What operating system are you running?

[flamepanther]

There are some cool games that will run under Win9x that won't work in XP or later systems, or through WINE under Linux--and I'm not aware of a good way of emulating or virtualizing real Windows 95/98. The only answer at the moment is to have an old machine around for running them.

[deathsled]

XP Pro. I gave W7 a quick whirl but I didn't like it at all. Too many helper widgets that were useless and took up real estate that I couldn't turn off.

I have no clue what you're talking about. I've never seen any "helper widgets" or anything that is taking up any screen space. When I install Win 7 Ultimate it boots to a clean desktop and off I go....

[o.pwuaioc]

XP Pro. I gave W7 a quick whirl but I didn't like it at all. Too many helper widgets that were useless and took up real estate that I couldn't turn off.

I have no clue what you're talking about. I've never seen any "helper widgets" or anything that is taking up any screen space. When I install Win 7 Ultimate it boots to a clean desktop and off I go....

You can turn on Windows Gadgets, but at the same time you can turn them off without a problem.

[jeffro11]

By default Windows 7 from an OEM/Retail install disc doesn't have widgets turned on by default. Not sure what your complaint was as you can turn them off... You probably used a Windows 7 install on an Acer or heavens forbid a Dell.

[Ziggy]

7 blows the hell out of XP. I understand not liking to make the jump when you're so familiar with something. I'm the same way with a lot of things. But 7 is just all around better than XP. After using 7 on my main PC for a while now, having to use XP on my other PC kinda sucks. And I LOVED XP.

[DinnerX]

There are some cool games that will run under Win9x that won't work in XP or later systems, or through WINE under Linux--and I'm not aware of a good way of emulating or virtualizing real Windows 95/98. The only answer at the moment is to have an old machine around for running them.

I always hope that someday there will be WINE on windows. It'll be great for old games as wine progresses. Right now I have wine on linux installed in a VM on windows 7.

[irixith]

I do most of my day-to-day on netbooks, which all run on XP. My main gaming PC runs Windows 7, not by choice, but by virtue of the modern hardware that lacks proper XP support, DirectX10/11, etc. I still enjoy XP far more -- I find 7 makes it harder to move around the file system, and there are too many things to turn off, from the sidebar to libraries to homegroups and beyond. I find it tries to oversimplify a lot of things that didn't need to be oversimplified, and in the process just made it a frustrating experience.

With all the extra stuff turned off that I don't like/don't need, and the classic interface rather than Aero, it's not horrible -- but it's not XP, and I wish they'd kept the windows explorer from XP rather than change it into the unhelpful mess it is now. Mind you I don't use explorer itself, I use Directory Opus -- I'm talking about the places explorer is melded into the system, such as file open/save dialogs.

It really all comes down to personal preference, but I find myself far more productive in XP than 7, and so I use each where they're necessary -- XP for the day-to-day, 7 for gaming. Works for me, at least until Windows 8 and that horrid "metro" UI comes along.

[Hobie-wan]

If there are things in windows 7 actually called widgets, I wasn't referring to them. I meant the fact I couldn't figure out how to make the left pane in explorer just show me folders without all the bullshit like "my favorite spyware downloads" and "my favorite stuff to do because I'm too fucking retarded to organize shit on my PC in a logical manner" and some bar up at the top of explorer that I'd never ever use and simply wasted a half inch strip of space. Hate the way the start menu looks and works. Couldn't figure out how to make the address bar in explorer show a normal path instead of shitty breadcrumbs. Between that and the inability to display folders in the left pane, it made navigating 10 times slower since I generally know where stuff is kept on my machine.

There were other things that took up space and were useless to me, but didn't seem to have a way to turn them off or hide them that I could find. But this was months ago when I was working with it.

[jeffro11]

Couldn't figure out how to make the address bar in explorer show a normal path instead of shitty breadcrumbs.

Click to the right of the breadcrumbs.

"my favorite stuff to do because I'm too fucking retarded to organize shit on my PC in a logical manner"

Right click to remove the objects and your "Favorites" go away.

some bar up at the top of explorer that I'd never ever use and simply wasted a half inch strip of space.

Then remove it.

Between that and the inability to display folders in the left pane

Works just fine here.

Sounds to me you never really used it and are just bitching because it's different. One day your new hardware will no longer work on XP and you will have to upgrade. Why you haven't already is beyond me. Hell you can even install new video drivers without needing to reboot among many other things. The breadcrumbs were added in Vista just so you know. Best invention ever.

[Ziggy]

Seriously, Hobie, like I said, I'm not a big fan of a change like the jump from XP to 7. But 7 really puts XP to shame. 7 is completely customizable. I made myself get use to the new Star menu, and customized it how I like it. You can do things MUCH faster. I don't even use Libraries or whatever the default directories are called.

But at the same rate, it depends what computer you're running. My secondary desktop is a 3Ghz P4 with a gig of RAM. It wouldn't make sense to upgrade to 7. It's best to just stick with XP on there. But my newer computer, it's 7 all the way. When I first put it together, I had XP and Vista dual boot (7 was coming out a month or two later). I was scared to jump from XP to Vista, I didn't wanna commit, I wanted to be able to fall back on XP. I ended up taking the XP partition out because I never even used it.