Slashdot Mirror
Hands-On With Windows 7's New Features
Barence writes "Microsoft has released the first pre-beta code of Windows 7, and PC Pro has a series of in-depth, hands-on examinations of all the new features. The revamped user interface has clearly gleaned more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, but it goes further than the Apple concept with 'jumplists,' new gadgets and an updated system tray. The much-vaunted multi-touch controls were there to play with, and it seemed to work well. Networking has been given the full treatment, with new features HomeGroup and Libraries. Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy ... or a complete disaster. Finally, several new features could make PCs easier to manage and secure for IT departments, such as BitLocker To Go and Branch Cache." All in all, these features together lead some people to the conclusion that Windows 7 will "suck less than Vista" — that last link from reader ThinSkin, who also points to a related sampling of screenshots from the current iteration of Windows 7.
Yeah, but can it run all my old viruses?
Most of the stuff on
Get that index finger in shape for pushing the reset button. Also, toughen up your fists for pounding your desk or hitting the wall.
wait, you mean _THIS_ is Windows Vista? Not again...I fell for this same trick in the last "experiment"
I was looking at buying a new gaming rig recently but I refuse to buy an operating system that hobbles the performance. Most of the benchmarks show that Vista is just slower than XP. These reports don't make future versions look that hopeful either.
It's pretty hard to buy a non-Vista machine these days. Am I going to have to blag an XP license from work to get a proper OS for gaming? How long am I going to have to hang on to these licenses before Microsoft releases a decent product or games companies start supporting Linux?
Yes, I know, buy a console. I still prefer PC gaming for many types of game.
Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy ... or a complete disaster.
Hmmm. I wonder which way Microsoft will take this....
This guy's the limit!
Wonder if they will give a little love to those that got looped into the ol 'Vista enabled computer!' fiasco?
While I am wishing, I would like a Shadowrun MMO....
They revamped the networking... Does this mean they *finally* got away from using the network stack created for BSD, one of their competitors?
Will there be a "Windows7 Plus!" to allow users to create funny themes ?
Does it out perform XP?
I didn't put Vista on my machine because every benchmark said it was slower than XP. Can I assume that 7 is going to be even slower?
I see the KDE team made leaps and bounds in their Windows port.
Windows Vista Redux
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
I know that there's plenty of time for this to change between now and release, but Aero's visual details continue to leave a vast amount to be desired.
There's simply far too much detail on elements that don't need it -- window borders, toolbars, status bars; everything seems to have about twice as many lines as are needed, with various controls popping up and down like the terraces of some ancient courtyard. This makes windows look more complicated than they should.
And don't get me started on the ridiculous transparency + airbrush titlebars. The first thing they should have done was to accept that the translucent window experiment failed (or at least to boost the opacity to ~90% like another company addicted to transparency learned to do), but the Windows UI team doesn't seem to have realized it yet.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Ha ha, just kidding!
I tend to dial Vista's UI way, way back.
(though I still miss the old Ctrl-F as seperate app from Win95/98 time - search as "sidebar" is a UI wasteland of lost context and difficult to mentally model behavior surprises)
I don't like the OSX dock, and its lumping together of "start a new task" and "return to a previous task context"... (not to mention the hopelessness of "alt-tab to the application you're thinking of, then alt-tab (or whatever) to the window in that program) instead of Window's "alt-tab to your task"
but I was thinking a better windows task bar would be just the icons of the running programs, but hovering or clicking brought up all the mini screen shots of just that application... that would actually be useful, one of the Windows 7 shots gave me hope that that's what they're leaning towards...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
It has to be pretty rock hard not just from a usability or even a glitch/bug standpoint.
Instead to make up for the failures in Vista, it has to be as fast XP and from what I have gathered about Vista it needs to have hw vendor support absolutely nailed.
Wasn't it the point of many windows fans that a lot of the Vista issues was poor/botched support by vendors?
ACK
For the moment Vista and this image come to mind.
looks like KDE4
When will KDE stop playing catch-up and start innovating?
Yes, I know vista had gadgets on the sidebar, stop ruining my joke. Sidebar looked like a bloated OSX dock or a cramped OSX dashboard.
Windows 7 looks like KDE4
"And don't get me started on the ridiculous transparency + airbrush titlebars. The first thing they should have done was to accept that the translucent window experiment failed (or at least to boost the opacity to ~90% like another company addicted to transparency learned to do), but the Windows UI team doesn't seem to have realized it yet."
The more important question is, can we change it? I'd be more worried about an interface I couldn't change than an interface that pleases everyone.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Next week's news: Windows 7 is actually--surprise!--Windows Mojave!
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
have they done anything to improve memory management and the incredibly insane amount of page faults?
Vista is terrible slow with it's default config, super prefetch, using all the memory and then paging applications your actually trying to run to swap, which is hundreds of times slower than ram, and sure feels like it too.
osx, and linux and most all other operating systems that I've used will not swap memory until the machine is completely out of ram, and are noticeably faster in this area. Vista starts to swap before your even logged in, and page faults like crazy
with 4 gigs of ram, less than one half used, why does vista page fault important programs like dwm.exe, my machine has 7 million page faults on that one app and it's only been turned on 12 hours
Can someone at slashdot fix the stupid "tags", they're all over the place on the main page. Not everyone uses IE, you know.
I took a look at some of the screen shots, and quite honestly I get the feeling unpaid open source developers could have done a better job. It doesn't feel like a qualified UI expert sat down to really improve thing. If they don't put a proper effort into the UI design, then Ubuntu is going to be the better OS.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
And lets pretend that one can steal ideas just to score a slashpoint.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Instead of great new features ... just make it leaner and meaner, more responsive, cleaner more direct UI... you know - look at how the competition has been kicking your ass for the last couple of years?
If they didn't take a step back and seriously consider what should be part of the operating system and what should be a free standing application - i.e. the bloat, then Windows 7 will suffer the same reception as Vista in my opinion. Microsoft has many different initiatives in many different areas, but still seems unable to resist using their operating system as the launching platform for those unrelated initiatives. At the end of the day, people want an operating system that works and works with them and for a reasonable price. Their idea for many different "tiers" to their operating system should have been the first clue to their management team that it is time to reign things in and refocus efforts.
Do they have virtual desktops that actually work yet?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
From TFA:
A printer manufacturer, for example, might include a direct link to buy new ink cartridges for that specific printer from their website
The purpose of an OS is to provide a stable, secure framework for which to run applications.
The purpose of a device driver is to provide stable, and secure interface between hardware and the OS.
Marketing fluff does not belong in an OS, or a device driver. I surely hope there is an opt-out for this tripe.
First of all, Vista is able to address memory over 2gb (a software limitation of XP).
Second, Vista has better support for newer processors and hardware. This is especially important in Dual (or higher) Core processors, since XP Home only supports one processor (or core), while XP Pro only supports two.
Third, Vista has great support for legacy games, far better than XP.
So don't believe the Slashdot FUD- Vista is far superior for gaming. And when you take into account how it will allow you to use modern hardware to it's full capabilities, unlike XP, it's not even realistically possible for Vista to be "slower" than XP.
And just like XP, you can tweak Vista to turn off services you don't need in order to get it to run faster. The internet is filled with web pages featuring Vista gaming tweaks: the only thing stopping a person from getting the real facts is their unwillingness to look. It may be shocking, but Slashdot is hardly an honest broker of Windows-based information.
Yeah, I know, trollish subject... but let's face it - what vendor *wouldn't* love to lock their users into *their* online services and *their* software to manage content on their portable devices and the like - all the while being able to advertise their other services, products, etc.
The biggest reason most don't do so right now is not because they listen to the geeks ( like myself - who would much rather just access the darn thing as if it were a portable HDD, copying/deleting/editing files like I would on any drive and only using a proprietary bit of software if needed - e.g. to flash firmware or something ), but because they then have to include the software, the user has to install that software, configure the software, etc.
It's a huge hassle and the only reason Apple gets away with it is because their solution, iTunes, is actually pretty darn good.. and it helps to have a previous technology to launch it with (QuickTime) and additional services that tie into it (iTunes Store).
SONY, Creative, Kowon, iRiver, etc. simply aren't in a position to even launch such an initiative, let alone make it successful enough that if I were to take their device to a random newish computer, that odds are I could use it with their software/services right away (the odds for that being the case with iPods and iPhones is already good - and growing).
But Microsoft *is* in the position to launch such a platform, and if all those manufacturers need to do is make their devices compatible - for free or against a small fee (?) - then there's very little reason not to do it.
Whether it would leave other platforms (specifically non-OS X) out in the cold / you can't circumvent it, though...
The new UI looks like KDE 4 to me, with the wrong bits of OS X thrown in. That said, there's no doubt it will change by the time they release it, so I'll reserve my judgment.
Judging by all the transparencies, gradients and drop shadows this will require an even more powerful computer than Vista. On the flip side probably every new version of windows has required a bit more than the last. The new taskbar reminds me a lot of the KDE taskbar.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
I like the fact that they have extended BitLocker, but I really wish they could get BitLocker to do something relatively simple.
As of now, with a TPM chip, you have TPM alone, TPM + a PIN, TPM + a USB flash drive.
Without a TPM chip, you just have a USB flash drive.
I really wish they could add a mode for machines without a TPM chip requiring a password and no USB flash drive. Of course, technically I could go out and install TrueCrypt which does the job nicely (TrueCrypt is arguably one of the best security tools out there), but on an enterprise level, it would be nice for the OS which has this functionality to include this relatively small item so I don't have to push out another .MSI file to bunches of machines for security.
Another thing I wish Windows 7 came with would be a more configurable backup utility. You can sort of kludge ntbackup from an XP CD, but that's no solution. I'd like to see something similar to Retrospect or Backup Exec that offers backups, but offers the option to encrypt the backups (perhaps similar to how EFS is done with recovery policies.) Encrypted backups are a must these days, and its a shame that no operating system offers this.
It was originally about IBM, but Microsoft works better now...
Three women are talking about their husbands & sex. Woman one says, "My husband is a policeman. He's very aggressive in bed & he likes to handcuff me". Woman two says, "My husband is an acrobat. We do it in all kinds of positions". The third woman says, "My husband works for Microsoft. He just sits on the side of the bed & tells me how good it's going to be when I finally get it".
Most of the original scope of Windows 7 has been abandoned. The new cleaned-up native API? Not a word about that. The Classic-like sandboxes for legacy APIs? Gone. What we have is more like a Plus Pack for Windows Vista, the same way Windows XP was a Plus Pack for Windows 2000.
So I don't think there's any reason to treat it as a joke. Windows 7 really is Mojave. It's Vista with some new bundled apps and gratuitous user interface changes (who came up with the ribbon? What was he on? Does the DEA know about it?), and a fresh new name to try and dump the bad PR from the botched release. It worked in the Mojave Experiment, so they see no reason not to go ahead and expand its scope.
From TFA:
Now, the real question is how easily it will be to NOT share particular folders and files.
"Marketing fluff does not belong in an OS, or a device driver. I surely hope there is an opt-out for this tripe."
Which is why the "About" button has been removed from FOSS software.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I guess when they finally release a version of WinFS it will be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever?
Vista XP, Mojave, whatever they call it, it's just Vista with a makeover. It's too serious to be funny.
Are they just catering to the small percentage of people who sit and tweak their desktops and widget layouts all day long and are constantly looking for something with more of "teh shiny!!1"?
I find it hard to believe that the best and brightest minds, with enough credentials to start their own University, sat around a room and decided "YES! The way to make it easier to use is to CHANGE IT ALL and NULLIFY WHAT EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS!"
Or is it not the experts in UI design or usability or the developers, but the usual suspect, the parasites from marketing -- who work at MS for the money but go home to a secret room with a wall-size photo of Steve Jobs and a bunch of products from B&O and Apple -- insisiting on newer, shinier, more trendier looks to "go along with" today's newest trends in art, design and fashion?
I just don't get how they decided that changing it all and making it work differently makes it better or easier to use.
Although as a caveat, I did format and build my machine from scratch, and if I didn't have to do Windows Updates from time to time... I'd have even longer system uptime -- take a look (That's in Hours:Minutes:seconds)
I haven't had any problems with Vista other than it being rather mediocre in terms of an 'upgrade' from what it offers compared to XP.
I mainly do development (.NET, sorry folks), play games and surf the web. It works fine for my needs. The FPSes aren't far off what I got in XP, and given that the driver model isn't changing at all in Windows 7, I'm sure it will improve more as time goes by.
As I recall, the drivers in XP sucked when they were first released -- we can give folks a little while to get it all sorted in Vista and migrate it right into Windows 7.
It's really not that bad.. and with over 1200 hours of uptime now, I am not complaining. Windows 7 seems to address GUI complaints I have had, and that's good... I'll be patient to see what else comes of it.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
looks like KDE
The taskbar is the biggest reason I use windows over OS X. If there's not an option for one in 7 I'll probably switch to OS X or Ubuntu.
...which of these will go out the window first?
There's a lot of KDE in those UI shots. This is not the first time MS has been ripping KDE UI-wise and usability-wise. XP's UI was heavily inspired by KDE-Keramik for instance, the new Windows System Manager was a blatant KDE System Manager rippoff, etc.
I find it interesting, as it shows the attention OSS gets from competitors in the field.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's just right clicking on the current Windows taskbar and selecting Toolbars. By default they're set to Small Icons, but if you select Large Icons you get this. Most Windows users freak out when they see when I enable this on a Windows desktop.
Quicklists? You can already right click on a running app in the OS X Dock and it has contextual tasks. Microsoft has a long way to go if this is what they consider groundbreaking UI.
More details at PC Pro
I have Vista's Windows firewall shutoff, I think, but Firefox 3 still can't reach the outside world. Any suggestions?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
In other words, the migration from XP to 7 will be as seamless as the migration from XP to Vista...
All you'll have to do is migrate your XP to Vista and then migrate from Vista to 7.
It would not surprise me in the least if MS refuses to offer an upgrade-from-XP version at all... that the only versions of 7 you'll be able to buy other than OEM already installed on a new machine are: (1) the full blown retail versions, intended for blank empty hardware, and (2)upgrade-from-Vista-only upgrade versions at the various levels, to force you to buy a copy of Vista even if it's only good for use as a stepping stone.
Computers are getting faster MUCH MUCH more quickly than operating systems are getting slower.
Just one second on that rant - I've got an 8-year-old Dell XPS T600 that I still use to play Unreal Tournament. I use it because it boots faster, starts the game faster, and has just as good a frame-rate as my current, Dell/Vista machine.
If your assertion was true, then I would happily turn off my Windows 98 forever. Starting applications and using the OS has been getting steadily slower in the post-XP versions of windows, even with new hardware.
In my experience, of course.
Tell the moon dogs, tell the March hare
"New Features"
All the new features in the world can't fix a product that's fundamentally broken. We're still waiting on that complete rewrite.
I'm reminded of the old adage--you know your software is finished not when there's nothing else you can add, but when there's nothing else you can take away.
Seriously, what the hell happened with the UI?
When even Apple is slowly moving away from the childish and unusable UI design it pioneered with the early versions of Mac OS X, Microsoft is going in the complete opposite direction! Why? What's wrong with the nice, clean and actually very usable UI of Windows 2000? (Yes, I know some remnants of this UI are included in Vista, and probably in Windows 7 too - but not enough to hide the horrific "design pattern" of making the user think the computer is some kind of children's toy)
I hope Microsoft won't get too much into all that os x "all you should do is picture shuffling-video editing-"innovative ways of including pictures in the email"-for-the-whole-day Steve "that's great" Jobs" stupidity.
btw I'm on Mac but hate Apple PR indoctrination and idiots who clap when Steve farts.
There were some reports of problems with the Vista boot loader making certain assumptions about the physical location of the primary operating system partition on the disk and the boot sector contents (probably having something to do with the trusted computing DRM, although Microsoft was coy about this). For example, it is necessary to chain boot loaders when full disk encryption is used so that the encrypted partitions can be mounted first as virtual volumes before other processes attempt to select and boot an operating system. My question is to what extent are the various boot configurations and scenarios supported (or NOT supported) by Windows 7?
Could all of this be a fake? I mean, the desktop interface looks as if someone modified kdock and added a few icons from Windows. The icons near the clock look as if they were pulled out of Gnome. It's not like this would be the first time someone faked a Windows environment for page hits.
The game.
"These reports don't make future versions look that hopeful either."
I was afraid of this... that 7 would just be Vista with some new pretties tacked on. If 7 still takes a minimum of 2 gigs of ram just to make average functions bearable, then it's still shitty software.
I couldn't even play my favorite game (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) on Vista until Microsoft came out with some patches. And I have a lot of old PC games that I like. Maybe I'll just move completely to the Mac ( I use one at work) and dual boot it under XP for my games. I'm simply not going to reward Microsoft for not giving me what I want out of an OS.
I have my complaints about Apple too... ugly and overpriced hardware, that dreary grey-metallic theme... but Apple continually improves the performance of their software. Everyone knows by now about how Apple has made their operating systems faster, even on older supported hardware. And that's what counts.
Has Microsoft ever... ever made an operating system that was faster than a previous version? Hmm? If that's too hard, then try this... have they even come up with one that wasn't noticeably slower on similar hardware?
Even Vista basic needs 512 mb ram at minimum for tolerable usage.
Windows 2000 was fast with half that memory, and it did nearly everything we wanted. What does Vista or 7 do that Windows 2000 does not that the public wants? Do we really believe that consumers were crying out for Aero Glass?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Maybe it my using Linux but it looks like windows 7 stole its look from Gnome - but hey what you expect from a company that has never created anything just stole other peoples ideas.
"Computers are getting faster MUCH MUCH more quickly than operating systems are getting slower."
That's not true anymore. With the end of higher clock speeds, we've gone to multiple cores to split up workloads in an effort to find someway to get increasing performance. But it's not the same as actually having a higher clock speed. I know we tended to overrate clock speed in the past, but it does matter, even if we find ways to do more work per clock cycle. In the death of Moore's Law, we've hit a wall that we can't break through, and even going over it is tougher than we thought. Even with the advance of technology and the size of modern software codebases, a 2 gig minimum of ram just for bearable usage is a disgrace.
If others are whining about the good ole' days, you sir, are making excuses for the new ones.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Looks like the cheapest option is a 5 CAL install, at $999 SRP - about $700 OEM street price. Hard to swallow for a legitimate license of the software.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Windows 3 to 3.1
Win 95 to Win 98
Win 2000 to Win XP
But you don't rehash suckass operating systems.
I see Windows ME wasn't on that list. There was no rehashing of Microsoft Bob. That's because you can't polish a turd. And many, many people think Vista is a very big turd.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm sure plenty of MS employees read /. so how about some of you there push to have a gamers edition? There are what, six versions of Vista? It's reasonable to expect them to do it again with 7. So why not charge the same price as an "Ultimate" version to get a slim-downed, optimized, and sans-bloatware version of Windows 7 for gamers? Hell, just make it sans-bloatware and you can call it "optimized" without actually doing anything extra. It'll even have a slick name: "Windows 7GE".
Perhaps they're taking hints from OSX, KDE and Gnome. It'd be a positive thing. Now, for some commentary on their new features..
--HomeGroup. This essentially turns all the Windows 7 PCs on the home network into a combined pool of data and files
I could easily see how one could do something similar on Linux vis automounter and Samba. DHCP could report the client list to Samba, which attempts to use a specially set password to mount other computers. From then, users would have rights as their own user, granting only rights that they natively have. This would provide security along with a standard solution that all Samba-speaking machines could use.
The only gripe with that setup is that data goes from A to server to B, rather than A to B directly, with the server mediating connections. However, I think this could be made around if we allow direct mediation like FTP can be set up for (Server says send file from B to A).
--HomeGroup is its ability to automatically detect when your work laptop, for instance, is being used in the home.
Network profiles would be much more handy, so one could choose which profile where one is. Also, CUPS is much better than the windows counterpart, as it announces service. Announcement is so much more handy in that regard, because so many devices and OSes speak that. Windows is the odd one out, yet again, unless you go through the "advanced configs".
--Music and video streaming
Arguably, Linux already supports this via multiple protocols. If your client computer is beefy enough, one can "stream" the video from the server. Or, if the client is a low-powered machine, you could use a combination of a sound daemon and X to do the heavy lifting. I would say that there might not be enough bandwidth for raw video via X, but it IS compressed somewhat. X settings are easier, at least in my experience. The sound is more tricky.
