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Ballmer Sets Loose Windows 7 Public Beta At CES
CWmike writes "The rumors turned out to be true. Microsoft will release a public beta this week of its next desktop operating system, Windows 7, hoping it will
address the problems that have made Windows Vista perhaps the least popular OS in its history. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will launch the beta during his speech at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Preston Gralla reviewed Windows 7 beta 1, noting 'Fast and stable, Beta 1 of Windows 7 unveils some intriguing user-interface improvements, including the much-anticipated new task bar.' MSDN and Technet subscribers should be able to get the public data tonight. The general public will have to wait until Friday."
If it weren't for his grating voice, they could sell that video as a sleep aid.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...or doesn't it count because no one even tried to take it seriously?
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
Early reports say that no audience members were injured at today's CES, a rare occurrence for a Ballmer speech.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Balmer is a looser.
Microsoft will release a public beta this week of its next desktop operating system, Windows 7, hoping it will address the problems that have made Windows Vista perhaps the least popular OS in its history.
So, Vista failed because they didn't provide a public beta for it?
How about addressing the increasingly long list of features people actually want instead of a resource intensive API to make my windows translucent? Or, making what was arguably Vista's best and at the same time worst feature (UAC) something that works without making itself so intrusive as to be the first time users desire to disable?!
New Task Bar? Do the words "Titanic" and "rearranging the deckchairs" come to mind here?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Hardly. If anything, it's the *most* popular. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean that something is liked, but having a lot of people dislike something as in the case of Vista means it's pretty damn popular. Just not for the reasons you'd like. It's easy to tell which is the least popular Windows ever: Windows 1.0. (It would be Microsoft Bob, except that's not actually "Windows".)
However, even for the "most hated" award, it's a tight race between ME and Vista. I'd say the hatred of ME is more intense, while the hate for Vista is more widespread.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Are they offering free upgrades to us early adopters, or is it the usual screw?
An operating used to be an important piece of software but now it's just something that lets me run my applications.
I expect more annoying changes to highlight the differences between this OS and previous generations in some vain attempt to make it seem worthwhile buying. When it's released it'll bum out because people don't want changes in their OS, they want to web surf, work and play games, all of what Microsoft intervenes in just to highlight their new flashy features.
Purchase of Vista?
One of the primary reasons Vista has slow adoption has been the tiers and pricing.
What's it is printed, the development costs are sunk. The need to have one tier of windows 7, and change 99 bucks for it.
It is far better for them to get everybody onboard the new system, then it is dealing with the hassle of corporations ahving so many versions.
It is also in there best interests to set the stage to ditch all legacy 32bit apps they sell.
Hell sell it for 59.99 and they would move 100 million the first year. Everyone on Vista will move over, as would people holding out on XP.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So the bulk of the article gushes all over the taskbar, with a bit of Aero thrown in...
Are the pundits so brain dead that they don't know the difference between an OS and a UI? A taskbar is not an OS.
The koolaid must be good.....
I want to hear what they did with the DRM. I want to hear what they've done to make the system more stable under load. I want to hear that they now have a package manager, instead of DLL hell. I want to hear that drivers now ship with the OS, and I don't have to install 70 MB of bloatware just to "install" a keyboard.
Oh wait, but look at that icon on the taskbar..... Slurp, slurp, damn that koolaid tastes good.
my disappointment in Windows 7 is already 10 months old.
I, for one, won't sign up until it's given a cool name like 'Moab', 'Durango', or 'Rumplestilskin' and a slick marketing campaign designed to fool me into upgrading.
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
Quote:
Ballmer will announce that there are now 100 million active Vista users, and that an additional 80 million licenses have been sold but not yet activated -- many to corporations.
How is that something to boast about? Essentially that tells me there are nearly as many businesspeople forced to buy Vista but downgrading to XP downgrade as there are Vista users
Honestly, that title just invokes thoughts of Gandalf sitting there saying "Escaped? Or was set loose?" Followed by a freakly looking Windows 7 Beta slinking around in the shadows.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Vista is the most unpopular OS in Microsoft history? Did the OP ever hear of Windows ME (Mistake Edition)?
Will this new Windows have a liveCD mode, so I can try it without having to go through the pain of partitioning ? Or maybe a utility to install the OS under WINE ? At the very least make it possible to virtualize it.
I'm all for giving MS another shot, but they better make it easy for me to do so. I don't think I would ever switch back, but I would be less eager to switch everyone I know to Linux that might be even slightly possible, if they came out with a workable OS. Which would give me more free time. So please, MS, make this one easy on me !!
What about Bob?
I've played around with the leaked beta for a bit, and was actually pretty impressed. They've pretty much taken Vista, polished it up and threw in some nice UI tweaks so it doesn't feel like you're using Mojave. It's much snappier, and I really like the facelift given to apps like Paint and Wordpad. It won't be replacing Debian on my laptop any time soon, but it's a definite step in the right direction, which isn't something I'm able to say too often about Microsoft products.
According to ComputerWorld.com this will be a DVD iso and require Vista SP1 to install. So it's an upgrade, not a full install. In my skimming, no mention of Live CD.
From what I understand, Windows 7 is Vista with some GUI improvement, significant performance enhancements, and new features. It's not a rewrite. It doesn't break backward compatibility. It doesn't solve the 32-bit 64-bit dilemma that both Linux and OS X are addressing. It doesn't eliminate the behaviour of configuring user accounts to be admin/root by default. It also doesn't force application developers to break old habits.
It's definitely an improvement over Vista, but Microsoft is bound by backward compatibility requirements to keep shipping OS's that are fundamentally broken and that do not allow for 32-bit apps and drivers to run out of one 64-bit OS.
They missed a golden opportunity to fix these problems to keep their OS relevant in terms of keeping up with OS technology.
This space left intentionally blank.
A few audience members had scorched retinas from the spotlights reflecting off Ballmer's head. Ballmer says a new coat of turtle wax was to blame.
Didn't the general public have access to it last week? Friday's just the dya they're -supposed- to have access to it.
'To protect your MP3 files' - uhm, wtf?!
I thought the worst operating system of all time was Window ME, then again has Microsoft made anything that didn't crash.
Zune - All crashed on the same day.
XBox - Rings of Death
Windows (any version) - need I say more.
How can such incompetent people make so much money, eh, it's probably the same as some nobody getting elected by repeating the word Change.
Still running XP and so are others I suspect. Would be nice to know if 7 is allows me to do something XP can't. The other issue is my overall lack of desire to purchase tech any time soon. Not too hard for me to forget Vista but it is hard for me to forget XP.
It will finally have a chair throwing screen saver.
"Set it loose." Does Windows 7 have rabies? Is it about to start gnawing on people passing by it? Is it not potty trained yet? More to the point... Why are we advertising Windows 7 here. It's really more something for E! Weekly -- Because as far as I can tell... Windows 7 is just Windows XP with a nose job. And dear god, has it gotten fat... Can it even fit into a size 16 now? Next week's headline: "Ballmer and Seven Check into Weight Management Clinic," with a paparazi photo showing him throwing chairs at the other inmates. Microsoft claims it was shopped... Film at 11.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What kind of pirate are you? You're missing your ARRRRRR.
I understand that "Bob" was the absolute worst. Kind of like having a fancy Clippy tell you how to 'think' just so that you can learn to use something that does absolutely nothing other than tell you how to use it. In never used it, so maybe that's why I don't think much of MS products these days, I have not been assimilated yet.
It will not require Vista SP1 to install, that's the only upgrade scenario supported by this release.
You can install it on a clean machine, in a dual boot configuration or however you want, but it'll only upgrade(as in transfer across settings, etc) Vista SP1.
When their "improvement" is the damned taskbar...
I mean, damn: cant they see that taskbars are going the way of the dodo or turning into widgets and quickly being made obsolete by desktop searching?
Of course, when you see the previous one, its to be expected that, for them, its a big thing.
NO SIG
Why anyone without any force would downgrade they hardware is beyond my understanding... come on microsoft, remove all the video, audio, driver .... low level encryption... and maybe just maybe your saless will go up... where is the %$^# root account anyway???
Choke that chicken!
Whip that weasel!
Spank that monkey!
Crank that shaft!
I do so love these articles. You rabid anti-Microsofties never disappoint me.
But most everybody using a computer is worried about spyware and viruses. UAC requires user education. You need to train your users (family, friends, etc) that when you see a UAC dialog, they better think. Tell them they should never see that dialog unless they are *installing* a program they bought (or downloaded). Train them to be nervous and worried about UAC dialogs... they should never see one unless they are installing software. It will encourage them to call you when one shows up.
UAC + user training = way better then XP. Your family can install crap easily, and they will call you before they do (so you can talk them out of installing yet another damn toolbar). Win win.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ntr-pw_6C0
> It is also in there best interests to set the stage to ditch all legacy 32bit apps they sell.
Not likely. Windows 7 will sell vastly more 32bit copies than 64bit. It's the device drivers. Existing 32bit drivers will work on 7 and many vendors have yet to ship any 64bit drivers for any Windows version. None would go to the trouble of bringing up a 64bit driver for a discontinued product. Therefore anyone not in a position to do a green field reset of their computing experience will stick with 32bit until the memory limit becomes too much pain to bear, then look for Microsoft to offer up PAE versions to the home user to keep 32bit alive a few more years.
It's a chicken & egg thing. To get widespread 64bit adoption we need widspread availibility of drivers for at least one whole product life cycle. But nobody will invest in 64bit drivers without proven demand. Then you add in the whole DRM nightmare involved in 64bit drivers for Windows and it is easy to see why vendors refuse to play ball.
Contrast with Linux. Every in tree driver went 64bit pretty much as soon as the first 64bit arch (Alpha) went into the tree. But even there there were issues with 3rd party drivers not seeing the need to invest in 64bit. Nvidia, ATI, Adobe, etc. Adobe was sorked around by getting 32bit plugins to run in 64bit browsers. But teh video problem was a real ballbreaker for quite a while. Thankfully we had a small list of video hardware with free drivers and thus 64bit support. I made the 64bit jump at home in 2003 but had to settle for a Radeon 9200 until things improved.
Democrat delenda est
And considering that every Microsoft product requires new hardware, the chances that software manufacturers will embrace when is doubtful as they will be waiting to see what consumers will be doing this time around and harware manufacturer will be waiting as well.
Because during a recession/depression, people are tightening their belts. Statistics already show that people are not spending and have already done their nesting spending and are putting everything else into the bank in case something terrible happens which is causing the economy even further troubles.
So who is left to buy their OS (which most likely will require a new computer as they always do)? Not consumers as they are hurting. Not businesses as they are cash strapped. Not the government as they are tryiong to make up for a deficit.
I say good luck getting those sales. This one may be a good OS (*cough* recycled VISTA *cough*) but it will most likely fail on release due to the economic collapse.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Bob wasn't an OS.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"intriguing user-interface improvements, including the much-anticipated new task bar."
lmao... anticipated by whom?
Progress, M$ style.
Is DRM in Win7 interestingly different from DRM in Vista? My impression is that Vista DRM had many ramifications for things like writing and deploying device drivers, etc.
Speaking absolute numbers, any software company in the world would be thrilled to sell ~10 million copies of their flagship product every month. So before you call Vista "unpopular" I'd like to ask: "Compared to what?"
Any company except Microsoft. As to your question: compared to XP, obviously, but more importantly to the rate at which the newest Windows replaces the old one. This one's not getting traction.
From a quick look online, it looks like Vista sold less total units than XP in the first 6 months, which is appalling since the total number of installed computers increased a great deal. Additionally, XP is still killing Vista for business sales as of 2008, two years after Vista was launched. And you can't trust MS's numbers, because the XP boxes they're selling now come with Vista licenses and XP pre-loaded, which they do so they can try to inflate their Vista numbers.
Going back to the story, Vista is so good that Microsoft has to run a "Project Mojave" campaign to convince people Vista doesn't suck. It's so good that Microsoft won't even mention it by name and are rushing it's replacement out the door as quickly as possible.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Vista-struggling-to-match-XP-sales/0,130061733,339282002,00.htm
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205210375
http://apcmag.com/xp_still_killing_vista_in_sales_volume_hp.htm
Point taken, but, to be fair, Bob wasn't exactly an operating system. It was an alternate shell for Windows 3.1 and 95.
In all honesty, I find Windows 1.0 to be the least functional of all of Microsoft's operating systems. But the bar wasn't very high back then, so I don't think its really in the running for "least popular." MS-DOS 4.0 (not 4.01) is also definitely in the running for "buggiest software ever released by Microsoft," but that's another story....
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
That's interesting. Do you closely follow other people's Firehose?
Oh, wait. Never mind.
I tried Vista and wasn't too impressed, but XP is getting seriously long in the tooth. I've got a pretty fierce machine, and XP just doesn't do it justice.
I run Linux on duel boot, but I have always preferred to have both Windows and Linux around, need to in fact, because of my work.
I'm looking forward to downloading the beta, and I'll go out and buy the upgrade as soon as it comes out.
So will loads of other people, even if its just grabbing it from piratebay and managing with dodgy rips and authentication issues.
They'll just pretend they'd rather use an OS that was released before most of the decent hardware in their computers was even created.
Yes, it might suck to start with, did you ever use Linux in the early days? that sucked hard in so many ways... I expect that Microsoft will sort things out satisfactorily, just as they did with XP (the OS that virtually everyone posting here is no doubt using now).
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
> What kind of pirate are you? You're missing the link to the goddamned torrent!
ftfy
You want an analogy that isn't a car analogy? You've got your "the OS is just a wrapper around the BIOS. Applications should do whatever they want" folk. These are the tech equivalent of "government is the root of all problems, remove it from everything"... call them Regan republicans or perhaps Ron Paul style republicans.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the "your OS should do pretty much everything, applications aren't able to making proper decisions without OS intervention". Are these guys the far-left who want government to do everything? Are these guys the tech version of socialists? Dunno.
And if you want my opinion, the OS is more then a shim around the bios. Operating systems (like the government) had to evolve to meet the needs of a growing, more complex set of applications and requirements (ditto with our governments). Going back to a "pure" operating system that just wraps the Bios and presents a green console just wouldn't work, same with going back to a razor thin US federal government. The OS needs to enforce rules and needs to dictate what applications (citizens) can and cannot do or else the whole thing will fail.
On the other hand, if you let the operating system do too much, you will piss off your developers and worse, probably piss off various governments (think anti-trust). Let your government get too big, you'll piss off the citizens and worse, risk bankruptcy.
I'll let somebody else flesh this out.
- sarcasm on -
Congratulations to all of us open source enthusiasts and fellow nerds.
We managed to do even worse then vista and couldn't get linux to be accepted on the desktop. Now we will be crushed between 7 and X.
- sarcasm off -
phypsilon
That's how bad it was. I picked up an upgrade copy for $50 at Best Buy. When Vista hits the bargin bin like ME did then I'll say that it's as dreadful as ME. So far MS isn't cutting the price of Vista. You can find the Basic version without SP1 for less than $50 on Amazon since sellers are trying to get rid of them but with SP1 you're still paying the typical $100 for an upgrade copy of Windows.
ME was a sad attempt to bridge the gap between Window 2000 and Window 98 by simply changing the UI to match and adding in a few extra features such as internet connection sharing. What really made it stupid was that XP came out shortly after so it was a big waste for people to buy it.
At least Vista owners will get some use out of their software before the replacement shows up. ME owners felt ripped off because XP was such a huge improvement and all they got was an ugly version of 98.
Work Safe Porn
This guy has a link to Steve Ballmer's CES keynote and an insightful take on it, and all you can do is wonder who he is? What do you want to do take twitter out on a date?
This is big news that we will hear more about. We've been forever hearing bullshit about what an evil data sucking company Google is and how Firefox sucks for having Google search built in. Now Firefox has user configurable search but M$ has bought your Facebook and bribed Verrizon and Dell for the kind of search "placement" that lost them the Netscape anti-trust trail. How much more in your face does M$ have to be to get your attention?
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4632931/Microsoft.Windows.7.Beta.1.Build.7000.x64.DVD-WinBeta
The UAC dialog looks a lot difference then any other dialog that pops up. Train them to be very nervous and apprehensive when they see a UAC dialog. Hopefully they'll start calling you when they pop up so you can talk them out of installing $GOOGLE_YAHOO_TWITTER_TOOLBAR_#23.
Really though, I've been fairly successfull in explaining what UAC is and why they should pay attention to when they pop up. Nobody wants spyware, but most people never see the connection between "I just ran $RANDOM.EXE and now my computer is slow". UAC is an easy sell if you frame it as a barrier between $RANDOM.EXE and spyware-city. In fact, given a willing listener, it isn't too hard to explain "on XP, a program could access any part of your system you want, on Vista, it can only access a couple things like your documents and desktop.. the only way it can access your system and install spyware is through a UAC dialog".
PS: And yeah, I know UAC isn't a foolproof barrier. If UAC is used correctly by a user, the only real way for a program to get root access is the old-fashioned way, privilege elevation exploits. But you don't need to tell them that detail, it isn't relevant to them and will just confuse them. Only nerds like us will appreciate that :-)
I'm not sure what you are getting at. There is nothing special about Vista that allows random software to be installed. XP would allow it as 99% of all home users were admin. Vista requires $RANDOM.EXE to request a privilege escalation.
And if you aren't the one making decisions about which software to install on Linux, who is? Last I checked, Ubuntu has a repository full of random software. Unless by "random software" you are being dismissive and condescending to software you deem un-pure somehow. But then we descend into semantics and language manipulation... something a few open source advocates seem awfully good at.
And often times for political gain. See also: the use of the term GNU/Linux.
It is basically like how windows update seems to function in Vista. Windows update is run under some privilege level that lets you, the normal user, do updates that affect the entire system and almost never see a UAC dialog (and you typically do only when you cancel an update). Right?
I've always wondered how windows update was able to do the magic it does without a UAC dialog.
Seriously, Microsoft is right about one thing: if you set people down in front of Vista and dont' tell them it's Vista, they love it. Tell them it's Vista, and they hate it.
People are PRIMED to hate the OS based on the name and based on really over-blown and inaccurate Apple ads, and really bad experiences SOME users had in the first year (due to the "Vista Capable" debacle mostly).
Since SP1, Vista has been very usable. I've been using it almost since it came out, and it's a perfectly decent OS. In fact, I sorta hate going back to XP now... I miss too many good things about Vista, like the instant search features, new Start menu, and just some of the look and feel.
Nobody seems to remember how much people HATED the old "XP" when it first came out. It didn't really become popular until SP2 was released.
Most of the anti-Vista sentiment is simply irrational and baseless.
Are there some things not to like? Sure. I turn off UAC immediately. There are a few quirks in the new Windows Explorer that I don't like (and which seem to be unchanged in Windows 7). But really, beyond that? It's much more stable, and full featured than XP, and it looks a hell of a lot better. Yeah, it's a memory pig, but I run with plenty of memory for my needs, and have no problems. And after 2 years of use, it's "slowed down" far less than comparable XP machines have (the old "Windows Decay" problem).
Am I looking forward to Windows 7? Definitely. It seems to fix the memory-pig and performance issues that Vista admittedly does have (a bigger issue on laptops than my desktop), but the fact will remain that it's little more than Vista with some spit and polish... and everyone will love it because it's "not Vista".
Vista-hate is getting to be tedious and facile, and it really is more psychological than real.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Yeah, that's what I thought too. Who gives a flying crap (other than Preston Gralla obviously) about a taskbar?
I do, actually. It seems at first like a huge rip-off of Mac OS X's dock, and Microsoft is nothing if not consistent about trying to rip-off Apple.
However, after now having seen some videos of it, I've gone from fear and loathing to interest and appreciation. It looks like MS somehow learned from all the horrible mistakes of Mac OS X's dock and made their new taskbar act like the dock should have. Icons stay in place and don't dance around requiring you to hunt for things. Separation between different apps is easily visible, and the use of color makes it easy to tell what you're hovering over without having to look directly at it. Multiple windows from the same app are grouped together instead of creating clutter. There is clear separation between active apps (in the bar) and the list of apps you'd like to run (in the Start menu).
It brings tears to my eyes. I've hated Mac OS X's dock from the first day I had to use it. As a Classic Mac OS user, I missed my pop-up folders, my segregated menus, and having all my stuff stay in place so that I could click it without looking or even really thinking about it. I bemoaned how with Mac OS X and its "lickable" Aqua interface, Apple was putting flash over functionality when better UI was the whole reason I was a Mac user in the first place.
This jaded old Mac user who has moved to using the command prompt to do everything out of hatred for the new Finder and dock feels something akin to warmth for an MS product for the first time. *sniff*
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
By Mary-Jo Enderle
I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Beta $MOCKUP.
I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.
WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! - the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved $HATED user interface from Office $CURRENT_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!
The controversial Digital Rights Management system in Vista has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray(tm) of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.
A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on $CURRENT_VERSION release day - the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets - in the shade.
I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.
Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!
I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Or the program executable. Click "Properties". Click on the "Compatibility" tab. Check "disable desktop composition". Then the next time the game gets run, it will drop out of Aero for you so you can alt-tab to your hearts content.
BTW, isn't this were having a video card with more RAM on it would help? It would seem to me the answer is yes.
I never really expected Slashdot to give Windows of any kind a fair shake, and given that 99%+ of you have never tried it, it's entertaining to hear the responses.
It's really not that bad. Really.
But I'll leave you to your devices and talk up Linux which with the attitude displayed here, is no wonder why it never makes it onto the desktop.
Feel free to mod me down or whatever. I usually like to wait until I've tried something before criticising it.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Repositories are cool, but they have their own set of issues. To name a single, rather major issue, who controls it? People are pissed about the iPhone and the AppStore, but isn't that a repository? Can a normal user install software on an iPhone that isn't downloaded via the repository? Dunno, dont own one. Same with the Xbox360 and XNA. Can you install random XBox apps that aren't through that XNA community repository? Dunno, I don't have an XBox.
Any operating system that wants to have a non-insignificant market share will have the ability to install software the way Windows or OSX does. It is either "install random executables" or "deal with increasingly draconian repositories".
Before you say "well, ideally the repository would be distributed like YUM is", explain how that isn't "visiting a random website", at least in the eyes of a non-nerd, non-technical user :-)
n/t
you had me at #!
You should work on your AC skills, or create another account.
As a longtime DOS user, I felt the same way about Windows.
The fact that XP removed the ability to do a lot from the command line meant you couldn't do that. I happily jumped to OS X that allowed me to use the GUI or not, AS I WANTED!
It took MS till NOW to get back with the CLI game.
By the time you get the CD they are already out of date. If you assume the end user has an internet connection, you can leave out all but drivers for the IO and the netcard. The rest, like video card drivers can either come off the driver CD that came with the video card (i.e. a non-internet user) or get downloaded off the magical inter-tele-tubes.
Seriously, I'm a nerd so this doesn't count... but isn't the first thing you do with a new piece of hardware is throw away the CD and download the current drivers off the net?
My computer is pretty good, and Xp doesn't cut it, I have a lot of issues where its pretty obvious XP is barely managing to control the hardware. I have Vista on a laptop (one capable of running it). I see some things I like, but I also see things I don't, and it appears obvious that Microsoft are going to draw a line under Vista and work on Windows 7 instead.
I probably could get used to Vista, but I didn't like it when I first tried it. Not because everyone hated it, but because I was at the time routinely needing to copy tens of thousands of text files over our network (experiment results), and my god that hurt.
Sure, they've fixed that, but it put me off, I didn't *need* to upgrade, and now I'm eagerly awaiting Windows 7.
The laptop needs to keep Vista for browser compatibility testing, which is most of what I use it for. For now at least. I'll probably make it ubuntu only at some point, instead of its present duel boot.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
In all honesty, I find Windows 1.0 to be the least functional of all of Microsoft's operating systems. But the bar wasn't very high back then
I wouldn't say that. Us Amiga owners were using preemptive multitasking and virtual desktops that year, and Mac guys had a pretty nice system of their own.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I doubt it. That poor lady would have gotten the even more evil looking UAC dialog that unsigned applications get.
PS: Folks. Get a damn certificate for your software. I train people to be scared and nervious of UAC dialogs and I think I'm not alone in this. Nothing says amateur more then running a setup program that wasn't signed. The evil looking unsigned UAC dialog will scare normal people (thanks to training) from installing your app. It is the same thing when you hit a page that uses a self-signed certificate in firefox. You will scare off a ton of your traffic.
PPS: And I understand this is expensive for open source apps. The best answer I have is make SSL certs issued by our governments, who would then (in theory) grant them to non-profit groups for free. If governments did SSL, everybody could have certificates. But that is offtopic :-)
I still have my Windows 1.03 floppies (Tandon OEM version).
Five 360K's plus a 1.2M with Windows Write.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
They've...taken Vista, polished it up and threw in some nice UI tweaks...It's much snappier, and I really like the facelift given to apps like Paint and Wordpad
Well, we couldn't ask for a more compelling review than that! I don't care what people say about 64 bits, UAC, DRM, or corrupted mp3's. Paint and Wordpad have always been there for me!~
Buying new computers, let alone new versions of Windows won't
be high on the list of necessity for the next 3 or 4 years. Ballmers
salesmanship is going to end up being just a lot of hot air
aimed at soon to be unemployed Windows Developers.
And folks keep saying that Windows7 will happily run on existing
Vista-Capable hardware. Until I get my grubby hands on it,
I will not rely on my internet peeps or other sources. "Once
bitten, twice shy my friends."
I look forward to a similar WIN7-CAPABLE class action suit with
this new OS.
Where's my pinch of salt?
The compelling reasons to upgrade to Windows7 just aren't
there. WinNT, 2K, XP could connect to the NET, send email,
compose letters, and be productive.
Why buy Win7? for the sake of a new TaskBar! Sorry, Ballmers
sales job isn't that good.
Most of the companies who buy tons of PC's in bulk are the ...Notice that a lot of these companies
Fortune 500
may no longer exist following the traumatic blood letting of
the banking and housing industry. That puts the onus back
on the broke home user.
Windows7 will need new hardware to run as it was intended.
Although PC vendors will short sell "Win7 CAPABLE" hardware
as they did the last time around.
Is Windows7 worth the expense? Soon enough the beta
versions on the NET will tell all.
Get past the "I NEED THAT" ora surrounding Win7 hype. You
truthfully can't afford it, or even justify it.
Just throwing another 2 cents worth onto the pile.
-
Bob Windows (Classic) OS2
The new taskbar looks like KDE's 3.5's kicker taskbar. Hopefully it is equally customizable. I'm rooting for Win7 - ut will be nice not to cringe when someone wants a windows PC at the office.
-- $G
Seriously, Microsoft is right about one thing: if you set people down in front of Vista and dont' tell them it's Vista, they love it. Tell them it's Vista, and they hate it.
I'm sure that if I buy a Dell or HP today and sit people in front of Vista they will think it is pretty neat. The problem is when you give them the box and tell them to go home. Just letting a normal user install any version of Vista on any version of Windows on hardware that is who knows how old with any number of peripherals is fought with danger. There is no way to tell how compatible any particular home desktop is till you run through the upgrade where by then you may have something as functional as an Etch-a-sketch.
The second sin of Vista is that it hurt developers. Its bad enough when a user finds their "Old Bessy Printer + Scanner" but it is doubly damaging when the software developer at the vendor has to now jump through extra hoops to restore the functionality. Even for new development trivial tasks, for instance Control Panel and Service control, are now made more complex in Vista. In a lot of cases this is how it should have been from the start but the developer is forced to take the cost of that. This ends up with some cases where the driver is fine but is unconfigurable or uncontrollable.
So it annoys some users who have old or exotic software and hardware. And it annoys software developers who find simple tasks made impossible or more complex. Are we sure that some hatred isn't justified Yeah, Apple commercials really are to blame for that...
If you need an additional hint: It is fine and well for Microsoft to present Vista to users and developers as "The new way" but they never offered them legacy support for the interim. Even offering users and developers "jailed behavior" would be better than outright non-functional.
I do, actually. It seems at first like a huge rip-off of Mac OS X's dock, and Microsoft is nothing if not consistent about trying to rip-off Apple.
I will reserve judgement until I've actually used it, but from the demoes I've seen it duplicates the single biggest reason the Dock is broken as a task-switching device:
There is no way to easily switch from one arbitrary window to another. First you need to hover over the application icon (or right-click it with the Dock), then click on the window within the application that you want.
The article explores features new to the beta.
It is not - and does not pretend to be - a review of Win 7 as a whole.
MS Vista ended the year with 21% of the global desktop. The OSX MacIntel with 7%. Linux with 0.8% Top Operating System Share Trend
We are not talking licenses here, we are talking users surfing the web - and a site that tracks access through the Wii as diligently as it does OSX and Windows.
The trend line for Linux couldn't be flatter if you drew it with a T-square.
Apple and Microsoft are pretty much where you would expect to find them anywhere in the last 25 years or so.
But Apple has bet its future on pricey high tech gadgets.
Microsoft profits - indirectly - from the $150 720p HD pocket camcorder.
"Attention WalMart shoppers."
Fun tech.
Family tech.
But not a budget-buster.
That is a good place to be right now.
The XP netbook at $350. The 64 Bit Vista Premium laptop at $800.
Microsoft is solvent, profitable - with Exxon-Mobil rated corporate credit. "Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar." Not even Apple can claim that much.
Point taken, but, to be fair, Bob wasn't exactly an operating system. It was an alternate shell for Windows 3.1 and 95.
Windows 3.1 and 95 were just alternate shells for DOS.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sudo is a different beast then UAC to some degree. It lets the admin control what programs can get elevated (/etc/sudoers). Ubuntu doesn't tap into all the crap you can do with sudo. It just does what UAC does... pop up a dialog to confirm privilege escalation, then run said program under the requested privileges. Well, only kinda.
Windows (.NET anyway) lets the program specify what privileges it needs to run under and which privileges are merely a luxury. .NET will run the program under only the privileges the application has asked for. I've yet to actually need this kind of stuff so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but it is my understanding the application has to request UAC, Vista doesn't just monitor the programs interaction and go "hey, this guy wants to write to a protected file, lets pop up a UAC and ask". Any program that doesn't request a UAC dialog and tries to write to a protected file will get a permission error.
What is my point? You are incorrect saying "not because I visited a website, or because I connected a photo frame to my PC. It also doesn't happen every time that I need those privileges". Vista will not pop up a UAC dialog in any of those cases (have you used it?). If it does, some software you have installed is trying to pull some seriously fucked up shit and obviously you should "cancel".
The Dock is fine as an app switcher for 99% of the cases. If you want to bring Mail to the front, you click on it. How could that be any simpler?
"The general public will have to wait until Friday" Unless off course you really want the 64-bit demo floating around the bitTorrent waves...
It's time for Microsoft to start fresh with a new base code anyway. Quit making the OS so darn backwards compatible and I bet life would be easier. Apple did that and seems to have had success. There's got a be a point in which you tell your client base "Look...your software's 10+ years old, we can't support it anymore. Upgrade or find an alternative."
One thing that helped kill Vista was having 6 different versions. "Oh, you want the pretty graphics that we boast about in all the commercials? Sorry, that's in the high end version that you didn't purchase." That's why I really like the Mac OS X. One version that contains all the features.
Yaaaayy!!! Let's all go BUY a service pack so we can have the OS we should have gotten when we got Vista. MSFT, I'm done with you.
Alt-Tab is the obvious answer here. Why would you use the mouse for switching windows?
You are clearly not a real geek... ;)
Command-Tab, thank you very much.
I've been using it for a few days and I only have positive things to say about it.
And Far Cry 2 is 20% faster on Win7 than on WinXP.
Alt-Tab is the obvious answer here. Why would you use the mouse for switching windows?
Because when you've got 30+ windows open and the one you want to switch to is "far away" in the stack, it's quicker and easier to click the button in the taskbar than hit Alt+Tab 10-15 times.
Getting desperate, Mr. Balmer?
So far, Win7 is largely underwhelming. It is certainly better than Vista, but what isn't? It will, however, be compared to Vista and XP, as well as the competition, especially OS X. After companies accepted the thought of not moving to a newer windos release (i.e. Vista), they will entertain the same thoughts with Win7. So this is not an "automatic update", it will have to bring some convincing reasons.
I've yet to see one.
Releasing a beta without any compelling reasons to prefer it over XP might well cause the kind of press that MS doesn't need at all - the kind that says "it's nice, but it does nothing old XP doesn't do".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Bill Gates said they had to release the next version of Windows in 2000. There is no way it would be ready in time, so the Windows team concentrated on the Business APIs for Windows 2000. Parts of the multimedia API were completely missing, like the video capturing API.
Now before you say, but I could capture video in Windows 2000. Yes, you could, but not through the Win32 API because it wasn't written yet.
That being said, even though the Win32 Video API was in XP, there was a major design flaw in the multi-media timer so many companies continued to use the work arounds they'd come up with in Windows 2000.
Windows XP was the finished version of Windows 2000.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Or just use Expose.
It's slower, even more so because I have 3 screens.
Or just click on the icon on the Dock.
It's also slower, and broken in the way I have just described.
The only time the problem you describe actually shows itself are for applications that are GDI-style, and those are few and far between these days.
No, the problem shows itself with every application that has multiple document windows.
The Dock is fine as an app switcher for 99% of the cases. If you want to bring Mail to the front, you click on it. How could that be any simpler?
The Dock sucks as a task switcher because it is application-centric. Ie: to get to an arbitrary window, you need to first click on the application (to bring all of its windows to the top), then on the actual window you want. Or, alternatively, right-click on the app icon and select the window you want from their (but this seems to have a ~1 second delay built-in before the context menu appears).
In contrast, the ("classic") Taskbar lets you immediately, and with a single click, bring any window to the top of the stack. It is a vastly superior task-switching UI.
This "new" Taskbar (and, the "classic" one with that incredibly annoying "button groups collapse" mis-feature is making exactly the same mistake Apple did with the Dock. Fortunately, at least, from what I've read, those of us who actually multitask heavily will be able to get the "classic" behaviour.
"There is clear separation between active apps (in the bar) and the list of apps you'd like to run (in the Start menu)."
Well, not really. Running apps and "pinned" app icons can be mixed together on the taskbar, like on the Mac's dock. The running apps have a extra glass highlight around them.
But since the Start menu is still there, you don't have to use it this way. You could just un-pin all your apps and only use the taskbar for running apps. Best of both worlds.
DCMonkey
Fired up my TechNet Plus subscription and downloaded (or, that is, am slowly downloading) build 7000. Whilst perusing the release notes, I happened across a warning - if Media Player touches your MP3 files, it will PERMANENTLY ERASE the first several seconds of them. All of them. Automatically.
Seriously. WTF?
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
Expose allows arbitrary switching easily. Combined with spaces (the first Virtual Screen interface since some of the SGI ones actually done right) getting to any app is quite easy.
Even more so there are two ways of "alt-tab" in OSX, one is between any app and the other is between windows of the same application. I contend that if you are working with 30 windows open of numerous apps there is something very wrong in your workflow.
--- I do not moderate.
So the only people who bought Vista were forced to buy it or are uneducated idiots?
or as the F/OSS leader says.. windows is a drug.
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5075219/olpc-teaches-children-to-smoke-windows
man you f/oss lunatics really need some medical assistance... all this trolling has damaged your brain. Maybe stallman will have "I trolled MS" on his grave. I'm sure the FOSS smelly hippies will do his bidding..
It's the new 666
Expose allows arbitrary switching easily.
Perhaps you missed the part where I was talking about the Dock ?
Besides, Expose has its own set of problems, especially with large numbers of windows and multiple screens.
Even more so there are two ways of "alt-tab" in OSX, one is between any app and the other is between windows of the same application.
This is not "two ways", this is one way with two steps.
I contend that if you are working with 30 windows open of numerous apps there is something very wrong in your workflow.
Typically a dozen or more of those windows are SSH sessions to servers, many of which are doing things like tail -f /var/log/all.log. Regardless, why should I close things (and lose state) just because I won't be using it for a while ?
There's nothing wrong with my workflow, it's been serving me well for over a decade. The OS X UI just doesn't handle heavy (and arbitrary) task switching very well. MacOS Classic was the same.
... Microsoft is bound by backward compatibility requirements to keep shipping OS's that are fundamentally broken and that do not allow for 32-bit apps and drivers to run out of one 64-bit OS.
Here's a run-down on Windows and Apple's 64-bit support on the desktop:
As you can see, Microsoft has been clearly in front of Apple regarding 64-bit application support. The fact that Apple did not support graphical 64-bit applications until October 2007 is frankly embarrassing, considering that 64-bit Windows has had this support since the first 64-bit OS in 2001.
It should also be noted that Microsoft was really important in bringing AMD64 (x64) to market. Intel was dragging its feet with Itanium, issuing press releases downplaying Itanium on the desktop, stating that 64-bit computing only made sense for servers. Microsoft's David Cutler reportedly went to Intel, asking them to introduce a set of 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set. Intel refused. So Dave started working with AMD, and in 2004 the AMD64 Hammer CPU was born. Intel was basically forced to come out with an AMD64 clone they dubbed "EMT64", about 6 months later. It is unlikely that Intel would have supported x64 unless Microsoft had agreed to support the new AMD CPU. Dave Cutler reportedly had Server 2003 running on the Hammer prototype a few hours after receiving it.
You can still see a remnant of the close AMD relationship on 64-bit Windows by opening a shell and typing "echo %processor_architecture%". Hint: it doesn't say X64.
Apple didn't invent the dock. If you're gonna spout that shit, we'll say Apple stole the dock from Stardock, who wrote it for OS/2. And that they got the idea from...
And the list goes on. Apple doesn't invent, just like Microsoft. They "appropriate".
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
(Please note, I am only addressing the first line of your post. The remainder is actually quite interesting).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Seriously, I'm a nerd so this doesn't count... but isn't the first thing you do with a new piece of hardware is throw away the CD and download the current drivers off the net?
A friend once tried that with his Netgear Gigabit Ethernet card on XP. ... it didn't work too well for him. It turns out that XP's built in ethernet drivers got in a fight with the hardware and kept trying to take down the OS.
He had no floppy drive in the computer nor was there a CD burner to be found for us to transfer the files to his computer. This was before the days of ubiquitous USB flash drives and the motherboard had no onboard ethernet, either, so we ended up commandeering an old-school MP3 player (you know... the kind the size of the iPhone with 64 MB storage) and converting it to mobile-disk-drive duty to save the day.
Hooray for the sneakernet!
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
This is the only thing I've been looking more forward to than targeted ads in my fleet of Lexuses (Lexii?)
Throughout December, I just wandered around the malls, singing "I'm dreaming... of a newww task bar". Pretty much the entire Austin area public took it up. I felt like the Pied Piper.
This will revitalize the economy all by itself. By getting the beta out there before Mr. Obama's new stimulus package is in place, Mr Ballmer just saved the USA at least $1trillion. Europe's stock markets are already on the mend as well; can the rest of the world be far behind?
Icons stay in place and don't dance around requiring you to hunt for things
Yes, it bugs me too that this isn't the default, but it makes the dock a lot more bearable. The dock now grows from the corner of the screen downwards. Items that are already in it don't move until the entire screen is filled, then they shrink slightly, but are still in almost the same place.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Has anyone know if any previous beta has worked on virtual box?
I'm aware they didn't (and never said that they did), but it's worth noting that Stardock probably stole their idea from NeXT, the company that Apple absorbed to grab the basis for Mac OS X. After all, the NEXTSTEP dock predates the founding of Stardock. You could argue that they got the idea from Acorn, but it's tenuous at best since Acorn's iconbar was so limited in functionality compared to NeXT's dock.
Anyway, I seriously doubt that any company's software from the 80s or early 90s is providing inspiration or something resembling market pressure to encourage MS to update the taskbar. MS, as always, has been firmly following Apple on UI ideas. Just look at Aero and UAC.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This article though short is probably one of the most interesting things I've read that's Window's related in a long time; just to know that they're doing it. Short, but very informative.
Windows 3.1 and 95 were just alternate shells for DOS.
Windows 95 did more than enough to be closer to an "Operating System" than a "shell".
So did Windows 3.1 (and especially 3.11), for that matter.
Wait a second, wasn't Mohave the least popular MS Os? Or was it Millenium Edition? --- No more lasers for me, thank you.
...but I wouldn't bet on it. I think Ballmer and Co. would have to be total idiots to not realize what kept people away from Vista and kept XP popular. I don't doubt that there are plenty of opportunities to fix Vista and all the other crap that Windows has accumulated since the MSDOS years. If people are happy with WinXP, sooner or later that will change as OSX/Linux/FreeBSD catch up with features/games/killer apps that were exclusive to Windows, and so Microsoft will have to find ways to give consumers what they want instead of trying to hypnotise them into upgrading to what MS thinks will help them keep market dominance. And eventually hardware purchases will pick up. When that happens, the average user is not going to want to install WinXP on their new computer. I think Microsoft will rebound like Intel did 4-5 years ago. If they don't, it'll probably be because of the economy and/or a major paradigm shift that Microsoft missed the boat on (might be "open source", might not). Cross fingers and hope that Windows 7 sheds more of the typical Windows/MS crud and improves interoperability with other OS's, etc.
Do you know that key-repeating applies to alt-tab as well? Like you, for years I was always hitting "Alt-tab-tab-tab-tab-tab...etc." to get to my window and it did get tedious when you have many windows open, but you can just HOLD alt-tab to get to the window you want. I've got about 15 windows open now and it only takes about 1.5s to traverse them all, if even that.
In fact, some might argue that it's TOO quick, but that's where another command comes into play alt-shift-tab. While still holding down the alt key, press shift-tab and you'll traverse the windows backwards (this functionality usually works in any application that has an "alt-tab" like functionality, like Firefox). So if you have 30 windows open, the furthest away the window you want could be is only 15, which if you overshoot, you can just go back one or two.
Here's a better suggestion: If you go into the new taskbar properties, you can set it to display the window name as well (basically, the way windows currently does it), so there's an even better distinction between pinned Apps (that only show the icon) and running apps (that now have a rectangular shape, complete with text). Best about it is that you can set it to only do this if there's space, so when you do end up with 30-odd windows open, they condense back down to the icon-only approach, so no space is wasted.
It's certainly made me consider dropping my taskbar back down to 1 level instead of the current default of two that I use.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
People share Prince. People share Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. I'm OK with that. Windows 7? What a waste of bandwith.
Do you know that key-repeating applies to alt-tab as well?
Yes, but if I want to play whack-a-mole I'll go down to the arcade, where I can at least have the satisfaction of hitting something.
So if you have 30 windows open, the furthest away the window you want could be is only 15, which if you overshoot, you can just go back one or two.
And it would still be quicker and easier to just click straight on the Taskbar button for the window I want.
I sure hope they kept that feature where Vista occasionally (actually quite frequently) decides I don't deserve a taskbar. Or decides my 2x4 quicklaunch section should really take up the entire top row. Or the fact that when I manage to get my taskbar back it reverts to 1 row.
No doubt I am being brainwashed into the "Microsoft way" of laying out my taskbar.
Disagree again. I'm tired of seeing people claiming that everything Microsoft does is inspired by Apple.
Aero was not inspired by Aqua. UAC is not inspired by... uh, Mac OS X doesn't even have anything like it, does it?
(Also, how does NeXT = Apple by any stretch? At that time, Jobs was nowhere near Apple, and you can't count a NeXT product as an Apple one. Fanboi indeed).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
that Microsoft pays its people (and associated borgified companies) to post positive comments on messageboards and such about Windows. 7 is no exception; thanks to the fiasco that was Vista (and it was horrible, only Microsoft-paid shills and people that don't know any better think differently) and their desire to keep the "buzz" up for Windows.
"The next version will be great, we promise!" We've been hearing that since the Win95/98 transition, and it's generally never the case, unless you updated from NT4 to 2000 (or 9x to 2000). Microsoft came as close as they could to a great OS with 2k, and now they're just moving far, far away from it.
Microsoft needs to pull an OSX move and make a new version of Windows that breaks compatibility completely yet is stable, secure, and great again. Sadly thanks to Microsoft's arrogance, ignorance, and irrational lust of their chaotic Windows code base, it'll never happen.
Unless the general public is REALLY stupid (and they certainly can be), 7 will be a disaster, and we should see huge migrations to other OSes soon after its release.
Microsoft, this is a wake-up call. I don't want to see you go away, just improve.
This is anonymous coward because I know the fanatic /. mods will mod this down horribly (not to mention all the paid MS /.ers with mod points).
Aero was not inspired by Aqua. UAC is not inspired by... uh, Mac OS X doesn't even have anything like it, does it?
I frankly don't know how you can even say the former. A glossy, composited windowing system with lots of transparency, animated effects, live icons, etc.? Aero was inspired not by the rounded buttons and pinstripes of Aqua but its general capabilities. Aero is to the Windows XP interface what Aqua was to the Classic Mac OS interface. It's directly inspired by what Mac OS X does and was an attempt to steal back some of the limelight for a pretty interface.
As for UAC, what do you think Mac OS X's capability-based permission dialogs are? Have you never installed anything on the OS before?
(Also, how does NeXT = Apple by any stretch? At that time, Jobs was nowhere near Apple, and you can't count a NeXT product as an Apple one. Fanboi indeed).
Stop it. You keep trying to put words into my mouth to claim that I'm saying that Apple invented the dock. I've tried to spell out that you're making this crap up in my last post, but you seem intent on pressing the idea. That's a typical behavior of partisans, fanboys, and anyone else who sees the world as "people I agree with v. all those people who are wrong and thus all the same in what they believe."
But if you insist, I'll take a stab at the argument since you're going to pretend I made it anyway. So here goes...
I have a hard time saying that a company that results from a merger can't take credit for the products that one of the two companies made even if they took the name of the other one. It's not like Apple bought NeXT's IP and chucked all the staff like Caldera did with SCO. It's more like NeXT bought Apple with Apple's money. They jettisoned the Copeland project Apple's engineers had worked on for years and made OpenStep the basis of their new OS, they put NeXT's lead engineer in charge of development, they replaced their CEO is NeXT's CEO, and they kept on almost all of NeXT's development staff. Really, what more do you want? Does Apple have to call itself NeXT to earn credit?
Eh, that's my best shot at it. There. I've set up a nice straw man for you. (Aren't I a sweetheart?) Now feel free to ignore the rest of my post and rabidly attack it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I agree that not "everything Microsoft does is inspired by Apple", but OSX does have something like UAC. It's just not nearly as annoying. Partially because there is the unix history of applications being aware of permissions and not requiring root access for every little thing.
I liked it. I was 9.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Win 3.1 was a shell. It actually required DOS to be installed first. And it was a completely separate product from DOS (packaged and sold separately). So in order to run Windows legally, you also needed to own a copy of DOS.
Win95 was a true OS in the sense that it could be installed on an empty partition and would boot to the GUI by default- though you could reboot in DOS mode to run certain programs (ie- games that required protected mode). Previous versions of Windows required you to put "win" in the autoexec.bat in order to do the same thing.
Sigs are for losers
I don't care if M$ releasing new OS as I am using Linux and it never bitch over me. Public beta ! = Open Source Ballmer you sucks big time pls stop doing sloppy works dude.
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
Low UID....respect....
-- Posted from my parent's basement
You're spot on about the Dock being an application switcher and not a task (window) switcher, but really, when you've got 30+ windows open all you ever see in the Taskbar is a few letters for each. That might be enough, but my experience isn't so good with many windows in the Taskbar.
There are OS X apps like DragThing and LaunchBar that I believe might be what you're looking for.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
'cause it sucked! There are better ways of getting fancy looking GUI in Windows than flat out upgrading your OS.
Yeah. It's called a GUI interface to sudo. Have you ever even used OS X?
Well, I wouldn't know but you seem to have the facts at your fingertips.
However, what I'm saying is that those 'sales' of Vista by virtue of it being forcibly bundled with the laptop, even if someone wants the laptop to install l00nix :) shouldn't count as sales because no explicit choice was made; partly, it plays on consumers' inertia.
Note: this is almost identical to the idea that the browser-popularity figures are artificially skewed to appear as though IE is the majority 'choice' when we all know that it only appears so because windows falls out of the box running IE and a large majority either aren't aware that alternatives exist or of what they're missing by not choosing an alternative; in these cases, they can't be said to have made such a choice.
Well, he's got a point, hasn't he? A well-known tactic shared by the 'food'-dispensing company with stupid yellow plastic arch as logo.
fwiw, I'm a windows zealot; thanks for the advice though :)
Requiem for the American Dream
There is no way to easily switch from one arbitrary window to another. First you need to hover over the application icon (or right-click it with the Dock), then click on the window within the application that you want.
Actually, the superbar (as it's called) does help wit that, to some extent. For instance, say you have two Internet Explorer windows open, and each window has 3 tabs. The taskbar will contain two icons, showing each window. However, if you hover over those two grouped icons, you see each of the tabs previewed, and you can click any of those previews and the active window, with that tab is brought to the front.
This doesn't work, in general, for MDI windows or stupid SDI interfaces like Borland's Delphi. Delphi's interface is stupid though in it's lack of navigability. Thankfully, few interfaces are that bad (though the Gimp uses that paradigm, and it's one its worst flaws IMO).
There really is a lot to like about the Superbar, if you just give it a chance. And yes, while certain behaviors are similar to OSX's Dock, it really is just combining two functions that the taskbar already did to better utilize space and provide more visual feedback.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
But, using hardware that would otherwise be idle is "resource intensive." It's a matter of perspective.
The problem is that this only works if the OS eventually gives the resources back. If it doesn't the resources are still gone for a comparatively minor benefit.
How do you kill that which has no life?
the worst thing on this new beta is the return of the "My" in front of some Documents folder.. like "My Documents", "My Videos" , etc.. instead of the cleaner vista naming
I hope they check this before release.. a folder named Videos is much better than a My Videos one
http://xkcd.com/528/
...NOT to lay hands on it!
but isn't the first thing you do with a new piece of hardware is throw away the CD and download the current drivers off the net?
Actually I keep the CD, especially for those circumstances where either: the RAID driver must be loaded because Windows doesn't have a working driver or the NIC is driver is not included in the Windows release, making it impossible to download the current driver. I've seen both happen on my previous and current hardware (previous system had RAID enabled, current system not). In both instances the network driver wasn't integrated in the Windows release.
Linux however detects, installs & configures the NIC on both systems out of the box. I've only had trouble with some linux distros that see a RAID option in the BIOS (disabled) and during the install assume I want to have both disks in an array instead of JBOD and won't let me configure otherwise. Both Fedora 9 & Sabayon 4 have this issue, Ubuntu & Debian don't (they don't load a RAID driver unless you tell 'em to).
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Vista did that, new accounts are quite privileged by default (roughly equivalent to NT "Power User" I think) but are not admins. Hence UAC, etc.
The role-based account security model has always been one of the best features of NT windows, it's well thought out and more powerful than the standard *nix srwx bits. The problem is that MS refused to actually USE it by default until very recently.
> There is clear separation between active apps (in the bar) and the list of apps you'd like to run (in the Start menu).
Actually, there isn't. You can pin unlaunched apps to the taskbar, and some come pre-pinned. So they're all mixed in.
You're spot on about the Dock being an application switcher and not a task (window) switcher, but really, when you've got 30+ windows open all you ever see in the Taskbar is a few letters for each. That might be enough, but my experience isn't so good with many windows in the Taskbar.
My primary screen is a 27" @ 1920x1200 and my Taskbar is 3 levels high. I also have that idiotic 'collapse many buttons into one' turned off (although I do have application grouping enabled). I can usually find the window I want just fine. ;)
Generally I need to have 50+ windows open before identifying them becomes a chore.
Personally I think the Taskbar is one of Microsoft's genuine UI triumphs. My only real complaints about it are that I can't rearrange the buttons arbitrarily, I can't drag & drop objects directly onto a button, and that there's only one of them to cover all screens (ideally, I'd like one per screen, for the windows on that screen - although in some ways that would not work as well).
I have yet to use a better task-switching UI - although Expose isn't any _worse_ with relatively low (5-10) window counts (assuming you have it bound to a mouse button), and looks a lot cooler, so I suppose it could be considered "better" within those constraints.
Honestly, I have no idea. But as an MSDN subscriber I found this little tidbit on the Vista x86 and x64 download details both worrying and intriguing:
"Instructions and Resources
Update to Windows 7 Beta (KB961367)
To protect your MP3 files
1. Before you install this Beta release, back up all MP3 files that might be accessed by the computer, including those on removable media or network shares.
2. Install the Beta release of Windows 7; download and install the Update to Windows 7 Beta (KB961367) located on this page."
Further investigation using the KB number brings up a suggestion it's to do with Windows media player cutting the first few seconds off of all your MP3 files.
To this I have one question, why on earth would Windows or WMP ever under any circumstances need to seek out all your MP3s on your local drive, your network shares and your removable drives and then WRITE to them?
It's certainly one of the more concerning things I've seen so far.
Some of us Amiga owners still are - thanks to UAE! :^) Amiga and MAC's had far nicer systems back then. If Commodore hadn't blown it and gone under I think Amiga's would be kicking Microsoft's butt right now and Balmer would be throwing chairs cursing at Commodore.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I wouldn't say that. Us Amiga owners were using preemptive multitasking and virtual desktops that year, and Mac guys had a pretty nice system of their own.
Was GEOS out for the C64 yet? Preemptive multitasking and scalable fonts in 64K running from floppy? Yowza!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Win95 really was a full-blown OS, even though it still had a lot of DOS code.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Seriously, I'm a nerd so this doesn't count... but isn't the first thing you do with a new piece of hardware is throw away the CD and download the current drivers off the net?
No. Usually I throw away the CD, install the hardware, and start using it. Linux seems to have much better hardware support than Windows these days.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I wouldn't be surprised if this 'Bug' was another Microsoft attempt to DRM everything. Why would you even use the distrusted and Evil Microsoft Windows Player or let it do anything for you is beyond me. Why would you need to back up your MP3 files - oh that's right - Microsoft will shave off the front of your mp3's, corrupt them and make them all nice for you. ? Screw that, don't let Microsoft devices default to anything. See, no problem. A bug - give me a break. And you anonymous cowards who call folks stupid or simply do your 'squaaak squaak' crap - you aren't fooling anyone, fighting against the weight of public opinion which is based on the reality of the really crappy Microsoft products here isn't going to help you guys out - Just build better products that people want. Don't unleash your army of Anonymous Cowards out there where opinions are exchanged.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
If it's sooo irrational - you know, that hatred of Vista, then why are you looking forward to the new version? You know, Vista was broken when it came out, it's still broken now and it's a DRM filled pile of crap and it was a DRM filled pile of crap. That's the bottom line, that's why it's hated. It's DRM filled, it's slow and it's broken and that's why they can't get the new operating system out quick enough. Vista 'love' is tedious and facile and dishonest. But it's not psychological - it's the Microsoft Campaign. 'Don't fix it, tell everything it's great as it is'
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
All I get on this Windows 7 beta is Hitler.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The warmth is just your laptop on fire from trying to run windows 7
Now, not only is Big Brother watching you!
Now, Big Brother is annoying you directly in your car!
What's next? Take a piss and your toilet spams you with audio advertising for bathroom cleaning products, personal hygiene sprays, prostate exams and the ever popular colonoscopy?
Sleight of hand my friends
They distact with the Taskbar
Mojave Kool Aid
http://xkcd.com/528/
I tried out that horrible version of Windows called "Teh Lunix". Nothing worked!
I went through the setup, and after it finished installing, the video didn't work. I had some friend who had a different version of Windows Teh Lunix (he called it a Destro, guess it likes GI Joe)... so we installed that, the video worked, but we couldn't get the networking to work.
So screw Windows "Teh Lunix" edition. It sucks. I went back to Vista, the computer has worked flawlessly ever since.
You'd be even more dismayed at WinMo if you'd seen versions prior to 6. I got a PPC6700 for free recently, and after being thoroughly unimpressed with WM5 flashed it to WM6. There was very little difference, and overall I found it hard to believe this is a product of 10 years of improvement over the WinCE 2.x OS that lived on my NEC MobilePro 700.
That little NEC clamshell handheld (also a used gift back in 2001) fit all my mobile needs at the time, much better than a Palm could, and would still be useful today had I not fried the poor thing many years ago. PocketIE was nearly worthless as a browser then, like IE Mobile today, but it was very useful for programming on my home linux box over a terminal with the dialup, for note taking, and general PIM stuff. Just using the calendar is a pain in WM5/6, and I would expect that to be a highly-refined core feature of a combo phone/PIM like this.
(Oh, and did I mention the wireless seems to hate most of the hotspots around here? Connects but won't ever pull an IP. I don't want to pay the absurd data rates, and there's no other network connectivity on this thing. I got wireless to work at home, but that's where I already have my other computers.)
FOSS would be dancing naked in the streets. LOL 2008 WinXP W2000 Win98 Vista W2003 Linux Mac December 71.4% 1.7% 0.1% 15.6% 1.7% 3.8% 5.3% http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp Windows 88.68% Mac 9.63% Linux 0.85% iPhone 0.44% Playstation 0.04% SunOS 0.01% Nintendo Wii 0.01% FreeBSD 0.01% NetBSD 0.00% AIX 0.00% HP-UX 0.00% OpenVMS 0.00% SCP 0.00% SCO 0.00% OpenBSD 0.00% http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
+5 Insightful?? More like +5 Pedantic.
I'm sorry you took the question as biased. As a user of Windows systems at home both home and work, I will be delighted to find out that either a) those who've claimed that Vista DRM brings with it a wide variety of disadvantages are wrong and/or 2) that insofar as there are such disadvantages, Win7 addresses them.
Certainly there have been detailed claims of concerns that would affect not just authors of Vista device drivers, but more indirectly, users who would not be able to connect devices that they own (I.e. because the drivers could not be written or deployed), or who would find features (echo cancellation) missing from the drivers they could get. See for example: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html I'm not claiming that article is accurate or unbiased. On the contrary, I'm asking: if concerns like this were real with respect to Vista, to what extent are they resolved in Win7. If the answer is: the article is incorrect with respect to Vista, then all the better.
By the way, my reason for not having significant direct experience with using Vista device drivers is that on the several occasions I tried Vista, I ran into so many compatibility and integrity problems that I had to back out to XP. I don't think this is the place to go into what those problems were, but I can detail them if you care.
And no, I haven't had the opportunity to write device drivers for Windows. The last time I wrote device drivers was for Unix systems, and it was quite awhile ago.
Thank you.
Always trust to *nix systems not to crap from M$
JMule user, enjoy it : http://www.jmule.org