I ran the beta as my main system and fell in love, no problems except for a minor vid card adjustment that I thought would be fixed by RC1.**RC1=VISTA**.All the same lock ups, slow running, memory hog, hard drive bloat. Why would Microsoft release a stable product as a beta, and then totally mess up the RC?I'm going back to XP tonight! Win7 beta is over in a short while, and I'll be damned if I'm going to run on a knock off of a bad OS again, like I did with ME.Maybe I'll give Linux an honosttry?As of now, first install took about 9 gigs of hard drive. I'm now at 13 after a few updates. Web browsing is slow as radiation degredriation, 3 games I tried locked up (worked fine in the beta). AI roboform works, but the pages load so slow I might as well use the time to look up my passwords on hard copy.I had none of these problems with the BETA, and almost everything I tried would not crash it except a few kids games designed for win 95.Please post replies to the proformance thread.This is my first day with RC1 and I hate it worse than VISTA (would barely run on my last system...win7 beta ran fine). I'm using a new system with a high end vid card(NVIDIA), a dual quad processer, and 4 gigs of ram.

G - Sorry to hear you're having such a harsh time with the RC. Please keep in mind that Windows 7 is stilla BETA - even if it's inthe Release Candidate stage. There are a few things though that have me mystified with regards to your post. So much so, I kinda wonder if we're running the SAME OS.You see, on my single core AMD chip with a measly 1 GB of RAM, the RC runs pretty smoothly. As far as hard drive bloat, Windows (the folder) takes up about 8 GB and Program Files (with a bunch of stuff installed, takes up less than 2. My Vista installation on another drive shows the Windows directory to be about 12.5 GB with Program files eating up about 2 as well. So, it would seem to me that Windows 7 is, in fact, a bit lighter on space consumption. Lighter by 4 GB...! I'd hardly count that as bloat. As far as browsing goes - IE 8 on the RC is like greased lightning compared to the one that came with the Beta. I can type this in pretty much real time on the RC's version, but with the Beta version, it was like typing while wading through rapidly setting concrete. 3rd party add-ons may exhibit unexpected behavior. As far as going back to XP - or even installing Linux - hey.. whatever floats your boat... Good luck with that.

What I meant by "bloat" is that I can install a 2 gig program fully to hard drive, and Program files grows by 2 gigs(expected), and windows grows by .5 gigs(totally unexpected). I'll play with a few moregame installsand see if I can give you a more accurate example. I have noticed this happening on most programs though. I have not done a trace of the installs all the way through to see where all the extra space is lost, I will attempt this also. As far as IE8, it seems that Avira is the culpurit. I like the idea of free antivirus, but I guess you get what you pay for.PS I am still trying to work out Win 7! I love it as an OS.

We heard you the first time. Please don't repost this daily.

What I meant by "bloat" is that I can install a 2 gig program fully to hard drive, and Program files grows by 2 gigs(expected), and windows grows by .5 gigs(totally unexpected). I'll play with a few moregame installsand see if I can give you a more accurate example. I have noticed this happening on most programs though. I have not done a trace of the installs all the way through to see where all the extra space is lost, I will attempt this also. As far as IE8, it seems that Avira is the culpurit. I like the idea of free antivirus, but I guess you get what you pay for.PS I am still trying to work out Win 7! I love it as an OS. I have a feeling I know where that space went... There was some discussion about that - regarding the WinSxS folder - which is part of the C:\Windows tree. It has to do with things called Hard Links. The WinSxS folder - or Side By Side - is a repository for how Windows keeps track of it's components. A component is defined in this case as a group of files that work together - as a subsystem to handle a particular feature. Think the whole of DirectX. Anyhow, the bottom line - Windows makes a "hard link" to those components and their respective files. The hard link in Windows is a file that is the same size as existing file it's linked to - so it appears to take up the same space. Ronnie Vernon posted some links with more information on exactly how this works: Don't Trust All Your Eyes Tell You... (hard links in Windows Vista) What is the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Windows Vista and why is it so large Engineering Windows 7 - Disk SpaceEnjoy.