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In-Depth With the Windows 7 Public Beta
Dozer writes "With the Windows 7 public beta out, Ars Technica has an in-depth look at the release. There's praise for Windows 7's UI changes and polish as well much-needed changes to UAC, but also a warning that those who have problems with Vista won't like Windows 7 much better. 'If you couldn't stand Vista's UI (whether it's because you didn't like Explorer, Aero, Control Panel, UAC, or anything else), Windows 7 is unlikely to do much to help, as it builds on the same UI. If Vista's hardware demands were too steep, Windows 7 will likely cause you the same grief, as its hardware demands match. And if Vista didn't work with a program or device you need to use, Windows 7 will offer no salvation, as its compatibility is virtually identical.'"
unleash the nerds!!
I have just started playing with it, and almost immediately found to run Google Chrome in the 64-bit version you need to add a parameter to the executable. Don't have any ISO's to test right now, anyone know if it lets you mount them, or a 3rd party solution that works?
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
OK, so wasn't Windows 7 supposed to be usable on netbooks? If it's got the same requirements as Vista, then how the hell is that going to work exactly?
Sounds like I'll not be changing my habits much: Windows for Games, Linux for everything else.
5468652047616D65
I wonder what Win7 is supposed to fix. I'm probably in the minority, but I actually like the Vista GUI. It's cleaner, a little "Tonka Toy" in areas, but seems more polished than XP. What I don't like about Vista are the problems with wireless, power, CPU utilization, random disk storms, and some strange memory issues when running large JVMs. If Win7 fixes the non-gui related issues then I won't mind using it.
Strangely enough, on my Linux desktops I prefer a very minimal GUI such as fluxbox or xfce4. I turn off almost everything except for a gkrellm monitor. I did play with compiz and beryl for a while, and it was interesting at first, but quickly became annoying.
If windows has the same problems which kept businesses from replacing XP with Vista. What happens when support for XP runs out?
I (foolishly, naively, but showing mostly uncrushable optimism) downloaded the beta and installed it only to be confronted what looked like Server 2008 minus the "classic" theme, perhaps "diet Vista".
Am I the only one that's more turned off by the Vista UI than the shitload of crap under the hood? I find tasks I can do simply and quickly, and with a fair amount of transparency with the "classic" UI, to be made highly opaque by the Vista (for lack of a better word) UI and involving much more effort, often MORE clicking, MORE bullshitting around. I did a Server 2008 server setup the other day (could have done 2003, but it was a small client doing filesharing only, so it was a good way to get my feet wet) and I was astonished that they had managed to make NTFS permissions editing and sharing setup involve more work with less control of the outcome than Server 2003.
Maybe I'm just getting Old And In The Way, but I'm missing the reason why they have to change the way some tasks are performed and the structure of the GUI. It seems like they're just making it different to be different and dumbing it down even dumber than it already was. Is there some sensible reason why the GUI needs to be so substantially changed?
So... the summary is basically saying that the problems everyone complained about with Vista, seem to be basically still there with Windows 7?
Er... this may seem like a stupid question, but what did they actually improve -- if not the things people were complaining about? Windows 7 beta seems to have had favorable reviews, so I wonder what people are basing that on, after reading this summary. (though, I note that Vista had favorable reviews on its launch too. It was just when reality bit that the knives came out. Shillery will only get you so far).
Not that I really care, since I've never used Vista and I won't be using Windows 7. XP still works fine for the one Windows box I have, and after any SP3 a Microsoft product is as good as it gets.
xkcd 528:
"What are you doing?"
"Trying the Windows 7 Beta"
"Why is it showing a picture of Hitler?"
"I don't know. I can't get it to do anything else."
"There's no UI?"
"No, just Hitler."
"Did you try Control-Alt-Delete?"
"It just makes Hitler's eyes flash."
"Huh... well, it's better than Vista."
"True."
So in a nutshell, Windows7 is rebranded Vista SP2. That in itself is fine with me, since SP2 is about when Microsoft O/Ses get stable enough for production use. And the taskbar and other UI changes generally look to be an improvement.
However, the big concern many, including myself, have with Windows7, is DRM ... is it overloaded with DRM that limits software usefulness / degrades performance?
Ron
For goodness sake, the majority of comments I read about Win 7 are almost overwhelmingly positive. Why must Slashdot continue to moan when Microsoft appear to have learnt from their mistakes with Vista? It's fucking annoying.
After reading the article, it seems like Windows 7 has changed some things which really did not need changing, not fixed some of the more irritating problems from Vista, like UAC, and has little to offer in the way of performance benefits. According to the article, it's about a 10% increase in performance, which is really negligible at this point.
/rant>
What Microsoft needs to do is reconsider every part of their operating system to see its actual value in the operating system. Keep the things that don't need changing, and don't just change them to have shiny new stuff to demo. The task bar was fine as it is. Get back to the basics and focus on the core of the operating system. Reduce its weight, reduce the fluff. I like the approach Apple is taking with Snow Leopard. Too often do operating system vendors think what users really want are shiny new dongles and gadgets. I, for one, want a usable, stable, and fast Operating System.
This is not just a Microsoft flame, either. I also think this Compiz Fusion business on Linux is quite silly. Adding cheap flashy effects, which offer very little in usability, but add expensive speed requirements should not be the aim of any operating system creator.
Web Hosting: Unlimited storage and bandwidth: $5/month
and ignore the frustrated virgins who post such tripe.
An axe to chop down a tree... a nose dropper to clear my sinuses, as my grandpappy used to say.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Shutdown button... has the word "shutdown" on it. This is the biggest improvement over vista.
As usual and excellent analysis by Ars. Here's my takeway
The taskbar? That's it? That's why I should go to Vista/Windows 7? Ooof! All these wasted years with my inferior taskbar.
It's like lasy year when the new BMW's came out and they had an improved cup-holder. Man I traded in my old one that day!
You keep harping on about going back to XP, when you people had the exact same ditribe about XP when it first came out. why don't we see this kind of thing when an open source package breaks backward compatability or copies features?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Can you elaborate on that? What does it do?
One of the weakest elements of the OSX GUI, in my experience is the dock.
And now we'll be forced to use it in Windows too.
Damn
i wish i could stop
That's compared to XP SP3, SP2 is still the fastest MS OS currently supported (well possibly 2008 SP1 depending on what you are trying to do).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I have not actually tried the beta yet. I hear it's quite pleasant and hardly Hitler-y at all.
(For those that don't read it regularly, you should really read the alt text as well.)
It's funny how people like Win2K these days. I remember it being very late and a popular target on this website for gaining so much bloat (30 million lines of code, up from NT4's 15 million), and shipping with 65,000 bugs. In a few years, maybe you'll look back at Vista or XP in the same way.
Oh please don't equate that taskbar to Gnome-like. It's really NOTHING like Gnome's bar except that it's square.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Because you can get Linux distros that look EXACTLY like XP? Complete with the blue bar and the start/programs style layout?
MSFT seems to have missed the memo. More and more of the things that folks are using computers for now(email/surfing/document editing,etc) don't HAVE to be done on Windows. And with EA and the other game publishers bending over their customers trying to see who can come up with the nastiest DRM folks are more and more going to the consoles which removes one of the biggest lock ins they had. Finally folks HATE feeling lost and frustrated. It makes them feel stupid and they hate it. I am willing to bet if you set two machines side by side and one of them was the "Win7 bling bling extra goodness!" edition and one was a Linux copying XP, folks would be able to find their way around the Linux machine easier.
Vista has been out, what now? Three years? And I have YET to have a customer come into my shop saying how they love Vista. They are frustrated, they can't find anything, it is slower than their old XP machine, and none of their stuff works. It has gotten to the point that I refuse to work on Vista machines because they get mad because I can't "Make it act like XP!" and that simply isn't possible. They LIKE XP, they know how to get around since it is basically the same interface they have had since Win95. The only nice thing about Vista and soon to be Win7 is I have been making extra by buying up and selling off lease office machine with XP. You know that your customers hate a MSFT OS when they are willing to pay MORE for an off lease XP machine than for a cheap Dell Vista one. You just can't make someone like something they don't. And putting "lipstick on the pig" isn't going to make Win7 a damned bit more popular IMHO than Vista is right now. Mark my words, it WILL bomb.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Folks hated the Vista look, and now they are going to "fix it" by taking away the quicklaunch and taskbar and replacing it with something that makes it hard to tell if a program is running or not?
Get your eyes tested.
Welcome to Slashdot!
Pretty much what it is. But the Vista name has too much "baggage" associated with it. Everyone is staying with XP and waiting for Windows 7, so MS is going to deliver it. Even if it is just Vista again.
I also like how he says home users hate change, then a few sentances later says everyone will switch to linux.
Yeah..linux is so much more similar to XP than Win7.
P.S. I'm not a vista/Win7 supporter by any means. I'm still running XP, and don't see any reason to switch. When games start using 4GB+ of memory I may have to though.
Um... have you even looked at Win7 (not the videos, an actual system running it)? It's dead easy to tell if a program is running. Your comment reminds me of some blogger who was whining that Aero made it hard to tell which application was running, ignoring the giant red button in the corner that is transparent on non-active windows.
For that matter, I'm not sure where you get the idea that folks hate Aero. I've heard of some people disabling it for performance reasons (valid if you don't have a discrete video card, although if you do it actually performs better) but only one person I know actually preferred the classic theme over Aero. I'm sure he's not alone, but I can't say I've been hearing complaints about Vista's look.
Also, same crap compared to what? Almost nobody complains about Vista's security (quite the opposite, actually), which definitely can't be said for XP, even with SP3. That's worth the sacrafice of some compatibility, in my mind - although I've found very, very few drivers or programs (out of the ones I use, which is a large but not quite common set) that wouldn't run in Vista or even that ran slower - a couple needed patching after install, but most needed only to be installed using Compatibility Mode and they worked fine.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Windows 7 Ho Multimate Edition?
If Microsoft is going to learn a lesson from Apple, I wish it were a lesson from one of the recent developments from the iTMS: ditch the DRM.
Honestly, I've had Vista installed on a machine since it was in beta, and now I have Windows 7 installed. It's only for testing purposes, and other than that one computer, I'm sticking with XP. Neither Vista nor Windows 7 are all that bad. They have some improvements, and I might even consider upgrading to Windows 7 at some point-- except for one little detail, which is I absolutely hate "Activation".
And you know, there are probably people reading this who are going to say, "Oh, activation isn't that bad! What's the big deal?" I just don't want to deal with it. Yes, I've had instances when I've upgraded hardware and had software products (Windows and others) that require activation stop working. I've had fresh installs of products that require activation simply refuse to work until I called the developer on the telephone, waited on hold for an hour, and got some kind of unlock code.
If I'm buying a piece of software that uses activation, then I see if they have a volume licensing version that doesn't require activation. If their corporate version requires activation, then I usually won't buy that product. There are enough problems with software not working that I don't think developers need to be building in DRM that arbitrarily stops it from working. It's even worse when that product is the operating system. And Microsoft wants me to set up an activation server in order to allow me to do imaging on my clients? Sorry, but screw you Microsoft.
So until Microsoft drops activation, I'm sticking with my volume licensed version of XP. When I can't use XP anymore, I'll evaluate my options and probably find another operating system that will meet my needs.
That's all for now, for this off-topic little rant.
You realize you could say the same about, say, Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10? DRM aside (an issue I've never run into in Vista, though some people apparently think it's a big deal... I'm just a guy who watches the occasional DVD, listens to MP3s I rip off CDs, plays games, and writes code. Vista has had no problems with any of that) you're basically looking at an iterative improvement in an OS and complaining that it isn't sufficiently different?
In any case, a fairly large portion of the under-the-hood code has been changed. MinWin was a substantial effort to modularize and remove interdependencies and stale code in NT, for example. It's not something the average user is likely to notice, but it's a substantial amount of work. On the other hand, the modification to the taskbar is easily its most significant change since its introduction, especially when you consider things like jump lists. From that perspective, you could argue that Win7 is more different from Vista than Win98 is from Win95.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
But the performance figures show it to be faster than Vista or XP.
How does it get in the way of programmers? I'm not a Windows programmer so I dunno.
I find the shit about 'test mode' for 64-bit to load your own drivers and then having it watermark your screen is bullshit. I shouldn't have to have crap in the corner of my desktop just because I want to load non-signed drivers.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Cheaper TCP. Less hassles. Better support.
Same reasons they switch to Apple - cheaper TCO. Less hassles. Better support.
Kevin Smith on Prince
If, to you, "having a real job" means working a Microsoft-only shop, enjoy your job while you still have it. Microsoft has continued to simplify computer and network adminsitration so nearly anyone could do it. Because of that, more and more small to mid-sized companies will start contracting services for computer and network administration instead of paying for their own IT departments. The larger companies may be able to avoid some of the financial pain for now, but the cost of paying Microsoft licensing fees (and other proprietary vendors' licensing fees) is becoming increasingly unacceptable. Whether you want to admit it or not, open source alternatives are increasingly becoming more robust and more feature rich. My company just adopted SugarCRM, abandoning ACT! We were ready to dive into Microsoft Exchange, but the cost of licensing is leading me to seriously consider Zimbra.
It's not that we don't have the money to acquire these specific tools--we're not defaulting to open source solely because we don't want to spend money on technololgy--it is, rather, that we've determined that Microsoft is no longe the only option, and it certainly is not automatically the best value. If I, as an IT manager, can provide technologies and services that meet the needs of our user base while saving tens of thousands of dollars every year by reducing licensing costs, I'm helping our enterprise succeed and remain profitable. Microsoft may continue to dominate for a time, but, unless it is able to realign itself and become more realistic regarding its licensing model (something it has both the financial and human resources to accomplish), it will face an inevetable end.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Sorry to have to break it to you. But much of the flash in Vista and Windows 7 is borrowed from Mac OS X, which is currently eating away at Windows market share.
Customers seem to like bling. So of course MS is going to offer it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Perhaps you know of some OS work MS did before DOS that I'm unaware, but to my knowledge MS has never been known for 'low resource' use and 'backwards compatibility'. I think you're confusing them with old school UNIX vendors, something like that statement to HP or Sun would make sense, MS, not so much.
The didn't change the skin even, just the name and the task bar.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If I had bought vista I would be annoyed that what sounds like a few minor changes is being sold as a whole new os. Vista was not popular because it offered no clear benefit over xp. Why would people want to pay for something that has no clear benefit over vista.
I believe Steve Ballmer actually said something like "Windows 7 is essentially Windows Vista v1.2"
Citation needed, I read it on google news
You know after trying "linux" i thought is was somewhat okay, until i got to the BOOTLOADER!!!!!!!!!!1
F**K the new bootloader, it is made in Stallman's usual contempt for other operating systems like Windows, and even sh*ts on OSX/Windows for loading. I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE THE NEW BOOTLOADER!!!!!!!!!
grrrrrrrrrrr
*more unintelligible sounds*
(also my worst post)
Editorial note: Setting up GRUB is typically a hit and miss process that involves multiple attempts, although this is largely a solved problem with the popular distros, I find it incredibly irritating that the default for nearly every distro is to overwrite the existing bootloader rather than attempt to use a more sane solution: add their OS to the existing bootloader when installing on a separate partition. I boot into Linux using the Windows bootloader (chain boots into GRUB.) Why can't this be a default option so that I don't have to worry about the fact that deleting my new, temporary Linux install will leave my machine unbootable?
It's merely in retrospect to XP, Vista, and now W7. Win2K SP3 actually worked. NT4 SP5 was finally working as well and was pretty perky, except for the single threaded GDI kernel issue, among others, that could halt the entire system with one stray command. That leftover still exists with many MS apps, although others that no longer utilize those APIs seem immune.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I know I'm going to be down-modded for this, but it must be said.
Let me start off by saying that Windows Vista is no longer the piece of shit that it once was. Ever since SP1, the many problems that Vista used to have have been gone. I was using Vista Ultimate since July and had absolutely no issues with anything, and it actually runs faster (gasp!) than XP on my machine. (Let me point out that my machine has a Q6600, 4GB of RAM, and an 8800GT)
Now that that's out of the way, allow me to tell about how much better Windows 7 is. I've been using 7even for three weeks. I installed the leaked build 6959, and besides a few major problems with Firefox's rendering, I had no issues with it. I then installed 7000 a couple days before its official release because I couldn't stand how horrible Firefox was acting up. And finally, I downloaded and installed Windows 7 x64 from the public beta site and got a legitimate key. With each new installation brought new improvements to speed and functionality.
7even is not Vista with an updated UI. Besides the obvious UI improvements (which took some time to get used to, but I find them more useful than before), just using 7even, you will notice that Microsoft must have put a lot of time and money into rewriting and optimizing code. An argument could be made to call 7even "Vista SP2", but I am convinced that there are enough updates and improvements that separate 7even from Vista that it deserves its own name. Microsoft removed so much bloat, improved UAC, added a couple necessary features, and added much-needed improvement to features present in Vista (for example, an AWESOME improvement to the defragmenter that makes me actually want to use it rather than a third-party program). And the taskbar, while some accuse it of copying the Mac, is actually an improvement of Mac's dock... You can't switch between individual windows in Mac, which is something that pisses me off being an employee of a TV station who uses Macs with Final Cut Studio.
I used it on a brand new dual core 64-bit laptop w. nvidia graphics card and 2 gigs of ram - not exactly a slouch of a machine. I then parked the laptop for half a year - it just wasn't useable. Then I threw linux on it and it became an AWESOME machine - enough so that I upgraded to 4 gigs of ram.
If you think Vista is "good", you have a strange definition of "good." If you think it's "a modern OS", you're at least a decade behind the times. Windows is obsolete. Get a mac if you need the hand-holding.
Kevin Smith on Prince
How many MacOS9 or below systems do you see in the business world, these days? Not many, huh? Now go take a look at how many Win2000 boxes are still out there - you'll probably find at least one in almost any business, because businesses don't like to break what works.
To put it differently, consider the relatively mild incompatibilities Vista faced compared to the switch from MacOS9 to OS X, and consider the screaming and shouting that the PC world raised upon discovering that their 10-year-old printer was no longer supported (this is anecdotal; personally I've had zero problems with XP and any printer, scanner, copier, tablet, camera, on indeed just about anything else).
In short, there's virtually no way in hell your idea of "chuck the old system out" with Windows will ever occur, because it would cost Microsoft their biggest market: business licenses.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I've got 3 HDD's for my work laptop. Dell E1505, 2 gig ram, HDD's different sizes, but, all same 7200rpm, 8meg cache, very close spin up, transfer rates etc... XP goes ok Vista/SP1, just a smidge faster than XP Win7 build 7000, smokes! I've noticed a better load time for Office 07, Photoshop, and other programs. Will be nice to see another build, RC candidate etc. When I installed XP, had to install a bunch of stuff to get everything detected (WinXP w/sp2 CD) When I installed Vista...well...never mind When I installed Win7, it caught everything except the video card & the SD card. I'm using it as my "daily" work box (with the back up drives in my bag...just in case.
Sure, it may not be a significant departure from Vista, but maybe that's the point. Microsoft announced it early enough (six months after Vista's release) that vendors had a heads up to get their drivers in order before the next Windows flavor du jour is realeased. If it is very close to Vista, the Vista drivers may work under Windows 7, or with only minor modifications. Windows 7, in my opinion, is/was a PR move.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Of course you could -- that's a minor version change, not a major one. Not understanding the difference can get you confused.
Vista to Windows 7 is a major version update. XP to XP SP2 is a minor version update.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
it obviously kills kittens
Yes, if you ran Vista, you wouldn't have had any problems swapping the motherboard. MS overhauled the NT HAL so it wasn't locked to a particular chipset.
They also completely restructured the audio system so it can provide theatre quality audio, and use stereo microphone input to improve background noise elimination. They replaced the old graphics engine to implement window compositing and offload window drawing to the GPU and allow virtualization of GPU resources. The filesystem was upgraded to include file versioning so you can go back and undo changes to files. They added priviledge seperation (like sudo), a process sandboxing mechanism, address space layout randomization and NX support for security. They added a prefetching engine which intelligently knows what disk pages to cache. They added IPv6 and bluetooth support. They added an imaging based installer system which makes it infinitely easier to create and deploy system images.
And according to Slashdot, Vista adds nothing of value to XP. So is it any wonder Windows 7 is mostly focused on polish and user interface?
Simply put, we're not computationally there yet.
And even when we are, people will bitch about the memory and processor requirements.
prompt for your password, rather than click and ignore?
This always happens, there are always people ranting about how the old one was better.
XP however brought application compatibility fixes for a lot of apps that hard a hard time transitioning to a real OS in which they didn't have free run over the system like in the pre-NT kernel OSes. I personally LOVED the jump to XP, all I had to do was switch to classic mode, pretty much everything else I preferred over Win2k.
I have a rule, force yourself to use the OS for two solid weeks in the real world (I'm a developer, so install VS and work as normal on it). After that 2 week period if you are going to be able to adjust to it and enjoy using it, you probably won't hate it, and you'll likely be okay with using it long term. When I finally did this for XP, it turned out that it didn't bother me so much.
I gave Vista 6 weeks and hated it the entire time. I will not run it. I figured maybe they'd back off some UI bullcrap in Windows7, since really that was 'the problem' with Vista.
I installed Windows 7 in a VM this morning. I did a double take on more than one occasion as it pretty much looks like Vista with a taskbar/startmenu that they managed to fuck up even more (which I didn't think was possible).
Vista/Windows 7 upgrades are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Windows XP upgrades.
Finally, you don't see this sort of thing when it happens in OSS because its used by so few people that you either A) know that it comes with the territory of OSS, (lets face it, most OSS developers don't give a rats ass about users/backwards compatibility) or B) the project is so large and backed by a company that has other motives, so it wants to maintain a stable user base and breaking backwards compat would lose the customers you've stolen from MS very rapidly. I mean if you think about, why use OSS software if its going to screw you the same way MS does. Free is nice and all, but once you're of the age of about 25 you don't mind actually paying for software if you have any sort of sanity. And its far easier to just USE Word than to try to make absolutely sure that Open Office really did save your resume with the proper formatting.
Finally, if you're going to tell me that you wouldn't work somewhere that wanted a DOC for your resume, thats good for you, really. I wish you luck when you get out of school, the rest of us will continue to live in reality and deal with the word docs when need be. If you think you can be that stuck up, you need to realize that the 10 people in your country that ARE that good and CAN get by with that sort of thing are laughing at you, cause you aren't :)
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"I could deal with supporting illogically arranged system settings much more happily were I not required to memorize a different path to basic settings for each release of the OS."
That's done to torture non-"Power Users". Works rather well.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I find it incredibly irritating that the default for nearly every distro is to overwrite the existing bootloader rather than attempt to use a more sane solution: add their OS to the existing bootloader when installing on a separate partition.
It would involve writing to an NTFS partition, and modifying Windows' files. In short, not a good idea.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
For those of you who don't want to install it yourself, you can check out the video of the install (very Vista like) and the general look and feel of the web site at the academy. Yes, you have to register, but other then that it's free.
-- Don't make me replace you with a small shell script.
With Vista I found UAC VERY annoying. Sometimes I'd get one warning from UAC, click OK, then get another one for the same program. This seems to have been ironed out in Windows 7. It's still there, but it's less annoying.
What WAS annoying is that the box I'm testing Windows 7 on has an old Dell CRT attached to it. Windows 7 got the screen refresh rate wrong (75 when it should have been 60) and screwed up the display from 3/4 into the install process till I was able to get into settings and change it. To be fair, Ubuntu on NVidia restricted drivers does the same damned thing.
Second annoyance was sleep mode. With my aging monitor (or maybe its the video card) coming back from sleep mode corrupts the display, and cannot be fixed short of a restart. In the default configuration, the computer goes into sleep mode after 30 minutes. Easily enough fixed, but still I didn't like it.
Another problem I found, was I found it hard to locate some things in the control panel. It's different than XP.
The last issue was a driver problem, that computer's onboard sound didn't even have a Vista driver. Fortunately I was able to get the XP driver to work.
I have yet to find any other real problems with it at this point. All in all MS seems to have learned from a lot of Vista's mistakes and made improvements. I'm not sure I'll buy a copy at this point, but I'm not ruling it out either.
How to install a new motherboard without reinstalling Windows. It's not complicated.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Interesting - how do you know? Surely, even a balanced binary tree can save the data.
There are plenty of programs out there that can read databases almost that big in the blink of an eye. I can't see why it's not technically feasible.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I get so tired of people whining about how crappy Vista is because it doesn't support their 7 year old printer correctly. "Did you download drivers from the manufacture?"... "What's that?"
I'd like to see one of these anti MS zealots download driver and kernel source for any Linux distro, compile, and use their device within 2 hours and then look me in the eye when they try and tell me about how much better it worked for them.
Uh... Sorry?
Long gone were the days you had to compile a Linux kernel itself, or even bothering to install the driver manually. It's all prepackaged for you.
Now you're complaining that users lack technical knowledge in order to install a driver to use under Windows? (excuse me, Windows?)
That's incredibly ironic.
If it's that easy, then perhaps you should implement it as a feature in Linux and garner the respect of everyone in the field.
windows 7 after all the crap talk its just vista re skinned.
More like the same skin with a new tattoo.
I certainly put all the Windows machines I use to the Classic look. It has nothing to do with speed or interaction, it is because all the new stuff starting with XP is incredibly ugly!
Those candy colors must have appealed to the idiots they use for user testing. But it is shameful they would switch to something that looks like the worst of the Enlightenment themes from the 90's. Personally those colors and the shinyness is appallingly tasteless and very distracting.
Really, what happened to the designers who did Win95?
This is actually supported by those same popular Linux distros that I frequently like to install to a partition to try out for a bit before installing a new one.
The biggest problem right now is that writing to Vista's NTFS volumes can cause the accidental erasure of volume shadow copy (read: filesystem snapshot) information.
It took a lot of cursing to get used to speaking OS X, but once I did I could appreciate it. You just have to go "okay, I'm in someplace with a different culture then my own. Lets step back and just take things in without getting upset". Not that "dont get upset" is easy :-)
Let me give you a little help, since it was your first post.
All the witty ways you have to make Microsoft's name into something cool and mean, we've seen them, most of us in the 80s, and then again in the 90s, and of course earlier this decade.
Also this is an adult website, you're allowed to say shit and fuck, we were able to figure out what those asterisks meant, and so can most 10 year olds.
If you're referring to the fact that it overwrites any existing boot loader, welcome to Windows 95, its been that way for the last 13-14 years. Since 99% of the people on the planet only run Windows, it simplifies the whole process for those users to just install it and let the rest of us deal with it after words since you probably should have some sort of clue about dual booting before doing so.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Maybe nothing tangible is up and running because of the sudden change to the new paradigm (and the inevitable compatibility issues). Are you sure CPU/HD speed is definitely the main problem?
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
It's already happening with XP, just read through this thread. Suddenly, it's not just a bloated version of Win2k for morons, but a lightweight and stable OS, while Vista/Win7 is the new bloated OS for morons. Also, DRM. Obviously, there was no product activation in XP, but now there is! DRM.
I must say I find this both fascinating and terrifying. Fascinating because it's interesting to observe people's resistance to change. And terrifying because, well, am I really that old that I'm just one of a few people here who remembers what happened during previous MS releases? Obviously, you (the parent poster) do, but the population in general seems to have early Alzheimer's. Shit, when Win98 was new some people were afraid they won't be able to have more than one explorer window open, and how it's the worst thing for productivity since Program Manager was discontinued.
I've tried the beta, and it's pretty nice. I'm slowly discovering some problems, but they're small details like where did NTFS metadata go, and why won't explorer show total file size in a folder, and a few other things which are most likely just bugs. XP still gets the job done, but it just feels old and clunky while doing it.
Downloading it now. I'll play with it and see what I like, what I don't, and what will make it crash - in a window. If it augers in or doesn't meet expectation, no drama. I'll just bounce back to my beloved MacOS or fire up my second fave of late, Ubuntu.
A defense contractor in Antarctica is a bad idea. Get Raytheon OUT of Antarctica.
> Finally, if you're going to tell me that you wouldn't work somewhere that wanted a DOC
> for your resume, thats good for you,
Really, I wouldn't do it. Remember, unless you are truly desperate the hiring process is two way. You should be checking out the potential employer while they check you out. Like most people here on /. I'd be working in IT. I reason that any IT shop that can't deal with a resume in PDF format in 2009 is giving out a pretty big blinking neon sign that they are incompetent. Do YOU want to work with idiots that haven't figured out that Word is not capable of and not intended to interchange formatted documents without the risk of loss of formatting? Worse, that are too dumb to open Acroread? I don't, life is too short to deal with a company that would probably already be in the fc deadpool.... if fc.com weren't themselves f**ked. This economy is going to be pruning out the weak, be somewhere clueful if ya can manage even if it pays a little less.
Democrat delenda est
You keep harping on about going back to XP, when you people had the exact same ditribe about XP when it first came out.
I still think people were right to complain about XP. It was an upgrade where, for the most part, the new features didn't benefit users. There were artificial distinctions made to push people to the new OS, like how Microsoft refused to release the updated Windows Media Player on Win2000 even though they could have. But ignoring things like that, bug fixes and support for newer hardware, there weren't really new features that made people want to upgrade.
That they've done this for two releases in a row doesn't make things much better.
> ..all the new stuff starting with XP is incredibly ugly!
Amen. Yet they comtinue to belch out more of the stuff with every version, never getting a clue.
Of course with Windows 7 (aka Vista SE) they removed the classic art and UI. Balmer knows best.
Democrat delenda est
I actually installed it on an old P4 machine with a built in graphics card and 512MB of ram. Most of the components of the computer rate about a 3 on the performance scale with the video card and 3D bits coming in at a one. So here's what I found.
1. I was able to work with Excel without a problem. It opened up and ran as fast as a dual core machine running XP. So that's fine.
2. Installation speeds were completely in line with what I'm used to. I installed Firefox, Flash, Adobe Reader and Office 2007. I didn't run into any problems.
3. The OS' installation was seemless. I didn't try to upgrade and just let it go from scratch. Once I finished the basic setup I just let it sit for about an hour and it did it itself. Once it finally booted up I didn't need to install new drivers. I really liked this to be honest given how painful driver installations and downloads can be.
4. The interface is almost the exact same as Vista. Now I have no trouble finding what I need when doing vista tech support. Going to the start menu and typing "event" then hitting enter takes less time for me than going: control panel -> admin tools -> event viewer. It's also easier to describe to new users. Ditto for hitting a command prompt since I get to skip the extra set of going to run. That said, I am in the minority here.
6. I ran the chess game, and that ran really slowly. This looks like it was due to the graphics card issue so it's understandable. I think I may try putting in a better card and giving it another try.
So yeah, that's been my Windows 7 experience so far. It basically feels like an improved slimmed down version of Vista because I know there is no way Vista could run that well at 512MB of RAM.
I don't see activation/validation/serial numbers/etc. as "DRM", but I guess you could call it that. Outside of software, DRM is an feeble attempt to prevent revenue loss which is easily defeated and then absolutely results in revenue loss.
Music? No DRM = No revenue from most people
Movies? No DRM, therefore no revenue. See all the downloaded movies? Cool.
eBooks? No DRM, no revenue. Ask Steven King if you have any questions.
Software has other ways of dealing with the same thing, but in the end it comes down to either something to make sure your users are paying or it is free. Free as in "no payment, ever."
In some environments (some businesses), it is difficult to get away with unlicensed, pirated software. Correctly, they are worried about the BSA and other audits. But that still doesn't mean they are going to play fair without some level of validation. Basically, if most businesses can buy one license and use it on 10 computers, they will do so.
The one thing that separates the home users from businesses is that businesses do not run cracked versions. Any validation, no matter how weak it is, is enough to force businesses to actually buy.
Sure, I'll be a lot happier when I don't have to pay for anything anymore and it is all free. And as long as I don't have to pay employees for their work then I won't have to worry about charging for anything anymore either. But I've yet to find anyone that isn't married to me who wants to work for nothing. Not even the daughter.
XP introduced wifi support, amongst other things.
Why is Windows 7 not a service pack for Vista?
"Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade with the goal of being fully compatible with existing device drivers, applications, and hardware." - Wikipedia
It seems Vista users should be given these incremental upgrades for free. I mean, when people bought Vista, they bought 1, 2, and 3, not 1, 2, and 3 with some bugs and incompatibilities. Is it reasonable to assume that the buyers expected Microsoft to fix the bugs and incompatibilities?
It seems now, Microsoft comes out with Windows 7 that has the same 1, 2, and 3 as Vista but with fewer bugs and better compatibility. It isn't fair that Vista users have to pay money again just to use the same 1, 2, and 3 that they were promised in Vista.
How much should a piece of software change before a company is justified to charge users hundreds of dollars again to upgrade?
Vista SP2, plus the OS X dock.
> I find it incredibly irritating that the default for nearly every distro is to overwrite
> the existing bootloader rather than attempt to use a more sane solution..
Well the default is intended to ensure the newly installed OS will boot and will continue to boot after the next regularly scheduled reinstall of Windows. Of course Windows will probably hose you anyway when that happens since it doesn't even ASK whether it can nuke your MBR.
If you want to boot several operating systems have Ubuntu (you didn't mention a distro and you are lacking in clue, thus almost certainly an Ubuntu user) install GRUB to the partition you installed the OS on and since you obviously undertstand the XP/Vista bootloader you can add the stanza to it to chainload.
> Why can't this be a default option so that I don't have to worry about the fact that deleting
> my new, temporary Linux install will leave my machine unbootable?
For pretty much the same reason Microsoft doesn't modify GRUB and make itself the non-default system. We assume that when you install Linux you are going to be actually using it, thus the default is to take over the MBR and make the newly installed system the default boot and the legacy OEM preload the optional one. However, unlike Microsoft we penguins aren't so arrogant as to think we are the ONLY OS in existence so we do autodetect the presence of a legacy OS and offer to prepopulate it on the GRUB menu, and make an easilly selected option available to install the bootloader outside the MBR in a secondary OS mode, something Microsoft will probably never do. Of course this isn't just to support Microsoft, many Linux folk have multiple distros installed and those features simplify installing, reunstalling and upgrading a collection of Free operating systems.
Democrat delenda est
I don't see how, they've split their OS base over 3 distributions now.. XP, Vista and soon to be windows 7.
All this is doing is fracturing their hold on the desktop which means that software developers are less likely to provide binarys specific to all three distributions.
As usual the majority are on XP so nothing as going to change because people are statisifed with what they have and the Desktop will continue to decay like IE has done.
Windows 7 is just a desperate move to provide a product that the public won't reject after the vista failure.
You keep harping on about going back to XP, when you people had the exact same ditribe about XP when it first came out.
Yes, and we were correct about it back then as well. XP really didn't add much over 2K. XP has just been around long enough and had enough SP's and patches and support to actually have become comparably worthwhile... if it didn't grab so much market share from Win2K we'd probably still be harping about stick with that one.
why don't we see this kind of thing when an open source package breaks backward comparability or copies features?
Your UID is lower than mine, so I can't really accuse you of being new here; I'm at a loss as to how you've over looked the endless tirades on /. every time an incompatibility issue comes up with F/OSS software. For starters, look at any of the last half dozen threads on Python 3 here. Half the posts are nothing more than attempts to calm the other half about compatibility issues.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Yes, obviously you're right. After all, Microsoft wasn't making any money until Vista was released and Activation became mandatory. Maybe if they just make Windows completely non-functional, no one will pirate it and they can make infinity dollars!
But the Vista name has too much "baggage" associated with it.
Yep, that's how the folks in Redmond see it. They labored for seven long years and came out with the Second Coming of operating systems and then had a marketing glitch. Not their fault really - those freetards and their netbooks spoiled their timing. Intel hosed up the Vista Capable logo thing and Jobs, well, how's a desktop OS supposed to compete with cool new tech like the iPhone? This is how they "fixed" the "glitch". They reengineered the name. Now everybody's free to explore it anew; discovering its richness and potential, learning its subtleties, evolving their understanding until they can take full advantage of this new and vastly more powerful operating system.
Or not.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... hookers are available for bloggers too..
Why yes, that's much easier than... connect hard drive, turn power on, boot....
QED
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is one of the biggest issues I have with Vista itself. You simply can't share fiels/folders/printers on a home network because the security settings are too paranoid but Win7 actually configures itself to properly work with other systems (sets a workgroup PW) and it's the only thing needed to access shared resources, unlike Vista that requires each user to actually have an account on the damn thing.
As to performance. Can't say I noticed anything better then what Vista Business 64 with SP2(beta) gives me. C2D 1.8Ghz 4GB and 320GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA. Do not use it on a Hitachi 80GB 7200 IDE deskstar drive though. Damn thing is dog slow (got a 2.1 drive rating - My seagate under vista gets 5.7) and it has a noticable impact on performance. In other words, a fast vista system wont see any performance gain but anything that is borderline useful should.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I've been calling it Vista2 for months.
Wouldn't that be ME III?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Indeed. I like to call Windows XP's default theme "Windows Xbox." I run the classic theme myself when forced to use Windows XP.
Program Intellivision!
And yet Vista is doing well. Millions of copies sold. 20% market share already.
I said here a year ago that it wouldn't hit 30%, ever. And it won't. It was foresight then. Now it's just obvious.
On release day W7 will have hundreds of millions of "copies sold" too. That's part of what Software Assurance is all about: hey! Check how many licensed users we have on release day! Vista licensing has become such a laughingstock that OEMs don't even pretend that the software will run on their computer - but you get a license whether you want one or not.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's because it already was true with XP.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Basically, by releasing Vista SP2 and branding it "Windows 7", MS will succeed where Vista didn't. Here's why:
Vista issues leading to failure:
1. Significant changes to driver framework forced 3rd parties to re-write drivers for Vista --> as a result Vista shipped with a large amount of unsupported and undersupported hardware (hardware that was already working fine in XP).
2. By SP2, XP had become a very stable OS with a predictable user experience. Average computer users were for the first time in history getting used to stability in their computing experience. Due to architecture changes, Vista introduced numerous issues with existing software products that hearkened users back to the Win95-WinME era. Once you tease folks with something better, you can't take it away and offer something less stable. This is something that Microsoft seems to have misunderstood: Even if WinVista was actually more stable than WinXP RTM, people were going to compare it to WinXP SP2, and that's a tall order to achieve with such a large amount of core changes to any software product.
3. Changes to the UI (including Office 2007). By and large, smart people whose computer use is incidental to their work (e.g. doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, etc.) know their respective fields first and foremost and memorize a list of steps to get basic things done rather than learn *how* their computers work. I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the Slashdot crowd, but that's how I've observed the vast majority of non-computer-savvy people work. In summary: if you change their computing experience in such a way that it takes them more than 30 seconds to find where that 'darn printer icon' has gone, and you've just created a negative first impression. Vista and office 2007 (which while not tied to Vista, is largely associated with it by the non-techy masses) has re-arranged a whole slew of things. Whether or not it's more intuitive for a new computer user is irrelevant when the vast majority of users are expected to be upgrading from XP.
4. UAC was misconceived and poorly implemented. Microsoft assumes my 60 year old mother knows whether she should permit a program to access some administrative function in the OS? Hah...
5. Higher memory requirements for an XP-like experience. Basically you need 1gig for ok performance, 2gig for max and 2gigs RAM cost a hefty $200 back in 2006.
6. A little known fact is that the latest code from Windows Update on top of Vista SP1 on a modern machine is a rock-solid experience (I use it every day on multiple computers). The problem is that negative reactions among early adopters regarding the abiove issues snowballed via word-of-mouth like what happens to a bad movie after opening weekend. By 2007 even those who don't have a clue about computers, had heard enough to "know" to stay away from Vista. Microsoft themselves discovered this and countered Vista's negative public image with a set of ads that appeared to convince skeptical new users.
Why Win7 will for the most part, avoid WinVista pitfalls:
1. Driver architecture borrowed from Vista. HW manufacturers need to do very little this time around (quick QA sanity test for most existing hardware). This will lead to much more positive initial user experience and in turn less negative early reviews.
2. Since significant Vista code is under the covers with a smattering of performance tweaks, I predict stability will be near Vista SP1(/SP2?) levels even as early as Win7 RTM.
3. Bulk of UI remains unchanged since Vista/Office2007, with the exception of the taskbar. Taskbar is going to be a bone of contention among some, but overall will not significantly hinder the release. Users will have had 3 years to get used to the Vista UI by the time Win7 ships. It's not going to make believers out of everyone, but I suspect that the majority will stop clinging to XP.
4. UAC is improved immensely. I still have a problem with asking regular folks to answer a question about their computer's security they don't fully understand, but at least it's expected to be significantly less intrusive.
5. 4gigs RAM is $20 after rebate at NewEgg, nuff said. I wouldn't be surprised if mem footprint actually goes down a touch as well.
Thank you ! I am serious...thank you. I am so tired of being treated like a nut and being marked "flamebait" and "troll" for saying that Win7 is going to bomb. I swear, it is like I woke up in an alternate reality where the past 3 years never existed. Does NOBODY remember the pre release hype for Vista? Does NOBODY remember how the press gushed on and on and on about how wonderful it was? The first time I loaded up Vista Beta 1 my first thoughts were "Oh...My...God. What are they thinking? This is going to bomb SO hard! The home users will hate it and the businesses will too. Who did this? It is awful!"
And here we are, three years later, and companies are offering machines with With XP Pro downgrade rights! in giant letters to sell their PCs. Why? Because the users have spoken, and the vast majority HATE Vista! Just like you they have either tried to like Vista(I did too. I used it for over a month and couldn't take it anymore) or they have watched a family member fight it and have decided not to go that route. I know that this will shock many Slashdot guys, but most of my users don't even want the "fisher price" look of XP. They want the "classic" that looks like Win9x.
With any other company, they would have in all likelihood listened to their customers and given them what they wanted. What does MSFT do? More bling bling! The majority of the public HATES your OS, in a large part because of the awful GUI, and your answer is to add MORE bling bling onto the GUI that they hate? Does that make ANY sense? And as for the earlier poster asking "why would they switch to Linux?" Simple-1. The GUI can be EXACTLY like XP,or even Win9x. That is what they know, that is what they want. 2. The OEMs are going to have to push SOMETHING if Win7 turns out to be another turkey, because I can't see Ballmer admitting defeat and allowing them to keep selling XP when Win7 comes out. Whether folks will buy Linux or go to guys like me to get XP machines, who knows.
But mod me down all you want. Say I am a troll, or flamebait, or whatever makes you happy. But mark my words, and mark them well. Windows 7 will B-O-M-B. It will bomb just as hard, possibly even harder than Vista, thanks to that confusing taskbar/quicklaunch with almost no way for anyone with even the slightest vision troubles to be able to tell if a program is running or not. And then when it does, just like with Vista, all those bloggers that were gushing over Windows 7 will be "I knew it! MSFT has another turkey on its hands!". But when even Thurrott puts out an article simple VS easy about how Win7 looks simple but isn't easy to use, and Mary Joe Foley is saying "If I wanted a Mac-like environment, I'd buy a Mac" then you know there are problems in paradise. Mark my words, folks aren't going to like Win7 anymore than they like Vista. Maybe the next one after that they'll listen to their customers and give them what they want.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
TFA has six pages, almost all of which were praise for Windows 7, and yet the "summary" picks out three choice sentences that were negative.
Nevermind the new features (both under the hood and with the UI), nevermind all the annoyances of Vista that this undoes, nevermind the ZDNet tests that show 7 to be faster than XP and Vista.
No, let's scan the entire article and post the most damning phrases we can find and call that a summary.
And no I'm not new here.
-David
Here, have a "modern" computer.
Ballmer: Well, we've done very well on Netbooks. When they first came out, I'm not sure if people knew whether they were PCs or something else, and I think everybody kind of understands now that a Netbook is a small-form-factor, low-cost personal computer. And we're doing very well with Windows XP, which fits. Vista does not fit, and we're working hard to make sure Windows 7 fits very well on the Netbooks.
Goofy foot is what happens when everybody else changes direction and you don't. Most "modern" computer companies don't go goofy footed twice in a row.
Yeah, we could all use with more reviews and less rhetoric. We'll get the reviews. They're coming. No doubt this topic is going to get at least one slashdot article every day until the thing launches on the first of July. In the meantime everybody and his brother is going to whine about the features he wanted that he didn't get, whether he's tried the thing or not. It's like the anti-Christmas.
Personally I've got 12 machines to put through their paces on this thing and I'm not going to know how it fared for a couple weeks. It'll probably be a year before I know who's going to roll it out and when (based on when the enterprise in-house apps can be rewritten and/or validated). In the mean time I've got to find out if the deployment tool is the grand pool of wonderful that Vista's was (hack, puke!)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Google for EasyBCD. It can fix the bootloader problems for you, if you're still on Vista/7.
... I really, seriously do. I use linux exclusively. I keep a copy of XP Pro in VirtualBox for:
1) AnyDVD + BDInfo + tsMuxer
2) To go back and run through how to do something while explaining how to do it over the phone to a friend (every so often).
I want Win7 to succeed because of a few reasons, the biggest of which is because I like Linux the way it is. I don't want it to become mainstream and ruin it. If that ever happens, I promise I will switch to something else (maybe BSD? Hell, maybe Haiku.)
I am so fucking tired of everyone screaming and shouting "Linux is bettera tan tem all!!!1!!!!!one!!! Winbloez is teh suck!"
I use Linux because _I_ like it the way it is. I don't want it to change.
There is a search feature in the control panel since Vista, and it works quite well. Want to adjust your screensaver? Just type screensaver in there and check out all the options. Want to disable UAC? Try "disable uac".
It is, IMHO, better than even the classic view.
More information on the "RAM change forced reinstall" please. Sounds like anecdotal FUD.
I think the point is that the slashdot editors like to waste their time masturbating about trivial negative press regarding Microsoft. I'm using Vista right now and I've had my penis in at least a dozen vaginas.
Review didn't bother to look any further than the taskbar. The windows accessories have also gotten a nice revamp, for example. .odt, Paint's got new brushes, the Calculator now shows the whole formula you've typed, etc. .odt documents, and be sure they can open them.
WordPad now supports
So when people switch over to Win7, you can actually start sending them
Kaetemi
Less than that of any other OS. Things you can do on Windows that you are unable to on other OSs without breaking the (stupid) law include playing BluRay movies, and PlaysForSureSometimes DRM tracks.
Other OS restrict what you can play by not supporting them.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nothing more to say really.
This is Windows XP to Vista's Windows 2000, end of story.
Windows 2000 was more secure, more reliable, and was architecturally a major milestone for Windows. But it had some really troubled beta releases, and suffered many delays and resets (it had been codenamed Cairo and was supposed to include the Object Oriented File System, but most of that plan was scrapped about halfway through). It also broke a lot of compatibility, had heftier machine requirements, had major issues with games, had major issues with drivers thanks to the whole new driver model. Many of these cleared up over time (by service packs, maturing of the ecosystem, etc), but tons of people said they'd never upgrade from Windows 98, which was lighter and faster and better for games. But when XP came along, they upgraded.
Windows Vista was more secure, more reliable, and was architecturally a major milestone for Windows. But it had some really troubled beta releases, and suffered many delays and resets (it had been codenamed Longhorn and was supposed to include WinFS (Windows Future Storage), but most of that plan was scrapped about halfway through). It also broke a lot of compatibility, had heftier machine requirements, had major issues with games, had major issues with drivers thanks to the whole new driver model. Many of these cleared up over time (by service packs, maturing of the ecosystem, etc), but tons of people said they'd never upgrade from Windows 98, which was lighter and faster and better for games. But when Windows 7 comes along, they'll upgrade.
Hi, welcome to Slashdot. Your comments have been made and addressed many times over.
Windows 7 and Vista SP2 are absolutely, positively nothing alike. SP2 is a sustained engineering project, not even run or engineered by the Windows development team. It's a collection of bug fixes and security updates - service packs don't add new features. The Win7 Beta is the culmination of 2 years of development from well over a thousand engineers, many of whom are the best in the business. It includes some major changes that were *incredibly* difficult to architect and develop, and has seen several significant chunks overhauled or rewritten entirely. I should know, I'm one of the developers.
Windows 7, just like Vista, and just like Windows XP, has no DRM code that runs unless you put DRM'd media on the box and play it in a player that supports DRM.
Back in the mists of time, even when we were all using LILO instead of grub, it was much frickin safer to get Linux to boot Windows than vice versa. I've never broken Windows with LILO/grub, but Windows never wants to play nice. It had it's chance ten years ago, now I do it my way.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
I just want to say one thing: I am glad they finally got rid of the wide taskbar buttons. They worked fine if you never had more than 5 windows open at a time, but they really didn't scale far beyond that. The new design (like the one in NEXTSTEP) should solve that problem.
Here's to hoping that the leading open source desktop environments will follow suit in the near future.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You cannot. I created a new notepad document, saved it as test.txt and pinned it to the task bar. I then closed it and launched the icon I just pinned and it opened a new empty Notepad.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
That's exactly what I wanted to know.
Nothing's has changed much, performance is the same, it's just another service pack for Windows Vista, or what's more like it is this is just Windows Mojave (Windows Vista, with a different name).
Great, I was optimistic, however this review makes me not want it.
Oh well, guess I'll save some money then!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I've used Vista on a friend's laptop and I've found it to be usable enough for browsing the web, with its default settings. The laptop is a 400 UKP model from Dell. On the flip side: over a few hours use, it has bluescreened on me once (I can't remember the last time Ubuntu crashed). As for the owners, my female friend hates it (she hates the UAC and the UI) and her husband gets along with it juts fine.
They call it Windows 7.
Technical version number is 6.1.
I call it 6.0.1.
Seriously, what do we have here? Some UI upgrades, one or two new features in WMP and MSN.
And they are gonna sell it the same price they sold Vista, only two years after??
The changelog reminds me more of Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 (which included things like IE 1, Drivespace, Task Scheduler, Themes Management, Wallpaper resizing, High-res icons and Pinball).
This is definitely an expansion pack, not a new version. I could have bought it for 50 bucks, but certainly not for 300+
Here you can read about my test-installation on a Motion Computing LE1600 (designed for XP in 2005):
http://max.zamorsky.name/2009/01/13/windows7-auf-einem-motion-computing-le1600-tablet-pcwindows7-on-a-motion-computing-le1600-tablet-pc/
First impression: quite promising.
Although I do not expect Windows 7 to be able to run on old or "smaller" hardware as MS claims.
how IT is changing the world - http://max.zamorsky.name
If they were honest, they'd call it "PLEASE let us stop supporting Windows XP". I figure if we all hold out long enough we can get new cars or something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oddly*, the procedure for doing it on Windows 98 was, if not as trivial as it tends to be on Linux, at least much less painful than it is on any NT-flavored derivative.
* I know the precise technical reasons for this, so it's not odd at all. But this is still the word which fits best in the sentence.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been calling it Vista2 for months.
Wouldn't that be ME III?
Yes. Yes it would...
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Been using the Beta since Saturday and I must say it is really nice. This is first Windows system I have been excited about ever. It's very responsive, and light weither doesn't have all the crapware as previous version *cough* Vista *cough* So far I am thinking I will be happily replacing my Windows XP Pro SP3.
I've been saying for years that the easy piracy of older windows (particularly win95) is a huge part of the reason that windows is the standard today. Everyone got used to it, familiar with the layout, etc. and when companies built infrastructure they bought what their employees were most familiar with.
So...what's funny is that for all it's anti-piracy nonsense to help 'increase sales' they turn it all upside-down with this beta. They give it out for free to get people used to it just like piracy of early windows versions did. Did someone at MS grow a brain?!
Oh, and what's even funnier is i'm typing this while in a MS training class :)
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
As a Windows Vista Premium 64 bit user unless there is an real enhancements to Windows 7 I will be staying on Vista. It works well with the service pack and I have daemon tools and other things working just fine. It will probably be 2010 before 7 even gets out retail anyway and it better have real improvements or it will fail. Who is going to pay another 100 + dollars for minor changes. Sorry M$ but you are not getting more money unless there is a real reason to update.
Hi, is download using some silverlight stuff or what? When I click download nothing happens...?
Expecting a user to go to TechNet or MSDN every time Windows does something weird or unexpected isn't user friendly. Its great you know these exist but it is pretty useless for a lot of other people. Microsoft should be constantly taking feedback and tweaking the UI instead of publishing more articles.
And i WAS NOT able to figure out how to successfully add Ubuntu
Just wondering-- does Windows 7 not allow you to use grub or something as your bootloader, and have grub load Windows?
I don't think I've ever tried to have a Windows bootloader load Linux.
Windows Vista made a lot of changes to the driver model and the display layer, and took a much harder line on security, which was all very necessary work, but which caused a lot of teething trouble in its early days. Windows 7 doesn't undo any of that work; it does, however, build upon it to make using the OS simpler and more refined.
So what he is basically saying is Microsoft has decided to release new eye candy atop Vista for the oooh, look how shiny crowd
The public beta, build number 7000, finally gives us the new shiny taskbar.
but the basic issues with Vista are still there? We're supposed to care?
...Well, besides releasing Vista in the first place?
...Wait for it...
... a beta.
One of the default wallpapers in the Public Beta is a small fish in the middle of the screen. Not amusing until you realize that the fish is...
You are correct in that hardware acceleration is not supported on most sound cards under Vista but it has nothing to do with DRM or protected media path. Hardware acceleration is not support with many cards because of the additional features in the Vista/Windows 7 audio subsystem including support for custom speaker configurations and per application volume controls (instead of a single global volume control).
I've been playing with the beta on a Dell Optiplex 755, and it's bad. I tried 2 different Dell LCDs, and it keeps setting the refresh rate out of the LCD's spec. Every time I reboot, I'm screwed. Every time I reset it, it forgets. ARGH!!
It will not activate with the included key, but works with another (free, for now) key. THIS IS NOT GOOD
IE8 can not play a video without locking up.
It uses Vista drivers, and only Vista drivers, so there's still not support for older HP plotters and wide-format inkjets, despite lies by Micro$soft and HP to the contrary.
Andy
Trying to get it in Firefox even on Windows didn't work for me. I didn't want to spend a lot of time messing with it, so I used IE and the forcefed Akamai-whatever download utility. Maybe it's coincidence, IE7 has been unstable since I installed that download util. I have to run IE7 without add-ons enabled just for it to work.
I'll need to do some Googleing since there's no listing for it in the add-ons menu or Programs and Feature. PITA.
Does no one realize that the fish on the wallpaper is a Beta? Get it? Beta?
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
Windows Vista has NOT had an extremely short life, and most people haven't skipped it. It's already been out for more than two years. The gap between Vista and 7 is greater than the gap between Windows 2000 and XP OR between Windows Me and XP. Windows Me was replaced after one year!
In every other way it is not at all comparable to Windows Me. Windows Me was a dead end, the last of an era - it was in development for a fairly short time and tossed out early because XP was coming along much faster than expected. It was barely different than 98 SE (in fact, Windows Me's alternate name was 98 Third Edition).
Windows Vista on the other hand was a massive undertaking, a very long project (just like Windows 2000) with architectural changes that will be around for years and years to come.
Oh, and Wikipedia is wrong. Cairo wasn't NT 4, Cairo was going to be NT 5.
Purchasing DRM'd music means that sooner or later, you'll probably lose access to your songs. You thought you had a deed, but you had a lease, subject to being revoked at any time. When the service goes belly-up or you change players, bye-bye music.
If you're OK with that, fine. But whether it affects you NOW isn't the whole picture. And the long-term prospects are why many of us avoid DRM.
Now, for things like rentals and all-you-can-listen-to streams, where it's understood up front that you can't keep this media, I think it's legitimate. But I ain't buying what I can't keep.
Copying is an incredibly complex system, actually. We aren't talking about a simple command-line file copy from one disk to another. We're talking about a copy engine in a shell that can handle arbitrary data sources all with varying capability levels, access restrictions, latencies, optimized move capabilities, and so on. Before copying can begin, you have to know if there's enough space at the destination, if the destination supports the kinds of files, levels of hierarchy, and file names that are provided by the source. You have to do access checks against both locations. In some cases an optimized copy or move isn't possible and data needs to be brought local to the machine and then pushed back out over the network. Sometimes temporary files need to be created. Merge conflicts need to be identified up front so that the user can be prompted before the operation begins, so that they don't walk away and have the operation stop in the middle because of a conflict. Many errors need to be queued up til the end so that the rest of the operation can proceed.
And that's just part of the complexity. The problem you hit may not have even been at all related to the copy engine. It could be a driver or configuration problem that made I/O perform slowly. There could have been a hang in Explorer, in a filter driver, in the file system, in the security manager (since we're dealing with ACLs), etc.
That's why it's a beta. When you get into this state and it says "Preparing to copy" for a long time, click the Send Feedback button! That's the best way to help us.
That said, Windows 7 has made many excellent improvements to copying, and more will come before it's done.
Feedback has been sent, I just found it interesting since this IS an issue people have had with Vista.
And again though, I don't know a whole lot of the nitty gritty, but from what your saying it almost sounds like Vista/7 is checking for information and circumstances I would relate more to installing a program rather than just copying over a folder. The only thing that was on the destination drive was Windows 7, since this was an 80 gig hard drive there was plenty of room.
I'll see what I can find regarding I/O since Windows 7 did rate my hard drive a lowly 2.9 for an 80gig Seagate Barracuda. Unsure if that is an accurate rating for it, sounds low.
other stats for reference, AMD 6400 black edition, 2x 2gig(4gig total) of dual channel ram, nforce 630/7025 motherboard by Abit, and nvidia 9800gt.
Oh, and thanks for explaining the issue in depth, I appreciate it.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I'm going to have to say that the winner of this argument is going to be the first person to actually present some credible evidence supporting their explanation as to why Vista audio is broken.
(Note: That it is broken doesn't seem to be a matter of contention.)
SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH SLASHDOT... Last time I looked there was no defectivebydesign attached to this article. The pattern matchers that assign that tag to all Microsoft OS articles must be offline. Mods, please investigate.
http://www.tomandemily.com
In Vista the disk rating measured only read and write throughput. However, the Windows performance team found that many hard drives with good throughput exhibited terrible latency with faced with random I/O. So the Windows 7 test will cap the result at 2.9 for drives with very poor latency, and 1.9 for drives that are especially bad. Basically if you hit those caps, your drive is likely causing noticeable hangs or reduced responsiveness.
Not really sure what you were getting at with the comment about installing versus copying a folder. I was just trying to explain that the code for copying items in the Explorer shell is actually very complicated (and needs to be, to support all the scenarios it's meant to). That doesn't mean it shouldn't be very fast and trouble free, but it does mean that sometimes there are bugs, especially in a beta!
Anyway, thanks for trying the beta and sharing your feedback :)
It is NOT true that 7 has just as bad hardware requirements. I am running the beta in a Virtual Machine on a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz with only 512 Mb RAM allocated to the VM and it runs just fine!
That's a successful post if ever there was one. Guess the MS employees had a late start in moderations there.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
They probably figured that people would start buying 7 after mojave had so much "success".
It's exactly what it looks like
That sucks! I found that usually the problem was that I forgot to install GRUB onto the Linux partition instead of the MBR. Messed up a few Windows installs that way before I managed to remember it for good.