Windows 7 Trumps Vista By Reaching 20% Share

CWmike writes "Windows 7 cracked the 20% share mark last month, a milestone the problem-plagued Vista never reached, Web measurement vendor Net Application said over the weekend. Gregg Keizer reports that Windows 7's online usage share reached 20.9% in December, up 1.2 percentage points from the month before. Windows Vista, meanwhile, fell by half a point to 12.1%, its lowest share since July 2008. Vista peaked at 18.8% in October 2009, the same month that Microsoft launched Windows 7. The other standout finding: XP is projected to still account for 13% when it's retired in 2014." An anonymous reader adds news that Google's Chrome browser is nearing 10% market share.

Comments

Windows 7

[devxo]

I'm not surprised, Windows 7 is actually rock solid OS. Everything is done perfectly and feels good. Vista itself wasn't bad, but drivers for it weren't ready. It was the necessary to move from XP.

It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.

Re:Windows 7

[grasshoppa]

I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need ).

The only reason to upgrade from XP is because security updates are due to end soon. And while that's a valid reason, most businesses are going to be asking themselves why they should upgrade if that's the only reason.

Re:Windows 7

[Mr_eX9]

Mac OS-style upgrades that are less expensive and focus on features over infrastructure (at least from a user perspective) would be pretty neat. And it would ensure that we don't have to wait 5 years between releases (or 7 years between viable releases) again.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

good question? i mean some stuff drivers and flash etc is not supported but dosent mean it could not be made companies simply build it for the new OS

Re:Windows 7

[pwizard2]

I'm normally a devout Linux user, but I can set my biases aside enough to admit that Microsoft did a good job with Windows 7. Of course, Vista could have been much better than it was if its codebase hadn't deteriorated so much during its insanely long development cycle.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need ).

I still feel that way about XP and Windows 2000. Welcome to the upgrade treadmill. You got on it by choice, now upgrade.

Re:windows 7

[joeflies]

I would have phrased your post as a question rather than a statement.

What huge improvement over Vista?

Windows 7 from the user experience is mostly Vista with feature tweaks and better driver support. The rest is mostly marketing.

Re:Windows 7

[increment1]

It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.

I'd like to see more support for per application permissions. Each application should be able to be restricted in terms of where it can read / write, what system properties it can modify, and what network resources it can use. This would need to be far more granular than simply allowing a program administrative permission or not.

The above should all be implemented easily for the user, with the program requesting specific rights as needed (or during installation).

One can dream...

Re:Windows 7

[igreaterthanu]

Even the new task bar and Aero Snap alone give great productivity increases. It takes a while of getting used to them though.

The "libraries" feature can be useful too. For example if you have a large amount of music on your external hard drive, some on a network drive and some on your local disk, you can create a "library" which is basically a virtual folder which combines files from multiple sources. You can have as many as you like and they show up as folders in Windows Explorer and in file dialogs.

Then there are features in Vista that aren't in XP that are now worth looking at because 7 isn't slow like Vista is such as Windows Search and the DWM.

Basically, lots and lots of very small things. You might not care about them very much individually, but after switching it is annoying for me to go back and not be able to use these features.

Re:Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

Time to read bud, there is a ton of info on it. Since Win 7 is basically Vista+, you have to start with the difference between XP and Vista. This is where the majority of changes occurred.

Read the following to fully understand the difference between 7 and XP, or cherry pick to get a basic idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista - stuff the end user will care about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista - stuff that actually makes it better
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_safety_features_new_to_Windows_Vista - stuff your IT guys will care about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_features_new_to_Windows_Vista - more stuff your IT guys will care about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 - stuff the end user will care about, including the features that were removed since Vista

Re:Windows 7

[increment1]

I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need )

Have you seen the transparent windows?

Re:Windows 7

[ShakaUVM]

>>good question? i mean some stuff drivers and flash etc is not supported but dosent mean it could not be made companies simply build it for the new OS

Contrawise, there's also a lot of devices not supported (or supported well) by Win7.

If you have a building full of XP machines, then you know your hardware is supported by XP, but you don't know if it's supported by Win7. The upgrade advisor helps with this, but is not perfect by any means. My gym upgraded, for example, and their receipt printer stopped working. So we got 8x11 receipts for a while until they'd bought some piece of hardware that they could retrofit the receipt printer with to make it compatible.

In other words, it's really not worth the bother to upgrade, for people or for businesses. I've often said that I'd upgrade from XP to Win7 once they get a file browser and start menu that works as cleanly as XP's, but in reality I'm sticking with XP on my home machine (built in Dec 2004) until it dies. Win7 won't do an upgrade on a XP system with RAID, it seems.

Re:Windows 7

[Missing.Matter]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_safety_features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_networking_technologies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7

Choose one you find useful. I'm sure you can create some sort of frakenstein XP OS which includes all these features, but I'm sure it won't perform as well. The particular features I find most useful in 7 is instant search, SSD support, UAC, integrated backup, GPU accelerated desktop, Aero snap and peek, and jump lists.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Decent IPv6 support, decent x86_64 support..not to mention that XP was TERRIBLE at managing multiple cores/processors and memory. XP would prefer the page file over real memory for some reason, too. Also, if you've ever done OS imaging via RIS, WDS is worlds better.

Re:Windows 7

[cyber-vandal]

• When an application requires higher privileges, you should always get a UAC prompt, rather than quite often getting "access denied" instead. The control panel should make it easy to elevate permissions when necessary. It should be obvious (as in not having to search on the internet to find out how) how to run Windows Explorer in admin mode. You should never have to login to an admin account to do anything. In short tidy up the security system so that it is as seamless as possible.
• Change as little as possible so that users don't have to relearn where everything is again.
• Give everyone XP mode.

Re:Windows 7

[natehoy]

If you don't allow your users to have Admin access, the differences probably aren't that huge. There is Windows Defender and BitLocker, so it might save you a few bucks on drive encryption software and possibly antivirus, and Libraries might make their documents a little easier to find.

If you do allow Admin access, the security popups can be a significant improvement in security, as they warn you when system areas are being futzed with.

The company I work for is still on XP and quite happy with it, for now. We're in the final throes of getting rid of IE6, though.

Re:Windows 7

[cyber-vandal]

None of which is hugely useful to the average office worker, who will be confused by quite a few of the new things, such as the change to how search works.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention that XP was TERRIBLE at managing multiple cores/processors and memory

I'm surprised how often this isn't mentioned. To extend, XP also has problems differentiating between an SMT core and an actual real core (important with all these i5s and i7s). Seen XP SP3 think its a good idea to put a double threaded job on "processor 0 and 1" with 2 and 3 empty. Problem is 0 and 1 was the same core, so effectively half the CPU was unused. Windows Vista and 7 don't make the same mistake - and thats part of the reason you on a SMT capable processor often see certain cores facing much higher workloads on average than others.

Re:Windows 7

[damnbunni]

Windows 7 won't do an upgrade on an XP system, period. You have to do a clean install.

If you really, really want to upgrade from XP to 7 you need to upgrade from XP to Vista, then Vista to 7.

Re:Windows 7

[Lanteran]

It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.

Easy: replace their kernel with the linux kernel.

Re:Windows 7

[painandgreed]

I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need ).

The reasons that we are is for 64 bit and ability to use more RAM. We're also in the medical imaging sector so both of those means that our programs can handle more images a lot faster. Also, it's getting to be a pain to support some newer hardware in WinXP as the base install disk doesn't have the drivers needed to boot some of it. Some companies simply aren't supplying drivers for their hardware for WinXP at all so backing down the OS is not really an option.

Re:Windows 7

[guruevi]

I'm a devout Linux/Mac user that has to support Windows 7 for a living. I can say that it's a dog.
- It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware or virtual machines
- Every time you deploy an image you have to manually re-register the thing with Microsoft so it doesn't disable itself
- Still no decent backup system
- XP Mode is buggy and compatibility in general is bad (especially in the 64-bit versions)
- Still no EXT3/EXT4 (or any Unix-type), Large FAT or GPT support
- Limit of 2 physical processors? Really? It's easy to get 4 processors in a box these days with 8 cores each especially in the academic world
- Full Disk Encryption requires TPM chips which are missing in just about any system these days so you still have to go into a 3rd party solution.
- You still have to download a virus scanner, there is none built-in nor is the OS self-contained enough to be used without one.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP, as is Windows Explorer. Have you actually sat down and tried to use them as they're meant to be used? Or have you tried to use them as if you were still using XP?

For example, I almost never use the "All programs" menu any more. No need. Everything I want or need is either on the task bar (pinned there) or on the start menu (pinned there or in the 'recently used' section), or available with just a few keystrokes typed in the search box.

I find I'm far more productive with Win7 than I ever was with XP. Going back to XP just gives me this feeling of XP constantly getting in the way... I feel utterly constrained by its limitations and annoyances. Windows 7 is a definit advance, and is definitely worth the upgrade.

I "upgraded" my XP laptop a while back (after using it at work for a while), and even though it's not a true 'upgrade', it was one of the most painless windows installs I've ever experienced (and I've done a LOT of them). Yeah, I had to reinstall my apps, but the data moved over pretty painlessly. I was up and running in under a day, easily.

I'm not sure what you even mean by the XP start menu working more "cleanly" than Win7's... the exact opposite is the case. The Win7 start menu is just vastly superior. Of course, you have to take the time to actually learn this fact.

Re:Windows 7

[lowlymarine]

Why would you want upgrades that focus on features over infrastructure? Features are essentially fluff and can be supplemented by applications; core infrastructure is critical to the performance and stability of the system. It sounds like you're trying to suggest that "form over function" is a good thing in core OS design, which is hogwash.

OS X upgrades aren't generally cheaper, either; Leopard was the same price as Vista ($129) and Tiger, Panther, and Jaguar all cost $129 each where XP got free service packs. Snow Leopard was a special case because it was little more than a service pack - the fact that Apple still felt they should charge $29 for it is pretty telling. That, of course, is all before we get into the massive premium you pay for the hardware in the first place.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Psychopath]

I really don't understand the claims that there are no improvements in Win 7 versus XP. I suspect they are only playing Minecraft.

Just a few that are top of mind for me:

A large base of 64-bit drivers; if a x86 driver exists, a 64-bit driver does too. Only needed if you want more than 4GB of RAM. What's that? No one will ever need more than 4GB of RAM? :P
SSD TRIM support.
A more usable taskbar.
Searchable start menu.
Usability improvements in native file explorer.
Stability improvements. A misbehaving app doesn't kill my entire system.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

Sorry, but that's really lame, short-sighted reasoning. Many of the features would be useful to average office workers, and the "confusion" is a very short-term thing. It's transient. It's not big enough to justify never upgrading, given all the other benefits (security, stability, easier to use, easier to support, etc, etc).

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

If you buy a machine with more than 2 physical processors, you can buy a special Windows license that will let you use all of them...or you can use one of the Server OS offerings. MOST decent laptops these days have TPM chips and have for years. My Turion X2 laptop had a TPM chip. There isn't NTFS write support built in to OSX, so it isn't perfect in regard to file systems.. Windows 7 comes with a backup utility that is extremely easy to use and to set up schedules with. You don't have to register the image with Microsoft if you know what you're doing (read as using KMS). Of course Windows 7 doesn't run well on a computer from 2003. Modern OSX doesn't either. If you don't like XP mode, use VirtualBox or VMware Player. Google harder next time.

Re:Windows 7

[PopeRatzo]

I still feel that way about XP and Windows 2000. Welcome to the upgrade treadmill.

Don't blame me, I'm still using System 6 on my Mac.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Psychopath]

You still have to download a virus scanner, there is none built-in nor is the OS self-contained enough to be used without one.

The DOJ made sure it wouldn't come with one bundled. Installing MSE is free, easy, and it works well.

Re:Windows 7

[PopeRatzo]

The particular features I find most useful in 7 is instant search, SSD support, UAC, integrated backup, GPU accelerated desktop, Aero snap and peek, and jump lists.

But...Steve Ballmer's a jerk!

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to address the many errors in your "points," but then I noticed the "/Mac user" part and realized you're probably just beyond help.

Re:Windows 7

[LordLimecat]

The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP

I tend to agree, except when it just plain doesnt work, or when I install a new program-- and then typing 'calc' pegs the disk as OpenOffice loads, rather than the calculator app. Or when you want to open the command prompt with "cmd", but the system sees youve written a script somewhere on your computer with a .cmd extension, and assumes you want to use that. Good it may be in some scenarios, but its not a hands-down improvement.

Regardless, the GUI stuff can to some extent be tacked on-- there may have been work done to bring GPU acceleration to the desktop (why again?) which XP cannot replicate, but the start menu? Please. Launchy handles that sort of thing if you really want it anyways.

Re:Windows 7

[interkin3tic]

I hear you. I'm still running windows ME. It's safer really. Few blackhats bother to check compatibility of their viruses or malware with older operating systems. Some rogue antivirus popped up a message saying "Scanning: You have... Windows ME? Shit, I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole. Uninstalling..."

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

Almost nothing you cited is actually true. There's no 2 physical limit on processors (for the Professional and higher versions)... heck, I'm using Win7 on a 4 year old box with 4 procesors (dual CPU with hyper-threading for 4 "virtual" processors). We also use virtual machines all over the place and it works quite well... with no need to constantly 'register' them. And yeah, you have to download "Microsoft Security Essentials" separately, thanks to wanting to avoid issues with the DOJ and law-suit happy McAffee and Norton... not exactly Win7's or Microsoft's fault there. So basically all your rationalizations and justifications for why Win7 is a dog are complete bunk. Sorry.

Re:Windows 7

[LordLimecat]

Windows search is a pig. Ive had to disable it for example in Outlook because it slows everything down, or just plain breaks search. Most of the small things you list can be tacked on after the fact if you want them. 7 is nice in a lot of ways, but theres not a lot that it does that XP couldnt do, and 3rd party apps tend to do those things far better.

Re:Windows 7

[LordLimecat]

Ive heard arguments like this for things like Sharepoint, and usually what it really means is that "we have a solution, we're just not sure what the problem is yet".

Re:Windows 7

[ilovejesusontoast]

Use windows key + R to bring up the run dialog then type calc.

Re:Windows 7

[CAIMLAS]

For users, or administrators?

Here are a couple good reasons why a company employing IT types might want it:
* UAC, as well as the signfiicant improvements in whatever mechanisms are used to authenticate users. It's now not a huge pain in the ass for an 'administrator' (or someone with heightened ACL privileges) to actually work on a domain workstation that's been locked down. (In XP, "locked down" meant "not an Administrator". For many years it was all but impossible do much at all w/o such privileges and/or a headache.)
* Improved user interface. Yes, this helps a lot - it's more intuitive to many, and the ability to tell the user "just type what you want" and have it come up is incredible.
* Improved administration ability through AD/GP.
* Easier to roll an image and maintain them.
* Makes better use of the current low-end hardware than XP does (eg. XP is still a dog on a 3GHz machine with 2GB of RAM; W7 is reasonably snappy, even w/o Aero.)
* Native virtualization support (as a guest).
* Native virtualization support (as a host).
* A networking stack that's had a great many of the bugs worked out of it (to 'just work').
* A wireless stack which has had a great many of the bugs worked out (so it's usable now, in more than a 'single location connection', without fucking with it)
* Improved CIFS performance.
* Relatively sane default security policies, making it not a nightmare for the overworked IT guy who's security focused but manning entirely more non-homogeneous systems than is sane.
* Even with a slow disk, the user will not experience nearly as much thrashing and waiting as a result, due to the improved heuristics, or w/e they want to call them, governing VM.
* It manages windows better. It's easier to manage your own windows in XP, but for those out there that are confused or scared by new icons on their desktop, it's far superior.

On the other hand, here are some reasons to not upgrade (as opposed to moving wholesale with new hardware):
* most old hardware simply doesn't work. Video drivers? You need those? Good luck if it's not a DX10 card. Intel 9xx is out of luck, which means most stuff is going to have shit performance (even for the card).
* Disk storage requirements are significant, so the lower-end stuff might not be simply 'upgradable'.
* You won't be able to game on the older hardware without significant performance degradation (compared to XP).
* Your users won't need you as much for the trivial things which irritate you.
* You've got applications which explicitly need other archaic shit, like ERP integration software or something that needs IE6. (On new hardware, these are mitigated through emulation/XP Mode... or doing something novel and moving the archaic shit to application servers, allowing for systemic upgrades to continue.)

That said... why is security a bad reason to upgrade, exactly? The "old NT" architecture was not fixable; it had to be replaced/extended/whatever. We've known this for the better part of a decade.

There's also the (quite obvious) hardware support issue.

Re:Windows 7

[Gadget_Guy]

XP's Service Packs were the equivalent of Mac OS's upgrades, but they were free. The most notable upgrade was Service Pack 2, which introduced the firewall, pop-up blocker, Bluetooth support, Windows Security Center, etc. Sure, it is not a patch on the monumental changes introduced with Vista, but when people say that XP did everything that they needed they actually should say that XP SP2 did all they need. If you gave someone a computer with the original version of the OS then they wouldn't be so happy.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is different from XP how exactly?

Re:Windows 7

[Mr_eX9]

I disagree--Windows 7 does a lot of good catching up to Mac OS and Linux in terms of keyboard shortcuts (Aero Snap alone is seriously worth $250 or more and is better than 3rd-party solutions,) multi-monitor management, and coherence of the different places that applications live. I can't wait till my workplace upgrades our machines to Win7 so I don't have to manually drag and resize windows anymore.

Re:Windows 7

[ColdWetDog]

Ive heard arguments like this for things like Sharepoint, and usually what it really means is that "we have a solution, we're just not sure what the problem is yet".

No, that was Lotus Notes.

Re:windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: Win7 is mostly Vista SP1 with feature tweaks and better driver support. Most of the Vista hell got worked out by SP1.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

Honestly, I'm not sure what you're even talking about. I haven't experieenced anything like what you're describing (and can't even really follow what you're talking about)... are you talking about just blind-typing really fast into the start menu search bar and pressing enter without even looking?

I use *.cmd files all over the place, but typing 'cmd' never fails to bring up the command prompt as the first thing for me. But then I just have it pinned to my start menu, so a Win+7 brings it up, no muss, no fuss. And all my most-used things are right there in the start menu (those that aren't pinned to the task bar), and the hover-over menu of most recently used documents is also a vast improvement as well.

Re:Windows 7

[LoudNoiseElitist]

Solid 64-bit support would be one reason.

Re:Windows 7

[icebike]

Don't be so stingy. Type that extra character "u" and you get one hit. calcu. enter. done.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

You don't describe in what way Win7's start menu is "worse" than XP's in the case of having many applications (seriously? 5000? Who does that?)

1) XP doesn't have instant search, so you either need to painstakingly micro-manage your All Programs list, manually organizing it, or you just have to search through everything to find what you want

2) Win7 DOES have an all-programs menu that you can use very similar to XP's... I just rarely need to

I do software development, and rarely have fewer than four instances of Visual Studio open at one time, or fewer than two dozen applications running at once (well, two dozen windows). It's much easier to find and manage my windows, and my most used applications and documents with Win7... I especailly like using the Windows Explorer "Favorites" node to tuck some of my most-used, deeply-nested folders, for one-click access, and to make handy drop-targets for drag-and-drop file moves/copies.

And I have yet to run into an application that won't run at all (I've had to set the compatibility setting in properties for some of them, but they do run). My hardware is hardly brand new, but everything runs flawlessly.

So no, I'm not delusional at all.

Re:Windows 7

[vlueboy]

Viruses aside, System 8 is pretty decent, though 6 is black and white, and stretching your sanity ;).

Even if Windows admins worldwide could suddenly enjoy security-through-small-marketshare status, they would hit the hidden brickwall of Web 1.5 to Web 2.0. You and non-geek home users stuck with 15-year-old PCs at home just realize their computer is a filing cabinet with marginal use

Hotmail and Yahoo are daily sites you would need, but they use underhanded "comment tags that by recent convention really should execute" scripts ... back 7 years, all I could do on the 266Mhz Mac was use iCab 2, since FF required OS 9 and wouldn't be born for another few years... IE got forever stuck on 5 and pre-carbon Netscape sucked on JS speed and functionality. This is the real reason home users upgrade nowadays --speed problems and broken compatibility with website standards. Nobody even sees a first generation cellphone browser seriously. One day IE6 and IE7 will be so broken that XP will reek of inadecuacy and decade-old PC's will get binned for Windows 8 desktops so they can enjoy HTML5+Web3.0

Re:Windows 7

[LordLimecat]

SSD support

XP supported SSDs; it does NOT support TRIM. There is a big difference.

UAC

XP has something similar, though, called RunAs-- several of my clients machines are set up so that if they attempt to install a program, a runas window pops up.

integrated backup

Ive personally found none of the integrated backups that windows has had to be terribly useful; but at least NTbackup supported tape, and individual file backup (rather than the all or nothing that 7 has)

GPU accelerated desktop

I dont know that its "Useful" persay, but granted that is something XP cannot have outside of someone rolling their own explorer replacement

snap and peek

There are window managers for XP which do those things, and as I understand it are better, though I have not used them. Personally I like snap, but it is only occasionally actually used, and it is rather clunky 50% of the time.

jumplists

Are nice, but again I dont know the last time I actually used one.

A lot of these things are theoretically nice, but changing how I use programs every 2 years doesnt strike me as a particularly good use of time. Vista and 7s mistake IMO was thinking that just because something looks good on paper, and in theory works if youve never used a computer before, theyre forcing office workers and professionals with years of experience on the same GUI dating back to Windows who-knows-what to fundamentally change how they do things-- and not always for the better.

I still need regular access to the Network Connections applet (ncpa.cpl), and its kind of obnoxious that they hid it behind about 5 clicks when it is the MOST useful applet for networking; Im sure I have many other such complaints but that was the biggest regarding their GUI house cleaning.

Re:Windows 7

[Radhruin]

I'm not a windows expert by any means (mostly use Linux) but I use Windows at work...

• Productivity. The new start menu is worth the upgrade cost alone. The task bar is also a huge improvement (although I tend to use full application names instead of the default icon only). I can't live without Aero Snap anymore.
• Security. Not running everything as admin actually works well. Lots of new security features, some of which IE takes advantage of (you'll notice that many 0-day exploits are defeated by IE8 running in protected mode, which I don't believe works on XP).
• Management. I think many AD features require windows vista or higher. You might find some of this useful.

Re:Windows 7

[LordLimecat]

decent IPv6 support

True, except that it occasionally needs to be completely disabled to get things to stop breaking, when it insists on trying to do IPv6 AAAA lookups on a domain network where no IPv6 configuration was done. There are several articles on this, and it is quite bothersome.

Re:windows 7

[Gadget_Guy]

Windows 7 from the user experience is mostly Vista with feature tweaks and better driver support. The rest is mostly marketing.

True, but what an amazingly difference that marketing makes. It is incredible how many people around here have gushing praise for Windows 7, and yet total scorn for Vista. The main reason for this is hype, most for the downwards hype that Vista has got.

How many people skipped Vista all togather because of what everyone else was saying about it. I know I almost did. When I got my first laptop with Vista, I was ready with my XP disc in hand to wipe it when I decided to have a quick look at the OS to see how bad it really was. It wasn't bad at all (or at least nothing like the bad press that it got). That laptop is still on Vista today.

I acutally got quite angry with myself for believing the bad hype. I have long known to ignore positive spin on a product from the companies and reviewers, but Vista was the first time I had been sucked in by negative hype in the communuty. So many of the things that people said about it were just outright lies. It became obvious that a lot of people who denigrated the OS had never actually used it. That is not to say that it didn't have problems, just not as many as people said.

So sure, if you went from XP to Windows 7 then you would be much more likely to have good things to say about it. So Microsoft didn't really need to make substantial changes to Windows 7. They just needed to release an OS that had good driver support from the start and could start with a clean slate with the community.

Re:Windows 7

[icebike]

Honestly, I'm not sure what you're even talking about. I haven't experieenced anything like what you're describing (and can't even really follow what you're talking about)... are you talking about just blind-typing really fast into the start menu search bar and pressing enter without even looking?

Essentially, yes, thats what he's talking about.

Lots of machines have that Windows Menu key now days.
Whack that, (or click the start icon)
Cursor is already in the search box.

At that point, if you know the name of the application, a fast typist, or a keyboard oriented user can launch just about anything faster than a mouse user drilling thru the start-bar.

 

Re:Windows 7

[icebike]

Really? 3000 apps?

You know, not every porn shot is considered an App.

Re:Windows 7

[LordLimecat]

you still have to download a virus scanner

Including a virus scanner with windows would a terrible idea. If you have a virus scanner monoculture, every virus will know how to bypass said scanner.

Re:Windows 7

[bertok]

It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware or virtual machines

It's been demonstrated to match XP performance on even quite low-end gear by several third-party tests. My experience is that's it's faster, particularly the 64-bit builds, which increase the file cache size from ~400MB max to "all of physical memory", which is a big improvement.

Every time you deploy an image you have to manually re-register the thing with Microsoft so it doesn't disable itself

You're Doing It Wrong. If you're supporting Windows 7 for businesses, you should be using KMS or MAK, and using the volume licensed Enterprise editions, not Windows 7 Home or whatever.

Still no decent backup system

It's the best ever - it has both file-level and image-based backups, it can take live snapshots of disks for both types, back up open files, it has a built-in scheduler, and a bunch of other features.

The VHD disk images created by Windows 7 can be mounted as virtual disks using a GUI or the command-line, can be used to boot from directly without having to be restored first, can be trivially converted into a virtual machine disk, and the install CD has a built-in restore wizard.

I haven't seen comparable features in any other operating system except OSX.

More importantly, if you're backing up desktops, You're Doing It Wrong. Laptops should use offline folders to sync with the master copy of the user data on a server, and shouldn't need backing up. Desktops should use folder redirection and/or roaming profiles. Back up your servers, not your desktops.

You can even do it the "Linux way" if you want to: I've seen sample scripts floating about that take a VSS snapshot of a disk, mount it as a folder or drive letter, and use rsync to incrementally update a backup, then release the snapshot automatically. I've done this myself for Windows Server 2003, about 6 years ago, it's nothing new.

XP Mode is buggy and compatibility in general is bad (especially in the 64-bit versions)

You shouldn't even need XP-mode most of the time, particularly on 32-bit editions of Windows 7. I've found that even the 64-bit editions will run just about anything if you simply set the "compatibility flags" on the main program executables. Just how bad are these applications that you have to support? Shouldn't you be blaming the app vendors instead of Microsoft?

Still no EXT3/EXT4 (or any Unix-type), Large FAT or GPT support

Are you kidding me? First, Windows has had GPT disk and boot support since Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, it has xFAT, NTFS on removable drives, and there's third-party EXT3 plugins.

If you think EXT3 on Windows is an important feature, again, You're Doing It Wrong. NTFS is a superior filesystem for Windows in practically every way. If you want to share data between Windows and Linux, use NTFS drivers on Linux, or a server with SAMBA.

Limit of 2 physical processors? Really? It's easy to get 4 processors in a box these days with 8 cores each especially in the academic world

That sucks, but 2 sockets is 12-16 cores these days. If you need more computing power than that, than you can afford a Windows Server 2008 R2 license, which gives you almost all the Windows 7 features, and more processor socket licenses. It's a commercial operating system, and it costs money.

Full Disk Encryption requires TPM chips which are missing in just about any system these days so you still have to go into a 3rd party solution.

The TPM requirement can be turned off using a group policy setting, but then it's not transparent to users, they have to enter a pass-phrase on every boot. External disk encryption doesn't require a TPM chip by default, I use that feature on my rather old laptop that doesn't have a TPM chip.

You still have to downlo

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

instant search - With an organized classic menu there is no searching for thousands of programs.
SSD support - Um Sata, CF.
UAC - a disabled plethora of crap which prevents programs from running correctly.
integrated backup - So much more secure than my Drive to Drive Clone. You embarrass me.
GPU accelerated desktop - Oh boy the DESKTOP! Hurray for the desktop, My desktop is accelerated, I can watch the paint dry. now for my next trick, GPU accelerated transitions and video effects.
Aero snap and peek, Snap can be had by other means, peek is a popup to make you clik on the wrong thing when your in a hurry.
Hows that Audio Mixer API working out for ya? Go ahead and Jump

Re:Windows 7

[0123456]

I dont know that its "Useful" persay, but granted that is something XP cannot have outside of someone rolling their own explorer replacement

I'm always puzzled by people who talk about the glories of 'GPU-accelerated rendering', because Windows has had GPU-accelerated rendering since at least version 3.0. XP desktops are GPU-accelerated unless you have a really shitty driver.

It doesn't have fancy compositing, but who needs it on a business computer?

Re:windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

What a HUGE improvement over VISTA

I hope you are being sarcastic. 7 is constantly slower than Vista.

Re:Windows 7

[chrismcb]

To me the biggest feature is 64 bit support. As applications become bigger memory hogs, more memory is important. 32 bit XP maxed out at 3G. I am sure Win7 has many other fine features. But got 64 bit support, and the ability to use more the 3G of memory is a good reason to upgrade.

Re:Windows 7

[icebraining]

dual CPU with hyper-threading for 4 "virtual" processors

What part of physical did you fail to understand? What parent said is right: http://www.winsupersite.com/article/win7/windows-7-product-editions-a-comparison.aspx#performance

Re:Windows 7

[beav007]

I've often said that I'd upgrade from XP to Win7 once they get a file browser and start menu that works as cleanly as XP's

Classic Shell helps to fix those issues.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't be able to game on the older hardware without significant performance degradation (compared to XP).

Let me call bullshit on this. I've run Left4Dead on both a 3.2 P4 and a quad core AMD (2.8ghz) and it runs just as good on the 3.2 P4 as it did on the AMD. And I ran it on the 3.2 with both XP and Win7 and there really wasn't any real difference. While I'm sure the benchmarks would show a difference but if you can't notice it from the aspect of someone playing the game than the difference is not significant.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

So... if unlimited cores and two physical processors isn't enough for you, then why aren't you using Windows Server 2008 R2?

Please. This is an utterly ridiculous complaint.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy works in Microsoft.

Re:Windows 7

[dreamchaser]

Chances are that if you have 3000 apps you are running routinely then you aren't producing anything either. Quite a few people only use a handful of applications to do very productive work.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

"Really? 3000 apps?
You know, not every porn shot is considered an App."

http://sourceforge.net/search/?q=Windows
Searching gives 11656 results

(that's only sourceforge @ 11k)

You were saying about 5000? ( I mean trolling me down to a -2, that's just lame )

"painstakingly micro-manage your All Programs list" - You mean drag them around into

3d
audio | mixers | players | plugins 01 | plugins 02 | plugins 03
games
graphics | plugins 01 | plugins 02 | plugins 03 | more
network
office
programming
security | antivirus | discs | recovery | registry
streaming
utils | archivers | junk
video | codecs | plugins 01 | plugins 02 | plugins 03 | more video

Then right click and sort by name. - While it may be painstaking (I'll give you that, during the install process -- 6 months+ ) it's sorted, it's alphanumeric and no need to search. I also don't get a bunch of command line programs pop up useless for the search. Go ahead run wget after you search. For joy your so productive. Oh wait you have to actually paste some intelligence behind the command.

Hate explorer, use ztree

And I have yet to run into an application that won't run at all - You haven't been alive very long then, or you don't work with old applications much. Compatibility settings won't help with some errors.

You run along now and pretend your Audio API isn't crippled. I still have a fire sale on bridges when your ready.

Look I am not saying win7 doesn't have a place, but I am saying in todays economy destroying and dissing XP the workhorse, is very stupid, if not a business destroyer if your on a deadline. Why would you eat your golden goose? If you want to surf the web be nannywared, tracked, snooped, spied, enjoy your win7, I don't care . If you want to work a bit, jump through a few hoops, and re-gain some resemblance of control of the system, and become productive, use XP.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

First, Windows has had GPT disk and boot support since Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1

Point of order - only the Itanium builds of Windows have GPT boot support (as a requirement of the platform), on other architectures you'll need Vista, 2008 or later on an EFI BIOS.

You could try using hybrid GPT/MBR, but of course that's a nasty difficult to support hack.

Data partitions are another matter, but certainly not boot.

Re:Windows 7

[gollito]

Instant Search (yes, you could add it to XP but it wasn't baked in) is a HUGE plus.

That aside, the management aspect of it in a domain environment are far and away the best thing ever. Splitting up the Pics/Vids/Docs folders was the best thing MS did in this regards. Yes, I know Vista had this too but 7 runs much better with fewer resources.

Re:Windows 7

[aztracker1]

The only time I've enjoyed windows own search is on my ssd systems.

Re:Windows 7

[l33t gambler]

Thunderbirds incorporation of windows search is very ugly. There was thousands of files in profile folder Inbox.mozmsgs and I was wondering why my backup process was so slow. But is it a poor implementation of Windows Search in Thunderbird, or is it a poorly written API for anything but Microsofts programs?

http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/thousands_of_files_in_profile_folder_inbox_mozmsgs

Re:Windows 7

[aztracker1]

Agreed.. XP wasn't even as stable as Win2K (notME) when released... Win7 is the only windows version other than 2K that was very stable at release... at least for me, until >32GB drives were more common.

Re:Windows 7

[guruevi]

Windows Server only supports 4 sockets and up to 32GB RAM unless you pay for the Enterprise version and we are currently physically limited to 4-6 real cores (12 with HT) per CPU.

For a workstation in the scientific or engineering field it is quite feasible to have a 4-socket system and more than 32GB of RAM SuperMicro makes quite a few of them in tower version.

The complaint is that there is a limit based on the license you buy. This is really annoying that people can't use $OS_of_choice and have to use a Server OS for their applications purely because the licensing won't allow it.

Re:Windows 7

[Stormwatch]

The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP

Nonetheless, both are near-unusable entanglements of chaos and irrational design. Contrast to Gnome's applications menu , which properly arranges all programs by category first, and alphabetical order next. Now that is how you design a good user interface: neat, logical, hierarchized.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is perfectly fine. The RTM release was a disaster, but everything SP1 and later were rock solid. In fact, I keep trying to convince myself to upgrade to Windows 7, but I can see no reason to spend the money on it. Aside from a new task bar, one that I don't really care for, Windows 7 doesn't offer me anything that I don't already have. Someone coming from XP might as well jump to 7, but if you're on Vista already, there is no real reason.

Re:Windows 7

[l33t gambler]

DWM is nice in the beginning, but when everything else GDI+ is not hardware accelerated even normal file browsing feels somewhat sluggish. Picture browsing and resizing windows is also very sluggish. Yes GDI+ was mostly hardware accelerated and I hope Windows 8 being entirely Direct2D.

Windows 7 GUI slowness: file explorer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToFgYylqP_U

Mozilla Firefox Direct2D test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th4ZVztTdQs

Re:Windows 7

[hairyfeet]

Well then, as someone who has been converting SMBs and SOHOs away from XP allow me to add a few. 1.-Windows Superfetch, which if your customers use specific apps day in and day out will have those apps loaded for them in RAM and ready to go instantly. It will even learn the times of day you use them, so if you use one particular app pre lunch and another after they will be loaded at the appropriate time. 2.- The file and registry virtualization tech that started with Vista is much more mature now, and when combined with WinXP Mode means just about any app will run no matter which versions of Windows it was written for. This is nice when you have an old app that is required and you want to move up to 64 bit.

3.-The security system is much better than the pretty much "everything is admin all the time!" XP way of doing things. To lock down XP you really needed to go in with GPOs and lock the OS down, and you would often find apps that needed serious "massaging" to work in a non admin environment. with 7 and the above file and registry tweaks built in that is no longer the case, now you can stick with a normal user, and the most risky part of your PC, the browser, can be run in low rights mode if you use IE or one of the webkit based browsers like Chrome or my favorite Comodo Dragon. 4.-Once shown how it works I've found my users to be MUCH faster using the new breadcrumb navigation system that the old panels and trees way of navigating the OS. The new breadcrumb makes it simple to jump anywhere in the tree, and will also remember the places they go to the most. This along with the new jumplists makes much faster access to common tasks and folders. 5.- Despite the tests posted, which are all of the Vista version, I've found adding a 4GB flash to Readyboost makes makes a machine MUCH snappier, especially if you are dealing with customers that run a lot of heavy apps and bog down their machines often. This is because the 4GB flash thanks to Readyboost turns any HDD into a hybrid and uses the 4GB for random reads, which are of course much faster than any spinning disc.

So as you can see just from naming the ones off the top of my head my customers are pleased with you have several reasons to upgrade. That doesn't even count the other niceties like the new printers and devices stage which makes managing everything from network printers to webcams and backup devices simple, the built in Windows disc imaging which is quite nice and very simple for users to operate, the ease with which new devices can be added thanks to MSFT incorporating more and more drivers into Windows Update and accessed via Action Center, Action Center which makes most administrative tasks quite simple for SMBs and SOHOs to keep up with, the new performance monitoring which will point out problem drivers and bottlenecks that would ordinarily be hard to catch such as the malfunctioning HDMI driver on a customer's machine which was causing it to not drop into low power mode as often as it should, heck I could go on all day.

So I'd have to say after the disaster of Vista MSFT really outdid themselves with this one. I have been running Windows 7 hard since Beta 2 and never have had a single crash no matter how hard I stress the system. It all "just works" and all the little features and rock solid design like I named above really do make it a worthwhile upgrade, and this is from someone who hung onto Win2K until 6 months after XP SP2 had been out.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need ).

The only reason to upgrade from XP is because security updates are due to end soon. And while that's a valid reason, most businesses are going to be asking themselves why they should upgrade if that's the only reason.

This is just embarrassing for a tech site and then to be modded insightful. Yikes.

I'm OK with the Windows bashing here... It's fun and good for a laugh. But to see this question and the responses it appears the bashing is more out of ignorance than anything else.

Also, what's particularly disturbing is the moderation where empty insults are rewarded and actual technical information is ignored or modded down.

Proudly posting as AC because I burned a mod point before I decided to jump into the fire.

Re:Windows 7

[cheekyjohnson]

It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.

They'll just change a few things and charge over $100 for it (like they did with Windows Vista and 7). Sure, they might be okay operating systems, but I'm sure not going to buy them unless they add something noteworthy (a few features that save some time aren't noteworthy).

Re:Windows 7

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

None of which is hugely useful to the average office worker, who will be confused by quite a few of the new things, such as the change to how search works.

The combined sum is. Also, confusion is temporary.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Extra cores presented via hyperthreading do not count towards the physical processor limit for licensing purposes, and haven't since Windows XP.

Re:Windows 7

[hoggoth]

> It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.

Really?

How about when I click on a folder in the Windows Explorer navigation pane it opens it without automatically scrolling the navigation pane so that the folder I just opened, the one I am clearly interested in, is at the bottom of the window with all of the information I just clicked to see off the bottom of the window. It's infuriating trying to use Windows Explorer now. Trying to browse folders is like trying to swat cockroaches. You see what you want to hit, but it keeps running away from you.

How about letting ME decide how to organize my folders instead of the terrible "Libraries" idea that aggregates things I don't care about into fake folders so when always show up when I open Explorer?

Windows 7 is better than XP in many ways. It's certainly better than the unusable Vista.
But claiming it's "perfect"? You've got to be kidding. I could go on for hours with irritations minor and major in Windows 7.

Re:Windows 7

[cheekyjohnson]

Win7 stays out of my way, doesn't nag me about things

Well, yeah. I don't think I've ever had an operating system "nag me" before. What does that even mean?

Honest, I just can't imagine not wanting to upgrade to Windows 7 (unless you have really old hardware with really limited memory and CPU speed).

Perhaps people don't want to pay hundreds for an operating system with a few improvements at best. Call me when they do something revolutionary or extremely noteworthy. It probably is good, and if I got it on a new computer I certainly wouldn't mind, but I'm not going to upgrade for a few features.

Re:Windows 7

[l33t gambler]

GPU accelerated desktop

Which one? GDI was hardware accelerated in Windows XP, but they threw out all that in Windows Vista and introduced window composition. We got nice transparency and no tearing while moving windows around, but much slower file browsing and awful tearing when resizing windows.

Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 brought back some GDI hardware acceleration but it still much more CPU intensive than XP. I look forward to a new PC that is as fast at regular file browsing as in Windows 7, as my previous PC was in Windows XP. A high end sandy bridge arcitecture CPU in late 2011. And maybe one of these new 120hz LCD monitors.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff729480(v=vs.85).aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToFgYylqP_U

- The ASUS VG236H was my first exposure to 120Hz refresh displays that aren’t CRTs, and the difference is about as subtle as a dump truck driving through your living room. I spent the first half hour seriously just dragging windows back and forth across the desktop - from a 120Hz display to a 60Hz, stunned at how smooth and different 120Hz was. Yeah, it’s that different.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3842/asus-vg236h-review-our-first-look-at-120hz

Re:Windows 7

[NJRoadfan]

Firefox was never available for OS9. Microsoft also released a barebones version of XP to upgrade older machines. It was called Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs

Re:Windows 7

[KingMotley]

Nice trolling. Most people don't try and download all of sourceforge and install all of it it.

The audio API isn't crippled. In fact most people I know of that run Windows 7 love the new audio features of it. Having an individual volume for each application is really nice. Not having to rely on terrible sound drivers written by some kid straight out of college and having it bluescreen your entire machine is really nice as well.

As for what else, have you even looked at the task manger? How about the resource monitor? It's nice being able to see quickly which application is hitting the hard disk, or which app just flooded my router with 200 connection attempts overloading it's routing tables and forcing me to reboot it. Or skype starts to break up and your lagging in your online game, a quick check in resource monitor will tell you if your ISP is dropping TCP packets. Let's add in I/O with priority that lets the application I'm working in responding well even though indexing, defragging, and virus checking may be running at the same time.

How about faster boot times? My own personal boot time went from 5 minutes 40 seconds to under 20 seconds. Shutdown is yet even faster.

And yes, let's talk about VS2010. Now install tortoiseSVN. Go ahead, checkout a large project from SVN, and then launch VS2010 to start working in it. Oh, you have to wait 5 minutes because SVN is updating the cache in the background, now only if you had priority on your I/O like Windows 7, you'd be coding already.

Let's add in support for TRIM for real laptops and performance desktops with SSDs, or add support for 2TB+ drives with a single partition. Can't boot your UEFI machine with XP? Tsk, tsk.

Seriously, I don't know what you are drinking, but you are the first person that I've heard that didn't like Win7 a *LOT* more than XP once they used it. I'm seriously doubting that you actually have used it.

Re:Windows 7

[Billly Gates]

The reasons are under the hood for the I.T. department. .NET 3.5 and soon .NET 4.0, sharepoint, and many others. New applications taking advantages of these wont run on WindowsXP.

You can run much better intranet applications and client/server applications. You do not see it now because those who run XP are preventing application makers from using these technologies. It is a chicken and egg scenario.

For the average user still using old Office 2003 the search when you hit the windows button where you type in something like "sales forecasts 2009" is very sweet when you have many documents. In school this was a life saver in Vista as I have 2,000 documents I have created over the years and I need to look something up.

Sure Windows XP boots so why upgrade is not the whole picture. The use of intranet enabled applications make a big difference in the corporate world.

Re:windows 7

[Billly Gates]

Windows Vista is simply not tuned and is very sluggish on the same machines as windows 7. Windows 7 search is just that it works. No constant spinning of the hard drives every few minutes as Vista tries to re-index my documents again. Windows 7 is incremental and snappy. It makes a big difference.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is lame and short sighted. this is slashdot, home of the "tech nerd" who shuns all new technology and considers anything more advanced then 80x20 wasteful bloat.

Re:Windows 7

[Osgeld]

even the calculator is even vastly improved and If you have more than one installed it will bring up a list of all of them

Re:Windows 7

[grcumb]

Sorry, but that's really lame, short-sighted reasoning. Many of the features would be useful to average office workers, and the "confusion" is a very short-term thing. It's transient. It's not big enough to justify never upgrading, given all the other benefits (security, stability, easier to use, easier to support, etc, etc).

Unless you're suggesting a switch to Linux, in which case it's the only reason you'll ever need.

Okay, seriously: I can see the point on both sides of this argument. Change is disruptive, and until the change is accompanied by a perceived reward significant enough to offset the short-term discomfort, it's simply human nature to resist it.

Apple got a lot of people moving in their direction by very successfully leveraging the social benefits. (Snide remarks here and elsewhere about metrosexual hipster-wanna-be Apple users are a not-so-tacit criticism of this effect.) Linux got most of the geeks onside because it rewards technical prowess (or, in some cases, the illusion thereof).

But Windows has been relying on its own inertia^Wmomentum for so long that fear of change is a legitimate argument against upgrading. In short, the Windows XP user base is increasingly self-selected for this trait. My prediction: the first 20% for Windows 7 is the easy one.

Re:Windows 7

[BoneFlower]

Windows Service packs, at least cumulatively over the course of a major version, are pretty close to equivalent to Mac OS X new versions. And they are free upgrades. Even if you buy the Professional Edition full install, your wallet will probably come out ahead of a Mac users over the same timeframe, even if you both got your hardware free. Of course, value for your dollar is another matter, and different people will call this different ways and that's fine.

Windows needs an infrastructure focused release too. Like OS X up through Leopard, there's some ugly that has collected and they need to focus on that. Windows needs a Snow Leopard style infrastructure update. Windows 7 service packs should probably focus on this, and hand out new user facing features when Windows 8 ships.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are that if you have 3000 apps you are running routinely then you aren't producing anything either. Quite a few people only use a handful of applications to do very productive work.

Chances are you weren't listening when I said it takes 6 months+ to install.. I was brief on the details I admit.
Installing, debugging, tweaking, and making behave. That's the pain part. But taste the rainbow skittles raining from the gingerbread man's ass comes from not needing to search after that. In fact, after all this wonderful tweaking, the indexing service is set to disabled, freeing up more cpu cycles and ram.

Many programs sit until needed. some are plugins and called from programs, some are utilities. The reality is, if you can't get your work done because you have to stop and find a solution, install it, debug it, re-register it, or ask support for help, you are the one who isn't productive, and you are the one shrinking the deadline.

However with that said,

Honestly, I think what we have here is a deceptive description of OS use.
one doesn't put win 7 on a raq 4 with a 512M CF disk.
Nor does on replacing a rack of production linux servers with win 2007 when all needed is php, modsec, and mysql,
Your not going to nstal netbsd on a workstation you wish to do photoshop on.
Otherwise go ahead install your win 7 on a 6085, 8080, or Z80. You see how stupid this argument is.
There's other expensive hardware considerations, security considerations, financial considerations
There is a reason for each OS to be used.

Your argument of 3000 apps being weird is official debunked. Too bad you can't fix my -2 troll now.

Re:Windows 7

[Pezbian]

It will upgrade. You just have to install and activate it first if you're going to use the Win7 Upgrade edition. There's a file the Win7 activation checks from XP before it will activate you Win7 install.

I learned this the hard way. Twice.

Installed 7 Pro 64 and waited the month trial to iron the bugs out with my oddball IBM machine failing to start and corrupted the hard disk when a USB flash or HDD drive was attached. Cleared it up and went to activate. No dice. The Win7 install told me nothing about XP being wiped from the disk and being unavailable for Win7 activation. Live and learn.

Re:Windows 7

[NJRoadfan]

XP SP2 was an exception rather then the norm for service packs. Normally service packs were reserved for bug fixes and minor system level updates (ex: NT4 SP4 added NTFS 3 support).

Re:Windows 7

[KarmaMB84]

They pulled the Sarbanes-Oxley card for the $29 upgrades. Apparently it's easier to make people pay the token fee than SOX compliant accounting for the updates (they "add value" to the product).

Re:Windows 7

[Kharny]

no, notes would be, we have a solution, it's just worse than the problem

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

All I can figure is that you've never actually used Windows 7. It offers a LOT of improvements - to name a few (in no particular order): 1) a vastly improved Windows Update that also requires significantly less reboots after updating (the majority of updates you don't need to reboot) - it also does a great job of tracking down drivers for hardware that you don't have the drivers for (for instance, my wireless card for my desktop only has a 32-bit XP driver from the manufacturers site - yet Win 7 is able to locate an official 64-bit Win 7 driver for it) 2) significantly better utilization of multi-core processors 3) it allows for far more RAM in 64-bit versions (this is useful for many things, whether it's gaming, CAD, if you're a 3D artist, running virtual machines, etc) 4) the search bar makes it dead simple to find basically anything (programs, files, specific emails or documents searched by content) all from one spot - this is great for idiot users who can't figure out where anything is - you can just start typing what you want and it'll pop up in the search results as you type 5) it supports new hardware (right now that's not an issue, but in a few years it will be) 6) like it or not, new software IS developed for Win 7 and support for XP will be phased out.

Those are all just things off the top of my head. I'm sure if you used it you'd find even more reasons to want Win 7 over XP.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no 2 physical limit on processors (for the Professional and higher versions)

So, there is a physical limit- and there isn't?

4 procesors (dual CPU with hyper-threading for 4 "virtual" processors)

So, there's four processors- only there aren't, as they're virtual?

nothing cited is actually true works both ways in this case. I think.

NIce of you to clear that up!

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Easy Transfer actually lets you transfer a lot of your settings and files from XP to Win7. It doesn't transfer programs though. Having tried Easy Transfer with one computer and just done a clean install with another, I was happier with the clean install. Since quite a few programs and drivers wouldn't work (or worse, would work in a crippled fashion) if you could upgrade from XP, most users would be unhappy if they had been able to do the upgrade. And I've never seen a Windows machine that wouldn't benefit from a clean re-install of Windows after 2 or 3 years anyway, even just to the same version of Windows.

Re:Windows 7

[hairyfeet]

And the funny part is the pirates did better at stripping down their own OS than MSFT did. Look up "Tiny XP Rev 09" for a nice uber light version of XP that takes just 45MB on the desktop and runs a good 80%+ of Windows apps, or even thinner is "MicroXP Rev 03" which uses less than 32MB. If you have an older P4 you want to try Win 7 on for shits and giggles download "Tiny7" and be amazed at a Windows 7 that just uses 145MB of RAM! They also have a "Tiny Vista" but of course it really isn't very popular. If you have valid WinXP or Windows 7 licenses you can use them instead of the included key and have a nice stripped down desktop that is just CRAZY fast. I recently installed the "Tiny XP" for a customer that needed XP uber light for a low powered laser cutter C&C. I used his provided legal key and now he has a 1GHz with 256Mb of RAM that barely sips power and runs his laser cutter like a champ.

As for TFA, is anyone surprised? Like XP Windows 7 is just a good OS, and I have yet to have anyone switched that didn't take to 7 like a duck to water. Hell my dad is about as clueless as they come when it comes to tech, he still can't figure out how to work more than half of his cell phone, but he has gotten more use out of his PC and laptop since I got him the family pack of HP in Oct than he did in nearly a decade of XP. What amazed me was being the impatient sort when I told him after dropping off the family pack at his work that it would be the weekend before I could install it he took it upon himself to install. I figured when I heard that and finally got a chance to come over the PC would be a big mess and cause me to start over but nope, it has done all the work and set it up for him, even pointing him to a free AV on first boot. All I had to do was show him how to get to Ninite to install his Firefox and MS Messenger and that was it. When he got a little headset mike to talk to his friends on chat it even asked him "You have a headset plugged in, would you like to learn about and use speech recognition?" so he is trying that out as we speak. A nice touch to a nice OS.

Re:Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware

No shit. It's new. Low-end hardware is, by definition, low-end and therefore not expected to run high-end software. That's why they have minimum requirements.

It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware

If you only give it 1 core of a Core Duo and 256mb of ram, then no shit. Give it a core of a Xenon and 2gb of ram, however, and it ain't too shabby.

Every time you deploy an image you have to manually re-register the thing with Microsoft so it doesn't disable itself.

That's only true if you don't know how to deploy a 7 image. Seriously, you have to know what you are doing first.

Still no decent backup system

Unfortunately, that seems to be a Windows trademark. It is a real shame, since their Wim images would provide a perfect foundation for a very nice backup system. Mountable, deduplicated, easily parsed, and all in one file. It's a real shame MS doesn't get into some of this stuff. On the other hand, they'd be putting a lot of people out of business if they shipped with a decent backup system, so it's not all bad.

(I can't comment on XP mode, personally)

Still no EXT3/EXT4 (or any Unix-type), Large FAT or GPT support

Who gives a rat's ass? I've been using computers for 20 years and I've been doing IT support for 6, and the only time I've ever needed EXT or any other Unix filesystem format support is when I was using Linux. I understand why Linux needs to support NTFS, but I see no practical need for Windows to support any Unix file system. It is such a tiny niche that the FOSS FS drivers more than cover the need.

Limit of 2 physical processors? Really? It's easy to get 4 processors in a box these days with 8 cores each especially in the academic world

Those are called workstations, not desktops, and accepted practice is to install Windows Server if you specifically need Windows or install Linux (much of the academic software that requires these machines is built on Linux anyway). Hey it isn't the desktop, but at least you have Linux on the Workstation!

Full Disk Encryption requires TPM chips which are missing in just about any system these days so you still have to go into a 3rd party solution.

TPM chips are present on just about every business desktop I have seen in the last few years. Whole disk encryption is often required thanks to various laws over the years, so TPM is extremely common among those customers who, you know, need it. They aren't found on consumer machines because consumers generally don't need or want whole disk encryption, making it an unwanted additional expense.

You still have to download a virus scanner, there is none built-in nor is the OS self-contained enough to be used without one.

I'm sure asshats like you (that's clearly an unfounded assumption, I have no idea if you are one of these people) would scream bloody murder if Microsoft shipped Windows 7 with a virus scanner. Damned if you do, damned if you don't eh? Did you know that over in Europe Microsoft isn't even permitted to ship Windows with a full version of Internet Explorer installed? Crazy European idiots.

Re:Windows 7

[robot256]

If he only has 3000 porn shots then he is pretty stingy himself.

Re:Windows 7

[vlueboy]

and the difference is about as subtle as a dump truck driving through your living room

Aren't car analogies are getting a bit violent here on /. ? :)

Thanks for both of your posts with two Youtube hardware-acceleration links. I am pretty impressed and saddened by the demonstrations, since I'm stuck with Vista. Since I had turned Aero off, I never really noticed that an OS CAN move windows without tearing, till my latest distro finally accepted Compiz. I use it only to move windows across the screens.

The fastest LCD I've had at home is 75hz, and I don't know why the IT industry refuses to upgrade my laptop to enjoy at least that much more, so I'm stuck with 60hz on my laptop, which is annoying because that is my main computer. A simple peripheral-vision glimpse at 60hz reveals flicker, especially on Cathode ray tubes like 19 inchers and even old TV sets. I did play around with a mac lab at 120 hz a decade ago. At that speed things look like they're printed on a wall.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

This remains an utterly silly argument for staying with XP and avoiding upgrading to Win7... especially for, oh, say, 98% of people for whom most of these issues you raise are just esoterica.

It's certainly not alien in the universe of software (especially at microsoft) that you pay more for more advanced capabilities. You can legitimately call into question the entire practice, but my point is that this is an utterly ridiculous argument for staying with XP over upgrading to Win7.... which is the current topic.

Re:Windows 7

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

- Symlinks
- native HD decoding using direct x 10 or 11 (good for multimedia machines with like pentium ds where they cant render 720p well)
- USB and network deployment and image based installers
- SSD trim
- installs fast
- good default driver support
- useful 64 bit (many drivers exsist now)
- excellent video card crash recovery, perhaps other hardware failures. Had much fewer BSOD with troublesome video cards say..

negatives:
- ever increasing windows folder, multiple DLL copy thing
- windows differential file compression
- areo lag (ok on a media centre or whatever\, but turn off for responsiveness)
- install is like 10 gb and grows FAST ( 1 month later on one machine and i am at 15gb - all undeleteable installer cache crap)
- some bugs still, such as explorer crashing, problems with folder refresh, not able to handle some old programs
- older drivers not necessarily available

So in the end i upgraded from 2k to windows 7. Its OK, and actually runs pretty decent on a pentium D that i have and runs real sweet with an ssd and a quad core cpu.

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

So you want to go back to a less easy to use file browser and lose the amazing search bar from Win 7? You're probably one of those people who throws a fit if you use a new keyboard with some of the keys (say volume control) in a different location.

Try actually using Win 7 for a couple of days - you'll never want to go back.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't blame me, I'm still using System 6 on my Mac.

I blame you entirely. System 6 is the first GUI that counterintuitively put Cancel to the left of OK, and since then that horrific layout has not only survived, but spread to other systems and applications. You have caused me more pain and misery than all of the Windows botnets combined.

Real men stopped upgrading their Macs at System 5.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

Well, yeah. I don't think I've ever had an operating system "nag me" before. What does that even mean?

Apparently you've never used XP. Anyone who has used XP knows exactly what I'm talking about.

"You have unused icons on your desktop!"

"You need to reboot to apply updates!"

Constant baloon pop-ups from the lower-right about anything and everything, mostly crap you don't care about. Having to constantly wait to shut-down because the OS decided you have extra time and don't need to be anywhere right now, so it can do stuff it wants to on your time.

More clear?

Perhaps people don't want to pay hundreds for an operating system with a few improvements at best

Well, it's just a hundred for the upgrade, and there are a LOT of new improvements over XP, not "just a few at best". Clearly you've not used it, or spent any time comparing the two.

Call me when they do something revolutionary or extremely noteworthy.

Everything I said was noteworthy and real. Maybe not everything was revolutionary (though there are certainly things in Win7 that are significantly better and enable applications that just aren't possible, or at least not as easy, under XP), but it's solidly evolutionary. Device Stage, support for SSDs, faster start-up and shut-down, reliable sleep and hibernate, readyBoost, member address randomization, UAC, better isolation of programs from data, better more efficient and faster graphics subsystem, better font rendering, never mind the instant search, better and easier to use UI, full 64-bit support, media center included, "play to" functionality with media player, much better networking, vastly improved security, ... honestly, it's clear you don't know what's in Win7, so your claim that XP is as good or at least good enough to not warrent upgrading, is just ridiculous and laughable.

Re:Windows 7

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Except when an application isn't in the menu you thought it should be in and now you have 20 folders to hunt through. KDE does the same thing and it drives me insane.

Re:Windows 7

[hairyfeet]

Actually I hate to say it but in the case of your first video Correlation != Causation. You see I have done that little experiment myself and found the real culprit of the CPU spikes. You see when you are dealing with huge numbers of files and folders like that Windows 7 tries to load all the metadata for those files on the fly if you are in icon view, and of course loading all that info WILL cause a serious spike.

To see for yourself switch between the different icon views along with list and detailed view and see the difference. You will see that in icon view it will try to load the metadata as well as read the folder's contents, which results in high CPU. In list or detail that simply doesn't happen and in my own tests the CPU went from 54% to less than 7% simply by changing the view. Since WinXP doesn't change the icons appearance based on what is inside nor does it try to load the metadata for a file unless asked it has lower usage which appears to be based on the GDI+ but in actuality is simply the fact that one OS is loading data the other just ignores. Whether one considers it better to use or ignore the data is a design decision but at least in that case doesn't have anything to do with GDI from what I can see.

Re:Windows 7

[Gadget_Guy]

Yes, I said it was the most notable service pack. SP1 and SP3 did have a few new features, but definitely nothing like SP2. This was because SP2 arrived at the time MS would normally have come out with a new version of Windows (3 years after the release of XP).

It was a shame that they didn't call it Windows XP version 2 rather than just Service Pack 2. If they had, it would not have been such a PR problem for Vista to take so long. They would have looked like nice guys for making it a free upgrade to a minor Windows release to tide us over while they re-wrote a lot of the code for Vista. Instead, people just think of the service packs as bug fixes and that the OS that they love dates back to 2001. The version from back then was rubbish. The REAL beloved Operating System was released in 2004 when SP2 came out.

Re:Windows 7

[Kjella]

Windows Server only supports 4 sockets and up to 32GB RAM unless you pay for the Enterprise version and we are currently physically limited to 4-6 real cores (12 with HT) per CPU. For a workstation in the scientific or engineering field it is quite feasible to have a 4-socket system and more than 32GB of RAM SuperMicro makes quite a few of them in tower version. The complaint is that there is a limit based on the license you buy. This is really annoying that people can't use $OS_of_choice and have to use a Server OS for their applications purely because the licensing won't allow it.

Well, boo-fscking-hoo. The rest of us are happy you're forced onto a server/enterprise edition so that the 99.99% of the market don't have to pay for the 0.01% you want. I'm sure they'd offer a "workstatation" edition with no limits and no possibility of CALs if there was really a need for it. You may have noticed there's no such thing as a workstation CPU either, there's desktop CPUs and server CPUs - and to get anything like you want you will need server CPUs in a server mobo that take server RAM w/ECC - in short your machine looks just like a server, except it doesn't have clients. All the validation and shit Microsoft have to do is shared with servers, not desktops. So why should you not e paying a server price? If you want to say it's a licensing choice not a technical choice, I say technically your needs are like a server so it makes perfect sense you and they pay the same.

Re:Windows 7

[gstoddart]

I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need ).

I suspect just overall hardening and robustness.

I've bee running Vista for just about 2 years, and with a big enough machine that was new to Vista, it has been a good experience.

A friend has been raving about Windows 7, saying he found it less confusing than Vista, but as stable as he's ever seen anything. I've yet to try it, but I'm contemplating upgrading (and, if anybody cares to provide some handy links on doing an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, I'm all ears) ... as much as I used to really hate Windows back in the day, I've been finding it to be a pretty decent OS -- granted, it hosts Firefox, iTunes, and VMWare where I do my "real" work, so it's mostly a desktop OS. But, it hasn't suffered from any of the warts I remember from past versions.

The only reason to upgrade from XP is because security updates are due to end soon. And while that's a valid reason, most businesses are going to be asking themselves why they should upgrade if that's the only reason.

Well, the reality of it is, XP will be EOL before long, and software updates won't necessarily support it. Sadly, some form of upgrade is more or less inevitable.

Having worked with upgrades in the past, if you wait too long at an enterprise level, upgrading becomes hard -- though, sometimes things like being tied to IE 6 prevent that, which really sucks.

I honestly can't give you an compelling reasons, but IME, if your machines are up to the task, the upgrade provides an overall 'better' experience.

Cheers

Re:Windows 7

[IICV]

Windows 7 "just works" in a way that XP never did. It took an HOUR to install a recent HP all-in-one photo printer on XP. Same install on Win7 took a minute or so.

That.... has literally nothing to do with XP vs 7, except inasmuch as HP drivers are a giant piece of shit and Microsoft might be bribing them to increase the quality of the Windows 7 drivers (e.g, send it to the slightly less retarded driver development department).

Anyway, I have to admit that I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I've used all of XP, Vista and 7 on my computers these last few years (work computer was XP, laptop is Vista until I put Linux on it, personal desktop is 7), and there's only one feature Windows 7 has that I find myself missing on XP (and Vista as well) - the positional window resizing stuff. It's really nice to be able to fullscreen a window just by tossing it at the top of the screen and window it again by dragging it off, but that's literally the only gesture I use. Other than that, I might as well be using Windows XP. Maybe if you provided some concrete examples, we could get an actual discussion going?

Re:Windows 7

[beav007]

You will use it the way the gods intended, and you will like it.

Ever had the feeling that computers should be white plastic and brushed aluminium, or that your mouse has a far greater number of buttons than you're comfortable with?

Re:Windows 7

[Dystopian Rebel]

Saw your username. Are you by any chance from a big city in Southern Ontario?

Re:windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotal and all but: I had a to use a work laptop with Vista (some dual core thinkpad) which was a totally miserable experience. Processor would be at 15-20% usage constantly and the whole system felt sluggish. Later on Windows 7 was installed on the same machine and it's totally different experience. Drivers shouldn't be an issue since they are the same on Vista and 7 right? I'm sure Vista could have been tweaked to feel more smooth, but the thing is: with 7 this was not necessary. Everything was ok after the installation.

Anyway, I don't see any reason to use Vista if you have to use Windows since 7 is superior in every way.

Re:Windows 7

[ruemere]

Dear Sir,

I do feel your pain (similar issues with Win7 here). On the other hand, your method of typing posts, that of MUD spelunker, is not helping you to state your point.

Kindly reconsider your style.

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

Can I be the second person?

I bought it to support my >4G RAM on my latest gaming PC build, and sure... TRIM support, but I can't even tell if it's working as I couldn't get Windows 7 to install unless I used my SSD on my RAID controller and it definitely didn't see my drive when I put it on AHCI. It's not any faster than my old XP build and it's sometimes even slower. The only things I notice that are faster are because I put a damn SSD in it. I do like the pinning so I can keep whatever game of the week is on my list, but I rarely use the search at the top of the window so I disabled it and now I can't even do a simple folder search without turning back on the indexer which I do not want!

Another thing I can't stand is being told my windows is not legal in about 50 different places. I've registered my copy... go the hell away Microsoft. Funny thing is, it's fine after reboot, and a few hours of gaming later I return to my desktop and the little warning shows up in the corner.

Other than start menu pinning, and the hardware support, I haven't found a thing that this does better. I use Windows for gaming and Linux on my laptop for my general PC tasks. As far as I'm concerned Win7 could almost be a black screen a Steam button for me... if all my games were on Steam.

Re:Windows 7

[ruemere]

Depends on the number of items or how unambiguously they are presented.

Examples:
Calc vs Scalc is easy. OpenOffice Scalc vs LibreOffice Scalc vs Go-OO Scalc are not.

Additionally, Windows7 menu does not integrate well with applications using their own menu system, and so the benefits of integrated search are lost as you still need to jump through several hoops.

In short, instant search is nice as long you don't need to look too deeply (just like with KDE). And for basic stuff, I still have my Quick Launch Bar... (Windows 7's " + type + select and run" VS "standard run from shortcut").

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

I've been using it for months at home. Still use XP at work though because it just does what I need it to. (And I've had the option to upgrade three times now...) The Explorer in XP allows me to see the treeview lines and organize my files better. I can't stand the libraries functionality for Windows 7... but I'm a bit controlling when it comes to putting files where I want and not where the OS thinks I should put them. I've also pretty much resorted to using Classic Shell at home because I couldn't stand having to search for everything all the time.

Re:Windows 7

[parlancex]

There is actually a fundamental reason for this rather than just oversight. The ATA BIOS command set gives you a 32-bit sector index to load data off the disk in real mode (2 TB of addressable data). On a conventional BIOS system execution will start in real mode after the BIOS has loaded the boot sector (first sector) of the boot device, which of course is just 512 bytes. Normally this sector would also contain your MBR partition table, but the BIOS doesn't really care. Whatever boot device you point it at it's just going to load the first sector into memory and start executing it in real mode. In order to access data beyond 2 TB you need to:

1. Initialize at least 32-bit protected mode, which itself involves several steps and data structures
2. Complete basic hardware enumeration with the information given to you by the BIOS
3. Load a suitable driver for the disk device class.
4. Now you can load and read the GPT and figure out where the OS is actually located and load THAT, then finally transfer control to it.

Step 1 alone will take generally take the 512 bytes available to you if you do it robustly, so where do you put the code for the other steps? Wherever you put it, it needs to be within the first 2 TB of the disk. Windows COULD support booting from GPT on legacy BIOS systems, however, there would have to be 1 of 2 restrictions: Either your OS partition would need to start in the first 2 TB of the disk, or Windows would require a dummy partition located in the first 2 TB of the disk to use as the second stage boot loader. Although you might see those things as a reasonable compromise, the folks at Microsoft obviously don't and have decided that trying to shoehorn it in with restrictions and gotchas is probably just sillier than using the modern EFI boot system for the modern GPT partition table.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone aptly says, Sharepoint solves 80% of the problem that you never have in the first place.

Re:Windows 7

[Archimonde]

I'm not sure about the others things you mention, but firewall was included (at least) since the original windows xp release. Service pack 2 only turned it on by default and added some polish. So relatively cautious men turned on firewall from the get go and didn't have much (or any) problems with worms.

Re:Windows 7

[Bacon Bits]

I'm a devout Linux/Mac user that has to support Windows 7 for a living. I can say that it's a dog.
- It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware or virtual machines

That hasn't been my experience at all. The only times I've experienced any vitrual OS being a dog the issue was hardware-related -- CPUs not supporting VM extensions or insufficient physical memory. I've run Win 7 on my Atom-based netbook with no problems, although it does have 1GB of RAM. Vista on the same system would barely let you log in. I've run Win 7 with great success on older hardware, although you did need to disable Aero. Just like I've had to disable compiz or use xfce instead of Gnome, too.

- Every time you deploy an image you have to manually re-register the thing with Microsoft so it doesn't disable itself

You're doing something wrong. Win 7 Ent can be deployed with WDS with no problems, IMX. Are you trying to use disk-based imaging (cloning) instead of file-based images that MS supports (WIM)? Are you not using the Enterprise SKU?

I've not done anything with VHDs, though, so I can't speak to any problems there.

- Still no decent backup system

Agreed. Although the presense of Previous Versions (aka, shadow copy aka copy-on-write-like behavior) has been quite welcome.

- XP Mode is buggy and compatibility in general is bad (especially in the 64-bit versions)

Been lucky enough to not have to mess with the ACT. Nevertheless, XP Mode is only necessessary to support software which was poorly coded in the first place. This problem is as much Microsoft's as poor hardware support due to proprietary drivers is Linux's.

- Still no EXT3/EXT4 (or any Unix-type), Large FAT or GPT support

What do you mean no large FAT support? It will mount large FAT32 volumes just fine. You just can't format them larger than 32GB using the built-in tools. If your problem is inter-OS compatability, though, this is rarely a problem. Just format the partition in a different OS. Otherwise just use NTFS.

There are a number of wonky work-arounds for ext3/4 filesystems (ext2read, booting a Linux-based VM, using an ext2 driver in read-only mode, etc.), but there aren't any good solutions. I don't see how this is a common problem, or even Microsoft's problem.

- Limit of 2 physical processors? Really? It's easy to get 4 processors in a box these days with 8 cores each especially in the academic world

That's a limit of 2 processor sockets, and either 32 cores (32-bit) or 256 cores (64-bit). That means that yes, you can get your workstation with Dual six core Xeons if you want to. If you seriously need more hardware than that, buy a Server SKU. You're already dropping at least $10,000 USD on hardware for such a system. The cost of the Server SKU is going to be negligible.

AFAIK Redhat sells RHEL on a per-socket basis. Additionally, you can't even get a Mac with more than 2 processor sockets. Not even a server. They do not exist.

- Full Disk Encryption requires TPM chips which are missing in just about any system these days so you still have to go into a 3rd party solution.

Maybe you should spec your hardware to meet your needs instead of blaming the OS for not being magical? If you need true full disk encryption then you should be aware of that when you buy your systems.

Additionally, BitLocker does *not* require a TPM; it's just not as secure: "By default, BitLocker is configured to look for and use a TPM. You can use Group Policy to allow BitLocker to work without a TPM, and store keys on an external USB flash drive; however, BitLocker cannot then verify the early startup components." -- See "What works differently?" http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725719(WS.10).aspx

Re:Windows 7

[ruemere]

Disclaimer: I work with both Win7 and WinXp on everyday basis.

"You have unused icons on your desktop"
== "You really need to learn to organize your desktop"
OR
== "Google for 'win turn off notification balloons'"

The rebooting policy can be managed centrally by competent IT staff, locally by users (requires certain permissions or simply users who can be trusted to do stuff reliably).
Nagging is relative... and when compared to bothersome and unnecessarily obfuscated wireless management menus (or network options), Windows 7's "friendliness" loses to Windows Xp's simplicity. Not to mention that in centrally managed environment Win7 is only a tiny bit any better than WinXp (or worse, as the enforcement of GPOs is almost as bad as under WinXp).

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:windows 7

[Archimonde]

Not only that, but wifi settings* in vista are buried behind something like 15 windows. Win7's are behind around 5. That is improvement, but still far behind leopard where three clicks will get you almost anywhere.

*or almost any other setting.

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

Well, yeah. I don't think I've ever had an operating system "nag me" before. What does that even mean?

Apparently you've never used XP. Anyone who has used XP knows exactly what I'm talking about.

"You have unused icons on your desktop!"

"You need to reboot to apply updates!"

Constant baloon pop-ups from the lower-right about anything and everything, mostly crap you don't care about. Having to constantly wait to shut-down because the OS decided you have extra time and don't need to be anywhere right now, so it can do stuff it wants to on your time.

"Your version of Windows may not be legal..."

"I can see you want to put file in this plugin folder... you need to open this as admin to do that!" (We don't, but you do!)

Windows XP never nagged me with the stuff you mention because I turned it off. I cannot seem to turn off this nagging Windows 7 re-register my PC for the fourth time message. (Yes, I'm fully legal with my version, but somehow Windows keep thinking I'm not!)

Also, I do get those reboot messages in Windows 7, only they moved it to the restart process... and don't even get me started on the fact that I came back to my PC the next time and fired it up to see that some update couldn't install and the machine just sits in a constant reboot loop. You think it would let me skip that one update? No way!

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

no this DOES have everything to do with Windows 7. Plug in a USB printer to Windows 7, and there is a good chance it will be able to find a driver for it on the web service that provides drivers to the OS. And it will be the most up to date driver. basically for an end user under Win7 a shit load of peripherals 'just work when connected'

Re:Windows 7

[BlueWaterBaboonFarm]

What 3rd party apps?

I'm just curious. I haven't had any issues with Windows search (but I don't use Outlook). I have my 1TB 7200 RAID 1 and 2TB 5400 RAID 1 array indexed and it seems to work flawlessly as far as I can tell.

Re:Windows 7

[ShakaUVM]

>>The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP, as is Windows Explorer. Have you actually sat down and tried to use them as they're meant to be used? Or have you tried to use them as if you were still using XP?

Amazingly enough, yeah - I use Win7 all the time. I have a Win7 laptop I use on the road and an XP machine at my house, and a Vista machine at my "office". Not to mention as any tech guy worth his salt, I've spent considerable time playing around with all three of them.

In short: Win7's start menu is inferior. Actually, the whole UI is inferior - it unoptimizes the common case to optimize the uncommon case. As anyone in software knows, this is a Bad Thing. For example, switching windows with >I'm not sure what you even mean by the XP start menu working more "cleanly" than Win7's... the exact opposite is the case. The Win7 start menu is just vastly superior. Of course, you have to take the time to actually learn this fact.

Yes, yes. Naturally the only reason people would hate the new start menu is because they haven't used it. /snort

Fucking nonsense. Their file browser and taskbars are likewise crippled, optimizing the uncommon case at the expense of the common.

Re:Windows 7

[Joe Tie.]

Yep, I'm a long time linux fan. Switched to debian when beos died, and then to ubuntu. And every time I tried my hand at windows again in the hopes of getting back into pc gaming, I was reminded why I left. Until last month. Tried windows 7 and instantly tossed more partition space at it as a keeper. It's a bit of an odd thing to say, but windows is finally ready for the desktop as far as I'm concerned. I still prefer linux, the package management is something I wouldn't want to give up. But I'll hand it to microsoft, windows 7 seems pretty solid.

Re:Windows 7

[YoshiDan]

You can get around this with the Win 7 Upgrage version. I installed it on a blank hard drive and it wouldn't let me activate. So I booted from the Win 77 install dvd again and chose upgrade then chose the existing clean installation of Win 7. After that it lets you activate.

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

I can't stand the libraries functionality for Windows 7... but I'm a bit controlling when it comes to putting files where I want and not where the OS thinks I should put them.

Oh, so you're just misinformed. You can customize that and add your own folders and point multiple folders to it (it creates sub sections in the libraries). I do this with my music, documents, and videos that are not only local but also on external drives as well - it's made life a thousand times easier than when I used XP.

I've also pretty much resorted to using Classic Shell at home because I couldn't stand having to search for everything all the time.

OK, how do you use it "for months" and NOT have learned where things are already? Secondly, you don't NEED to search - hit windows then type what you want in the search bar and it's RIGHT THERE. I never wasted the time learning where to find all of my usual tools, it's far simpler to hit the windows key and type the first three letters and hit enter.

I think your complaints about Win 7 all revolve around you not knowing how to fully use it.

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

Really? You call not only searching file names (programs and data) but also the CONTENTS of any test based file (email, text documents, presentations, etc) to be "not looking too deeply"?

It comes across more like you're of the "If it doesn't print gold coins, it's crap" type of mentality.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

I see three main things.

Improved implementation of user accounts and privledges (ipstack, and some access controll)
Updated API (drivers, graphics audio have changed)
Eyecandy and change of menus (but they still don't look like they support scalable vector icons.)

Nothing worth a hundred and fifty dollars, especially considering that you can virtualize XP on top of linux easily on newer hardware.

Re:Windows 7

[gparent]

I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need ).

The only reason to upgrade from XP is because security updates are due to end soon. And while that's a valid reason, most businesses are going to be asking themselves why they should upgrade if that's the only reason.

And by soon he means in 3 years, give or take.

Re:Windows 7

[laron]

Not to forget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_removed_from_Windows_Vista
A lot of little things are no longer there, for example the ability to display activity icons for each network connection (dial-up, VPN, WiFi, LAN) in the systray so you can actually see which interfaces are being used right now. Does anybody know a third party replacement for that?

Re:Windows 7

[ShakaUVM]

Grr, slashcode ate a paragraph.

Anyhow, long rant short - looking at some common tasks. I'm not comparing stock XP against stock Win7, but my tweaked versions of both, because I'm a bit OCD about reducing the number of keystrokes to do things to the minimum possible.

1) Launching very common apps via the taskbar. XP - quick launch toolbar to launch, taskbar to switch. Win7 - One taskbar to both launch and switch. Victor: XP. The user knows better than Windows when he wants to launch something, and when he wants to switch. It *is* possible to get the quick launch toolbar back in Win7, but requires a hack to do so.

2) Launching common apps via the start menu. XP - I have a folder off the start menu containing all my common locations and tasks, reachable with two keypresses (Win, I). A third keystroke takes me to the directory or task I want to get into. I've got 10 items in the base directory, and more from the hierarchical directories inside of it. Win7 - can pin a (small) number of things to the start menu directly before it gets too ugly for words. Keystrokes don't work all the time, since they're sitting on the root start menu, so it's usually a matter of hitting Win, and then scrolling to or (ugh) clicking on our commonly used task or directory. Victor: XP. Looks much cleaner, and doesn't require using the mouse at all to navigate the UI quickly. Switching to mouse = loss.

3) Switching tasks via alt-tabbing. XP - hit alt-tab. Win7 - hit alt-tab or Win-tab. Win7 allows previewing the windows before switching to them, instead of relying only on name. Victor: Win7

4) Switching tasks via toolbar. XP - click on the toolbar. Win7 - click on the toolbar, look at the popup that appears, scroll through the live task previews, and with the mouse (ugh) click on the one you want. Victor: 1 click vs. 2 clicks and a scan? XP. (Note: Win7 can disable this via options, unlike the start menu, which is fixed in it's broken state).

5) Launching uncommon apps. XP - Win, P. By default, this just shows you the last few apps you've run. Expanding it out (down arrow) shows you your hierarchical organization of tasks. Recently installed apps near the end, otherwise they've been sorted (by me) and easy to find. Win7 - type the name of the task. If it's working properly, and you know the name (pop quiz - what's the name of that HDR photo editing suite you bought three years ago?) and you only have one copy of the name, it works well. Unfortunately, those three things break all too easily. I was giving a workshop, and half the laptops couldn't launch sound recorder from their start menu. The other half could. So I had to take very valuable time walking a classroom of teachers into the Windows directory to launch it directly, since their start menus were not indexing correctly. When you have to hit "all programs" on Win7, that's just an epic loss compared with the hierarchical organization of XP. Victor: XP, by a clear margin. Faster, more reliable, more organized.

6) Saving a file to the desktop. XP - hit the giant bloody "Desktop" button right there. Win7 - made the link tiny, and buried it within a nest of worthless crap. On small screens, it tends to collapse the nest down to things that you don't actually need. Watching teachers spend 5 minutes trying to figure out how to save to the fucking desktop because Microsoft buried it within mountains of pointless (for them) crap makes me want to put staples through my fucking eyes. Again, they optimized the uncommon case at the expense of the common. Your average user saves to the desktop a lot more than they save to a workgroup file server. If they don't even have a file server, or even a workgroup, why is this shit eating up all of their valuable 9" screen space? Victor: XP

7) Navigate up to the desktop from a folder on the desktop. XP - hit the giant bloody "up arrow", or the backspace key. Done. Now you can operate with the files on your directory easily. Win7 - open a folder on the desktop. Look hopelessly at the breadcrumbs. Pound your head i

Re:Windows 7

[laron]

Actually Vista pre SP1 had some horrible performance issues, for example with copying. Those were fixed eventually, but by that time everyone and their dog had written a negative review.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to use an older DOS-based Windows, why not choose one that doesn't suck? As in, Windows 98SE?

Re:windows 7

[Gadget_Guy]

I have heard that same story before. But I do wonder whether you would have had the same improved experience if you had installed a vanilla version of Vista instead of Windows 7. Some laptops and desktops come with a lot of third party software installed by default which can really slows the system down. One of the first things I do when I get a laptop is to remove all the add-on products, or if too time consuming then I install a new OS.

Anyway, I don't see any reason to use Vista if you have to use Windows since 7 is superior in every way.

Absolutely, if you have the choice then go with Win7. But I tend not to upgrade the OS on a working system. The time it takes to install it (plus all my usual add-ons) just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Re:Windows 7

[rastos1]

The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP, as is Windows Explorer. Have you actually sat down and tried to use them as they're meant to be used? Or have you tried to use them as if you were still using XP?

While typing is IMHO better than hunting the right entry in menu, Win7 has still some pet peeves:

• You can't drag&drop a file from explorer to cmd to get there full pathname. This was replaced with clumsy Shift->right mouse button to get context menu->copy the path to clipboard (killing the current clipboard content) and then pasting into cmd.
• You can't tab into the address bar to select and copy the current path to clipboard.
• Searching in start menu works badly in localized versions of Win 7 - where some less-used programs do not have translated names. So for some programs you need to type in localized name for some programs English name.

Re:Windows 7

[Monolith1]

new task bar

Missing show desktop icon = fail

Re:Windows 7

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The TPM requirement can be turned off using a group policy setting, but then it's not transparent to users, they have to enter a pass-phrase on every boot. External disk encryption doesn't require a TPM chip by default, I use that feature on my rather old laptop that doesn't have a TPM chip.

More than that, if you're supporting Windows 7 in a business context, why the hell are you buying crappy consumer-level PCs? Enterprises buy machines like HP EliteBooks, Lenovo ThinkPads, or Latitudes, all of which are better built and have longer support life-cycles than a consumer PC. And of course they have TPMs, with the exception of some lower-end ThinkPad models.

These machines aren't even particularly expensive. You can get a ThinkPad T410i for $750 right now.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

The most notable upgrade was Service Pack 2, which introduced the firewall, pop-up blocker, Bluetooth support, Windows Security Center, etc. Sure, it is not a patch on the monumental changes introduced with Vista, but when people say that XP did everything that they needed they actually should say that XP SP2 did all they need. If you gave someone a computer with the original version of the OS then they wouldn't be so happy.

Bullshit. Windows XP is Windows XP. The way I see it, they're all just about the same--except each newer version takes up more memory, has fewer bugs, and is in general more stable than the previous version. Of those "features" that you mentioned:

Firewall: This was a good thing in general for all those people lacking a router who have their machine in direct contact with the Internet or use public/untrusted WiFi connections, but hardly crucial for me. In fact, it just slowed my machine down and caused extra swapping so I always turned it off in my installation. Besides--I thought I remembered XP providing a firewall before SP2--it was just then that it was enabled by default? And given how insecure the OS is to begin with, making the first several users created during the installation Administrators, malware doesn't have to try very hard to put an exception for itself in the firewall's settings or disable it completely.

Pop-up Blocker: Again, useless. Unless you still used IE6 for whatever reason. And it did nothing to block the primary pop-ups I've come across, which were installed system-wide in the form of adware, requiring absolutely no instance of IE to be running... they opened their own IE windows whenever they felt like it.

Bluetooth Support: Although I never had and still don't have any Bluetooth-capable devices or a Bluetooth card, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt here. The technology is really picking up lately, allowing some useful features (especially in cell phones and cameras), but it's still not in the "OMFG MUST HAVE" category. After all--it provides no function that I know of that can't be done with good ol' USB cables or simply using a PC SD card reader.

Windows Security Center: Is this a joke? Really? You're calling this worthless, annoying piece of shit a highlight of XP SP2? Where to begin... maybe the general annoyance level, immediately nagging for anti-virus software right after installation of the OS? You might think that's good, but it doesn't matter--all of the nagging in the world won't get people to keep paying for their subscription (if they paid a single penny past their "free" trial to begin with), keep their AV software and signatures up-to-date, and actually *USE* it. I've even set free programs like Microsoft Security Essentials up on other people's computers, and have still seen some strange virus-like activity going on within the system; people just refuse to learn about and actually *USE* anti-virus software; they just don't care. I'd be surprised if anyone even *reads* the warnings; most just blindly click it off to get it out of the way. First thing I always did upon installing XP is go through Security Center's confusing interface and tell it to shut the fuck up and get out of my system tray.

Re:Windows 7

[Monolith1]

new task bar

Missing show desktop icon = fail

I meant to say in the old spot, I find it a pain down in the bottom right with dual monitors.

Re:Windows 7

[Vectormatic]

if we throw out all the GUI changes (some people like em, some people dont), there is one killer feature for anyone who uses their PC for actual work

64 bit support

at some point you WILL need 4+ gbs of memory if you use your machine for anything serious, and lets face it, xp64 never was a real option

Re:Windows 7

[TheLink]

You can't drag&drop a file from explorer to cmd to get there full pathname.

I just checked. I can do it.

There are times when that doesn't work, for example when the cmd shell is running as a different user from the explorer.

The stuff I like about Windows 7:
- task buttons are grouped by apps
- per app volume control
- the search thingy when it works.
- filesystem is 4KB aligned by default.

The stuff I don't like about windows 7:
- Lots of stuff changed for no apparent good reason
- Lots of stuff more cluttered: for example the Network Sharing Center is a mess, it doesn't really help the noobs, nor does it help the experts.
- Windows Explorer often insists on "calculating" stuff rather than actually doing stuff.
- the search thingy when it doesn't work :). I often have to type the entire name out.
- the search thingy prevents me from using the start menu short cut system I've been using for Win 95/2K/XP (create folders/shortcuts and subfolders in the start menu that start with a number or letter, then use winkey, letter/number to launch the stuff).

Re:Windows 7

[Vectormatic]

sorry dude, but clicking an icon when there is a simple shortcut key = fail

windows key + d, learn it, live it, love it.

(pedantry aside, i never quite understood why people click that shortcut, if there is one thing windows has done right, it is keyboard shortcuts)

Re:windows 7

[Vectormatic]

i dont want to talk up vista (in my experience it is a total pig), but dont underestimate the bog-down power of your typical enterprise SOE. The laptop i work with (windows XP, core 2 duo, 3gb ram) feels like a fricking 386SX compared to the old write-off laptop (single core, 2gb linux) i have at home, thanks to the ~100 processes running after startup, not to mention the insane network integration, which coupled with mandatory wifi at the office, throws latency on top of everything i do.

I have to say though, even my GFs main pc (quad core, 8gb windows 7) feels a bit sluggish to me these days, i guess having an SSD in my older desktop spoiled me. I should really just throw some money into the mix and make myself a good primary system again.

Re:Windows 7

[Gadget_Guy]

I don't give a damn whether you think these features were useful or not. Microsoft don't write their software just for you.

So you don't use the firewall? Big deal. Given how SP2 virtually stopped the worms that could infect your system within 15 minutes of connecting to the Internet, this was a useful tool for a lot of people. It doesn't just protect Internet users (especially dialup), but can stop worms from spreading within a network once one computer has become compromised.

You didn't use IE6? Well, it was the most popular web browser at the time, so once again this was a useful upgrade for a lot of people.

You don't have any Bluetooth device? Does that mean Microsoft shouldn't add support for it, or that they shouldn't list it as a feature of the service pack? How utterly self centered of you. As you say, Bluetooth is picking up more and more, but that wouldn't happen so much if the operating systems didn't have built-in support for it.

And Microsoft Security Center marked the beginning of the change of philosophy of Windows to incorporate these kind of settings into one single, easy to read place.

The fact that you had no use for these features doesn't change the fact that they wrote them and can legitimately count them as new features. Next you will be saying that the service pack wasn't required because it didn't help people who used a Mac!

Re:Windows 7

[TheLink]

Yeah agree with you on most stuff. I have my Win XP classic menu set up similar to your scheme too. So Winkey, 1, 1 = "1 Explore Desktop". Been doing that since Win95 (Win 98 had a bug where if you press winkey too early while booting, stuff breaks :) ).

I've got quicklaunch on Win 7, I think I did that by switching to a "classic" mode. Don't recall doing much "hacking".

The Win 7 start menu search is non-deterministic so if you don't want to make mistakes you have to wait to see what actually pops up before pressing enter. Non-deterministic stuff like these and "Personalized Menus" don't help as much as a good deterministic UI.

I dislike some of the new Win 7 UI stuff, for example the "Network and Sharing Center".To me it doesn't help the noobs nor the expert users. The noobs don't normally do such stuff on their own so you might as well design it to make it easier for someone to talk them through stuff over the phone. The experts? They don't need graphics targeted at noobs. If there are graphics it should tell them something useful in a concise and deterministic manner.

Same goes for the much of the flashy window management stuff: The preview of thumbnailed windows in Win 7 and OS X might be nice if you have a few windows, but pretty much useless if you have > 20 windows open.

In my opinion if you only have a few windows open, you don't really need previews to tell you which windows are which ;). Where the UI makes the diff is in helping a user manage many tasks/windows.

An OS should help new users, but it should also have ways to augment users who bother to learn the shortcuts or are trained.

Analogy: any crappy OS can handle one or two processes. A good OS handles dozens or hundreds of processes well.

Example: Windows 7 allows you to switch among apps by pressing winkey+number. However it raises the first window of the relevant app, not the most recently used window. This is fine if you only have one window open per app. But doing MRU would help in both the "few windows" case and the many windows case.

FWIW, I wrote "LinkKey" to do stuff like link alt+number to arbitrary windows- which is nice if I need to work with more than two windows at the same time (for two windows - alt-tab works). For example, say I have to refer to one or two windows (reference docs) and then work with two other windows based on the reference docs.

I could do lots of clicking, but the GUI should help if it can. It's sad if "unix screen" beats a "modern" GUI in task management.

Re:Windows 7

[paganizer]

Do you hear the word "Snide" a lot, out of curiosity?

What is the purpose of Windows? to manage hardware resources, and provide common services for the efficient execution of applications.

If a User only used a word processor, then the ultimate OS for that person would be an OS that booted the system directly into that application. But we don't have a lot of people with just one application; I've got about 100 +/-, so i want my OS to:

A) not get in the way of running my applications, making it easy to locate the program and then initiate it. With just a few applications, one obvious way to do this would be to have icons on the screen corresponding to the applications (or even better, programmable keys on a keyboard). With more than a few you really can't do that, so you bring up the problem of locating the applications. The Traditional ways: 1) memorize the file names, then type them in the "RUN" bar/box/whatever. Works great, and has for decades, but there is no framework to help you remember, and you have to have a working memory. of course, operating systems have always included some method to search for the stuff on the system, but, once again, you have to have SOME memory for this to work. 2) have a menu that lists the applications, perhaps grouping them by type of application; this has been established as the most useful method by long practice, and is The Industry Standard.

B) Use a minimum of system resources, and pass along as many of those resources as possible to the direct control of the applications. This would mean that anything done to beautify the operating system is counterproductive, and that is really the whole point; if the OS wastes a clock cycle or a byte of resources on ANYTHING besides running the applications that the user wants to run, it is not efficient.

OK, back to the real world. we like hi res backgrounds, and fading transparent resource screens. The companies that make operating systems have their own agenda, so they build in backdoors, DRM schemes, and planned obsolescence.

Also, all users are different. one user wants an icon on his desktop for each application, and if there isn't enough space, they increase the res and use smaller icons. another wants to type in the name of the apps and launch them that way, and may never look at a menu. Another might have Voice Command integration, and go through the hassle of training her computer to recognize her voice so that she can literally ask for the application that she wants.

The majority of users are going to want what they have always had, which is a Start menu, with icons representing applications, usually organized into categories by type. the girl with voice command will find this boring, the guy who wants to type in applications will find this old fashioned, and the guy working on the direct neural interface will find all this hopelessly obsolescent.

I would be running Windows 2000 if there were drivers to support my motherboard available, because it uses the least system resources. Since thee are no drivers, I use XP, because it uses less resources than other available Windows operating systems, and provides a simple interface to launch my applications, meeting the criteria for being the Most Efficient Operating System for my purposes.

If someone wants to run another Operating System, fine. But singing the praises of DRM, or justifying resource bloat, or bragging about the way your desktop transitions between screens, or criticizing people for using a menu system, etc, is just...annoying? yeah, I think that is the best word.

Re:Windows 7

[Zorpheus]

What I do not like about the Windows 7 start menu is that you have to scroll through it whenever you are searching for one of the not-so-often used programs. I can easily find the program I need in the large, alphabetical list of the Windows XP "All Programs" menu. Having to type a few letters in Windows 7 to reduce the list is just a delay. If you do not pin lots of programs to the start menu, the "All Programs" menu will be showed in such a small box that it is unusable. You have no other choice than looking for the alternative solutions.
The task bar also existed in Windows XP, and pinning programs to the start menu was as simple. The only improvement is the search box.

Re:Windows 7

[cyber-vandal]

XP is stable, it is familiar, it has people with yeas of experience of it, all the software businesses need works on it. I'm not saying that Windows 7 isn't better, but it's not that much better than XP for the average office worker who won't even be aware of a lot of the advantages. The question is why should an organisation with a lot of XP PCs go through the hassle and expense of upgrading to 7 when the majority of workers will notice very little difference and will probably suffer a short-term drop in productivity thanks to Microsoft changing things around.

Re:Windows 7

[cyber-vandal]

Lame and shortsighted? Here's the pitch to the people who have to pay for the upgrade:

"we need to buy 10,000 new PCs with Windows 7 because Microsoft and some nerds on Slashdot say so"

"but what we have works fine"

"but, but it looks prettier and it has bitlocker"

"get out of my office!"

it may look short-sighted to someone who hasn't ever worked in a large organisation, but upgrades are this lame and short-sighted word: "expensive" and shouldn't be done just because some anonymous dork who's never had a proper job says so. And for the record I'm typing this from Windows 7 so I'm well aware of how little it's actually improved my productivity, never mind some 50 year old audio typist who'll take months to get used to it.

Re:Windows 7

[thsths]

It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.

No, I think that is easy: a decent update system would be nice. One that does not have to scan all the files to figure out what is installed, but one that uses a database, like any other package system I know. And it should include support for third party applications. There, that should be enough to market Windows 6.2 as Windows 8.

Re:Windows 7

[cyber-vandal]

Give me some examples of what would improve worker productivity so drastically as to justify the expense of upgrading of several thousand workstations.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Memory limitations. (Sure there's 64-bit XP, but it's not that common. And it also has some driver issues like Vista.)

The upgrade makes sense if you're dealing with computers with more than 4GB of RAM or drives dealing with more than 2TB. So if you're doing a lot of video editing, 3D rendering work, working with huge HD-res massive megapixel images, or crunching huge sets of data and numbers, upgrading to Windows 7 might not be that bad of an idea. Being able to throw more RAM at a problem often is a good thing.

But if you're just running a typical POS machine, or doing typical office work involving word or data processing - you not only could get by with XP, but even Win95 or 98 may be able to satisfy your needs. (Although I'd say to keep the older OSs away from the internet because of lack of anti-virus support.) Moving to one flavor of Linux or another might also be wise and save a lot of money if you have a lot of rather simple terminals.

Re:Windows 7

[metrix007]

Just a few questions, coming froma Win 7 user.

How is pinning any different than having links in the Quicklaunch? Yes, it is a bit but the principle is the same.

I also note you didnt mention explorer, which has actually removed functionality. I have to go to the properties of a folder to see the size now, as it is not in the status bar. Lame. Why do you consider it better?

Re:Windows 7

[Jeremy Visser]

[citation needed]

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

And absolutely NONE of what you wrote here had anything to do with what I wrote. You cited specific complaints about Win 7. I gave you factual information that your complaints are merely that you do not know how to use it's features and that if you did, you would no longer have these complaints.

You seem like one of those people who's utterly terrified of any change what so ever. Seems odd to find someone like that on Slashdot, but it takes all kinds, eh?

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

Sorry, just realized that you didn't write that post. Still, the point remains that you seem terrified of change, regardless of if it's change for the better.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

-> "The reasons that we are is for 64 bit and ability to use more RAM."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition

-> "We're also in the medical imaging sector so both of those means that our programs can handle more images a lot faster."

You do know that XP doesn't waste time trying to render windows with transparencies or other bullshit, right?

-> "Also, it's getting to be a pain to support some newer hardware in WinXP as the base install disk doesn't have the drivers needed to boot some of it. Some companies simply aren't supplying drivers for their hardware for WinXP at all so backing down the OS is not really an option."

Ok, this is an actual pragmatic reason why it makes sense to upgrade (like the "I need security updates" reason), but the issue is that you failed to address what was asked: "I'm still having a hard time understanding what technologies exist in 7 that don't in XP AND are something I ( or a business would need )."

The truth is (at least in your case, specifically) there doesn't seem to be any new relevant technologies in Vista/7 that you would really need (since there are 64-bit versions of Windows XP); like it has been stated before, you feel the need to upgrade because of the forced obsolescence imposed by Microsoft (by not supplying any more security updates) and the hardware manufacturers (by failing to provide working drivers for XP for new hardware).

Again, you could prove me wrong by pointing to a feature in Vista/7 that would actually be required by/useful to you (one that doesn't already exist in XP, mkay?).

Re:Windows 7

[pinkushun]

Is that like getting a root canal, before having an extraction done on the same tooth? Ouch.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 is a Vista upgrade, just that it isn't provided for free. WinXP is all you ever wanted.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista wasn't bad? Any OS which takes 10 or more seconds to open folders is nothing more than a polished turd.

Vista was, is and will always be utter crap.
Worst OS ever IMO.

Re:Windows 7

[orange47]

windows explorer? I use that thing only to start total commander setup (which, btw, has its own 'start menu', try changing the bar)

Re:Windows 7

[dremon]

1. BIOS INT13H extensions allow for 48-bit LBA addressing so there is no problem in accessing large hard drives from the real mode.

2. GRUB loader boots from GPT disks just fine; one additional small GPT partition is required for that (BIOS Boot Partition) where the second-stage loader is embedded. It doesn't have to be in the first 2TB address space.

So it is either an oversight or ignorance.

Re:Windows 7

[marcosdumay]

They'll surely fix those problems on the next iterations, making the search more sensitive to context. Also, they'll probably want to add a central repository of stuff to launch even without context, so you can work faster... After that, they'll probably add a few builtin constructions to help you launch similar programs, and, if they are feeling inventive, a way to let one program communicate with the other (Microsoft being Microsoft, that will be a binary communication, maybe based on object message passing).

Then, they'll see the need of making the search box taller (may I sugest 25x80?), so that you can see the last searches, and if they are feeling a lot inventive, they'll create a way to let programs interact with you directly on the search area, without needing some other area elsewhere on the GUI, that will make simpler programs much more friendly. Maybe, someday somebody may even port a text editor to that interface...

Re:Windows 7

[Rockoon]

Its in a category all its own, because the author has written the best program on earth.

All kidding aside, the categories in ubuntu drive me nuts too. Its a rare program that would fit into a single category.

Take something like R.. its a statistics/math package.. its a graphing package.. its a programming language.. etc..

Re:Windows 7

[carcomp]

Thats a good point. It took awhile for me to start using it, but that search bar in the start button can be amazing at times. For instance, when I am at a friends house and need to remote into another pc, i just type "remote" and the RDC thing pops up. Beats searching through a bunch of menus. Speed seems on par with XP. I have found that some applications don't work correctly in vista (and its usually when i'm trying to do something odd like install strange extensions into outdated versions of dreamweaver to support a proprietary thing we use at work). I can easily use XP mode here to get things going right away. (Why this isn't in Win7 Home Prem is beyond me though). Also, as for driver support, someone mentioned that devices may not work on Windows7. For a business, this is valid, but for most home users, well, anyone with devices that won't work on Win7 really should go and get some new devices. Another point, usually the devices that don't work are oddball things like webcams that are not used too often. IMO.

Re:Windows 7

[PopeRatzo]

Saw your username. Are you by any chance from a big city in Southern Ontario?

Nope. Chicago born and bred.

Re:Windows 7

[Rockoon]

GDI was most certainly hardware accelerated in XP, if the driver so chose to do it (nVidia and ATI certainly did.) Since just about everything XP itself renders is GDI (that includes explorer) then thats accelerated too.

Only a few GDI functions were done in software with a modern GPU, and Alpha blending was one of them but that was because behind the scenes that function was actually GDI+ (it was introduced into GDI at the same time as GDI+ was released)

GDI+ was not hardware accelerated *at all* on XP (no driver hooks!), which is why many applications these days render so damn slowly on XP.

In windows 7 (and maybe Vista?), as long as your GPU has DX9 drivers that do full hardware acceleration, GDI and GDI+ are completely hardware accelerated (manufacturers dont have to do GDI-specific drivers now.. just DirectX drivers)

Re:Windows 7

[cheekyjohnson]

"You have unused icons on your desktop!"

"You need to reboot to apply updates!"

Doesn't happen to me. I turned them off.

Clearly you've not used it, or spent any time comparing the two.

No, I just didn't see anything noteworthy (by my standards).

Everything I said was noteworthy and real.

Well, not to me. I'm sure it's a good operating system, but I have no need to upgrade for such small things.

support for SSDs

I'm pretty sure you can get SSDs to work with XP, right?

better and easier to use UI

I don't have any problems with XP.

so your claim that XP is as good or at least good enough to not warrent upgrading, is just ridiculous and laughable.

It isn't ridiculous. It's my opinion. The improvements and features you listed, while good, are not noteworthy enough for me to upgrade.

Re:Windows 7

[Rockoon]

And its very solid.

The latest Steam Survey has 64-bit Windows 7 as the #1 installed OS at 35.09%, with 32-bit XP second at 24.64%

All told, 64-bit Windows OS's on the survey are now totaling 46.41%, with another ~4.5% going to 64-bit OS/X's.

So nearly half of gamers are now using 64-bit OS's, this is in spite of the fact that very very few games actually come with 64-bit binaries.

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

Secondly, you don't NEED to search - hit windows then type what you want in the search bar and it's RIGHT THERE.

How is that not having to search for something? You even called it a search bar...

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

You completely missed one of his main points. Different people use their PC in different ways. If I wanted to type in a command to run my apps, I'd have a command line window glued in the middle of my screen.

As far as libraries, it's not about mis-information. I have a folder on my machine that contains all my media that I care to listen to on that machine. I do not have network drives, I do not need network drives, and I don't have my files all spread out in every third folder that I downloaded them to at one time. I keep my folders organized and keep everything within three to four clicks.

That's how I use my PC and frankly, I find the argument: "Learn the new way, it's better than the old!" a bit tiresome. It's also usually spoken in a condescending manner. Especially from people like you (I'm feeling) who can't understand that people have preferences and we are not cookie cutter versions of you.

Re:Windows 7

[Metroid72]

- DirectAccess Client (always-on corporate connectivity with manageability)
- App-V (application to application compatibility virtualization solution)
- MED-V (OS to application compatibility virtualization solution)

Re:Windows 7

[n1ckml007]

Did you ever try to use wifi in Vista after the computer was in sleep mode? Also UAC was really obtuse.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

You're asking the impossible. Not because the features don't exist, but because it's impossible to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. When given a list of useful new features you reject them out of hand. We-don't-use-them-now-so-they-can't-possibly-be-useful.

Moreover, the features don't have to justify the expense. Most of the capital expense has already been spent. (I'm guessing you've been buying Win 7 PCs with downgrade rights.)

Most of the rest of the expense will be because IT needs a lot of hours to do the upgrade; however, IT is the department that will benefit the most from the new features that ordinary office workers don't need. The new management features will save significant time over the next few years. The new security enhancements will help prevent the catastrophes that suck up a lot of IT's time. Even something as minor as the upgraded taskbar becomes a time saver once you've become used to it.

In the end, you don't have to convince your boss (or yourself) with a list of features. You convince your boss by pointing out that security updates are ending in 3 years. (Unless you're looking into Linux or Mac. In which case the question you need to ask yourself isn't "what's new in Win 7" but rather "what's in Windows".)

Re:Windows 7

[coerciblegerm]

Secondly, you don't NEED to search - hit windows then type what you want in the search bar and it's RIGHT THERE

That, by your own admission, would be searching.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

It is funny how you prise the NT 6.1 but you give bad critic for NT 6.0 and NT 5.1/5.2.

Microsoft does not need to touch the NT operating system in next Windows. All what they need to do is to reinvent the desktop and application GUI's (like Internet Explorer 9) and they get totally different look and use. People will hate it first, as the first version will be terrible. But soon people learn the terrible GUI and they start to prise it. like they did with MS Office 2007 Ribbon, what still is terrible in usability point of view.

The operating system has "nothing" to do with the computer use from the point of the normal user.
Of course the device drivers (what belongs to the OS) were the cause for many problems with Windows Vista because MS changed the NT operating system ABI/API with the 5.x series and many (most?) old drivers became broken or non-working.

But it was not the problem what people actually suffered (drivers). As the biggest problem was that the Windows Vista was terrible slow. The NT operating system was so huge that it demanded over 512 RAM, few gigabytes disk space and included almost everything from internet explorer to desktop.

So began the project MinWin, where OS developers cut all the depencies from NT operating system to upper levels. The IE integration was removed and IE became separated from the NT operating system. Same was done with the desktop and most all other software as well.

And now with after Project MinWin was done, we can enjoy its products in Windows 7. NT takes anymore few megabytes of disk space and about 40Mb of RAM. Demands only Pentium 2 computer.

But that is still far away from what Linux OS demands. As it demands has not changed since its born at 1991. It still demands just Pentium 386, 4-8Mb of RAM and few megabytes of disk space. The OS is still fast and light as it were at those days (when compared to that day other OS's). Of course you need to get the correct version of the Linux for that, but it still is Linux. But when you throw a full blown software system with Linux OS. Heck, then you really need hardware power if you want Ubuntu or other similar slow software system what is distributed for high-end and medium-end computers.
If you take a other smarter and faster distribution than Ubuntu, Mandriva, OpenSUSE and so on. Like Arch Linux. You get old P3 computers fly with 512+ RAM with newest KDE SC and GNOME where Windows 7 would still be slow.

It is not about operating system, it is about software systems and it is about what system programs, system services, graphical user interfaces and application programs you have installed and in use.

 

Re:Windows 7

[coerciblegerm]

So you want to go back to a less easy to use file browser and lose the amazing search bar from Win 7? You're probably one of those people who throws a fit if you use a new keyboard with some of the keys (say volume control) in a different location.

Try actually using Win 7 for a couple of days - you'll never want to go back.

Don't be so condescending. YOU might like it better, but that doesn't mean it is objectively better or easier for everyone. No one is trying to force their computing preferences on you, but you seem to be doing so to others. I'm using Windows 7. I don't hate it, but I'm not amazed by it. I don't fear change, but I do question change that impedes the way I prefer to use MY computer. Frankly, if you're touting the search bar as one of the major features of the operating system, you're fighting a strange battle.

Re:Windows 7

[Fri13]

Basicly you just told why Mac OS X, KDE (3.x seris), Plasma Desktop (KDE SC), GNOME and so on have been more productive since the start.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

I use ReadyBoost with spare USB drives. It actually helps a lot on older machines that have reached the hardware's limitation for RAM.

The same effect can roughly be achieved in XP by moving the pagefile to flash storage, but removing the flash device is not as "clean" in this use case.

Re:Windows 7

[I8TheWorm]

You're right except I'll disagree with Vista's shortcomings. The lack of ability to fine tune UAC meant most people simply turned it off and the DRM scheme baked in was terrible in many ways.

However, the complaints about speed of file copy were based on perception... Vista actually was faster, but didn't hide some of the operation from the end user like XP and before, so users felt like it was taking longer.

Windows 7 is very nice, and easily the best OS Microsoft has made to date. _Obligatory Ubuntu comment here_ it hasn't replaced what I prefer to use, but has certainly made working in the enterprises I tend to much nicer.

Re:Windows 7

[ydrol]

If on XP , install http://executor.dk/ , a good Menu app.
In settings , set 'Hot Key also Hides...' for expected hotkey behaviour..

Re:Windows 7

[ydrol]

A friends laptop (running Vista) had a spare D: partition filling up with Windows updates. No prob - I'll just delete them.
Nope:
Disk Cleanup - Still there
No permission to delete:
Administrator rights - check.
Take Ownership (recursive) - check.
Change ACLS to full control - check.
Tried GUI
Tried DOS - 'takeown' and 'acls'
Google'it - check.

I got a few deleted via the GUI, but just wasn't concentrating as much as I should have been :)

30 minutes later - I just gave up - it was meant to be a social call not a hacking session!
May try via Team Viewer at some point - I hate sitting a other peoples computers when I'm not at home!

Re:Windows 7

[I8TheWorm]

• Driver install/update is much cleaner in Win 7
• Media center and even just WMP allow for many more features
• Aero peek
• The searh programs and files found in the start menu allowing for finding installed apps you're familiar with much faster than tree navigation
• multitouch (touchscreen) support
• more scalability in RAM and processor cores
• slimmed down footprint
• Backup actually works, and works well
• baked in support for a second monitor
• wireless networking is much more seamless
• Aero snaps (I don't actually use this one, but some folks apparently like it
• bit locker
• blue-ray support
• direct access (reduces the need for VPN clients... I stopped using both the Cisco VPN client and the ISA PPTP client because of it)
• Homegroup > workgroup
• Libraries
• Readyboost
• VHD support
• Powershell ISE
• performance improvements

Re:Windows 7

[operagost]

The max for 32-bit Windows XP isn't 3 GB: it's 4 GB. MS did needlessly hamstring it by disabling the use of PAE to move drivers into the >4 GB area. However, the result varies depending on the installing hardware to between 2.75 and 4 GB of available RAM; therefore, your claim is inaccurate.

Re:Windows 7

[ShakaUVM]

Amen, brother. I want the same keypresses to do the same thing every time. Especially for something as simple as the things we're talking about here.

There is a registry setting to have Win7 switch to the MRU window instead of an arbitrary one (
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16334/make-the-taskbar-buttons-switch-to-the-last-active-window-in-windows-7/ ) which means that the geniuses at Microsoft actually considered doing it the right way and rejected it for their bling and flash or whatever justification they had.

Microsoft, I don't want transparent glass aero crap. I want an OS shell that lets me get my work done with the minimal amount of interference from the UI. After you got that down, *then* you can go ahead and add the worthless eye candy in.

Re:Windows 7

[operagost]

- Printers folder made needlessly complex for things like merely viewing the pending jobs. Instead of simply updating the entire view, they hid the 15-year-old-design queue window in a link that takes three clicks to get to.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

My take on it.

1) Launching very common apps via the taskbar. XP - quick launch toolbar to launch, taskbar to switch. Win7 - Right click to launch and take me where i want to go, left click to switch. Victor: I can go from 0 to slashdot in two clicks, or open my time sheet in open office. With xp you're stuck hitting the quick launch, then selecting the app, waiting for it to load the home page or a blank doc, then unloading that page/doc and loading what you actually want.

2) Launching common apps via the start menu. XP: Click start, click programs, look at the two column menu (we're using common case, not power user here). Win7 Click, 99% of the time what you want is in front of you, if you're looking for your 3 year old photo editing app you click all programs and it's the exact same structure as the XP menu except you can't use keyboard shortcuts (common users don't use those). Victor Win7

3) Switching tasks via alt-tabbing. XP - hit alt-tab. Win7 - hit alt-tab or Win-tab. Win7 allows previewing the windows before switching to them, instead of relying only on name. Victor: Win7

4) Switching tasks via toolbar. XP vs Win7 when you're running a couple apps is a wash. For power users running tons of apps at once Win7 has a much better organizational structure. Your common tasks are always on the same place on the task bar so you don't have to read the whole task bar to find what you're looking for. Sure it might take two clicks if you're running multiple instances of an app, but you always know where they both are, while if you were doing the same in xp you'd have to blindly click on an icon. Victor 7.

5) Launching uncommon apps. Win7. 100% Search actually works in Win7. If it's not in search it's under all programs. All programs is the standard XP start menu. So what if you had a workshop where some computers had their sound recorder deleted from their start menu. Same thing can happen in XP.

6) Saving a file to the desktop. XP - hit the giant bloody "Desktop" button right there. Win7 - Hit the smaller desktop link right there. Victor Win7 for encouraging users to save things in places that make sense instead of piling thousands of icons on their desktops.

7) Navigate up to the desktop from a folder on the desktop. XP - hit the giant bloody "up arrow", or the backspace key. Done. Now you can operate with the files on your directory easily. Win7 - Hit the desktop link discussed in 6. Victor XP because it's still more intuitive.

Once the common user gets used to symlinks (or whatever win7 calls them) win7 will be 100% better.

Re:Windows 7

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Improved stability/up-time.

Desktop/UI enhancements that reduce time mucking about with windows.

Faster searching.

64-bit from day one, appropriate driver availability is much higher.

Better 3d graphical support, possibly why stability is much higher. Less time rebooting, less 'glitches' affecting productivity. (This would have a huge impact where I work.)

Multiply all these little things together by the number of people and you get a factor of how many man-hours it equals. If it's higher than the upgrade cost, you've profited. Where I work it'd be huge, but we're in mid-project right now.

Re:Windows 7

[Malc]

I use task manager. Graphs are better than flashing lights. I don't really want an extra line of nearly icons in my systray that I have to put the mouse over to remember which is which.

Re:Windows 7

[geekoid]

how much RAM would you like to access?
How about running the new Office tools so you can get bigger spreadsheets and substantially better collaboration?
How about better security by design?
Better stability?
How about needing to have what vendors going to?

It may not have anything new YOU need, but for the vast business and home users, there are needed features and uses.

Re:Windows 7

[geekoid]

A) you can ahve the XP disk in the srive instead of an install

B) IT's not an upgrade, it's a clean install. It only checks to see if XP is around becasue you get a discount for the purchase. After that, it's a fresh install.

Re:Windows 7

[geekoid]

Don't blame Open Offices crap on win7. They shouldn't be over riding a default windows program naming.

I have several .cmd files, and have never seen anything but the default Dos box when I type cmd.

Acceleration is brought to the GUI because people lie pretty color, and active GUIs. The general population, not you, obviously. So, you know, turn it off.

Re:Windows 7

[magarity]

It's hard to think how Microsoft can make the next Windows better from Windows 7.

No, it's very easy: object oriented UI, dammit! If I need to drag a folder containing a program to another subfolder or drive, then the shortcut link on the desktop should follow it! And that shortcut itself should have the properties of the thing to which it shortcuts! And the program should still run after it moves! Which brings me to my next "easy to make Windows better" item: DITCH THE $%#^ing REGISTRY!

Re:Windows 7

[Risen888]

For example, I almost never use the "All programs" menu any more. No need. Everything I want or need is either on the task bar (pinned there) or on the start menu (pinned there or in the 'recently used' section), or available with just a few keystrokes typed in the search box.

Congratulations, Microsoft. You've almost caught up with the free desktop of 2006. lol.

Re:Windows 7

[geekoid]

You're an idiot.

While we know you're nor using 1000 apps at once, so your a liar; however if you had the memory to do that, win7 can do it.

Yeah, MS is doing away with there legacy cruft. this is a GOOD thing.

Lets see you run a 20 year old Mac app on OSX.

If' you are getting less work done that is your fault. plain and simple. You haven't taken the time to learn the tool, or whats available for legacy apps. The reason I know this is because Win 7 CAN run ALL those programs you list. MS has a tool available on their website for doing just that.

But you don't care about that, you just want to have problems so you can bitch.

I'm not sure about your facebook comment, since their value keeps going UP. It's one of the largest online site for eyeballs, and makes about a billion a year in revenue, if not more.

Your hate, it clouds your mind.

Re:Windows 7

[stewbacca]

System wide search that works well and the task bar improvements are worth the price of admission.

Re:Windows 7

[stewbacca]

How is Search more confusing now? You click the magnifying glass and type what you are looking for.

Re:Windows 7

[geekoid]

"Grr, slashcode ate a paragraph."

It's a poor workman that blames his tools. The rest of you post proves that point.

pretty much everything you mention can be done in win 7, easier.

One example, point 7. Simple click on the bread crumb and you're there. Not sure why this is hard for you.

I hot key around win7 far easier then I ever did in XP.
I'm so good, the entire post only took 4 keystrokes~

Re:Windows 7

[stewbacca]

I haven't seen comparable features in any other operating system except OSX.

That's the problem. Win7 is reaching levels of refinement close to OSX, which is unfamiliar territory for most of us geeks.

Re:Windows 7

[TheLink]

That reminds me- check out the new task scheduler UI. Microsoft's UI bunch seem to have lost their way.

There must be a better way... As the (perl?) saying goes: "easy things easy, hard things possible".

So they should make "popular/common tasks easy and advanced stuff possible".

Re:Windows 7

[TheLink]

Thanks for the tip! Wonder if it'll work with my Win 7 setup - currently I ungroup all the windows, so that I only need to "one click" directly on the task button I want.

Imagine what a concert pianist will think if the piano keyboard did "key personalization". Or grouped keys together so you have to hover over a key first for a few hundred milliseconds to be able to press the key you want ;).

Sadly from what I see the GNOME and KDE bunch aren't better. OS X's Expose isn't for me either (have a Macbook on my work desktop, and I mostly use it via ssh ;) ) - unnecessary steps just to get to the window I want.

So much of what UI designers are doing nowadays seem to be like the fancy cutscenes in games. The ones that look cool the first few times, but after that gamers want to skip to get to the "real stuff" ASAP. If those idiots designed guns, there'll be some unnecessary fancy animation and sound after you pull the trigger, before the gun actually fires. In games those fancy animations are often "handicaps" for game balance - they're not an advantage :).

Re:Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

Or you could just use the search bar and find whatever you are looking for instantly.

Re:Windows 7

[KingMotley]

Let me guess? OCZ SSD? Sorry, but OCZ SSD's have a bug that causes problems with AHCI. Faulty hardware, please contact OCZ for possible remedies.

If all Win7 is steam for you, then you don't need to do folder searching. If you want searching turn on the indexer, or don't. Or drop to the command line like in linux

Re:Windows 7

[Dystopian Rebel]

Ok, thanks, just wanted to check. By the name, you might have been someone from my tribe.

Re:Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

I bought it to support my >4G RAM on my latest gaming PC build, and sure... TRIM support, but I can't even tell if it's working as I couldn't get Windows 7 to install unless I used my SSD on my RAID controller and it definitely didn't see my drive when I put it on AHCI.

Honestly that sounds like a driver/bios configuration issue. I've seen others describe the problem, but it was generally the BIOS not showing the SSD if RAID was enabled. If your configuration is such that the drive is not visible on boot, there is no way you'll get it to boot to the SSD. Most people were able to fix problems that actually had to do with Windows with the Windows repair disk. Running an SSD boot with a Raid 0 data array is a fairly advanced setup, and it's easy to screw it up between the bios, raid drivers, and OS config.

I do like the pinning so I can keep whatever game of the week is on my list, but I rarely use the search at the top of the window so I disabled it and now I can't even do a simple folder search without turning back on the indexer which I do not want!

So... you disabled the search and are now complaining that you can't search? I'm not even going to respond to that. It's just too blatantly obvious.

Another thing I can't stand is being told my windows is not legal in about 50 different places. I've registered my copy... go the hell away Microsoft. Funny thing is, it's fine after reboot, and a few hours of gaming later I return to my desktop and the little warning shows up in the corner.

Did you install to a blank drive from an upgrade disk? That's technically illegal, and Microsoft does not appreciate it and they will tell you so. The only upgrade path for XP to 7 is via Vista. The upgrade disks are meant to upgrade from Vista to 7, so if you did not do that you have violated the EULA, and thus your copy of Windows is not legitimate. You get a deep discount for upgrading from the most recent version. You should not expect to get that discount for "upgrading" an ancient OS.

Pretty much all of the problems you describe seem to have been caused by you yourself. It's the old PEBKAC problem, you know?

Re:Windows 7

[KingMotley]

I believe the key word there is "you". You don't need to search, the computer does need to search however.

Re:Windows 7

[Skuld-Chan]

A lot of the features that come out of the box with 7 you can bolt on with XP. Good example of one of these an enterprise would use is GPO preferences. XP doesn't support it, but can with a client installed.

Desktop search is another one - click the start button (or hit the windows key) start typing - XP doesn't have that, but you can get MSN/Google desktop search as an addon.

DWM/Aero - not really necessary but things like Aero-peek are pretty cool for productivity sometimes.

64 bit support - yes there is XP-64, but Vista/Windows 7 really cemented Windows x64 as a supported platform you can actually use at home or business. XP-64 suffered from massive compatibility and driver availability issues. If you have over 3 gigs of ram you really do need to run a 64 bit OS.

Windows 7 window management in general AKA Aero Snap - Windows key left right up and down on a window - moves it all over the desktop. Its very ... Mac like (Mac doesn't have this feature actually). XP doesn't have this and I'm not sure there is a way to hack it on. Another thing Aero snap does is automatically maximize windows or snap them into the left or right of the screen when you drag the window to the edge.

So a lot of this stuff is a case of deploy and test time for a business. You can build an image for XP that has a lot of the features Windows 7 does, but it will take more time to test since many are 3rd party.

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

I bought a full version and installed it to the SSD then registered it. I still get popups that it's not legal even though I've activated it three times. The last one was a call to Microsoft while the first were Internet activations.

I disabled the search because I didn't want the search at the top of the window and the file indexing going on all the time and with that disabled, you can't search at all. There's no fallback to a generic folder by folder search (like XP search...)

Re:Windows 7

[Skuld-Chan]

Should also add that SP1 added support for SATA drives bigger than 130 gigs (or something) and USB-2.0.

Yes the original XP doesn't support a good chunk of those USB 2 controllers installed in most modern machines.

Re:Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

Otherwise go ahead install your win 7 on a 6085, 8080, or Z80. You see how stupid this argument is.

Try installing Ubuntu on any of those and let me know how that works for you.

Your arguments are asinine.

Of course you aren't going to like Windows 7 if you disable all its features in order to use your own custom systems. You need that kind of crap when you are running Linux, but honestly, the smart thing to do in 7 is just turn search indexing back on (and turn it on for the whole drive, it defaults to just documents and the OS folder, which I think is dumb).

The search indexer sits idle (i.e. not using any CPU cycles and virtually no RAM at all) until something changes on your hard drive. Starting from scratch it might spend up to a couple hours indexing everything, but after that only unused CPU cycles are allocated to the search indexer. Unless you spend all your time moving thousands of files search indexer will never slow your performance, ever.

Honestly, I don't understand your aversion to actually using your computer as intended. CPU cycles regularly go unused, why do you have a problem with allocating such unused cycles to a search indexer that will find all of your files in a few key presses?

Also don't be fooled by the RAM usage in system resources. 7 is much more proactive about memory than XP was - so it will leave a lot of things allocated even if they are not in use. If more memory is actively needed by a program than is unallocated, re-allocating from processes that aren't actively using RAM is basically free (it takes only a handful of CPU cycles - microseconds or less, which if you are physically capable of noticing you are inhumanly perceptive).

The result of this is that old hands that knew how to get the most out of XP and previous versions of Windows get freaked out by memory that appears to be running out of space. It isn't. Leave it alone. The OS is a lot smarter than you are about memory management, so if your hard drive starts thrashing it means you've really run out of ram for what you are trying to do, not that your ram is being used inefficiently. Attempting to tweak it yourself will almost certainly make things worse.

Even halting processes isn't going to help you any. Unless it is actually using CPU cycles (which you can verify with system monitor quite easily) it isn't slowing anything down, and even though it appears to taking up a chunk of ram, it really isn't.

It used to be you could do a better job of this stuff on your own, but that's not true any more. Taking 6 months to build a database out of your file system even though you can find things faster and easier with Search after just a few hours seems like an incredibly ignorant waste of time.

But you can use your machine as you like, obviously. But if you are going to criticize Windows 7 you should at least use it as it is intended.

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

I don't usually have to "manually" search anyway... I know where I put my files, but occasionally I install a program and they install a file to either the install path or they put it in the profiles folder. Sometimes it's easier to do a simple search of the profiles to see if it's in there (all users/my profile) and I don't need/want indexing and search building enabled all the time.

There are a few odd times when I search the whole system, but the occurrences of that are once (maybe twice) at year at most.

To tell you the truth, my biggest complaint is that the search/address bar at the top of the windows is not easily customizable/movable as it was in XP. It feels like a step backward. I'd prefer if I had one bar at the top of my windows and that's not possible without removing features I find handy (the file menu for one...) I previously posted a shot of my explorer in XP with the File menu, back/forward buttons and the address bar all on one line and it works GREAT for me. I no longer have it, don't feel like making another to post and I can't seem to find that link again, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Re:Windows 7

[Skuld-Chan]

Why are so many Linux/Mac people so incredibly ignorant when it comes to Windows?

It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware or virtual machines

Really? I deployed Windows 7 to over 300 Dell Optiplex 520's with 2 gigs of ram - thats a 5-6 year old machine and it runs just fine. Even supports Aero with the integrated video display. On virtualization - you may have me there, but I doubt it. Typically I wouldn't recommend booting Windows 7 on a VM with less than 1 gig of ram at a bare minimum.

Every time you deploy an image you have to manually re-register the thing with Microsoft so it doesn't disable itself

Wow - ever hear of waik (the windows imaging toolkit?) or volume licensing?

Still no decent backup system

Like the built in Windows Backup? Last time I used it - it did actually allow me to restore an entire machine from an image it made and it worked. For enterprises there are tons of of options to backup Windows - like SCCM.

XP Mode is buggy and compatibility in general is bad (especially in the 64-bit versions)

Really? I've only had to use it once, but I got it to run an old Windows 3.1 app just fine and the customer (staff at a community college) was happy with the results.

Still no EXT3/EXT4 (or any Unix-type), Large FAT or GPT support

Uh... yeah there is > http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/gpt_faq.mspx

Limit of 2 physical processors? Really? It's easy to get 4 processors in a box these days with 8 cores each especially in the academic world

Really? http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee52/skuldchan42/hwmonitor.png - screenshot from my old skulltrail machine - thats 8 PHYSICAL cpu's running Windows 7.

Full Disk Encryption requires TPM chips which are missing in just about any system these days so you still have to go into a 3rd party solution.

Again - not quite. You can use full disk encryption with regular user authentication. But seriously - the only machines that don't support TPM are pretty ancient - like Pre-Celeron 1 GHz cpu...

You still have to download a virus scanner, there is none built-in nor is the OS self-contained enough to be used without one.

The only accurate statement in your entire post, but then - does OSX or Linux come with a virus scanner? And please don't say they don't need one because there aren't any OSX or Linux viruses/rootkits.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because the 4GB flash thanks to Readyboost turns any HDD into a hybrid and uses the 4GB for random reads, which are of course much faster than any spinning disc.

I'll assume for flash you're talking about SATA or PCIe SSDs (or maybe USB3 flash drives?). Or you're talking about spinning disks that are older, or extremely low-end.

If we're talking USB 2.0, the maximum you can get is 480 Mbps per controller (and you never really get that full speed on any one device). That works out to 60 MBps. I'm not sure what the last spinning disk you used was, but I can write to my WD Black Caviar at around 100 MBps and read from it even faster. My spinning disk is significantly faster than the theoretical maximum that any USB 2.0 flash-based storage device could ever hope to achieve.

SATA/PCIe-based flash storage, is, of course, much faster than any spinning disk (150-250 MBps and beyond).

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Replying to my own AC post here... whoops, my bad. I read hairyfeet's post 3 times and didn't see "random reads" until after I'd posted my reply. Please disregard, random reads certainly are going to be faster than a spinning disk (except maybe when you hit the drive's cache).

Sorry, don't mind me, carry on :)

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

As far as libraries, it's not about mis-information. I have a folder on my machine that contains all my media that I care to listen to on that machine. I do not have network drives, I do not need network drives, and I don't have my files all spread out in every third folder that I downloaded them to at one time. I keep my folders organized and keep everything within three to four clicks.

Yes, and due to your ignorance of libraries, you're using 3-4 clicks when you could do it in 1-2 clicks. Your files will be in the same location on your machine, the library just provides a way to link folders into one larger "folder" so if you have work documents in one folder and personal documents in another, you can click the documents library and see them all, yet still separated into "work" and "personal".

I find the stubbornness of people like you who refuse to even try something new that will likely make things better for you a sign of incompetence. You're like a person screaming that they don't need one of those new fangled automobiles, your horse and buggy works just fine.

I'm not telling you that you HAVE to use anything, I'm saying stop being a bigot and give it a damn chance before you dismiss it as crap. But that's up to you. I you want to make your life more difficult and refuse to try anything new because you're scared shitless of any sort of change, that's your own mental issue.

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

Woooosh. Instead of YOU having to click a thousand times through menus and folders to find something, you type part of a word and the COMPUTER searches it for you instantly. Seriously, WTF is up with all the people terrified of learning something new? Did you have these same panic attacks when XP came out? 2000? 98? 3.1? DOS? Technology changes and improves constantly - if you can't deal with that, then you shouldn't be using it.

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

I don't fear change, but I do question change that impedes the way I prefer to use MY computer.

That is exactly what I'm talking about. You've decided that X is the only option for you and you refuse to look at any new options presented. There's a huge difference between trying new options and saying "Nah, I still like X best" and this childish refusal of trying something new and giving it a chance.

Re:Windows 7

[ajlisows]

Wow. I'm not so sure I've seen a lunatic rant this solid on Slashdot for awhile.

Seriously? 3000 Applications? Assuming you spend a full eight hours actively using applications every day of the year that would put you at one hour per year per application. Doesn't seem like you could really be producing anything much either.

"Mah Jongg" for Windows v 1.0? Are you joking? Don't you have a better version of "Mah Jongg" amongst those 3000 applications? This is the big deal breaker you could come up with... Windows 7 won't run a game from 25 years ago....a game with thousands of clones out there for you to download?

I don't work with the Audio API but I have worked with VS 2010. I think VS 2008 feels a lot more responsive so you do have a point there.

As for the rest of your post....the only comment I have is that you seem to be a very disturbed individual.

Re:Windows 7

[grasshoppa]

- On a corporate desktop, 2g is about the max I've seen in larger businesses. 4g is fine for BUSINESS apps
- Most places are running OfficeXP/2003 for exactly the same reason we talking about here
- Xp can be as secure as 7 for all intents and purposes. My users are limited users and only have access to what they need access to. This process is no different under 7 than it is under xp.
- XP isn't any less stable than 7, that's a misconception perpetrated by admins that don't know what they are doing.
- This is the only valid point you made. This, plus the security patches are enough to upgrade in my book. But try convincing your average user of this fact, or worse, your average manager.

Good luck. ( and yes, "vast businesses" are still on XP and who are exactly who I'm talking about ).

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to try a non beta version of Vista. Most things in Vista open instantly thanks to SuperFetch, including folders. Vista and 7 are much more responsive and faster than XP when it comes to general usage and only a tiny bit slower when comparing 32-bit Vista/7 gaming performance to XP.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

Okay, seriously mods... how is parent a "troll"? All I did was cite my own experience and opinion. Sheesh.

I stand by everything I typed. It's 100% accurate for me. It most certainly wasn't any attempt to troll anyone.

Re:Windows 7

[SpryGuy]

I find the wireless management under Win7 to be vastly simpler and superior to XP. I'm not even sure what you're talking abou there. In Win7 it just works. It was always a pain in the ass with XP (so much so that every laptop seemed to ship with its own 'replacement' for XP's built in wireless networking features).

Re:Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

I can't see how that's better than typing "calc" and getting exactly what I'm looking for. I know I use it all the time and love it. A friend of mine actually just commented on how great it was a few days ago. How often does some neat feature of an OS come up in casual conversation? I know for me, the OS usually only comes up when I'm bitching about something.

And yes I've used Gnome. I lived on Ubuntu for about a year after I got royally pissed off at Vista, which came with my then-new laptop (it stopped recognizing my laptop keyboard 0.o). There was nothing in Gnome that I especially liked. Nothing I really hated, but it certainly wasn't any kind of improvement. I've always preferred XP's desktop to GNOME, and I prefer Windows 7's to XP's. I could have tried KDE, but I just never bothered. In fact the only things I really, really liked about Ubuntu were the compiz cube (I'm a sucker for eye-candy) and Synaptic.

Oh to have a Synaptic* for Windows! What a wonderful thing that would be! But on the other side of that, installing non-repository software in Ubuntu sucks monkey balls. That's why Synaptic exists at all. Windows doesn't have Synaptic because the chasm that Synaptic fills for Linux is just a pothole in Windows. It would be nice to have a browseable software clearing house for Windows, though.

* When I say "Synaptic" I'm including apt-get and the repositories it connects to. I know Synaptic is just the GUI front-end. The real point is centralized software repository and the ease of finding software, including updated versions of what you already have installed.

Re:Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

I have to use Lotus Notes et all at work.

It is, bar none, the worst office suite I have ever used.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

XP Mode is just Virtual PC; I've never seen a "compatibility issue", it's just XP in a VM, it has exactly as much compatibility as XP should. The only thing I've ever had to use it for is 16-bit applications for that matter, since 7's compatibility seems as fine as XP's.

Re:Windows 7

[ColdWetDog]

I have to use Lotus Notes et all at work.

It is, bar none, the worst office suite I have ever used.

It that was it's supposed to be? Never could figure it out myself. My condolences towards you and anyone else so afflicted....

Re:Windows 7

[ruemere]

Depends on the number of documents you have. I've reached several tens of thousands... so searching their content does not work for me.

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Windows 7

[ruemere]

Server != Workstation.

Quite a lot of additional work (at least according to the article).

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Windows 7

[toddestan]

That's nice, but you do realize that the vast majority of computers max out at around 3GB? The most I ever saw out of 32bit XP was 3.5GB, and even that computer ended up at the 3GB mark a couple of upgrades of other components later.

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

I did give it a chance, it doesn't matter, I still have the same number of clicks for all my media that would all still be in the same folder. Libraries would make no difference. I don't understand how you think putting my media folder in a library will somehow magically make it contain less folders that I personally went through and organized. I don't like having a single folder of a million media files to dig through. I don't understand how you don't see this in what I said. I have my own organization. It works and libraries do jack shit for me. Period. Call me all the names in the book that you like, it still won't make you more intelligent or make libraries any more appealing. I'll still have 3-4 clicks to open my Media/Sounds/Songs/Playlist or Library/Sounds/Songs/Playlist.

Re:Windows 7

[Totenglocke]

You can also create your own custom libraries as well - but you don't care about that. I bet you still use an original Pentium with 16 MB of ram because "I still have to use a keyboard and mouse, so it's the same number of clicks either way".

You do realize that the rest of us laugh as you sit there defiantly using something that's obsolete while the world passes you by, right?

Re:Windows 7

[nschubach]

Yep, I'm still rockin' my good old Pentium non-MMX 200MHz! It's a beaut!

None of them new fangled processors with their hyper-threadamajigs or any of that nonsense!

And people tell me the Linux community is full of asses...

Re:Windows 7

[grasshoppa]

Essentially, yes. If the worker themselves aren't interested in learning the new OS, then it's going to be a painful migration with little benefit to productivity ( but a boon to admins, granted ).

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfectly? Are you nuts? Consider the # of patches so far.

Win7 is a great upgrade from XP, but perfect, not by a longshot.

Re:Windows 7

[ShakaUVM]

>>pretty much everything you mention can be done in win 7, easier.
>>One example, point 7. Simple click on the bread crumb and you're there. Not sure why this is hard for you.

Lol, moron. Open a folder on your desktop. Look for the breadcrumb for the desktop. You'll be looking for a long time because it isn't there.

Re:Windows 7

[Lanteran]

hey look, I pissed off some windows 7 fanboys.

Re:Windows 7

[hairyfish]

Have you actually sat down and tried to use them as they're meant to be used?

I use my PC how I want to use it, not how Steve B wants me to. Win7 won't let me do that and somehow that is my fault? You have a strange idea of customer service in your world.

Re:Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Because HP, Dell, and Bill Gates want more money.

They don't want you to know that you can get an up to date, secure, fast operating system that will run on your old hardware.

For free.

Re:Windows 7

[cyber-vandal]

Improved stability/up-time.

It's been a while since I've seen an XP PC crash.

Desktop/UI enhancements that reduce time mucking about with windows.

Have you ever worked with non-technical people? They use hardly any of the features of XP, they're highly unlikely to use any of whatever enhancements you're referring to. I like mucking about with Windows but I'm yet to find anything on my Windows 7 install that would improve my productivity so much that it would save significant sums of money.

Faster searching.

Useful but not that much faster

64-bit from day one, appropriate driver availability is much higher.

Totally irrelevant to productivity and in any case for a lot of corporate users would require a hardware upgrade for no gain whatsoever.

Better 3d graphical support, possibly why stability is much higher. Less time rebooting, less 'glitches' affecting productivity. (This would have a huge impact where I work.)

I bet you don't work in an administrative department. That again is totally irrelevant to an accountant or a secretary.

There is no compelling reason for an organisation to go through all the expense and hassle of upgrading software and potentially hardware as well if what they have already works fine, especially since there's no guarantee that everything the business depends on will work on Windows 7 even with XP Mode.

Re:Windows 7

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's been a while since I've seen an XP PC crash.

Fair enough. I've noticed the suspend mode works way better, too. I didn't mention it before because I doubt you're talking about a wide deployment of laptops.

Have you ever worked with non-technical people?

Yes, and that's why I think 7'd be better for them. The feedback is more visual and the windows don't get 'stuck' anymore. I'll concede that I can't really tell you if your group of people will find that interesting or not, you know more about that than I do.

Useful but not that much faster

Really? Is indexing on?

I bet you don't work in an administrative department. That again is totally irrelevant to an accountant or a secretary.

Sure, if they just have a spreadsheet, email, and a web browser all day. It has been a while since I've worked at an office where anybody had a job that simple. If it's as simple as that I'm not sure why this conversation's even happening, really.

There is no compelling reason for an organisation to go through all the expense and hassle of upgrading software and potentially hardware as well if what they have already works fine....

"It's not worth the upgrade if it isn't worth the upgrade!" Right, we get that.

windows 7

[persaples]

What a HUGE improvement over VISTA. THAT was going to kill me with slowness, etc.

Chrome adverts

[Timmmm]

Google just (re)started a pretty big advertising campaign for chrome on the London underground.

Re:Chrome adverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes you wonder, why the hell would an advertising company spend millions (or billions?) on advertising a product which they don't sell or get any money from?!
Not to mention the amount of money going into developing and maintaining it. ... I believe it's because Google is the world's biggest privacy threat (far bigger than governments) and a stealth spyware corporate empire.

Re:Chrome adverts

[Leebert]

Because the browser with the largest market share uses Bing by default.

Re:Chrome adverts

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed at your comment.

Bing has been such a crippling force on Google's search share market that it's got them shaking in their boots and spending millions on browser development force and marketing? ... really?

Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[cyber-vandal]

With the continuing use of XP we'll still be supporting IE6, 7 and 8 for the forseeable future, given that IE9 won't run on XP.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[blind biker]

JChrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera run on Windows XP very nicely. IE 9 could run on Windows XP just as nicely, actually, but MS decided to make an artificial impediment.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[zaivala]

This is only a problem for people using IE, yes? Grow up and use a real browser.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[abigor]

This is only a problem for people using IE, yes?

Yes, in other words the great majority of people who visit websites.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[aztracker1]

I don't think it's so artificial, because of the acceleration enhancements, and the updates to the underlying graphics system from Vista/win7

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Ogive17]

My fiancee has a 6 year old macbook. About 2 years ago a few websites stopped working for her, then a few more, until just about everything didn't work as intended. The OS could not run the latest browsers, including Safari. Only thing that would fix the problem was upgrading to the latest Apple OS... after enough complaints to the manager at the apple store (which I did in a loud manner, on the floor, where it was crowded) I get a free upgrade.

So it seems to me Apple is already doing this sort of thing.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Shimmer]

What exactly was the nature of your complaint? "I want a free OS upgrade and you're not giving it to me?" _

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Anonymous Coward]

That really is unfortunate, especially since IE9 will start supporting HTML5 which is becoming very useful to web developers. It also is a step backward for sites that use HTML5 features already to have notices on the page that say "This page best viewed with (Firefox, Chrome, whatever)". I'm not sure of any of the numbers, but I can imagine that a large portion of people still on XP would be used to using IE and would be resistant to switching browsers.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[blind biker]

I don't think it's so artificial, because of the acceleration enhancements, and the updates to the underlying graphics system from Vista/win7None of that crap is necessary or even useful, for a web browser, as the other web browsers running on WinXP demonstrate.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Vectormatic]

Only thing that would fix the problem was upgrading to the latest Apple OS... after enough complaints to the manager at the apple store (which I did in a loud manner, on the floor, where it was crowded) I get a free upgrade.

You sound like a dick

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[aztracker1]

The point was that the limitation wasn't artificial, not that the reasons for said limitation have value. Considering the fact that Mozilla, Google, Apple and Opera are dedicating resources to hardware accelerated canvas and video support, it would seem that your assumption that t isn't necessary would be mistaken. As to MS not putting the effort to support their latest browser efforts to a decade old OS that hasn't been sold as a mainstream option in 4 years...

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Ogive17]

The complaint was "Her laptop can't browse the internet and I can't seem to upgrade the browser (safari) or install a new browser (firefox)".

Their answer "Unfortunately your OS is old and there is no way for it to run the latest version of safari which would allow you to use the internet. The only fix is to upgrade to the newest OS for $40"

Me "There's nothing wrong with the current OS, why do I have to be forced to upgrade to a new OS in order to keep functionality of this laptop?"

About then is when the manager came over and I explained that it seemed pretty stupid that her laptop no longer was able to surf the internet. I wasn't yelling in the store, but I wasn't using my library voice either.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Ogive17]

Why, because I didn't bend over and take one in the butt from Steve Jobs? I'm sorry but their way of handling their software practically disabled my fiancee's laptop. Can you imagine if Microsoft told XP users that their computers could not use IE7 or IE8 and that their choice was to use IE6 for the rest of time or to buy a copy of Windows 7? We're not talking about a laptop from the 90s, it was bought in the '04-'05 time frame.

I'm old enough to have been screwed over by companies enough for me to learn a lesson. They will continue to take advantage of you until you fight back. Never take anything at face value. Ask questions and if their answers don't clarify the situation, talk to a manager. If you've been a customer for long enough, you deserve something back.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Vectormatic]

if you bought it in the 04-05 timeframe, it either had OS-X 10.3 or 10.4, both of which came with safari, alternately on 10.3 you can run firefox 2.0, 10.4 is still currently supported by mozilla. Firefox 2.0 might not be the pinacle of web-browsing these days, but it is miles ahead of IE6, which people still use daily

and the correct response isnt to bitch and moan till you get what you want (and dont have any rightfull claim to), but to say "fuck you" to apple, and stop buying their crap, if you are to cheap to stay hip

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, in other words the great majority of people in North America who visit websites.

FTFY.
(see here: http://gs.statcounter.com/press/firefox-overtakes-internet-explorer-in-europe-in-browser-wars).

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[blind biker]

I don't think I want to argue too strongly my side; I can see that this is mostly a matter of opinion. In mine, MS would have a vested interest in supporting Win XP with a decent browser, since the OS is very popular and if MS won't, the alternatives listed before, will. But as I said, I'm not going to get all holy-war on you on an issue like this. I can see us getting a beer and discuss this in a civilized way :D

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[aztracker1]

Well, if you're ever in the Phoenix area, that could be arranged.

In any case, my main point is that supporting a code base that hasn't been sold for over 4 years, and is 10 years from the original release doesn't really make sense to support from a practical stand point, especially when alternatives exist for the platform.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Shimmer]

Your argument is not very persuasive (IMHO). I think you got your way by being difficult, not because you were in the right.

Some parts of your argument are simply nonsensical ("there's nothing wrong with this OS", except that it's defective and I want a new one). Others seem spoiled (Apple should "keep functionality of this laptop" because it's not fair that web sites have changed in the six years since I bought it). Do you really think it's reasonable to expect a six-year old OS to work with every current software app?

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Ogive17]

I think it's perfectly resonable to expect a 6 year old OS to be able to handle current browsers. I can understand if they don't want to support 3rd party browsers, but I don't understand why I couldn't upgrade safari.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Ogive17]

Not my laptop, it is my fiancee's. She's not a computer person at all and I almost never use Macs. I tried to upgrade safari, install firefox and I think I also tried opera... but nothing would work.

We were willing to pay a fee for them to work on the computer (thinking it was some setting we messed up). When I was told the reason it no longer worked and what the only solution was, I said that it was unacceptable. The tech at the store almost seemed amazed someone was using a laptop that was 6 years old.

I do a lot of negotiating at work... often it requires compromises. My fiancee gave Apple $2000 for her macbook, in turn Apple should make sure it 'just works' for something basic like browsing the internet. I didn't go into the store wanting a new OS, I wanted her laptop to be able to get on the web. I didn't have to do much to convince the manager that all we wanted was for it to work, he's the one that suggested they would go ahead and upgrade the OS and safari for us.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Vectormatic]

your story in its current form sounds a lot more reasonable then in your first post, complaining in a very load manner untill you got the upgrade for free. And if the store manager really did offer the upgrade without much coaxing, that is a credit to him.

But i stand by the point that you have no claim to that free upgrade, your fiancee paid apple 2000 dollars for a laptop, not a laptop + 6(or more) years of free updates/support, and there is no way apple could forsee what webbrowsing would go through in that time, if they had to calculate that in with the price, be prepared to pay 3000 instead of 2000 for your next macbook.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Ogive17]

Yeah, the orignal post was a little bit on the sensationalist side.. isn't it :). I told the tech that it makes no sense to me why I have to buy an upgrade and I did say it in a stern tone that was a bit louder than my normal conversational voice. I wasn't rolling around throwing a tantrum like a 2 year old :).

I'm not a Mac guy, I've been building my own PCs for the past 15 years. I had been using XP from launch until last August (when my mobo fried and decided to put Win 7 on my new computer). If MS stopped supporting IE for XP as soon as Vista came out, I would have been livid. I understand there comes a point then a company needs to cut ties with an OS.. but not in that short of a time frame.

I think the entire point of me first commenting in this thread was to voice my displease with out Apple does OS updates. A new version every year or two that is basically the equivilent of a service pack from MS, but Apple makes you pay for it. There is already an premium on Apple products to begin with, the small updates should be free.

But that's just my opinion and it's one of the reasons I don't plan on buying a macbook of my own.

Re:Bad news for anyone doing web sites

[Vectormatic]

ah i see, well i agree with you there, although MS seems right back on track for the two yearly OS cycle they had going before XP.

The whole apple thing also seems a bit expensive to me, i roll my own systems as well, and lately i've been skipping windows alltogether and just install some flavour of linux.

Anyway, seems like we sort of agree on the whole matter, paying for SPs the way apple demands it is idiotic, and good for you for getting the upgrade!

Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[gad_zuki!]

Let me count the ways:

1. The UAC - unfortunately users can't be bothered to run as a non-admin and just use runas, so UAC is the next best thing. Running as non-admin is easier than ever.

2. 64-bit support with easy to find 64-bit drivers. If you want MS to sign your drivers you need to provide 64-bit.

3. Protected mode - not as in memory but as in a native sandboxing technology that IE and and Adobe X use. These apps interact with the OS via a broker process. This is also why so many exploit target the add-ons (Flash, pre-X Adobe, Java) and not the browser itself.

4. Bitlocker

5. Large disk support.

6. SSD TRIM support. I have 3 SSD drives and they would be a PITA without TRIM in 7.

7. Better security architecture. A lot of things dont run as non-admin in XP so you needed to run them as admin or system to make them work, which greatly increased your attack surface.

8. Better Windows update agent. I love the option to ether use my WSUS or go to MS to get updates . As well as a decent GUI that shows me that status of the updates, last update, etc.

9. Windows Media Center done right.

10. Powershell support native.

11. A decent taskbar, finally.

12. Performance increase. I've run 7 on 256 megs of RAM on an old P4 and it flies on modern hardware.

13. Youre going to upgrade anyway from XP eventually, might as well get something good.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[timeOday]

The importance of any upgrade is subjective, so YMMV. For me, the recent upgrade from XP to 7 was a hassle with no benefit. The main difference is I spend more time looking for stuff they moved around. I also found Win 7 definitely more RAM hungry, and the USB driver for my Garmin GPS doesn't work under 7.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[cyber-vandal]

For home users you're right. For the majority of business users however who don't get the latest version of Windows every 3 or 4 years:

1. UAC is irrelevant to business users who use a locked down XP Pro

2. 32 bit is going nowhere for the foreseeable future

3. The only point I agree with, however a good IT department and good security software will keep threats to a minimum

4. Bitlocker is irrelevant to most business users

5. It'll be quite a while before most business users need 2TB disk space

6. Few business users will have SSDs in the foreseeable future either

7. Few business users are allowed to run anything as admin

8. Again largely meaningless to most users who get their updates from IT

9. Meaningless to business users

10 Useful but not exactly a dealbreaker

11. As point 10

12. I'd dispute that but it's always YMMV on assertions like that

13. You shouldn't have to upgrade if the software does what you want it to.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[blind biker]

Only 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 are really important. In a company environment, all can be addressed with correct policies in place. That's much cheaper than having to upgrade to Win 7.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[DannyO152]

As to Point 13 and specifically "eventually," if that moment is 2012, then maybe one could go from XP to the no-doubt-better-successor to Windows 7. Is the cost of XP to Win7 and Win7 to Win8 really going to be less expensive than XP straight to Win8? If it were, then people will choose to stick with XP. Costs and applications trump the underlying benefits of the new operating system, unless those benefits are realized with little user intervention. XP to Win7 was not such an upgrade.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[crhylove]

1. UAC - Cruft, annoying, and a total CHARADE of security.

2. XP x64 while hard to find drivers for is a better performer than any other Windows derivative. FACT I use it.

3. I've already reformatted dozens of Win 7 machines, so if you are trying to say security is somehow better than XP: FALSE.

4. Does somebody use this? How does it help?

5. I have several 2tb drives running happily on xp machines. I have not seen/purchased a larger drive yet.

6. I haven't used this. Haven't seen it. Don't know what it's for. Every business I support has IDE or Sata drives, no SSD.

7. Bullshit. Just as many virii as XP and Vista. Maybe more. Absolutely abysmal compared to EVERY Linux distro.

8. Updates are slow, frequently crash, and include malware that would hurt most of my clients. Same as in XP.

9. Compared to VLC? FAIL

10. OK, so 1 sysadmin somewhere in the arctic might actually notice/use this. Compared to Linux? FAIL

11. You mean a giant ugly one that doesn't recognize portable apps at all? FAIL

12. This I'd like to see. Other than x64 support (and as I said, XP x64 is much faster), Win 7 has been slower than XP in every benchmark I've thrown at it.

13. Agreed. You should try Linux Mint. Because other than getting off Windows altogether, moving from XP is definitely a down grade in every situation, for every user.

XP IS better. As a sysadmin I've had nothing but problems migrating customers from XP. By default I now reinstall OEM XP over Vista/Seven as step one in the standard workstation build. Everything just works. The menus are easy to navigate, well documented, and not randomly changed for no usability improvements. Windows 7 is crap. It's better than Vista, but so is punching myself in the face.

Try Linux Mint 10. It's about 50,000 x better than Windows 7, and has all the features you CLAIMED Win 7 has, but done properly. For my clients that require Windows software, I'll not be moving them away from XP until Bill Gates comes to my house and shoots me in the face. Oh wait, he did that: It's called Vista/7.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[antdude]

12. 256 MB of RAM? I can't stand with 512 MB of RAM! XP Pro. SP2 and SP3 were faster especially when multitasking.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[LordLimecat]

UAC

On the flip side, if they are running as admin, they only have to click "OK". Its better, but it doesnt protect against PEBKAC :(

protected mode...this is why they target the addons...

IIRC Protected mode isnt a huge barrier, as its been broken. Addons are targeted because they are wildly insecure, installed on a huge userbase, and are cross-browser-- so even though a very large minority(?) of users are on chrome / firefox, they are still trivially targetable.

bitlocker

I dont understand why someone wanting full disk encryption would pay the extra money for ultimate rather than simply getting TrueCrypt, TBQH

SSD TRIM

Agreed, though Im not sure how they had the foresight to implement that before SSDs really hit it big.

No real complaints on the others, though.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[chrismcb]

11. A decent taskbar, finally.

My BIGGEST gripe with Win 7 is the taskbar. It seems like every time Microsoft does something right, they do it wrong in the next version. The taskbar in Win 7 is horrible. I want my quick launch back. I want to know what will happen when I click a button. I hate that I have to right click to start a new instance. About the only the Win7 did right is make it easier to hide tray icons. Give me the XP task bar anyday. And get rid of the stupid aero look.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[ShavedOrangutan]

14. Unchangeable desktop background with a big Windows logo.

15. All other customizable options locked and no control panel.

Windows Starter Edition on an Acer Aspire netbook.

Yes, you can hack the .bmp and change the desktop background, but Windows Genuine Advantage will detect the change and brick the computer. I wish I was making this up.

Fortunately Unbuntu 10.10 works just dandy and fixed all those problems.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a compelling case. Except that I already have XP, it works "good enough", and Windows 7 costs money. Are those features you listed worth a couple hundred dollars to me? No.

If I really want those features I'll install Linux for $0, which either has similar features or doesn't need a security kludge like UAC in the first place.

Windows 7 *is* better than XP, but for $0 I'll stick with XP for the foreseeable future.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

None of these are really things 95% of the population find useful or can take advantage of.

Here is what is selling today:

$250 computers with GNU/Linux

40GB 5400 RPM Hard Dives (laptop style)
1GB of ram
1.6Ghz Atom Processors
3D Accelerated Graphics
17 second boot times

What the tech world fails to realize is costs have a bigger impact on consumer than features as users mostly browse the web and can't take advantage of 2TB drives when they have less than 10GB of data. Speed improves with a better designed OS. Microsoft hasn't designed a better OS. Vista and 7 are slower than Ubuntu 10.04 and XP.

What is sad is that while small companies are doing great selling these types of systems larger ones have failed to pick up on it. They are still selling $500 desktops. Users are better off with buying new or upgrading accessories than moving to an OS like Vista or 7 which offer no benefits. Users with Vista and 7 are just as if not more vulnerable to viruses, spyware, and other malware.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit the windows button, type the first four letters of what you are looking for and boom there it is. As for you Garmin, the drivers are Garmins fault not Win7. Your phone is gonna replace your GPS unit sooner or later anyhow so just move on to a new OS. XP is what, about 10 years old. Would you use a 10 year old cell phone? How bout a 10 year old linux distro? I know your cable box or satilite tv provider made you upgrade and you figured that box out. If you can not figure out how to find something on a computer maybe you are on the wrong website.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[l33t gambler]

12. Performance increase. I've run 7 on 256 megs of RAM on an old P4 and it flies on modern hardware.

No, it does not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToFgYylqP_U
Sorry for slamming (spamming is not in Operas dictionary) the thread with this link but people keep posting the same untruth.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[bdleonard]

I hate that I have to right click to start a new instance.

Somebody needs to buy a mouse with a middle button...

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, linux has a security kludge known as su.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Pentium100]

If I was building a new computer today, I would probably use Windows 7, however, I built my computer in 2007 and at that time it was either XP or Vista, I chose XP. Now that I have it, Windows 7 is not that much better to justify spending so much time reinstalling Windows and all of my apps even if I downloaded a pirate copy.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Osgeld]

i just right click on some dead space and change it like normal, what are you running a prerelease?

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[cbhacking]

A few more:

14. ASLR, which provides much better protection against exploits. The majority of exploits on Win7 were on old DLLs that didn't use ASLR, but going forward that won't be an option.

15. Aero Snap, the ability to tile windows side-by-side made fast, intuitive, and dead easy. Anytime I find myself using an older OS I'm always ending up with windows placed half-off the screen and wondering why they didn't snap.

16. Built-in multi-touch support. Although the base OS makes relatively little use of it (you can use it to zoom and various things), apps can take advantage of this feature. Not very useful to those without tablets, but if you have a tablet there's no reason to run anything older than Win7.

17. Much better video driver model. A video driver crash no longer causes a kernel panic, because the driver isn't in the kernel. Additionally, you can swap drivers in and out in seconds, without rebooting.

18. Instant search of everything. I never use the All Programs menu anymore, and I don't mind doing full-text searches for a specific mail or document (try this on XP, if you're really bored).

19. Jump Lists, while arguably part of "decent taskbar," deserve mention themselves - quickly open a recent document, a Steam game, etc. or run a common task with quick-and-easy UI.

20. VHD booting, which isn't intended for home users but is great for people testing drivers or testing software on multiple OS configurations, on native hardware.

21. Built-in ability to burn disk images. A small but handy feature that's long overdue.

22. Ability to control per-application volume with independent sliders. Very handy when one app is always too noisy, or you want to quickly mute certain apps without quitting entirely.

23. Bi-directional firewall. Although the default is to allow all outgoing traffic, you can use it to prevent certain apps from phonong home, or be extra secure by configuring it as a whitelist.

24. More helpful dialog boxes, such as the file overwrite or "this file is locked [by application X]" ones.

25. Volume Shadow Copies, typically known as the "Previous Versions" feature, allowing you to recover deleted or overwritten files or directories.

26. Superfetch, which pre-loads applications into RAM when (based on usage history) you're likely to run them soon. Makes launching a big app (games, Visual Studio, whatever you use) much faster than on XP.

27. Highly customizable power options, such as controlling how much the CPU speed will scale when plugged in vs. on battery, and whether to maximize WiFi capability or save power.

28. Hybrid sleep mode, where the computer enters suspend (for fast wakeup) but also writes out the hiberfile (in case of power loss, or for rapidly dropping to hibernation).
28a. Resuming from sleep or hibernate is *MUCH* faster on Win7 than on older versions, especially if you have a multi-core system (improved parallelism).

OK, I think that's long enough... I hadn't meant to write so much but it wasn't hard (especially as the user of a tablet PC) to come up with plenty of items. Hell, there's lots more little things, like the default path to user profiles not having spaces in it, that are nice. XP is a pain to use, and has been for years - I find myself doing things like opening the Start menu (with the Windows key) and typing, and instead of doing a search some random thing that started with a letter I hit happens instead.

For the record, the following items apply to Vista as well as Win7 (the others are new, or at least much better, in 7): 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 14, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[gnapster]

GP is running the crippled "Starter" edition which is what is typically installed on netbooks. I don't have it myself, but I saw it first hand when trying to help a 13-year-old with her new computer on Christmas day. She was nonplussed.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? It may have some valid information but it reads like an absolute troll post written by a angry 15 year old. The moderation is appropriate and justified.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitlocker is irrelevant to most business users

wrong, just way way wrong

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[spongman]

I want my quick launch back

right-click, toolbars, new toolbar, %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[weicco]

doesn't need a security kludge like UAC in the first place

You run Linux as root? Wow!

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the size of the original poster's GPS unit, but mine is the size of a wrist watch, and also records heart rate and cadence ;) In short, his "GPS unit" might actually be a running/fitness watch (e.g. the FR305 and later variants).

However, I agree that Garmin could be better at providing drivers: how long did it take them to support OS X?

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[cyber-vandal]

[citation needed]

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

2. 64-bit support with easy to find 64-bit drivers. If you want MS to sign your drivers you need to provide 64-bit.

I stopped reading right there. You're a moron. No one outside of hollywood needs 64 bit drivers. When was the last time you had a 2gb print job? 64bit is the ultimate con. PAE would solve the problem of having more ram, without needing to cut my on chip cache in half.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit the windows button,

What windows button? I ripped off some MS branded bloat keys from my keyboard, do you mean one of those buttons?

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Your phone is gonna replace your GPS unit sooner or later anyhow so just move on to a new OS.

There are many specialized areas where a phone is nowhere capable of replacing an existing GPS unit. Some commercial GPS units, even some created by Garmin, can costs 10s of thousands of dollars.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[demonbug]

6. Few business users will have SSDs in the foreseeable future either

I don't know, I think SSDs make a lot of sense in a business environment right now. They offer significantly better performance with the only drawback being up-front cost. And really, for the vast majority of business computers there is no need for hard drives with hundreds or thousands of gigabytes of local storage - files are stored on the server, with only a working copy on the desktop. A single 40 GB SSD would probably be sufficient 90% of the time. It just needs enough space for OS, applications, and whatever data you are working on right now. I haven't actually seen the data complied, but they should also have somewhat lower failure rates.

Sure, on my home computer I have a need for massive amounts of storage because I don't have a storage server set up (and an SSD for performance); right now at work I've got an ancient 40 GB spinning hard drive, which is only slightly over 50% full. Business use is the ideal place for SSDs to be put into use right now. Sure, a 40 GB SSD costs about as much as a 1 TB spinning drive, but with the HDD you're just paying for a lot of space that will never be used in exchange for lower performance that affects pretty much everything you do.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[crhylove]

This is no troll. I'm a sysadmin with 20+ years of experience, and XP is a MUCH better performer than 7 in every category.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[toddestan]

I don't see how SSDs would make sense in a business environment. The speed won't make a difference on most business PCs, and they cost more. An extra $100 per workstation starts to add up. Sure some users can take advantage of them, but for most they'd never notice. You'd be better off taking that $100 and buying better monitors.

Of course, the cost is the real factor. Once you get an SSD that's good enough (say 40-80GB) for cheaper than the spinning disk (less than $50) they'll completely take over.

Re:Here come the "its not better than XP" posts

[toddestan]

Windows 7 Starter (common on netbooks, rare elsewhere) doesn't allow the desktop to be changed. I couldn't believe it either, but that's the way it is.

TL;DR version

[WinstonWolfIT]

20% of the computers currently in use were shipped with Windows 7.

Re:TL;DR version

[gnapster]

Exactly. I am wondering if that 20% includes my new laptop which I bought on Friday. It came with Windows 7, and I overwrote it with Linux Mint within an hour of bringing it home.

I would have set it up to dual-boot, but the overzealous factory reset configuration on my previous netbook has caused me a world of headache that I have no time for, presently.

Re:TL;DR version

[Your.Master]

Not unless you were browsing online with it. The article and summary both specify "online usage share".

Re:TL;DR version

[PReDiToR]

Toshiba laptop for Wintereenmas, Win7 on it.

Open box, say "oh wow"
Get out CD with Arch Linux on
Power up laptop long enough to open DVD tray, turn off quickly
Power on with Arch disc in, remove three partitions of crap
Install* Arch, and E17 (yeah yeah, OK, 16.99999 or whatever ...), get the thing up and running, love every minute of it.

CBA sending the sticker underneath back to Redmond for a few quid back, used it to install Win7 DVD (from Piratebay) in a VM that never will be let on the internet because Photoshop is essential for me and WINE just doesn't cope well with it in my personal experience.

* New hardware required WiFi driver to be downloaded from the manufacturer's website. Fortunately I'm a geek and this presented no significant difficulty.

Re:TL;DR version

[Vectormatic]

So you say winstonwolfIT didnt actually read the article before summarizing?

Madness i say!

Re:TL;DR version

[pinkushun]

Web Stats Nov 2010 - Operating Systems

1 45.98% Windows XP
2 24.12% Windows 7
3 15.59% Windows Vista
4 9.13% Mac OS X
5 1.66% iPhone OSX
6 1.52% Linux
7 1.06% Windows 2003
8 0.43% Android
9 0.24% Windows 2000
10 0.11% WAP

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Re:TL;DR version

[coofercat]

Right - and a lot of corporates probably downgraded it to XP, pending doing the upgrades en-masse later in the year. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if the upgrades double-count those machines (but as someone's already answered, this is "online usage share", so that isn't immediately relevant here).

However, this doesn't explain where 10% of all the computers on the desktop are ChromeOS. That would suggest that one in 10 computers use it, and yet, apart from maybe seeing people trying out the Chrome browser, I don't think I've ever seen a machine actually running ChromeOS. Either all of Google has switched, or else something fishy is going on...?

Re:TL;DR version

[westlake]

20% of the computers currently in use were shipped with Windows 7.

Windows 7 RTM July 2009. Retail October 2, 2009. Windows 7

Re:TL;DR version

[RocketRabbit]

Of course most people with new comers don't browse the web these days. They are sitting at home inside a Faraday cage drawing pictures with Ms Paint. /facepalm

My two cents

[Antony-Kyre]

The thing about XP, it's familiar and simple. People are just so use to it. My experience with Windows 7 is that things aren't where they use to be. So, maybe that's the issue.

Now, for the fun part of this post. Anyone here hanging onto unused copies of XP just incase you decide to build a new machine? I know I am.

Re:My two cents

[Rinnon]

The thing about XP, it's familiar and simple. People are just so use to it. My experience with Windows 7 is that things aren't where they use to be. So, maybe that's the issue.

Now, for the fun part of this post. Anyone here hanging onto unused copies of XP just incase you decide to build a new machine? I know I am.

I hold on to old OS' in case I have to do work on an OLD machine, not a new one. I don't plan on installing XP on a brand new machine any more than I was installing Windows 2000 on a new machine when I had XP. I'm not saying upgrading blindly for the sake of upgrading is the way to go, but Windows 7 is straight up more stable than XP in all of my experiences. It's a pleasure to install on new machines, since it handles most drivers on it's own, it has better security, doesn't let people use IE6, and I haven't had a single client (personal use computers) have any concerns or issues that stemmed from Windows 7. Even users who had gone from Windows XP to Windows 7 didn't take that long to acclimatize.

Re:My two cents

[Antony-Kyre]

Having used IE8, I can say IE6 is a lot better. I am not sure which one is more secure, but IE6 seems less buggy, and allows me to rearrange the menubar/toolbar the way I want.

On a more humourous note, one upside to IE8 is that I was able to use a user agent changer so websites think I am using IE6 instead of IE8.

Re:My two cents

[oracleguy01]

Now, for the fun part of this post. Anyone here hanging onto unused copies of XP just incase you decide to build a new machine? I know I am.

So you never plan to put more than 3 or 4GB of RAM into a computer?

Sure there is XP 64-bit which is uses the Windows 2003 kernel but drivers might be more of a problem now that there is Vista 64-bit and 7 64-bit, especially for brand new hardware.

My work computer has 12GB of RAM and I have to say I love having that much RAM. Combined with the window manager improvements in Windows 7, I can keep a lot of stuff open and keep track of a lot of windows. The OS also keeps a huge program cache which makes apps open really fast.

At home my computer (Windows 7 64-bit) has 4GB of RAM and if I were to build a brand new computer I would put 6 or 8 into it. RAM is pretty cheap these days and having lots of it is nice. I like not having to close out whatever I am working on if I want to play a game for a little bit.

Plus once you start having 8-16 cores in a machine you need more than 4GB of RAM just because if you have enough tasks running to max out that many cores, their RAM usage can add up to a lot.

Vendors are Lazy

[headkase]

Vista was actually ok and now it's up to Service Pack 2 it's not that bad. What gave Vista the bad reputation was that at launch drivers were horrible. Vista was the re-architecture step for Windows and vendors by being late to develop well-behaved drivers significantly contributed to it's negative reception. Now, fast forward to today: 7 is Vista+ and vendors are already up to speed with their drivers and it had a 1 year open beta to nail everything down. No hassles, good support.

Vista took the hits that prepared the wider software-ecosystem for 7.

Another thing to think about is that with Windows 7 64-bit is now entering the mainstream. My 7 machine is 64-bit and I have 8GB in the puppy. Of course, my Ubuntu laptop is also 64-bit even though it only has 2GB of RAM.

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[Nerdfest]

I love Vista. Its wonderful performance and "phone home" functionality that sends personal information to Microsoft made me become a happy Linux user. I haven't run Windows at home since.

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[headkase]

If it wasn't for games I'd be Linux only too. Fact is WINE doesn't cut it and I don't want an XBox 360.

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[rubypossum]

yeah, I'm not sure what Vista you're using but it's not the same as mine. Vista was a miserable pile of crap, particularly on a memory starved system - which every system that I used that ran Vista always was. It was slow, always swapping and .... cludgey. My laptop doubled in speed when I installed Windows 7, even on a fresh install it was miserable under Vista. Now I've moved everything over to Ubuntu and it's even better.

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[headkase]

My sister's laptop has 1GB RAM, some value-segment AMD Turion processor, and Vista 32-bit. It's not a speed demon but it's no dog either. 7 is undeniably better than Vista, but Vista, now at Service Pack 2, I reiterate, is not that bad.

All I know is that every Christmas when she comes by I do a complete format on that machine to refresh it for another year for her. She never complains about it! ;)

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[Antique Geekmeister]

Don't blame the vendors. The specs for Vista were metamorphosing from day to day until Service Pack 1, and no vendor could predict which way the other vendors would sway things, so there was no _point_ for them in alpha testing. And don't forget the nightmare that was WinFS, which has corectly been discarded entirely. Shoving an ill-managed, demonstrably fragile, resource gobbling and impossible to repair database into the kernel's filesystem components was a bad idea. It's why Berkeley DB was never successfully integrated into ext2: it's a destabilizing approach and was deservedly discarded, although it wasted thousands of hours of vendor engineer time trying to integrate storage devices to support it.

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

What gave Vista the bad reputation was that at launch drivers were horrible.

That and a bunch of noisy asshats looking at memory usage and jumping to conclusions.

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[0123456]

Don't blame the vendors. The specs for Vista were metamorphosing from day to day until Service Pack 1, and no vendor could predict which way the other vendors would sway things, so there was no _point_ for them in alpha testing.

Plus it required a major driver rewrite for an OS that few people were going to be using for quite some time, so it was inevitably going to be a low priority compared to XP drivers. Microsoft shot themselves in the ass by making such major changes to the driver model between OS versions.

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[digitallife]

All I know is that every Christmas when she comes by I do a complete format on that machine to refresh it for another year for her.

I shuddered reading this, as I remembered what its like to use windows. Bleh!

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[weicco]

I was wise enough to wait that NVidia and ATI had Vista drivers ready before I switched from XP to Vista. After the switch Vista trashed a days creating indexes but I was expecting that let it do its stuff. The next day I was really pleased with my installation. The thing was much faster than my two year old XP installation. I guess my experience would've been much worse if I hadn't waited NVidia/ATI to put its act together.

These days I'm running Vista at home on two of my laptops. Both were the cheapest laptops you could get from the store couple of years ago. Both have lousy CPUs, hard drives and graphic adapters, other one has 1 gig of memory and the other one 2 gigs. I'm pleased with them also as I was with my desktop, although the other one is showing some problems with the hard drive.

So I'm not really sure what's this bitching about Vista really is. My friends and coworkers sometimes talks about "that horrid Vista" but when I ask what's their problem with it they can't tell. And that's weird. They are technologically adept people and they can't tell what's the problem with their PC! They can be very specific when telling what's wrong with their cars though... ;)

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[pinkushun]

I made the sacrifice for the greater good: I dropped many games to move over, but at the same time I discovered many new and fantastic games!

I support the game developers, the more support they get, the more and better games there will be!

Re:Vendors are Lazy

[GoochOwnsYou]

I would love to be Windows free but until Steam is ported to Linux (and my games collection on Steam, which will never happen) I will retain a Windows 'gamer' machine.

Drivers, drivers, drivers.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Digital Audio Workstation field, everyone would love to use XP, IF only there were enough 64 bit drivers and apps for everything used. As it is, they'd have to go with 32 bit XP drivers (and waste half of their CPU cycles), or use Vista64. Security is not in issue in the DAW field, because anyone with half a brain will not have their DAW connected to the internet. All updates will be made via sneakernet.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers.

[Xtravar]

Uh, what? Drivers aren't the bottleneck from DAWs that I've seen. It's that VST effects and other apps/plugins are 32-bit. Most DAW software has figured out how to bridge 32-bit VST to 64-bit now, though, by running a dummy 32-bit process to communicate with.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers.

[bemymonkey]

I dunno about you, but I'm still waiting on decent Win7 x64 ASIO drivers for some of my interfaces... XP: Buffers set to absolute minimum, no problems. Win7 x64: Crackling at anything anywhere near real-time...

It's the sole reason I keep a dual-boot XP install on my desktop replacement...

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers.

[Xtravar]

I'm not super high-end, but my audio interface works fine under 64-bit. So does the professional studio I use. I don't want to make assumptions about what you bought, but I'll just say that the state of drivers (regular updates, supported platforms) was the #1 thing I looked for when I bought my interface because I know those music equipment companies can be super sketchy. FWIW I have never gone wrong with M-Audio interfaces, and I use Reaper as my DAW software.

Re:Drivers, drivers, drivers.

[realaven]

My Cubase VST32 works quite well with my new Quad Core 3.2 Ghz and 4 Gig of Ram, thanks very much. Can't complain about performance or noise at 2 ms latency, either. I wouldn't mind running XP for another 10 years, if only there was an SP4... What else am I running that crunches performance - SQL Server (2 instances), Windowblinds, ZoneAlarm and a 1680 pixel desktop with full effects enabled. These would probably weigh in at about 1% of my CPUs if I switched them off. And I have no problem using my DAW online, as it is also my work machine. Have not had to reinstall windows in 6 years since a lightning killed my previous rig. The only thing that is coming and going are new MOBOs, CPUs, Graphics Cards and the occasional bigger hard drives. And I wouldn't like to swap my nice retail XP Pro with any drm enabled Windows7 - I wouldn't even know which version to get.

good riddance to bad rubbish

[Tumbleweed]

I'll see you in Hell, Vista. You and RAMBUS!

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll see you in Hell, Vista.

You mean, Hasta la vista? :)

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[DigiShaman]

I say we build a "Box-O-Doom". It will represent everything that is evil and shall be sacrificed in a volcano. It must have the following:

1. Case must be beige with other parts slightly discolored (yellowed) from the others.
2. P4 with RAMBUS.
3. Intel i740 AGP video card.
4. Connor IDE hard drive.
5. 1x CDROM drive that uses a CD caddy.
6. Winmodem.
7. Windows ME.
8. Office 2000 complete with Clippy.
9. MS Bob.
10. Norton System Works.
11. Subscription to AOL.

Bonus: Should have enough dust and cigarette tar, a fleece can be made of the stuff.

 

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[Tumbleweed]

I say we build a "Box-O-Doom". It will represent everything that is evil and shall be sacrificed in a volcano. It must have the following:

1. Case must be beige with other parts slightly discolored (yellowed) from the others.
2. P4 with RAMBUS.
3. Intel i740 AGP video card.
4. Connor IDE hard drive.
5. 1x CDROM drive that uses a CD caddy.
6. Winmodem.
7. Windows ME.
8. Office 2000 complete with Clippy.
9. MS Bob.
10. Norton System Works.
11. Subscription to AOL.

Bonus: Should have enough dust and cigarette tar, a fleece can be made of the stuff.

Don't forget the IBM PCjr keyboard, Apple iMac "hockeypuck" mouse, 14" VGA CRT, and 5 1/4" floppy drives. And a Zip Drive or something like that.

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[Vectormatic]

oh oh!

dont forget:

- lotus notes
- IE 5.5 with various toolbars
- motherboard with the notorious leaky caps

and as an alternative for the intel i740 video card:

- Nvidia geforce FX 5800, performance of GF 4, but now with added vacume cleaner noises!

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch Office 2000 for Office 95. And replace the VGA CRT (that is at least vaguely usable) with a CGA screen - two colour palette choices, both disgusting.

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[Rich0]

- IE 5.5 with various toolbars

Yes, in honor of my wife's friend, at least 20 of them. The actual viewing space for webpages on that 14" VGA monitor shouldn't be more than about 3"x6". But hey, the emoticons on hotmail sure will be nicely animated (well, at the 0.3 fps screen update rate the system can handle with all that garbage running).

Oh, and be sure to install Gator on it as well.

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[Rich0]

You can keep the CGA adapter of course. However, I'll raise you the screen on the IBM Portable Personal Computer. Imagine those two CGA palettes displayed on a monochrome amber screen - maybe around 7" diagonal.

Re:good riddance to bad rubbish

[toddestan]

I actually ran Vista on a yellowing socket 423 1.5Ghz P4 with RAMBUS memory. As a bonus, it's also a Carly-era HP.

It's currently in my parts pile, still intact, as there really isn't anything worth taking from it.

64-bit?

[Magnum7385]

I admit, I have not RTFA, but I'm interested in the statistics overall of Windows-based 64-bit systems, versus 32 bit. I'd also more specifically like to know the numbers on XP 64-bit ..
Anyone have a link for me? Thanks.

Re:64-bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just me using XP 64-bit.

Also, don't forget features removed in Visa and 7 that were in XP, for example it's no longer possible for folders to retain their own folder view, a much-used feature.

Re:64-bit?

[oracleguy01]

While not a sampling of the average computer user, gamers seem to (rightly) prefer Windows 7 64-bit over the 32-bit version: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

XP 64-bit has a pretty small usage on that survey.

Interesting parallels

[Anonymous Coward]

Afghanistan: Started 2001, end of major combat projected 2011, complete end projected 2014.

Windows XP: First shipped 2001, end of sales late 2010 (some units still out there, probably sold out mid-2011), full end of lifecycle projected 2014.

Two pains in the ass that will never end have similar timelines indeed.

Why is this news?

[MikeV]

No one sells Vista anymore or offers it pre-installed. Everyone is selling 7 now and offering it pre-installed. /. is acting like this is some sort of race. Windows 7 is winning!!!! Winning against what? Vista is dead. Being proud that 7 is winning against roadkill is pretty pathetic.

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

*feel the butthurt*

Re:Why is this news?

[TheoCryst]

The interesting part is that Vista was the "latest and greatest OS" for twice as long as Windows 7 has been, yet Win7 has already passed Vista's peak marketshare. In other words, Windows 7 has more market penetration after a single year than Vista had after two. Pretty impressive to me.

Who needs 64 bit?

[ceCA]

Sure 64 bit let's u address much more memory but it also doubles the size of any 32 program once converted to 64 bit. What a fuckn waste. Nobody needs 64 bit programs that are wasteful by definition. Unless u are running some large database in ram or designing a nuclear bomb u really don't need this useless wasteful crap called 64 bit. It's getting to the point now that buying a computer is like buying a muscle car from the 70's. What a waste !!

Re:Who needs 64 bit?

[0123456]

Sure 64 bit let's u address much more memory but it also doubles the size of any 32 program once converted to 64 bit.

No it doesn't.

Re:Who needs 64 bit?

[Straterra]

32-bit, what a waste! Nobody needs 32 bit programs that are wasteful by definition! BACK TO 16-BIT GUYS!

Re:Who needs 64 bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Protip: Remember to check the AC box before you post.

Does Windows Phone 7 Have a Data Transmission Bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/01/03/1558244/Does-Windows-Phone-7-Have-a-Data-Transmission-Bug

Well, now we know that the data transmission thing isn't a bug, but a feature. "This data is used to make the phone you chose look more popular!"

Faith Restored.

[stewbacca]

The best Microsoft OS to date (Win7) has surpassed one of the worst (Vista). My faith in the consumer is restored.

Re:Faith Restored.

[Jartan]

The irony of your comment is that Win7 is just a service pack for Vista.

Re:Faith Restored.

[stewbacca]

If that is true (and it isn't), then it is the greatest patch in the history of computer science.

Re:Windows 7 - not quite rock solid

[flyingfsck]

No, it is not rock solid. It blue screens and crashes on my laptop. Not often, but it does do so, while Linux runs rock solid on the same machine. So in my experience, it is no better than WinXP.

XP features for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot recommend ClassicShell enough to people who skipped Vista and (relatively) recently moved to Windows 7. It will not take care of all the quirks in Explorer, but a lot. Just the "folder up" button is worth installing this.

No, I am not involved with this project at all.

Re:XP features for Windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of the folder up button? In Windows 7, you can click directly on which folder you want to folder up to (without having to do them all one by one), and if you click the arrow you can even select a different subfolder than the one you used to go down to the folder you're currently looking at. The folder up button was removed because it was useless.

Re:XP features for Windows 7

[Bigjeff5]

I disagree.

Windows 7's shell is new, and confusing at first, but if you jump in and just try to use it as intended I think you will find pretty quickly the most of the changes you hated actually make your life easier.

It's not as intuitive as I've found Macs to be, but my personal opinion is the changes are a good thing.

Clinging to the old way of doing things may be more familiar and therefore easier at first, but if you never learn the new way you'll never get to take advantage of all the improvements that have been made.

It's like a carpenter who refuses to move from hand tools to power tools. Yeah, the hand tools are smaller and easier to carry around, and the carpenter is very good with them. And yeah, power tools are big, bulky, take up a lot of space, and require a whole different set of skills to operate, which can be a painful learning experience. If he has never used power tools before then the first chair he makes with power tools is going to take him twice as long or longer than it would have taken him with hand tools. If the carpenter stops there and decides that these new power tools are clearly a waste of time and just killing his productivity, he has just made a huge mistake. Had he continued, then after building that first chair he would have started figuring out how the power tools work, and the next time around he would have been able to use them more efficiently, so that the second chair he made would have taken about as long as it used to take with the hand tools. By the third chair, he would have been building chairs in half the time or less, and with each new chair he would have gotten faster and faster. Finally the carpenter would have been making five chairs in the amount of time it used to take him to make one. What's more the cuts from properly handled powertools are cleaner and more accurate, making the finished product even nicer!

If you give up on new technologies just because they are different and confusing at first, you'll forever be stuck using lesser tools.

Re:XP features for Windows 7

[toddestan]

Well, a few things:

1. If you want to go up one directory, you can just hit the button to go up one and be done. With the breadcrumb interface you have to gu up to the top and find the right directory name to click.

2. If the window is not big, or the directory name is long, you don't get the breadcrumb thing at all, and instead you have to click the little drop down menu thing and then click the directory name.

3. Sometimes if I'm not careful with my clicks, it changes the top to an edit mode as if it thinks I want to type in something.

Overall, I don't mind the breadcrumb thing, just annoyed that they took the up button away. I will grant that most of my experience is with Vista, but my understanding is the Windows Explorer interface in 7 isn't changed.

Are people getting Vista because it's better?

[aklinux]

Or is it just because Microsoft won't let 'em downgrade to XP any longer?

Giving credit where credit is due.

[Dcnjoe60]

I hate to say this, but it appears that Windows 7 is doing much better than the article title implies. While it is true that it broke 20%, what isn't apparent until digging into the article is that they are including Apple's iOS and Google's Android in the mix of operating systems. These weren't an issue when XP peaked as they were just looking at pc desktop/laptop installations.

Browser stats?

[Kjella]

An anonymous reader adds news that Google's Chrome browser is nearing 10% market share.

Seems nobody's commenting on the browser stats. That XP is in a slow decline and Win7 on the rise is simply natural, it's clearly better than Vista and XP is getting long in the tooth. Chrome took another 0.72% of the market last month, and NetApplications is on the low side of things. StatCounter now says 14.85%, up 1.5% in the last month. At that rate, they'd overtake Firefox within the year. Firefox is holding steady and IE loses, in fact in Europe it now says Firefox is the dominant web browser with 38.11% over IEs 37.52%. Recently I've been seeing Chrome ads all over place and clearly it is working taking users from IE that Firefox never reached. That is much more likely to have an impact on the future than the slow decline of XP.

Re:Browser stats?

[dr_blurb]

An anonymous reader adds news that Google's Chrome browser is nearing 10% market share.

Chrome took another 0.72% of the market last month, and NetApplications is on the low side of things. StatCounter now says 14.85%, up 1.5% in the last month.

I'm seeing the same thing on my Calcudoku puzzle stats page. Google Chrome share now 13% for logged in users (IE 45%, Firefox 37%).

One thing I still need to do is break down the results by the difficulty level of the puzzles solved, to see if there's a correlation between IQ and choice of browser :-)

Windows XP vs. Windows 7 popularity

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems mentions on twitter, facebook, technet blogs and forums agree that Windows 7 has surpassed Windows XP in popularity: http://bingmatrix.cloudapp.net/go.aspx?t=Windows+Clients&a=&k=Windows+2000%3BWindows+XP%3BWindows+Vista%3BWindows+7&s=twitter.com%3Bfacebook.com%3Bblogs.technet.com%3Bsocial.technet.microsoft.com

Agree, except about the Start menu

[LongearedBat]

The only real problem I've had with Win 7 is the very limited view of apps in the start menu.
Yes, I've pinned the 10 most commonly used apps on the task bar. And that's enough. It's not reasonable to pin all commonly used apps onto the task bar, because then it would get too cluttered.
And it's a royal pain when the start menu enforces a tiny view of a very long list.

The solution?
I installed http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ so I could get the full view of Programs.

Aside from that (and some small problems with file search) I quite like with Win7.

Re:Agree, except about the Start menu

[Rockoon]

I just put those shortcuts to less frequently used programs into a folder on the desktop.

Slashdot discussion out of control, but...

[Dystopian Rebel]

This shouldn't be an OS War discussion. W7 is a service pack for Vista. Vista did many things better than WXP, but failed in two critical aspects:

1.) driver support, and
2.) performance tuning

W7 addressed these problems well. I did have some problems with Vista, but I find it a good OS just the same. I use XP, Vista, W7, Linux, and OS X.

I hear that gamers prefer XP. I myself use computers for a living and don't care for computer games. I think the following are the plain truth:

- Linux is still the best OS for consumers who don't need MS Office; Linux is free, it looks great, it's portable, it's powerful. If you're a programmer, you get everything you need.

- OS X has the best rendering technology of all the OSs. Built-in PDF is brilliant. OS X is almost as good as Linux for built-in dev tools. The integration of "Spaces" and "Exposé" add significant usability to OS X.

- WXP is very compatible but it became a security nightmare. Vista includes an outbound firewall, UAC, and stricter licensing. I'd like to see botnet statistics, but I think it's likely correct to say that Vista and W7 have not been exploited the way XP has been.

Re:Technologies

[TaoPhoenix]

I'll take your question and give it a scary spin.

Pretty soon we'll have technologies that exist in Windows that we *do not want* that don't exist in XP.

The Trusted Computing ruckus is back. There's Intel Insider hardware DRM coming through the Sandy Bridge line of chips from Intel. Then for National Security we might wind up with a law that orders us to move to these nice crispy chips to keep certain certifications etc. Maybe if XP won't go away on its own, Intel can help with a kick.

Really now, we need to start reading stories in pairs. Why, I think there was something about using technology to enforce good behavior...

KDE4

[AlexiaDeath]

KDE4 does that for me for free.

Re:KDE4

[Dunega]

Cool.

Re:KDE4

[ifiwereasculptor]

I can relate to the bitching precisely because I never really got into KDE4. Gnome is lighter, faster, and I almost never have to search for an application, since either I have just installed it and remember where it is or I've already used it before, so it felt weird and unnecessary to me.

Re:KDE4

[icebike]

The days when gnome was lighter and faster than kde are long past. You should try the latest version of KDE and experience what it's like to have a whole computer back.

7 is good, but was Vista really bad?

[torako]

I still don't quite see the major differences between Vista and 7 that make Vista a demon from hell and 7 the OS of the savior. 7 improved on a few annoyances of Vista and added nice features to the task bar that make it a bit more OS-X-dock-like, which is nice, but I don't see that as a revolution.

The main difference is that while most drivers for Vista were bad, because they were rushed, by now they have matured enough to not be troublesome anymore. But is that really an advantage of 7?

Re:7 is good, but was Vista really bad?

[NetServices]

Yes, Vista really was that bad. It's not as bad as Windows ME but it sure was a fish out of water. It might have had more importance if XP would have been discontinued sooner. I don't know of any enterprise that is using Vista but there are more and more moving to 7.

Re:7 is good, but was Vista really bad?

[ydrol]

Most people on /. have better than average rigs. When you see Vista Home Basic running like an absolute dog in a 2G Celeron with 1G ram, it makes you think! I did a cleanup on such a machine, it was horrible. Running a bit better now, but I imagine XP would fly on it, but the owner would not be happy!

Re:7 is good, but was Vista really bad?

[grasshoppa]

Vista has serious performance issues. Same rig, difference between Vista and 7 is night and day. Under vista, the harddrive is constantly grinding. The bandwidth the drive is severely compromised, resulting in reduced desktop performance for simple things like browsing web pages or navigating the local file system. Installations take much longer too.

Format, reload 7? Everything was snappy. I did notice increased disk usage that wasn't present under xp, but no where near the level of Vista and it never interfered with what I was doing on the system.

"pwufessuh haiwypheet" of ITT Tech BLOWN AWAY 7x?

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially in the 1st URL below:

---

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1930156&cid=34734160

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1930330&cid=34737526

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34612834

http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1930156&cid=34719276

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1930330&cid=34737308

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34647708

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1931788&cid=34747678

---

(ROTFLMAO!)

I seriously wouldn't listen to "pwufessuh haiwypheet" guys, he's only an ITT Tech student.

Worse Than That (Re:Windows 7)

[EXTomar]

The "upgrade path" isn't clear with multiple versions of upgrade. As mentioned, you can't upgrade from XP to Win7 directly where you need to do a Vista then do a Win7 upgrade. And it is not clear from the packaging or other marketing that you can't upgrade Vista Home to Win7 Professional. And you can't do a upgrade with the "full versions" if the previous was "upgrade" where you are forced to wipe.

Basically upgrading any machine to Win7 is often a "craps shot" where you won't find out what worked and what didn't till after you attempt it due to combination of factors. It is much easier to retire/rebuild a new machine from scratch than it is to try to take an XP machine to Win7.

Re:Windows 7 - no choice

[walterbyrd]

I'm not surprised either. If you buy a new desktop, or laptop, you usually have no choice.

I see no advantage of win7 over xp. Most of the changes are cosmetic, and not helpful.

Considering that it's been about ten years since xp was released, win7 seems pathetic. Small wonder that apple has surpassed microsoft in market cap.

A minor correction

[Lonewolf666]

It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware

No shit. It's new. Low-end hardware is, by definition, low-end and therefore not expected to run high-end software. That's why they have minimum requirements.

It doesn't work all that well on low-end hardware

If you only give it 1 core of a Core Duo and 256mb of ram, then no shit. Give it a core of a Xenon and 2gb of ram, however, and it ain't too shabby.

Actually, one core of a Core Duo would be OK. I've had Win 7 running on much less (one core of Atom) and performance was acceptable as long as I did not run large applications. Not great but serviceable.

The problem on old PCs or netbooks is RAM: Win 7 needs much more of it than XP (Not an issue for new desktops or "big" laptops, you buy them with 2 GByte or more anyway).

Nice, but doesn't really affect me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. I'm happy for the Win7 team, and I'm happy that some folks in Redmond are making a little money. Mostly because it's self-serving: I work at Microsoft, and this helps keep my paycheck steady. But the reality of the situation is that it's just a product, and it's not all that great. None of it is all that great. In fact, a great many co-workers are running Linux or even have Macs on their desks. I've been running Linux as a primary desktop for 5+years (with Wine+Virtualbox when absolutely necessary for some client apps), and I don't have to flatten and rebuild even half as often as my Win-native brethren. It's *way* faster, the interface is more consistent, and a lot of apps are simpler for non-novice use. Yes, people within Microsoft hate the goddamn playskool "ribbon" too. Word still rocks, but Powerpoint is a flea-ridden pile that can't hold a candle to OpenOffice. Outlook still doesn't have basic notification features I find in Gmail. SQL Server is no Oracle. And some fools keep convincing other fools that Sharepoint is suitable for network border deployment, resulting in orgs getting owned up on a regular basis. (The open-source Alfresco is a way, way more solid and capable product than Sharepoint, and requires less admin/user ratio.) OS X still rocks the UI world, but iTunes and the iPod sink under the weight of onerous DRM. My kid would carry a Zune, but some geniuses decided he might steal a song, and mad eit unusable as a portable drive for schoolwork. An Android device seemed a more sensible choice. So Vista was a turd, and Win7 at 20% makes me happy. But a combined total of WindowsVx over 2/3 of the market makes me worry about the health of the industry.

I'm not a zealot, but I'm not a customer either. Windows is just a product.

AC for obvious reasons

Re:Nice, but doesn't really affect me.

[neminem]

Really, SQL's no Oracle? I agree, products are just products, and Microsoft's made some truly terrible ones, and many more mediocre, but supporting both MSSSQL and Oracle as we do, I'd be way the heck happier to only support the former. And admittedly I haven't tried OpenOffice in a few years, but when I did, it was a bugridden piece of garbage, while at the time, Office may have been bloated, but it was still quite useable (on the other hand, I still have Office '03 installed at home. I hate the ribbon too.) Outlook is terrible, and my mp3 player also runs Android, but I couldn't disagree more on Oracle.

And I like the Linux kernel fine, but I still haven't found a window manager I like the UI of much, and most of my interactions with the OS go through the window manager, so that's pretty important. (Course they broke all kinds of things in the Win7 UI, too; I've got replacements running for just about everything. Maybe I should go look for "make Linux look like Win2k" sometime when I'm really bored.)

Why?

[gillbates]

Everything I want or need is either on the task bar (pinned there) or on the start menu (pinned there or in the 'recently used' section), or available with just a few keystrokes typed in the search box.

Ok, I'm really trying hard not to troll, and I don't want to start a flame war, but you do realize that Linux users have had the features you've just mentioned for more than 12 years, right?

Are you that excited about these things, or merely that they're now available in Windows?

In 1998, the Gnome Desktop allowed you to drag icons to the "start bar", and KDE has had an Alt-F2 "search for executable binary" popup for as long as I can remember.

If these are the sorts of things which make Win7 vastly superior, may I recommend giving Linux a try? You'll probably be pleasantly surprised at how easy it makes it to get things done.

Late reply but wanted to add my thoughts..

[RulerOf]

Hey, just in case you read this, I wanted to actually submit the post I wrote in response to what you said. While I wrote it a couple hours after your post, I lost my net connection and suspended my laptop, and just brought it back online today. Original text, with a few edits, follows:

Have you actually sat down and tried to use them as they're meant to be used? Or have you tried to use them as if you were still using XP?

The ironic thing is that only the ignorant and the extremely insightful tend to understand this.

I used to do that kind of stuff. I installed XP and immediately reverted the UI and start menu from "Fischer Price" to "Windows Classic" ...but eventually I realized--from using other peoples' desktops!--how nice it was to have all that stuff one click away behind the start button. I used to revert the Control Panel to "Classic View" (called "Icons View" for Vista/7)--which admittedly is sometimes necessary only on XP it seems, though I admit using NT6 with Office I only can't seem to find the "Mail" applet--and while it was familiar to me, I again gradually realized how much of a pain in the ass it became to help people over the phone because I had no idea what their control panel UI was actually laid out like.

Some time later, I found out why these UI elements are changed. Microsoft spends craploads of money on R&D to empirically determine that a UI change is good for a majority of use cases. I've found over the years that most change-fearing power users need to know these things before they can attempt to use the changes a new Windows iteration presents to them.

Alas, however, there will always be exceptions to the rule, even though they might drive you nuts, don't worry. When those people fall behind because they can't use productivity enhancements out of sheer ignorance and unwillingness to at least learn or attempt to understand, you can just chuckle quietly to yourself while you watch them waste time.