Programs have been able to add exceptions to windows firewall for as long as I can remember. uTorrent does it automatically and I very much doubt MS gave them a free pass. Windows firewall isn't designed to keep programs from accessing the net, it's designed to keep external programs from getting in.
How have you come to that conclusion? My point was simple - I support artists by going to their shows, which as you've indirectly stated is how they make their money. They don't profit much from album sales, so I don't feel guilty for pirating them. The above commenter seems to think otherwise. I suspect they're the one that's really the failed musician.
And for the record, I have no musical talent what so ever and never once pretended I did. I'd probably make it big.
That's exactly my point, that's how they're supposed to make their money, through touring and performing (And of course selling merchandise at the events), that's how it's supposed to be. If an artist stopped doing that and relied on CD sales to support their lifestyle, I'd be far more inclined to buy their CD's.
I'd love for all future phones to be connectible via USB. No doubt even if some kind of legislation passes, the phone companies will pawn a crippled bluetooth implementation as being the "universal connector" while still making you shell out £25 for a stupid cable that just so happens to do something the bluetooth can't.
Why should they just pan off 64bitness like that? Considering what x86-64 really is these days (little more than a few extra registers), they have no reason NOT to make it 64bit. In fact, since this project is likely years away, they may as well make it 64bit as standard. Whether you like it or not, the industry will be moving to 64bit within a few years, it's likely the next version of Windows will be 64bit only and since windows essentially decides the hardware out there, 64bit will be the norm. There's not a single modern OS out there that doesn't support 64bit CPUs in some way, while still working perfectly fine with (99.9% of) 32bit Apps. At the end of the day, it's a potential performance boost in certain circumstances with almost no performance loss anywhere else.
Presumably, the Macintosh Business Unit has "higher profit margins" because they don't actually have to spend a lot developing Office, rather they just have to port it? The cost of developing each successive version goes into the "Windows" business unit (if such a thing exists in Microsoft, you know what I mean). Or does my logic have an obvious flaw that was so obvious, I missed it?
I'm not directly replying to drsmithy, but I would like to point out that anyone saying "Oh well windows sucks because in Linux I can just go to the command line and..." has sort of missed the point of WINDOWS. Not flaming or trolling, just pointing out that it's easier to click a few buttons than it is to type something into a command line and that's why "n00bs" make Windows so popular. Jus' sayin'.
And for those people, Windows (or MacOS) is not for them and that's fair enough, but for what Windows is, Windows 7 is at least a decent version of it and that's what I'm getting at.
Not everyone in the whole wide world runs Linux or OSX or whatever. Some people actually like Windows, as crazy as it may seem.
But countering your argument, I could easily replace "Windows" with "linux" and "win2k" with say...Ubuntu 6.0 or something. I don't think I've ever seen a new OS that literally let you do more than the previous version, it's supposed to be about doing the same things, only better (Or we'd all still be using terminal windows for absolutely everything - and yes, I'm aware that enough people do this).
I'm not entirely sure what the "recommended" hardware was, but my system is pretty modern (less than a year since nearly every component of it was released), so I fully expected them to have decent support for it. I'm fortunate to not have many issues, just the odd one where it goes into sleep and doesn't wake up (I think it's happened twice now in about a month), but IE8 is definitely borderline broken in it. Luckily I'm a FF user so it doesn't affect me, but if you need IE support for one reason or another, give it a miss here. I'm luckily not tied down to IE in any way, shape or form.
Of course there's a PR campaign on the move, all the stuff on Microsoft's own website is proof of that, but the hype that's "affecting" me is the hype of people telling me just how much they like it. To be completely honest, I wasn't really that interested in Windows 7, not after how disappointing Vista was to me (Years of following it's progress and when it was finally RTM'd, it was lacklustre at best), it was only when I had a bit of spare time after Christmas and some people on IRC were talking about it that I decided to give it a try and I was definitely impressed - and I switched over FROM Vista, so there definitely has to be something different about it, if it really is "just vista".
