I can kind of see where you're going with that, but for 95% of people it's a non-issue, and if you're such a purist then you aren't in Microsoft's target market anyway. And I'm not sure what compiler they use to compile Windows internally, but I would wager that it's probably the same MSVC compiler that is part of Visual Studio. Sure, it's not open source, but for most people, it doesn't really matter whether their OS is open source. I like open source software in general, but I use what works best for me, and in this case, it's Windows with a smattering of FOSS tools to fill in the gaps.
Right, so you have no actual technical complaints with any of it, you're just spouting bullshit analogies that don't mean anything. What's wrong with mingw gcc? It's completely native, it's cygwin that uses POSIX emulation, if that was your problem. As for Visual Studio, God forbid someone actually make money from software. I don't use it personally but most people can get by with Express, and if you need anything more than that you're probably intending to sell the software you're writing, so I don't see what's wrong with having to buy a professional edition. I haven't seen any problems with ActiveState Python or Perl, although you don't have to use ActiveState, I'm using the regular open source Python from python.org. Bottom line, there are a lot of options for software development on Windows, and despite your bullshit analogies, they work fine for a lot of people.
Honestly, if Vista was not a rewrite of the kernel, why was there such a driver/application compatibility problem? You're completely wrong on that point. Most of the changes in Vista are under the proverbial hood, whereas the changes in 7 are more prominent to the user.
Could you clarify what worthless gizmos and gadgets and shit moving around your screen that you're complaining about? I see none of that on my Vista or Windows 7 installs. And what does the up arrow have to do with the refresh button? The replacement for the up arrow is the breadcrumb system; you click on the folder name of the one above it to go up and you can even click on one of the little arrow separators to get to a different subfolder of the parent folder. That's the way Dolphin in KDE4 works too, so I don't see how that's confusing. Then again, KDE4 seems to be getting panned for some of the same reasons as Vista (people resistant to change). And you know, there are these magical things called options, sort of like config files? If you don't like the new taskbar you don't have to use it.
Actually, Windows 7 has been demonstrated to run fine on netbooks, and it does use less resources than Vista in my experience, so I don't see why it wouldn't run on an Eee PC. Although I think on a machine like that, I would still rather run Linux, but dual-booting with 7 for games would not be a bad prospect.
Compared to XP it feels like a mish-mash of web interfaces and compared to MacOS X it feels like a toy.
What do you mean by web-interfaces, that really doesn't make any sense at all. Also, I usually feel like OS X feels like a toy OS to me, but that's just me.
That's really not much of a bad thing if it really happened, although Vista SP2 is already in beta testing and it basically includes nothing worth mentioning.
I suppose that's partly because DX10 is so hard on graphics cards that it doesn't run optimally on a lot of them, although with the latest batch of graphics cards this is finally no longer the case. But seriously, play Crysis at max settings on a Radeon 4800 series or GTX 260/280 and tell me that's not impressive. Also, there's no reason to stagnate an API just because no one's using the previous version effectively (which is false btw), it's just an API. In short, your post makes no sense.
All those things are easily downloadable for those that want them, and not included for those that don't. That way, you can use mingw-gcc, Visual Studio, or any other compilers you want. Visual Studio Express is free and offers everything most people would want, i.e. a compiler and a decent IDE, or you can use mingw and Emacs/Eclipse like I do. You can similarly download python, perl, etc. just as you would on Linux, and use them in the IDE/editor of your choice. I don't see how that's crippled in any way.
Really? I see that more with Apple users than any other group of users, when Apple puts out restricted products like the iPhone they buy it and then proclaim why an open solution would actually be inferior. Did it never occur to you that perhaps Windows 7 is actually better than Windows XP, Vista, and ever other Windows before it, and perhaps even OS X or Linux, depending on your uses? I stick with Windows partly for games/application compatibility, even though I prefer the *nix command line, but I actually like the way things work in Windows as compared to OS X, and Linux is nice but I can run it in a VM more easily than the other way around, so that's what I do.
Well, the driver model in Vista was vastly different from XP, but Vista drivers work in Windows 7 so that's not an issue. Although WDDM 1.1 drivers specifically built for 7 are supposed to use less RAM and resources, which is nice.
Honestly, if anything I've only seen a bunch of FUD on slashdot about Windows 7, so I'm not sure what slashdot you're reading. A lot of the enthusiasm over Windows 7 is partly because it is better than Vista, and partly because a lot of people never even gave Vista a chance so a lot of the neat things in Vista seem new to them in 7. As for features, try reading the Engineering Windows 7 blog to see some real new features. You should look at how much Paint has improved if you think that this is a simple minor release. And finally, your statement about incremental releases is the most hypocritical thing about your post. It's OK for Apple to charge full price for what you admit is an incremental release, but when Microsoft does it it's certainly worthy of mockery? Before you start complaing about astroturf, maybe you should try to inform yourself and realize that your bias is showing.
All the benchmarks I've seen so far show Vista/Win7 being close to 30% slower than XP running office apps on the same hardware.
[Citation needed]. Seriously, 30% is a lot, and how do you measure office application performance anyway? Post-SP1 game benchmarks have shown that the performance difference is less than 5% and in many cases identical, largely due to the fact that drivers for Vista no longer suck, so I don't see how office apps, which are much less demanding, could run that much slower.
For one thing, window management in Windows 7 is a lot nicer than any other Windows to date, and I would say miles better than OS X (although OS X's window management is retarded IMO), and performance is a bit better than Vista, and then all the reasons Vista had over XP (integrated search, intelligent prefetcher, hardware accelerated UI, etc.) Document libraries are a neat feature, as is the Homegroup home networking setup, Device Stage looks cool if I had a device to use it with, and the bundled programs like Paint, Wordpad, etc got a nice makeover. Wordpad even supports.odt now.
It sounds like you're trying not to see any benefits of new versions of Windows, which is strange, because XP really isn't that good of an OS in the first place. It's just kind of stable and more or less plug and play, although Vista is even more so with the huge number of bundled drivers (eg. I just plugged my roommate's printer into my laptop and it "Just Worked" (TM)). If you are really curious about what's improved and not just trolling, I'd advise you to check out the Engineering Windows 7 blog.
Yeah, I used to think that too but the main problem for me is how reflective they are. It's impossible to use them outdoors. I guess it's kind of useful in that while I'm waiting for it to start, I can use it as a mirror! I guess they look moderately nice indoors but so do matte screens IMO, especially if you get an LED backlit one.
I wasn't aware that being W3C compliant meant not including additional features. Does that even make any sense? AFAIK, most browsers have their own set of extra CSS tags prefixed with the vendor name, like -moz-rounded-corners and such, which Firefox uses for parts of the UI. Is that not allowed too? Oh crap, I guess we all better use lynx, none of that useless non-compliant GUI business.
I think it's built into Vista, because it uses junctions to point apps to the new AppData\Roaming folder that were expecting Application Data. Of course this is a bitch when you're using robocopy to backup your home folder, and wondering why after several hours it's still copying. For anyone who might be interested, you use the switch/XJ to keep it from following junctions in a neverending loop.
I don't think anyone who actually does work on their laptops understands glossy screens. They are absolutely worthless for anything besides looking shiny before you buy the laptop. Posting from a laptop with a ridiculously reflective screen that pisses me off when I use it outdoors. And it's a tablet PC too, so you're kind of supposed to use it outdoors more...
I concur, I've seen corporate editions a lot in third world countries where everyone pirates everything (the corporate editions have no cd key check/activation) and they are much less bloated than the normal ones you buy from the store. But the easiest thing is to just use Avast or AVG or Clamwin or whatever floats your boat.
I think the Acid tests also focus on making sure things break gracefully, which is also important. I guess it's not so bad that IE8 doesn't pass ACID3 because as you mentioned, it tests things that aren't in widespread use, although it does hamper the ability of developers to actually use said features when everyone but IE supports them. And by the time IE9 is out, there will be something else to support that it doesn't support unless they start making more of an effort on that front. I guess the problem is that most people don't really care about standards support, so it's kind of a chicken-egg problem for IE.
I'd like to note that the latest Shiretoko (Firefox 3.1) nightly gets around 93/100 on Acid3, since you're comparing nightly versions of Webkit and Opera. I also think it's been at 93/100 for a while, and I don't think they're focusing on getting 100% for 3.1 as much as just getting it out the door at this point.
I agree that IE lagging on CSS support is a major PITA for web developers, but I don't think Netscape's CSS2 support was that great in 1998 either. Of course, I didn't know what CSS was in 1998, but I don't think it was exactly in wide use at the time, at least relative to the awesome <marquee> and <blink> tags.
Slashdot Mirror
I can kind of see where you're going with that, but for 95% of people it's a non-issue, and if you're such a purist then you aren't in Microsoft's target market anyway. And I'm not sure what compiler they use to compile Windows internally, but I would wager that it's probably the same MSVC compiler that is part of Visual Studio. Sure, it's not open source, but for most people, it doesn't really matter whether their OS is open source. I like open source software in general, but I use what works best for me, and in this case, it's Windows with a smattering of FOSS tools to fill in the gaps.
A Vista install is pretty big, but including extra space for apps dilutes your (already specious) argument.
Right, so you have no actual technical complaints with any of it, you're just spouting bullshit analogies that don't mean anything. What's wrong with mingw gcc? It's completely native, it's cygwin that uses POSIX emulation, if that was your problem. As for Visual Studio, God forbid someone actually make money from software. I don't use it personally but most people can get by with Express, and if you need anything more than that you're probably intending to sell the software you're writing, so I don't see what's wrong with having to buy a professional edition. I haven't seen any problems with ActiveState Python or Perl, although you don't have to use ActiveState, I'm using the regular open source Python from python.org. Bottom line, there are a lot of options for software development on Windows, and despite your bullshit analogies, they work fine for a lot of people.
Honestly, if Vista was not a rewrite of the kernel, why was there such a driver/application compatibility problem? You're completely wrong on that point. Most of the changes in Vista are under the proverbial hood, whereas the changes in 7 are more prominent to the user.
Could you clarify what worthless gizmos and gadgets and shit moving around your screen that you're complaining about? I see none of that on my Vista or Windows 7 installs. And what does the up arrow have to do with the refresh button? The replacement for the up arrow is the breadcrumb system; you click on the folder name of the one above it to go up and you can even click on one of the little arrow separators to get to a different subfolder of the parent folder. That's the way Dolphin in KDE4 works too, so I don't see how that's confusing. Then again, KDE4 seems to be getting panned for some of the same reasons as Vista (people resistant to change). And you know, there are these magical things called options, sort of like config files? If you don't like the new taskbar you don't have to use it.
Actually, Windows 7 has been demonstrated to run fine on netbooks, and it does use less resources than Vista in my experience, so I don't see why it wouldn't run on an Eee PC. Although I think on a machine like that, I would still rather run Linux, but dual-booting with 7 for games would not be a bad prospect.
Compared to XP it feels like a mish-mash of web interfaces and compared to MacOS X it feels like a toy.
What do you mean by web-interfaces, that really doesn't make any sense at all. Also, I usually feel like OS X feels like a toy OS to me, but that's just me.
That's really not much of a bad thing if it really happened, although Vista SP2 is already in beta testing and it basically includes nothing worth mentioning.
I suppose that's partly because DX10 is so hard on graphics cards that it doesn't run optimally on a lot of them, although with the latest batch of graphics cards this is finally no longer the case. But seriously, play Crysis at max settings on a Radeon 4800 series or GTX 260/280 and tell me that's not impressive. Also, there's no reason to stagnate an API just because no one's using the previous version effectively (which is false btw), it's just an API. In short, your post makes no sense.
All those things are easily downloadable for those that want them, and not included for those that don't. That way, you can use mingw-gcc, Visual Studio, or any other compilers you want. Visual Studio Express is free and offers everything most people would want, i.e. a compiler and a decent IDE, or you can use mingw and Emacs/Eclipse like I do. You can similarly download python, perl, etc. just as you would on Linux, and use them in the IDE/editor of your choice. I don't see how that's crippled in any way.
Really? I see that more with Apple users than any other group of users, when Apple puts out restricted products like the iPhone they buy it and then proclaim why an open solution would actually be inferior. Did it never occur to you that perhaps Windows 7 is actually better than Windows XP, Vista, and ever other Windows before it, and perhaps even OS X or Linux, depending on your uses? I stick with Windows partly for games/application compatibility, even though I prefer the *nix command line, but I actually like the way things work in Windows as compared to OS X, and Linux is nice but I can run it in a VM more easily than the other way around, so that's what I do.
Well, the driver model in Vista was vastly different from XP, but Vista drivers work in Windows 7 so that's not an issue. Although WDDM 1.1 drivers specifically built for 7 are supposed to use less RAM and resources, which is nice.
Honestly, if anything I've only seen a bunch of FUD on slashdot about Windows 7, so I'm not sure what slashdot you're reading. A lot of the enthusiasm over Windows 7 is partly because it is better than Vista, and partly because a lot of people never even gave Vista a chance so a lot of the neat things in Vista seem new to them in 7. As for features, try reading the Engineering Windows 7 blog to see some real new features. You should look at how much Paint has improved if you think that this is a simple minor release. And finally, your statement about incremental releases is the most hypocritical thing about your post. It's OK for Apple to charge full price for what you admit is an incremental release, but when Microsoft does it it's certainly worthy of mockery? Before you start complaing about astroturf, maybe you should try to inform yourself and realize that your bias is showing.
All the benchmarks I've seen so far show Vista/Win7 being close to 30% slower than XP running office apps on the same hardware.
[Citation needed]. Seriously, 30% is a lot, and how do you measure office application performance anyway? Post-SP1 game benchmarks have shown that the performance difference is less than 5% and in many cases identical, largely due to the fact that drivers for Vista no longer suck, so I don't see how office apps, which are much less demanding, could run that much slower.
For one thing, window management in Windows 7 is a lot nicer than any other Windows to date, and I would say miles better than OS X (although OS X's window management is retarded IMO), and performance is a bit better than Vista, and then all the reasons Vista had over XP (integrated search, intelligent prefetcher, hardware accelerated UI, etc.) Document libraries are a neat feature, as is the Homegroup home networking setup, Device Stage looks cool if I had a device to use it with, and the bundled programs like Paint, Wordpad, etc got a nice makeover. Wordpad even supports .odt now.
It sounds like you're trying not to see any benefits of new versions of Windows, which is strange, because XP really isn't that good of an OS in the first place. It's just kind of stable and more or less plug and play, although Vista is even more so with the huge number of bundled drivers (eg. I just plugged my roommate's printer into my laptop and it "Just Worked" (TM)). If you are really curious about what's improved and not just trolling, I'd advise you to check out the Engineering Windows 7 blog.
Yeah, I used to think that too but the main problem for me is how reflective they are. It's impossible to use them outdoors. I guess it's kind of useful in that while I'm waiting for it to start, I can use it as a mirror! I guess they look moderately nice indoors but so do matte screens IMO, especially if you get an LED backlit one.
I wasn't aware that being W3C compliant meant not including additional features. Does that even make any sense? AFAIK, most browsers have their own set of extra CSS tags prefixed with the vendor name, like -moz-rounded-corners and such, which Firefox uses for parts of the UI. Is that not allowed too? Oh crap, I guess we all better use lynx, none of that useless non-compliant GUI business.
I think it's built into Vista, because it uses junctions to point apps to the new AppData\Roaming folder that were expecting Application Data. Of course this is a bitch when you're using robocopy to backup your home folder, and wondering why after several hours it's still copying. For anyone who might be interested, you use the switch /XJ to keep it from following junctions in a neverending loop.
Umm, I'm pretty sure junctions in NTFS on Vista are similar to symlinks.
I don't think anyone who actually does work on their laptops understands glossy screens. They are absolutely worthless for anything besides looking shiny before you buy the laptop. Posting from a laptop with a ridiculously reflective screen that pisses me off when I use it outdoors. And it's a tablet PC too, so you're kind of supposed to use it outdoors more...
I was doing my physics homework while reading slashdot, and this cracked me up.
I concur, I've seen corporate editions a lot in third world countries where everyone pirates everything (the corporate editions have no cd key check/activation) and they are much less bloated than the normal ones you buy from the store. But the easiest thing is to just use Avast or AVG or Clamwin or whatever floats your boat.
I think the Acid tests also focus on making sure things break gracefully, which is also important. I guess it's not so bad that IE8 doesn't pass ACID3 because as you mentioned, it tests things that aren't in widespread use, although it does hamper the ability of developers to actually use said features when everyone but IE supports them. And by the time IE9 is out, there will be something else to support that it doesn't support unless they start making more of an effort on that front. I guess the problem is that most people don't really care about standards support, so it's kind of a chicken-egg problem for IE.
I'd like to note that the latest Shiretoko (Firefox 3.1) nightly gets around 93/100 on Acid3, since you're comparing nightly versions of Webkit and Opera. I also think it's been at 93/100 for a while, and I don't think they're focusing on getting 100% for 3.1 as much as just getting it out the door at this point.
I agree that IE lagging on CSS support is a major PITA for web developers, but I don't think Netscape's CSS2 support was that great in 1998 either. Of course, I didn't know what CSS was in 1998, but I don't think it was exactly in wide use at the time, at least relative to the awesome <marquee> and <blink> tags.
When in doubt, wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware