Which version of Windows do you use?

[Rick Brewster]

zara, Vista and 7 are very similar from my viewpoint as the developer in terms of what APIs I have available to me and how they behave. Win7 simply adds a few things that are easy to ignore on Vista, such as taskbar progress label thingies.

[warfighter67]

I have 2 computers I use, the one I'm on right now at my dads has XP but he can get me W7 for it, and the one at my moms has W7.

[chrisco97]

I hope I can get it someday, but right now, I just cannot afford it.

[janettsue]

I would love to upgrade to windows 7 but I have to take into consideration other programs that I run on my computer that take priority and at present have problems with windows 7 and some with 64bit. I know in time the problems will all be worked out and I will be able to upgrade. I assume others may have similar problems with programs they use. If you use your computer for work it is a good idea to check the programs you work with for compatibility before you upgrade.

Great job on the new forum!

[Rick Brewster]

What programs would have problems with x64 or Win7, at this point?

2-3 years ago, sure. But Win7 is almost 100% compatible with Vista which has already been "dealt with". Same with 64-bit, which has over 13% of the Paint.NET user base now and thus cannot be simply ignored by software companies.

[Wilson]

Windows 7.

[janettsue]

What programs would have problems with x64 or Win7, at this point?

2-3 years ago, sure. But Win7 is almost 100% compatible with Vista which has already been "dealt with". Same with 64-bit, which has over 13% of the Paint.NET user base now and thus cannot be simply ignored by software companies.

Only QuickBooks 2010 (Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Solutions) is designed to be compatible with Windows 7 (I've still heard of some problems). While I am saying that it is compatible, if you go to Intuits site and look up systems requirements for Enterprise Solutions you will find that Windows 7 is not on the list. You can still install and run QuickBooks 2007, 2008 and 2009 on Windows 7, but you may encounter problems Intuit says they cannot resolve. Not something anyone wants to have happen to their company books. While I have 2010 Premier Accountants Edition and Enterprise Solutions Accountants Editions 10.0 and they are backwards compatible to a point I am reluctant just yet to uninstall my earlier editions. Intuits Cash Register Plus only runs on 32bit. I hope they will upgrade that soon. I am just going to bide my time till I know the kinks are worked out. If I have to open a company file created on an old edition I want to be able to. In a perfect world you would hope if someone upgraded their OS they would upgrade their accounting system as well. I would much rather be doing paint.net than QuickBooks.

[jerry533482]

i doubt vista or 7 would run evin close to properly on my 1.8 Ghz (single core) pentium 4 and 512 MB of ram.... would they?

I'm running windows 7 home premium x86 on my 1.6 Ghz [single] core acer laptop, and it runs smoothly. No problems except for when I'm multitasking like 6 or 7 apps, then the machine might freeze. But other then that, your machine sounds quite capable of running Windows 7 without issue, with the exception of RAM. Microsoft says you need at least 1 GB (1024 MB), and I have 3 GB, while you have 512 MB. But then again, Windows 7 is designed to run on XP hardware, so there is hope for you.

Hey Rick, I haven't studied processors & chips in that much detail, but I'm curious as to if you can tell me if my CPU's faster or slower than Leonte's. Mine is an AMD athlon 64 2650e [single] core running at 1.6 GHz with 512kb L2 cache, & as Leonte's stated, his is an Intel Pentitum 4 [single] core at 1.8 Ghz. I know that AMD makes chips that are slower Hz-wise, but have better overall performance, while Intel has better average Hz speeds, at the expense of a smaller cache (although this is not always the case). Given that you are looking into 24 thread CPUs (your blog) & you've had a multi-core processor before I bought my first machine, would you say my CPU is faster, or is Leonte's faster?

[Rick Brewster]

P4 1.8 is almost assuredly -- and nocitably* -- slower than an Athlon 64 at 1.6ghz.

* as opposed to "omg it benchmarked 3% slower"

[Zwicky]

Both my computers do not meet the system requirements necessary to run Windows 7, nor do I have the money to buy it. I will continue to use Paint.NET on Windows XP however.

[jerry533482]

I wonder how many Paint.NET users will stick with XP after support has been dropped.

[Rick Brewster]

It would be counterproductive to speculate.

[DarkShock]

I'm using Windows 7.

And it was my idea.

[Frontcannon]

I bet that it was your idea to change your OS.