There's a few ways to get remote sound. One is to use PulseAudio, and follow the instructions here. They work fine. Also, another choice, if your program is ESD aware, you can use a syntax to target output at a certain server. In fact, I can play MP3s like that on my DS vis the command:
mplayer -ao esd:ip_address_of_ds music.mp3
Found here.
It's a bit more of a setup, but Linux can either process the video locally OR remotely. I dont think Windows can do that.
As for the touch-interface, it looks a lot better than what Linux _currently_ offers, however MPX is a big thing to watch, considering is in the main X.org package. MPX is a multi-point server extension that allows up to 16 mice and 16 keyboard inputs, WHILE keeping backward compatibility with non-MPX-aware apps. This is a biggie, as MS could only figure out how to do multi-point and multi-touch with a special OS only for MP programs. All it takes now is Gnome, KDE, and Compiz to natively communicate with MPX so that we can realize the future of Linux over input development.
Add this to the Wiimote, light-pens, and a downward-facing projector, we could create a touch surface for 1000$ or less, and multi-pointer to boot. Things in Linux sure are picking up...
"Microsoft is essentially handing control of the Device Stage screen to the hardware manufacturers, allowing them to embed links to their online services and client software. A printer manufacturer, for example, might include a direct link to buy new ink cartridges for that specific printer from their website, or a link to a PDF of the deviceâ(TM)s manual."
Uh, I vote "disaster", given the potential for abuse and bugs. If this is merely another way to install crapware, this time into the Device Manager itself, I am not impressed. That isn't serving the end users, it's serving the needs of other vendors.
This does not suck less than Vista.
This is not the operating system I'm looking for.
Move on. Move on.
Snow Vista
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Could they jam ANY more information into the start menu? The ribbons pose similar problems. Too much information and no priorities. Which, is worse than their old menus that simply lacked priorities.
I have window previews in KDE4 right now running nicely on old hardware too. (T41 thinkpad!) Most of the other features look like what I've got now, except complicated with either too much information or none at all.
I'm happy supporting it at work, but I'm glad my family is off Microsoft for good.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
.
How old and how relevant are those benchmarks these days?
The $1500 HP Elite available from Walmart.com ships with 64 Bit Vista, a quad core Intel CPU, 8 GB RAM, a 1 GB NVIDIA 9800 GT DX10 graphics card, Blu-Ray, HDTV and 1 TB of storage.
The NVIDIA is entry level from a gamer's point of view. But is hard to picture a system with specs like these being hobbled in any meaningful way.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It takes 15 minutes to setup wireless on XP or Ubuntu?
I'm sure glad I have a MacBook...
I am a Mac owner and fan, but in my experience Apple is also going in the wrong direction. OS X 10.5 feels slower than 10.4 on my MacBook Pro. And interface-wise my MacBook Pro feels slower than my old Powerbook G4 (despite being much faster at computation-intensive tasks).
It does seem like software tends to grow more demanding even faster than the hardware gets more powerful. When you go back and run old software on new hardware it's drastically faster than recent software, and you wonder why a few new features should cost so much snapiness.
n/t
Ugh, ugh! I remember I made multi-configurations menus too for specific setups since not all gmaes like EMS, XMS, want most conventional memory, etc.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Alas I could never afford a genuine Sound Blaster. My OPTi 82C924's "Sound Blaster Emulation" was about as convincing to games as a midget trying to pass as a professional basketball player.
But nothing was as painful as trying to get that thing to work in FreeBSD.
I'm beginning to rant.
Sine you'll be pirating the software, the licence is irrelevant. All you need to blag is a copy of the volume license cdrom disk and google for an install key that'll install it.
http://goscreen.info/
Light, doesn't hog memory, and fast, etc. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
How is this going to make my life any easier? How is this going to make me any more productive? Give me one good reason why I would want Vista, or Win7, or even XP?
Win2k runs all my hw and sw, it's fast and reliable, has an easy and familiar interface. Win2k does have all that bloat, or DRM.
Yeah, I know, "horse and buggy" etc. But, at least I'm not a lemming.
Nor will the (new or current) Nvidia drivers work with my 7900GT and Win7. Great! I can continue not using the newest version of Windows.
*Sigh* I gotta agree. Look at the text on the translucent IE window frame. It's sort of hard to read. I'm running Vista, and I never noticed that before. And it's because Vista puts a white glow around the black text, so that it stands out no matter what the background is. 7 appears to have done away with the glow, so the text blends into a dark background. A little thing, but all those little things add up.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The problem is not that Vista requires more hw to run as fast as XP. The problem is that vista requires all that hw, and does not offer any significant advantage over XP. Why should I spend all that money to buy a new OS, that is much worse than the OS I already have?
Features are lacking and/or unstable.
I agree with you, but I want to add that they should install gnome. Maybe I am getting modded down for this, but I have to say that KDE4 is noticeably slower than KDE3, in spite of all promises.
Just do this:
USE OS;
ALTER FILESYSTEM C_drive ENGINE = WinFS;
Marketing fluff does not belong in an OS, or a device driver.
What makes you think Windows is an Operating System? It comes with one (subject to tying), but ceased being merely one pretty much since MS-DOS 4, which included a decent text editor. Now it also comes with an ecommerce API for peripheral hardware supplies. And a thousand other things.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I fail to see how or why anyone would use the Device Staging Manager to provide more useful information to the consumer.
If I were a company and have all information on our website that a consumer might need, wouldn't it just be easier to put a link to our website on the desktop? (grrr)
So..Microsoft has cleverly designed more work for device manufacturers to do, other than make sure your drivers work for our latest OS.
No one ever voluntarily does more work that is of little benefit.
The hell were their UI people thinking?
Objection! Counsel is assuming facts not in evidence!
That is ridiculous by Mac OSX standards.
Well if this was a hands on experience they better wash them before they come to the table.
Remember how many features where announced in longhorn and did not appear in Vista ? So wait and see...
Raymond Chen has clearly rejected the "system tray" terminology.
I'm going to the casino. Don't gamble.
this is what vista was supposed to be. i think weve just been running a beta that was pushed out before it was ready.
...wouldn't it just be easier to put a link to our website on the desktop?
Except that this way, you get to irritate the customer without even requiring a visit to your poorly designed website that doesn't offer any real content anyway!
If Microsoft were smart they would rebuild Windows as a Unix system. Unix was on its way to become the standard OS back then, but the Unix vendors engaged in the self-destroying Unix wars and Microsoft managed to make DOS the IBM PC OS. When RMS came with his free implementation and got the idea of free software in the minds of guys and gals who had never heard of that era, the Unix-like systems started conquering the world again. Guess what, Unix-like systems are again on their track to become the standard OS, everywhere, from mobile phones to supercomputers. Microsoft will soon find itself being forced to become compatible with Unix-like systems or die. If I were the Microsoft CEO now I would focus on either acquiring MacOS X or rewriting Windows as a complete and certified Unix system.
Did anyone else notice the little nugget in the description of Direct Access that the protocol only supports IPv6? This may finally start to bring about adoption of IPv6...wait, what am I saying?
It looks like you're too stupid to understand kernel changes or maybe its too hard for you to use google. The best I could offer you is some medication for whatever mental condition you suffer from. Its best for the human race that you dont pass on your genes.
Bring the damned up arrow back so we can get to the parent folders! Navigating with the new explorer makes me want to throw chairs at steve ballmer. No up arrow?!?! No direct access to a list of drives...just history from internet explorer?!?!? How the fuck do you click up into the desktop now?! Navigation is only one way ---> down. Really>!?!?!? Who thought that brilliant concept up?
zosxavius photography
Looking at the layout and behavior, the new taskbar and navigation are more of a openSuSE 11.1 flavor
I would not be surprised with the Novell-MS pact that we see some compiz/opensuse hints in Windows 7. IMO the openSuSE distro is taking off to be a really good enterprise desktop option--much better than a OSX in the long run.
All you'll have to do is migrate your XP to Vista and then migrate from Vista to 7.
The sad this is FTFA the MS guy is quoted talking about upgrading from Vista to 7 and there is no mention of upgrades from Vista. Either their marketing blood is thick expecting everyone to already have upgraded to Vista from XP or they're just ignoring the fact there have been a significant number of people that have downgraded or just refuse to upgrade.
get even messier with new concepts. How about reducing the amount of concepts like My Documents, HomeGroup and My Computer? That might make computers more approachable for a first(old) timers.
