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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.'"
MS will hold off on release until netbook manufacturers have high enough specs to run 7.. Duh!
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.
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: Now with more hookers.*
*Hookers available for tech journalists and reviewers only.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Isn't WoW the flagship app of Wine these days?
Well...I think your larger problem is that the Intel 950 sucks, as do most integrated GPUs. Per Wikipedia, it doesn't even support OpenGL 2.0.
There you go. Personally, I've always had good experiences with NVIDIA cards on Linux. Lenovo builds good, reasonably-priced laptops with NVIDIA or ATI cards these days.
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....
So they're planning a release around 2045? Right about when pocket calculators can play Crysis.
I hate printers.
Polish and User Experience in my view IS the operating system.
What the OS does for me is hide all of the ugliness of computers.
I just want to run a bunch of applications. Be able to switch between apps quickly. Setup a network to media with my XBox. Find files I'm looking for and boot quickly. It's all "Surface" stuff. But for me Vista has been incredibly stable so I haven't seen any need for improvement.
Windows 7 has added a lot of really nice things on top of Vista. People buy new operating systems because they increase their efficiency. That's why people love a mac. Those are the important new features. Being able to drag a window to the side of the screen in a big new feature. It might not take as many dev hours but it's a huge time saver for the user.
Service Packs fix bugs. New versions add features. Windows 7 is as much about adding features as it is bug fixing. And so far I've really liked a lot of the new features. I like that I don't have to manage my music and video sharing with my Xbox independently of my Zune independently of my WMP and I look forward to Winamp taking advantage of it as well.
I like the new taskbar even if I had to enable labels and disable application grouping. I don't like that it mixes running apps and icons but at the same time I do kind of have to remind myself "Why do I care?" At most I usually only have 2 icons mixed in that aren't running. And since figuring that out I've reorganized my pinned icons so that I rarely have an 'orphaned' icon.
I don't notice any performance bump. Then again I don't own a computer with less than 3GB of RAM and really... what excuse is there for only having 1GB of RAM? You can buy 1GB of RAM for $15.
I like the new wifi widget.
I like the new driver search feature (it found new updated drivers automatically and installed them. Handy!)
I like the new taskbar look and I like that I can change the taskbar's color. Seriously. I have to look at it all day. I didn't want black on my black background.
I can't stand that MSN now won't go to the notifications are and instead goes to my taskbar leaving TWO!! TWO!!!! STUPID #$*)@# taskbar entries for the same application.
I don't like that I can't have something pinned to the taskbar and start menu.
I like being able to drag an application up to the top of my screen to maximize it.
I like the updates to touch for my tablet PC.
I like the jump menus. Handy for Microsoft Word.
I look forward to Device Stage or whatever it is they call their USB connected device system.
And I look forward to being able to tell media to 'play on' my xbox from my PC.
And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head from 2 days of use.
As far as performance and bugs are concerned perhaps you could call this SP2. But everything beyond that are the kinds of enhancements and improvements that I expect from an OS upgrade.
What did I get out of XP? An improved Start Menu? Easier Networking? More stability? Was XP just Windows 98 SP3?
Actually, from what I can see, Windows 7 is to Vista what Windows 98 Second Edition was to Windows 98. Yes, there are a few added features, but for the most part it is Vista revisited. And they are not releasing it as SP2 because they want to make money - and historically, service packs have been released free of charge. Since Vista sales have not been what MS wanted them to be, they are trying to make up for that with a name change - but I don't see anything that distinguishes "7" from Vista other than the name. I think that anyone with a Vista license should be able to plug their vista key into "7" and get activated instantly. It won't happen, but it would be the right thing for MS to do. At the very least, they could offer "7" as a Vista upgrade for 10 or 20 dollars, as they did with Second Edition (for 98 users).
One problem is that "runs faster" and "feels faster" can be viewed as a subjective situation. If the UI is responding more quickly to my actions ("feels faster"), one could easily argue that whether it's actually running faster is less important. If I get X*3 units of work done with Windows 7, versus X*2 units of work done with Windows XP, then you could say my computer runs faster because it helps me do more work faster. If that increase in productivity is only because it "feels faster" then "feels" and "runs" subjectively become the same thing.
People buy new operating systems because they increase their efficiency
No. People buy new computers that have new operating systems on them because they don't have any choice when they buy a new computer. That's the way Microsoft sells software: to distributors, not to end-users.
How many copies of Vista do you think would have sold if users had been told, "Well, you can have an XP system that is exactly like what you've been used to running problem free for the past few years, or you can have Vista, which won't work with some of your hardware and be slow and unresponsive unless you pay more for the machine it's on"?
My guess is: not very many. XP is a pretty good system. And by the way, XP had an NT kernel, so no, it was nothing like Win98 SP3.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I've run Vista from beta 2 through the RCs. When the final version was released I got the free upgrade for the "Vista Capable" sub-$500 laptop I'd bought in November.
While Vista was in beta, it was dismal. There were major issues, and minor issues. Through the beta process, the quality improved - all the minor issues were resolved (things like the taskbar corrupting the desktop when it was moved to the top of the screen instead of the bottom). On the other hand, all the major issues - Aero performance, network performance, gaming performance, hyperactive UAC, and so on - didn't improve at all.
I know I bought a laptop that compromised a lot for the cost, but I still expected a brand new computer to at least be able to let me double-click a folder in explorer without stalling and spinning for tens of seconds. After suffering for a while, dealing with the issues so that I could stay up with the "cutting edge" and so I'd be familiar when friends asked me to help them with their own new computers, I ended up rolling back to XP.
I grabbed the 7 beta around midnight Friday, and put it on the same laptop (it's the only system my family won't kill me for messing with). While it isn't as fast as XP, it's really quite useable even with all the Aero features on. I haven't loaded up any games yet, still tinkering around with apps. The performance was the biggest problem for me, and with 7 it's a non-issue completely. The interface is more consistent (a lot of the standard tools and control panels in Vista were untouched from 2k/XP, more of them follow the new UI now). Desktop gadgets work like I expect them to. Lots of things are just "better."
Regarding hardware requirements... I think what's happened is that MS has learned from the "Vista Capable" fiasco and that even though 7 could run and perform on lighter hardware than Vista, they're keeping the higher standard so that you can actually expect such a "minimum" system to be used on a daily basis.
Your family videos won't play because of DRM - who are you, Brad Pitt?
Recent versions of VLC have left me very disappointed. Video quality is just bad; VLC isn't even doing decent upsampling (I just get nearest neighbor!). Plus performance is abysmal on Linux. Hence, I have switched allegiances and now use SMPlayer* on both my Linux and Windows machines. SMPlayer has better video quality, a nicer GUI, and proper subtitle support. There is a codec pack to download, but installation is trivial.
(* It's really just a nice frontend for MPlayer.)
It's a pity, because VLC can do a bunch of awesome network streaming stuff. Sometimes I get the feeling that VLC's mission isn't very clear. There was a time when it set out to be something more interesting than just another movie player.
The sad thing is, this poop gets modded up.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry