run like a champ.

And sure, with the new OS I did have to make a couple of tweaks, but not nearly as messy as trying to get my wireless NICs working in Linux!

and built with Windows command sets in their base software. I've had no troubles getting wireless NICs to work in the several installations where I've put Linux on systems with wireless NICs - but, then, I made sure the NICs weren't labelled 'Out of the box compatible with Windows' but required drivers to work in ANY version of Windows, thus they used the Industry Standard Command Sets and not the MS ones - that does make a difference.

I don't know what distro you were using, but when I loaded Ubuntu 9.04 on an HP 6510b, the wireless worked flawlessly. I think all I had to do was supply the access code. I don't recall, it was a while ago. Everything else just worked as well.

I have windows 7 running on a dell dimension 4550 w/ 1.25 GB ram and it works great. The audio driver didn't work but win 7 has a "compatibility driver installation" feature. It detected the incompatible hardware from the failed software installation and automatically asked if I wanted windows to attempt to install a compatible driver, I thought "there is no way this is going to work" and clicked to initiate the install and sure enough... it worked! Somehow windows automatically installed a compatible driver on old in-compatible hardware. That is awesome, windows 7 truly is an improved OS.

Quote: "... you try loading and running any of the Windows OSs on any hardware that's more than a year or so older than the release date of the hardware."

I think you meant "OS" instead of "hardware" at the end of your opening statement. IMX, a Windows OS can usually be installed on "older" hardware that meets the minimum requirements specified by MS, and it runs about as well as it would on more recent hardware.

Whether it is feasible to actually use the computer with the new OS is another matter, if only because you are right about the drivers, especially for peripherals, and even for some mainboards, too.

I got the RC running on an old nforce2 board with a geforce 6200, athlon 2800+, and 2gb ram ...

Aero and all ...

Used a lot of xp drivers ... simply run the installers compatible for the OS they are for

Oh and don't forget to use the command line to shutdown digital driver signatures ...

Works like a charm ... video playback is better than with xp even 1920 x 1080 desktop resolution ...

Only annoying thing is opening any folder with large numbers of files can make a guy wait ... processing thumbnails, this seems to make my AVG resident shield use a lot of resources ...

All in all Win 7 is definetly better than Vista (kinda of another ME fiasco) and reasonably better tha XP

You figured out it is a top secret plan for Microsoft to take over the world... there is a company that does all that you talk about... APPLE

smoke screen.

I don't know what world you live in but you could not be more wrong...

I have Windows 7 installed; running Lotus Notes 8.5 and Office 2007 on a Dell Latitude D600 with 512MB of RAM on a 20GB hard drive.

The only drivers that were not recognized by default were the video and sound. This was easily remedied by visiting Dell's site and downloading the available drivers.

So let us recap: Windows 7 running smoothly on a laptop made in 2003, with a video driver from 2005 and an audio driver from 2007.

So much for forcing a hardware change

Friends don't let friends use crappy computers in the same way that they also don't let them use Macs. It is time to throw the 500Mhz Slot 1 with the tired Gladiac and 15" CRT out the window. At todays prices, anyone should be able to scrounge up enough dough to replace their tired equipment or simply start over from scratch.

The reason, we must move on. If everything had to be backward compatible, the prices for hardware would be sky high due to extensive R & D. Someone has to kick the ant hill over from time to time and make the next big thing happen. I praise Bill Gates and his support teams for doing it.

So lead, follow or get out of the way. Technology must go on, regardless of whether or not the mass majority wants to try and keep up.

Perhaps you should look at Windows itself. The major issue is Microsoft's perception of a necessity to maintain backwards compatiblity to please their applications segment. For Windows, this has resulted in a bloated pig of an OS as Microsoft valiantly tries to maintain backwards compatibility. An effort which often fails but not for the lack of throwing untold lines of code into it.

Unlike Apple which moved on with OS x, Microsoft not yet had the courage to say time to start over, we've taken this obese pile of crap as far as it can go. Instead, they continue to produce more and more code bloat which lets us run that expensive new computer at more or less the same speed as it's predecessor.

hardware and software when the current stuff still works perfectly and does what's wanted, I've four Pentium 4 computers in the house that Windows 7 will not run on due to the lack of drivers, and a range of video cards that are the same way - and that's without getting into the scanners and printers, technology that hasn't had any major changes for ages.

