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Dual-Booting Windows 7 and XP

After attending the MSDN Developers Conference on January 16, I decided Windows 7 was just to cool not to try.  However, I didn't exactly have an extra PC laying around the house.  Then, a co-worker reminded me that my HP dv8000 had an extra drive bay.  After a trip to the store to get another hard drive, a few hours of partitioning the drive, burning the Windows 7 image to a DVD and then installing Windows 7, it works like a charm.  I was a bit hesitant to ever install Vista on this specific machine because I felt Vista would bring the machine to its knees.  However, I'm quite pleased with the response of Windows 7 on the machine (dual-processor 2 GHz, 1 GB RAM).  Looks like Microsoft has a winner! 

Print | posted on Monday, January 26, 2009 10:00 PM |

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# re: Dual-Booting Windows 7 and XP

Vista would also have worked fine. Most of what you will like about 7 was introduced in vista, starting with the installation experience. Welcome to 2009.
1/26/2009 11:04 PM | Joe
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# re: Dual-Booting Windows 7 and XP

I agree with most of that, except I have never seen Vista crash on any machine (75+ where I work, and 4 at home), and the Reliability Manager snap-in shows this (check yours - oops, it is gone in Windows 7, Oh well. I have seen IE hang now and then, but I would not blame the OS in that case) XP is solid, too. Win7 still needs a little work. I've filed about 10 bugs so far in the beta program.

Windows 7 is faster and contains less junk (some missing good stuff, however) and does not "run something" every time it wakes up from sleep.

Of course Windows 7 is better than Vista, just like Vista was better than XP, and XP was better than 2000, and 2000 was better than NT.

It does seem, however, that the "7" love affair is mostly from XP users: Look at the ... install experience, disk image backup, search in start menu, screen clipping tool, translucent windows, compatibility with hardware/software, and on and on - all no different from Vista.

I do not mean to offend or dispute an opinion. My take is that we are just talking about an OS - Vista is not nearly as bad and Win7 is not nearly as good as the posts I have been reading over the last few years. Both are clearly better than XP, and the latest and greatest is, well, the latest and greatest. Always.
1/27/2009 7:23 AM | Joe
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# re: Dual-Booting Windows 7 and XP

Don't get me wrong either. I've never been a part of the anti-Vista club and my original post was not intended to be a slam of Vista, sorry if it came across that way. I really only have XP around so I can use it for testing my software development(my main PCs are Vista). From what I've seen of Windows 7, I think it will go a long way to getting folks to finally make the switch from XP even though at the core it's the same as Vista.
1/27/2009 8:24 AM | John Blumenauer
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