Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 Beta Screenshots Leaked
Slatterz writes "Screenshots of what is said to be the next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system have been leaked onto the internet. The ThinkNext.net blog posted a range of screenshots over the weekend which it said represents Windows 7. Overall, the screenshots show a distinctly Vista-like interface, but there is still plenty of time for tweaks and changes to take place."
As far as I can tell, there is nothing that looks really really special that would prompt me to shift off what I'm running now. The fact that they still require malware protection (evidenced by the "we can't detect any anti-virus software, panic" screen), tempts me to question why they haven't focused more energy on securing the system.
The only really interesting thing I saw was the sharing option, "homegroup"? Could be interesting. But overall, nothing revolutionary.
Come to think about it, I remember reading before MS Windows XP came out about all the wonderful things that were going to be in it. Yet, when it did come out, it wasn't a revolution, just more gradual changes.
This promises more of the same.
So, as I said, I'll stay with Ubuntu, because if nothing else, at least it runs on my machine with only 512 MB of ram. (I'm poor, and it works, why would I upgrade?)
I wank in the shower.
With a product that's been stable for a long time (stable in the development sense, not in the 'not crashing' sense) you shouldn't expect any large changes between major versions, and no changes at all between minors. You don't just throw away decades of work to make it different for the sake of it. If there are any differences they're probably only there because the marketing department demanded something obviously different so people would upgrade for the new eye candy. Or, at a push, because some HCI guru has had a brainwave about how to make things radically easier to work with. That's very rare though.
Frankly, the fact it looks very similar is a good thing. It might mean MSFT aren't just doing some window dressing.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Unfortunately for Microsoft Windows XP is the first OS to "work well enough" which makes me ask, why would I update? IE 8 certainly looks nice along with the enhanced GUI features, but they aren't so large an improvement that I'm going going to spend $120 to upgrade.
As long as OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird and Gimp work on my computer, I don't see any pressing need to upgrade. They're going to have to pull out something much better for Windows 7 to get my hard-earned cash.
Even getting it "free" when I upgrade my computer isn't enough of an incentive because my computer's speed seems good enough at 2.67 GHz with 2 GB of RAM. I've also only used 32 GB out of 201 GB (I actually have more then that but they're on a separate partition for Linux which I need to develop in sometimes for university).
Just a note: XP Professional and Vista Enterprise or Ultimate can run a NT subsystem for POSIX, including a fairly complete Unix-like OS called Interix. On XP, look for the "Services For Unix" (SFU) downloads, on Vista it's called "Subsystem for Unix Applications" (SUA).
Although bash isn't included in Interix by default, it's downloadable for free, either manually or via command-line package manager, from http://www.suacommunity.com/ (along with many other tools, including perl, ssh/sshd, svn, and the full GNU build toolchain, to name the ones I use most often). You can run Win32 programs from within an Interix shell as well, so I actually use bash as my primary Windows CLI shell these days.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
From my brief experience with Vista and then seeing this, I am not sure they are really changing anything. Take a look at the new "Mojave" advertising campaign. They rename the product, display a few stable elements of the OS, and fool few sheeple into thinking it is new. Then we have screen captures of "Windows 7" which look amazingly similar to Vista. Yes, the GUI is one of the last things developed but why not use something less memory intensive if you are still in the core development areas? Why not use just a basic (think Win98)and functional GUI until you are sure the thing runs like it should? This leaves me wondering where I have seen this before... oh yeah, WindowsME. You know. The one where MicroSoft took one thing, repackaged it, made a few "improvements", and basically created some abomination that was seldom seen as an improvement of it's predecessor. I can't help but get this strange feeling that Windows 7 is nothing but Vista 1.2.
Sigh. No matter how much you try to repackage and redesign a turd, it will still be a piece of shit when you're done.
Since you've been using Windows for so long, clarify for me if you share the same experience with explorer?
Do you find that with mapped network and optical drives, that essentially the 'pauses and hangs' or nuances of the OS's seem essentially identical (in some regards) to previous versions? Almost down to the millisecond, it honestly feels like the same code to me.
I think the delay in mapped network drives must be somewhere in the network stack--it's waiting 1/x seconds for the file server to respond. You're right, it could definitely survive just fine in another thread, somewhere nice and out of the way. It's an act of sheer braindeadedness that this component still acts like NT 4.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Who cares?
Apple (who is even more proprietary than Microsoft) has seen amazingly significant growth in their user base.
Desktop Linux (this is the year! again.) is growing.
People don't want to pay $200 for their operating system and another $400 (or more) for application software, just to write a few letters, surf the web, balance their checkbook and (maybe) run spreadsheets or create presentations. That's just not worth $600.
Ubuntu, Fedora, or what have you, and you get all this for free.
Vista (the OS that nobody wants) is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Windows 7 will suffer the same fate.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I don't want to put you down, but...
"having worked" implies (to me at least) that you are currently not working on that project anymore. You also state that there is both a 2000-XP kind of difference and a refined-version-of-vista difference. That, together with the fact that the product will not ship for some time (if MS' release history is kept in mind one could argue this would not happen before 2010), leaves me unimpressed.
Win7 might change considerably before being released.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
I use bblean on win2k when I'm forced to vacation in Windows land. The awful XP interface is a masterpiece in comparison to the cluttered mess of garish icons and redundant dialogs in Vista, you can see better design on the typical myspace page. The vista UI reminds me of the sickly sweet colors in kids tv adverts, it probably was designed to appeal to 7 year olds. For someone like me who's (a) an adult and (b) sat infront of a computer for the majority of their waking hours, visual clutter is distressing and impedes productivity.
Someone in Redmond must have gotten up early for a cofee and to read Slashdot. The pictures on the blog are gone now--he was made to take them down.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I only need to use Vista for a little testing every few weeks. I can't use it for 5 minutes without wanting to throw the computer out of my 7th floor window. The interface is very inconsistent. It's also constantly popping up message windows (not just the security Allow/Deny). The mouse pointer doesn't always indicate the system is busy when it's doing something, so I often think it's not responding to my clicks, but I can never tell. Although it's purely a matter of taste, I hate the translucent windows. They're very distracting.
I would never touch Vista if I didn't have to use it occasionally for testing.
Developers: We can use your help.
What's wrong with the Vista interface?
The impression I get (not having actually compared Vista and XP side by side) is that Vista makes less efficient use of my screen space, preferring to make aesthetically better use of whitespace and prettier icons.
The real thing I've noticed is that Windows Explorer no longer accepts custom columns, which is a major pain for a shop that uses TortoiseSVN. That is an interface issue that I resent. That and the much more subtle (than in XP) difference between active and inactive title bars.
Aside from that, Vista SP1 runs close to acceptably fast on a 2.83 GHz quad core with 4G of memory. It does compile fast, but the OS itself is sluggish at times, compared to, say, XP SP2 on my 1.66 GHz (or so) dual core Mac Mini at home. (Yes, I did turn off something compositing and Aero Glass, like the Windows Vista Annoyances book suggested.)
Having looked through lists of Vista advantages, it appears to me that the only real advantage is that we will be able to continue to buy it, unlike XP, which is becoming less available. I'm very definitely not a Microsoft fan, but XP SP2 was an OS that basically worked, and didn't get in my way very much. Vista SP1 is not there yet, and may never be.
To wistfully try to counter some of the follow-on comments: These are my experiences. They are real experiences, not made up. They can be ignored, but not wished away. Your experience with Vista may differ; frankly, I hope it's better for you.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I was a summer intern. I was implying that XP is also basically just a refined 2000; aside from the look and feel, it's a remarkably similar OS overall. In particular, the biggest differences that come to mind at XP's release time were the fast user switching and system restore (there were others, of course, but it's hard to remember much else that was very new and exciting).
We (the team I was on) were running Win7 on most of our machines, including production boxes, by the end of my internship. I won't claim it's ready to ship yet, but it's easily within a year. It certainly may change in several significant ways before release - there was a substantial (if behind-the-scenes) feature cut while I was there - but for the most part it's already usable and entering the heavy bug-fixing stage, rather than still in the feature development stage.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Hm, maybe you should read up a bit :)
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0104.html#7
It happened in 2001... doesn't mean it can't happen again -- the attack was purely social engineering.