Your summarisation of the changes is actually wrong, they did a lot more than just "disable a few processes on startup", the startup is one of the major changes to the kernel, it now uses a multi-threadded approach that can load several systems at the same time, as opposed to doing it linearly (And, for example, being forced to wait for a drive to spin up or whatever). That's just one example of what I'm referring to.
Secondly, you appear to have either contradicted yourself or proved my point, I'm not sure which:
not many folks are being fooled. They are still throwing money at good reviews by people that they payed last time for good reviews. The only real difference at all is that finally, some of those reviews are correct
Right - so which is it, are people being fooled, or is 7 actually a genuine step forward for Windows? On the one hand you're saying that Microsoft just paid everyone to give positive reviews, but with only a handful of exceptions, everyone I know that has actually TRIED the beta has been extremely impressed with it. I'm not talking about big fancy reviews on tech sites or whatever, I'm talking about a few friends, online buddies, forums, etc. The general consensus is that Windows 7 is good. That's what I'm referring to when I say it's unlikely Microsoft has "fooled" everyone. But still, you claim they bought reviews (and you know, they may well have, I cant' say one way or the other) and that's the only reason there's so much positive feedback, but from my own experience, the positiveness has all been word of mouth and after the clusterfuck that was Vista, wouldn't it be really odd for everyone to suddenly say "errr...well actually, it IS quite good?". People were ready to jump on MS for Windows 7 being shit (And I believe you and a few other people here are those exact people), hell everyone likes to hate on the huge, evil, monolithic corporation, but as crazy as it may seem, they actually got a few things right with 7 and it easily stands apart from Vista.
But don't take my word for it, go ahead and install both Vista and 7 side by side and see what the difference is. Then install XP and see for yourself that 7 really is a worthwhile upgrade from it - and it's still in beta.
No they didn't and I know exactly where you got this idea from - minwin.
For months, there was talk about how windows 7 would have a "mini kernel" and be very modular, but this was attributed to something one of the developers (I honestly cannot remember who) said. In an interview, he was talking about Windows 7 and as part of the same interview, mentioned about a completely separate project going on internally at Microsoft to create "MinWin", the completely cut-down version of Windows. At some point, wires got crossed and people thought Windows 7 == Minwin.
A few months later after Microsoft effectively said "Errr...Windows 7 will be an updated Kernel to Vista's NT6.0..." and there was a PR shitstorm, they said about the misquote and cleared it up. I can only assume you didn't get the memo.
You win the "uninformed opinion of the year" award, my good sir.
For one, what you're referring to is WinFS. WinFS stands for Windows Future Storage, not Windows File System and even though it may SOUND like a File System - it's not and never was. It's a layer that sits atop of the file system and offers metadata about the files it stores, for faster searching and identification (more than a 3 letter extension ever could).
Secondly, WinFS's technologies are already out in the wild, part of SQL server and a few other things.
Thirdly, Windows 7 was never, ever purported to have anything like this, I have never even seen an article speculating on such a thing so I can only assume you've made that little factoid up out of thin air. It shows you have not done any research on the subject and obviously know nothing about the OS, so why comment?
I agree with what you're saying, it really isn't a COMPLETELY new OS and could probably do with a "SE" tag, but I honestly do not blame Microsoft for using a brand new name, considering how bad Vista's reputation is, it just makes complete business sense.
It'd be like Codemasters releasing a new Colin McRae rally game after his death - it'd be a sequel to the well established series, but the name would be a bit...well...you know...
You've CLEARLY not tried the Beta. In fact, anyone claiming that "Windows 7 is just Vista with a slightly new lick of paint" has definitely not tried either 7 or Vista or both.
Either Vista was better than you believe it to be, or 7 really is a huge step forward from Vista, because there's no way even the almighty Microsoft could fool such a large amount of the public into thinking that an OS was as good as Windows 7 is claiming to be, especially after Vista.
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Programs have been able to add exceptions to windows firewall for as long as I can remember. uTorrent does it automatically and I very much doubt MS gave them a free pass. Windows firewall isn't designed to keep programs from accessing the net, it's designed to keep external programs from getting in.
How have you come to that conclusion? My point was simple - I support artists by going to their shows, which as you've indirectly stated is how they make their money. They don't profit much from album sales, so I don't feel guilty for pirating them.
The above commenter seems to think otherwise. I suspect they're the one that's really the failed musician.
And for the record, I have no musical talent what so ever and never once pretended I did. I'd probably make it big.
That's exactly my point, that's how they're supposed to make their money, through touring and performing (And of course selling merchandise at the events), that's how it's supposed to be. If an artist stopped doing that and relied on CD sales to support their lifestyle, I'd be far more inclined to buy their CD's.
I'd love for all future phones to be connectible via USB. No doubt even if some kind of legislation passes, the phone companies will pawn a crippled bluetooth implementation as being the "universal connector" while still making you shell out £25 for a stupid cable that just so happens to do something the bluetooth can't.
Tell you what, I'm stop pirating your music when you stop charging ludicrous amounts for merchandise like dog tags and t-shirts.
That's unpossible.
I suppose the logic is this:
Without the suit, you WILL be hit by a bullet.
WITH the suit, you MIGHT accidentally fling yourself off a cliff or whatever.
I'll take the latter odds over the former odds any day of the week.
Performance killer? I beg to differ.
Why should they just pan off 64bitness like that? Considering what x86-64 really is these days (little more than a few extra registers), they have no reason NOT to make it 64bit. In fact, since this project is likely years away, they may as well make it 64bit as standard. Whether you like it or not, the industry will be moving to 64bit within a few years, it's likely the next version of Windows will be 64bit only and since windows essentially decides the hardware out there, 64bit will be the norm. There's not a single modern OS out there that doesn't support 64bit CPUs in some way, while still working perfectly fine with (99.9% of) 32bit Apps.
At the end of the day, it's a potential performance boost in certain circumstances with almost no performance loss anywhere else.
Ummm...yes? One's correct and one's incorrect. If you're going to do something, do it right...
Presumably, the Macintosh Business Unit has "higher profit margins" because they don't actually have to spend a lot developing Office, rather they just have to port it? The cost of developing each successive version goes into the "Windows" business unit (if such a thing exists in Microsoft, you know what I mean).
Or does my logic have an obvious flaw that was so obvious, I missed it?
If people don't scream about this, I'm going to be annoyed the next time people bitch about there being 4 or 5 versions of Windows Vista/7.
I'm not directly replying to drsmithy, but I would like to point out that anyone saying "Oh well windows sucks because in Linux I can just go to the command line and..." has sort of missed the point of WINDOWS.
Not flaming or trolling, just pointing out that it's easier to click a few buttons than it is to type something into a command line and that's why "n00bs" make Windows so popular.
Jus' sayin'.
And for those people, Windows (or MacOS) is not for them and that's fair enough, but for what Windows is, Windows 7 is at least a decent version of it and that's what I'm getting at.
Not everyone in the whole wide world runs Linux or OSX or whatever. Some people actually like Windows, as crazy as it may seem.
But countering your argument, I could easily replace "Windows" with "linux" and "win2k" with say...Ubuntu 6.0 or something. I don't think I've ever seen a new OS that literally let you do more than the previous version, it's supposed to be about doing the same things, only better (Or we'd all still be using terminal windows for absolutely everything - and yes, I'm aware that enough people do this).
And that's got nothing to do with Windows 7...
I'm not entirely sure what the "recommended" hardware was, but my system is pretty modern (less than a year since nearly every component of it was released), so I fully expected them to have decent support for it. I'm fortunate to not have many issues, just the odd one where it goes into sleep and doesn't wake up (I think it's happened twice now in about a month), but IE8 is definitely borderline broken in it. Luckily I'm a FF user so it doesn't affect me, but if you need IE support for one reason or another, give it a miss here.
I'm luckily not tied down to IE in any way, shape or form.
Of course there's a PR campaign on the move, all the stuff on Microsoft's own website is proof of that, but the hype that's "affecting" me is the hype of people telling me just how much they like it.
To be completely honest, I wasn't really that interested in Windows 7, not after how disappointing Vista was to me (Years of following it's progress and when it was finally RTM'd, it was lacklustre at best), it was only when I had a bit of spare time after Christmas and some people on IRC were talking about it that I decided to give it a try and I was definitely impressed - and I switched over FROM Vista, so there definitely has to be something different about it, if it really is "just vista".
Your summarisation of the changes is actually wrong, they did a lot more than just "disable a few processes on startup", the startup is one of the major changes to the kernel, it now uses a multi-threadded approach that can load several systems at the same time, as opposed to doing it linearly (And, for example, being forced to wait for a drive to spin up or whatever). That's just one example of what I'm referring to.
Secondly, you appear to have either contradicted yourself or proved my point, I'm not sure which:
Right - so which is it, are people being fooled, or is 7 actually a genuine step forward for Windows? On the one hand you're saying that Microsoft just paid everyone to give positive reviews, but with only a handful of exceptions, everyone I know that has actually TRIED the beta has been extremely impressed with it. I'm not talking about big fancy reviews on tech sites or whatever, I'm talking about a few friends, online buddies, forums, etc. The general consensus is that Windows 7 is good. That's what I'm referring to when I say it's unlikely Microsoft has "fooled" everyone.
But still, you claim they bought reviews (and you know, they may well have, I cant' say one way or the other) and that's the only reason there's so much positive feedback, but from my own experience, the positiveness has all been word of mouth and after the clusterfuck that was Vista, wouldn't it be really odd for everyone to suddenly say "errr...well actually, it IS quite good?". People were ready to jump on MS for Windows 7 being shit (And I believe you and a few other people here are those exact people), hell everyone likes to hate on the huge, evil, monolithic corporation, but as crazy as it may seem, they actually got a few things right with 7 and it easily stands apart from Vista.
But don't take my word for it, go ahead and install both Vista and 7 side by side and see what the difference is. Then install XP and see for yourself that 7 really is a worthwhile upgrade from it - and it's still in beta.
Hello, Twitter.
No they didn't and I know exactly where you got this idea from - minwin.
For months, there was talk about how windows 7 would have a "mini kernel" and be very modular, but this was attributed to something one of the developers (I honestly cannot remember who) said. In an interview, he was talking about Windows 7 and as part of the same interview, mentioned about a completely separate project going on internally at Microsoft to create "MinWin", the completely cut-down version of Windows. At some point, wires got crossed and people thought Windows 7 == Minwin.
A few months later after Microsoft effectively said "Errr...Windows 7 will be an updated Kernel to Vista's NT6.0..." and there was a PR shitstorm, they said about the misquote and cleared it up. I can only assume you didn't get the memo.
You win the "uninformed opinion of the year" award, my good sir.
For one, what you're referring to is WinFS. WinFS stands for Windows Future Storage, not Windows File System and even though it may SOUND like a File System - it's not and never was. It's a layer that sits atop of the file system and offers metadata about the files it stores, for faster searching and identification (more than a 3 letter extension ever could).
Secondly, WinFS's technologies are already out in the wild, part of SQL server and a few other things.
Thirdly, Windows 7 was never, ever purported to have anything like this, I have never even seen an article speculating on such a thing so I can only assume you've made that little factoid up out of thin air. It shows you have not done any research on the subject and obviously know nothing about the OS, so why comment?
I agree with what you're saying, it really isn't a COMPLETELY new OS and could probably do with a "SE" tag, but I honestly do not blame Microsoft for using a brand new name, considering how bad Vista's reputation is, it just makes complete business sense.
It'd be like Codemasters releasing a new Colin McRae rally game after his death - it'd be a sequel to the well established series, but the name would be a bit...well...you know...
You've CLEARLY not tried the Beta. In fact, anyone claiming that "Windows 7 is just Vista with a slightly new lick of paint" has definitely not tried either 7 or Vista or both.
Either Vista was better than you believe it to be, or 7 really is a huge step forward from Vista, because there's no way even the almighty Microsoft could fool such a large amount of the public into thinking that an OS was as good as Windows 7 is claiming to be, especially after Vista.
I know it'll probably be a disappointment, but this is like...the Sci-fi/comedy equivelant to Duke Nukem Forever!
Pinch me!