Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ballmer Sets Loose Windows 7 Public Beta At CES

Posted by timothy on from the conventional-wisdom-ranks-it-high dept.

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."

18 of 672 comments (clear)

  1. "Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by Wildfire+Darkstar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...or doesn't it count because no one even tried to take it seriously?

    --
    Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
    1. Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by Ron_Fitzgerald · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My first thought as well. Millennium was even more horrendous then Vista in my opinion.

      Vista problems, at least in my experience, were due to hardware incompatibilities. Millennium was a terribly built OS that was rushed out way before ready.

      But maybe that was their strategy, "Millennium who?"

      --
      ~ Ron Fitzgerald
    2. Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by mcsqueak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At that time you could choose Windows ME or Windows 2000.

      I don't know about anyone else, but I loved Windows 2000 professional. I ran it on my personal machine for years, until I finally bought a Laptop that came with WinXP. Windows 2000 always ran very solid for me and didn't cause any problems (until I tried to install a HDD that was larger than Windows could recognize).

    3. Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by endothermicnuke · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've used every version of Windows since Win 3.1. and currently use Vista. And Windows Mobile (even though it's not a desktop OS) is the most horrendous, user-unfriendly, bloated and buggy mess that MS dumped on its users. I bought an HP ipaq after debating hard between iphone and ipaq. I simply didn't want AT&T contract and wanted to be able to open office documents among other things. I chose the ipaq. It amazes me that version 6 (the one on my ipaq) is that bad. How can it be version 6!??? is beyond me. After months of trying hard to get used to using it and depending on it, now it sits there in my draw abandoned. $299 gone and it's one terrible feeling of sadness and anger.

    4. Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by moderatorrater · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I completely agree. I've used Vista and actually like it better than XP for my laptop, and that's something I never would have said about ME after 98 SE. I think Windows 7 will clear up the PR problems, fix a lot of the things that have bugged people the most, and overall just provide a better experience. From the screenshots I've seen, they sat down and decided on what all the low hanging fruit would be, bundled it into a new OS and are shipping it. These aren't insubstantial changes, but they're things that seem obvious once I've seen them and that seem fairly easy.

      I think that Windows 7 will be a lot like Windows 98 SE was. It'll clear up a lot of the perception issues and also resolve some of the more substantial problems with the OS. I know I sound like a corporate shill for saying this, but I'm actually really excited for this release.

    5. Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's like if I were discontinuing a model of car because of several huge design problems, but after releasing the replacement model, suddenly started reselling the discontinued model again-- this time, with a spoiler that somehow made it harder to steer. It doesn't make a lot of sense unless it's a half-assed money-grab.

      Windows 2000 was -supposed- to be launched as consumer OS. They even had a "Windows 2000 Home" edition planned in addition to "Professional" and "Server", but it was dropped from the plan fairly early on. The WinNT codebase simply wasn't consumer friendly enough - backwards compatibility with Win95/98 software, games, and piles of consumer hardware etc simply wasn't there.

      So they backed off pushing consumers to Windows 2000 until 2002 with XP Home, and rushed out ME with a focus on multimedia features (that actually largely made it into XP) to have something new and shiny in the home market.

    6. Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by mobby_6kl · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Your points regarding PPC 2002 are completely valid, but I also got plenty of value out of the device. Closing and switching between apps could be easily solved with one of the task manager apps, and many programs included an explicit "Exit" option. Pocket Word (and other office apps) were indeed useless, especially once you also consider that the files had to be converted on the desktop first so if somebody sent you email with a .doc attached, you couldn't view/edit it. Again though, SoftMaker Office solved all that since it supported desktop file formats and had all the features of the desktop versions.

      I still have my Asus A600 right here on my desk, and I occasionally use it for games of PocketUFO or as an ebook reader (the transflective screen is great outdoors. Not that I'm outdoors too often) It's quite good for PIM tasks too, probably better than my much newer WM6 smartphone, but that could probably be explained by its lack of a touchscreen. Speaking of the smartphone, why the fuck does it take at least ten times as long to boot as the PDA? Hopefuly it has something to do with initializing the GSM receiver. Other than that though, I'm perfectly happy with it, WM6 isn't nearly as bad as some peope make it sound.

    7. Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? by Xest · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't recall having any such issues switching to Windows 2000 as a gaming system for the most part and did so as soon as it was out.

      The only issues I did encounter were with finding drivers for some peices of hardware (webcam was one) or with games that were still DOS based rather than written for Windows, which by the time 98 was in swing was a lot of them.

      I didn't have any issues with reduced framerates in Quake and Quake II or anything. I can't remember what hardware I had at the time but my original graphics card was an Orchid Righteous 3D followed by the first GeForce that came out- I think that was after Windows 2000 though? I can't remember. If it was then I was still using my Orchid when it came out I guess as my 3D card, but can't remember what I had for 2D. Otherwise I was using my GeForce from the off with it.

      I know a lot of people did complain of problems though so it could well be that I was just lucky in the games I played or the hardware I had that just worked for the most part. For me though, Windows 2000 was probably the best Windows switch for me (ironically until Vista- I had more probs with XP on release, but then I didn't switch to Vista until it was already SP1). 2000 was just such a painless switch for me with so many benefits, it was the biggest jump for me since 3.11 to 95. The only Windows OS I never installed was ME, although when I was working tech support I did have runins with it of course.

      But again, going back to my Vista experience and comparing with that, I think this is often the crux of why some people view different Windows releases in different lights- the hardware you have etc. When I installed Vista it was both SP1 and I was doing so on a newly built machine which was well over spec compared to the high end machines around when Vista was originally released. Vista has for me hence been rather painless, but I know for sure had I installed it on my old hardware and done so at release it would probably have left me with a whole different impression.

      So I guess that's the key really, how good you find a new MS OS depends on when you first really start to use it and/or what hardware you use it on. If you use it at release with hardware it works fine with you'll probably appreciate it, if you use it long after release on hardware that's capable you'll probably also appreciate it. If you use obscure hardware, or hardware that unfortunately just doesn't work well at release then you'll probably hate it. Microsoft could take note on this and try to minimise the problem because I'd guess most people's views of an OS is shaped early on and possibly never changes. I bet many of the early Vista complainers would find it a whole different experience now for example whereas something like ME that just never really improved (I think MS just gave up on it pretty quickly) would always have looked sour no matter what hardware and point in time.

  2. OS or GUI??? by cptdondo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Pivacy Issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? by Z34107 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Vista is smart enough not to spin up your disks constantly or do CPU-intensive busywork while on battery.

    Then again, so is Windows 2000 and most flavors of Linux.

    --
    DATABASE WOW WOW
  5. Re:Windows 7 admin/root accounts and 64-bit by Rycross · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People with older 32-bit chip sets? Not everyone has a new computer. You do realize that most Linux distro's specifically offer 32-bit and 64-bit versions, don't you? How is that any different?

    What I do know is that when I ran Vista 64 bit I was running a plethora of 32-bit applications. I do know that system-level drivers required 64-bit versions, but I had no issues finding those for my hardware. I don't anymore as I lost my MSDN subscription when my job changed, and frankly Vista isn't worth paying for when I have XP already, but it worked fine when I did.

  6. Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? by Endo13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You'd think so, but it's actually not true. I find it amazing myself, but UAC actually works. I work at a PC phone support center, and we get tons of calls about computers infected with Antivirus 2009/Antivirus Pro/etc. Out of the dozens (if not hundreds) of these calls I've taken over the last few months, I got exactly one call about a Vista machine that was infected. A good 99%+ of those calls we get are for infected XP machines, and I can guarantee you XP does not have 99x the marketshare of Vista, by any measurement. I also had another call where the caller had gotten a popup that would have infected her computer, and she believed the popup and pressed "scan". Only problem for the malware was, the next screen she got was a "continue or cancel" screen from UAC, and that apparently scared her more than the panic popup had, and she clicked cancel.

    --
    There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
  7. Re:Interesting note on the MSDN download.... by kasot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    WMP would render mp3-files unusable if the meta-data is edited. Simply a bug...

  8. I care. I'm surprised to say that I actually do. by Valdrax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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").
  9. Re:I tried to watch some of his speech. by jcr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Newb,

    I've been signing off my posts on all manner of forums since around 1982. Sometime last year, a couple of kids on digg suddenly decided to get bent out of shape about it, and I've never been one to comply with arbitrary demands. Go cope.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  10. Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? by Nazlfrag · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It happens less on linux, but it still happens. Read fighting fragmentation on linux by the same author for a clearer picture. His solution there is to defrag the drive by copying to a backup and copying back over the original data. So not only does fragmentation happen, you can defrag without fancy tools. GP is 100% correct.

  11. Re:Win7 == VistaSE (haiku) by Esterhaus_48 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    An echo chamber, to be sure. But what of competition?

    In a world where all the applications worked seemlessly across operating systems (something similar to that of the PC hardware side), then competition would take hold and customers would get more choice.

    How about if the DoJ breaks up Microsoft into 3 companies? One of them continues to support and update Windows XP. The others do likewise, except with Windows Vista and Windows Seven. They all compete to offer the best features, performance, and value to customers while maintaining application interoperability.

    I think that would be interesting to see which survive, and which thrive.

    And if we extended this to *nix, Mac, et al? More competition, more choices. A better tomorrow?