XP Users Are Willing To Give Windows 7 a Chance

Harry writes "PC World and Technologizer conducted a survey of 5,000 people who use Windows XP as their primary operating system. Many have no plans to leave it, and 80% will be unhappy when Microsoft completely discontinues it. And attitudes towards Vista remain extremely negative. But a majority of those who know something about Windows 7 have a positive reaction. More important, 70 percent of respondents who have used Windows 7 say they like it, which is a sign that Windows 7 stands a chance of being what Vista never was: an upgrade good enough to convince most XP users to switch."

Comments

Try Windows 7?

[squiggly12]

I would, but with some of the problems I had with Vistax64 (could have been hardware issues), I might wait until SP1 at least. Hell, it took me that long to migrate from Windows 2000. I waited until frakking SP1 was out!

Re:Try Windows 7?

[PIBM]

What's stopping you from trying the beta ? Put up a new harddrive / empty a small partition, turn on your AHCI and install windows 7!

Time to put those 8gb of ram to some use besides in linux :)

Re:Try Windows 7?

[rhook]

No need to wait for sp1, Windows 7 might as well be Vista SP3 with a new UI and more efficient code.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Kratisto]

There's no such thing as a needless upgrade. Someone will use it. I, for one, welcome our 64 bit overlords.

(Yes, there's a 64 bit XP, and yes, it has horrible driver support)

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Anonymous Coward]

^ This is the typical slashdotter.

Sitting around seething in hatred towards Microsoft, clinging to Windows until the Year Of The Linux Desktop finally arrives.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[InlawBiker]

It's a big plus that embedded, low-power 3d graphic chipsets like Intel's x4500 are finally ready for Microsoft. When Vista first came out the 3d processors simply were not there on the budget machines. It is important to add the 3d effects to the UI, no matter what anybody says. But it's funny how my wife's old Macbook with the ancient GMA 950 chip runs OS-X liquid smooth.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[tsa]

Once XP is completely dead, then I guess I'm done with Windows entirely.
 
The fact that you still run XP shows you need Windows. I bet you will be running Win7 in the future.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[the_humeister]

As an XP user all I can say is GO TO HELL Microsoft. I am done with your carnival sideshow of needless upgrades and pointless eye candy.

Once XP is completely dead, then I guess I'm done with Windows entirely.

OK. So what exactly will you move on to next then? Mac OS X with the same number of upgrades and pointless eye candy? Other Linux/BSD distributions that also have the same number of upgrades and pointless eye candy? Or are you just going to forgo all that and use the command-line exclusively?

Re:Try Windows 7?

[IntlHarvester]

OS X was designed in an era when 3D chips were pretty primitive, so it falls back onto the CPU if the graphics chips aren't up to snuff. If you check the system profiler, "Quartz Extreme" probably isn't enabled on your MacBook.

IIRC, MS eventually came around to the same conclusion and Win7 will emulate DX9 on the CPU for certain chipsets.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[caitsith01]

As an XP user all I can say is GO TO HELL Microsoft. I am done with your carnival sideshow of needless upgrades and pointless eye candy.

Once XP is completely dead, then I guess I'm done with Windows entirely.

I'm also a dedicated XP user. You are being unreasonable.

I have been using Windows 7 for a couple of months. Without having metrics to back up my personal experience, I find that it does everything at least as well as XP, and many things better.

Most noticeably, it has a user interface which doesn't look like it was designed in the mid 1990s. It looks and 'feels' a hell of a lot better, as well as being vastly more customizable. Maybe this doesn't matter to you, but it does to me and I would suggest to most computer users. Overall the UI in Windows 7 looks good and is very responsive.

Various other things work a lot better than they used to - for instance, my laptop has an HDMI port. This was a constant nightmare on XP, and frequently didn't work at all or did weird things like resetting my display settings for the laptop itself whenever it was connected to a TV. Windows 7 just figures out what it is plugged into and switches to the most appropriate video-out mode. Similarly, whereas switching screens under XP frequently causes issues with a video that was playing fine on one screen not transferring to another without restarting playback, in Win 7 this seems to happen seamlessly. Audio likewise is a lot simpler and easier to configure.

Unlike Vista, MS seems to have done a good job of working out when additional security is appropriate - e.g. when software wants to actually make changes to installed components or add drivers to the system, a password or fingerprint scan is required, but I am yet to be annoyed at an inappropriate time as I was in Vista.

Games seem to work just as well as they do in XP, which is a huge contrast to Vista (which came with my laptop and ran games like an absolute dog).

It starts up and shuts down a lot more quickly than XP.

The media centre (can't remember what it's called) is actually pretty good for use on a plasma TV.

However, most noticeable is that most of the time I DON'T notice that I'm using Win 7, or any particular OS - stuff just works properly without any real need for fiddling around.

So, from one XP adherent to another, I say: maybe you should give it a go. Vista was a horror from the pits of hell as far as I am concerned. MS may be a big evil lumbering corporate monster, but someone there appears to have taken the problems with Windows by the balls and actually focused on making an operating system that has the following features: modern; actually works even on modest hardware; good user experience. My experience so far indicates that they have largely succeeded.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Osty]

But it's funny how my wife's old Macbook with the ancient GMA 950 chip runs OS-X liquid smooth.

The ancient GMA950 chip in my netbook runs Windows 7 Aero glass liquid smooth.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[infinityxi]

Just something to point out, necessary applications aside, it is fully possible to move to Linux with a minimalistic desktop. On an Ubuntu system (the flagship desktop distribution), one can either install XFCE or just grab Xubuntu and run with that.

With that said, I don't see it entirely as a bad thing that Windows, Max OSX, and modern linux distributions bundle eye candy into their newer offerings. Something that is easier on the eyes, or gives the user a bit of shiny will create an overall positive experience. I mean we all could have gotten along very well with our current GUI looking like Windows 3.1 in term of style but part of the user experience is how sleek and nice an interface is. It's why some people buy Macs, others install Compiz, and many XP users will go to Windows 7 even if all their previous applications work perfectly well in XP.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[bschorr]

I put the RC up on a 64-bit machine a week or two ago and I've been generally pretty pleased with it. Seems much faster than Vista, the new taskbar is pretty handy and it stays more or less out of my way. No driver problems either (so far).

I never advised a single client to upgrade to Vista (I didn't hate Vista, but didn't think it was a worthwhile upgrade either), but I think I will be comfortable advising some clients to upgrade to Windows 7.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[bruce_the_loon]

Here you go. Found it at the bottom of the RSAT forum page from MS. RSAT for Windows 7

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Skreems]

And no ability to upgrade from XP without wiping your entire machine. That's a hell of a "feature" for something that may as well be Vista SP3.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[FreonTrip]

I'm not so certain of the validity of that statement any longer. A very large number of non-display x64 drivers certified for Vista and Windows 7 now happily run on XP x64 too, and video card drivers for the platform aren't a problem unless you're using something either very old or esoteric at this juncture. I say this as someone who decided to use all four gigs of his RAM back in February and hasn't run into a single deal-breaking issue with his install since then. :)

Re:Try Windows 7?

[fractoid]

As an ex-XP user who's been running Ubuntu for the last two years, I can agree with this. I've likewise been using the Windows 7 RC and it's pretty darn good. Everything works, I've had a couple of blue screens (trying to run Lego Star Wars in XP SP3 compatibility mode) but otherwise everything's been stable and my (fairly standard) hardware all works perfectly. The new start bar interface is nicer than XP / Vista's in my opinion and little touches like live previews in Alt+Tab windows switcher with no slowdown just make it feel more polished.

The only thing that's stopping me from saying "100%, will buy when released" is that they're trying to charge a retarded amount for it and I can get near-enough functionality for free in Linux.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[lukas84]

RSAT Tools were out on Friday. What kind of techie are you if you're unable to find them?

Re:Try Windows 7?

[lukas84]

You're wrong. The Custom option can preserve your hard disks content, and you can transfer all your user settings using USMT (Corporate) or Windows Easy Transfer (Home User).

Re:Try Windows 7?

[SanityInAnarchy]

It is important to add the 3d effects to the UI, no matter what anybody says.

I say, sorry, no, it's not.

Some of the 2D stuff that you get from these hardware-accelerated compositing window managers, like drop shadows and zooming, is actually useful. Most of the 3D stuff is complete eye candy fluff.

Not that I'm complaining -- I do think it's a step in the right direction, though I wonder if it's the right approach. (If I put SVG stuff on my KDE4 desktop -- even as a wallpaper -- and zoom in, what happens?) But at the same time, you shouldn't need a 3D desktop to use a word processor.

But it's funny how my wife's old Macbook with the ancient GMA 950 chip runs OS-X liquid smooth.

Try Compiz on just about any card. It's the main reason I'm not down on this stuff in general -- because it can be done right. But again, requiring it, or overplaying its importance, is a mistake. At the end of the day, the GUI, the mouse, the web browser and web apps, are all innovations that burn more CPU than they ought to, but pay off immensely. 3D effects in a 2D UI, so far, give you about two minutes of "Ooh, Shiny", and then it's back to work, with very little difference.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[mgblst]

All the studies I have seen show W7 as being the same speed, or slightly faster than Vista, on the same hardware, even for gaming. There is no speed increase with W7, more likely you are using a newer computer.

I won't be moving to W7, I have no reason to waste time learning a new OS. Microsoft enjoy moving everything around, for no reason, like changing the control panel. Such a huge pain in the ass trying to do the simplest of stuff, because Microsoft love tinkering with stuff.

You don't get this on Mac OS.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[mjwx]

Most noticeably, it has a user interface which doesn't look like it was designed in the mid 1990s.

The UI is a huge leap backwards.

It looks and 'feels' a hell of a lot better,

Looks and 'feels' aren't going to increase productivity. The complete lack of text on the task bar means I have to learn what each icon represents and then have to mouse over it or open the item to figure out what it actually is. In XP or Vista I can just look at the task bar and figure out which server's I've RDP's and SSH'd into, what page my browser is on, any IM's demanding my attention and who they are from. I'm going to lose a crap load of productivity from this alone and probably some hair as well. There are good reasons we favour text based language over a pictogram or hieroglyphic language, complex text is far easier to read.

That stupid "network and sharing centre" is still there, still trying to tell me that it knows what to do with my network. Why do I have to assign a "location" popup to every different DHCP address I get, the OS should handle this invisibly.

Maybe this doesn't matter to you, but it does to me and I would suggest to most computer users.

Customisability is a two edged sword, with customisability comes more chances for something critical to fail. I'm not saying that extenisve customisability is a bad thing but most users will only change their screensaver and background. Some will pick a different pre-selected colour "theme" but most will leave it as default. Most users do not care about customisability beyond major superficial points like the background.

Games seem to work just as well as they do in XP

Game performance is nowhere near the level of XP and the old games which didn't work in Vista still don't work in 7. I'm not completely cynical however, I know 7 is still immature and many of the drivers will have issues. It will take time for the drivers (esp graphics drivers) to mature.

It starts up and shuts down a lot more quickly than XP.

The RC does not start nearly as quickly as a fresh install of XP. As a gamer I reinstall XP every 3-6 months. Vista slowed down at the same rate as XP if not faster and I expect 7 to be the same.

Windows 7 is what Vista should have been released as. It's nowhere near as good as XP and tends to nanny the users a bit too much. It is better then vista which managed to refine annoying pop-ups and disruptions to a weaponised level but basic OS functions in Windows 7 are still several order of magnitudes more disruptive then in XP. Many OS tasks which should be invisible to the user are quite obvious and very annoying. I think MS spent too much time on the "look and feel" and not enough time on getting the codebase to run quickly and reducing Vista's extreme level of annoyance to the user.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[TheThiefMaster]

To back up Freon, I've been using XP x64 since its release, as my primary (home, gaming) OS.

There are no driver issues. Even my no-name webcam works.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Osty]

Some of the 2D stuff that you get from these hardware-accelerated compositing window managers, like drop shadows and zooming, is actually useful. Most of the 3D stuff is complete eye candy fluff.

I think the parent got it a little bit backward. It's not important to add 3D effects to window managers, but it's important to add 3D rendering. That doesn't mean wavy windows, desktops on cubes, or whatever, but the ability to do hardware-accelerated compositing, to render to a texture so you can have easy window previews, scaling, etc. More importantly, by using only the 3D pipeline vendors can simplify their hardware and software because they don't need to worry about 2D acceleration anymore, and desktop environments can seamlessly switch between "2D" and 3D. Visually, nothing has to change. You don't need to have "glass" effects or anything else just because you're doing 3D compositing. That's just eye-candy to get users to use it. In the end, everybody benefits, even the luddite who just wants to run a bunch of full-screen terminal apps.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Zancarius]

I think you're being a little unfair (or trolling). I'll bite. First, a qualifier:

I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I confess that I like Windows 7. (To qualify: I used Gentoo as my primary desktop OS for about 1.5 years, switched to XP when I had a semester of .NET development at uni, and then recently switched to Win 7 to try it out with the public beta--I've been impressed thus far.)

Looks and 'feels' aren't going to increase productivity. The complete lack of text on the task bar means I have to learn what each icon represents and then have to mouse over it or open the item to figure out what it actually is. In XP or Vista I can just look at the task bar and figure out which server's I've RDP's and SSH'd into, what page my browser is on, any IM's demanding my attention and who they are from. I'm going to lose a crap load of productivity from this alone and probably some hair as well. There are good reasons we favour text based language over a pictogram or hieroglyphic language, complex text is far easier to read.

Spend about 5 minutes learning the OS. The new taskbar wasn't something I appreciated at first--but it grows on you. Although another couple folks have already suggested this fix, here's mine: Right-click your start button, go to properties, and under the Taskbar tab, change "taskbar buttons" to "combine when taskbar is full." Poof! Text magically appears on your buttons. I don't select "never combine" as someone else suggested, because I happen to like having similar applications groups together.

Fancy that.

That stupid "network and sharing centre" is still there, still trying to tell me that it knows what to do with my network. Why do I have to assign a "location" popup to every different DHCP address I get, the OS should handle this invisibly.

I agree the network and sharing center is stupidly designed (and severely dumbed down). I'll grant you this. I haven't noticed the DHCP issue, but then... I don't use 7 on a laptop. I suspect this might just be specific to your configuration, however.

Customisability is a two edged sword, with customisability comes more chances for something critical to fail. I'm not saying that extenisve customisability is a bad thing but most users will only change their screensaver and background. Some will pick a different pre-selected colour "theme" but most will leave it as default. Most users do not care about customisability beyond major superficial points like the background.

That's being a bit petty, IMO. Gnome, KDE, and just about every other user-facing desktop allows for the customization of some things. Are they bad? Maybe.

If it were as horrible as you suggest, perhaps you should stick with bash? csh, maybe? Actually, forget I said that bit about csh.

Actually, screw this bit about multiprocessing OSes. Why not head back to a modern DOS-based system?

Game performance is nowhere near the level of XP and the old games which didn't work in Vista still don't work in 7. I'm not completely cynical however, I know 7 is still immature and many of the drivers will have issues. It will take time for the drivers (esp graphics drivers) to mature.

Umm, I haven't noticed a difference. Mind you, I don't play a lot of games, but the ones I do play actually appear to have a higher average framerate (~5-10, so it's within the margin of error) than XP.

Unfortunately in the Windows world, upgrades are synonymous with planned obsolescence. If you want your old games to work, run your favorite Linux distro and install them under Wine (no, I'm not kidding). I got Carmageddon 2 to play just fine (joystick included) under Wine. I could never get it working, even under XP.

The RC does not start nearly as quickly as a fr

Re:Try Windows 7?

[mjwx]

Spend about 5 minutes learning the OS.

I never said it was difficult.

Right-click your start button, go to properties, and under the Taskbar tab, change "taskbar buttons" to "combine when taskbar is full."

This is not my issue, my issue is with the all icon interface, I do this anyway (it's second nature now so I forget that I even do it) but even if I do this I'm still stuck with the all icon (no text) interface. There is less information at a glance and they have taken away much pertinent information like what each program is doing. I have to mouse over a minimised RDP session to find out which server it is connected to, the will amount to a large loss of productivity when there are multiple RDP sessions. The same is true for multiple doc's, web browsers, IM sessions and explorer windows.

That's being a bit petty, IMO. Gnome, KDE, and just about every other user-facing desktop allows for the customization of some things. Are they bad? Maybe.

Now you are misreading my posts. I didn't say it was bad, I said it introduces new problems (complexity). The vast majority of users do not care that much about customisation beyond the screen saver/background but some do. A balance must be reached in order, hence the two sides (simplicity vs options).

Umm, I haven't noticed a difference. Mind you, I don't play a lot of games,

The NVidia ones are terrible with some graphics cards (my 285GTX for example). It always takes time to get these things right and I acknowledge this. Have MS ever released a product without bugs? NVidia are releasing new drives all the time so this will get better.

This is true, but it's a minor gripe.

True about start-up times in general. It seems like an issue for users with ADHD, it costs nothing to be patient for a minute or two more. My big issue is with entropy, windows getting slower over time (with regular use). It does happen with XP, 98, Vista or any version of windows I've used for 3 or more months so it's a fair bet it will happen with 7. with XP I have a 4 GB image of my C: that can be rolled on in 1/2 an hour, with 7, it will be 3 times that with drivers and default programs (Open Office, SumatraPDF and so on).

but I think a majority of your post is a little over-exaggerated.

Fair enough, my comment may have been a little bit melodramatic.

I've found a few things I like in Win Vista like the new start menu, far more streamlined and efficient then the old one and the search feature has long been needed. But with Vista the problems outweigh the benifits. Seeing as I built my new gaming PC 3 months ago I will probably be on XP for a while now. Long enough for MS and OEM's to get the bugs out of everything and make things a wee bit faster.

