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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."
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.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
Why? Because XP came pre-installed on my last computer, and Windows 7 will come pre-installed on my next one.
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.
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!
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.
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
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...
No need to wait for sp1, Windows 7 might as well be Vista SP3 with a new UI and more efficient code.
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.
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.
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.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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'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!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
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.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Sucks for those who bought Vista - service pack used to be free before.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.)
^ This is the typical slashdotter.
Sitting around seething in hatred towards Microsoft, clinging to Windows until the Year Of The Linux Desktop finally arrives.
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.
-- Cheers!
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?
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.
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.
Read Pynchon.
The ancient GMA950 chip in my netbook runs Windows 7 Aero glass liquid smooth.
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.
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.
Turn based strategy game that runs over XMPP. Phalanx
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.
Here you go. Found it at the bottom of the RSAT forum page from MS. RSAT for Windows 7
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
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. :)
RSAT Tools were out on Friday. What kind of techie are you if you're unable to find them?
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).
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole