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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!
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.
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!
"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"
Yeah, but if you look at the history of Windows, the best OSes have been rehashes of older ones. Sometimes it takes a bit of tweaking to make a good OS.
Windows 3 to 3.1
Win 95 to Win 98
Win 2000 to Win XP
And what is your objection to using the BSD network stack? A technical weakness? Can't be the licensing, I assume; the whole point of the BSD license is to allow this kind of usage.
No, they did that in vista. That was the problem.
If they are smart, they will go back to the BSD TCP stack.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
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
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"
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...
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.
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.
>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"
Really? I always thought the way that the dock combined task management and app launching into one place was genius. In windows, you typically have 3 places from which to launch apps (desktop, start menu, quicklaunch) and one place to manage tasks, the taskbar. Why the hell do they waste all that screen real estate on taskbar item titles, when they'll be unreadable once you have 4 apps running anyway? Why do I need quicklaunch and taskbar to take up separate real estate? And why are there multiple, confusing ways of accomplishing the same task (this goes for the proliferation of control panels as well)?
I sorta see your point with the alt-tab thing, but the problem is, in windows, alt-tabbing thru browser windows is an exercise in futility because you have no clue which one of the 10 firefox instances your proper window is until you try them all. In OS X you have a much shorter list of things to alt-tab thru, then cycling windows is cake. It does take a little bit of getting used to, but I vastly prefer it.
I do understand that alt-tab behavior in Vista is different -- if it allows you to preview content of the window before you switch (like alt-tilde in OS X does for window switching) then it would be better. I just haven't used Vista so I don't know.
I guess when they finally release a version of WinFS it will be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever?
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.
don't worry, I'm sure you'll find a way to keep your parents from finding your alien-tentacle-hentai.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
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
You can always try installing http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx (look for Alt-Tab Replacement).
It gives you a preview before switching. Works pretty well. Cheers.
"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
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...
On the front page, for this article, the tags are actually overlapping with the text. Someone needs to learn how to code CSS properly instead of coding "Web 2.0 hey-look-we-can-move-the-poll-up-and-down" stuff.
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
It takes 15 minutes to setup wireless on XP or Ubuntu?
I'm sure glad I have a MacBook...
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).
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).
They rewrote the stack for the W2K8, aka NT6.1. A nice girl was praising the new shiny Windows 2008 Server on the MS IT Academic Day at my uni last year. My friend won an USB pendrive :)
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 think they're focusing on the initial in-store impression. It's Joe the College Student walking through Best Buy with his parents trying to decide on a laptop to take to school. If the Macs have "teh shiny!!1" and PCs don't, Joe is going to spend all his time at the Mac station. It doesn't matter that Joe will end up turning off all of "teh shiny!!1" once he brings the laptop home as long as he brings it home at all.
Corporate customers on the other hand are going to be turned off by shiny bits. I think that probably has a lot to do with the lackluster response to Vista.
They didn't use the BSD stack. The UNIX utilities like ftp came from BSD because those utilities came from licensed networking code from Spider Systems that was based on BSD. The licensed stack was intended as a stopgap until Microsoft wrote their own stack for NT 3.5. For whatever reason, the UNIX utilities weren't rewritten, and people saw the BSD copyrights and assumed Microsoft used BSD's stack.
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.
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.
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.