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Microsoft Announces Windows 7 SP1
CWmike writes "Microsoft has announced service packs for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but declined to set a release date or a schedule for getting a beta in users' hands. A company spokesman said Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will primarily contain 'minor updates,' including patches and hotfixes that will have been delivered earlier via the Windows Update service, rather than new features. One of the latter: an updated Remote Desktop client designed to work with RemoteFX, the new remote-access platform set to debut in SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be upgraded to SP1, Microsoft said, presumably at the same time as Windows 7 since the two operating systems share a single code base. Besides RemoteFX — which Microsoft explained Wednesday in an entry on the Windows virtualization team's blog — Server 2008 R2 will also include a feature dubbed 'Dynamic Memory,' which lets IT staff adjust guest virtual machines' memory on the fly. Microsoft did not spell out a timetable for the service packs, saying only that it would provide more information as release milestones approach."
Gartner says Windows 7 breaks the rule - they're obviously getting better after 35 years of developing the SAME FUCKING OPERATING SYSTEM. I'll give them a break and say it's been since July 1993 for the NT codebase, so that's 17 years of practice to get a first release right.
People love biased reporting so long as the bias is the same as theirs. Better yet when the bias just happens to be in their best interest as well.
A Windows OS in an extended support phase is unsuitable is anything but a closed environment. Trying to frame it as a usable OS in normal small/medium office or home environment is simply ridiculous. Extended support life-cycles exist to help corporations plan, and for developers to base products on, not to judge if it's viable OS option.
To reiterate, any useful support short of egregious security holes for XP has already ended, and same happened to 2000 5 years ago.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
XP and OSX were both released in 2001.
All XP updates since have been free (as in beer). While retail copies of XP are no longer available the operating system is still supported and security patches and the like are still regularly released.
New versions of OSX have been released at approx. 18 month intervals since the initial release, they have all cost money and as far as I can tell software updates are only made available for the current version and the previous version. Security fixes for vulnerabilities in anything pre 10.5 will never be released so if you run OSX it's a good idea to pony up for the new version periodically. And, of course, the change in CPU architecture means most of the old versions won't run on the latest hardware anyway.
Windows Path : whatever I paid for the XP Home OEM that continues to run well on my old 1.6 GHz P4 as it has done for years + $0.
OSX Path : buy a Mac to check out this new OSX operating system all the kids are talking about + rip off + rip off + rip off + buy a new Mac because the new version won't work on this old PPC piece of crap + rip off + rip off
Linux Path: Free biatches.
BSD: is dead.
Now wash your hands.
Why? I think Ultimate is a fair comparison if we're looking at features offered by the two operating systems.
Exchange support, Full Media Centre, Encryption, Unix support, Domain Joining, etc. I'm not seeing many features for Windows Ultimate that aren't in OS X 'normal edition'...
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
I'm not sure how a bash interpreter is any more of a feature than a Windows command interpreter, especially after PowerShell. Bash can run bash scripts, cmd.exe can run batch files, and WSH lets you do VBScript and a bunch of other crazy stuff.
Wow. Just wow.
Did you get that from reading some bullet point list of Windows "features" somewhere, or come up with those conclusions yourself? Despite your other points being fairly valid albeit mundane facts most people should know, you really have no idea what you're talking about.
Next up: Windows notepad is a text editor just like emacs, and can function as an IDE because it can read program code and perform search and replace.
You would have been done better by mentioning Powershell. Its bullet-list of features are extensive. Notwithstanding the fact that it's a clumsy, slow, and verbose monstrosity.