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Engineers Tell How Feedback Shaped Windows 7

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-do-you-want-today dept.

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."

84 of 452 comments (clear)

  1. We Listened! by db32 · · Score: 5, Funny

    We heard what you wanted and were sure to avoid those things at all costs. In the event that we could not avoid a given feature we made it practically impossible to use, moved the functionality to a new hidden location, or barrage you with popups and wizards to ensure you really want to use it.

    --
    The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
    1. Re:We Listened! by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "With Windows 7, Microsoft made sure that every edition of its operating system would run on low-end hardware. "One of the feedbacks that we got was how different the needs were for users on laptops compared to needs of users on desktops,""

      Are you kidding me?! You're a company named Microsoft. You've been developing operating systems for 30 years. It took you this long to realize that different users have different needs, and that your OS should run on low-end hardware? And you only figured that out because of user feedback??
      /me boggles

    2. Re:We Listened! by runyonave · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's Microsoft, they take a very long time to do anything right (or do anything at all). Just look at Internet Explorer, they have been working on it since 1994. 15 years later, we are still YET to receive a browser from Microsoft that is at least more than 20% web compliant. As a web developer this dearly pisses me off. How is that Firefox, Opera even Safari can get complaince in the 75%+ rating and not IE. Now that boggles my mind.

    3. Re:We Listened! by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Insightful
      /me boggles

      Microsoft has a monopoly, they don't need to cater to users.

      Users have to adapt to Microsoft. Haven't you noticed?

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    4. Re:We Listened! by jonbryce · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:We Listened! by Again · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's Microsoft, they take a very long time to do anything right (or do anything at all). Just look at Internet Explorer, they have been working on it since 1994. 15 years later, we are still YET to receive a browser from Microsoft that is at least more than 20% web compliant..

      Microsoft does have the technical resources to make IE score 100% on the Acid3 test. However, it is not in their best interests to do so. Here is a quote from Bill Gates (taken from wikiquotes) which demonstrates Microsoft's business strategy.

      One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.

      This is the attitude that Microsoft is developing software with. Just look at the number of businesses that are stuck with IE6 because of some legacy ActiveX application. Microsoft's strategy is working very well for them and I don't see them ever changing.

    6. Re:We Listened! by jzhos · · Score: 2, Insightful

      MS bashing aside, they don't have to make sure the new OS run on the low-end hardware at the beginning of each release cycle, before the netbook thing took off and CPU has to be multicore to keep improving. In the good old days, developer don't need to worry about the lower end of the hardware during planning. The OS release is rather a long development cycle (at least for Windows), 3-4 years. When the new release comes out, the high-end machines during planning phase are already the lower end. Companies will upgrade the hardware anyway, perfect fit for the new release.
      Things are different now, as the single CPU is not any faster and it is even slower (netbooks), such the development assumption also changed. I don't see anything wrong with whole thing.

    7. Re:We Listened! by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And all they had to do to head that off was give away their 8 year old OS. No major skin off Microsoft's back, and they maintain lock-in. There probably wasn't even a chair thrown.

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
    8. Re:We Listened! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Remember MS has never concerned themselves with consumers; for the most part consumers are not their customers. Companies were their customers for businesses. On the consumer side, OEMs are their customers. Either way, MS never dealt as much with direct consumer support and interaction. If there were support issues, companies' IT departments took care of their business users and OEMs handled the consumers. With Vista, this came back to hurt them as OEMs could simply blame MS on the whole fiasco especially when consumers could downgrade to XP and see a significant performance and stability improvements.

      MS also gambled that minimum hardware would advance more than their new OS would bog it down. With every release, MS would redefine what "minimum" hardware requirements meant. With Win95 and 98, minimum meant Windows may be slower if the user was doing processor intensive. More memory would definitely fix it. With XP, "minimum" meant that Windows would be slower especially if the user was doing processor intensive. More memory would fix most things. By the time of Vista, minimum meant you could load Windows onto the machine. Good luck on actually running anything but the OS. More memory might fix it, but CPU and video card upgrades were more likely necessary which meant it would be cheaper for the user to buy a new computer or downgrade to XP rather than upgrade their computer to actually use Vista.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    9. Re:We Listened! by aztracker1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because for a while (96-98) there weren't concrete standards for DOM interaction beyond document.clear/write/close .. Once the standards were firmed up, things headed in that direction and IE5 was pretty compliant for its' time compared to the alternatives. At that time Opera was pretty much following IE's lead, and Netscape 4.x was a nightmare by comparison. This is even without use of proprietary ActiveX plugins or Java.

      Microsoft created an XML interface that eventually became the XmlHttpRequest we all know and love. MS's DOM interactions in IE4 shaped the direction of the W3C DOM specification we have now. It's easy to gripe about MS from today's standards, but when IE4-5 came out it was well ahead of the competition.

      This is why your comments are trollish. You could say that from 2003-2007 there was a huge level of disparity between the development of IE and where web based standards have come. And that you have large issues with MS because of this. From 1997-2002 IE was pretty much the best option.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    10. Re:We Listened! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Some consumers buy Vista in the store and upgrade, but for the most part, consumers get Vista because it is installed when they buy a new computer. For businesses, users get Vista because their company buys Vista. Due to the nature of OEM licensing, OEMs for the most part, have to handle support. If you have an issue with Windows and call MS, they will tell you to call your OEM. Because of this structure, MS does not directly deal with users as users are not their customers. Businesses and OEMs are their customers as they are the ones paying MS for Windows.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    11. Re:We Listened! by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd say what really bit them in the ass with Vista was the whole "Vista capable" fiasco. I am sitting here staring at a Compaq Presario that I got for a whole $50 because the customer absolutely HATED Vista and wanted that box taken out of his sight. Those Worst Buy Vista capable machines really were a very bad joke.

