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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.
Microsoft Vodka? When do they learn to use Russian Standard Vodka (worth checking out btw, some style for the Saturday night).
But for that matter, haven't it been established for long already that Win7 is basically Vista with the quirks removed and improved features. Vista was more like a transition, while actually still being a good OS.
Seriously allready, it's not funny anymore
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.
I have installed it on three machines:
The good is that desktops work rather well.
The bad is that notebooks are rather problematic. I have an HP tablet that when the screen is flipped causes the machine to stop dead in its tracks.
The other problem I had was that upgrading an XP to Windows 7 machine worked ONCE I completely removed all of the partitions. Windows 7 needs a system partition that is blocked by most OEM's backup and restore partition. It frustrated me for five hours, and the messages from Windows 7 were crap.
Overall, Windows 7 is acceptable. Definitely needed when using Vista, but Windows 7 no work of wonder...
Want work of wonder... Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Now that has me impressed. I run Windows machines, but on my netbook Ubuntu Netbook Remix runs perfectly and the UI is brilliant. Much better than the Windows 7 stuff.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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 ?
If Windows 7 is any good or not is really a moot point. Every new, additional release of windows, and every new API they introduce dilutes the Windows XP/IE monoculture that was stopping the acceptance of alternative OSes. Microsoft is unlikely to ever regain the position of dominance they had on 2000-01, so it's only a matter of time.
..don't panic
Dear John Dvorak,
A martini is made with gin and vermouth.
A vodka martini is made with vodka.
Stick to bad car analogies next time.
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.
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.
Small Glurmo: But, your Highness, she's a commoner. Her Slurm will taste foul.
Slurm Queen: Yes, which is why we'll market it as New Slurm. Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic and make billions!
I don't have any time for Dvorak (or other "pundits") but he is right about Microsoft's publicity and media work being haplessly out of touch. I'm a PC... The Wow Starts Now... Gates and Seinfeld... Windows 7 Party... and, of course, any time CEO Steve Ballboy speaks ("Squirt me that... IBM should do hardware...") or is photographed without a bag over his head.
I don't foresee buying Windows 7. Windows XP works just fine. I see no compelling reason to attend any Windows 7 "Support Our Corporation" Party unless Pamela Anderson has accepted to do a striptease.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
...and came to the conclusion that I was dealing with a couple of cranks in Mssrs. Manjoo and Dvorak (not that the latter comes as any surprise).
Manjoo's piece attempted to 'prove' that Windows 7 was a better operating system based on one feature (Taskbar/Aero Views vs. Exposé) and provided a rather subjective critiqué even for that. I'd have liked to have learned more from him about why Windows 7 supposedly beats out Snow Leopard. Nonetheless, his first paragraph (with regards to crapware and the like) tells me what I've always known about the Windows experience: The more things change, the more they unfortunately remain the same.
As for Dvorak's piece, "cheap Microsoft vodka" paints a funny picture, but droning on about how he never gets any more press kits from Microsoft (is it really any wonder, knowing Dvorak?) doesn't tell me anything about Windows 7.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
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?
Dvorak is an idiot, trying to get publicity for his stupid views
Yeah. What kind of moron makes a martini with vodka?!
If I pretend Vista never happened and I'm going straight from XP to 7, 7 is good.
I could do everything I need to do using just XP, but it wouldn't get done quite as rapidly or elegantly. The whole side-by-side window thing wins a bunch of gratitude from me to Microsoft. Windows key + left/right arrow = definite winner. Anything that reduces my interation with my mouse is a good thing. Works great with side-by-side monitors too :)
Windows 7 improves things *just* enough for me to have little moments of 'ooh, that's nice', which is something missing from XP and Vista.
USB device recognition: Fast. Very fast. ;)
Multi-monitor support: Slick. Unobtrusive. A no-brainer.
UI interactions: Rapid. Responsive. Highly configurable. -- I tend to turn off all the animations / slide effects. Me click close gadget = window gone instantly. Thus my productivity goes up a small percentage.
Hardware support: Inconspicuous. Works just like magic. -- My Nokia N97 (with or without installation of Nokia's Ovi application suite) works exactly as I need it to when I hook it up.
