Windows 7, so who's tried it?

I've just stuck with Windows Media Player. The fact that you can throw a lot more at version 12 and it'll play it w/out having to download codec packs makes it even better.
 
Hmm I might have to reenable WMP with all the good things said about it (I usually turn it off in lieu of Winamp or VLC).
 
I put Windows 7 on my 8GB flash drive, let's see how well it installs (and runs) on my Acer netbook.
 
WMP 12 Is easily an improvement over 11, and I liked that anyway. I like the way I can move an album from one folder to another and WMP will add the new album automatically (as long as the folder is in the music library) and remove the old one that doesn't exist. So far the only thing it won't play is MKV, but I expect I could download the codecs.

I have found out though that there are no Win7 x64 drivers for my little analogue video convertor (Dazzle DVC170), so I'm going to have to keep XP to use that (and my scanner, same problem).
 
IceBone said:
WMP even in Windows 7 has proven to be inadequate. Doesn't display subtitles for movies and has problems with several older rips I have. CCCP with MPCHC does that without a hitch and I've been using Winamp since 1.x. It is the best player in the world for music.
Click to expand...

To get subtitles to display in WMP12 you have to register VSFilter.dll, also known as DirectVobSub. CCCP registers the filter for you when it installs and it's already integrated into MPCHC.

The only downside when registering the VSFilter is that if a video contains subtitles, you would lose hardware acceleration. This happens for both the Microsoft DTV DVD decoder as well as the MPC decoder. The only codec that I know of that can do subs and hardware acceleration in WMP12 is CoreAVC with Cuda enabled. The downside is it's not free and only supports Cuda enabled cards. Basically nVidia only.

thevictor390 said:
Windows Media Player + CCCP is the only thing I've found that will play decent-size h.264 smoothly on the netbook (Atom N270, Windows 7). It's rather baffling.
Click to expand...
Doesn't help that the built in DTV decoder doesn't take too kindly to inadequate hardware. Luckily FFMpeg is an excellent software decoder.
 
Well, I tried WMP and I still don't like it. So I'm sticking with MMJB for a little longer.

Another question, is there a way to make all the gadgets appear in a sidebar like in Vista. I don't like the individual gadgets approach that's in Win7. Thanks.
 
I hate the interface of WMP (control-P to pause? really?), but I do respect that it can play videos that bring VLC and MPC to their knees on my sub-par hardware.

In retrospect this thing would have been better of sticking with XP, but I'm way too lazy to go back now.
 
Right now it looks like this, each gadget needs to be minimized individually, and I can't make them visible when I maximize another window.
http://img19.imageshack.**/img19/7932/74654533.jpg

So basically I want it to looks like this. (Only one button would minimize everything.)
vista-sidebar.jpg
 
I don't know about minimizing, does winkey+D work? Winkey+space should bring them all to the front.
 
These past few days I've been trying to get used to Windows 7 after using XP for all of these years. The experience has been OK but I really can't get used to certain changes.

Replacing My Documents with Documents for example, I'm sure listing all the different types of document is handy but after working with the "old" system for some time it's just confusing. For now instead of using the Documents shortcut in the menu I've created a shortcut to My Documents and placed it on the desktop.

Another thing that annoys the hell out of me is the apparent inability for most programs to minimise to tray, they instead just lurk in the task bar. Windows Live Messenger is a prime example of this and my God is it annoying :mad:.

My keyboard and mouse have also recently taken to sometimes lagging terribly which is another annoyance (although this problem has mysteriously disappeared as I'm writing this). I've tested my hardware for faults and it seems fine so it's probably a case of trying to find some software of a driver causing some incompatibility. Oh the joy.

My conclusion is that it's a lot prettier than XP ever was but I'm going to need to do some tinkering to get it to work how I want it to. I can't really comment on performance because the hardware I'm using is too incomparable to what I was using previously.
 
Windows 7 has a tray just like previous versions of windows, and programs can minimize to it just fine. not sure what the problem is there.

The new documents system is fundamentally different so it takes a bit of getting used to, since you can include multiple locations in a "library," but it's great if you have multiple hard drives or other storage devices. If you want to bypass it though just ignore the library aspect and only include one location: C:\Users\username\Documents. Should work the same as before.

If you're talking about separating stuff into file type, i.e. Music, Videos, etc., XP did this as well, so again not sure what you mean.
 
I was referring to the documents library, I'm used to storing everything centrally in My Documents anyway so it's not an issue to be stuck with one drive. The tray problem is very strange as some of my programs minimise to tray perfectly but others such as Windows Live (ironic...) simply won't do it. If you minimise them they'll just go down to the taskbar, not the tray.

After some searching there seems to be a workaround with Windows Live if you run it in Vista compatibility mode, why this works I have absolutely no idea.
 
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Dr_Q said:
I was referring to the documents library, I'm used to storing everything centrally in My Documents anyway so it's not an issue to be stuck with one drive. The tray problem is very strange as some of my programs minimise to tray perfectly but others such as Windows Live (ironic...) simply won't do it. If you minimise them they'll just go down to the taskbar, not the tray.

After some searching there seems to be a workaround with Windows Live if you run it in Vista compatibility mode, why this works I have absolutely no idea.
Click to expand...

MS is making a big deal about not wanting programs to place stuff in the notification area (thats why all the extra app placed icons are hidden in the tray by default) They really think it will make a cleaner experience. It hasn't bothered me much, but it does to a few people! :p
 
If you use the default theme and already have the program pinned to the taskbar, it makes sense. And the system tray certainly can get overused. But it still is a bit annoying how you always have to click that little arrow now.
 
@Dr_Q - Go to C:/Program Files/Windows Live/Messenger

Right Click on msnmsgr.exe, and check "Run in compatibility mode for"... and select "Vista SP2" from the drop down.

WLM will now minimise to the system tray.

EDIT - Didn't notice your post with the last bit about you knowing this already, sorry. This works because WLM was updated to use the taskbar in Windows 7. MS wanted to have a more consistent experience across the Windows Live Wave series, and all MS programs, so basically everything will eventually a) Use the "Superbar" and b) Use a form of the Ribbon UI or the new light-blue/whitish grey colour scheme in 7.

thevictor390 said:
If you use the default theme and already have the program pinned to the taskbar, it makes sense. And the system tray certainly can get overused. But it still is a bit annoying how you always have to click that little arrow now.
Click to expand...

I like the arrow (it existed in old versions of Windows as well, it's just that it hides icons automatically now), I think it helps everything look much cleaner and streamlined.

Cheers! :)
 
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You don't have to click the little arrow. Just like with XP, you can select which programs are always visible and which hide. That arrow is the same as the arrow in XP, but instead of expanding the system tray, it pops up a window with all the icons.
 
The difference is that all programs are hidden by default. So you always have to click the arrow, not just when you need to get to the infrequently used icons. My past experience with choosing to always show certain items has been buggy at best but I forgot about it until now; I'll give it a try.
 
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