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.

Comments

Vodka

[sopssa]

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.

Re:Vodka

[cjfs]

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.

Re:Vodka

[Anonymous Coward]

I am definitely going to update to windows 7.

Fixed it for ya.

Re:Vodka

[Torodung]

If you took an average customer and stuck windows vista and windows 7 in front of them they'd probably not notice the difference.

Are you the guy behind the "Mojave" campaign? ;^)

Re:Vodka

[HermMunster]

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.

Re:Vodka

[murdocj]

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."

Re:Vodka

[commodore64_love]

>>>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...

Re:Vodka

[Josh04]

I believe he's referring to how the "Apply" button will be off the bottom of the screen.

Re:Vodka

[Razalhague]

You took the latter half, I'll take the first half:

I agree with you. I have had vista on my PC for a while and I like it except for annoying security features.

Re:Vodka

[sopssa]

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?

Re:Vodka

[Azureflare]

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...

Re:Vodka

[bwcbwc]

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.

Re:Vodka

[dagamer34]

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!

Re:Vodka

[frovingslosh]

Windows 7 is basically a service pack for Vista rolled into something with a different name. The purpose of the name change is multi-faceted. It lets Microsoft distance itself from the stink of the Vista name (the OS that even Microsoft executives said was awful), and it completely screws any legitimate Vista owners, who never got a decent OS for their money (or their Microsoft tax if buying it bundled), and asks them to pay again before getting a fixed OS (assuming it is finally fixed). So once again Microsoft screws its customers, as they are the easiest group to screw.

Re:Vodka

[malkavian]

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 (I got the UK preorder, which came early due to the postal strikes here).
So, your end of story isn't quite the end of the story it seems (isn't that always the way with someone that says "end of story"? It usually means "I can't think of any evidence, or any proof, so don't want to talk anymore in case you prove me wrong").

Re:Vodka

[gtomorrow]

-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?

Re:Vodka

[drsmithy]

Uuum, NO. How can you have completely forgotten about the vast DRM horrors that got introduced in Vista? All the other things, like slowness, compatibility problems, partially a bad architecture, were results of this one thing, and by themselves not the relevant points. They existed, because every shit and his mother now had to be encrypted and locked down.

The FUD is strong in this one.

Re:Vodka

[westlake]

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.

Re:Vodka

[quarterbuck]

Except James bond apparently. His has both Gin and Vodka. And considering that he has been drinking this stuff from the 60's far before Americans even knew what a Vodka was, I think I'll respect his opinion. And I'll respect the opinion of anyone who fought in WW2, drinks Martinis and still can charm the pants off Hale Berry.

Re:Vodka

[StuartHankins]

It actually sounds like you've got electrical problems or something. My experience (in companies having hundreds of PC's) has shown that Windows desktops crash from time to time. It's not unexpected because it's a commodity OS. You reboot the servers every 30-60 days (usually there's a security patch which requires a reboot anyway).

We have one RHEL 3 machine that's gone offline twice in 5 years -- once when it did a controlled thermal shutdown (air conditioner failed) and another when a noob IT guy hot-plugged an external SCSI array (MSA 30) into the box (the drives are hot-pluggable but the enclosure is not). I've been running Red Hat in some form since 5.2 and the box that ran that only stopped once -- we turned it off when the suspended ceiling snapped and fell all around it. I had to vacuum it out.

Now I'm not saying that Debian is the most stable in the world -- it's an end-user, experimental OS that's very aggressive in trying out new features, similar to Fedora and I haven't used Debian in ages -- but the last time I had a bunch of machines failing, we found out it was arcing in the electrical panel. It took 3 electricians to find it and we were wondering why UPS's, fans, and machines kept dying.

I have 3 Fedora 8, 2 RHEL 5.4, and 3 RHEL 3 servers and they're really very boring to maintain. I got some excitement earlier this week when a power outage caused a (different) RHEL3 machine using software RAID to fail 2 arrays (1 drive with 4 partitions in different arrays had 2 of its partitions get out of sync due to the power loss and got automatically kicked from 2 of the arrays). I just added the partitions back to the arrays manually, it's a single command. The server and arrays were online the whole time so nobody noticed / cared.

