Windows 7 uses the same driver model as Vista. So as long as companies have released Vista drivers (which many finally have over the past few years), then the hardware will work fine with Windows 7.
Someone mod the parent up please!
I've seen a lot of posts from Windows naysayers about upcoming driver hell and, from my experience thus far with Windows 7, it just isn't true. For the Windows 7 beta I've just installed Vista drivers for anything I want to get working and I haven't had any issues so far.
What are the numbers showing about Firefox these days? Last I checked, the VAST majority of Firefox users were staying up-to-date.
One could argue that these numbers indicate that almost all Firefox users are tech-savvy and keep their software updated, however, I've seen plenty of Firefox users who are not. I think the difference here is that Firefox has a far more user friendly update method. It's very easy to do and it's not constantly in your face asking you to upgrade.
I think people don't run Windows Update for two reasons. The first is that, well, it kinda sucks. It's slow and sometimes it errors and you have to start all over (oh great, another 10 minute scan to tell me the same thing it just told me before the error?). The second reason would be that there are probably still quite a few people running illegal copies of Windows. Maybe not intentionally, they could have just passed it to a friend or relative who set up their computer for them and then told them never to run Update.
So, to summarize, I think people DO update and upgrade, but they do it when it's not going to prevent them from doing their work or otherwise interfere with their computing experience.
The problem with bundling IE isn't an issue with computer-savvy folk like us, but rather with Joe Sixpack who isn't going to go out of his way to get a new browser when he's already got one bundled with his computer.
This brings up an interesting point.
Lets say that they do get Microsoft to actually do some proper programming and separate out IE from Windows so that it can be uninstalled in such a way that the OS can go about it's business. Furthermore, lets say that they even get Microsoft to develop a wizard during installation that lets a Joe Sixpack choose from a list of browsers to install.
Is this going to make ANY difference to Joe Sixpack or is he still just going to install the first one on the list (which would probably be IE... fair enough since it is Microsoft's OS and they're obviously going to be a bit bias here)? If the average user is confronted with a choice of browsers, are any of them going to know enough about the choices to make an informed decision?
Microsoft should follow the Linux lead here... the core OS should just be the bare necessities and there should be a user friendly GUI to connect to and download features and software that is supported on the Windows platform. This could be done for both free software (IE, Firefox, etc.) and software they currently charge for or that may be going to a subscription based system (Office).
They could kill two birds with one stone here, they'd just be packaging the OS so it is slimmed down and performs better AND they wouldn't be facing this legal crap every release.
Granted, I still don't see what the big deal is. Yes, IE can't be removed and it is annoying and so the law indicates it is a monopoly. I guess I've always viewed a monopoly as a system where you can't access, obtain, use, etc any competing product. This, of course, isn't the case with Windows as I'm typing this up in Chrome at the moment. I do understand though, this isn't the way the law sees it and I'm sure there are good reasons for this that I'd understand if I fully dived into the required reading.
Yeah I just tried the Bittorrent test and got a message indicating the service was busy.
I wonder if the worst offending ISPs would consider blocking these site's IP addresses. I can imagine their response now "Oh we're not 'traffic shaping' or blocking those sites... we're just 'data molding' or 'idea shaping'."
My last job was a position as a web developer and the company policy was basically to ONLY develop for IE as that is the only market my boss seemed to care about. Of course that didn't stop me from testing in Firefox too...
What I found was that IE6 is horrible. Really, quite possible the worst browser ever considering it's rendering behavior in a time of web standardization.
IE7 was like a breath of fresh air. Normally, any rendering differences between it and Firefox were due to a box model rendering difference. Often, I could develop in one browser and then make small modifications at the end to get a nearly exact viewing experience in the other browser.
I only got to test IE8 for a short time before I moved on to my current job, but I was very impressed with the standards-compliance improvements (the Expression Web product line is focused on the creation of standards-based websites so it does seem like Microsoft is finally listening to the masses on this one). The backwards-compliance mode was a good compromise and seemed to work well. My latest sites all either worked very well in IE8 or needed only small visual tweaks.
I'm hoping IE8 helps bump IE6 off the map completely and promotes the development of well-coded sites in the future to comply with the default strict doctype mode.
Hey, there is nothing stopping Firefox from making it's own OS and having Firefox installed by default on it.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has every right to include their own browser in their OS... it IS their OS. Granted, it doesn't help that IE is rather tenaciously tied into the OS but it's their right to code their OS like that if they so choose (not that I think it's a good idea).
Really, as a user I wouldn't want this. All this does is install more software by default that I have to go and uninstall. If I want a browser, I'll use IE to go onto the internet and get it.
Sadly, this isn't about educating end-users so that they'll pick a browser based on features, security, and performance... it's about every browser company saying "I want equal treatment as your browser on your OS, even though I didn't contribute to making it at all, so that I can get a slice of that nice big user-base that is just fine with using the default browser."
Which raises an interesting question... if this were to succeed and all of these browsers would be installed, which one gets to be "Default"?
Do you have sources for MS trying to prevent Mono from working? I'm not calling you a liar or anything, but this is really the first I've heard of it and I'm curious.
As for Mac OS X, it's been my understanding that there is already a working Silverlight plugin. I highly doubt it's anywhere near as mature as Flash for Mac OS X is but then again Adobe has had a large head start.
Part of the reason I'm moderately optimistic about this OS (other than the improved performance over Vista that I've seen in beta) is that I've seen from reading their RSS feed that they actually have been listening to feedback and are attempting to incorporate a lot of it.
It stands to reason that if a large number of users likes the functionality of a particular taskbar function from a particular OS that they would provide feedback, when asked, to development programs for other OS that would might lead the developers in the same direction. Same goal, different path.
I wouldn't go that far. I think Flash and Silverlight do actually have a place on the web and I think most of the general hate for these technologies is due to their overuse and outright abuse by Flash-enhanced ads and pop-ups.
I think these technologies both really shine in video streaming currently and I think they'll excel at Rich Internet Application development (they do now but you don't see a lot of RIAs at the moment using them). True, you could do much of this with contemporary web languages but perhaps not as easily.
If it is one, what's so bad about competition forcing it to become better or die? Doing Flash programming used to be about as much fun as repeatedly slamming your junk in a car door. Now it's getting better from that perspective and I don't doubt that competition looming from Silverlight is some of why.
Something I've learned about this site... it's only a monopoly and/or evil if it's Microsoft.
Adobe has somehow convinced people that its a good thing that they have little to no competition and that they'd never be an "evil" corporation like Microsoft.
Looks to me like a lot of those CSS results are due to trying to make it cross-browser compatible. Looks like they went pretty far back too... some of those tags have been depreciated since Firefox 0.9.
I never really did the color comparison/validations on my pages although I can see how handy that information could be and I bet its pretty easily remedied.
What I am surprised about is that you mentioned its valid HTML. The article mentions the site uses.Net 2.0... its been my experience that most, if not all, of the pre-built controls they offer end up compiling into invalid code. I've heard you can change this by re-writing parts of the controls and if they did that to produce valid HTML then I'm impressed.
I'm aware of the history but call me optimistic... I'm hoping the shift in the Microsoft leadership in the last years may be for the better. I'm thinking the future of the Mac and Linux implementions of Silverlight could be a good indication on whether anything has really changed or not. I'm hoping that Microsoft learns from the success of Adobe and realizes targetting one specific platform doesn't necessarily increase that platform's market share... I think this is especially true for web applications, although this may change in the future as more companies attempt to move their applications onto the web platform.
As I mentioned in another post, I really hope Silverlight's adoption rate rises and that they follow through on the cross-platform promises. I want there to be some competition for Flash/Flex just as I want competition for Silverlight. I'm hoping some really good features will spring out of both products because of this.
Granted, its not likely to happen, but what if Adobe pulled out of any sort of future Flash/Flex development? Sure, another competitor would pop up at some point but really there doesn't seem to be a lot out there right now (that I've found anyway) with the feature set of either Flash or Silverlight.
I could be wrong, but I believe one of the main differences between Silverlight 1 and 2 was back-end languages.
Silverlight 1 used a Javascript back-end while Silverlight 2 uses a.Net language back-end (C# or VB.Net). Silverlight in general uses a subset of the WPF system which is why its also named WPF/E which stands for Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (which indicates its use as a web platform instead of for desktops).
But why is it any better to have Adobe (and Macromedia before that) dominate the market?
I'm personally hoping Silverlight matures on as many browsers and operating systems as possible AND that it and Flash and/or Flex continue to exist in competition. With luck, the competition will continue to drive each development team to improve their respective product.
They could have offered multiple technologies to access the video on that website I suppose but whats the big deal with them choosing Silverlight?
So it may not have been the best choice for maximum exposure but it IS only one website, I'm sure other websites, including the TV networks online, will be offering it in Flash.
Silverlight is just a technology choice. Once upon a time, I'm sure people would have been upset that something like this was being done in Flash. It's easy to forget there was a time Flash wasn't found on every computer since it's enjoyed many years without serious competition... but hey, thats only an issue when its Microsoft right?
I'm not convince games influence crime any more than any other media does.
Depending on a person's personality and imagination, they can get just as "involved" in a book, movie, or even a song. Really can we say with any certainty that, for the majority of people, games have any more lasting effect on personality and character traits then any of these other forms of media?
Really, crime and violence have been around long before even books were widely available. I think we may discover one day that increases in violence and crime may have more to do with the ever increasing human population numbers. More people, more violence and crime.
After scanning over the article, it seems to me they aren't attempting to ban the games or prohibit them from being made or sold.
This is more about appropriate content for children. In my mind at least, its similar to how DVD movies with a certain rating aren't supposed to be sold to anyone under the age of 18. Everyone else can still purchase copies though.
I'm not saying I agree with the idea that the government has a right to tell us whether each individual child is mature enough or not to handle the content, but this isn't about preventing most people from obtaining the game.
Agreed.
I've run Vista Ultimate 64-bit on this machine and am currently running 2008 64-bit with a small partition set aside for Windows 7 64.
My experience with Vista Ultimate was that it used nearly 2 gigs out of my 4gb of memory just sitting at the desktop after booting up. Windows 7 uses around 500-600 mb on the desktop after bootup.
I realize this is hardly an in-depth test but that says a lot to me that the default install experience is much better and far less resource intensive than it was in Vista. I'd call that a fairly significant improvement.
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Windows 7 uses the same driver model as Vista. So as long as companies have released Vista drivers (which many finally have over the past few years), then the hardware will work fine with Windows 7.
Someone mod the parent up please!
I've seen a lot of posts from Windows naysayers about upcoming driver hell and, from my experience thus far with Windows 7, it just isn't true. For the Windows 7 beta I've just installed Vista drivers for anything I want to get working and I haven't had any issues so far.
What are the numbers showing about Firefox these days? Last I checked, the VAST majority of Firefox users were staying up-to-date.
One could argue that these numbers indicate that almost all Firefox users are tech-savvy and keep their software updated, however, I've seen plenty of Firefox users who are not. I think the difference here is that Firefox has a far more user friendly update method. It's very easy to do and it's not constantly in your face asking you to upgrade.
I think people don't run Windows Update for two reasons. The first is that, well, it kinda sucks. It's slow and sometimes it errors and you have to start all over (oh great, another 10 minute scan to tell me the same thing it just told me before the error?). The second reason would be that there are probably still quite a few people running illegal copies of Windows. Maybe not intentionally, they could have just passed it to a friend or relative who set up their computer for them and then told them never to run Update.
So, to summarize, I think people DO update and upgrade, but they do it when it's not going to prevent them from doing their work or otherwise interfere with their computing experience.
The problem with bundling IE isn't an issue with computer-savvy folk like us, but rather with Joe Sixpack who isn't going to go out of his way to get a new browser when he's already got one bundled with his computer.
This brings up an interesting point.
Lets say that they do get Microsoft to actually do some proper programming and separate out IE from Windows so that it can be uninstalled in such a way that the OS can go about it's business. Furthermore, lets say that they even get Microsoft to develop a wizard during installation that lets a Joe Sixpack choose from a list of browsers to install.
Is this going to make ANY difference to Joe Sixpack or is he still just going to install the first one on the list (which would probably be IE... fair enough since it is Microsoft's OS and they're obviously going to be a bit bias here)? If the average user is confronted with a choice of browsers, are any of them going to know enough about the choices to make an informed decision?
Microsoft should follow the Linux lead here... the core OS should just be the bare necessities and there should be a user friendly GUI to connect to and download features and software that is supported on the Windows platform. This could be done for both free software (IE, Firefox, etc.) and software they currently charge for or that may be going to a subscription based system (Office).
They could kill two birds with one stone here, they'd just be packaging the OS so it is slimmed down and performs better AND they wouldn't be facing this legal crap every release.
Granted, I still don't see what the big deal is. Yes, IE can't be removed and it is annoying and so the law indicates it is a monopoly. I guess I've always viewed a monopoly as a system where you can't access, obtain, use, etc any competing product. This, of course, isn't the case with Windows as I'm typing this up in Chrome at the moment. I do understand though, this isn't the way the law sees it and I'm sure there are good reasons for this that I'd understand if I fully dived into the required reading.
Yeah I just tried the Bittorrent test and got a message indicating the service was busy.
I wonder if the worst offending ISPs would consider blocking these site's IP addresses. I can imagine their response now "Oh we're not 'traffic shaping' or blocking those sites... we're just 'data molding' or 'idea shaping'."
My last job was a position as a web developer and the company policy was basically to ONLY develop for IE as that is the only market my boss seemed to care about. Of course that didn't stop me from testing in Firefox too...
What I found was that IE6 is horrible. Really, quite possible the worst browser ever considering it's rendering behavior in a time of web standardization.
IE7 was like a breath of fresh air. Normally, any rendering differences between it and Firefox were due to a box model rendering difference. Often, I could develop in one browser and then make small modifications at the end to get a nearly exact viewing experience in the other browser.
I only got to test IE8 for a short time before I moved on to my current job, but I was very impressed with the standards-compliance improvements (the Expression Web product line is focused on the creation of standards-based websites so it does seem like Microsoft is finally listening to the masses on this one). The backwards-compliance mode was a good compromise and seemed to work well. My latest sites all either worked very well in IE8 or needed only small visual tweaks.
I'm hoping IE8 helps bump IE6 off the map completely and promotes the development of well-coded sites in the future to comply with the default strict doctype mode.
Hey, there is nothing stopping Firefox from making it's own OS and having Firefox installed by default on it.
As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has every right to include their own browser in their OS... it IS their OS. Granted, it doesn't help that IE is rather tenaciously tied into the OS but it's their right to code their OS like that if they so choose (not that I think it's a good idea).
Really, as a user I wouldn't want this. All this does is install more software by default that I have to go and uninstall. If I want a browser, I'll use IE to go onto the internet and get it.
Sadly, this isn't about educating end-users so that they'll pick a browser based on features, security, and performance... it's about every browser company saying "I want equal treatment as your browser on your OS, even though I didn't contribute to making it at all, so that I can get a slice of that nice big user-base that is just fine with using the default browser."
Which raises an interesting question... if this were to succeed and all of these browsers would be installed, which one gets to be "Default"?
Do you have sources for MS trying to prevent Mono from working? I'm not calling you a liar or anything, but this is really the first I've heard of it and I'm curious.
As for Mac OS X, it's been my understanding that there is already a working Silverlight plugin. I highly doubt it's anywhere near as mature as Flash for Mac OS X is but then again Adobe has had a large head start.
...what did you expect?
Part of the reason I'm moderately optimistic about this OS (other than the improved performance over Vista that I've seen in beta) is that I've seen from reading their RSS feed that they actually have been listening to feedback and are attempting to incorporate a lot of it.
It stands to reason that if a large number of users likes the functionality of a particular taskbar function from a particular OS that they would provide feedback, when asked, to development programs for other OS that would might lead the developers in the same direction. Same goal, different path.
I wouldn't go that far. I think Flash and Silverlight do actually have a place on the web and I think most of the general hate for these technologies is due to their overuse and outright abuse by Flash-enhanced ads and pop-ups.
I think these technologies both really shine in video streaming currently and I think they'll excel at Rich Internet Application development (they do now but you don't see a lot of RIAs at the moment using them). True, you could do much of this with contemporary web languages but perhaps not as easily.
When did Flash become a web standard?
If it is one, what's so bad about competition forcing it to become better or die? Doing Flash programming used to be about as much fun as repeatedly slamming your junk in a car door. Now it's getting better from that perspective and I don't doubt that competition looming from Silverlight is some of why.
Something I've learned about this site... it's only a monopoly and/or evil if it's Microsoft.
Adobe has somehow convinced people that its a good thing that they have little to no competition and that they'd never be an "evil" corporation like Microsoft.
I never really did the color comparison/validations on my pages although I can see how handy that information could be and I bet its pretty easily remedied.
What I am surprised about is that you mentioned its valid HTML. The article mentions the site uses .Net 2.0... its been my experience that most, if not all, of the pre-built controls they offer end up compiling into invalid code. I've heard you can change this by re-writing parts of the controls and if they did that to produce valid HTML then I'm impressed.
I'm aware of the history but call me optimistic... I'm hoping the shift in the Microsoft leadership in the last years may be for the better. I'm thinking the future of the Mac and Linux implementions of Silverlight could be a good indication on whether anything has really changed or not. I'm hoping that Microsoft learns from the success of Adobe and realizes targetting one specific platform doesn't necessarily increase that platform's market share... I think this is especially true for web applications, although this may change in the future as more companies attempt to move their applications onto the web platform.
As I mentioned in another post, I really hope Silverlight's adoption rate rises and that they follow through on the cross-platform promises. I want there to be some competition for Flash/Flex just as I want competition for Silverlight. I'm hoping some really good features will spring out of both products because of this.
Granted, its not likely to happen, but what if Adobe pulled out of any sort of future Flash/Flex development? Sure, another competitor would pop up at some point but really there doesn't seem to be a lot out there right now (that I've found anyway) with the feature set of either Flash or Silverlight.
I could be wrong, but I believe one of the main differences between Silverlight 1 and 2 was back-end languages.
Silverlight 1 used a Javascript back-end while Silverlight 2 uses a .Net language back-end (C# or VB.Net). Silverlight in general uses a subset of the WPF system which is why its also named WPF/E which stands for Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (which indicates its use as a web platform instead of for desktops).
But why is it any better to have Adobe (and Macromedia before that) dominate the market?
I'm personally hoping Silverlight matures on as many browsers and operating systems as possible AND that it and Flash and/or Flex continue to exist in competition. With luck, the competition will continue to drive each development team to improve their respective product.
They could have offered multiple technologies to access the video on that website I suppose but whats the big deal with them choosing Silverlight?
So it may not have been the best choice for maximum exposure but it IS only one website, I'm sure other websites, including the TV networks online, will be offering it in Flash.
Silverlight is just a technology choice. Once upon a time, I'm sure people would have been upset that something like this was being done in Flash. It's easy to forget there was a time Flash wasn't found on every computer since it's enjoyed many years without serious competition... but hey, thats only an issue when its Microsoft right?
I'm not convince games influence crime any more than any other media does.
Depending on a person's personality and imagination, they can get just as "involved" in a book, movie, or even a song. Really can we say with any certainty that, for the majority of people, games have any more lasting effect on personality and character traits then any of these other forms of media?
Really, crime and violence have been around long before even books were widely available. I think we may discover one day that increases in violence and crime may have more to do with the ever increasing human population numbers. More people, more violence and crime.
After scanning over the article, it seems to me they aren't attempting to ban the games or prohibit them from being made or sold.
This is more about appropriate content for children. In my mind at least, its similar to how DVD movies with a certain rating aren't supposed to be sold to anyone under the age of 18. Everyone else can still purchase copies though.
I'm not saying I agree with the idea that the government has a right to tell us whether each individual child is mature enough or not to handle the content, but this isn't about preventing most people from obtaining the game.
Agreed. I've run Vista Ultimate 64-bit on this machine and am currently running 2008 64-bit with a small partition set aside for Windows 7 64. My experience with Vista Ultimate was that it used nearly 2 gigs out of my 4gb of memory just sitting at the desktop after booting up. Windows 7 uses around 500-600 mb on the desktop after bootup. I realize this is hardly an in-depth test but that says a lot to me that the default install experience is much better and far less resource intensive than it was in Vista. I'd call that a fairly significant improvement.