If you didn't like Vista and probably won't like 7, buy a Mac.

Oddly enough my biggest issue with 7 is one of my major gripes with OS X, the text free interface. Between the hieroglyphic interface (slow compared to XP\Vista's text centric interface), security through obscurity, vendor locking and Apples trademark denial of any problems* I couldn't use a Mac. I use Linux on my laptop, I only really deal with Windows at work and on my gaming PC

* - Problems happen, I accept this but I do demand that vendors work to fix them. Microsoft for all their faults at least admit to problems with Windows and try to fix them. I cant fault MS's effort here (results maybe).

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this will bring back the text and reduce the size of the icons.

You've either never read my comment or are incredibly stupid.

The complete lack of text on the task bar means I have to learn what each icon represents and then have to mouse over it or open the item to figure out what it actually is. In XP or Vista I can just look at the task bar and figure out which server's I've RDP's and SSH'd into, what page my browser is on, any IM's demanding my attention and who they are from. I'm going to lose a crap load of productivity from this alone and probably some hair as well. There are good reasons we favour text based language over a pictogram or hieroglyphic language, complex text is far easier to read.

There are your words exactly as you typed them. You mention the lack of text and when I point out your incompetence, you try to sneak in the icon size bit in your response. Nice try, but you lose.

You really didnt read my comment. I have no idea how you reached this conclusion. This is something the OS does not need my interaction for. Secondly those are two different idea's, one the OS is not following my commands (deciding for itself how I want my network set up) the second is an unnecessary interruption (annoyance).

Then I suggest that you learn to use English correctly. Paragraphs are used to combine like ideas and information. If they were supposed to be two completely separate ideas, then you should have written it differently.

In addition, it's "ideas" not "idea's" because it is not being used as a possessive in your statement.

Because that's a really unbiased sample there.

The vast majority of people do not care about altering the Windows start up sound. They are quiet happy with right clicking a picture and selecting "make this picture my background". You don't work with regular end users do you, most do not even care about the background hence the default rolling hills XP picture is so prevalent.

All samples are going to be biased and I can only speak from my experience if I am to remain honest. I do, however, like how you magically have this unbiased insight into the minds of "the vast majority of people" so that you are able to know exactly what they want and are able to speak for them all.

Like most AC's you lack a clue. Both of these statements are not true.

Translation: You have no real argument so you attack the credibility of the statement based solely upon the name it was posted under.

So tell me, is mjwx your true birth name? Or perhaps you had it legally changed to that? Wait, what's that? Your alias is makes you just as anonymous as I am? Well there is a revelation!

By the way, you might want to take a look at this and this. So where is that supreme lead on gaming performance that you said XP had?

Microsoft could just implement it properly, like Sudo under Ubuntu. There is no reason that any program ever should pop up in front of what I am doing, let alone dim the whole screen to completely kill my train of thought. UAC should wait in the background until dealt with, it can draw attention to itself in the task bar, in the same way an MSN chat window would.

Sorry but no. If I am doing something that warrants a UAC popup, then I am going to fully expect it and it is not annoying. If something else is doing something to trigger a UAC then it's a possible security breach and I WANT an annoying popup that will get my attention no matter what I am doing.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Speak for yourself. For me, this is Year 5 of the Linux Desktop, and my "seething" at Microsoft has long since cooled to "very occasionally annoyed when forced to look at someone's Windows box".

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Briareos]

I tried the RTM on Friday. No Remote Server Administration Tools. Google turns up a blog on technet with a dead link to RSAT beta.

I guess going to download.microsoft.com, typing "Remote Server Administration Tools Windows 7" into the search box and hitting enter is too hard?

Because that would have - surprisingly, I know - worked?

np: Kode9 & The Spaceape - Addiction (Memories Of The Future)

Re:Try Windows 7?

[smchris]

Clinging to the least necessary Windows as an annoying middleware to Adobe web tools running in a qemu VM after 8 years with a linux desktop. When I say least, I mean XP stripped down to barest classic view, barest servers and optimized for acceptable performance. If Adobe came out with linux versions of everything, a whole class of tech people wouldn't need Windows.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[fortyonejb]

Come on please. Learn a new OS? Win7 takes no time to "learn", it's flat out easy to use, and anything that takes a minute to adjust to will save you hours down the road. Vista was crap, just terrible. I'd like to see these "studies" you mention, because for example: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/01/03/windows-7-beta-1-vs-windows-vista-vs-windows-xp seems to disagree with your posturing. But, you do end it by flying the colors of your flag, yes, you are a mac fan, you are blind to all the changes since OS9. Apple tinkers more than anyone, sorry but your strawman is burning.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[mdwh2]

Agreed - I love how this story gets tagged "astroturf" simply because it presents news that's favourable to Microsoft.

Yet the daily Apple Slashvertisements (including today's news about the Iphone being the number one selling phone in Japan this month - god knows why that's news, we never get stories on all the other phones that are number one selling phones in any country, every month), oh, that's fine.

I could at least understand the pro-Linux / anti-MS stance, as at least that's embracing open solutions. But given that it's Apple - who provide a far more locked down and controlled platform - it makes no sense.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[GaryOlson]

Putting a beta OS on physical parititions? Many forms of virtualization exist which are far better suited to testing beta software. What kind of geek are you? I think your remediation should be installing 8 different distros of Linux in VMs to better acquaint yourself with virtualization.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[KillerBob]

I would have called it XP Pro, SP7 - but who's counting, right?

You'd be wrong, though... XP is NT5 kernel, vista is NT6, 7 is NT6.1... aside from the numbering changes, though, Vista/7 make some pretty significant changes to the way that drivers talk to the hardware/operating system that mean that, aside from the UI changes, it's not really fair to call either Vista or 7 an extension of XP. Vista really is a complete rewrite, and 7 is more of a bugfix and new UI for Vista (which, incidentally, is a huge upgrade over Vista... they've fixed all of the reasons I ended up going back to XP on that system).

Specifically... drivers now run in userspace, with no direct access to the system, and without being run with kernel level or privileges. This means that if a subsystem crashes, it can be restarted without having to restart the computer, and in fact, that's happened a few times with the graphics subsystem on my laptop (my primary gaming system), which is now running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (from MSDN). Also, user accounts/userspace is limited. That's the main reason that people kept running afoul of the UAC, actually... it's not that the UAC was so invasive (though it is pretty annoying in Vista), it's that their software/drivers were all expecting to be run in a lower ring, with greater access, and the OS was asking the user's permission because that's not what software is supposed to be doing.

Incidentally, since installing Windows 7 x64 on my laptop, I've installed Office 2007, World of Warcraft, Civilization IV, Jade Empire, and both of the KOTOR games, without running into the UAC even once. It's there, I've seen it while installing drivers and when I first installed antivirus. But it's nowhere near as invasive as it was in Vista. I am a Linux user on anything where I have a choice, but for my experience with 7, it really is a *huge* improvement over Vista, and I think enough of an improvement over XP to make switching worthwhile.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[rainmaestro]

It really all depends on what you are testing, and your setup.

If you're running a bare-metal VM, fine. But if you're installing the beta in something like VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox, etc, you can run into issues. If you're looking at hardware, graphics performance, etc, the use of craptastic VM drivers in place of your real hardware renders any testing worthless. The potential lack of working guest tools can further complicate tests.

My VirtualBox VM at home has a handful of VMs (XP, SuSE, Debian, OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD), but for anything but the most basic of beta tests, I'd rather slap it on one of my spare drives and add an entry to GRUB. VMs are great, but testing inside one adds an unwanted layer of complexity that can affect the reliability of your tests.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[u-235-sentinel]

What's stopping you from trying the beta ? Put up a new harddrive / empty a small partition, turn on your AHCI and install windows 7!

Time to put those 8gb of ram to some use besides in linux :)

Tried it and kept going with Linux. It was an interesting experience but I like working in an environment where the DRM isn't there because someone else decided I needed it (recall the broadcast flag in Vista issue?). Unable to configure the system as I see fit (unless I install a hack to make it work right). Unable to inter operate with other OS's because Billy boy decided how things should work instead of the committees they are a part of. And I'm tired of hearing that every version of Windows is "New and Improved", "The best in the world!" and so on. Better than crap is still crap.

And don't get me started with their hyper aggressive attitude.

That's just the beginning of my list of issues with Windows. :-)

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Khyber]

Any real geek has a machine with multiple partitions and multiple OSes already installed - VM not necessary.

For example, I've got the latest Ubuntu (32 and 64 bit) XP (32-bit) Vista (64-bit) ReactOS (32-bit) MenuetOS (64-bit) and just for shits and grins I have 98SE installed as well.