Re:Vodka

[Jurily]

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.

Re:Vodka

[the_womble]

By that logc, you should not blame Linux is a driver does not exist, or is not full featured, for some piece of hardware.

Re:Vodka

[Com2Kid]

Win7 has a fair number of new features, but let me ask you a question,

What is more important: Coding shiny new Gee Wiz features or making dramatic improvements to the underlying engineering of a system? Which would you rather support, mounds of eye candy or a thousand small improvements that make a system more responsive and more stable?

If you read the Engineering Windows 7 blog you can read out about dozens of changes that have gone into Windows 7 from the kernel on up. Some of them are directly noticable by end users, but a lot of other ones are not so immediately visible.

For example, I have a USB gaming headset. I plug it into the front USB port on my machine and I have good quality headphones + mic. In XP and Vista I had to exit out of whatever apps I was using and restart them to switch them over to the USB headset. Win7 can switch apps over between audio end points and inputs (basically sound cards) dynamically.

It is awesome, it is cool, but it sure isn't gee wiz shiny. Still though, it is something I appreciate, much more so then I likely would appreciate new eye candy.

What I am trying to say here is, just because Win7 doesn't have brand new seizure inducing GFX doesn't mean nothing has changed. It just means the changes are more subtle, and more focused on the overall under the covers quality of the OS.

Re:Vodka

[Dustie]

Didn't your mother teach you not to lie? That was NOT what he wrote:

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...

Re:Vodka

[numbski]

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.

Die Dvorak

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously allready, it's not funny anymore

Good and bad...

[SerpentMage]

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.

A martini...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:A martini...

[Quarters]

Dear Richard Stallman,

A Linux distro is made with Linux, GNU and other stuff.

A GNU/Linux distro is made with Linux, GNU, other stuff, and the rainbows and unicorns that live only in your head.

Don't post as anonymous coward next time.

Re:A martini...

[imsabbel]

This is the guy who complained about that "idle process stealing 97% of his cpu power".
Do you expect he knows what he is talking about?

Does anyone REALLY take Dvorak seriously?

[mattand08]

I've been listening to Dvorak on Twit for a few years now. Why does anyone listen to this guy? His whole shtick is to say everything sucks. I'm guessing LaPorte, Marketwatch, et. al. have him on for the "controversy", but more often than not he's just wasting everyone's time.

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.

Re:Does anyone REALLY take Dvorak seriously?

[internic]

TWIT is a podcast that features a sort of panel discussion with something like 4 panelists, of whom John Dvorak is one. So presumably the parent listens to hear what the other panelist have to say and this necessitates hearing Dvorak as well.

Obligatory Futurama response

[Dachannien]

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!

Re:Dvorak is right about Microsoft on this point

[maxume]

You have poor taste in strippers.

Re:Dvorak is the enemy of slashdot

[julesh]

Dvorak is an idiot, trying to get publicity for his stupid views

Yeah. What kind of moron makes a martini with vodka?!

So what?

[VinylPusher]

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.

Re:So what?

[cjfs]

Windows 7 will see me through the next 6 years quite happily.

Until 2015: The year of the Linux Desktop!

Windows 7 faster than what?

[Posting=!Working]

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."

Google "Farhad Manjoo" + Microsoft: Poodle

[curmudgeon99]

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.

Run the GUI - not the Computer

[SwedishChef]

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.

Windows 7 Will beThe Death Knell For Microsoft

[TechnoGrl]

A little background about me....
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 ... started in Acess and VB and moved in to NET and SQL.

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.

Re:I get that with Windows "OK" buttons

[shutdown -p now]

I get that with Windows "OK" buttons, so it's not just Linux.

On Windows, there's UI guidelines which require dialogs to fit on the screen fully in 640x480 (maybe it's 800x600 since Vista actually, I vaguely recall an update in that department). Windows software doesn't have to follow those guidelines - and a lot of it doesn't - but all system dialogs do, and vast majority of MS applications does as well (I'm sure there's some odd exception, though I haven't seen one).