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A Tale of Two Windows 7s
theodp writes "It was the best of operating systems, it was the worst of operating systems. When it comes to the merits of Windows 7, it looks like Slate's Farhad Manjoo and PC Magazine's John Dvorak are going to have to agree to disagree. Manjoo gives Windows 7 a big thumbs-up (a sincere one, unlike Linus!), calling it a 'crowning achievement,' while Dvorak is less than impressed, saying, 'Win 7 is really just a Vista martini. The operating system may have two olives instead of one this time out, but it's still made with the same cheap Microsoft vodka.' So, for those of you who've had a chance to check things out, are things really different this time?"
Multiple readers have also pointed out that there have been problems with the download and installation of Windows 7 upgrades obtained through the student discount offer, which Microsoft has confirmed.
John Dvorak is...
Old, real old.
Out of touch.
An old fogey.
Stupid.
Really stupid.
A troll.
Illogical.
Ignorant of what he writes and says.
Now feel free to actually comment about the topic at hand: Windows 7, worth it or not?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
But for that matter, haven't it been established for long already that Win7 is basically Vista
Vista was somewhat unfairly blasted, Windows 7 is being somewhat unfairly hyped. The differences really are trivial, the Vista launch was just poorly managed. If you took an average customer and stuck windows vista and windows 7 in front of them they'd probably not notice the difference.
From the article:
The desktop OS is besieged from all sides: More and more of our applications now run on the Web, and the idea of running huge, complex, and expensive personal systems will, in time, seem strange.
Does this remark seem strange to anyone else ? I, honestly, am not seeing this trend at all, but I've seen it talked about. What's the reality here ?
Overall, Windows 7 is acceptable
Yay! We have XP back. Only took 8 years!
Well it looks like Microsoft has turned the Vista blunder into a Windows 7 success, money making opportunity... great move on their part. They did this by basically just waiting for drivers to mature, waiting for the hardware to catch up, and focusing on creating some fancy ads like these: Windows 7 Ad Campaign Kicks Off, Focuses on Features
I tend to agree with Dvorak... Windows 7 is more like Vista SP3...plus some fancy interface updates but basically the same deep down.
Dvorak is saying that there's really not a lot new. He's saying that Microsoft didn't bring into the fold those things they promised in Vista prior to the launch (all the interesting technologies they cut out). He's saying that Windows 7 is really just Vista with a few new eye-candy like things. Yes, it is a bit less resource hungry but even with all that the amount of performance gain is only about 5% over that of Vista, which goes unnoticed by the average user.
The feature sets that they added are not that significant and some of them aren't even based on Vista, instead they are based on add-ins such as WMP.
Technically, Dvorak is correct. It's just another run on the laundry where some of the more significant stains happened to come out.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
While Windows 7 is late, both rival desktop systems have yet to really gain enough traction. Linux is still hampered by -perceived- usability problems and the fact that WINE isn't 100% yet. If people were willing to re-learn an OS and developers would re-write all their applications, I have little doubt Linux would have majority marketshare. But people don't want to learn something new and so developers write for the masses with Windows and WINE isn't perfect at running Windows apps so while Linux is improving at a breakneck pace, its just not enough to overtake Windows. OS X is still hampered by price. When I can go out and get a $350 laptop that runs even Vista decently, and the cheapest Macbook is $999, something is wrong. A lot of people want to go to OS X but yet the price premium is so expensive for casual users (yes, yes, we've all heard that if you add up all the components things just about average out) but to pay $600 for their cheapest desktop that I could buy for $400 retail or build/upgrade for less? Thats just a bit ridiculous, especially for a machine that you can't upgrade easily.
If Linux could gain Windows binary compatibility, it could overtake Windows. If Apple would drop its price on Macs to more reasonable levels it could overtake Windows. But since neither have managed to do that, Windows still survives despite a terrible OS (Vista) and the new usable OS being almost too late (in 2009 not 2007)
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I know this stuff has been beaten to death, but here's a guy who:
A) thought the mouse was a waste of time
B) thought the iPhone would fail
C) proclaimed there was no way Google would ever buy YouTube
among other things. In a strange sort of way, I almost admire him. He's managed to make a career of just complaining about stuff with not much to back it up.
The only thing I sort of remember is Dvorak claiming he had the scoop on Apple switching to Intel, but IIRC the rocket scientists at MacOS Rumors made the same claim. The implication here is that that prediction may not have been the most difficult to devine (i.e., saying that in the future, there will be a cure for cancer or some other disease.)
Quite frankly, if Dvorak is shitting all over Win7, my first reaction is that it's probably going to do well. In some ways, Dvorak is to tech as Jim Cramer is to stocks: Do the opposite of what they say and you'll be fine.
Both reviews are based of the reviewers perception of what Microsoft needed to get right, and both are crap. Nobodys opinion matters as much as mine, cause I actually have to *buy* my copy of ... whatever.
My beef with the Microsoft fanboy's review is not that he got all mushy on 7, which I will admit is not a bad OS in my experience, but his insistance that its all pointless anyway, cause the 'cloud' is coming....
I know the mainstream media has to jump on the 'next new thing' bandwagon, but this particular bit of hype is baffling for a couple of reasons....
The entire concept of 'cloud computing' is moronic. Lets throw out 30 years of computer science innovation, turn our boxes into the computing equivalent of a toaster so we can use the internets, office software, Quake, and photoshop by subscribing to a never ending service that we cant actually even license...much less 'own'.
What could possibly go wrong? Once we all have thin clients on our desks hooked into the cloud, we can get rid of all the desktop programmers and put all the software innovation concentration on those super awesome AJAX developers out there, who can 'almost' pull off web apps that have the features of desktop apps we stopped using in 1998. Hype is stupid, the cloud is marketing fog.
You need a new profession if you can't make Vista stable.
Windows hasn't crashe-prone since pre-XP, end of story.
Dvorak complains in his rank that "Somewhere along the line, Microsoft apparently decided that it only wants to deal with those amenable suckers who will give it a pass on everything". This has been the apple strategy for years, any new hack who doesn't write glowing reviews (or even has the slightest criticism) is cut off from Apple. The hacks, like Mossberg, who praise every apple-touched product are showered with special treatment--including preview samples and preferred access.
When Apple does this it's called brilliant marketing (you better call it that if you're a hack who wants your calls returned), when Microsoft does it, it's unfair competition.
Dvorak...why should MS give you special access?
Mostly it sounded like Dvorak was annoyed that he wasn't being treated like the big cheese that he thinks he is:
"I haven't received a single personal note from a Microsoft PR person for roughly four years."
>>>Linux is still hampered by -perceived- usability problems
That's because it's written for programming geeks, not your average idiot. Heck even an engineer, like me, has a difficult time using Linux. (Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done.)
Windows and MacOS are idiot-friendly. Even the ancient AmigaOS and C=64 GEOS are idiot-friendly. That's what Linux needs to become if it wants to be a universal replacement desktop, instead of just an isolated tool for technicians.
Uh oh. Here come the mods...
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dvorak has been known to say things just for the publicity, so take him with a grain of salt. If I remember correctly he has even admitted to this. How much publicity is he getting by going against popular opinion this time? Much of that article is him complaining he was left out of the loop. Awwwwwww, I feel so bad for him, someone needs a hug.
Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done
While this begs the question of why you changed it in to that in the first place, I just did it, so yes you can.
As for idiot friendly, I just had to fix a Vista-AVG combined bug that kept my brother from being able to download ANYTHING. AVG was nixing everything (without even functioning as an anti-virus). Had to reboot to safe mode to remove it to fix the problem. Could never happen in Linux (because of sane software design principles).
I agree with you. I have had vista on my PC for a while and I like it except for annoying security features.
Hardly a good metaphor at all since everyone knows martinis are made with gin, not vodka.
Everyone does know that, right?
Beware of the Leopard.
Exactly. And theres lots of random issues like that. Once I installed Ubuntu some text we're randomly either really, really small and some we're huge. All the font sizes we're still normal and it was a fresh install. While I, who run linux servers daily, even couldn't solve the issue, how will a normal user do it?
>>>it is not usability problem
Yes it is. It's a lack of bug-checking by the Linux crew. Ubuntu's Display Preferences window does not fit on a 640x480 screen, which makes it impossible to access the "OK" button because it's off the bottom of the screen. So you'll be stuck in 640x480 mode forever.