Also, if one OS dies, the other operating systems are still there to use. As long as the bootloader itself does not get screwed up, I'm fine.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Bigjeff5]

My laptop came with vista about two years ago, and maybe 4 months in it pissed me off so much I switched to Linux. There were issues that I found annoying, like the broadcast flag you mentioned (my laptop was never powerful enough to play anyting outside the monitor at any quality anyway, so that was purely ideological) and the heavy resource usage. But there were also some dealbreakers, mostly hardware issues that were taken care of with Win98 - like my USB mouse, a plain-jane generic usb mouse, I had to manually apply the generic usb mouse driver because Vista couldn't find it (it was sitting in with all the other drivers, btw). I found that unacceptable, and was on the verge of switching when suddenly Vista stopped recognizing my laptop keyboard. It was 100% Vista doing this, there was no hardware problem, this was a standard laptop keyboard with a standard interface protocol, and I was pissed. I could have fixed it, I do that sort of thing as my day job, but I found it unacceptable.

Fast forward a year and a half, and I started having issues with Linux. Little stuff, fixable stuff (most of it I actually did fix), the biggest two annoyances were getting good sound on all my apps and not being able to reasonably expect that a non-repository app would make and install correctly. Again I could fix all these problems, but I shouldn't have to. I wasn't doing crazy things with my laptop, just using it, and occasionally I'd see an app I wanted and it was a crapshoot whether or not it would actually compile and run correctly without work on the code or script itself.

That's probably my biggest gripe with Linux. In Windows, great effort has been put in over the years to ensure an application will reliably install and work on any windows machine. The OS may be different, which could break the app itself, but the install process is the same and - provided the executable is compatible with that version of the OS - you can expect the rogram will install without a hitch. There are even simple tools that snapshot your before and after system and build the install script based on that, ensuring that you won't miss a thing when you deploy the package. Why doesn't anybody do something similar for Linux? It would make things a hell of a lot easier for the end user, for anybody who wants to install a program that does not exist inside the repositories.

With Linux, often the assumption is made that you are running a similar configuration as the developer, and critical libraries may be missing and the response is just "well, you should have that already". Well, I don't, and now I have to scour the web to find the missing libraries - which also aren't in the repositories - in order to install an app.

A month or two ago I switched back to Vista, this time with SP2, and I'm happy with the switch. It's clean, nice, and works like it is supposed to. I probably didn't pay for Vista retail, but since it came with my Laptop I'll use it, and since SP2 I'm pleased with it.

Unable to configure the system as I see fit (unless I install a hack to make it work right).

The difference between Linux and Windows is, in Linux if you want to do anything outside of what Debian, or Ubuntu, or Fedora think you should need to do you have to hack it. Hacks and workarounds are the norm in Linux, and don't tell me it's not because I've used it off and on for the last 15 years. In Windows that only happens when you want to do something that is technically illegal (like removing/working around the broadcast flag). DRM definitely sucks, but you should be bashing your senators and congressmen, not Microsoft. If not for the broadcast flag and HDCP compatibility, the only way to watch BlueRay movies would be on a set-top box.

When you can play BlueRay discs on your Linux box, then you can feel superior about DRM in Vista. Till then, DRM isn't necessary in Linux, because you can't do it anyway, and that seems to be a common theme.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Windows is

Re:Try Windows 7?

[mrstella]

Until Apple decide to finally bin Mac OSX, just like they did with their previous OS. Then you'll be forced to learn a new OS, will you move platforms? Probably not, but it will be fun visualising you bitch and whine like a little mactard

Re:Try Windows 7?

[Alex Belits]

With Linux, often the assumption is made that you are running a similar configuration as the developer, and critical libraries may be missing and the response is just "well, you should have that already".

No.

All packages that are built from source automatically detect your libraries and will build whatever works with them -- as long as you install development packages if you use anything built from source. If libraries are missing, you just install them.

All packages that are provided for Debian or Ubuntu already refer to all dependencies, so unless you go out of your way to install them "the Windows way" (download package in a browser, use dpkg from command line to install it, instead of using a repository), everything happens automatically.

All packages that have their own installers, carry libraries with themselves (this is what all Windows installers do).

The only things that don't fit into those categories that I have seen recently are truly ancient applications that are a massive pain in the neck to install on any OS, Unix equivalents of DOS applications. Last example of this that I have seen was Xilinx FPGA Editor -- it insisted on Motif and portmap, did not recognize screen number, and was not packaged for Ubuntu, so I had to configure such an environment for it manually.

Well, I don't, and now I have to scour the web to find the missing libraries - which also aren't in the repositories - in order to install an app.

If they are binary Debian/Ubuntu packages, that's because libraries are in the maintainer's repository along with them. You NEVER "scour the web" for Linux libraries' binaries. The only way to produce a valid Debian package that depends on a library is to have another package with that library and refer to it -- so consistency is maintained.

If they are only available as source tarballs (what by now only applies to bleeding-edge development stuff), you see all their names in the output of ./configure, look up the repository, and only if they are not there you may have to look for them elsewhere -- usually in a README file that you forgot to read in the first place.

The difference between Linux and Windows is, in Linux if you want to do anything outside of what Debian, or Ubuntu, or Fedora

Or it's in Ubuntu Launchpad PPA for that package, where you can get pretty much everything that ever was released as open source and is somewhat maintained by someone. Or in a private repository.

think you should need to do you have to hack it. Hacks and workarounds are the norm in Linux, and don't tell me it's not because I've used it off and on for the last 15 years.

If installing from manufacturer/developer's package is a "hack", then all Windows applications require hacks to be installed as well.

Re:Try Windows 7?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Drop shadows help distinguish the window border, without making the border itself ginormous. By being sort of pseudo-3D, they tap into a part of our brain that's used to dealing with real 3D objects, and make it very easy for us to tell what's part of the window we're looking at, and what's part of another window.

Again, not important, but useful.

A similar example might be the fact that when I get a modal dialog box, that actually intends to block me from doing anything with its parent window until I deal with it, the entire parent window is darkened. Efficient to do with compositing, and does actually give me visual feedback for something I need to know, but not really worth the effort.

On the other hand, people are making good points that dropping 2D support and adding exclusively 3D, since you need 3D anyway, is probably a good thing. I just don't see it as a deal-breaker, certainly if it's the only advantage an OS has -- it's why I didn't use Vista.

The real test is not users

[quarterbuck]

The real test of Windows 7 won't be users, it would be enterprise customers. There are still a lot of large Windows setups which have not upgraded from XP (Investment Banks and their "excel sheet departments" for ex.). The decision to switch would in that case be taken by Sysadmins and the like.

Re:The real test is not users

[Opportunist]

Nope. Sorry, but nope. SysAdmins are the ones who have to suffer from changes, they're not the ones that make or even decide them. There are 3 deciding factors when it comes to a system switch:

1) Requirements of a top important application
2) Golf partners of decision makers
3) Investment cycles

Only the first reason is one that is based on technical issues, and even in those the average Admin (and sometimes even CTO) has little if any say in. Essentially, if MS wants to "force" enterprise customers to update, they need to nudge the makers of important enterprise applications (Autodesk, SAP...) to require newer systems.

I'm committed to Windows 7.

[olsmeister]

Why? Because XP came pre-installed on my last computer, and Windows 7 will come pre-installed on my next one.

Re:I'm committed to Windows 7.

[popeyethesailor]

I bet your VCR has 12:00:00 on it too :P

Re:I'm committed to Windows 7.

[AbRASiON]

Congratulations on being the minority on slashdot, if you don't ever re-install the OS on your machine or learn to switch out the one on there for a newer (or older, Vista -> XP) one then you most certainly aren't the norm here, I might even go as far as to say, you simply don't belong here.

so they've rebranded vista...

[mrboyd]

and now that the various device drivers for vista works people like it... Is it a feat of engineering or marketing?

Re:so they've rebranded vista...

[MBGMorden]

.NET Runtime optimization is actually one of the neater technologies in the MS world. In short, it's compiling native language libraries for commonly used interfaces that would have to be run in a VM. All you need to do is leave the computer alone for a short while so it can chug through. You can explicitly command it to finish the queued compilation tasks per the instructions here.

When it's working properly that's about the just of it - however my machine (a 2.5ghz Quad core with 4gb ram) had nearly a week of being left alone to chug through, with 3 or 4 reboots in between - didn't ever finish up. I also tried the stated command since it was suggested in a google query I had made, but it didn't clear anything up.

Re:so they've rebranded vista...

[michaelhood]

As someone running Windows 7 final (MSDN), I have to say that it's pretty ridiculous to expect end users to "trim the fat" from their OS.

That said, I haven't had any such issues except once when I opened the system information dialog and inadvertently triggered the refresh of my Windows Experience Index measurement. This spawned a background process to run some benchmarks, and continued running after I closed the dialog. Took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on.

Windows 7

[DaMattster]

I acutally like Windows 7, it crusies on my low-end, Sam's Club Dell Inspiron 1525 Celeron with 2GB of RAM. I still have plenty of memory for doing other things. Gnome and KDE have some catching up to do again. Looks like Microsoft took a page from the open source play book of only accepting quality code. That said, I am still pro open source but, at my job, we are going to Windows 7 so I'd better learn it, kicking and screaming.

Re:Windows 7

[je ne sais quoi]

That said, I am still pro open source but, at my job, we are going to Windows 7 so I'd better learn it, kicking and screaming.

At my job, we're all learning linux, latex, openoffice and hiring programmers to get us off MS software all together. Granted, I'm the boss, so it makes it easier, but it is still a very gradual process. Also, my employees have started bringing in their personal laptops with Ubuntu on them -- I figure now is as good a time as any. Our IT department will try to get us to upgrade to Win7 but I will fight the upgrade train as much as politically sane to do, because I'm just not interested in learning it and I'm really tired of getting screwed by MS with every other OS. I keep XP around because lots of software runs only on it and nothing else, especially PCs that control equipment. These PCs will need to stay, but we no longer need dedicated windows desktops in the group, the last one is now dual-booting to debian. Everything else except the equipment drivers is mac or linux.

Re:Windows 7

[D Ninja]

I may get modded troll for this, but open source != quality code. In theory, it is more likely that that is the case, but I have seen some open source code that made me die a little on the inside. Microsoft's developers are generally smart people who know their job. Many of the issues that ships with the operating system results from very poor (and too much, IMO) management. (For the record, I am not a Microsoft employee...I just like following various companies, of which Microsoft is one.)

Re:Windows 7

[Bent Mind]

There is no "learning" Windows - if your job requires you to "learn" your operating system, and you're not a desktop tech, you're spending too much time dicking around with fonts, themes, and control panel widgets.

As a certified office instructor (one of many side jobs), I'm required by my job to learn Windows. A lot of users are confused when they start Vista for the first time. Within 30 minutes, and a few "Where is" questions, they are up, running and playing with fonts, themes, and control panel widgets. As to Unix desktop bashing, I prefer KDE 4.2 to Vista. Everything is easy to use and it doesn't require 2GB RAM to run. But, to each their own...

Re:Windows 7

[0123456]

Microsoft's developers are generally smart people who know their job.

This is something that's often puzzled me: the Microsoft developers I've come across seem to be smart and perfectly capable of producing a high-quality product. Yet the company perpetually churns out steaming donkey shit.

Windows Vista is a good product

[onionman]

I have Macs on my desktops, and I run Linux for my number crunching machines. So, I'm no Microsoft fanboy. However, it seems to me that Microsoft actually tried to do the right thing with Vista... namely they built a reasonably secure operating system from the ground up and decided to actually enforce the programming paradigms. The problem isn't with Vista, it's with the antiquated applications that still need tons of shims to work. For example, I recently installed Quicken on my father in law's XP machine and discovered that it wouldn't work unless running as an admin account, which is simply absurd! So, I worry that Windows 7 is just a light weight version of Vista with most of the security rolled back so that insecure applications will be able to continue running and users won't complain about their favorite applications breaking.

Re:Windows Vista is a good product

[Drakino]

However, it seems to me that Microsoft actually tried to do the right thing with Vista... namely they built a reasonably secure operating system from the ground up and decided to actually enforce the programming paradigms. The problem isn't with Vista, it's with the antiquated applications that still need tons of shims to work.

Nope. And thats part of the problem. Vista started life as the Server 2003 SP1 code after the restart on Longhorn. UAC and such was just bolted on, .Net was kicked to the curb inside the OS, and the OS was rushed out the door from code restart to ship in 18 months. This quick cycle left driver vendors hanging, leading to compatibility issues day one. It also lead to some horrendous bugs, like Direct X apps using up twice as much memory as they should and so on.

A proper new secure OS from Microsoft would have to pull the same trick Apple did. Throw the old OS in a box, allow it to run in the new OS, and kick all old APIs to the curb. A good start would be the Singularity OS Microsoft has in it's research labs.

Re:Windows Vista is a good product

[ducomputergeek]

I recently put Windows 7 on my Bootcamp partition and I've been pleasantly surprised. It runs pretty snappy on this older MacBook with 2GB of ram. All of our Windows based apps work fine. I could even get it to boot in Parallels Desktop 3, but not do much. (Need to upgrade to Parallels 4 to get it to work with Windows 7). Hell, it recognized the Airport card out of the box. Same with the Intel GMA drivers. Only thing I needed from Bootcamp was the "Restart in OSX" option.

I've even installed Windows 7 on a number of friends vista machine and they all are much more impressed at how snappy it is compared to Vista even on older hardware.

secure!

[Anonymous Coward]

And this time, unlike Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista, Windows 7 really will be secure. Really!

Re:secure!

[Opportunist]

It is. A lot of old exploits don't work anymore, just as every time. And just like every time before, we'll get new exploits.

Generally though we'll see a lot more social engineering and "you have to install this or something horrible happens", as well as a shift more towards third party applications, as we've seen already. The security hole in MS systems these days isn't Windows anymore. It's mostly plugins for Browsers, at least for now. The new Windows is Flash and PDF reader. At least 'til Adobe gets its act together.

Do the users/sysadmins want to change?

[tecker]

The thing with the businesses is CHANGE. See they have this software they know works with XP, Sysadmins who know XP front and back, users who are used to XP, zero in the buy-new-machines fund, and are looking to save money anywhere they can. To justify buying a new version of Windows might be hard since, despite its age, XP works.

Our university department is cash strapped right now and despite heavy discounts we will NOT be moving to 7 unless it comes installed on a computer. We might if we are lucky get it in the 2011 FY budget. Unlikely though. Our users are so used to the look and feel that they likely would balk at the 7 upgraded look, and ask us to put back in the "classic" look. Yes the Windows 2000 look. Not that new XP Luna stuff. 2000. Thats why we are not switching to 7 anytime soon. The users could care less and our administrators wont give us the money.

Plus, were a little lazy and dont want to reinstall all of those comptuers.

Re:Do the users/sysadmins want to change?

[dagamer34]

I have one word: security. To believe that an operating system that is 8 years old is still secure is quite funny. Microsoft has been patching that thing for years. Now, let's be honest, XP was designed in an era where the Internet was still kinda new and anti-virus wasn't "big". Windows Vista was HUGE leap for security and Windows 7 improves on that foundation. At some point, running an old OS does leave yourself open for vulnerabilities. Right now, XP is in Extended Support, such that if you don't have a Software Assurance contract with Microsoft, you're tough out of luck. And security patches themselves run out in 2014. Sure, that's 5 years away, and Microsoft will have probably released 1 new OS and prepping for another, but you can't make XP stick around forever.

Re:DRM?

[marklar1]

The RC Release Candidate is downloadable for another 2 days (until the 20th, I believe)...so just try it.

The DRM seems like it always has...if you own the media, or it is DRM free, then you shouldn't have a problem. The amount of annoying dialogs for permissions is wayyy less than Vista. It is smooth, fast, better laid, and I've not had a single crash or let down over the last few weeks of trying it out. The layout is much cleaner, OS X users will immediately "get" the dock (whether you like it or not is another issue)...

My main curiousity was the Media Center (got a deal on a PC from a friend that is dedicated to that purpose, leaving me to do my "work" on an old PowerMac) and it is amazingly good vs. Vista's complete F%^%*!? dissapointment.
I was adamant that MS owed Vista MC users some love, and felt shafted to need an OS to finally get a WMC that works, but this is soooo much better all the way around...and @ the pre-ordered $49 goes a long, long way to fixing the hurt.

The RC will work well into 2010, so freakin' load it up and see for yourself...what do you have to loose...?

For the record, my main machines have been macs since 84, occasional Win and Nix experiences. I'm overdue for a new desktop, hate Apple's choice of iMac with fixed graphics and screen, or a $2000 Pro Mac sucks... This could really be the jump ship point for me to be a reverse switcher...

Re:Resigned to it

[Brian Gordon]

Vista got bad press and users think they're being smart by eschewing the upgrade. "Vista, I heard bad things. XP is fine." But this is the same crowd that bought an ipod because all their friends had one. They would upgrade just for the newest thing, if it weren't suddenly hip and edgy and retro to claim to be an XP purist. So when they hear Windows 7, they automatically kick into MUST UPGRADE mode and, lacking any bad press, don't have any reason to adopt the negative position.

If Vista was so awful, Windows 7 isn't all that different. Vista was fine (when heavily reconfigured); Microsoft just needs to shed the bad reputation of the Vista name to get the dumb users back.

Re:Windows 7?

[The Orange Mage]

They arrived at 7 for the version number in this way: Windows 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 lines are self-explanatory. The NT4 and Windows 95/98/ME family were all part of the 4.x version of Windows. Win2000 and XP were 5.x, so naturally Vista was 6.0. That leaves us at 7 for the new Windows.

Re:DRM?

[shutdown -p now]

Does Windows 7 have more DRM or less than Windows XP? I think my decision to switch will be primarily biased along that criteria.

You can do everything in 7 that you could do in XP (i.e. there are no new restrictions on existing stuff). On the other hand, it has new DRM for stuff which you can't handle without supporting some - such as BluRay.

Mohave

[frovingslosh]

Remember the Mohave ads? Microsoft showed people a "new" OS and supposedly they liked it (although they could only really see it under very controlled conditions that would not show the faults, like driver incompatability). And then it was revealed that the OS was really Vista, which no one liked.

Now jump forward to the present. MS finally has a service pack that will fix many of the problems in Vista (although not all, and it still has very Vista characteristic performance benchmarks). Someone at M$ wants to release the service pack, but someone higher up who understands the M$ way of doing things better says "If we give people this service pack, even though it fixes many things, it will still have the stink of the Vista name on it. Lets do this: change the GUI around just enough that we can claim it's a new OS. Then rather than give people a new service pack for Vista, we can charge them for a whole new Operating System. Call it something other than Mohave and no one will get wise."

An so, with much hype, they release Windows 7. Everyone who bought Vista and was entitled to a workable OS gets screwed. M$ charges anyone who wants their Vista fixed for a supposedly different OS, even though Vista was so broken that even M$ executives called it a disaster. Profit.

Re:Windows 7?

[Keen Anthony]

I've thought about this a lot. I feel Microsoft is trying to say that its returned to the roots of Windows. It's been many years since a Windows release was formally identified by a standard version number. It's very common now for software to have more eye-catching abstractly descriptive version identifiers like Pro, Lite, Special Edition, etc. Standard version numbers for an OS like Windows communicates a sense of a return to old school software efficiency and productivity.

Sounds a little silly maybe, but follow me a sec. "Windows 3.11" was just a piece of software; cold and boring. NT was "new technology". It communicated a sense of industrial strength computing. The Year-based Windows releases were all about being modern. You needed them to be modern. "Me" and "XP" were attempts at being trendy. Multimedia was standard, and Windows XP communicated a new kind of "Xcitement", "Xperience", etc. Vista is the post modern, post multimedia OS, communicating the idea that it's forward looking.

Windows 7 is simple, plain, and in the West, comforting. It's lucky number seven. It sounds like it's a serious operating system that is focused on doing its job, and not blinding me with flashy trends. It sounds like an operating system I can trust. In any case, that's the marketing strategy I got from the name. I have no specific insight into Redmond's actual reason.

I'm (sorta) one of them

[CajunArson]

I've been a 99% Linux user since 2000, including 3 years of law school where I really only used Windows during exams because of Exam4 requirements. However, I'm starting a job at a (small) law firm and my laptop has Win 7 all loaded up and running. My prognosis so far: I can live with 7, especially because it runs Firefox and Cygwin runs Bash and basic UNIX utilities OK as well. I can even use VIM.

    Is it particularly fast? No, but it is not insanely slow. My laptop is recent but not super-high end, 2.2Ghz Core2 with 4GB of RAM is the good part, the Intel graphics are the bad part. Frankly, the Aero effects on Windows 7 work just as well as the compositing effects from KDE 4.3, meaning that they do work, but not blazingly fast like on my desktop with the Nvidia card. As for memory usage... despite claims to the contrary, Linux using a modern, fully featured desktop uses a little bit less RAM, but not significantly less. I'm not even close to filling up my 4GB even with office, firefox, and miscellaneous junk running, so no biggies there.

    I'm not a fan of Windows, I think that Windows 7 is somewhat boring for a "huge" release, but it does get the job done. My new job is concerned with me being able to write office documents and access Exchange + a small windows network, which Win7 makes stupidly simple. Do I miss virtual desktops? Sure. Am I annoyed that Windows still doesn't have very good window management and that I can't get rid of the annoying borders on my windows that the Bespin KDE theme lets me annihilate? You bet. At the same time, Windows does make certain configuration tasks easier (especially graphics & wireless even though I can and do use graphical utilities under Linux).

        I'm not saying that I couldn't do this just as well in Linux, but I am saying that I don't have the time to get my system tweaked to the rest of the office... at least immediately. This is a small law firm with technically proficient lawyers, and being the most junior associate I won't be shocked if I get some IT related tasks from time to time, but my day job is to be able to use nice boring office software, which Windows 7 allows for in a reasonably secure way.

        As for the XP part of this... I had an old XP license that I did purchase fair & square (for $10 from my University back in the day). It could have gotten the job done for a while, but Win7 really does have better security and like it or not it is the path forward. One major feature that Win7 has over XP is the find option in the start menu. Since MS keeps screwing with the Control Panel and everything else, I almost never bother to hunt through menus. Instead I just type in what I want to do in the search bar and it does a very good job of finding what I want. In fact, it's likely faster that me clicking menus even if I did know where stuff was. I'm not sure if XP even had this feature but Win7 makes it very easy to use by default and I've saved quite a bit of time with it... so there ya go, one actual reason to upgrade!

Re:I'm (sorta) one of them

[Cabriel]

I would disagree with that. A guy I work with is a Linux Fan. He's technically advanced. He's using Ubuntu. He can't figure out how to give me read access to a given folder on his computer. With Windows, i can do it with my eyes closed.

Yeah yeah. I hear what you're saying. Unfair comparison. Well, his parents can use XP and Vista just fine. They can use MacOS more or less easily, but they keep using him for tech support for it. He convinced them to use Ubuntu. He gets tech support calls every day from them. Which is supposed to be easier, again?

Re:I'm (sorta) one of them

[mgblst]

I was the second person to download Linux 0.1, have been a Linux devotee since then, spend weekends installing Red Hat on laptops at best buy for fun, weekdays hand out free DVD with Ubuntu, and have converted all the University machines to Scientific Linux.

Said that, I walked past an billboard advertising W7 and I was sold. It was so good, even on a huge paper display, that I am fully Microsoft now. I have become a c# developer over the last 20 minutes, and I am now as proficient in that as I was in C/C++. I have bought all the MS hardware, as well as all my clothes have little Microsoft icons on them.

Re:I'm (sorta) one of them

[cbhacking]

Just a tip: you can run (and build) POSIX apps (including bash, ssh/sshd, svn, gcc, and even things like httpd or window managers) in Windows without Cygwin. There's a POSIX-compliant subsystem for the NT kernel (just as the Win32 API that people are used to is implemented as a subsystem on top of NT). It's only available in the higher Windows editions, but it's faster and better integrated than Cygwin, and avoids a lot of Cygwin's silly restrictions (executables needing a .exe or similar extension, for example).

The subsystem is called SUA (Subsustem for UNIX Applications) and is enabled from the "Turn Windows features on or off" window (you can find it using Start search).
To use it you'll want to install Interix, a basic operating environment that includes a couple shells, a collection of standard utilities, and a working build toolchain. The link to download this will be in the Start menu after enabling SUA, or you can find it online.
Once you've got Interix installed, you can install a package manager and a bunch of pre-compiled binaries (including all the ones listed above, and hundreds more) from http://suacommunity.com/ (you can also get a more detailed version fo these instructions there). It will also offer to install an X server, which is handy if you want to run graphical apps locally or from a server.

For the record, I'm not officially associated with Interix or suacommunity.com in any way aside from being a forum member on the latter, but I've found this little-known feature of Windows to be one well-worth telling people about.

Re:Most of us XP users don't have a choice

[compro01]

since Microsoft will soon stop XP support and updates, and refuse to patch any more security exploits.

"Soon" is not until 2014.

Most Windows XP installs don't make use of dual core or higher systems as one has to by the non uniprocessor version of XP to use more than one core or processor.

Cores and processors are different things in Microsoft's view. Cores are processors cores, while processors are the physical CPU packages. XP will use dual and quad core processors fine (7 arguably does a better job of distributing load across the processors, but that's beside the point), just you can't use a uniprocessor version of it on a machine with 2+ CPU sockets.

SOL Vista user

[oldhack]

Sucks for those who bought Vista - service pack used to be free before.

Re:SOL Vista user

[shutdown -p now]

Sucks for those who bought Vista - service pack used to be free before.

Well, they say Microsoft has always been stealing ideas from Apple...

Re:DRM?

[cyn1c77]

, so freakin' load it up and see for yourself...what do you have to loose [sic]...?

Time,

and "time is money, friend!"

Re:Most of us XP users don't have a choice

[Osty]

At least Windows 7 Pro has an XP virtual machine, but we don't know how compatible it is yet.

Why not? It's been available since the RC. You do need hardware virtualization support, but that's easy to check (I dislike GRC because of his irrational fearmongering of UPnP, but this tool is the quickest way to check if you have virtualization available on your CPU). It's based on the mature VirtualPC product and running full XP, so if an app worked in XP it should work fine in virtualization.

Windows 7 is a Service Pack to Windows Vista practically, and it is like when Windows XP came out as a Service Pack to Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was version 5.0 and Windows XP was version 5.1, Windows Vista is version 6.0 and Windows 7 is version 6.1.

First, read about why Windows 7 is 6.1. Cliff notes: app compatibility, because too many apps are stupid and don't handle major version bumps properly (witness all of the apps from Windows XP that wouldn't install on Vista simply because it was 5.1 to 6.0 and the installer assumed major version would always be 5 and so just checked minor version, resulting in 0 less than 1 == not supported). Win7 is certainly an enhancement on top of Vista, but then Vista was an enhancement on top of XP (really on top of the Server 2003 codebase, but that came from XP), and XP was an advancement on top of 2000, and so on. Some things haven't changed, like the new WDDM driver model that Vista introduced (though Win7 did bump to WDDM 1.1, which allows for easier/better drivers, especially in the realm of gpus). Other things have changed dramatically, though you wont really notice such as the DWM now being much more efficient, especially if coupled with a WDDM 1.1 driver (nVidia, ATI, and Intel already have such drivers available). In Vista, DWM memory usage would grow linearly with the number of windows open. In Windows 7 with a WDDM 1.1 driver, memory usage is now constant regardless of the number of windows (and with a 1.0 driver, it's still ~50% more efficient than Vista). Another example, Win7 is much nicer to SSD storage. But you should look at the list of new features yourself.

Sadly a lot of XP machines will need RAM upgrades if not video and hard drive upgrades to run Windows 7 as I heard even 1G of RAM is not enough and that Windows 7 is a bit of a hard drive and resource hog like Vista is, because XP runs faster because it has less features and fewer services that start up upon bootup.

1GB is fine. I've used Win7 on netbooks with that little RAM and they were just as snappy (if not snappier) than when running XP. Of course I also like to upgrade netbooks to 2GB, and when you can do so for $20 why wouldn't you? You don't need a new video card, especially if you already have a DX9-capable card (DX9+ required for Aero, will be snappier with a 10.1 card but Aero will still work well). Win7 fits quite well into 16GB on netbooks with plenty of room to spare for your own content, and you can even hack it (though it's not recommended or supported) to get down into 8GB. Win7/Vista definitely have more startup services, but that's also a bit of a red herring as there are new things like the Aero Destop Window Manager and the new Audio server that show up as services now.

Most Windows XP installs don't make use of dual core or higher systems as one has to by the non uniprocessor version of XP to use more than one core or processor.

XP Pro supported 2 processors, so for most people that would be fine (assuming most people have single or dual-core CPUs, not quad-core). What's more important than that is 64-bit really shines in Win7 (it worked well in Vista as well, but it's even better in 7; for XP

Windows 7 is worthy for some

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're an XP user, Windows 7 appears to be a worthy upgrade. If you're a Vista user, I would be pissed about the upgrade price and wait to see the next version of Windows.

I am a Vista user.

Same shit, different decade

[Peter Cooper]

We get the same story every time. People don't want to upgrade from [2 versions ago] to [next version] and [last version] sucked.. but it always happens.

A lot of people wanted to stick with 98, thought Me sucked, and didn't want to upgrade to XP until they absolutely needed to. Same shit, different decade.

Re:Resigned to it

[shutdown -p now]

Vista objectively sucked on release, before hotfixes and service packs came along. By the time it became a usable OS, it received too much negative publicity.

The difference with Win7 is that the latter works great out of the box (this isn't hearsay - I was using it since beta, and I use Win7 RTM since the day of its release for MSDN subscribers).

Well of Course

[MadUndergrad]

Of course the people who've "tried" Windows 7 are gonna like it. They more than likely have used it on some special demo machine with the specs and thorough setup to make it usable. Just like Mojave, when users try it in a custom environment designed to make them like it, they'll like it. But that's not what they're getting on their Compaq POS-9000. They'll eventually realize they're unsatisfied with 7 and look forward to the new version of windows without realizing they're going to be duped again just like before.

Re:Well of Course

[Meumeu]

They more than likely have used it on some special demo machine with the specs and thorough setup to make it usable. Just like Mojave, when users try it in a custom environment designed to make them like it, they'll like it. But that's not what they're getting on their Compaq POS-9000.

Yeah, it's not like the beta and the RC1 have been publicly available for months now...

Re:Well of Course

[cbhacking]

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been getting "special demo machine[s]" with Win7. It's hardware requirements are pretty easily met by any desktop and the vast majority of laptops from the last 2 years, even including many netbooks. You can build a new computer for about $500 that will exceed Win7's requirements in every aspect by at least a factor of 2x, but honestly you probably don't need to. Hell, I've got a severely underpowered (ultra-low voltage, essentially extreme underclocking) tablet PC, and Win7 runs fantastically on it.

Re:Windows 7?

[IntlHarvester]

Correct. The commercial software industry has always treated version numbers as a marketing element.

It doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to look good on the box.

Users like Macs so it will go down well

[dbIII]

If I wanted to use it in my office I would want the features in the full version. With the proposed price for that it's even beginning to look as if OS X on Mac hardware instead of what superficially looks like an OS X ripoff would be better value. However, the important thing is the applications so you buy the platform that will run them.
It's a pity that the 5 digits per seat software my users run starts and stop services just to put stuff on the screen so every user would need Admin access and UAC turned off. It's really not Microsofts fault that people are still writing applications with an MSDOS mindset even when they are paid a fortune to drag it screaming into the new century, but as I said, you get the platform that runs the applications.

Re:DRM?

[PitaBred]

I own the media, but I can't rip it to my hard drive, so I'm forced to bring optical discs with me if I want to watch videos on my laptop. Windows 7 fails at multimedia. I can't imagine the media center features will let you actually do what you want with your media, which relegates Windows 7 to a game loader on my box.

Anyone with Windows 7 experience confirm these?

[JustNiz]

I haven't tried windows 7 yet. Before I even consider buying it (just to get away from Vista) can anyone tell me if Microsoft have continued the ongoing trend of assuming the users IQ and knowledge of computers is seriously diminishing with every new windows version?

Vista hides much useful information that XP shows, and has introduced even more pointless, time wasting and just annoying "are you sure" dialog boxes even with UAC turned off. Can anyone confirm if the following stupidities have been fixed in Windows 7 or is the trend still downward?:

XP's copy progrss dialog clearly states the filename and full path. Vista's doesn't even mention the name of the file you're copying any more and it only tells you a small part of the path of the source. It leaves you guessing which copy operation it relates to which is mindnumbingly clueless whenever you're doing multiple concurrent file copies.

If you move a folder containing files to a different place that already has a folder with the same name, XP merges them fairly quietly and properly. Even with UAC turned off, Vista introduces extra supremely annoying and unavoidable dialogs to confirm each file in turn (yeah I know theres a "do this for all" checkbox but its still annoying). This extra dialog is not disableable and is really a pointless intrusion if you have any knowledge of what a move operation should do. Worse, even after a successful move, the source folder is left behind. I'd love to meet the marketing moron who thought of these new semantics just so I can kick him in the nuts.

If there's even one file in a folder that Vista thinks might be a media file, Vista forces a media-style display on the contents of the whole folder. This results in all the useful info you need (such as file attributes and modified dates) getting hidden and replaced by a retarded popularity rating you will probably never use. It does this every time you create a new folder and you can't turn off this unwanted 'helpful' (snort) functionality.

Vista's DRM means it can't play MY media to ME. XP can play it without problem.

Vista still frequently forgets the last view settings you set ("sort by" choice etc) even if you set "remember each windows settings" and even do "apply to all folders". This is a problem Windows has had even way back to Windows 95 as I recall.

Feedback about how Windows 7 works in these respects would be much appreciated. I'm not giving Microsoft even more of my money just to find out its no better (or even worse) than Vista for the stuff I do most.

Re:Anyone with Windows 7 experience confirm these?

[brentrad]

Personally I liked Vista when it came out, mostly for the eye candy. I'm a very visual person, and I had just bought a new 20" monitor, so I wanted something that looks good. XP was looking dated. I was going to switch to either Ubuntu or Vista - I like Linux, but I haven't really used it much. Vista was more familiar, and it was good enough, so that's what I went with. I've been using it since the day it came out. But Vista did have some major bugs, the most annoying having to do with file copying, both local and network. All the file copy bugs are fixed in Win 7. The behavior when merging folders is the same, though.

1) Windows 7 still does ask you if you want to merge the folders, and if any of the files are the same, it asks you what you want to do: overwrite, copy but rename one of them so you have both, or skip the file. Personally I like this setup - even though I'm a power user, I'm not perfect, I still accidentally almost overwrite files that I didn't intend to all the time. Vista and Win 7 also provide you with a thumbnail view of the files when asking you if you want to overwrite - a nice touch when you're not sure if the files are the same even though they have the same name. Personal preference, I guess. I much prefer this behavior than the XP way. Also much improved is the fact that if one of the files you want to copy can't be copied (like if it's in use), the whole file copy operation won't stop - it will just fail that one file and go on to the next. XP's instant failure of the whole copy operation if one file is in use drives me nuts.

