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Michael Dell Says Windows 7 Will Make You Love PCs
ruphus13 writes "In a recent talk at the Churchill Club, Michael Dell addressed several topics, including the fact that Windows 7 is poised to take advantage of the upgrade cycle. Dell has always been a strong MS OEM ally and it is now hoping to cash in again from the impending upgrades. From the post: 'Dell made plain several times that he sees the installed base of technology as very old, and sees a coming "refresh cycle" for which he has high hopes. "The latest generation of chips from Intel is strong, particularly Nehalem," he said, adding, "and Windows 7 is on its way." (The operating system arrives Oct. 22nd, although Microsoft's large-volume licensees are already getting it.) He pointed out that many business are running Windows XP, which is eight years old. "I've been using Windows 7 for a long time now," he said, "and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement."'"
It seems if you run a Vostro (like me) Windows 7 might not be your friend if you want your touchpad and video card to work.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/cf9bc301-e3c2-4c5b-b9cd-9eab8582f45f
Or maybe they will fix it in the next week, but I doubt it.
Revenue Q2 2008: $14,147m
Revenue Q2 2009: $10,623m
Profit YTD 2008: $1,400m
Profit YTD 2009: $762m
Yeah... If I was Michael Dell, I'd be working to sell the idea that Windows 7 is going to make you love a PC too. Especially if you bought a lot of other expensive shit.
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional $139.99
Cheapest Nehalem Processor: $199.99
Latest Office 20xx: $119.99
Total : $459.97
But you know, that (almost) nobody is buying this stuff at full boxed retail price. The OEM license for Dell will be around $50-70 for customers, the hardware is bought in big unit counts too, and gets appropriate discount, so the PC's will go somewhere between $600 - 1200 depending on some other factors like graphics, RAM and HDD models/capacities and branding.
Not many people MS Office boxed version. Most private people will pirate it (and Microsoft is actually more happy about it then if they would use alternatives like OOo). Many will also go legal and use OOo or get a copy from the company they are working for.
Businesses will go volume license, and the package of software / seat will also circle around $200 - $400.
That said, I'll still continue to use Ubuntu + OOo + other open source software. I also build my PC's myself, so I get the best fitting solution and opt out of the MS tax (and be it just because of the principle, though the financial aspect is also counting). Considering the current economic downturn (and the fallout that is following as we speak), more businesses are and will also go a more open source way, though not the majority and many only partially (i.e. Windows 7 + OOo).
One thing is true though, the Win 7 (re-branded Vista) will increase sales of PC's for a little time, especially since Christmas is approaching.
There are a few things that have improved, most of which were avalible in Vista too:
Much better use of multicore CPUs
GPU acceleration of the GUI
self healing system files(in some instances)
OS aware of SMART HD readings and able to prompt user
DLL seperation
vastly better RDP
vastly improved central managment and deployment features for businesses
Easy 64 bit usage with drivers
Faster installs
Better power managment and usage of hardware suspend
better usage of memory (cacheing for very noticible speed gains)
Media center!
transparent Bitlocker hard drive encryption (in pro and ultimate) with TPM
program execution isolation that redirects reg and file system calls to safe locations
epiclly better wireless support
support for propper GUI scaleing on high DPI LCDs
Integrated Touch support and Speech Recognition(not fantastic but alright)
Automatic driver retrival for most hardware right of Windows update without searching
Fast search and indexing
Document libraries for easy organisation
Faster boot times and UI responce on semi-decent hardware (compared to XP)
Better moniter support for HD TVs and multi moniters/GPUs (by default)
Child restricted accounts to limit games and allow usage limits for children.
Just to name a few, it has been a long time since XP and things have progressed.
On the cons side I still don't like the superbar much, you can change it to be simmilar to the Vista one quite easily though. They have also removed the email client probably due to the EUs meddeling but live mail is still avalible.
While I agree Windows 7 is a leap forward from XP, I think Intel are going to struggle to get people to see Nehalem as the same category for upgrades. The Nehalem processors (and the associated required DDR3 RAM) are significantly more expensive than the Core2Duo processors, without providing any noticeable benefit for the vast majority of users. Unless you are a gamer or into heavy video/photo editing, the current Core2Duo generation is more than sufficient to outperform your needs. Ironically Windows 7, by running better than Vista on lower system requirements, will actually hurt Nehalem sales, by breaking the "software bloat"-"hardware upgrade" cycle
Why buy Office 2008 when it's crippled and buggy on the Mac? Might as well spend $60 for iWork '09. For occasional use, it seems that Open Office 3 runs many of the macros, but any more usage than that and you'll start having problems and using your work.
Some of the amenities are nice - the Explorer changes (mostly done in Vista) are very helpful, but at the same time the Explorer interface now takes up much more room than it needs to. The only thing I actively like about 7 is the new taskbar -- but even that has its frustrations, primarily that it's not friendly for running applications that are configured based on command line options. An example is java -- while it recognizes java apps that you "pin" as JRE-based, it loses any additional information/parameters when you attempt to launch a jar file from the pinned menu. Another is putty, which lets you specify a parameter controlling startup profile, but this is not available to pinned instances.
All in all - it is definitely better than Vista. Whether it's better than the XP-based configuration that Dell is talking about... I think that's very much up for debate.
I know you're just trolling, but I'll bite.
"- Multimonitor support is terrible"
No it isn't. I hook my Macbook up to projectors periodically to give presentations, and it mirrors when I want to and extends the desktop when I want to. Keynote has this cool "presenter mode" where it shows the slides on the secondary display and things like time elapsed and a timer and the next and previous slides on the primary.
I don't run a flight simulator or Cowboys stadium out of my house, so I don't really have a need to hook up more than two displays at once. I did manage a workstation for a pro once who had three 23" ACDs (in the day this was a $6000 setup) and that was always plug-and-play as well even though it needed two graphics cards.
"- 64-bit? With drivers? You're kidding, right?"
I don't know what that means. I don't have to install drivers, except for things like printers. I've never had a problem with 64-bit mode in Snow Leopard; even though I have an older printer with some pretty ancient Panther-era drivers it prints just fine.
"- Games? Child restricted accounts? Nope."
I'm kind of boring, all I play is Warcraft and Civ 4. Restricted accounts have been around since System 7, and although they just refined all the user restrictions in Snow Leopard that kind of functionality has been around for ages.
"- Program Execution isolation"
If you mean NX, it's been transparently integrated since 10.4, and seriously improved in 10.5. If you mean some Windows feature that keeps your 16-bit crapware from blowing up the rest of the OS, Mac OS X doesn't really need that.
"- Transparent Bitlocker"
It's called FileVault, and Apple had it in 2003, years before Vista. Argue the merits of full-disk encryption all you like, I think it's stupid unless you work for a bank, hospital, or government, and then you'd better be using OpenBSD and fancy encryption hardware instead. For non-spook intrusion it's just as effective and much faster.
"- Central management and deployment for businesses"
Dude, Apple Remote Desktop, and it's much cheaper than anything nearly as powerful on Windows. Clearly you never worked in an Apple production environment.
Me? I managed large labs of Windows PCs and Macs in an academic research environment for three and a half years. I've seen the good, bad, and ugly on both platforms. I know what's realistic and what isn't on both sides. Most critically I know when idiot trolls like you are full of crap.