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Is Microsoft Improving Its Image?
nk497 writes "Writer makes the case that Windows 7 is a turning point for Microsoft, and we all might start liking them soon ...
'While it's not winning everyone over, there are real signs that Microsoft has taken criticisms on board where it matters most: in the software and services that it provides. The idea of a faster, slimmer Windows is one that most Vista owners would automatically put on their wishlist, and it seems that Microsoft has genuinely done something about it. It's not just reignited interest in the Windows product line, but it's got users appreciating a fresh approach from Microsoft as well.'"
Microsoft's goal is to be like cable TV.
You pay about $50 a month to use their O/S. And then you pay an extra $10 a month for Word, or get the Premium package with Word, Excel, and Access for $20.
Is this where you want to be in 5 years?
I prefer to own, not rent my own PC.
I prefer to own, not rent my applications.
I want my applications to be mine and my data to be mine so that I do not lose access to them arbitrarily.
Microsoft is a big scammy company that provides extremely easy to use products that work reasonably well.
I don't like them as a company but I can deal with that.
I do like their ease of use and will miss it but the free competition is now only a couple years behind microsoft (and gaining).
But I won't be lead to market to slaughter and end up renting their OS and applications at the rates they desire.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
People will say whatever they want- on slashdot, that will be MS bashing and MS loving. But think about this honestly, and answer honestly- I think it is helping.
I, for one, prefer windows over linux, and the thought that Windows 7 is better than vista makes me excited to try it. My main machine is still XP, but I've got Vista at work and on my laptop, and I just can't stand it. Anybody who says vista is good is somebody who only tries websurfing- not actually trying to get something done.
Now, if only they got rid of the pesky sys requirements of windows. I don't want to need 4gb of RAM minimum to get things running smoothly. I want things to run with 512 as smoothly as XP does, and allow the extra 3.5 gb of memory to give me extra performance with other programs.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
There is also a business-related issue. Microsoft is now the underdog compared to Google. Google gave away a free desktop sidebar, and now Microsoft has made that obsolete by bundling in their own with Vista and Windows 7. A decade ago, there would have been howls of monopolization, and using Windows to enter an adjacent market. Today, nothing. Today it is seen as Microsoft defending its desktop turf against Google's Internet challenge.
If Microsoft wants me to "like them":
1. Ballmer has to go. This guy is just offensive. Between the combat metaphors and the chair tossing, I can't respect any company run by this guy. AND, he's doing a poor job of running Microsoft.
2. The 'kinder/gentler Microsoft' has to become more open. That means opening up APIs and stop trying to manipulate standardization processes.
3. They have to improve their product quality. That will be a huge challenge given their code base, and maybe Windows 7 will be a substantial quality improvement. The record for Microsoft seems to be "every other product is OK" (Win 98 was much better than Win 95, Win XP is much better than Win 2k, hopefully Win 7 will be much better than Vista."
4. They also need to pay attention to both Apple and to their own research arm, and start -innovating-rather than blindly copying what others are doing.
5. Until 1..4 are achieved, I'm not going to like Microsoft. More importantly, I'll not even consider a car (e.g. Ford) that has Microsoft products in it, and the idea of the current Microsoft trying to "fix health care records" scares the fertilizer out of me.
Just my $.02...
That was because Opera forced them to, not because they wanted to look like nice guys. They just didn't want more fines.
If I was running a company and our flagship product came out several years late, overhyped, underspeed, underfeatured, unable to run on most computers, frustrating to use, and it sold really poorly, causing billions of dollars of shortfalls in sales, well, yes, I'd try to do better the next time. No news here. The real problem is that Windows 7 is just a service pack for Vista. Many of the issues like DRM and slow I/O have just been lightly patched over with no real attempt to roll back to the somewhat simpler, faster Windows XP code base. When you're in a hole, stop digging, don't just paint the hole walls a more pleasing color.
Actually, with Vista and Visual Studio 2008 and Windows 7 will seal the deal. I've railed on about how Microsoft has abandoned native code developers, and that's tuned me into Linux quite a bit... but...
Visual Studio 2008's C++ compiler is pretty darned good. Everyone rips MFC, and deservedly, in some ways, but, all of sudden, everyone else's "slim" C++ framework is suddenly pretty darned fat. I mean, doc/view in wxwidgets? And you surely gest if you think Qt is thin. And, MFC, for all of its ugliness, comes now with those fancy Office ribbon bars that I just love. I know it sounds crazy, but I see those ribbon bars popping out of the default MFC application, and I'm like, yeah, I know its a fatter framework than WTL and everyone in the Unix world will laugh at my giant download... but look at those ribbon bars, minitabs, and all the other widgets that other frameworks simply do not have.
Microsoft does have to watch out though, because my foundness for the MFC facelift in no way diminishes the excellent work under way with the tools for wxWidgets. There's some forms editor tools for wxWidgets that have no native C++ answer in Visual Studio and that's something Microsoft really ought to worry about.
And, in Windows 7, those fancy ribbon bars are going to be shipping as part of Windows.
But all in all, compared to Ubuntu Hardy Heron, I really like Vista as a desktop. I really do. That's not to say that Vista is better than Hardy in every regard - Hardy trumps for working with ISOs and command line dvd burning is a hoot, but... the way that the task bar works, the folder search works, the file open dialogs work, and, its pretty darned stable, and feels faster than Hardy does, I must say.
The one thing that does suck about Windows 7, though, is that I think the Outlook Express -> Windows Mail in Vista is a mail client that I think Microsoft finally got right for casual pop mail, and that's going away evidently.
This is my sig.
And it's also one of the main features of 10.6.
I wonder how far they'll be able to go with that. To me, OS X 10.5 is basically XP requirements with the level of Vista's features already. (and yes, with Windows 7 cutting some cruft and adding a "dock", it's getting even more similar to OS X)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
XP *has* gotten pretty bloated.
Back in the SP1 days, you could run XP acceptably on 256MB of RAM, and pretty decently on 512. Today, 512 feels cramped, and is the bare minimum I'd recommend for running SP3 and all the security patches.
1GB is a more reasonable minimum if you actually want to use apps. Firefox 3 is hungry enough that it'll use up 100-300MB if you have a lot of tabs open, so you really do need at *least* 1GB to run the OS plus just a web browser, which is really pretty minimal in terms of applications.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
It seems that Windows 7 is still a lot like Vista to me.
Shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a half a brain in his head (or has any memory of Microsoft product releases), but that said, take it from the horse's mouth.
PBS' Charlie Rose interviewed Bill Gates a few weeks back and asked him whether Windows 7 was indeed new, or it whether it represented an incremental improvement to Vista. Gates became uncomfortable, went silent for a few seconds, and muttered it was the latter. An awkward pause ensued before the next question was asked. Unsurprisingly, he was more forthcoming and talkative when the questions were general, and weren't about Microsoft or Windows.
So there you have it kids. Windows 7 is the marketing name for Vista SP3. It should really be SP2.5, but the small collections of features to Windows 7 as sales enticements merit some recognition. But then, that's from someone who thought Win98SE was kind of cool.
Well, yes - because XP has been around for so long, hardware has overtaken it.
That's one thing that annoys me about Microsoft (as well as games companies). When I finally get a fast enough computer for the goddamned program to run well they stop supporting it!
Free Martian Whores!
M$ Vista PluS Pack!
Why would you want reduced playback support in your OS?
Because if no one releases programs which play broken DRMed files, then people will eventually stop releasing broken DRMed files.
Media companies will whine and complain that the lack of DRM prevents them from selling their media on windows PCs, but it only takes one company to break rank and start making money (much like EMI with MP3s) and the rest will cave.
Besides, since I never buy DRMed media, it doesn't really matter to me whether any device I own can play it or not.
I've used XP for years, I recently upgraded to Vista 64 bit Ultimate. While it was nice and all, the OS took up 24GB on a 30GB partition and I did not install anything. Talk about bloat, it was straight crap. I then decided to give Windows 7 32 bit a try and have not looked back. While there are a few quirks with certain programs, I have yet to have a BSOD or anything. Actually, it encountered a problem installing paint.net and gave the exact steps to fix it. I did not have to google or search arcane MS Knowledge base articles. It was a simple copy and paste to edit a registry setting and boom it fixed the problem. Vista is the equivalent of an over budget Hollywood blockbuster flop. If Windows 7 is making up for that then keep going. Please keep it lean.