Or until you can get some geek to reveal the secret ALT-CNTL-X-NUM-+ whatever key combo. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0 - QUOTE: "Linux works for you, because with youses guys computers, YOU work for the computers, and, and, and....."
Seems to me if the average user gets stuck in 640x480, and can't out, it's the computer that has the control not the user. Not consumer-friendly.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So you're blaming Vista as a OS when the problem clearly was other program, AVG?
And yes, it would happen in Linux too. Linux antiviruses would go as deeply in the OS as in Windows too, and same kind of bugs would appear (as they have intercept downloads).
Windows and MacOS are idiot-friendly. Even the ancient AmigaOS and C=64 GEOS are idiot-friendly. That's what Linux needs to become if it wants to be a universal replacement desktop, instead of just an isolated tool for technicians.
The day that happens, a new operating system will be created so that programming geeks can have a usable operating system...
The biggest difference is that Vista required a major hardware upgrade to run properly. Then when MS realized that there weren't enough "Vista capable" machines in existence to sell enough copies, they tried to shoehorn it into some platforms where it really couldn't perform. So Vista's failure was mostly the fault of the marketing people overriding the engineered design. Although the performance tuning of things like memory caching and the search service were also big problems.
Windows 7 has a much better chance of success because hardware sold over the past couple of years will have no problem running it. In fact, even some machines that couldn't run Vista should be able to run Win 7. However, if you are already running Vista on a dual-core machine with a couple gigs of memory, there's no real reason to upgrade unless you find the UI changes compelling.
Ironically, apart from the one-liner about the "cheap Microsoft vodka", Dvorak has absolutely nothing to say about the operating system itself. He spends the whole column railing about the incompetence of the MS marketing department and whinging that he is no longer treated like a press god. Looks like he's finally catching on that the industry has passed him by.
We are the 198 proof..
What doesn't make sense is why would happy people with a working computer go to a computer repair shop? Got you there, didn't I!
Seriously -- does anybody still listen to Dvorak's douche-baggery these days?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Wouldn't a much simpler - and more honest - solution to the piracy you're advocating be to simply get people to switch to Opera or Firefox?
And let's be clear - you claim to be a web developer. So the pages you develop have nothing to do with anyone's products or ideas? You couldn't simply sense IE 6, state that it's not fully supported on your pages, and put in friendly links to Opera, Firefox, Safari, Chrome or the Microsoft Win7 homepages?
No - you come here and advocate piracy.
How about we track down every page you've developed, copy the source for public consumption, and tell the people that you work for that you don't believe that people who work for a living putting out software products should get paid for their efforts if it makes your life harder.
Sheesh!
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
-nod- I suspect most people who've been using Linux for a while are spoiled by alt-window-dragging, which renders that problem moot
I'm sorry but on what planet is knowing a "secret handshake" to see a UI element you should never have to search for to begin with being spoiled?
In the past 2 weeks. I had my Ubuntu Box crash on me twice, actually a 3 weeks ago it was a lot more because I was looking at the screen savers. My Debian server crashed running only one Virtual Box VM, My Mac Crashed and needed to be restored from backups. Saying windows is more prone to crashing then other OS's is false. Prone to viruses is an other thing, but a clean un-virused WIndows actually is more stable then Both Linux and Macs in my opinion. However Windows vulnerability to Viruses makes it rather quickly from a stable system to a flaky slow OS the breaks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
>>>Its hold alt and drag. Its hardly a "secret key combo".
It's certainly not documented anywhere inside Ubuntu's Help Files. I looked. It wasn't there. I swore at being stuck in 640x480 and then reinstalled from CD
.
>>>you think the typical user is going to change screen resolutions?
Yes. (This is the problem with talking to geeks. They assume if a user has a problem, it's the USER who is the idiot. It couldn't *possibly* be a flaw in the precious code.) Why wouldn't a user change screen resolutions? It's one of the easier-to-access settings on a computer.
IMHO *all* functions on a computer should be controllable with a mouse and ONE single key "Enter". If an OS can enter a state where it can't be controlled with the mouse/enter combo, then the OS is not consumer-friendly. It needs to be updated.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"While this begs the question of why you changed it in to that in the first place"
No, it really doesn't. The fact that a user *can* change it is the only thing that matters. This is the issue with many (not all) devs in general. Say something they wrote isn't easy or is unintuitive and instead of fixing it they say "well nobody with a brain would do that" or "if they don't know how to figure it out then too bad for them". These are not valid comebacks.