Just one thing: Classic Explorer view. Please. You can have the fancy-smancy new interface with bouncing icons and transparent windows and everything you want so it looks like OS X... but for those of us who work with the GUI on a daily basis, give us the option of falling back to the classic Explorer interface. Because, as much as I despise the DRM, bloat and kludginess of the UAC, the awful interface is the number one reason I don't upgrade. Thanks.
Printer running out of ink? Here's the cartridge you need and here's a link to an online shop where you can buy it! Great! For the home user..
The last thing I need is 400 employees trying to purchase their own cartridges when we already have a dozen in stock. The last thing I need is them being told they must upgrade to the new version of media player so they can get their free music download when its supposed to be a disabled application. The last thing I need is them being able to install messenger without it even telling them its installing some software let alone prompting for a password (ANY password).. (Vista Business already does this).
Remember the joys of setting up your hardware in every single game? Running GAMECONFIG.EXE to say yes, my SoundBlaster is on IRQ 7, my display can handle 1024x769 in 256 colours, and no, I don't have an AdLib card.
Youngster. I wish we had GAMECONFIG.EXE. In my day we had boot into DOS because WinDOS wasn't good enough. Then we had to edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys and enable HIMEM for our games to run. Those were the days...
Just use QEMM and run the game in DesqView.
First off, I think that's a job well done thus far. I think itâ(TM)s awesome that Microsoft is putting out an operating system as innovative as this. To have the multi-touch from their R&D department finally integrated into their OS is a giant leap toward seamless user interfaces. Hopefully, Microsoft will be able to fully integrate PCs running this with their Microsoft Surface product and continue to develop the technology into a wider full solution for a familyâ(TM)s home of PCs, not just one or two.
It irks me that people have compared the screenshots of Windows 7 to OS X 10.6. Neither of the two is out yet. And it may not be till the next decade that Windows 7 is out, by which time Apple will probably be on 10.9, if not 11.
I agree! The classic Explorer view with the folders sidebar is critical and my biggest gripe with Vista.
What does Vista offer over XP?
I wonder if 'Multi-Touch' Support can translate easily to 'Multi-mouse'. Not two mice fighting to control one cursor aka windows today, but some extended combination (n mice = n cursors) Modern PC's support multiple screens, many applications but still single inputs. Is there an official reason why an OS can not support two sets of monitor/mouse/keyboard? Limiting each to a screen should be possible. Still no reason why they could not interact too. This would bring a whole new level to extreme programming!
Oh wow. That is a glowing endorsement of Vista. Running a game exactly HOW MANY YEARS OLD NOW?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In fact, Windows 7 seems to be adopting the Apple way of doing things: Do rational, incremental improvements while describing these are revolutionary. ;)
Seriously, though - I wish us all a more secure, less troubleful computer experience. I think Microsoft has finally budged in the right direction - they are starting to document their formats and interfaces, and now they are also adopting a sane development roadmap. Not bad, Redmond.
Stop the brainwash
None of the features of Vista is a reason important enough to switch from XP to Vista. Vista has no 'must have' features. It has eye candy, but that's not a real reason to switch, is it? eventually, we'll all have to switch because our hardware and software will be obsolete, but then we would have been forced to switch, it would not be our choice.
You didn't answer my question: give me one good reason to win7?
Bullshit.
* Click the AirPort icon in the top-right corner.
* Choose network.
* Enter password.
The unfamiliarity can justify the first step, but anything longer means you Mom must have dropped you as a child.
(And before someone pipes up with "BUT I HAZ SSID BROADCAST OFF!", the same AirPort icon has a choice named "Join other wireless network". In there you type the network name then enter the password - same number of steps.)
The menu system that many MS apps employed previously were definitely not the best option.
That's not a problem with menus, that's a problem with those particular applications. Removing the menu bar because some applications had let theirs get disorganized and were due for a refresh is like replacing the steering wheel with a joystick because putting the radio controls in the steering wheel on one car model turned out to be a bad idea.
Except Microsoft went further and put the gas cap on the dashboard and moved the speedometer to the glove compartment while they were about it.
...that most recent benchmarks on current hardware (with SP1) are pretty close to 1:1.