Firewall: I will never need a 3rd-party firewall. Windows 7's firewall (once you get at its interface) is nothing short of perfect.
Networking: Again, it just works. No need to faff about with it. Even recognised my nForce 4 based motherboard's Nvidia ethernet port. Not just recognised, but supports TCP offloading. Not that I needed to know this, but I went poking around
OK, I had to install graphics drivers to get any reasonable performance, but if I hadn't, I could still use my 1920x1200 native resolution and not really suffer *too* great a performance loss in office apps.
Windows 7 will see me through the next 6 years quite happily.
I've been using Windows 7 for a couple of months now, since it was RTW, after using Vista for a couple of years.
There is absolutely no comparison to Vista in terms of speed and stability, as it it far better. I also love some of the new features they added. Windows 7 is to Windows Vista what Windows XP was to Windows ME.
By the way, Apple's ads have been going downhill since they started. They started out nice and truthful, highlighting Microsoft's failures and Apple's successes nicely, but now they've turned into mostly FUD and cheap-shots.
"Programming is life, the rest is mere details"
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.
Why? Simple - it gets everyone, even the people who don't know any better, OFF of IE 6 and 7. IE 8 is no great technical achievement, but it sure makes my life easier as a web developer. When the hype is whipped up like it is for Win 7, then people are spurred to upgrade hardware, etc. It's a good deal.
If you have people in your life who won't change to a Mac or Ubuntu, try getting them to upgrade to Windows 7, PLEASE. Legally or illegally. All of us on Slashdot should know how to get a cracked/activated copy of Win 7 that doesn't call the mothership by now. If that's what it takes to get people off of IE 6, DO IT. The lesser of two evils here is moving people to Win 7/IE 8 rather than letting them stagnate the Web by continuing to use IE 6.
I get that with Windows "OK" buttons, so it's not just Linux.
PS you can drag windows around offscreen to get them back if you hold down (IIRC) the ALT key and drag the window.
Vista was more like a transition, while actually still being a good OS.
That is revisionist history in the extreme.
Despite all who liked Vista - and there were many - no, it was not a good operating system if you use simple consumer metrics: a) it frustrated people, b) it caused many working Windows systems to no longer work, c) it created confusion without end.
You can even use this simple product metric - it was so bad that the company that made it decided to call the fixed version by a completely different name.
At the risk of being modded down as a basher - and I'm not - I say this because it's REALITY.
You might want to disagree with me as a happy Vista user - but that makes my point. You might WANT for reality to have been that Vista was great and poor, poor Microsoft was unfairly slagged and misunderstood - but that is not Vista's history.
Do you even remember Longhorn? How that failed to materialize? How Vista was supposed to be all of the Longhorn goodness that was supposed to be ready for prime-time release? You do know that Vista wasn't just some follow-on to XP that didn't get a fair shake, yes? And if it was supposed to be the transition to anything, it would have been to the lauded claims of Longhorn?
Vista failed. Microsoft fixed it (we hope) - but it was such a failure, they had to rename it.
That was not the fault of Consumer Misunderstanding or poor Microsoft being bashed by the Spiteful Media or People Like Me.
It failed because too us could get it to work - and fewer still were those that got it working that didn't still prefer XP.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
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.
OK, I have no problem with anyone saying Windows 7 is faster than XP. I've never actually seen Windows 7. But I have noticed this gem.
My laptop was disabled due to the cooling fans being completely blocked and my inability to find the 3 hidden screws to finally open the case. So I hooked up my old desktop, a Celeron 300MHz running Windows 95. When I finally got the laptop running, I could not believe how much slower a Pentum 4M 3.2 GHz with 4 times as much memory was at basic file manipulation. I'm not talking about running any programs, but just open folder move/copy/delete files. I have all visual effect turned off in XP, no thumbnail views, all explorer toolbars and options off, and all power options to Never turn off. Windows 95, double click on a folder and you see the contents before you can get your finger off the button. Same with moving, copying and deleting files, click and done. Everything responds instantly. Windows XP, click and wait. Tried shutting off everything, no wireless, no antivirus or anti spyware, nothing at all running at startup on a clean install, and still nothing responds as quickly.
Can anyone tell me why a computer that is 10 times faster with 4 times the memory is so much slower at responding to simple inputs? There's a perceptible lag when just single clicking a desktop icon to highlight it.
I liked computers so much better when the most important thing was reacting to what I was telling it to do.
There needs to be a Stop button, as in "stop doing everything that you're doing so you can respond to what I'm telling you to do right now."
This sentence no verb.
I suggest that you Google "Farhad Manjoo" + Microsoft. You will find clear evidence that he is a Microsoft Poodle. You can find dozens of places where he is obviously shilling for Microsoft. Don't trust a damn thing this "Farhad Manjoo" jackass says.
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!
That's the shallowest legitimate attempt to make sense of Microsoft marketing I've come across in years.
I'm reminded of the episode where Schlomo Teittleman accuses Tony Soprano of being a living golem. Teittleman creates the golem through a deal with Tony to deprive his ex son-in-law of his divorce settlement. Tell me, who created this "magic sticker" program in the first place?
From Microsoft e-mails reveal Intel pressure over Vista
Apparently, not all of the back-pressure came from the down trodden, and there was a clear second option: delay Vista-capable until Intel could ship the 945 in volume. Pretty risky, counting on Intel to meet volume targets.
Their second golem-making move was to set Vista up as a mandatory upgrade, so you got Vista whether you were happy enough with XP or not and then quoting Vista adoption figures as if it was a blockbuster out of the gate, fooling no one of any importance.
Finally--since I don't wish to continue all day--how could any sane company manage to screw up its QA relationship with nVidia while releasing an OS where the promoted benefit to end user is a more advanced graphical user interface?
Microsoft decided to push Vista into the marketplace where the customers didn't want it, and their partners weren't yet ready to fully support it. Major partners like Intel and nVidia.
It should have been handled more like the Windows 2000 roll-out. Let the losers continue to run Windows 98 if they're happy enough with it, force the issue with Windows XP when there's not much left to complain about. Imagine how the Windows 2000 roll-out would have gone if they'd discontinued selling Windows 98 pre-installed, without providing a stable nVidia driver, while Intel was still pushing volume on chipsets with no AGP support.
Even Microsoft's internal communication sounded a lot like a NASA engineer's memo from the launch pad declaring "I've got a bad feeling about this".
Windows 7 is not what Vista should have been, but rather when Vista should have been. A less arrogant refresh in between would have served the day. Was the entire MS marketing department too clueless to type Itanium, RDRAM, Caminogate, or Prescott into the Google search bar? A fine education in Golem 101 was there for the taking.
A little background about me.... ... started in Acess and VB and moved in to NET and SQL.
I've been using Windows since Windows 386 - I even played with Windows 286 for 10 minutes. I really started using Windows all the time with 3.0 . OK... so I've been using it since the mid to late 80's . I'm a microsoft developer by trade
Vista , and now Windows 7, pushed me over to purchase a Macbok Pro. I've always admired the UI on those machines but Windows have been good enough and heaven knows it made me enough money.
So I try Vista 2 years ago. SLOW... excruciatingly bad user interface - Am I sure? Yes. Am I sure that I'm sure...? {sigh} I tried it 3 different times - couldn't take it more than a couple weeks. Transferring several gigs of info through the Explorer interface was a minimum of 5 times slower than in XP. Am I sure? Yes {sigh}
So I stick with XP and maintain Vista o a VM for when I have to test with it which is NEVER because NONE of my corporate clients are using it.
So I try Windows 7 about 2 months ago. Looks Pretty ! And it's not asking me if I'm sure it looks pretty every 2 minutes. It looks pretty right up till the time I go into Control Panel. Now it's not looking as nice. WTF? It's Control Panelzilla! Ahhhhh! And look how many new ways I have of sharing things. But you know what? I just want to share a fracking folder. I have a home group now too. I also have more things in my root drive than I ever wanted to see. Ever. Including lots of symbolic links. Which don't seem to be able to be handling correctly in Explorer. You haven't liven until you've seen a file path like "User Data/User/Data/User/ Data/ User data.... ad infinitum . Frack that. Oh ... and it's still slow. And it crashed on mee 5 times the first week.
