Windows 7 is officially here!!! :-D

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That's actually why I asked him if he had 64bit, because I've seen some techless people buying 8 gigs with a 32 Vista. I still have 4gig since I had Vista 32b and now upgraded to 7 64b, need to get more RAM now.

 

See, I think well of Ziad ...

 

I don't have 8Gb! Nor would I want to, even if I they were running on a 64-bit OS. When the OS comes that requires me to have 8Gb to run things properly I'll just give it the finger and stick to my beloved XP. Or Win7 if I end up making that upgrade

 

Taza I meant

Eldular, let me tell you you're working too hard because I do see where Taza said 64 ...

 

I saw the part where he wrote that he had 64bit after you posted "Obviously, as do i" that's why I posted that I didn't see it before and that's why I had asked the stupid question. I wasn't giving Taza bad credit, just wanted to help him out!

Stop picking on me lol.

 

No accounting for taste.

 

Oh you.

Could we get this train back on track?

Thus far, I'm liking Windows 7 even if I can't find a way to not cache thumbnails and turn just video/audio preview off. Two most annoying things really, but not really bugs.

 

Don't mind if we do.

Ziad, try making a massive panorama image (currently sitting at ~1GB) in Photoshop. I've only got 2GB of ram in my PC, and Photoshop (and everything else on my PC) slows to a crawl if I try to open that file. I've had to use the computers at school to make it...which in one lab, there are 2 computers currently running Win7 RC1 with 6GB of RAM and Adobe CS4. Those computers kick serious arse! Win7, CS4, and Core i7 are a 3-way made in heaven! I just wish I could afford CS4...or 6GB of RAM...or a full version of Win7 for that matter.

Anyway, the point of all that is, Win7 doesn't *need* 8GB...but as file sizes increase - which they will always continue to do - you're going to need more RAM no matter what.

 

And that's why I upgraded my RAM now, fearing I couldn't do it later at reasonable expense. It's an investment into the future as I plan to use my computer for another three years or so. Great that Windows 7 64bit allows for that much RAM.

I saw my computer coming to its limits, using the 4GB I had then to some 95%, when doing the exact opposite of what Kit did - searching and replacing in some 20.000 smallish XML files amounting cumulatively to 700MB. That's hard computing. Unlike him, I had the old computer at work and brought my work home in order to spare me a couple hours staring at progress bars moving at snail's pace.

 

Any system with 6G of ram should be blazingly fast, otherwise it has a piss-poor design. Just think of recent game system requirements, where the ones for vista are often double the ones for xp. The software and hardware industries are passing the ball between each other and trying to trick you to follow. Things just get cheaper (thank you gamers ).

And if your ram isn't being used, then that part is useless. Memory caches are still faster than even ssds and while they need to be filled first, they are more reliable (ssds are young, just look at the intel fiasco).

Most files will not increase in size (docs, pics, music), so it's not such a good argument. And what will you do with your 1G panorama, shrink it so you can host it somewhere (absurd)? I'm not saying there is no use for more ram, but most systems/uses cope perfectly well with less than 4G, since the disk is the bottleneck.

 

Admittedly, I don't currently see a speed increase from having 8GB RAM in everyday use. My computer shuts down faster though

 

Pictures *will* increase in size as cameras keep increasing resolutions. Hell, a single RAW file is ~25MB with no filters.

Music files will increase in size too as more and more files have embedded metadata like album art, artist bios, and the like. Also, bit-rates will move to a higher number as Mp3 players and computers get more HDD space. I've been using 192kbps for all my ripped music that I put on my phone...but all my original files are FLAC files...which are huge. I’d love to have all my FLAC files on my Mp3 player!

The massive panorama I'm making will be printed on a 60" by ∞ photo plotter (aka a large-format printer) to span the entire length of 3 walls in my friend's media room. The file will never be shrunk...or turned into anything except a lossless TIF file, and its home will be a flash drive.

Also, more RAM is essential for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as 3D modeling, HD video editing, image manipulation, CAD designs, electrical circuit design simulation*, and dozens of other tasks because this stuff is stored in RAM while the work is being done.

* - I have to use MultiSim a lot in my electronics engineering classes at school. I designed a very large circuit to show an example of what a single PIC could do. When I pressed "play" to activate the simulation, my computer's RAM monitor went to 0 and my CPU usage shot up to 100% on both cores. The simulation worked like a charm on one of the two school PCs I mentioned earlier.

 

The file size increase due to metadata is insignificant compared to the size of the data. Sure it will increase, but this affects more the disk space or program design than ram needs.

CAD, virtualisation, GIS, (etc.) and pics for tens of square meters are a specialist thing, most people don't do them. But again some of these are so power hungry due to lazy design. If high ram capacities hadn't become so cheap so fast, the pc software world would be more similar to the embedded one and programmers would be more careful in treating our resources.

 

I find myself using 100% CPU and most of the RAM even without gaming thanks to *heavy* multitasking.

I always find ways to use up all of the available memory and make myself wish I had more. Heck, my 701 netbook has been upgraded to 2 gigabytes. And yes, it was worth it.

 

Bottom line is as technology advances you will always need more. Who remembers Windows 3.1 and using 1MB of RAM? I do; in fact my first PC was...

25Mhz not GHz people..
512KB of RAM 2 256KB sticks....
30MB HD - Most new games today use are 1-2 GB minimum if not more
15" CRT 32 color monitor - yup 32 colors thats it...
GPU - didn't have one
Sound - If you heard it great, if not who cares

That PC did exactly what I needed it to do back in 1994 and more. Advance 15 years and now my current PC does exactly what I need it to do and more. Imagine trying to run Windows 7 on my old PC; wouldn't happen. The thing with technology is as it advances (software and hardware) you need more computing power (hardware) to operate the applications you want on your PC (software). If you don't update the hardware, the software will really slow down your PC.

As for Windows 7 compared to Vista - Vista had to happen for Window 7 to be created. I'm happy with Vista and will eventually move to Window 7 with my next PC or whatever the OS is at that time.

 

My 1st PC was the IBM PC Jr. 128K system. Infocom games galore!

 

"My" first computer was my big brother's 286, iirc on Windows 2.something. 3.1 was a major leap forward.

It always depends on what you do with your computer. Years back my sis bought a Celeron 700 or so, and that box is still running Win98 SE on a 2GB HDD with 320MB or so RAM. I had then just bought and built my first all-new computer a Slot A AMD Athlon 650MHz to replace the one I built from leftovers of friend's computers who had upgraded. I am two core upgrades (first an Athlon 3000+ and now the Intel 9450) ahead. My sister has now bought an EeePC and is happy with it, praising it's computing power I guess it greatly depends on your perspective.

Point is, she's hearing some mp3, watching the occasional DVD, writing, doing e-mail and surfing the web.

I game, and use the computer for light programming, and all of the above, and some more things, all in heavy multitasking, even more so now that I have two screens. And I know what a good computer feels like in terms of speed and responsiveness.

 

Basic? I remember utilizing basic when I was 8 years old on a TI-80. But I won't consider that one my 1st PC, as it couldn't run games. Though I could get the screen to run my name infinitely!

 

My first computer was an Apple as well, DMC. It was a Mac plus. It even had 1 meg of RAM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Plus