I get that most devs are analytical and if there is at least one way to do something then it's "good enough". But UI's are subjective and as such just because there is a way to perform a given task in your software it does not mean that there isn't a better way to do the same thing for a larger number of people. When we say "the user experience sucks" we're not saying *you* as a dev suck. We're saying we simply want a better experience. This is something many designers learn early on (we create designs and get shot down on them all the time), but something many devs seem to never fully grasp.
Linux is not written for the programming geek. You are living 5+ years in the past when it comes to Linux. And, frankly it is foolish to attempt a demeaning of Linux based on your standard of measure since Windows was years ago far less user friendly than Linux is, and there were plenty of people using those unfriendly versions of Windows back then.
In the realm of Windows 5 years is nothing as Windows didn't change for a good 7 years. But 5 years to Linux is like a decade in the computing world.
I know old and young (and everyone in-between) that use Linux and don't have the problems that you allege.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
>>>Alt-drag a window then
And I was supposed to know to do that - How???
>>>similar as you did in Windows on 640x480
FALSE fucker. On Windows all you have to do it press Enter. Ditto Mac. Windows/Mac doesn't hide their commands in obscure locations.
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.
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The more I read, the more I realize the Linux motto is: "It's not a bug. It's not poor documentation. It's not unfriendly design. It's the user's fault. Every time. It's the idiot user, not Linux."
I obviously disagree. It's the programmers' fault, not the user.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Interesting.. I'm counting 2 BSODs, 6 complete lock ups and a few failures to activate disk drives waking up from sleep mode since Monday
If I saw this behavior I'd be thinking I'd had serious hardware or driver issues.
Oh good. Yet another iteration of a Microsoft product. They can't just add features or make the old ones better; they have to put them in new places. Take the "Run" command and put it somewhere new. Change the Control Panel. Screw up the Networking configuration screens beyond belief. Change for change's sake. They do this crap in all their products not just the OS; Outlook, Office, etc. It's to the point that customers don't want to upgrade because they don't want to have to re-learn everything.
People ask me how I can remember all the Unix/Linux command line instructions and I tell them that it's easy. They have not changed much in 25 years. Once you learn them, you've learned them.... all you need is to learn any new ones or any new switches to the old, reliable commands. Contrast this with every Microsoft product ever stole...er, innovated where you'll find new locations for old commands. We know what we need to do but we can't find the stupid command to click on to make it work.
MS has truly lost their way. The single greatest Apple commercial was the one where John Hodges decided to put all the money on PR and spend nothing to fix the product. It's so typical.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
You could also have tabbed through the buttons (just like on Windows) til you reached apply. It takes a bit of guesswork, but it's certainly a lot easier than reinstalling. More advanced users would be able to shift-tab, knowing the apply button is near the end (I correctly guessed this at two shift-tabs on my first attempt). Also I suspect many users would have guessed that Apply has a keyboard shortcut, and that the shortcut would be Alt-A. That is standard underliney shortcut behaviour like on Windows, what do they call them, accelerators or something? Anyway, no offence mate, but you really ought to have figured a solution out without having to reinstall the whole flipping OS.
I do agree with you to a point though, Windows does handle this situation a bit better. However, you can't just take a single pet peeve and use it to claim that one OS is better than the other. Do you think WIndows is entirely without similar usability screw-ups? Or Mac OS? As a long-time Linux user, Windows frequently leaves me fuming, simply because it insists on doing so many things in a way that seems brain-dead from a Linux user's perspective.
Maybe Linux isn't as beginner-friendly as Windows. Maybe not though. Comments such as yours do nothing to prove it either way.
So, your claim is not actually that "a Windows 7 machine at Staples is $300, and an equivalent machine from Apple is $1500", it's "Staples has a product I'd be interested in purchasing that comes with Windows 7 and costs $300, and Apple has a different product I'm not interested in purchasing that costs $1500". That's really a much weaker comparison.
Longhorn was the code name for Longhorn. When they couldn't deliver on their promises, they throttled back and delivered a subset that you know as Vista.