I think his concern about owning the data refers to having free access to the format it is stored in. I haven't seen this to be so much of an issue with Microsoft since it seems a lot of applications can figure out how to read an Office document.
However, if Microsoft moved to a subscription and went out of business within the next 6 months, 10 years from now would you be able to find an app that would load a Powerpoint 2007 slide show?
Someone pointed a similar issue out to me when I mentioned how much iTunes music I bought. I did realize that my music was only usuable so long as I could install iTunes on my computer or had a working iPhone/iPod/etc.
So, in regards to 'owning' data, he does bring up a real concern.
Windows XP = lean
Windows Vista = fat
Windows 7 = leaner than Vista = Windows XP
Actually I think it is more like this
Windows XP = Coke
Windows Vista = New Coke
Windows 7 = Classic Coke
Sales of "Classic" Coke skyrocketed when it was RE-introduced to the market. People hoarded it just in case Coca Cola discontinued it again. I see sales of 7 to be quite brisk at launch. Whether you like Vista or not prevailing public opinion is not favorable so anything that replaces it should do well.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
>>>Almost every operating system has gone through this.
No not true. In the past Microsoft might say, "XP can run on 128 megabte" and it did. With Vista they claimed it can run on 512 megabyte, and it didn't. It runs like a snail through amber. In the past MS was honest about the minimum requirements but *this* time Microsoft lied, pure and simple, and a lot of people upgraded or bought Vista machines that could not run the OS properly.
As for Windows 7:
Will it run on 512 megabyte? No. Then it's not any "thinner" than Vista.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
> You don't own any application you use, unless you wrote it.
Quit being such a corporate boot-licker.
You own a copy of a work in perpetuity unless there is some other
sort of license in effect. If you are a consumer, any relevant
license may be considered null and void for various reasons related
to notions in contract law.
My copy of Word Perfect 8 for Linux continues to be mine until
I sell the original package (and media) it came in. The same
goes for my 10 year old copies of Applix and CivCTP.
The same also applies to my copy of msoffice 4.2 if I still have it.
Quit trying to rewrite copyright law.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Not really. The recent experience i had with that was when i went and installed all the mainstream distros under VirtualBox because i was packaging my code for most of them.
Some of them come with hundreds of megabytes worth of locale data for obscure languages that i will never ever use, and default to several gigs of installation size, without ever asking if i wanted office productivity suites installed on my dev boxen or not.
Figuring out and uninstalling the nonnecessary cruft is nontrivial, and often impossible because of deep dependencies between packages, especially in Gnome and KDE desktop suites.
Yes, i could go with source-based distro and spend weeks tuning everything from scratch, but what does it really give me ? A few gigs of spare disk space ? A small percentage faster load times ? Its not really worth the effort. The truth is, 98% of the "customers" dont care about the bloat per se, so from the software packagers point of view its just easier to live with it.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Just get rid of the shortcut, it's a lot easier than trying to rip out vital parts of the OS because you'll just get all whiny when removing the only web accessing part of the OS too.
You'll whine that you can no longer use FTP, you'll whine that for some reason you can no longer connect to network shares, etc. What you want to get rid of, sir, is the shortcut. After all, IE is basically a wrapper around the internal engine (Trident.)
Anyway, there are still some applications you should not remove from most distros. Remove apt from Ubuntu and have fun setting it up again, stuff like that.
You seem to mostly be talking about "install bloat", not "runtime bloat".
Although both are bad, I think that these days it's pretty much agreed that using 2GB more hard drive space probably isn't a big deal.
The problem is that Windows has so many background things running that really are required to do anything useful (like using the network), plus all the extra background tasks that you might not feel you need, but turn out to be required for things like applying updates. A Windows XP install with just the Microsoft standard background tasks takes about 300MB of RAM to do nothing, and Vista is far more bloated than that.
Good examples:
This kind of bloat where Microsoft has "important" background programs running that you can't turn off but don't really need just does not happen in a Linux install. Yes, there are some stupid Linux installs that have too many services running by default, but you can just turn off the ones you don't use, and nothing else stops working.
I've met one person in my life who actually likes Windows. Her ex husband hated it. That's why she likes it.
No offense, but... do you get out much? There are a lot of people who like Windows, regardless of various passing frustrations.
I don't know, I think the "so called" luster or salad days of Microsoft happened back in the 90's. They will never be amazing again, not that they were that amazing in the 90's when Windows 97 came out, LOL.
Bill's getting old and Melinda doesn't have too many good years left if any at all for a family. I am surprised he doesn't retire and have some babies. I guess he was happy with continuing with making his mark on history as a baby boomer philanthropist which is what I guess he thought would make his image work for this decade. I didn't get that whole deal.
I guess he is happier just working and making Slashdot/Linux people miserable or their source of amusement. He will need someone to carry on his legacy. Usually men with that much power and money want at least one child.
Good points, I want to add that if we call 7 a service pack for Vista, then where does it end? Was 98 a service pack for 95, 2000 for NT?
I've been using 7 beta as my production machine since it was released. Sure, I'm careful by using acronis to snapshot the system every major step, and so far that has kept the system problem free. I had installed far cry 2 and it was having some problems so I reverted the system back, although I'll try again tonight with the new Nvidia drivers.
point is, 7 is so good/shiny and stable as it is, in beta, and provides a better much better user experience that I rather use it than the tried and true xp 64. It will also be the first MS OS that I will buy when it is released (maybe also because I am no longer in school too).
Yes, Linux is gaining some amount of traction with the techno-hipster crowd, but that's still a relatively small slice of the sum total of all computer users across history capable of forming opinions. There are people that have walked into an Apple store and played with one of the locked away, overheating iMacs with mushy keyboards and single-button mice for a few minutes without getting a feel for how the system is actually used. Students that used old Unix shell accounts and IT guys that work overtime fighting the server over a serial terminal with sh. People that remember DOS or their old SGI Irix workstations. People bitten badly by the BeOS and OS/2 generation and people that spend their days working with the arcana of the AS/400 and its legacy.
And then, there are people that have never done any of this and have no perspective by which to judge in the first place.
I suspect that a great many of people that are purpourted to "like" Windows fall into this latter category. (I suspect also that a lot of people will consider commenting at this point with a, "Well, I..."-type response before realizing that, as readers of slashdot, they are not even remotely to whom I refer :).
There are undoubtedly people that like Windows more than any other platform for various reasons ("Games" seems the most-often cited, to be sure), but that crucial set of statistics that outline how many have ever heard of, seen, or used another platform with any amount of rigour is sadly not accounted for in any of what I have seen. Until that point, we can only look at it with mass generalizations: there are likewise a lot of people that commonly use Linux or MacOS on their desktops and laptops and a lot that say they would switch from Windows to something else were it not for some piece of third-party software (engineers give me this often. A lot of the high-powered CAD stuff is shockingly platform restricted and doesn't run in Wine at all).
RTFM
Of course, 'shill' here means 'person I disagree with'. The fact that Windows 7 will run slower on your ridiculously outdated hardware means utterly fuck all. The fact that you're declaring which Windows version is best despite clearly not having tried Windows 7 says plenty. I'm a non-partisan user. I have an imac, a linux-booting eeepc & a dual-booting xp/ubuntu main machine. I tried Vista for four days when it was in beta and have never even though about using it again. So I hope some of this qualifies me as a legitimately open-minded end user. I fucking LOVE Windows 7. I've had one issue since installing it a week ago, and that's that windows installer is buggy as shit. Other than that, the interface is lovely, some of the newer features (which may have been in vista, I don't know) are really useful...top of the list is the integration of the quick launch toolbar into the taskbar, making the difference between a running application and a launch icon disappear. Njice paradigm shift, treating open and closed apps the same way. Windows 7 is fast enough to make that believable...Firefox loads in about a quarter of the time it takes in XP on the same machine. Being able to run a locked Windows Media Center on my TV, which is running as a second monitor, is awesome. Boot time is good, shutdown time ditto, UAC is still a bit annoying, but less so. They didn't need to fuck around with locations again...i have the way MS redefines all the control panels etc with each release. I don't need to find display settings somewhere new every time I upgrade. Still, the thing is, who needs an OS that uses on 20MB? Have you priced RAM lately? The fact is that Windows 7 will run comfortably on a pretty cheap MODERN PC. I can't loan linux on my abacus, boo-hoo.