Showstopper?I don't think I've ever run 'chkdsk' in Windows anyway. Always at the repair console.A simple patch could fix that right up.
Windows 7 Review: XP vs Vista vs 7 in 80+ Benchmarkshttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/windows_7_review?page=0%2C0Finally, Microsoft releases a successor worthy of Windows XPFor the Windows faithful, it’s been a tough eight years. With the launch of Windows XP in 2001, we thought we were poised on a brink of a new world of NT-based goodness—but two years and uncountable exploits later, the future of Windows was grim. Facing a never-ending torrent of new ‘sploits, worms, and trojans, Microsoft fired back with the single greatest operating system update of all time—Service Pack 2. In the single fell swoop of SP2, Windows XP went from Swiss cheese to secure, and once again we were poised to enter the promised land with… (wait for it)… Vista.Of course, we all know how Vista turned out. Haunted by poor performance in everything from games to disk access to networking, Vista is widely considered to be Microsoft’s biggest failure. Nonetheless, Vista laid the groundwork for a host of new technologies, all absolutely vital to pushing Windows into the 21st century. Vista’s new, modern driver architecture was designed to move core functionality from the kernel (where any instability can bring down the whole system) to user space—an absolutely necessary development. Likewise, Vista’s proper enforcement of permissions for both users and applications enhanced security, even though UAC remains very annoying. And once vendors fixed their driver flaws and Microsoft squashed some underlying bugs, Vista morphed into an entirely workable operating system, even if we still wouldn’t describe it as “good.”
Windows 7 can be used for 120 days for freeJust like VistaBy Nick FarrellThursday, 20 August 2009, 11:00SOFTWARE ALCHEMIST Microsoft has decided that its Windows 7 product can be used for up to 120 days without providing a product activation key.The Vole generally allows punters only 30 days to activate their copies of the company's operating systems, though a little-known command designed for corporate administrators can be used by anyone to reset the countdown up to three times.Windows Secrets has published step-by-step instructions for using a single command to add an additional 90 days to the stock 30-day grace period.During the 30-day grace period, Windows 7 operates as if it has been activated. As the grace period shrinks, however, increasingly-frequent messages appear on the screen. For example, on days four through 27, a pop-up asks the user to activate once each day. During days 28 and 29, the pop-up displays every four hours, while on day 30, it appears hourly.However, by using the command "slmgr -rearm" at a Windows 7 command prompt, users can reset the time-until-activation countdown back to 30 days.The secret was found by Woody Leonard, a contributing editor at Windows Secrets and the author of several computer books, including Windows Vista All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies.The Vole has since confirmed that the command can be used as many as three times by Windows 7 users to avoid activation.The command apparently works on Vista too, but we have never met anyone who wanted to run that for longer than a month. µ