Removing significant features != Eventually becomes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
From that page: 'WinFS was billed as one of the pillars of the "Longhorn" wave of technologies, and would ship as part of the next version of Windows.'
Kinda matches my memory - and I do believe that there were other promised techs as well with Longhorn, also not delivered.
Longhorn didn't disappear, it was the code name for what eventually became Vista.
Wanting a thing to be true does not make it true.
You're spouting more revisionist history as well.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
He got you to read his article, didn't he? I think he decided to make a bad review of 7 just because, in a sea of decent reviews, his would stand out and get more pageviews.
I refuse to read Dvorak, because I really don't think he has anything useful to add.
The words above should be framed in gold. Ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes is pretty rare.
Also, regarding this specific case, a system friendly to a random consumer, should take care to provide visual clues for escaping from such situations.
Assumption that a random new user is to know standards of a system they are hardly familiar with, is flawed.
Regards,
Ruemere
I think Windows 7 is a Microsoft marketing and PR brilliance myself. They basically just slapped a lucky #7 on Vista, added just enough new features that they could say it wasn't Vista with a straight face and apparently succeeded in transforming from complete failure to at least a reasonable, if not raging success. Its a tribute to the power of marketing to make lemonade out of lemons. It will probably open an opportunity for them to end of life XP, which they desperately want to do, and force everyone to upgrade to Vista... err ... Windows 7, which will massively boost their profitability and stock price.
They are also skillfully playing the psychology of all the Windows fanboys who know deep down in their heart that they don't really like Vista, and Windows 7 is really just a slightly updated Vista, but are desperate to not be embarrassed about Windows anymore, so you KNOW they are gonna say its the greatest thing ever even if it really isn't. Microsoft marketing had a huge tail wind on Windows 7 since all the pro Windows bloggers, press and early adopters were going to sing praises of it even if Microsoft did just put a different title on a Vista box, which is practically what they did. If they'd put Vista 2.0 on the same box that is now Windows 7 it would have gone down in flames.
@de_machina
Specs or gtfo
Looks like he's finally catching on that the industry has passed him by
Three cheers for progress.
You missed the point. It's not the learning curve gp was complaining about.
It's:
- speed
- stability
- requirements
- actual substantial improvements over XP.
In gp's experience both Vista and 7 failed on all 4 fronts. Slow, crashy, expensive and not better in any way.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
except for annoying UAC messages
So I take it you don't like knowing when you or any software steps over the user/administrator boundary?
Whenever I get one of those I didn't anticipate, it's time to hunt for malware.
I dunno, after reading Dvorak's screed, I'm guessing that he is just sad that if are no junkets where "journalists" like him are invited to Vegas, receive their talking points, and then go gamble and drink afterward. No more Comdex. No more twenty-foot high convention center displays. No more huge ad-revenue funded parties where vendors "give back" to the publications that so shameless promoted them.
Good riddance.
By that logc, you should not blame Linux is a driver does not exist, or is not full featured, for some piece of hardware.
It isn't really effective security if it bugs the user so much that he'll reflexively click on permit.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
IDLE-TIME PROCESS. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right.
Nice going mods! Veeery informative...
Keep in mind that Windows 7 *is not* Windows 7.
If you're running what claims to be Windows 7, open a command prompt and run `winver`.
It is Windows 6.1. In other words, a dot release of Vista. The actual Windows 7 that was talked about after Vista was released was the complete re-write you're referring to, however after Vista bombed, they re-skinned Vista and touted it as Windows 7. Make no mistake, you all bought the same thing as the mac users going from 10.5 to 10.6. It's not a whole new OS - it's the same old OS shipping with a new skin, and few new minor updates. Nothing more, nothing less. The whole thing is a ploy to finally get people to move off of XP. If it succeeds, it's the ultimate example of sheeple-ship.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Being able to drag any window without finding the title bar is being spoiled.
In this case it also helps get around minor UI issues at low resolutions.
Holding alt and dragging with your mouse is no more a secret handshake in Linux than Win+E or Win+R is in Windows. You may not know them personally, but they're well documented and almost any geek will show them to you.
PS Win+R opens the Run dialog and Win+E opens an explorer window.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)