The problem with backwards compatibility in MS Windows is nothing to do with hardware compatibility, but built in software incompatibility put in by MS to force changes. The industry standard commands for most peripherals have been unchanged for over a decade, yet MS changed the ones they use in Windows so you can't use your older printers etc. Kind of like Ford building a motor to run on a special mix of paraffin and fruit juice that only they make, and then making all their cars with ONLY that motor and selling it in areas where you're required to buy Fords.

Technology can go on, what I object to is rectums who make unneeded changes just to rip people off, ie MS and Windows Command set changes.

Windows. The bloat is due to all the applications and wizards MS shoves into the Operating System kernel to cut out competition.

You need to get special extra programs to allow Windows to have any backwards compatibility, even with earlier MS software. Try running Word for Windows 2a on Vista or Win 7 - it don't. Try opening a Word 6 document in Word 2007, it's scrambled - but you can get some extra software which will allow some of this to work, but Windows pers e, is NOT backwards compatible.

On the hardware side, hardware built to be out of the box compatible with Win NT or Win 98 won't run in Win Vista or Win 7, and little will work in Win XP - all due to introduced changes by MS to break compatibility.

All MS needs to do to simplify Windows a lot, and allow a lot of compatibility, is to go back to using the Industry Standard Command Set for the OS, but that means they can't force people to buy a new OS or new apps as such software will run on any hardware or use any software designed to use the ISCS - which was the intent of it.

Sorry, every piece of hardware and all but one program (many date to the Win 3.1 era) I have all work with Windows 7 RC. I only had to down load 1 up dated driver and that was for the brand new Nivadia video board. The program that did not work has a problem because of "not enough memory" since I have 8 gigs Ram and 1 gig for each of 2 video boards, the program is slightly confused and I will have to use it on an older machine.
I have over 80 soft ware programs, two dot matrix printers, two scanners and two all in one HP printers, all more than 8 years old or more. All work with Win 7 on installation, unlike with Vista because there were not Vista drivers available for months if ever. This was my problem with Vista, not to mention how sloooooooooooooow it is.

So there is hope for my Office 2000 Pro to run again? I really can do without all other "upgrades" in later office versions.
And if I get my Xerox AIO to work as well, which had no drivers (but plenty of cartridges) since Win XP, I will come back to Windows.

I agree with Dianecmiles; I have installed the RC of Win 7 on everything from a Dell Optiplex from 2003 (with of course, a RAM upgrade!) to a laptop from 2005 and newer PC's, and Win7 runs like a champ and runs all of the apps without so much as a hiccup. Even when the upgrade analyzer said they wouldn't.
Vista started out not recognizing most of my hardware, but through Windows update after update, eventually drivers were pushed down and apparently all of this driver intelligence has been built into Windows 7. I know it's popular to bash Microsoft regardless of the product, but Windows 7 truly delivers what we deserve in a PC-based operating system. Stable, good performance, compatibility, better UI.

I have an EVGA MB in a system that I put together with parts and pieces about 4 years ago. I installed Win 7 and did NOT have to go searching for ANY drivers at all. It even picked up my newer Linksys WMP54GS wireless card, found my network and asked me for the WEP key during install. The Video card is a G-force 6200 (512mb)and runs overclocked just fine. All of my XP video games(online gamer till I die) run just fine. EQ, WOW, Grand Fantasia, Perfect World, Runes of Magic.... And the list goes on... But anywho... They all run fine under Win 7.

Im running Win7 Ultimate X64.

Audigy 2 ZS works fine with Windows 7 64 bit and it hasn't been manufactured for years.

We've had a user last week who wiped the indexfinger over the "scan your finger" message on the screen instead of the reader on the keyboard and the same user had the mouse upside down. Yes they still exist. As you can see, I have avoided giving away wether it was a he or a she

Male or female, I'll bet it was one of those "pointy-hair-bosses."

I could not verify this feature on my LCD, but noticed that it works well on all CRTs over 12".
Biggest improvement impact was found when playing Pong.

Touch feature on a CRT??? I doubt it. But thanks for the laugh.