First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1

The other A. N. Other writes "It seems that Microsoft couldn't keep the lid on Windows 7 beta 1 until the new year. By now, several news outlets have their hands on the beta 1 code and have posted screenshots and information about this build. ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 column says: 'This beta is of excellent quality. This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with. Even the pre-betas were solid, but finally this beta feels like it's "done." This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled.' ITWire points out that this copy has landed on various torrent sites, and while it appears to be genuine, there are no guarantees. Neowin has a post confirming that it's the real thing, and saying Microsoft will be announcing the build's official availability at CES in January."

Comments

They're glowing!

[sexybomber]

The sound of ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 writers blowing their loads over this is deafening.

Re:They're glowing!

[EvanED]

I'm not the original poster, but I really wish Apple would let me. But they insist on selling OS X only with their own hardware, and then don't make hardware I both want and can afford. To my eyes, iMacs are stupid because it doesn't make sense to throw away a hundred or two hundred dollar monitor when you get a new computer. Hell, the bulk of my current system is about a year old, but I have components in there from 2004, and that's just what's in the main case. The Mac mini is probably even less upgradable than the iMac, and has for a moderately powerful system today is an underpowered processor and small amount of RAM. (For about $200 less what I paid for my current over a year ago, you get (1) dual core processor instead of quad core, (2) the same amount of RAM, (3) basically integrated graphics shared with main RAM instead of an 8800GTS. Wow, great deal.) Now at the other end is the Mac Pro. Beautiful systems, but start at twice the cost of my current system (this time I think about comparable in power), which is well out of my price range. Then you add on top of that the fact that I like to build my own system, and Apple has put itself out of my market. But I very well might actually get one if it weren't for those other problems.

On the laptop side, last I checked they're in the same ballpark as a Thinkpad, so that's not so bad. But if I were to buy a laptop now, I'd probably get either like a netbook or a tablet... again, neither of which Apple sells.

So from my standpoint, I'd love to run OS X... but I'm not going to pirate it, I'm not going to give Apple if they are going to call me a criminal for hacking it to run, I'm not going to buy Apple hardware, and Apple won't let me run it otherwise, so I'm out of luck on that point.

World domination 201

[Janek Kozicki]

Now the fate of 64bit future is being determined...

Re:World domination 201

[houstonbofh]

Now the fate of 64bit future is being determined...

Not really off topic. XP can not really do 64 bit. Vista is a resounding failure. 3.2-3.5 gig is not enough memory. If Win7 is not a solid product, Microsoft will loose the workstation and power user market.

Re:World domination 201

[houstonbofh]

Vista is hated. Weather it is a technical failure or a PR failure is moot. No one wants it. And XP64 is not really functional at all. And God help you if you run a lot of general use software on either. The point is that the cliff is looming, and there is still not a clear winner. It could be that the economy is doing what no one else could; Slowing down the consumer.

Re:World domination 201

[datapharmer]

XP can do 64-bit just fine, and has been able to for several years; even before Vista came out.

why aRe:They're glowing!

[irtza]

There are no new features in this build. If Microsoft has any new stuff lined up for the RTM then we're going to have to wait to find out.

All this talk about stable beta's seems a bit pointless. If you change the name and theme on the product, you can't real muck it up too bad. What's the point of this other than to try to put the name "Vista" in the grave?

Anyone know what these people are so excited about? Couldn't get much real info from the article. They comment that its snappier than other betas. How about compared to XP? That would be the real comparison I would like to see.

I am a linux person myself - Ubuntu on the computer I am posting from, but I did use Windows on my laptop before wiping it. I am also not opposed to having windows installed if I gain any benefit. That is what I want to hear from people, what are its compelling features (I don't play games).

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[gbarules2999]

All I learned from their screenshots is that it looks like KDE and that there's a picture of a fish in the wallpaper. Wow. Revelation of the day.

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's slow as hell. as one of those that have ran it, I'll tell you right now. the speedy feel of the XP days will never EVER come back, until your computer has way more processing speed and data channel speeds that exceed what the newer Microsoft OS's will use.

I have Vista and Windows 7 running nicely. sata 15,000 rpm drives and hardware that is fricking insane fast makes it feel like XP on modern hardware.

posting anon to avoid being kicked by the MSFT NDA

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[irtza]

so here is then the next question, are the added features of Vista/win 7 worth it? What do you have available that you did not previously and does this make life more efficient?

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[capnkr]

I'd guess that 'black hats' are glowing because this gives them a good jump on:

1) finding out which security holes still exist from prior MS work, and

2) a good look at the "new" OS structure to find out what other holes might be there, well before final release...

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[houstonbofh]

It's slow as hell. as one of those that have ran it, I'll tell you right now. the speedy feel of the XP days will never EVER come back, until your computer has way more processing speed and data channel speeds that exceed what the newer Microsoft OS's will use.

Not true... It just won't come from Microsoft. Linux, Solaris, *BSD, and Apple all have that snappy feel. Maybe Microsoft should look at the code in Linux. It is open... ;)

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[yoyhed]

The best new feature of Vista, and it really, really is a nice one, is the instant Start Menu search. You can be SO fast at starting programs or finding files by just hitting the Windows key and typing the first few letters. Also, breadcrumb navigation in Windows Explorer is nice. However, these are things that can be added to XP - I just wish the authors of such addons would refrain from making them look exactly like Vista, because that doesn't look good with my XP classic theme.

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[socsoc]

I use OS X daily; it has many virues

Would that be virtues or viruses?

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[BungaDunga]

Try Launchy. Does that and more, I hardly touch my start menu. Runs on XP for that matter.

Re:why aRe:They're glowing!

[Alex Belits]

UAC is far worse than sudo -- with sudo you have one point when application is started as root, and the only thing user has to say is to confirm that he actually wants to run something as administrator. Applications that run as root are still trusted to actually so the right thing because user isn't supposed to know what precisely a particular application should or shouldn't be allowed to do. When anything fine-grained is necessary, there is PolicyKit that controls access to services -- then user's input is only necessary if policy demands it.

UAC is all about not trusting the application or system configuration -- user is asked to make all the decisions. It's like bizarro PolicyKit -- fine-grained access control, but no actual policy behind it, so user has to make all decisions. The root of this problem is, of course, Windows' still-shitty IPC and per-process privileges/permissions handling -- until that is fixed, expect more braindamaged security from them.

Waporware

[Mr Europe]

And we can start quessing which of the mentioned fine features will actually be in the release version of Win7. This has happened so many times before.
Remember when during waiting of win95 many magazines were worried what will happen to McAfee and other virus-scanner companies when the new windows is fully virustolerant?

Re:Waporware

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when during waiting of win95 many magazines were worried what will happen to McAfee and other virus-scanner companies when the new windows is fully virustolerant?

Well, whatever one might think about windows 95, "virus-tolerant" is certainly an apt description!

why is this surprising?

[roc97007]

I don't see why this is surprising. This is just Windows Vista service pack 3 after all. Naturally the beta is going to be more stable than the initial Vista beta.

Re:why is this surprising?

[Enderandrew]

Well, I'm hearing claims that it will run well on a netbook with 512MB on ram and an Atom processor, which is a huge improvement over Vista. However, despite the supposed lower requirements and multi-touch gestures, I'm not sure what the benefits of Windows 7 are.

Re:why is this surprising?

[roc97007]

I agree, but, well, lower requirements is a big one. I remember an article in /. that pontificated that "Vista runs fine on any processor 3 Ghz and above" which is a bar that none of my computers can reach. Some are limited by architecture to 2 Gbytes ram, another buzzkill. (And why should I buy bleeding edge hardware -- in this economy -- to run Vista when XP runs fine?) If Windows 7 (any version) can run on netbook-level hardware, it actually has a chance in hell of replacing some of my XP installations. [1]

And yet... and yet, when Vista was still in beta, we heard reports that it was faster than XP, and look how that turned out. So we really can't go by the beta, we have to wait for reports about the finished product. And then we find out if Microsoft really has made an effort to make the codebase more efficient, or if their real plan was to wait two more years for the hardware to catch up with Windows' gargantuan requirements.

Before someone brings it up, I'm aware that much of Vista's performance issue was the way DRM was implemented. But since DRM is part and parcel with the operating system, it counts. It's the total end to end performance that makes the user experience, so it's not legitimate to say "the new OS really is much faster than the previous release, all those pauses and long execution times you're seeing is because the OS has to check every bit to make sure you haven't stolen something".

Assuming, of course, there is some new feature I absolutely have to have. I didn't see any in Vista. Yes, it had a snazzy new interface. But since I turned off XP's snazzy new interface and all the irritating special effects when I installed it, why would I base a buying decision on yet another snazzy new interface I have to turn off?

Re:why is this surprising?

[lorenlal]

1) It won't be named Vista.
2) Supposedly, UAC is much more configurable, especially from the group policy angle.
3) Not as much bloat is supposed to be bundled. If you want all the default MS software, you'll go to Windows Live to grab it. Bloat being: Media Player, the Movie Maker, Picture Gallery, etc. You'll get IE (cause you'll need something provided to go grab the stuff) and you'll get a pretty plain OS otherwise. I'm a huge fan of that.
Other than that, I'm not sure if anything else has changed... But I expect that they've also worked on handling "very large files" and other stability stuff.

Re:why is this surprising?

[schon]

The changes and additions that Windows 7 brings are more significant than you think.

But apparently not significant enough that you can actually name any of them.

Re:why is this surprising?

[roc97007]

> Although you are right that part of Windows7 success is [...]

Woah, partner -- it's way too early to be calling Windows 7 a success.

Do these get better just because of time?

[plover]

Everyone seems to have the opinion that Vista was a failure. My wife (a non-techie) hates Vista because her ancient accounting app periodically crashes ever since switching to Vista. I assume many other people had the same sorts of issues with many other apps.

But now three years have gone by, and many of those apps have been patched, become obsolete, or replaced with working alternatives. That means the remaining apps are now in an ideal position to work correctly in Windows 7. Is it possible that Windows 7 could be exactly the same crap as Vista, but because so much time has gone by it doesn't matter as much?

I think we saw the same thing with the transitions from Windows 98 to Windows ME to Windows XP.

Re:Do these get better just because of time?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one other possibility, of course - that Vista never was crap, and the MS excuses about driver and application incompatibilities (such as your wife's accounting app) unfairly being blamed on Vista were actually true. And, if anyone were to give Vista a fair fresh look (Mojave? Win7?) they might conclude it's actually a really solid OS.