      We are talking a 1.8GHz Sempron, a measly 512Mb of RAM, and an ultra cheapo SiS IGP, anybody who has ever run Vista knows there is NO WAY in hell that thing will EVER run Vista at an acceptable speed, instead the customers would quickly get frustrated as the machine thrashed away (this particular box was even given a 250Gb hard drive upgrade from Compaq because it thrashed the original drive to death) and would quickly either dump the machine for a new XP box or bring it to somebody like me and say "get this Vista POS off and put XP on!"

      So if MSFT wants to know who is to blame for folks hating Vista like the second coming of WinME, they just need to look in the mirror. Sure on a dual core with 2Gb+ of RAM it'll run decently, but the "Best Buy Specials" being sold at the time of the Vista release were single core Sempron and Celeron with 512Mb of RAM and really lousy Intel or SiS IGPs. Those machines should have NEVER had Vista come within a 1000 yards of it, yet MSFT let manufacturers put "Vista capable" on them along with that piece of trash Vista Basic and customers felt like they were scammed, which of course they were. I have many customers now with new XP duals and Quads and they are not looking at Windows 7 until 2012, if at all. Too many got burnt thanks to Vista Capable and are just gonna set out Windows 7.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    12. Re:We Listened! by koiransuklaa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh, that may well turn out to be a major decision: if OEMs and end users now expect to get their (netbook) operating systems for ~$20, how can Microsoft raise the price to $100?

      That is a _major_ price hike for devices that now cost $200-$400 total...

    13. Re:We Listened! by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Because it's an 8 year old OS. People aren't expecting Windows 7 on a "netbook", and Microsoft is setting that expectation. They don't like netbooks... there's no margin. MS would prefer that people always look at them like toys, rather than what they actually are, which is more than adequate for 99% of what people do with their computers. People will still pay for the "real" OS because they're being told that Netbooks are toys, and nothing more.

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
    14. Re:We Listened! by dwiget001 · · Score: 2, Informative

      || So if MSFT wants to know who is to blame for folks hating Vista like the second coming of WinME, they just need to look in the mirror. Sure on a dual core with 2Gb+ of RAM it'll run decently, but the "Best Buy Specials" being sold at the time of the Vista release were single core Sempron and Celeron with 512Mb of RAM and really lousy Intel or SiS IGPs. Those machines should have NEVER had Vista come within a 1000 yards of it, yet MSFT let manufacturers put "Vista capable" on them along with that piece of trash Vista Basic and customers felt like they were scammed, which of course they were. I have many customers now with new XP duals and Quads and they are not looking at Windows 7 until 2012, if at all. Too many got burnt thanks to Vista Capable and are just gonna set out Windows 7. ||

      Actually, Microsoft didn't just "let" manufacturers put "Vista Capable" on the systems, Microsoft was an active part of making it happen, despite protest from at least one if not more OEMs.

    15. Re:We Listened! by default+luser · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Absolutely. Intel looked like they were going to start producing "decent" integrated graphics when, in 2004, they announced the GMA 900. It looked to Microsoft like the world's largest GPU maker would finally have something capable of desktop compositing, so they figured they could finally add this capability to Windows without a huge performance hit.

      Then, in 2006 Intel announced the GMA X3000, but couldn't produce drivers to enable the advanced features like Vertex Shaders (this took eighteen months). In the end, the perfrormance sucked, and most OEMs passed-over the capable G965 for the craptacular 915G and 945G. So, in early 2007 Vista launched, and Microsoft was screwed because Intel hadn't delivered acceptable 3D performance in time, and had to put "Vista-Capable" logos on 915G and 945G machines that were still shipping.

      The whole Netbook debacle hit Microsoft like a ton of bricks becaused Intel tried to segment the market, and used predatory pricing bundles to prevent OEMs from making netbooks with dual-core Atom or 3rd-party chipsets (e.g. pricing the Atom N270 + 945G chipset less than the Atom CPU itself). This meant that ALL Netbooks were incapable of running Vista, not just the low-end ones, because the only way to make a profitable Netbook was to follow the herd and take the Intel deal.

      Now that Intel is finally upping the spec on their new Atom dual-core netbooks (end of this year), and now that Windows 7 has been optimized to the point that it's "usable" even on low-end Netbooks, I think Windows "performance" is poised for a comeback.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

    16. Re:We Listened! by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Oh I agree that MSFT deserves the blame, as it is their OS and they wrote the minimum system requirements, which lets be honest here-while MSFT minimum system requirements have always been "off" the ones they put for Vista were so wrong I don't see how it could be labeled as anything but bold faced lies designed to push their new OS (which of course cost more than XP to the OEMs) onto machines that could NEVER run it.

      Now I have actually had to use machines with XP that were slightly over the minimum specs CPU wise and while it wasn't a great experience it WAS usable. Now compare it to Vista Capable. Now is there anybody here who thinks that even if you double their minimum specs for Vista Capable that it would be even slightly usable? I can tell you that 1.8GHz Sempron even with 1Gb of RAM was frankly unusable for anything at all, surfing, email, pretty much all it would do is sit there and thrash the hard drive.

      So I have to agree wholeheartedly that the Vista Capable mess was 100% MSFT's fault. Vista Basic should have never existed, Vista Capable was nothing but outright fraud, and it is no wonder with so many folks getting burnt at stores like Best Buy and Walmart on Vista Basic machines that Vista ended up the most hated MSFT OS in a decade. They made their bed and now they have to lie in it, as I doubt after being burnt on Vista Capable many of those folks are gonna jump on Win7 in the next year, if at all. It was just too stupid a move, and somebody should have been seriously fired for even thinking it up IMHO.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    17. Re:We Listened! by jgarra23 · · Score: 2, Funny

      The OS is much more important/integral to the user experience than the (different) windshield is to driving.

      Try driving down i-75 in Florida WITHOUT a windshield and your mouth open. I bet you will recant this statement :)

  2. Yes by homey+of+my+owney · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ummm.... We'd like it not to crash.

    1. Re:Yes by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm fairly sure they would too :)

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    2. Re:Yes by __aamnbm3774 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      oh come on now. Since XP was released the random 'crashing' isn't prevalent any more.
      If you have bad hardware or are overclocking, that is a different story, but also your own fault.
      Lets be reasonable, this is like a wife of 30 years, bringing up stuff you did in high school!

    3. Re:Yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is like a wife of 30 years, bringing up stuff you did in high school!

      I'm guessing you're not married.

    4. Re:Yes by acohen1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually XP crashed quite a bit before SP1.

    5. Re:Yes by aztracker1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Windows 2000 had a few internal issues that would cause BSODs to happen without outside interference in certain hardware without 3rd party drivers. Though many 3rd party drivers (I had an older burning software for NT4 that caused 2K instabilities). XP was much more stable, though again plagued by 3rd party drivers, and had quite a few stability issues of its' own.

      I would say the core kernel in the NT line of windows has been very solid. Though many different drivers have caused numerous issues. This is separate from some of the userland interfaces in windows which really didn't firm up until XP SP1 and SP2. Win2K was my favorite Windows until 7's beta, but it was a ways away from sorted out. SP4 for Win2K was a big bump for usability and stability (IIRC was about the same time as XP SP1).

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    6. Re:Yes by Cro+Magnon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Actually, the crashes weren't all bad. Back when I was using W95 at work, I took coffee breaks every time it crashed in the morning. Of course I paid for it; I was in the bathroom during its afternoon crashes.

      --
      Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
  3. Feedback by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

    We took all the feedback.
    Printed it.
    Made bricks with the printed feedback and some glue.
    Built a piramid with the bricks.
    Painted it green and brown.
    Called it Mount Feedji.
    Burned it down in a massive party.

    Then, still drunk from the party, we designed W7.

    .

    Ok, that was a lie. We didn't actually paint it. But we considered that suggestion for quite a long while.

    1. Re:Feedback by MRe_nl · · Score: 4, Funny

      I wanted to start a farm on Feedji, you insensitive clod!

      --
      "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
  4. Let's give the devil his due by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Windows 7 plain rocks. Seems like Windows 2000 just got reincarnated and polished.

    I've been running it for a while now and have no issues.

    1. Re:Let's give the devil his due by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Vista wasn't terrible to begin with.

      Vista was terrible to begin with when it just got released. I ran it for 2 months, hoping for something to improve - some magic hotfix pushed through Windows Update, or better drivers, or whatever. I'm a patient guy, which is why it took 2 months to realize that I can forget about it till the service pack.

      Vista SP1 now, that was usable. And, of course, 7 is built on everything that was in Vista SP2, and then there are some quite real tweaks perf-wise, and new taskbar is neat...

      I have one other theory about why 7 is so much better received than Vista: part of it is the visual design.

      If you recall, Vista had that weird color theme with yellow-green background and dark, almost solid black window frames and taskbar (and window frames were entirely black when maximized - and most windows are maximized when working). There also were those dark yet glossy green-cyan toolbars in Explorer that somehow made me think of uranium glass. The overall effect was fairly eye-straining and kinda "meh". It killed all the bling that Aero was supposed to bring on the spot.

      Enter 7: bright blue wallpaper with a bright, highly saturated colored Windows logo in the middle. Almost transparent window chrome and taskbar with a light blue tint. Very pale blue selection highlight in menus, and toolbars are almost white. The entire design has a very "lightened" feeling about it because of the color choice.

      I strongly suspect that, especially when seeing 7 right after Vista, there's a strong subconscious impulse to differentiate the two just because of the design difference, and not in Vista's favor.

    2. Re:Let's give the devil his due by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I know this is slashdot, but saying Windows 7 is not Ubuntu is just plain ridiculous.

      No it isn't. I admit that I haven't used Windows 7 or Ubuntu much, but after even a cursory look I can quite safely say that Windows 7 is not Ubuntu. It is also not MS Bob, GEM, or OS/2, just in case you were still confused.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Let's give the devil his due by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Vista wasn't terrible, but 7 is much more polished. It feels faster because of GDI fixes, changes to a lot of other systems that make things just flow a lot better... I'd pick 7 over Vista any day. I prefer how relatively lightweight XP and 2000 are, but they don't have the DRM required by MS so they'll never get the DX10 and 11 features that new games are using, so... I'll go with 7 for my games, and keep doing my actual work under Linux.

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
    4. Re:Let's give the devil his due by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm actually not sure how this got to +4 funny. Maybe +5 interesting? I digress. I've been a fan of Win2k for a long time, I used it for just about everything from gaming to my work up until XP64 and had a stable driver set. Does Win7 have that nifty feel of Win2k? Yes actually it does. Even on lower end hardware it's decently snappy, and runs well.

      Issues? The biggest I've found is it's ability to lose connection to the internet on reboots. Meaning you need to disable and reenable your network card which fixes it. Sadly no new drivers for my card, but otherwise works fine. I consider that a 2 on my 1-10(10 being worst) scale of crap. Otherwise, I'm quite happy. My XP64 machine has been up and running for a bit more than 460 days now without a reboot. I expect that Win7 will beat that easily.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    5. Re:Let's give the devil his due by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Thus trolled Zarathustra.

    6. Re:Let's give the devil his due by mcrbids · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you have gone 460 days without a reboot, it's because you haven't been applying security updates. Your system is highly vulnerable, and you are a joke as a system administrator.

      Turn in your geek card NOW.

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  5. MS moves fast by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Over a decade ago, feedback for Microsoft software took place by filling out surveys on paper and floppy disks sent in to the company's headquarters. The ubiquity of the Internet has led to more feedback, faster.

    And yet they could have used the Internet for feedback well more than a decade ago. Glad to see they've finally entered the mid-90s.

    --
    This guy's the limit!
    1. Re:MS moves fast by lordandmaker · · Score: 2, Funny

      Come on, they're at least in the late nineties by now. They've got support for 64-bit architectures and everything!

  6. Mojave Experiment 2.0 by Coopjust · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by wampus · · Score: 2, Informative

      If an app was coded to work as a non-priveleged user in NT4, there was a pretty good chance it would work on Vista. Directory structure changed a bit, but the OS used symlinks and junction points to hide that from apps.

    2. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, yeah.

      Win 2000 = NT 5.0
      Win XP = NT 5.1
      Win Vista = NT 6.0
      Win 7 = NT 6.1

      What did people expect. It's not a new iteration, it's an enhancement. Just because they brand it as a new OS does not make it so.

    3. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by Dan667 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      in spite of the hardware problems, I have used vista and I hated it. Why do I have to re-learn everything because microsoft wants to try to sell more copies of an OS? It should make you life easier, not harder. And completely ignoring things like boot time, security, and backwards comparability (the things the Customer actually cares about), while bending over backwards to make sure DRM for hollywood is in the OS is really just shooting yourself in the foot.

    4. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's even harder to know the requirements when Microsoft has been publically publishing them as a part of the security guidelines required to get Windows Logo certified since 1993.

      UAC doesn't enforce or work around anything new, at all. These requirements have always been known. They've always been considered standard security guidelines on UNIX-based systems and have been the standard security guidelines on Windows since the Windows NT 3.1 release, the first release of a Windows kernel capable of enforcing any such restrictions.

      Standard user accounts in Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 have always enforced these rules, and because of such this software often simply failed. The answer from the companies that made this crappy software, including such companies as Adobe and Intuit, have always just replied to run as Administrator, often just because the program expects to be able to write files to the same directory as the program binary. Writing to /usr/bin is obviously a no-no in UNIX just as writing to %ProgramFiles% is clearly a no-no in Windows, but apparently a huge amount of software assumes that it can be done and it seems easier to just tell the impatient user to strip all semblance of security than it is to fix the application.

      To claim that this can't be the application developers' fault is just stupid. If you found an application on Linux that "required" root privileges just because it violated the published and standard security guidelines for UNIX-based systems you would definitely blame the application developer. If that application developer ran as "root" while developing that application you would also admonish them. When people elect to ignore the guidelines and the safe practices in the name of convenience they get exactly what they deserve.

      In my opinion MS should have just dropped the hammer, not permitted users to log in as Administrator, even from the console, and allowed all of these applications to fail. However, from the perspective of the user, including those on Slashdot, that would appear to be the fault of Microsoft. The answer is UAC. Apart from jailing the Admin account under the guise of a standard user and providing sudo functionality from non-Admin accounts (including prompting for the password, a better way to set up a Vista/2008/7 system), UAC also goes out of it's way to help poorly written applications silently succeed by handling common poor practices. For example, when that app attempts to write to %ProgramFiles% instead the file is written under the user profile. It might not be your favorite flavor of cake, and the icing is a bit granulated, but you get to have it and eat it too.

    5. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by Coopjust · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As I said above (not in my original post, but as a part of this comment thread), I don't debate that the Vista Capable debacle is Microsoft's fault. I'm just finding it funny that the Mojave experiment worked the second time.

      Memory & performance pig: 7 is a bit trimmed, but the difference really isn't that big.

    6. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by Jugalator · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What did people expect. It's not a new iteration, it's an enhancement. Just because they brand it as a new OS does not make it so.

      MS (Steven Sinofsky to be precise) has officially claimed that the kernel version number of 6.1 is only for compatibility reasons, for apps only looking at the major OS version number, and that it otherwise would have been an "NT 7.0". I can't be bothered to find the article now, but some careful Googling on the "Engineering Windows 7" blog would do the trick.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    7. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by EvanED · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'll echo the above to a large extent. Here's my take on UAC, as compared to sudo.

      First the similarities: they function in much the same way.They have similar (though not completely overlapping) goals, and they protect more or less the same stuff. Back when I first switched to Vista (about six months after it came out), there was still a lot of flap going on about UAC. I decided to keep a log of every UAC prompt I received, and did so for a month. I don't have it handy, but IIRC here is roughly how it came out. There were bascially three reasons I got prompted: (1) I was making an expected administrative change that would have required root on Linux (most of them), (2) there was a bit of the UI that was designed poorly, or (3) I was first logging on and this hardware monitoring piece of software was starting. The second category is the most interesting; almost all (or maybe all) of these were because I wanted to change my environment variables. Even though I was just changing my user's variables the dialog where you do that is also where you change system-wide environment variables; the fact that you could do the latter mean you needed elevation. (Win 7 fixes this dialog so you don't need elevation to change your own environment.) In addition, while I didn't get it for this reason, some people got UAC prompts for things like start menu and desktop changes. The desktop thing wouldn't happen on Linux because neither KDE nor Gnome have the idea off a global "all users" desktop in addition to the per-user one. The changes that caused these UAC prompts were because the change had to affect the all users desktop. I'm not sure how Gnome and KDE store the equivalent of the start menu soo I'm not sure hoow sudo would behave there.

      Now the differencees:

      1. UAC behaves more like 'su' than sudo. You need the password of the admin user, not your own. For enterprise users, this could be a big deal. For a home user, I doubt it matters much. For a single-user computer, it doesn't really matter in the slightest.

      2. UAC doesn't cache its permission. If you need to elevate twice in a row, you have to explicitly elevate twice. At least on a typical desktop configuration, gksudo will cache its permission for a couple minutes. This is the main respect in which, IMO, UAC is more annoying. That said, this rarely happened in my month of UAC logging.

      3. UAC is on-demand: a running program can ask for elevation. This is in contrast to sudo, where you need to start with said user's rights. This isn't very different from the end user's perspective as compared to stuff like GkSudo, but is pretty nice as compared to running sudo from the command line, where at least I often found myself going "oops, I needed to start that as root."

      4. Even admin users need to elevate, but root doesn't need to sudo. A little annoying if you're doing a loot of admin stuff. Then again, you only need to click 'yes' as opposed to type your password, so it's not too bad. This is important for Windows users where most people are an admin anyway (and hence sudo as-such wouldn't do anything). Speaks more about the Windows architecture and programs than UAC in that respect. (Win 7 changes this; admin users don't have to explicitly elevate as much. Icons with the UAC logo elevate without a prompt. Programs that just want elevation, like installers, still cause a prompt.)

      5. UAC checks the program's digital signature, and displays either the confirmed source or a warning about a missing signature; sudo doesn't do any of that. In theory this is a nice win on UAC's part, but in practice I doubt it matters much. A lot of programs (esp. OSS apps) aren't signed, so the presence of that warning usually isn't surprising so I just click through anyway, and (1) you need to a lot of thee time and (2) I even know all about what it's talking about it.

      All Microsoft did in 7 is reduce the security, since many users will blindly click through whatever is shown anyways, and power users turn it off.

      I don't buy this stat

    8. Re:Mojave Experiment 2.0 by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's just Microsoft's version of gksudo.

      Not really. gksudo asks you if you know what you are doing and are allowed it. If UAC sees three doubts, it asks three questions, because its primary task seems to be to distrust the machine's own programs. gksudo just knows it has asked you a second ago and assumes you still are the same user with the same skills and rights.

      In other words: gksudo focusses on the user, UAC on the program actions

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
  7. Nothing to see here by headhot · · Score: 4, Informative

    Its a pretty useless article. You don't get any more info out of the article then you get from the title.

    1. Re:Nothing to see here by dunezone · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Customer complained about feature "x", we evaluated feature "x", we concluded the customer was correct and we corrected feature "x" to customers suggestion.

      Customer Support 101

  8. Re:I can see it now by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's your point? That mojave marketing stunt didn't address Vista's actual problems.

    Yes I've used it. I found it hideous for all the usual reasons, plus some of my own.
    My brief use of windows 7 RC just confirms that Microsoft are taking windows down a path that I don't wish to follow any more.

  9. Re:Whoever proposed a bigger memory footprint than by int69h · · Score: 5, Insightful

    XP requires TONS more ram than Window 3.1 and would be much slower on the same hardware. Do you not agree that XP is progression from 3.1?

  10. Re:Whoever proposed a bigger memory footprint than by EmperorKagato · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's Windows Vista and not Windows 7.
     
    4chan has already posted a guide on what is the lowest system you can expect to get windows 7 running on.
     
    I'm bringing this up as an example since it is source outside of the popular media.

    --
    ----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
  11. Re:An F-15 is much bigger than a P-51. OMG BLOAT! by schnikies79 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From my observations, people are upgrading hardware at a slower and slower rate, so it is relevant. Most I know haven't done a major upgrade, outside of possibly adding ram or a changing video cards, in a few years and don't plan to anytime soon. Hardware has reached a "good enough" point.

    I'm on a Athlon X2 with 4gb ram (maxed out). I have absolutely no intention of upgrading anytime soon.

    --
    Gone!
  12. Dear God... by X.25 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Windows 7 is another proof that enough marketing can make something good.

    Windows 7, Windows 7, Windows 7, ...

    I yet have to find someone who can show me what it brings me, over XP, that is worth paying 100+ EUR for.

    1. Re:Dear God... by TaggartAleslayer · · Score: 2, Funny

      Continued support?

    2. Re:Dear God... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative

      IPv6 is available for XP as a download from MS. Self-healing NTFS might be nice, although I'm not really sure what it means; NTFS has had journaling for a long time, does this add per-block checksums and error correction? DirectX 11 is only really relevant to games with a recent GPU. And a new taskbar? That's really stretching it.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Dear God... by AaronW · · Score: 2, Informative

      I recently switched my HP Mini netbook from XP to the 7 RC.
      I have found that some things are just more stable. Hibernate, for example, seems to work a lot better and works faster. It's much improved over XP. It's definitely been more stable and it's a number of little things I notice that are improvements, besides the improved task bar.

      Memory wise, Windows 7 Ultimate it doesn't seem to use much more than what I was using with XP Home. If anything, the memory management feels like its improved quite a bit.

      A lot of the little things in XP that bugged me seem to be fixed. Wireless and networking now always work when coming out of hibernate.

      The only thing that bothers me is that I can no longer initiate a drive self test using the smartmontools.

      Now I can't compare to Vista, since I've never run it. My primary OS is Linux.

      That's not to say it isn't without its warts. Installing my printer (an HP Laserjet 4M Plus) requires 15 minutes of waiting to get the list of printer drivers.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
  13. Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by tenzig_112 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I get the impression that the Windows 7 launch is a lot like seeing an old girlfriend suddenly show up on your doorstep wanting to get back together. She's had some work done, apparently: stomach stapling to take off some of the weight, breast augmentation, and a radical nosejob to make her look as much like your current girlfriend as medical science will allow.

    She's pretty, of course, almost too pretty. She still wears far too much makeup and carries that desperate look in her eyes. The fragrant haze around her is the perfume she overuses to mask the scent of failure.

    But standing there in that low-cut top, you'd almost forget for a moment what a psycho she was- how she used to shut down in the middle of a date and forget everything you were talking about and how she was only happy when you were buying her things. You'd almost forget about carrying around her legacy baggage or those nights when, for seemingly no reason at all, she would simply stop speaking to you and when you asked what was wrong she'd just spit a string of hex code at you and expect you to figure it out.

    You complained about her for years before finally deciding to get rid of her, and here she is again. Though, somehow she seems like a completely different person now.

    "I'm up here," she says when she catches you staring at her chest.

    Tempted though you may be, you know that over time she'll get bored and slow down on you just like she always does. And then you'll be right back where you started: trapped. She keeps you by convincing you that you don't have a choice. You're just not smart enough for one option or rich enough to afford the other.

    "But I'm different now," she says, batting her eyes innocently. "I've changed."

    Indeed she has. Apparently, she's really into Cabala now or something like that. It's helped her discover loads of untapped potential in herself. But it also means that you'll have to buy all new furniture to fit with her understanding of feng shui. That's not the only change she has in store for you. The minute you let her move in, she'll have a new alarm system put in that succeeds only in preventing your friends from coming over on poker night.

    She doesn't love you, but she doesn't hate you, either. The truth is that she couldn't care less one way or the other. She's here because she doesn't want to be alone. Like all human beings, especially those well past their prime, she wants to feel wanted and, after a string of lost jobs and bad investments, she needs a place to stay.

    But all in all, she's OK. She's a seven. She'll do, I guess.

    1. Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by ZinnHelden · · Score: 2, Funny

      You'd almost forget about carrying around her legacy baggage or those nights when, for seemingly no reason at all, she would simply stop speaking to you and when you asked what was wrong she'd just spit a string of hex code at you and expect you to figure it out.

      Seems like a lot of /.'ers would find women easier to comprehend if this were the case.

    2. Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's nothing left to say, I'm going to simply link to this comment in every discussion about W7. Spot-on, and if I could buy you a pint I would.

    3. Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by Comatose51 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Had me up until "is a lot like seeing an old girlfriend " and I lost any sense of reference of what you're talking about.

      --
      EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
    4. Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by WiiVault · · Score: 2, Informative

      Cheers friend. The best post I have seen on /. in years.

    5. Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by vulgrin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Lets continue the analogy:

      Your OSX Girlfriend shows up on your doorstep telling you to buy her a new Snow Leopard coat. Oh, and you are going to need to get her some updated pants and shoes too to match. Of course, she won't step inside your door until you've gone and bought one of those new Apple brand "iMansions" that, really, is just the same as the Intel Houses that everyone has, but comes with fancy aluminum siding and costs twice as much. You could TRY to put aluminum siding on any old Intel house, but you hear those contractors are getting sued out of business.

      So, you finally get the new mansion and invite her in and you realize that she's really just like every other girl you've been with. But, all your friends like her, so you might as well go along with it. She's arty, but very serious too, and won't play any games with you. After a while, after buying her all her iAccessories you realize you really aren't getting any more out of her than your other girlfriends.

      But your Linux girlfriend, she is awesome. She'll do whatever you want, whenever you want, rarely complains and will stay in pretty much any house or mobile home you have. Sadly, she's also a robot who gets delivered to your house in a box, and you have to assemble her up the way you want. You have to turn to your friends and the internet to find out why the heck she won't talk with you, or why her feet are on backwards. She's very secure in your relationship, so much that she won't do anything unless you really PROVE you are her boyfriend. She plays a few games, but you're getting sick of chess, solitaire and downhill sledding penguins. And then every few weeks you have to shut her down to replace her heart and lungs. You are so damn tired keeping her running and happy all the time who has time for sex?

      To top it off, everyone has seen her naked. She's put it all over the Internet for everyone to see and fiddle with her naughty bits. She claims it makes her a better woman, but since you have to keep patching her up, you aren't so sure. What's worse, she keeps comparing you to some guy she met in Finland and talks about how much he "got inside her."

      --
      I sig, therefore I am.
    6. Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by turing_m · · Score: 2, Informative

      Genius.

      --
      If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
    7. Re:Windows 7: "I'm up here, boys!" by space_jake · · Score: 2

      Can you translate this into a car analogy for me?

  14. Waffle? by Burnhard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article waffled on a bit and at the end of it I'd learnt absolutely nothing, because they didn't actually say anything.

  15. Window's Explorer... by FlopEJoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can I just have a 64-bit windows operating system that will keep up with the latest graphics drivers. And bring back classic XP Window's Explorer... I hate Vista's Explorer with a passion. If you change something, make a classic version!

  16. Lack of feedback by Enderandrew · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but one of the things I truly love about OSS development is how transparent development is. I can easily contact the developers. I can submit bugs.

    I have tons of usability gripes with Windows. I've never felt like I could submit feedback to Microsoft that might be seen and looked at.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  17. Re:Whoever proposed a bigger memory footprint than by washu_k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  18. Mojave was Vista SP1 by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's your point? That mojave marketing stunt didn't address Vista's actual problems.

    The Mojave ad campaign came out a few months after the February 2008 release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which did address technical problems with Windows Vista.

  19. Is there anything GOOD in windows 7.... by sys_mast · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...that came from this feedback, that makes businesses using XP want to switch? We all know why NOBODY switched to Vista, so why would anyone switch to win7?

    Please, I'm not asking why should NOT switch, we all know that answer. But someone please explain why we SHOULD move to win7 !

    --
    Those who can, do.
  20. Re:I can see it now by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ehhh... they did fix some fairly serious design errors in Vista (mostly the GDI concurrency and network latency bullshit). I still hate the DRM and the fact that Microsoft thinks it's more their computer than mine, but for a gaming machine, Win7 ain't half bad and since XP will never get DX10 or 11, I'm gonna go with 7 over Vista.

    --
    My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  21. Install by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just installed windows 7 professional. Easy install except for the multitude of reboots - at one point it rebooted, said it was installing updates, then rebooted again, installed more updates and rebooted again, installed more updates - and then let me log in. Tiring.

    I then went through the pain of installing all the programs I want - mostly things like python and a jdk and eclipse and yahoo messenger, and as is usual in the windows ecosystem, many of these things wanted to install their own toolbar (hmm, not python or ghc :) and whatever other cruft someone thinks is essential. This isn't a problem with windows 7, but rather with the windows mindset, which is that the user is too stupid to know what to do, so someone else should decide - and then make it hard to change. Yahoo messenger though had some problems - when a chat window opened it opened almost maximized (didn't fill the screen, but had no title bar and the top part of the window was off screen) - it took some time to figure out that if I resized the window, it would snap back to normal. But I needed to do that with every chat window that opened. This was not happening on Vista or XP.

    IE wants to have Bing as your default search provider and makes it hard to change. I changed this twice to Google (which took some doing) and then the machine would reboot and it would be Bing again. No wonder Bing usage is increasing. Firefox got stuck in "safemode" and it took some work to find out how to unset that - had to restart firefox, not from the "recently used items" menu, but from the disk copy. Why it was in "safemode" in the first place, I really do not know.

    The window decorations and menubars are way too big (on my relatively small screen - 1440x900) and take up way too much vertical space - handling multiple windows at once is almost impossible and the taskbar thingummy doesn't really help much - and the system doesn't want me to use a font any smaller than I'm currently using. The taskbar is too wide and you can't change it, but autohiding helps some. The icons on my desktop are too big and there seems to be no way to change that either. There's a cute analog clock which I rather like, but it is huge and won't get any smaller, nor can you move it right up into a corner - it snaps back to the middle of the screen. When some notification windows are active (including the "change search provider" one which was quite slow), it was impossible to move or resize the parent window - very annoying.

    I had to go to websites and get drivers to install (most of which required reboots) and in several cases was told that there are no drivers for that device for win7.

    The system seems to run ok - not fast, but acceptable on this hardware (not the best in the world). If you have any number of windows open, things get slow quickly though - changing windows or applications has a perceptible lag (when more than just a few things are running).

    I'm sure that some of these problems will be fixed - drivers will become available quickly enough and I'll probably find workarounds for others, or some nice person will tell me "thats easy, just do this...", but some of them are just "the user is stupid, don't let the user do things we (microsoft, yahoo...) don't want them to do". Sadly enough, this attitude is becoming more prevalent in linux as well, but has a long, long way to go before it reaches the level of contempt shown in the windows world.

  22. Re:Marketing... by stumblingblock · · Score: 2, Funny

    A bit OT, but my Target store is now carrying Mexican glass bottle cane sugar Coca Cola in the food section! Maybe they will begin to carry classic software.

  23. There are full-size cars and compact cars. by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're ignoring that computers have more RAM available.

    And you're ignoring that computers come in a wider variety of form factors and price ranges than just mid-to-high-end desktops. How comfortably would Windows 7 run on even a one year old netbook with a 900 MHz Celeron, half a GB of RAM, and a 4 GB SSD?

  24. +1, insightful by caseih · · Score: 2, Informative

    Too bad this brilliant little piece of prose is already rated at +5, Funny. In reality it should be +5, Insightful. It is both funny and insightful. So close to the truth as far as most people's relationship with Windows goes that it actually hurts! Best comment I think I've ever read on slashdot. Bravo.

  25. We Listened! And We Won! by westlake · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    Monkey-boy has the instincts and habits of a winner.*

    When the Atom netbook entered the market - typically with a larger screen, better keyboard, and twice the RAM and storage space of the competition - the Linux netbook was drop-kicked into the dumpsters behind your local WalMart.

    For the better part of decade in the U.S., WalMart was the lone mass-market retailer to champion OEM Linux. It really, really tried to make a go of it.

    ____

    *-monkey-boy." It's trash talk like this that makes me reluctant to reccomend Slashdot to anyone over the age of consent.

    That and irritants like the Borg icon and the stained glass window.

    Star Trek: TNG ended its run in 1994.

    1. Re:We Listened! And We Won! by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Informative

      > When the Atom netbook entered the market - typically with a larger screen, better keyboard,
      > and twice the RAM and storage space of the competition - the Linux netbook was drop-kicked
      > into the dumpsters behind your local WalMart.

      Yes... much beefier hardware. It bears little resemblance to the original EEE 900 really.

      It bears repeating that Dell still sells a lot of Linux netbooks. They actually load
      Linux on the newer hardware. They didn't just abandon Linux outright as if their use
      of it was all some sort of game played to manipulate Microsoft.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:We Listened! And We Won! by agnosticnixie · · Score: 2, Informative

      When the Atom Netbook came out, Asus' Linux netbooks were still better specced for the same price, and it would be a few months before Acer and Dell would cut options off Linux books, HP still has the fully powered linux option outside the American continent (which is admittedly better than the HP VIA netbook did) and only MSI had fudded because they were too moronic to do as a corporation what a few million users easily had done on their own.

  26. Re:Whoever proposed a bigger memory footprint than by Ash-Fox · · Score: 2, Informative

    windows 7 is infinitly more stable that xp ever was.

    Windows 7 RTM has done a BSOD on me 11 times acording to eventvwr.msc.

    My XP system has yet to BSOD.

    My XP system does not randomly have issues with software I run.

    not to mention that 7 runs faster and does everything just plain better that windows XP.

    Like displaying animated gifs in the image preview program? Oh wait...

    Like running 16bit applications? Oh wait...

    Like running DOS applications? Oh wait...

    Looks like you weren't telling the truth. Next time you'll want to backup those statements with something.

    --
    Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  27. Re:Another Slashervertisment for Bill's Winders by dwiget001 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, it's just Microsoft Technology Evangelist (TM) dollars at work. /shrug

  28. Aero look for old Microsoft apps by hey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This was something I noticed when Vista came out...

    To make application I have written have the Vista Aero look I had to recompile. But I noticed that my old version of Microsoft Excel (2003) has the new look. So there must be some code in in Vista that handles Microsoft projects nicer. Which doesn't seem fair.

  29. Re:Yet another troll... by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There is plenty of trolling. And abuse of mod points.

    I happen to think you're right. I'm anti-Microsoft, but honesty makes me say that Win 7 is decent. So far, it works on all the hardware I've tried it on - as old as the original Athlon 1 Ghz machines. Of course, it's kinda slow on that machine, but it WORKS.

    Huge improvement over that Vista abortion. Yeah, I know, lots of people thought Vista was good. Well, it never ran right on any of my hardware, including a 2.4 Ghz dual core Opteron with 8 gig of memory. Phhht.

    Whatever - people who abuse their mod points like this are total asses, with no life. Screw 'em. Someone with a big stick needs to beat the Slashdot staff til they add new mods. Simple "Agree" and "Disagree" buttons, like has often been suggested should solve the problem. For that matter, those two buttons could be seperate from the rest of the mods - everyone has them all the time.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  30. Amen! by tacokill · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am astounded at how bad file explorer is in Vista. That single program is probably the reason I have not "upgraded" yet. I use file explorer all the time so I am especially sensitive to this change.

    I will never understand how file explorer gets WORSE as you go higher in releases. How is that possible?!?! Is there somekind of grand MSFT strategy to wean people from file explorer entirely? I just don't understand a computer operating system that does not allow easy navigation of its file and folder structure.

    Note, I am not saying everyone is like me. Rather, I am saying there are enough "me's" out there that this could not have gone unnoticed at MSFT.

  31. Re:Listened my ass: Junction Points by flink · · Score: 2, Informative

    This might be be moot now, but under XP, Explorer's address bar understood environment variables. I would always just put %APPDATA% in there and hit enter. You might want to give that a shot.

  32. Windows 7 and the Demo Effect by Bent+Spoke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I find these glowing reviews of Windows 7 to be, on the whole, quite humorous. After all, this is a continuation of the decades old MS tradition of tailoring software to maximize the demo impact. Specifically, a users first 5-15 minutes is the most important. First impressions and all that rot.

    Eye candy certainly plays a part in this, but it's more the subtle hint that the software can do "a lot more than your seeing" that's important. After all, when it comes to software marketing, implied functionality is far more important than actual functionality.

    But at the end of the day, what are we really looking at. It looks nicer! For most users, that's about it.

    Not to detract from their success. This is a serious psychological coup to pull off.