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Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked
An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"
Pull the plug!
Seriously.... they claimed all this same stuff for vista. and we all found out they were full of crap.
7 might be better than vista. but i still dont believe it's the fastest ever or any of their other bs.
This isn't news. it's an ad.
You might like to actually test it, people have been telling good things about Windows 7, and the interface and updates do look quite nice. Personally I'm using Vista as I never bothered to replace it with XP, so I should notice it even more.
Judging from the article and what I've read before, they've spend time on making sure interface and the system responsiveness improves a lot. That is what people usually consider as "fast", even if its fake-fast it looks faster. Its pretty much the only thing OS can do to appear faster anyways - You cant magically get more CPU power.
This is one thing benchmarks unfortunately do not show, but is where Windows 7 (and FreeBSD as well) excel - responsiveness.
On a modern multitasking machine, I (for one) don't care so much if a task takes a little longer to complete in the background so long as I can carry on working in the foreground.
7 Multitasks better than any previous Windows OS bar none, and I think this is why it "feels" faster. It responds to user input a lot better.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Microsoft should give Vista users a free upgrade to Windows 7. Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't work well with XP, because the drivers are unstable. So I'm stuck using Vista, which is a huge beast, slow, and shitty. Now that Windows 7 is coming out, I would love to use that instead, but I get stomach pains when I think about handing my hard earned money to get what Vista SHOULD have been. Now I wait for the /. crowd to flame me to death me for using windows.
I'm one of those with double height taskbars in windows classic mode. I find it faster to be able to directly click on a taskbar item to select any of the 30+ windows open, than to click one of 6 items, then click again to select one of 5 items. I don't care how cluttered or messy it makes it look.
I've used KDE before and the problem with KDE was (is?) the sort order is wrong when you have a double/multi height taskbar - the items are organized from top to bottom then only left to right. This is bad because if one item is removed, everything to the right of it gets shuffled up or down. So you lose track of where stuff is. Windows does it right - right to left then only top to bottom. Perhaps I should put the taskbar on the side to sidestep the problem.
The other problem with KDE is "everything" is named starting with a "K" which makes it harder to scan to find stuff quickly.
Windows network file service is just as slow and as network-chatty as ever.
When you compare it to NFS4, it is most miserable. With SMB, the client and server shoot packets at each other all day and barely any data gets transferred. NFS4 will totally saturate my gigabit ethernet and it's almost all data in those packets.
Microsoft should just embrace NFS4 and drop SMB like a hot potato. It serves noone's interests to have such a crappy file service system in this day and age.
This interests me greatly. I just had to install Ubuntu (9.04) on my gaming computer because my wireless card "just works" with it and I don't have a way to get it up near enough to the router to plug it into the intertubes.
Downloading wireless drivers for windows on Linux ftw. :-)
I have been running Ubuntu on my other (non gaming) computers for over a year, as well as setting up my parents with Ubuntu, and have so far used a CLI about 4 times.
Installing flash was interesting, and was the biggest pain. However it should be noticed that I was installing a workaround to allow flash to run in an 64 bit browser and that's not even possible in windows as far as I know.
meanwhile I am constantly having to kill the explorer process and restart it from the task manager in windows. I'd personally much rather have a CLI to fall back on.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Well let's put it this way: I simply disagree with everything you say, but I guess that's personal.
When I have to do stuff in Windows it takes me 10 minutes of mucking around all the stupid settings windows, tabs and icons, every Windows version shuffles all that around, and eventually I find out I have to edit some obscure registry key just to stop some stupid program I didn't install consciously from loading on startup. The fact that you remembered what icons you have to click to get somewhere doesn't mean it's easier to remember or anything, most likely you've had so many stuff to fix on your windows machine that you now know what is where from the top of your head. Most non-geek people I know who use Windows don't even know they have a control panel.
I also don't really get why you think you have to remember any commands for everyday linux use, like many people alread posted a fully working linux system doesn't need the CLI, and it just keeps working unless you deliberately screw it up. It's sometimes a hard way to get there, especially on new hardware, and that's what the CLI is really useful for, much more useful than the Windows GUI (you know how to see the system log for example? Or the boot log? Or the PCI ids of that 'unknown device' on your system).
Last but not least let me add that people often view Windows as 'much easier' because they are used to it, and they bought the machine pre-installed and ready to go. Most people wo think Windows is easy would be completely lost if you gave them a generic installation CD and told them to get the machine up and running with all the hardware working properly.
>>Ah, but you didn't know that Windows has "shutdown -f -r" you say. Well, stop blaming the OS for your own ignorance then!
I seriously hope you're making a joke there. No normal user should ever need to know command line flags to TURN OFF HIS COMPUTER. This functionality has always been broken in windows, forcing a user to babysit his machine to make sure it successfully turns off, something you don't always have the time to do (at an airport, or you're running late for something).
Besides, the bigger problem is the immense amount of astroturfing going on for Win7. If you hated Vista (and nearly everyone does - I do tech workshops for a living) you'll hate Win7. They didn't fix the broken Vista file browser or windows explorer, and so *nothing else they did* matters.
But when you read things like this (from TFA):
"Although the look of Windows 7 may seem to be nothing more than some polish applied liberally to the Vista Aero theme, make no mistake: this is a full replacement operating system, and more than just 'Vista done right'. From driver support to multitouch groundwork for the future, from better battery management to the most easy-to-use interface Microsoft has ever had, Windows 7 is hardly half-baked."
Then you know that there's something seriously screwy going on. It sounds like all the press outlets are creaming themselves for Win7, and I can't figure out why. Usability is the most important feature they should be concerned about, and both Vista and Win7 are steps backwards in usability.
For the anecdotal record, I installed the RC on my ye olde underpowered XP laptop (512 MB RAM) and with the bare bones, stripped down setup it runs about the same as it did using XP. If nothing else, the fact that I've left it on for 3 months underscores my lack of desire to return to XP.
It's slower than XP for everything but the critical "shut down" benchmark.
No, I'm not making this up. That's straight from the article.
Windows 7 is Vista R2.
The server version even makes that explicit. Vista's server version is Windows 2008. Seven's server version is Windows 2008 R2.