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Engineers Tell How Feedback Shaped Windows 7
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica took the time to talk to three members of the Windows 7 product development and planning team to find out how user feedback impacted the latest version of Windows. There's some market speak you'll have to wade through, but overall it gives a solid picture regarding the development of a Windows release."
7 truly is Vista SP3. And I don't say that in a negative fashion; Vista runs very well on my two desktops and laptop.
However, minus the new taskbar (which I think is a massive step forward), there really isn't that much that's new. A little bit faster, a little bit less buggy.
In the end, 7 is Mojave Experiment 2.0. Microsoft tried an ad campaign, it failed because people wouldn't get over how "bad Vista is". Microsoft gives it new clothes and a new name- now it's the best version of Windows EVER!
In short, Microsoft went back to marketing after the Vista launch floundered and destroyed its reputation (due to a bunch of underpowered computers with poorly written drivers giving the OS a bad reputation).
Well not really. The sudden concern for netbook users was caused by the possibility that people might switch to linux. When the original linux powered Asus EEE PC was released, it was so popular, it pushed Microsoft into third place behind Apple and Xandros for OS shipments that month. I imagine that would give monkey-boy a bit of a fright.
While I think you got it backwards, I get your point. 3.1 -> XP was a bigger jump than XP -> 7
However:
3.1 required 2 MB, ran OK on 4
XP required 128 MB and ran OK on 256. That is 64 times what 3.1 needed over 9 years
7 requires 1 GB and runs OK on 2 GB. That is 8 times XP over 8 years
7 doesn't look too bad.