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So I just inherited a new-ish* laptop from my roommate and decided that since my University gives me free access to legit MS stuff, I might as well throw Win7 on it and screw around some.
(*New-ish for me means "made in the last 3 years". It's a Celeron M 1.6GHz w/1GB RAM and decent enough graphics to run Aero.)
It's definitely faster than Vista, but it still sucks for boot time to useful desktop (important in a laptop if I'm going to use it in class), both cold and resuming from hibernation. Some very unofficial timings:
Windows 7:
from end of BIOS checks to login screen: 42 seconds
from login screen to loaded/useable desktop: 40 seconds
resume from hiberation: ~30 seconds?
Resuming from hibernation is tricky to time, because I think it "cheats" and displays a picture of the desktop early while it's still reloading memory. Sometimes I get a frozen "enter password" screen and have to wait about 5-10 seconds before my typing actually does something; other times it'll go back to a semi-usable desktop but still be thrashing the hard drive.
And now, for comparison, the same totally unscientific numbers for my 7-year-old Pentium 3 laptop with Arch on it:
from end of BIOS checks to login screen: 34 seconds (including time it takes me to type LUKS password)
from login screen to loaded/useable desktop: ~3 seconds (go Fluxbox!)
resume from hiberation: 19 seconds (go s2disk with compression!)
Edit: Those hibernation resume times were under the same load on both machines (PDF viewer and file manager open plus a browser with a bunch of tabs).
So yeah. Keep trying, Microsoft.
I might post some more "benchmarks" after I get Arch onto the new laptop as well (be curious to see if MS has seriously optimized app launch times or whether I'm just not used to non-ancient hardware... Firefox loads damn quick on there).
PS: Anyone know how to make s2ram work on a Thinkpad R30 so that the mouse still exists after resume?
Last edited by thetrivialstuff (2009-10-03 03:08:49)
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Are you using the synaptics driver? That resumes for me on my R40.
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the X one (xf86-input-synaptics)? I dunno if that'll work; the summary in pacman says it's for touchpads -- the R30 only has a nipple. The problem's not X-related; the mouse actually disappears until I hard power off, remove the battery, and reboot. gpm/console stuff can't see it either after a resume.
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How do you get resume from hibernation to go so fast? Any guides? It takes me about the same amount of time to resume from hibernation as to boot cold...
Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.
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I have a ThinkPad X31 that also has only a pointing stick. I configure it through HAL, not through xorg.conf. I don't have any problems with the pointing stick after resume.
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I have a ThinkPad X31 that also has only a pointing stick. I configure it through HAL, not through xorg.conf. I don't have any problems with the pointing stick after resume.
Same here, except I have a T61. It has a touchpad, but I never bothered to install the drivers because I hate those things with a passion.
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PS: Anyone know how to make s2ram work on a Thinkpad R30 so that the mouse still exists after resume?
Ditto, mv your xorg.conf to xorg.conf~ and try again... Works a treat on my T41
never trust a toad...
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So I just inherited a new-ish* laptop from my roommate and decided that since my University gives me free access to legit MS stuff, I might as well throw Win7 on it and screw around some.
(*New-ish for me means "made in the last 3 years". It's a Celeron M 1.6GHz w/1GB RAM and decent enough graphics to run Aero.)
It's definitely faster than Vista, but it still sucks for boot time to useful desktop (important in a laptop if I'm going to use it in class), both cold and resuming from hibernation. Some very unofficial timings:
Windows 7:
from end of BIOS checks to login screen: 42 seconds
from login screen to loaded/useable desktop: 40 seconds
resume from hiberation: ~30 seconds?Resuming from hibernation is tricky to time, because I think it "cheats" and displays a picture of the desktop early while it's still reloading memory. Sometimes I get a frozen "enter password" screen and have to wait about 5-10 seconds before my typing actually does something; other times it'll go back to a semi-usable desktop but still be thrashing the hard drive.
And now, for comparison, the same totally unscientific numbers for my 7-year-old Pentium 3 laptop with Arch on it:
from end of BIOS checks to login screen: 34 seconds (including time it takes me to type LUKS password)
from login screen to loaded/useable desktop: ~3 seconds (go Fluxbox!)
resume from hiberation: 19 seconds (go s2disk with compression!)Edit: Those hibernation resume times were under the same load on both machines (PDF viewer and file manager open plus a browser with a bunch of tabs).
So yeah. Keep trying, Microsoft.
I might post some more "benchmarks" after I get Arch onto the new laptop as well (be curious to see if MS has seriously optimized app launch times or whether I'm just not used to non-ancient hardware... Firefox loads damn quick on there).
PS: Anyone know how to make s2ram work on a Thinkpad R30 so that the mouse still exists after resume?
A celeron 1.6Ghz are you talking about dual core here? And isn't w7 system requirements at least minium dual core or faster then 2Ghz? (could be wrong)
???????????????????????????
You did NOT provide enough information about your systems or what type of DE/services you ran with archlinux kernel if any at all.
So yeah. Keep trying, Microsoft.
In "datormagazin" windows 7 won all tests on their notebook test, boot time, GUI interaction, hardware support, snappy window managers etc, ubuntu notebook failed poorly only linux mint 7 managed to keep up with w7 but only barely. Moblinv2 ran great on an intel support system.
I've tried w7 on my main system for 2 months (sony vaio 2.26Ghz dual core, ati 3400HD 4GB ram) and it had a faster boot time and a much snappier experience then my archlinux build (at that time I ran kde4 and lots of services).
I'd say windows 7 running great on notebooks isn't exactly a good thing for the linux world..... especially since linux is suppose to run better on less advanced systems. Moblinv2 is looking hopeful but they need to support more hardware.
By that I mean why should a company/store switch OS if w7 runs better then their linux counterpart, as in a full blown desktop system.
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How do you get resume from hibernation to go so fast? Any guides? It takes me about the same amount of time to resume from hibernation as to boot cold...
Enable compression in /etc/suspend.conf:
compress = y
And this is without encryption (suspending to vanilla, non-LUKS swap partition, and encryption disabled in /etc/suspend.conf -- with encryption on hibernate/resume is the same speed as XP was).
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A celeron 1.6Ghz are you talking about dual core here? And isn't w7 system requirements at least minium dual core or faster then 2Ghz? (could be wrong)
???????????????????????????
You did NOT provide enough information about your systems or what type of DE/services you ran with archlinux kernel if any at all.
I did say it was unofficial/unscientific
The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A200; the CPU is a Celeron M 520, single core. It's 64-bit (apparently) but I only have 1 GB of RAM so I need to run 32-bit windows 7.
My point was that Arch outperformed it on boot-to-usable desktop (meaning the hard drive has settled down enough that I can run programs without having to wait longer for them to start) time on hardware that was clearly inferior in every way, so I didn't bother giving specifics (7 years old vs. 3 years old should be a clear distinction in hardware).
In "datormagazin" windows 7 won all tests on their notebook test, boot time, GUI interaction, hardware support, snappy window managers etc, ubuntu notebook failed poorly only linux mint 7 managed to keep up with w7 but only barely. Moblinv2 ran great on an intel support system.
I haven't been able to find this article. I found one reference to it on a Microsoft TechNet blog entry, and this page:
http://www.datormagazin.se/tidningen/article502128.ece
Which I think means that their full articles aren't available online and they want me to buy the magazine to read it? Can you post the text of the article? I don't want to speculate / respond to something I haven't read.
(OK, I'll speculate anyway: If they used one of the bloated desktop environments like KDE on the Linux systems, it wasn't a fair test.)
I've tried w7 on my main system for 2 months (sony vaio 2.26Ghz dual core, ati 3400HD 4GB ram) and it had a faster boot time and a much snappier experience then my archlinux build (at that time I ran kde4 and lots of services).
There's your problem -- KDE4 is bloated.
I'd say windows 7 running great on notebooks isn't exactly a good thing for the linux world..... especially since linux is suppose to run better on less advanced systems. Moblinv2 is looking hopeful but they need to support more hardware.
By that I mean why should a company/store switch OS if w7 runs better then their linux counterpart, as in a full blown desktop system.
I would argue that Windows 7 needing 9 GB of hard drive space just to install (and that's being charitable; the official requirement is 16-20), and needing a 1GHz x86 or x64 CPU, and over 1 GB of RAM, means that Windows 7 is *not* running great on netbooks. Rather, it needed the definition of netbook stretched to perverse extremes just to support it. Call me when Windows 7 runs great on an ARM-based netbook with 4 GB of solid state hard disk and 512 MB of RAM that lasts 9 or 10 hours on the same physical battery that makes an intel-based netbook with a spinning hard drive run for 2 or 3. /rant
Edit: I just noticed that you said "notebook" and not "netbook" in your message. The datormagazin article was about netbooks, though, so I'll leave my rant in
Last edited by thetrivialstuff (2009-10-04 03:54:19)
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I'll be perfectly honest, I've used Windows 7 and like it quite a bit. It's on my work machine right now. (iMac, mostly using Snow Leopard.) And my laptop came with a free upgrade that I'm likely to stick on it. The UI changes and overall functionality genuinely impressed me. My desktops are staying Arch but for the first time since Windows 2000 I find myself really fond of a version of Windows.
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It is a lot more useable than Vista, that's for sure. It even has a few things I really like over XP (the beginnings of some *very* rudimentary window management functions, e.g. the keyboard shortcuts for half screen).
Here's my biggest gripe on the UI side of it so far: Aero/glass takes up way too much screen real estate. The window borders and title bars are HUGE; this laptop has a much bigger screen than my other one, but it feels more cramped because of that. If I turn off the theming, I lose some semi-useful features (the better alt+tab, win+tab, and the window preview thing when you hover over taskbar buttons). And a lot of the interface changes in windows explorer, etc. look frankly ugly with Aero off.
My biggest gripe overall, though, is the complexity of the system. Have you taken a look in computer management yet? There are 32 different task scheduler tasks enabled on a clean install! 32! And no, Task Scheduler hasn't replaced Services; there are more of those than ever, too. Granted, the system feels snappy to the user, so all of that isn't really having a negative impact, but I get the feeling the computer is struggling to get every last ounce of idle time from me, in which to run all of those tasks that keep it snappy. I think MS hasn't really optimized their codebase much; they've just come up with a bunch of heuristics to preload as much of the bloat as they can before the user gets to it.
The single biggest innovation in Win7 is that the OS stays responsive when the hard drive is thrashing its guts out -- but it does still thrash, perhaps *more* than it did in previous Windows.
Also, what they've done to the directory structure in users' home directories is horrendous. Go in there and do a dir /a sometime -- it's a mess of junctions (NTFS hard links) pointing at each other and at various legacy locations (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings is a sort-of hard link to the new C:\Users). And "Libraries" (Microsoft's take on UnionFS) are a kludge -- the Libraries are implemented as individual XML files buried in <userdir>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Libraries . Basically there's so much filesystem complexity now that you *have* to leave "show hidden and system files" turned off, or else there'll be so much cruft visible you won't be able to get anything done. It's "desktop.ini" two-point-oh.
All of that makes me really leery about fixing the OS when something goes wrong, and since the process, task scheduler, and services lists are now verging on being too complicated for a human to remember, spyware will have lots of new places to hide.
Oh, and you still run as root by default.
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thetrivialstuff
I did say it was unofficial/unscientific
The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A200; the CPU is a Celeron M 520, single core. It's 64-bit (apparently) but I only have 1 GB of RAM so I need to run 32-bit windows 7.
