Hi all Late last week I installed a new copy of Windows 7 which I bought from Microsoft online store for work purposes. Because we just upgraded our Apple MacBook Pro to 8GB of RAM and I'll be fitting a SSD in it later today I think, I opted for the X86 vernon of 7 because what a lot of manufacturers don't tell you is that the same keys work for the X86 versions as do for the I386 version. So I thought I would try an experiment and install the X86 version as a VM. I then installed the I386 version in native mode in a BC partition on the same machine so that I could benchmark performance of both versions and then decide which to keep and which to dump.
I was anticipating dumping the X86 version, as I was pretty sure that the I386 version running in native mode with a full 8GB of RAM and the complete resources of the machine available to it. However, as it turned out, the absolute opposite has proven to be the case. The X86 version of 7 absolutely and totally runs the I386 version into the ground, despite the fact that the X86 installation is running inside of a virtual machine and only has 4GB of RAM allocated to it, rather than the 8GB that the I386 version had. I'm actually very very pleased about that because it's allowed me to reclaim the 60GB partition I allocated to the I386 configuration and with quite a few of my apps already installed the virtual machine's dynamic hard drive is only 14.8GB currently. I used exactly the same key for the X86 version as I did for the I386 and it works perfectly. So it would appear that people are buying laptops and allowing themselves to be conned into buying more upgrades just because they want to move to the X86 platform. But after what I've seen here with this, I am going to buy another copy shortly and install it inside of another VM on one of our two quad core I ntel I7 machines. I consider it a darn right waste to put an I386 version of any operating system on to a quad core native 64-bit machine like that especially when the exact same product key works for both. I have to confess that I've been pleasantly surprised by just how stable 7 is as opposed to XP and earlier versions. Although I still firmly believe that Microsoft is about 15 years too late in terms of doing a total rewrite of their operating system, one must give credit where it's due. Finally it seems that they have produced a more or less stable client operating system. As for what will happen with the next version, that's in the lap of the gods. But I'll be amazed if they ever get around to doing the already long overdue rewrite. I've been hearing little rumours on the accessibility front regarding what everybody is currently calling "Windows 8". I'd love to think that they're true, and I'm not going to go into detail. But I honestly don't believe that there will be much change in the way accessibility is handled. It's been a "racket", with price-fixing and a rip-off culture for more years than I care to remember. I'd be amazed if that were to change any time soon. Anyway, credit where it's due. Microsoft does appear to have got something right, at last. :) Gordon ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