2) The folder left behind after a move - definitely one of the most annoying bugs in Vista. One particular annoyance of mine was that if you tried to move any folder named VIDEO_TS - i.e. the contents of a dvd, it wouldn't let you - period. You had to re-create the folder in the new location, and copy the individual video files to the new folder, then delete the old folder. And frequently it would show a few of the video files in the old folder, and you couldn't delete them - but they'd disappear on reboot. All of that is fixed in Win 7.

3) Vista had a bug where some network file copies took FOREVER. And sometimes they just hung, requiring a hard reboot. Network file copies in the Win 7 RC work just as fast as XP though (there were still some issues with this in the beta, but the RC fixed it.)

3) Windows auto-setting folders to type "Media" - I think it still works like this, but there is an option in Folder Preferences to turn this off (I did.) And it actually remembers the setting if you set a folder to a certain type. I agree, this has been broken since at least Win95. They finally fixed it. :)

4) Vista also had an annoying way of, if there were any media files in a folder, and you click into it and it starts creating thumbnails - if you then tried to move the folder, it would wait until it finished creating the thumbnails, THEN move your files. Win 7 stops creating the thumbnails and just moves the folders. I had turned off the auto-create thumbnail functionality in Vista because it was so annoying and slow. I've turned it back on in Win 7 - it doesn't slow you down like it did in Vista.

5) DRM - well I never did run into any DRM issues in Vista myself (unless the copying VIDEO_TS folder issue above was related to DRM). However, I don't have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drive, and I don't see getting one any time soon. However, I do have a 55" HDTV with Vista running Media Center, connected with HDMI (but no HDCP on anything.) I "find" all kinds of HD video on the internet (Matroska mostly), and every other format you can think of, and Vista and Win 7 have never stopped me from playing anything I want. I use Zoom Player, it can play anything if you install the CCCP codec pack. AnyDVD works fine in Vista (haven't tried it in Win 7) for removing advertising, region protection, and encryption, and so does CloneDVD2. Never understood what the "Vista has DRM!" people were g

Re:Anyone with Windows 7 experience confirm these?

[lennier]

"Use a different file manager, and your problems are gone."

I'm sorry, but 'swap out the standard system shell to work around braindead behaviour' is an automatic OS DESIGN FAIL.

You just don't bypass Explorer in production environments. Not optional.

Heathen

[Spad]

OK, I admit it, I like Windows 7. I've been running Enterprise x64 at work since it was released on Technet and it's really good - driver support was almost flawless out of the box (Although when I tried to install the latest Catalyst drivers they consistant BSOD it, but that's really an ATI issue) and it runs much better than Vista on the same machine. The only things I've had problems with so far are old or stupid apps with hardcoded OS detection limits or 32-bit only libraries and so far all of them have worked via the XP Mode VM (Although there are some quirks with multiple monitors). My current plan is to upgrade my home PC from XP Pro to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Technet again) in the coming weeks. One completely awesome feature that they should have added years ago is the ability to right-click on a DHCP lease and convert it into a reservation, which saves me a hell of a lot of time.

There are still negatives - there are some real issues with pinning certain apps to the taskbar, especially if they're located on a network drive (though there are workarounds), I'm not a fan of the way that they've over-simplified some of the menus making it difficult to find the advanced settings you want and the libraries are annoying, though I suspect they'll grow on me; also, Sharepoint still behaves inconsistently when trying to save documents directly to the site via Office 2007 as it did in Vista, especially with Visio for some reason. Oh, and even the new and improved UAC still annoyed me, so I had to turn it off completely - though I'd imagine non-power users probably wouldn't have as many issues with it.

All in all, I think we all know that Windows 7 is the OS Vista should have been - and probably would have been if Microsoft hadn't decided on an arbitrary release date for it whether it was done or not (ignoring the business implications of letting Vista development continue for another 2 years) and I for one am very impressed with it so far.

Win7 is do or die for MS

[nulled]

Did you know that the ONLY reason why Windows 7 was 'trimmed down' (ram, cpu and resource hog that Vista was)... was simply BECAUSE of Linux running on NetBooks?

It is well known fact, that internal to MS, and to the top executives there, that they did not think Vista had ANY issues at all. Why do you think they spend all those MILLIONs of dollars on Mojave and the silly SienField commercials? They actually THOUGHT it was PUBLIC perception problem, not a technical one.

It was not until the massive influx of the Netbooks, running Linux, that MS went 'Oh SH*T' we better do something. So, they HAD to make Win7 run on a Netbook.

THIS and mostly only this, (seriously) was the reason for the 'trimming of the fat' and the rest was MASSIVE investment into WHY people hated vista. Hense, why the security popups are now GONE.

Just remember, MS does not innovate... they simply copy others or react to negative things. If it were not for LINUX...MS would STILL be pushing out retarded Mojave ADs and others...

Kinda ironic isn't it?

Re:Win7 is do or die for MS

[weicco]

Maybe all these Vista's "famous" problems was about bad or incompatible hardware and/or drivers. I have Vista on our other laptop, which is mainly in my wife's use, and we've had zero problems with it. I used to have a desktop PC with Vista and it worked like charm also. My coworker on the other hand has had some major problems with Vista. His desktop had some old hardware on it when my desktop had the latest state-of-the-art stuff inside.

But what's ironic about MS wanting to compete on netbooks? I thought that's the idea of the whole free market economy. And I've always thought that one of the major points about open software is about choices. Would you like to reduce users choices to The One True OS For Everyone, Linux?

Re:Resigned to it

[Shikaku]

I'd recommend installing Linux Mint, and seeing if that works better for you.

It's literally pick your poison with OS's though. They ALL suck, just use the one you think sucks the least.

Same Old same old

[hyades1]

The fact remains that most businesses won't change from XP, which runs on primitive machines, to Win7 (alias VistaLite) which still, for the most part, requires hardware upgrades. You could run a serious office with AppleWorks on a 2E, for shitsakes, and that (mercifully) went to its reward 20 years ago. Primitive spread sheet, word processor and data base...and Mail Merge. For the most part, subsequent improvements have been more devoted to eye candy (sorry...I know I'm oversimplifying a bit). The computing power of an average desk-top computer today is more than sufficient to run just about every small company in the world. Why would a guy running a body shop with a P2 give a crap about upgrading? The machine does everything he wants, and rudimentary security will stop all the nasty things from reaching his rarely-online machine.

And if you honestly believe that The Boss gives a flying fuck about whether his staff have pretty transparent windows to look at while they're figuring out how much to charge for the bumper repair, you're smoking something I'd kill to get hold of.

The average home computer has been kicking the ass of the average work computer for at least 10 years, and that situation isn't going to change any time soon. Win7 may be better than Vista. It's still going to be irrelevant until they start giving it away along with a free multi-threading P4 (which these days is worth just about as much as a bag of chips).

Re:DRM?

[0123456]

People who keep asking this are ill informed. DRM exists in whatever it is protecting not in the OS (besides a decoder).

Bollocks. Microsoft have been trying to get DRM into hardware (e.g. encrypted framebuffers for graphics chips) and the low level of the operating system for years... the only reason we don't have it is because it's a retarded idea that would trash the market share of any hardware company who implemented it.

Re:DRM?

[TrancePhreak]

I own the media, but I can't rip it to my hard drive

Windows has never gotten in your way of doing anything. If we can conclude something, it's that you have failed at multimedia.

Learn to google? Doom9.net?

Re:DRM?

[wildstoo]

On XP I can play my Blu-Ray movies (legally purchased) in PowerDVD (legally purchased) on my LCD monitor connected via DVI (legally purchased).

On Vista and Win7, I can't. Instead, I get a message about "upgrading" to a display with HDCP.

Sure, I can buy a HACK like Slysoft's AnyDVD HD to work around it, but why the hell should I have to?!

To the people who blame the content instead of the OS: note here that ONLY the OS has changed. It worked in XP, it doesn't in Win7 or Vista.

Bottom line: It's still TEH EVILZ0RZZZZ, and anyone who says there's less DRM in Win7 or Vista is either ignorant, deluded or lying (astroturfing).

Special package just for disgruntled Vista Users

[tenzig_112]

Special upgrade package just for disgruntled Vista Users

Windows 7: Fool Me Twice Edition(tm)

Cut maintenance 90% with Ubuntu or OS X

[SgtChaireBourne]

Sounds like you're a liar, alternately a shill. Based on several hundred first and second hand contacts, not counting schools, tech support calls go away after upgrading parents or non-technical users to Ubuntu or OS X. Really. If you failed to give a quick orientation, then you'll get a few days of 'how do I' calls. After that it's smooth sailing. Maintenance is a major savings once you leave M$ products behind.

A hidden savings is found with the end users. The end users are more productive as well, once you leave M$ products behind. Interestingly, even crusty, old KDE 3.5 is easier to use than XP, even for those with a Windows legacy.

YMMV, but I find the above based on several hundred first and second hand contacts, not counting schools.