My point was that Arch outperformed it on boot-to-usable desktop (meaning the hard drive has settled down enough that I can run programs without having to wait longer for them to start) time on hardware that was clearly inferior in every way, so I didn't bother giving specifics (7 years old vs. 3 years old should be a clear distinction in hardware).
Windows 7 and every other nt kernel boots into a fully functional GUI/X with running services (daemons) in the background that's why on lower systems there's always a slight delay. On my arch system must of stuff is backgrounded or forked during init. If you're gonna compare boot time to a fully functional system I suggest you use a DE that's similar to windows, like KDE or gnome.
I haven't been able to find this article. I found one reference to it on a Microsoft TechNet blog entry, and this page:
http://www.datormagazin.se/tidningen/article502128.ece
Which I think means that their full articles aren't available online and they want me to buy the magazine to read it? Can you post the text of the article? I don't want to speculate / respond to something I haven't read.
Sorry no, the magazine i'm subscribed to is a paper magazine with a montly fee, and I have no scanner either. Yeah I know you should never quote a source without some sort of linkage and there's too much text for me to manually write down.
(OK, I'll speculate anyway: If they used one of the bloated desktop environments like KDE on the Linux systems, it wasn't a fair test.)
There's your problem -- KDE4 is bloated.
A couple of things, first of all KDE4 is as bloated as you make it to be unless you mean the libs themself are bloated? I ran KDE4 main libs coupled with compiz and that was basically it. datormagazin consists of lots of excellent unix programmers so i'm sure they were fair on their tests. What other DE would you use vs windows 7 then? Remember you have to use a WM that's exactly or similar to w7s own GUI, xfce/lxde isn't the same thing. Of course this is all arguable
I would argue that Windows 7 needing 9 GB of hard drive space just to install (and that's being charitable; the official requirement is 16-20), and needing a 1GHz x86 or x64 CPU, and over 1 GB of RAM, means that Windows 7 is *not* running great on netbooks. Rather, it needed the definition of netbook stretched to perverse extremes just to support it. Call me when Windows 7 runs great on an ARM-based netbook with 4 GB of solid state hard disk and 512 MB of RAM that lasts 9 or 10 hours on the same physical battery that makes an intel-based netbook with a spinning hard drive run for 2 or 3. /rant
Windows 7 outperformed linux on all netbook tests, most of the netebooks had atom
running as their main processor. I've never had a netbook running 9 hours on any os, hell even running a bare archlinux with awesome as wm lasts roughly <4 hours on my system. And this is a full blown w7 interace not a barebone wm.
I just noticed that you said "notebook" and not "netbook" in your message. The datormagazin article was about netbooks, though, so I'll leave my rant in
Yeah typo on my part, I meant "netbook" all along.
A normal joe will be more than happy if he can run a windows system on his atom-netbook system, especially windows 7 which is brand new. I'm very impressed how smooth w7 runs on most of my systems, and most of my hardware is already
detected without the need of external drivers (common on xp). In my opinion a lot more users will choose windows 7 over linux, this is of course just my input on the current market, doesn't mean it's factual or anything.
Also the magazine is in swedish, so unless you speak swedish..yeah
My dream is that someday linux will be known as a desktop oriented os with special focus on servers, meaning most of the hardware is already supported by local vendors and gaming is a possibility
Try running W7 on your notebook and see how it runs compared to linux, or better find a local computer store and try out various models running w7, and you'll find out for yourself, don't take my word for it.
Although i have no current plans of running w7 on any of my systems, doubt i'll ever go back to windows.
Wouldn't it be awesome if one could go into a store and choose from macosx/windows/linux and they all had the same or similar hardware/gaming support, a bit utopia eh
Last edited by greenfish (2009-10-05 09:55:25)
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@ greenfish
does that mean that you bought a number of copies of win7? I wouldn't mind testing it but hello, I'm not about to fork out $100 or thereabouts for testing purposes only! I did try the beta in virtualbox and wasn't happy with it, but that is water under the bridge...
never trust a toad...
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If you're gonna compare boot time to a fully functional system I suggest you use a DE that's similar to windows, like KDE or gnome.
I consider my setup to *be* fully functional: I can do everything that Windows / KDE/Gnome users can do on their DE's, just as easily and often quicker. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't really buy that a "full" desktop environment is any easier to use, or even to learn.* I think it's just what everyone is used to, thanks to Windows and Mac OS.
(*: I have some experience to back this up, from teaching people who've *never* used a computer before. It is much easier to teach them to use a terminal interface than to explain about all the various elements of modern GUIs that we take for granted because we watched them evolve.
On a terminal, it's literally as simple as "Press Q on the keyboard", but to someone who's never seen a computer or any kind of GUI before, it could take half an hour to explain how to click "File > Quit" because you have to explain which part of the mouse is the kind of click you want, let them practice moving it around a bit (this is NOT easy to learn if you've never done it before), then explain what a menu is and how when you click it it stays open only until you click something else, and how the blue hilight means that you're hovering over the command, and that if you click when you don't see the blue hilight it won't do anything even if the mouse is still close to the command you want... and so on.
Oh, and then you have to explain why not all programs have menus because Microsoft invented this thing called a 'ribbon' that's different in every program that has one, and how there's a magic orb somewhere that's a bit like a menu, sometimes...)
I've never had a netbook running 9 hours on any os.
I think some of the earlier ARM-based netbooks with solid-state storage were approaching that, before Microsoft realized that they were ignoring a whole market segment and forced hardware manufacturers to make netbooks a lot more powerful (and power-hungry). Now that Windows is dominating the netbook market, we probably won't see much more development of the really long-living ARM books...
Try running W7 on your notebook and see how it runs compared to linux, or better find a local computer store and try out various models running w7, and you'll find out for yourself, don't take my word for it.
I believe you on that; I can't really imagine any large DE running much faster than Win7 on this laptop. When I do put linux on it though, it'll be running wmii and lightweight apps wherever possible, so it won't be a fair comparison in terms of machine instructions executed or memory used, but it will be faster
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Resume time from ram for my win7 install is under 4 seconds, boot is pretty fast too, under 30 to login. Not got back round to fixing grub and adjusting my fstab
/me gumbles at windows 7 having a boot partition
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I consider my setup to *be* fully functional: I can do everything that Windows / KDE/Gnome users can do on their DE's, just as easily and often quicker. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't really buy that a "full" desktop environment is any easier to use, or even to learn.* I think it's just what everyone is used to, thanks to Windows and Mac OS.
No, no no! That's not what I meant at all my good sir. I'm running a fully functional system my self using only a WM and scripts (awesome/compiz) without the need of a DE enviroment. If you're gonna compare windows 7 vs a linux distro you have to take into consideration w7 gui is running everything with all the whistles on (tons of services) and aero. You can't compare a GUI that takes up 2mb in ram vs a full blown windows DE with 200mb ram, same goes for linux DE's as well. If were gonna discuss boot time here with w7 then you should find a bloated DE like KDE4 with compiz running and then compare boot time, not xfce or lxde
(*: I have some experience to back this up, from teaching people who've *never* used a computer before. It is much easier to teach them to use a terminal interface than to explain about all the various elements of modern GUIs that we take for granted because we watched them evolve.
Yes of course, but that's assuming the user will continue to use the terminal in the future even when he/she is using a GUI to operate their system on a daily basis. Curious when you say "terminal" do you mean a true unix shell or an ms-dos emulator (xp,vista)?
In my opinion the windows 7 interface and macosx are two smoking hot interfaces
Same goes for KDE/Compiz on the linux side.
EDIT: Had to shorten your post a bit, my lunch break is over
@ greenfish
does that mean that you bought a number of copies of win7? I wouldn't mind testing it but hello, I'm not about to fork out $100 or thereabouts for testing purposes only! I did try the beta in virtualbox and wasn't happy with it, but that is water under the bridge...
Hi! No i ran a final RTM build of windows 7 which is duable for 120 days until it requires an activation.
Last edited by greenfish (2009-10-06 10:39:03)
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A normal joe will be more than happy if he can run a windows system on his atom-netbook system, especially windows 7 which is brand new. I'm very impressed how smooth w7 runs on most of my systems, and most of my hardware is already
detected without the need of external drivers (common on xp). In my opinion a lot more users will choose windows 7 over linux, this is of course just my input on the current market, doesn't mean it's factual or anything.
Well ... yes they have improved that but try some very popular hardware from a few years back and maybe you will be left in the cold.
W7 may be better in the driver department for really really new hardware or some specific hardware like satellite cards or tdt otherwise I would stick with linux without much thought.
Currently I don't own anything that linux can't put to work out of the box except a winmodem (and even that could work if I bought the driver) but I suspect I may own a few pieces of hardware that W7 can't handle (my soundblaster comes to mind, didn't try it yet though, not much will to spend some time installing W7 on a spare disk).
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Got my hands on Windows 7 Enterprise edition and have to say that things have become a lot smoother. On my hp 6510b most of the drivers worked out-of-the-box and rest could be installed from Windows Update exept some useless fingerprint reader. Few experience points:
-Bitlocker drive encryption is very easy to use, you just turn it on and with TPM module it seems to be quite safe even without any extra password queries. Altering boot sector caused bitlocker to go safe mode demanding recovery file etc.
-I had to lower security features from security policy to access samba share.
-Windows firewall finally makes some sense, 3 security levels and you can choose share etc settings separately to each level
-Network sharing center is still pretty pointless, it would be better without it
-Most of the software works, for those which doesn't MS offers XP Mode (Windows XP in virtualPC)
Also Windows 7 Enterprise and 2008 Server should provide VPN-less way to access networks shares remotely but I haven't tested it out.
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My desktops are staying Arch but for the first time since Windows 2000 I find myself really fond of a version of Windows.
Same experience here. Nothing negative to report with what I have seen of Windows 7. It seems very light, stable, predictable and responsive.
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7 looks pretty nice, but - from my experience - all versions of Windows seem to have this tendency to break in the most magical ways, often leaving reinstallation or restoration from the image the only possibilities. Properly set up Arch won't go bonkers on you unless you hit some update breakage, run out of space or your hardware fails.
I find this aspect of an operating system oft-overlooked.
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With proper 2D support Linux should be far more responsive then Win7 etc. Right now, Arch Linux outperforms XP here in every aspect (except 2D and 3D - Ati OS drivers) :> I bet the newest Kubuntu should start much faster then Win7 thanks to upstart and Grub2 maybe.
@Greenfish
I read quite a lot OS comparisons when comes to desktops and much of them are just marketing bull or things from winboys perspective.
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Same experience here. Nothing negative to report with what I have seen of Windows 7. It seems very light, stable, predictable and responsive.
I agree with you on all of those except "light" -- an OS with a 9 GB footprint does not qualify as "light" in my books.
Also, Windows Explorer (including the desktop and taskbar sometimes) still hangs and becomes unresponsive if you type \\somehostthatdoesn'texist\share into the address bar and hit enter. I can't believe they haven't fixed that since Windows 95. So -1 for stability.
(Same hanging behaviour if you put in a host that does exist, but requires a different password from your windows login one.)
Last edited by thetrivialstuff (2009-10-09 20:22:36)
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9 gigs? I had no idea..I should have said "It feels light.."
And, don't get me wrong-- I am not going to buy Windows7. I am very happy with Arch and have been for the past 3 years. It still brings me a lot of pleasure to use and I can't say that for any other OS.
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My base Win7 Ultimate install came to 12gigs, for netbooks and notebooks that's horrible, for desktops not so bad
Win7 is OK but I still miss using Arch after 8 hours in XP and a few gaming hours in 7
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