So I get a MAc book Pro. A little over 900 bucks. It's light ... it's engineered well and the UI makes me wanna cry tears of joy. And it is faster on 2 gigs of memory and a 2.1 processor than my idiot HP 9700 was with Vista on 4 gigs and a 2.6 processor. MUCH faster. And I can run XP on it beautifully though I never do.
So I'm no longer a NET programmer. The same companies who NEVER adopted Vista (ummm... like all of them?) will NEVER adopt Win 7 - for the very same reasons. I think they will flock to something else. Linux? Maybe Macc? Maybe. Personally , I think they're screwed. Me? I'm learning Objective C and LAMP technologies and am going to reinvent myself programaticaly speaking. I'm through with MS. It's been a nice long ride bit it's over.
I've been around a while. I've seen IBM go from the major supplier of PCs and OS... to a non-player. Why? Because they thought they were gods and forgot they were just a corporation. They forgot they couldn't dictate what their clients wanted forever.
Think the paradigm can't shift?
Think again.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Interesting. I can't even USE Firefox on a computer with less than 8Gig of RAM. How do you live?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
You realize that you can use / in path names anywhere in Windows, right? Command line tools understand it. All UI tools, including Explorer, understand it. In fact, all core OS APIs that deal with files understand it (which is why it's hard to find a Windows application that is broken in that regard).
About the only problem is that / is also used as a switch designator, so "foo /bar" is taken to mean the same as "foo -bar" on command line. But even then, any geek, Unix or not, would just use PowerShell, which doesn't have that annoyance, and so "ls /" works exactly as it should.
I'd like to see a bullet list of the features in Win7 versus Vista and XP.
"Features new to Windows 7".
The only reason I upgraded from Win2K to XP was for remote desktop functionality that I needed for work
One nice thing about 7 is that if you RD from 7 to 7/2008R2, you can have full accelerated Aero Glass experience (unlike Vista, which forced you into Basic), limited only by the capabilities of the client machine.
So to make your job easier, you want people to pirate Windows 7 just for the IE8 support? Really?
Wouldn't it be easier for them to just, I don't know, install IE8 instead of a whole new OS?
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.
I'm not going to get into the whole Linux/MacOS/Windows mess, but talk about the Dvorak article. Manjoo at least looks at the OS and gives his opinions on it. Dvorak talks about the marketing that M$ does and does not once actually review the OS. He doesn't say one thing good or bad based on the OS itself. He bases his entire opinion on the marketing. That isn't journalism in any manner whatsoever. It is purely a crack pot writing what he thinks things are based purely on his opinion with no facts.
I'm a Mac user by choice that is currently typing this from Kubuntu 9.04 with Windows 7 executing in a background. I was impressed with Windows 7 until I tried to play with networking. It wasn't working initially (turned out to be a conflict with VirtualBox's default 10.0.2.x NAT range) but I needed to see how Windows was configured (DHCP, etc.). So I go to Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> View Network Status and Tasks -> Change Adapter Settings. Then I left-click on "Local Connection". Now, to get the IP and gateway info, I have to click "View Status of Connection". To view whether it's set up for DHCP check the DNS servers, I have to click "Change Settings of this Connection", right-click on "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP)" and click "Properties".
By contrast, here is what I do in Mac OS X: Click the apple menu, click System Preferences. Click Network. There I'm presented with a list of all of my adapters. I click on one and I see everything I need.
In Kubuntu, I click the knetwork-manager applet and click "Manage Connections"
Now, which of the three is the most usable? Keep in mind that as I was troubleshooting the networking issue I had with my VM, I constantly had to repeat those steps. What is that, like 10 clicks? Look at the menu names ... "View Network Status and Tasks", "Change Adapter Settings" ... is this supposed to be intuitive?
Another thing, is that Windows pops up every time I jump on a network and asks me if it's a home network, work network, or public network, and initializes stuff for me (including home groups, which I don't want). Now, this is fantastic for end users, and a great feature. But as a power user running 3 levels of NAT at home (local net, work VPN, and NAT VMs) it is infuriating to have the details hidden from me and not know how to get to them.
I would definitely recommend Windows 7 to anyone who wants to plug something in and have it just work and be done with it (which is I think the point). But the configuration is hellish, so if you like to tinker, think twice.