How Vista Mistakes Changed Windows 7 Development

snydeq writes "For the past several months, Microsoft has engaged in an extended public mea culpa about Vista, holding a series of press interviews to explain how the company's Vista mistakes changed the development process of Windows 7. Chief among these changes was the determination to 'define a feature set early on' and only share that feature set with partners and customers when the company is confident they will be incorporated into the final OS. And to solve PC-compatibility issues, Microsoft has said all versions of Windows 7 will run even on low-cost netbooks. Moreover, Microsoft reiterated that the beta of Windows 7 that is now available is already feature-complete, although its final release to business customers isn't expected until November." As a data point for how well this has all worked out in practice, reader The other A.N.Other recommends a ZDNet article describing rough benchmarks for three versions of Windows 7 against Vista and XP. In particular, Win-7 build 7048 (64-bit) vs. Win-7 build 7000 (32-bit and 64-bit) vs. Vista SP1 vs. XP SP3 were tested on both high-end and low-end hardware. The conclusions: Windows 7 is, overall, faster than both Vista and XP. As Windows 7 progresses, it's getting faster (or at least the 64-bit editions are). On a higher-spec system, 64-bit is best. On a lower-spec system, 32-bit is best.

Comments

Re:release date

[Lumpy]

I am no microsoft apologist but give them a break as they are at least trying. I use XP, Vista and Windows 7 daily. and Windows 7 actually is the best of all three. They took out all the mental retardation that they put into vista and did something I never EVER would expect microsoft to do. but revert to naming that makes sense.

Windows 7 is the OS that will save their ass. So it only took them 7 years to get it right... Hey! I just figured out how they got it's name!!

Will Windows 7 support the devices I already have?

[TwobyTwo]

There are at least two reasons I didn't move to Vista:

1. Vista twice trashed an XP system that was dual booting on the same system...I think it got over anxious about updating file system indexes while booting (and I'm sort of picky about running OS's that trash my systems)
2. Vista wouldn't support the perfectly good Epson Perfection 1200U scanner that I bought some years ago, and for which Epson chose not to release Vista drivers. Likewise for other devices.

I'm willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and assume that Win7 solves problem #1. Anyone know whether Win7 will support all those perfectly good devices I have that work just fine on Windows/XP, and that I was supposed to throw out when I installed Vista? If the answer is "no", I'm sticking to XP for a long time (or moving to Mac, for which drivers are indeed available).