Nah, on second thought, that doesn't fit well with my world view. MS Sucks! Linux roxors!

Re:Do these get better just because of time?

[Farmer Pete]

Most of the problems of Vista wasn't with Vista itself, it was with applications that were written poorly. I work for a company with ~2500 computers. We have over 10,000 unique pieces of software installed company wide. Many of those pieces of software were designed for Win95/98 and were only tweaked to work with XP. For example, they insist on installing to the root of C:\, the don't play well with multi-user installs, or they write data to their program files folder. I personally believe that Microsoft should get a medal for what they did with Vista, it's still a bitch to deal with, but they went out on a limb and tried to make programs behave properly. It's funny, if they hadn't done anything, people would have complained about the lack of security. They try to make apps behave like they do in other OS versions, and they get chastised endlessly. Hopefully you are correct and most widely used apps will be compatible with Windows 7. I didn't have any big issues with Vista, but many of utilities (A lot of it FOSS) I need to do my job didn't work under Vista.

Re:Do these get better just because of time?

[lorenlal]

Well done.

But - You could see Vista as MS finally paying the piper for the insecurity that was MS-DOS, Windows 3, 95, 98, ME... And then still not enforcing any sort of security in 2000 and XP.

It all depends on what your angle is I guess. Vista finally made people annoyed enough that software writers had to actually think about running software in a moderately secure context... In that regard, it was a good thing. I might not particularly love the way MS handled it (say, compared to Mac OS), but it was still a step in the right direction.

If the Windows user base can finally be trained to run in a standard user mode, with proper mechanisms to perform administrative tasks, we'll all be better for it... and I'll give a lot of credit to the *nix communities for really pushing this need for all those years. A lot of us might hate MS for various reasons, but if they really can put out a better product, good for them.

Shill me one more time!!!

[mcnazar]

Are Magazines/Tech review sites/Editorials real anymore or are they just industry backed reviews (aka advertisements)? Is advertisement driven content real journalism?

I remember almost every tech journal I picked up a couple years ago reviewed Vista as the "New Coming". Yet, a year later these journals are bemoaning how Vista "sucks" (which it does btw).

Excuse me for being cynical but I will take this review with a pinch of salt as other reports show that, at least benchmark wise, there is absolutely no difference between Vista and Windows 7.

As for Windows 7 feeling "so much more responsive".. well, depends who is paying you to write that review innit?

Re:Shill me one more time!!!

[sdkit]

Excuse me for being cynical but I will take this review with a pinch of salt as other reports show that, at least benchmark wise, there is absolutely no difference between Vista and Windows 7.

There was one set of benchmarks that showed no improvement: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/10/46TC-windows-7_1.html/. There was another set of benchmarks done on a later build that showed improvements: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3182&page=1/.

As for Windows 7 feeling "so much more responsive".. well, depends who is paying you to write that review innit?

Cynicism, conspiracy and an ad hominem attacks all in one. You're going all the way to +5 insightful!

No Idea what the techspecs are on this but

[sleeponthemic]

Rather than wasting our time with a new GUI, I'd like to see Microsoft get the ball rolling on full, proper migration to 64 bit. Perhaps I'm a "power user" but for a sound designer, this 2 gig limit per app/~3.5 max feels more and more like 640 kb all over again.

(Unfortunately, the existence/popularity of 32 bit windows precludes the vendors of software such as Cubase and the likes from actually doing a proper job of putting out 64 bit software).

Re:No Idea what the techspecs are on this but

[talz13]

Yes, I was disappointed when I heard that vista was going to have a 32 bit version. If microsoft wants to push the transition to 64 bit, they really need to make a 64 bit only version.

Also, please drop the 6 editions and go back to home and pro. If you want windows in a developing country, either pay for it, download it, or make microsoft price it at what the local market will bear.

Doesn't look finished to me

[coryking]

The task bar needs quite a bit of work. I bet that is one part of the OS that will change quite a bit from Vista. Looks like it is still a work in progress because right now it looks boxy and ugly.

It also looks like Aero wasn't turned on for these screen shots. Probably a driver thing. Vista without the glass doesn't look nearly as good.

I think like Vista, this version will be a lot of little things that improve the OS not huge ones. Then you'll go back from Windows 7 to Vista and go "jeez... how did I live without this Windows 7 feature" just like when you go back to XP and get pissed how crappy the taskbar is, how "in your face" the windows were, how crappy the file dialogs were, how crappy taskman.exe was, or how generally insecure the default setup was. Vista is a huge improvement over XP but it is hard to describe what improved. Just a lot of little annoyances are gone or smoothed out. Windows 7 will probably be the same.

And can I rant for a second? Look, I know why the ZDnet guys are doing this, but we live in Web version 2.0 these days and they could easily have made it so their gallery didn't require a complete page-load between images. But like I said, I know why they do require a page-load.

Re:Doesn't look finished to me

[_xeno_]

The task bar needs quite a bit of work. I bet that is one part of the OS that will change quite a bit from Vista. Looks like it is still a work in progress because right now it looks boxy and ugly.

It also looks suspiciously like Mac OS X's Dock. Hmm, single icon per application, where I have I seen that before?...

For further confirmation that this is Window's take on the Dock, take a peek at this screenshot. Hmm, "Unpin this program from the taskbar"... Seems a bit like dragging the application onto the Dock, thereby "pinning" it. (Although at least Window 7's little "launched border" is easier to see than the glowing dot on the Dock.)

Of course, I'd have to use it to see if it actually works. Mac OS X's Dock works the way it does due to the way Mac handles applications - each application gets a single instance and has a single menu bar but can have multiple windows. Windows does it differently - each window is essentially its own application. So directly ripping off the Dock probably won't work.

Still, it's nice to see that Microsoft's stance on innovation hasn't changed. :)

Look, I know why the ZDnet guys are doing this, but we live in Web version 2.0 these days and they could easily have made it so their gallery didn't require a complete page-load between images.

I don't - Slashdot seems to have found a way to load ads via Web 2.0 in the new discussion view; I'm sure ZDnet and their advertisers can come up with a way to rotate ads using Web 2.0 techniques...

Re:Doesn't look finished to me

[roc97007]

> And can I rant for a second?

Certainly. May I?

Who amongst non-geeks really cares what the desktop looks like? Am I the only one who thinks that perhaps we've lost sight of what an operating system is for? I really don't expect my desktop to look and operate like Myst. I expect an OS to be a robust, secure, program loader and a robust, cohesive collection of resources that applications use. Yes, I know I used "robust" twice. It's important.

The desktop is a way to start and manipulate applications. It is not an end in itself. It shouldn't suck the life out of the machine for the sake of pretty graphics.

And this Linux desktop vs Windows desktop thing totally misses the point. Yes, I played with Ubuntu's cute rubber windows for awhile, and then I turned all those features the hell off. What a waste of resources.

I think it comes down to why one buys a computer in the first place. Is it to do actual work, or to play with the pretty jellyfish? I think that if pressed, most people who make their living on computers would admit that all the cuteness is at best a distraction.

I mean, from a technical standpoint, the design and implementation of cutting-edge desktop presentation is interesting, don't get me wrong. But on a day to day basis, would you really sacrifice the majority of your computer resources just for presentation? Amongst other things, that doesn't seem very Green to me.

And don't even start with "let's all go back to the command line". Office 2000 was a huge increase in efficiency over vi/troff and I'm never going to go back. But Office 2007 is just Office, only annoying. We've reached a point of diminishing returns. Until there's a significant Xerox-PARC-grade paradigm shift, we're just rearranging the furniture. And each remodel significantly increases clutter and expense.

Compare with XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing Windows 7 to Vista is useless, at least to someone like me. I love XP, having never had any serious problems with it whatsoever. It's by far the most stable OS I have ever used. Tell (and prove to) me that Windows 7 is better than XP, and I will show great interest in switching. Tell me 7 is better than Vista, and you don't have a chance.

List of changes between it and Vista plz.

[DanWS6]

What are the improvements? Have they added in WinFS yet?

Re:List of changes between it and Vista plz.

[tomhudson]

"What are the improvements? Have they added in WinFS yet?"

They tried to - they're in the process of copying the files now ... the dialog box says "Copying files" and to please wait another 10.459 years for the operation to complete ...

Re:List of changes between it and Vista plz.

[Jugalator]

Heh, WinFS... It's such an easy troll target... ;)

The storage system (not its own file system) called "WinFS" was released as Beta 1, but later cancelled, with components of it ending up in SQL Server 2008. It was later assumed to be dead for good, but Ballmer said in late 2006 that it was still being worked on, although he was not clear on in which products it would end up in. For all we know, the team could be working with the SQL Server team now.

This is among the last pieces of good actual info on this project:
http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx

Windows 7 will not include WinFS, and it was never announced for it.

All the fun of a recession

[igb]

Axioms:

1. Consumers don't put a new OS on Wintel platforms, they buy a new system.
2. Businesses don't spend money without some sort of justification.
3. Moore's Law is now adding more cores and threads, not more mippage on a single task.
4. Disks, RAM and other drivers of new equipment purchase are pretty much ``as much as you want for as little as you want''.
5. Netbooks and small laptops are the current hot items.
6. XBoxes and the like are providing gamers with an alternative to PCs
7. The economy has tanked since Vista shipped.

All that being the case, why on earth do we care about Windows 7? If Microsoft couldn't get people to migrate off XP with benign economic circumstance and ready availability of credit, why do we think it's going to happen this time?

ian

Re:All the fun of a recession

[4D6963]

Yeah, people just "grab free distros". Like my sister who just bought a laptop with Vista, I asked her if she liked it and she just said "oh no I just grabbed an ISO of Debian through BitTorrent, burnt it and installed it over the Vista install. By the way, is ZFS any good or should I just stick to ext3?". I was like "wow!". Then she proceeded to ask me if she needed to vi into /etc/fstab to mount her iPod.

Re:All the fun of a recession

[shutdown -p now]

Then she proceeded to ask me if she needed to vi into /etc/fstab to mount her iPod.

Wow, your sister sure is stupid - she should know better and use Emacs for that!

Links to the torrent (for Google impaired folks)

[Doug52392]

File name: Windows.7.Beta.1.Build_7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso [MSDN iSO]
Size: 2,618,793,984 bytes (2.44 GB)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2123650

Viruses and Trojans Still a Problem

[shatfield]

I just had to repair a friend's Vista PC which had 3 Trojan programs running that had taken control of her internet even though Kaspersky antivirus was installed. The Trojan had worked its way onto her computer via a P2P program that her daughter was using to get music, and that stopped Kaspersky from being able to update its definitions, which it was set to do every day. I couldn't even go out to Microsoft's Windows Update site to get Windows updates, and Windows Defender (which was also installed and running) was disabled by one of the Trojan programs. It took me over an hour to clean it all up and get her machine running properly again.

Not even 2 antivirus programs could stop this from happening on the latest Windows PC.

This is what is stopping me from being even the slightest bit excited about Windows 7.

Re:Viruses and Trojans Still a Problem

[plutoXL]

So in this case the weakest link was not Vista.
A bigger problem was Kaspersky AV not recognizing the trojans.
The biggest problem was a teenage girl who didn't think it mattered if she downloaded britney.mp3 or britney.exe

How sweet of them!

[aGF2c2hleA]

I think their plan is to mimic the look and feel of Gnome or KDE, you know, to ease the transition for mom and pop when they switch to linux

No, Compare with 2K

[recoiledsnake]

Why not compare with 2K ? Also, 2K is better than XP by the same metrics you mentioned. Then why are you running XP?

I don't want excuses...

[Sparky McGruff]

Sure, MS may be right about driver and application incompatibilities. But, when I bought a brand new laptop, pre-loaded with Vista, that has the Vista logo on the box, I don't want to hear that it's the fault of the network chipset provider that the wireless network works marginally at best. MS and the hardware vendors need to get their shit together, so that they don't tell me that a computer is "Win 7 Compatible" or comes pre-loaded with Win 7 when it really isn't.

If you're trying to install a new OS on an old machine, that's one thing. You definitely need to do your homework to make sure that the off-brand network card you bought will work with the new OS. However, a new machine pre-loaded with the OS should run. If MS can't make sure that the OEMs have working machines before they slap a "Vista" or "Win 7" sticker on the damn thing, they should stop making software, period.

Re:I don't want excuses...

[gbjbaanb]

Blaming them is putting the blame in the wrong place.

It is if MS demands a "Vista Ready" certification programme from the vendors before said vendors can claim its suitable for Vista.

Who would want the pirated version?

[Lord Byron II]

I can understand somebody wanting the pirated version of a video game, or even a release-version of an OS, but who in their right mind would tie up their Internet connection for a day and risk the legal trouble and possibility of a virus/worm/backdoor to download a beta copy of an operating system that's built on the most reviled version of Windows since WinMe?

Let's Reiterate...

[His Shadow]

For those incapable of following the train of thought, here it is...

There is no such thing as Windows 7. This is not a new code base, it is not an overhaul of Windows framework. Windows 7 is Vista Service Pack 2. The Windows 7 bullshit coming out of Microsoft's propaganda machine is a concerted and direct effort to bury the name Vista and all the bad press associated with it. That anyone has bought into this crap is astounding. Vista was several years delayed. Now we have hordes of people believing that MS got a new OS out the door in 18 months? Wake up already.

Re:Let's Reiterate...

[jd142]

Right. This is Windows 98 compared to Windows 95. No major change in theme or interface, but more stable and with a few of the sharper corners rounded off. See also windows 3.0 and windows 3.1. :)

Task Bar?!

[nurb432]

Why are we so concerned about eye-candy? How about the actual system underneath?

Is it stable, scalable, administrable? What sort of resources does it need? Ram? CPU?

Sure, 'pretties' are nice ( especially for the end user ), but its a lot like a cake: If the cake is full of holes, lopsided or not fully cooked, does it really matter what flavor the icing is?

Re:Task Bar?!

[AmiMoJo]

I used to share the parents opinion of eye candy, until I tried out Mac OS. The shadows on the windows really make them look like they are layer on top of each other in a way that Vista doesn't. It actually makes the system that little bit more intuitive, that little bit easier to interpret the information on the screen and work with it. It's subtle but an improvement none-the-less.

Considering how well Mac OS runs on even old Radeon 9200 hardware I don't think it's much of a resource drain or bloated either.

It's apparent

[HangingChad]

It's apparent that Windows 7 represents a radical name change from Vista. A bold new direction in OS branding.

And people say innovation is dead in Redmond.

Poorly implemented javascript = bad

[coryking]

You can write javascript that enhances a page. One can quickly write an implementation that keeps each image a standard page (good for SEO, good for multi-tab) but can also swap the image and not reload the page. Then you can right-click "Open new tab" or just click on it and not refresh the entire page.

Javascript = good.
Shitty Javascript = bad.

Features?

[loconet]

Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista? As someone else pointed out, a name and theme change does not really qualify as substantial change. Ok, so WinFS was never promised for this version. What exactly are they offering this time besides a fix to the taskbar? I have yet to see an article that outlines changes outside the UI. Is this an elaborate prank?

Did you turn off Aero?

[coryking]

Most nerds seem to turn it off assuming it is "flasy useless eye candy". Little do they know they basically turned off hardware accelleration. You do know that Vista, with Aero enabled, will delegate most of the window drawing to the video card. In fact, the more ram on your video card, the better, Vista stores all the window data on that instead of your system RAM.

If you've got a card that does DirectX10 it will even hand the fonts to the video card and let the video card deal with font rendering and caching. Once you turn off Aero, the video card is just an old-school video card. Since a certain set of nerds seem to hate nice looking things, I bet most of them turn off the one thing that makes Vista way more snappy than XP--Aero.

Re:Did you turn off Aero?

[John Betonschaar]

Non-aero window drawing is also hardware-accelerated, just not 3D hardware accelerated. And it has been like that since Windows 9x or something.

Your computer isn't going to be more responsive by adding extra load on the GPU, only (possibly) prettier. Which is kind of subjective, I for one think Vista looks like multi-colored poo that gets in the way of working with the computer.

Features New to Windows 7

[tshak]

Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista?

Features New to Windows 7.

Enjoy!

Re:Oh really?

[John Betonschaar]

No I'm telling you video cards from 10 years back already provide hardware accelerated blitting (even translucent), filling, rectangle drawing, etc. So your desktop _is_ hardware accelarated by the video card without anything Aero, and it has been like this for years.

Of course you don't get all the fancy shader tricks but like I said, not everyone actually appreciates those.

Re:I think modern window systems

[John Betonschaar]

Let's just stop here because you obviously don't know much about how video cards work. You can 'cache' anything you like in video RAM without using the 3D capabilities at all, just like you can DMA stuff around without taxing the CPU, and draw stuff to the screen with just a few FIFO commands, it is not, (I repeat: it is NOT) what makes your system 'slow' unless you want to blur title bars, wiggle windows when you move them or add all kinds of other visual effects just because you can.

The only valid point you make is that with a full-blown GPU-accelerated desktop you can throw in much more eye candy without slowing down the system. My point is, that if you don't need/want/care about this eye-candy, about everything essentially already _is_ GPU-accelerated, even without Aero. Windows Vista doesn't NEED anything besides age-old window drawing, it just offers you the option to throw (in my opinion) useless eye at you that only distracts from the actual GUI.

Also I doubt your claim that Aero actually does TTF rendering on the GPU, do you have any references to back that up?

What you are "aware" of is a lie.

[bhpaddock]

Windows Vista's performance "problems" have nothing to do with DRM. If you aren't playing back a DRM'd file, then there is no DRM-specific code running, and no penalty of any kind. The idea that Vista had any more DRM code running than Windows XP was a myth propogated mostly buy people who knew it wasn't true, and others who were gullible and believed anything that sounded bad about Vista.

If you don't want DRM, don't buy any DRM'd media. Having support for DRM'd media in the OS (like BluRay / HDCP / etc) has absolutely ZERO impact on people who don't use DRM'd media.

Vista had its issues and they are well understood, there is no reason to make up myths to blame them on.

Re:Oh really?

[hairyfeet]

You are telling me that I should WANT an OS that requires the freaking GPU just to draw the desktop without running like a slug? Really? Let us not forget people: We are talking about an OPERATING SYSTEM here, not the latest bloateware 3D game. I just want the OS to freaking boot and then get the hell out of my way so I can run MY programs. I don't need nor want your "flippin 3D super desktop search live enabled web 3.0" crap in my OS! Just freaking start and move! Is that really so freaking hard?

I ran just about every kind of Vista out there, from beta 1 through SP1. And do you know which one WASN'T a giant resource hogging web 3.0 bloated piggy? A freaking pirated version where they had stripped the living hell out of it so much the entire OS fit onto a CD. I might have stayed with it if the driver support for my hardware didn't suck. Instead I'm using good old ever reliable WinXP Pro. But if Win7 is more of the Vista "We want to be Apple so damned much it hurts!" crap I have a feeling I am going to be running XP for a LONG time. I am just glad I build my own desktops and getting motherboards with 2K/XP drivers is pretty much standard issue.

And if any of the guys from MSFT are reading this: STOP trying to be Apple! If I would have wanted a freaking Apple I would have bought one,okay? You are a business company, NOT a home entertainment company. Make a decent low resource using business OS and stop trying to be "Steve Jobs Jr" because frankly it is embarrassing. Allow me to make a prediction: If you force everyone to get rid of their quicklaunch and taskbar and replace it with a freaking dock(gee, I wonder where you got THAT idea from?) then all you are going to do is severely piss off your customers who will either: Stay with XP,move to a Mac,or go to Linux. And I apologize if this came off a little ranty, but ever since that monkey Ballmer took over it seems like they are going out of their way to destroy themselves trying to be Apple. Vista, Zune,I'm sure others can point out even more Apple envy. They are really turning what was once a solid business OS into a giant media oriented mess. And give up the crazy MPAA DRM already! They are NEVER going to pick you over Apple because EVERYBODY has a freaking iPod!

Re:I think modern window systems

[LSD-OBS]

I think you need to read those links again.

Read the description of Redering Tier 2, the highest level of acceleration. The TTF fonts are NOT rendered on the card. Instead, in ClearType mode, the raw pixels are sent to the graphics card in a format representing 3x normal horizontal resolution, and are then edge blended with the existing pixels for a convincing anti-aliased look on LCD displays.

Also note, they're talking only about DX9 there with no mention of DX10, and note the restrictions about what *isn't* accelerated.

Did you perhaps mean to give us a different link with relevant information?

Much ado about nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO MS just "doesn't get it" and is doing stupid things by design, maybe the problem is too much "design by committee" or something.

The problem with Vista / Win7 / etc. wasn't that they tried to do TOO MUCH, it's that they tried to to TOO LITTLE. They're about 10 years BEHIND the current hardware (the mainstream CPU has been '64 bit' for YEARS even on low end parts). Given Moore's law it'll be even more pathetically inadequate in 2009/2010 when we're supposedly to be using Win7. By then we'll have at least cheap 16GB RAM, 64GB SSDs, 2TB HDDs for a song, 8 core 64 GFLOP CPUs, 2 TFLOP GPUs, better HD screens, 4Mbit/s+ broadband into more and more houses, and still we'll be stuck with .... notepad .... and corrupted registries and driver cleaner / crap cleaner / applications that won't install / uninstall / backup / transfer properly most of which being 32 bit.

Now for netbooks / mobile internet devices, OK, yes, for those, design a lean efficient low bloat OS. That is not the same product as your desktop / laptop offering.

I have relatively little problem with 'bloat' if it gets me major new generations of CAPABILITIES. Wake up, the HARDWARE we use today is LIGHT YEARS ahead of the SOFTWARE's capabilities to even USE it in 99% of the cases. Lack of 64 bit applications and applications that intelligently use RAM is one example -- 8GB of RAM costs as little as $40 today. Every one of my family's desktops has 8GB installed now, and if it wasn't for the stupid limitations of the motherboard / chipset, I'd have put 16GB or 32GB into the heavily used machines for these kinds of (commodity) RAM prices.

My quad core CPU is still something like 90% idle doing most OS / web / desktop stuff even under Vista with all the eye candy on. If I complain about it being *slow* it is probably because it is ALGORITHMICALLY broken in some buggy brain damaged way (like the horrible network throughput when you're playing audio or something) not because it is inherently trying to do something that exceeds the capabilities of my actual hardware given well designed software.

The main problem is that we can't even take good advantage of the multi-gigabytes of RAM, multi-terabytes of disc, multi-cores of CPUs, multi-teraflops of GPUs we have. A typical 'power user' desktop today exceeds the compute / RAM / storage capabilities of a 'supercomputer' in the 1990s, yet we're using a OS design / implementation that is BARELY any better than what we had then -- e.g. NTFS, FAT32, 32 bit OS being the most common, et. al.

I wouldn't care too much if they wrote vast portions of the whole OS in something uber bloated / slow like VB or JAVA as long as the performance critical bits were fast and the overall thing was well designed for reliability, stability, and easy extensibility to take full advantage of the system.

There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like filesystems (say start with ZFS then migrate MOST EVERYTHING to use a full featured relational database model on top of that with MAJOR emphasis on metadata, schema use, RDF, et. al.). There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like BACKUP. Ever had a 1.44 MB floppy or CD go bad on you and lose valuable data? Didn't that suck? The average joe in 2009 will be having 1TB drives! Can you imagine losing a LIFETIME of data in one catastrophic event -- ALL your family pictures / movies from maybe 3 generations of family, ALL your documents, ALL your personal files, et. al.? That's going to be a common occurrence due to viruses, hardware failure, or whatever, and the OSs like VISTA are just PATHETICALLY mis-designed to help people manage their storage / data / metadata, do backups, do searches, synchronize, transfer, etc. -- basically they're beyond uselessly bad at giving storage management resources. Heck not a day goes by that I am not even limited by the silly 128 character 'path length' 'limits' even in the latest VISTA 64.
No, Windows Home Server is not a solution. Forget backwa

Re:Linux has UAC too

[man_of_mr_e]

UAC pops up asking you to elevate to delete a shortcut on the desktop, and then annoys you a SECOND time, asking if you're really sure you want to delete it. In Linux, you don't need root to delete a shortcut from your desktop.

You misunderstand why the UAC dialog pops up. It's not the act of deleting the icon from your desktop. That doesn't require admin privs. What you fail to realize is that is a side effect of a feature of Windows called a "common desktop". Icons in the common desktop are shared with all accounts, they are meged with the icons in the users profile to create a single view.

If you delete an icon from only your set of icons, no elevation is required. If you delete an icon from the shared desktop elevation is required because it affects multiple user accounts. The same feature exists for the start menu, in which you can have "shared" and "non-shared" shortcuts. You can delete the non-shared ones without elevation, but you can't delete the shared ones.

I find the majority of people are like you. They simply don't understand why the UAC prompt is coming up. Perhaps that's a failure of Microsoft's, but one user should not be able to affect other users without elevating privilegs. It's working the way it's supposed to.

Re:Oh really?

[hairyfeet]

EXACTLY! I tried Server 2K8 and I was like "Why? Why in the hell can't you just add a basic GUI on top of this and sell it to business users for the desktop? Why?" It is low resource,doesn't have tons of bloated multimedia junk that has NO business being in a business OS, and runs solid as a rock. So why can't those of use who just want to get our work done buy this on a machine without shelling out insane money for a server license? Why?

And as for the one who marked me troll, accept it: Vista is a flop. It is a giant festering turd of fail that the general public can't get away from fast enough. Why do you think EVERY single ad we see and every blog is either "I'm a PC" or Win7? Because MSFT knows that wasting more money on Vista is pointless because the public has spoken and they don't want it. For those of you that have gotten Vista to work or like it,congratulations! You are in the minority! I have sold more machines in this past year and a half and built more custom PCs than I have in the 15 years I have been in PC repair. Why? Because folks are happy to shell out extra money to me so they DON'T have to take Vista. I have been working with MSFT products since the days of Win3.1 and I have NEVER seen folks go so far out of their way to avoid a MSFT OS, even during the horror that was WinME.

Sadly from what I have seen of Win7 instead of learning from their mistakes and going back to their roots and making a solid, backwards compatible, low resource business OS they are instead going to pile even MORE bling bling on top and then really insult the customers by getting rid of quicklaunch and replacing it with an Apple Dock which they will probably screw up on the implementation anyway. I swear if I didn't know any better I would think Ballmer was trying to burn the company down on purpose. I just don't get who exactly they are trying to please. The home users HATE change, the gamers want an OS that sucks as little CPU and GPU as possible to give them better FPS and the business owners want low resource usage so they don't need expensive hardware along with backwards compatibility with all their old business apps. So who exactly are they pleasing with this desire to copy all things Apple? Because from the way my customers are happy to shell out for even older off lease business machines just so they can have XP over Vista it sure ain't them.

The one nice thing about all this is we may finally see real competition brought back into the OS market like we had in the 80's. Because I have the sinking feeling that Win7 is going to make MSFT customers run away even worse than Vista did. Oh, and before someone points out the Vista sales numbers please note that ALL Vista downgrades are counted NOT as an XP purchase but as a Vista sale. And you know it is popular when even Tigerdirect is using "Includes XP Downgrade rights!!" in giant letters as a selling point.

Re:God Damn! It's Good to be KING !!

[NeverVotedBush]

Settle down, man. This is just another "Mojave" commercial.

Re:Oh really?

[hairyfeet]

Uuuh.....did you actually bother to READ my other post? I said Server 2K8 was a GREAT OS and that they should have put a WinNT style GUI on top of THAT and sold it as a business desktop instead of the nightmare of a home OS that is Vista. Now can you HONESTLY tell me that you think Vista was built with the business user in mind? Up until now they took a rock solid business OS and then stripped out a few business centric add ons and you had the home version(like XP Pro and Home) or they took a great server OS like Win2K server and simply stripped it down to make a rock solid basic desktop like Win2K Pro. This is the first time we have seen them try to shovel a HOME operating system onto the business user. Is there anyone who can look at Vista and think it was built for anything OTHER than multimedia? Hell the thing has bling bling coming out its butt!

And I haven't actually bought a retail machine in ages BTW. All my operating systems are retail or OEM and I build the hardware myself. If I need a laptop it boots long enough to see that the hardware works and get imaged in case I need to return it then it is wiped-no exceptions. And believe me I know about having to tweak a MSFT OS, it comes with the turf. Hell I still have the DOS commands for Win9x to copy the CD and install from HDD memorized. And while the machine I used for Vista wasn't anything top of the line, it should have been MORE than enough to handle it. let us not forget we are talking about an OS, not an application. I shut down UAC, I turned off indexing, I downloaded and ran every Vista tweaking utility I could find as well as editing the reg with suggestions from every Vista tweaks site I could find. What did I get on this 3.6GHz P4 with 2Gb of RAM and a 6200 followed by a 7600 graphics card?

Slow as a slug, hell it reminded me of the days when folks would put Win95 on a 286, it was that painful. A HDD that thrashed all the time and finally gave out from the strain, a network that would die if you looked at it funny, file transfers that were awful(and this was after SP1, before SP1 I would burn a DVD to move a file 3 feet because the network was too damned slow), freezes for 10-25 seconds for no damned reason whatsoever,2 or 3 times a week it would either BSOD or just vaporlock,hell I could probably go on all day. And from talking with my customers and checking forums I know that I am FAR from alone. Compare that to the SAME hardware on XP SP3-under 45 second boot from cold, extremely responsive, fast network transfers, not a single loss of connectivity or a single BSOD, no freezes, no thrashing, just a well functioning stable OS.

I have owned, ran, sold, and fixed every MSFT OS since Win3.1. And i REALLY wanted to like Vista, I really really did. This isn't some Linux or Apple zealot trying to spread FUD here. I even ran the beta hoping that I could help fix the bugs and make it a better OS. But they didn't build an OS for me. They didn't build an OS for the business users, or the gamers, or even the home users, because they HATE change. No, they built an OS for those inside MSFT that want to take over Apple's turf, and frankly it shows. Vista is an OS that IMHO just screams "I can be as cool as an Apple Mac! No really I can!". The problems with that are MSFT customers didn't want an Apple, they just wanted a new Windows, Apple knows how to have pretty without dragging down the OS and MSFT don't, MSFT owes a LOT to business customers who they frankly burned real bad with the lousy backwards compatibility and high hardware requirements of Vista, and finally that the home users absolutely HATE change and Vista is frankly change for change sake.

I truly hope they change for Win7, I really do. I hope they put out a low resource, rock solid stable business OS instead of seeing posts all over the place on how to turn Server 2K8 into a desktop just so you can have a MSFT business OS. But from what I have seen of the beta it screams "But I REALLY can be a Mac this time! I Promise!", and if they are going to force me to run a Mac clone anyway then why the hell shouldn't I just get a Mac?