So, I have switched to the long awaited Windows 7 on my laptop. (HP Pavilion tx2020 now running Windows 7 Ultimate.) And what are my first thoughts on this new os?
- It seems inherently more stable thant Vista was, at lest when multitasking and running more than 2 programs at once.
- However, I have lost fingertip-touch functionality. My touchscreen still works with the sylus, but not with my fingers. My guess is that there is an updated driver from HP releasing soon that will fix this.
- My graphics driver is having issues with 7. This was mercilesly fixed by switching to custom Omega drivers. Mind you, they are not made for Windows 7, but they seem to work better than the vendor supplied ones.
- The upgrade process from Vista Business to 7 Ultimate took forever. No, really. Forever!
- It has some clever new things of organizing, virtual folders and tags for example. Perfect for controlfreaks like me.
- It comes with a shiny new taskbar that actually has some real improvements to it: when docking a program icon to the taskbar, it doesn’t require more space when you launchthe program, it simply let’s you know by highlighting the icon that it’s being used. Also, autogrouping and onmouseover previews are handy things.
- It gives you more detailed control of the securtiy settings than Vista. Which used to be a pain.
All in all. I like it. Will install this on my girlfriends laptop as well, and when I get a new machine, this shall also be with 7. However, if you have an older pc, like my old laptop, then don’t bother. Stick with XP. If you’re stuck in Vista mode however, it’s worth a switch. Although the switch itself will take forever.
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I’m trying to get Windows 7 32 bit to work on a HP Pavilion tx 2020. I also have problems with the graphics drivers. Can you please elaborate on how you got the ‘omega drivers’ to work? They give the same error “not vista” as the (vista32) drivers from HP…
Apparently HP will not support Windows 7 on these computers. Their recommendation is “reinstall vista”. I just realize how much I hate vendor locked hardware!
Hey there,
I ran the installation file for the omega drivers in vista compatibility mode and got a few error messages during installation that I simply ignored. However, my laptop crashed completely as a result of this just a few weeks later, forcing a full re-install (of Vista) and thus, I would NOT recommend using Omega drivers for 7.
I found a better solution than reinstalling Vista – I downloaded all the drivers I could think of – HP’s Vista, nVidia Win7 desktop (seems to have the 6150) and nVidia Win7 notebook (might not have any “go” lesser than 7xxx series) – all failed as you know. But they do leave their unpacked setup files behind.
Then Right-click on desktop and chose “screen resolition”. Click “Advanced settings”, Adapter-> Properties. Driver->Update Driver. “Browser my computer for driver software”->”Let me pick from a list”->”Have Disk”. And here you select the directory the nvidia setup files unpacked to.
Unfortunately I had all the files unpacked to different sub-folders in the same folder – and I think I just let Win7 search through all – as such I’m not completely certain *which* of the drivers it actually installed, but it did detect a 6150 go and it works fine. However, since the date of the driver is 2008, I assume it is the HP Vista…
Hope this helps!
… Just a note; I could be slightly off in how I made Win7 update its driver – but I do remember that you really have to *insist* and always chose the most “non-automated option”. If you at any point give it an option to “bail out”, it will jump right back to “your standard vga is properly installed”. I was rather frustrated while desperately testing different combinations, so when one of the suddenly worked, I didn’t take completely note on *what* I did – I was more interested in carefully confirming that it actually worked, which it did!
Yep, it seems the trick to do anything in 7 or Vista is to always *insist* on doing it your way rather than doing it the windows way. I will try this method myself when I get my laptop back from service.