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My copy arrived today - seems my pre-order was a little quick off the mark, or perhaps they were expecting the worst of the mail strikes ahead. Regardless, I doubt I'll get a serious install done until the weekend anyway as I still have the final bits of hardware to shuffle between current and future main box.

As a home user, I don't see any problem with NTFS. Of all the FS out there, the one that I'd rather have might be ZFS, but that's on a seriously geeky level.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I get Windows 7 for free @ my University, but I have (noob) question: If I wanna replace my Windows Vista with Windows 7, how do I do it to avoid losing anything on my computer?

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Canon DSLRs: 5D Mark III, 7D
Canon lenses: 17-40/4L, 24-105/4L, 24/1.4L II, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, 100/2.8L Macro, 70-200/2.8L IS, 100-400L
Other stuff: Canon 580 EX II, Canon 430EX II, Velbon Sherpa 600R
Apple: MacBook Pro 15", iMac 27", iPad III, iPhone 4S, Apple TV

My deviantART

just choose upgrade option rather than fresh install, this will keep all your documents and settings, though its a bad option to choose as it will keep all vistas files on top of 7 meaning chunks of disk space being used up for no reason.

Try backing up your files and folders first and do a fresh install, it will make the system run a lot smoother.

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Mark Osborne
My life through an iPhone

I'd agree with Orsan - I'm a great believer in the format and fresh install. Much of the fast performance we see from new OS's is in fact down to a fresh installation. I normally reformat and reinstall my OS from scratch every 6-12 months and each time it feels like a new system or a hardware upgrade!

Ok, thanks guys!

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Canon DSLRs: 5D Mark III, 7D
Canon lenses: 17-40/4L, 24-105/4L, 24/1.4L II, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, 100/2.8L Macro, 70-200/2.8L IS, 100-400L
Other stuff: Canon 580 EX II, Canon 430EX II, Velbon Sherpa 600R
Apple: MacBook Pro 15", iMac 27", iPad III, iPhone 4S, Apple TV

My deviantART

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But remember that if you are about to do a fresh install then you should "deactivate" your apps where appropriate before you do anything else. Failure to do so may mean that when you reinstall them and use your activation code that activation may fail as the code has been used too many times. This happened to me earlier this year with two apps and I ended up wasting a lot of time persuading the companies concerned that I wasn't a pirate.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

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In between those heavy PhotoShop sessions you might be tempted into a spot of gaming. Bit-tech.net has its first batch of compatibility tests on W7 x64 here.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Hi folks,

If you previously installed the Beta Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and relied on it "checking for updates" when you run it (it says it's doing so) then more fool you and more fool me.

Luckily I decided to uninstall it anyway and install the final release version, available here. The difference in the amount of advice offered is significant.

For the while I'm going to content myself with getting all my drivers/firmware/software up to date and then, despite having the W7 DVD within reach, hold off W7 installation for a little while longer and let the early adopters do a bit more testing for me.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

The "early adopter" risk is in part why I'm building a nearly new box for Win7 than upgrading my existing main one Again I remember why I stopped tinkering with computers. Tonight I've cut myself all over my hands wrestling with a rather sharp copper heatsink, and had much frustration twiddling bits trying to find out why it wouldn't boot. Hopefully I'm not far off getting my old box back up to its original spec... once that is done and I had some food then I can start the win7 box build...

Just as well I have plenty of spares around here in case things go wrong...

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Same!!!

but the reason i do it is usually because i don't have a choice: typical reasons
-fried the Mo-Bo (under manufactures warranty) TG
-or get a wikid virus form all the legal downloading
-or from a HDD failure (5months ago a 750GB WD died.... only 1 year old... i ran some recovery software.... only like 50% of stuff came back, and none of it had a folder structure or file name.)

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Canon 50D || Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 || Tamron 17-50 f2.8 || EF 50mm f/1.4 || EF 35-105mm f/4.5-5 USM || 430EX II w/wireless system flickr

Like Gordon Laing I have a Media Centre (MC) based on Windows XP, which I am thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 (W7).

However I have a friend who has both Vista and W7(Beta) MCs running, and he reports that there are some problems.

Colours on his LCD HD TV which are fine with Vista do not look right with W7 - he thinks there is some problem with the colour palette.

Microsoft have changed the TV recording format - programmes recorded on XP/Vista will replay on W7, but not vice versa.

Despite earlier indications W7 does not support Blu Ray - some sort of licensing problem apparently.

The BBC has apparently made some changes to its HD coding on Freesat causing problems for the W7 codec.

My main reason for upgrading was Blu Ray support - which, as I've said, is not there after all. My XP system is still perfectly adequate, so I'm now wondering whether upgrading is worth the effort.

Does anybody out there have any thoughts/comments?

I'm impressed with the install speed. The RC was fast, but the one I just did seemed even faster, although it is higher spec hardware than the earlier test boxes. Put the kettle on at the same time I fed the DVD in. I'm at the desktop now and I've still half a mug of coffee left!

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Going through the user customisation and software install now...

Only quirk I have to report is that after installing the Sony software CD, Win7 would not to boot up, but a system restore bought it back. I vaguely remember reading about this happening on Vista too, but as I didn't run that I never looked into it... for now I'm skipping it as I rarely use it. Now to move onto the Canon and Olympus software...

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Ram useage is higher than i expected.

Just using normal things, like maybe 3-6 explorer windows, 20-30 firefox tabs, itunes, msn, tweetdeck i'm running around 3GB of useage.

Right now I've just got the one firefox tab and couple explorer windows and lightroom 3 (x64) and im using 3.5GB as it goes through 702GB of photos on my Archived hard drive... haha.

Definately gonna buy windows 7, im sold on its speed now. I might even pick up another 6GB of ram once the prices come down again (our suppliers told us a little while ago they were set to go up in the run up to windows 7 because of some shortage in asia, true, false, who knows, but ddr3 is more expensive than when i bought it!)

Is there any sort of deals you can get through education, because I want to get Pro or Ultimate but preferable not pay £120+

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

Hello vincer, and welcome to the friendly Camera Labs forum!
To enjoy your stay here please have a look at the house-rules!
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As to your questions: I Doubt that Bluray support will get into W7 anytime. So if your XP system is running well, why bother?

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses