Windows 7 Trades Email and Photo Apps For Downloadable Ones 496
arcticstoat writes "Microsoft has said that it plans to remove a lot of the standard apps from Windows 7 in order to make the new OS 'cleaner.' Among the apps for the chop are Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker, which will no longer be included with the operating system as standard.
Instead, equivalent versions of the apps will be available from Microsoft's Windows Live download service as optional free downloads, much like the new BETA versions of the apps that Windows Live offers today." Meanwhile, jammag writes that "tech pundit Mike Elgan posits that the rushed-to-market Windows 7 — due in 2010, now being beta released this October — may in fact merely be Vista with new packaging.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
it's Vista Service Pack 2.
It's true, you know (though it will probably be Vista SP3, as they'll need to roll a new desktop GUI). Microsoft has recognized that the corporate customer base didn't warm to Vista and is "waiting for Windows 7". No dummy, Microsoft will release *something* branded "Windows 7" ASAP.
Of course, this may blow up big time if the fundamental issues with Vista aren't resolved. Since one fundamentel issue seems to be "it doesn't add anything important over XP", MS may be in trouble here. Big companies skip one release of Windows all the time, but MS really doesn't companies to stop and ask "wait a minute, why do we do these upgrades again?".
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Windows 7 (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that *I* would ever install it on every windows desktop around, but I'm told (wink wink) that it runs great, can be torrent'd from about anywhere, is, uhm "free", and has the best of both XP and Vista in it.
I'm just sayin...
promoting Thunderbird (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Abort, Retry, Fail? (Score:2, Interesting)
Simple test of worthiness - trust me, it works (Score:2, Interesting)
If the answer to any of these questions is 'no" then it isn't worth buying
Re:Windows 7 (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft has plenty of options for making this release interesting to business. Really, they just need to say "it is boring, it is a bit more secure, it has a few more Palladium-style paranoia features, your willy is big enough already, it will work on your existing hardware, nobody will need retraining." Sure, that marketing won't be interesting to the geeks, nor will it entice the home users to upgrade.
My theory is that Microsoft has accepted that lots of people skip a version, and is going to adjust their marketing accordingly. The "15 flavours of Vista" thing did not work for them, and the rapid release cycle works surprisingly well for Apple. So they will adopt a two-step release cycle with marketing as follows:
They've more-or-less done it before with the whole 95/NT/ME/2000 thing, and it's got to be easier to build parallel marketing campaigns than parallel operating systems.
The alternative, where business starts migrating around SP3 (if at all) generates them too much bad press.
Re:Yes, let's remove the two most-used programs (Score:2, Interesting)
Now you can't fully uninstall QuickTime as some of the basic libraries of QuickTime are used in their Quartz rendering engine. But nothing stops you from using another movie player.
Careful, your argument could come back to bite:
Now you can't fully uninstall Internet Explorer as some of the basic libraries of Internet Explorer are used in their operating system rendering engine. But nothing stops you from using another web browser.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeesh, I'd rather they repackage XP with a new look and SP4 and sell me the stack as Windows Mohave. Just guarantee support for another 5 years and I might actually pay!
Re:Windows 7 (Score:3, Interesting)
"stop and ask "wait a minute, why do we do these upgrades again?"."
In a large networked environment basing your desktops on a version of windows that no longer gets security updates does not seem sensible to me. Also as a release gets older finding suitable hardware/software/drivers for it will get harder and harder.
So you either have to let new machines have the newest as they come in (meaning you support a mixture of releases) or you do a mass upgrade at some point in the release cycle.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft has recognized that the corporate customer base didn't warm to Vista and is "waiting for Windows 7". No dummy, Microsoft will release *something* branded "Windows 7" ASAP.
You know, you say that, and it would totally make sense, and I'd agree with you, but why is it going to take until 2010 to reskin the OS? Apple will come out with a completely new version before then, Linux should have some awesome stuff for sandboxing and virtualization by then, heck even Novell will have a new OS by that time.
So what exactly is Microsoft doing? Are they truly that incompetent that they can't get a cleanup of their operation system done by the middle of next year (despite Vista being out for nearly two years already)? I am starting to the the answer is "Yes, they are that incompetent."