In-Depth With the Windows 7 Public Beta 785
Dozer writes "With the Windows 7 public beta out, Ars Technica has an in-depth look at the release. There's praise for Windows 7's UI changes and polish as well much-needed changes to UAC, but also a warning that those who have problems with Vista won't like Windows 7 much better. 'If you couldn't stand Vista's UI (whether it's because you didn't like Explorer, Aero, Control Panel, UAC, or anything else), Windows 7 is unlikely to do much to help, as it builds on the same UI. If Vista's hardware demands were too steep, Windows 7 will likely cause you the same grief, as its hardware demands match. And if Vista didn't work with a program or device you need to use, Windows 7 will offer no salvation, as its compatibility is virtually identical.'"
What's the point?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder what Win7 is supposed to fix. I'm probably in the minority, but I actually like the Vista GUI. It's cleaner, a little "Tonka Toy" in areas, but seems more polished than XP. What I don't like about Vista are the problems with wireless, power, CPU utilization, random disk storms, and some strange memory issues when running large JVMs. If Win7 fixes the non-gui related issues then I won't mind using it.
Strangely enough, on my Linux desktops I prefer a very minimal GUI such as fluxbox or xfce4. I turn off almost everything except for a gkrellm monitor. I did play with compiz and beryl for a while, and it was interesting at first, but quickly became annoying.
Re:Problems with Chrom in the x64 version (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's the point?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hardware demands match? (Score:4, Interesting)
The current beta seems to Windows 7 Ultimate... Good grief they have learned nothing... My guess is we will be seeing at least 5 or 6 version of Windows 7
Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Enterprise come right to mind. I just hope they don't offer 32 and 64 bit versions of each...
I just found out one of my programs that I tested under W2k,XP, and Vista doesn't work right under Vista 64!!!! And what is worse I can not figure out what is causing it!
Re:Hardware demands match? (Score:2, Interesting)
Runs faster, or feels faster?
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the real-world complaints about Vista upon launch revolved around application and hardware compatibility, with a nice dose of "the system requirements are what!?!" Also, Vista didn't do anything that XP didn't already do, so why bother?
Since launch, Vista has recieved a lot of needed application and hardware compatibility, and a lot of under-the-hood fixes. Additionally, the kinds of hardware requirements that Vista needed became commonplace.
Really, the only substantial launch problem with Vista that hasn't been solved already is its general pointlessness. With Windows 7 you at least have the potential for a better interface.
Full disclosure: I have Vista, XP, Ubuntu, and OSX 10.5 laptops.
Re:FFS (Score:4, Interesting)
I still see the odd Windows 98/95 installations. I'm certain XP will outlast Windows 8.
People get stupid ideas in their heads like "Windows 98 is TEH FASTEST!!!" and they never switch. Such is life. The rest of us actually evaluate it. Make an informed rational decision and move on with our lives.
Re:Windows7 Rebranded Vista SP2 w/ New Taskbar (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that DRM is like broken glass just under the water of a running stream. Even after you rip yourself open on it, you're still not completely sure what caused the injury in the first place.
Anyway, it doesn't support mounting an ISO under any software that I tried and I'm guessing it was DRM related. Sometimes it went through the motion and then blocked it at the last moment. This was extremely frustrating as I ended up having to use an ISO reader and copying installation files to a directory.
That was frustrating, but some of my machines don't have DVD drives, so it will be impossible to use it on those.
GrpA
Re:So in other words... (Score:3, Interesting)
I also like how he says home users hate change, then a few sentances later says everyone will switch to linux.
Yeah..linux is so much more similar to XP than Win7.
P.S. I'm not a vista/Win7 supporter by any means. I'm still running XP, and don't see any reason to switch. When games start using 4GB+ of memory I may have to though.
Re:What's the point?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Polish and User Experience in my view IS the operating system.
What the OS does for me is hide all of the ugliness of computers.
I just want to run a bunch of applications. Be able to switch between apps quickly. Setup a network to media with my XBox. Find files I'm looking for and boot quickly. It's all "Surface" stuff. But for me Vista has been incredibly stable so I haven't seen any need for improvement.
Windows 7 has added a lot of really nice things on top of Vista. People buy new operating systems because they increase their efficiency. That's why people love a mac. Those are the important new features. Being able to drag a window to the side of the screen in a big new feature. It might not take as many dev hours but it's a huge time saver for the user.
Service Packs fix bugs. New versions add features. Windows 7 is as much about adding features as it is bug fixing. And so far I've really liked a lot of the new features. I like that I don't have to manage my music and video sharing with my Xbox independently of my Zune independently of my WMP and I look forward to Winamp taking advantage of it as well.
I like the new taskbar even if I had to enable labels and disable application grouping. I don't like that it mixes running apps and icons but at the same time I do kind of have to remind myself "Why do I care?" At most I usually only have 2 icons mixed in that aren't running. And since figuring that out I've reorganized my pinned icons so that I rarely have an 'orphaned' icon.
I don't notice any performance bump. Then again I don't own a computer with less than 3GB of RAM and really... what excuse is there for only having 1GB of RAM? You can buy 1GB of RAM for $15.
I like the new wifi widget.
I like the new driver search feature (it found new updated drivers automatically and installed them. Handy!)
I like the new taskbar look and I like that I can change the taskbar's color. Seriously. I have to look at it all day. I didn't want black on my black background.
I can't stand that MSN now won't go to the notifications are and instead goes to my taskbar leaving TWO!! TWO!!!! STUPID #$*)@# taskbar entries for the same application.
I don't like that I can't have something pinned to the taskbar and start menu.
I like being able to drag an application up to the top of my screen to maximize it.
I like the updates to touch for my tablet PC.
I like the jump menus. Handy for Microsoft Word.
I look forward to Device Stage or whatever it is they call their USB connected device system.
And I look forward to being able to tell media to 'play on' my xbox from my PC.
And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head from 2 days of use.
As far as performance and bugs are concerned perhaps you could call this SP2. But everything beyond that are the kinds of enhancements and improvements that I expect from an OS upgrade.
What did I get out of XP? An improved Start Menu? Easier Networking? More stability? Was XP just Windows 98 SP3?
Re:FFS (Score:3, Interesting)
The kernel has undergone significant changes with respect to modularity.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
So... the summary is basically saying that the problems everyone complained about with Vista, seem to be basically still there with Windows 7?
Er... this may seem like a stupid question, but what did they actually improve -- if not the things people were complaining about? Windows 7 beta seems to have had favorable reviews, so I wonder what people are basing that on, after reading this summary. (though, I note that Vista had favorable reviews on its launch too. It was just when reality bit that the knives came out. Shillery will only get you so far).
Not that I really care, since I've never used Vista and I won't be using Windows 7. XP still works fine for the one Windows box I have, and after any SP3 a Microsoft product is as good as it gets.
Basically, Vista solved almost all of its problems by the time SP1 rolled around. As long as you have 2 gigs of RAM, it's faster than your XP SP3 install, and depending on your system, it's most likely more stable. 7 is basically just UI and performance tuning to make it solidly faster than even Vista. See the /. story about zdnet benching the three OSs last week for comparison of speed.
If you ran Vista... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, if you ran Vista, you wouldn't have had any problems swapping the motherboard. MS overhauled the NT HAL so it wasn't locked to a particular chipset.
They also completely restructured the audio system so it can provide theatre quality audio, and use stereo microphone input to improve background noise elimination. They replaced the old graphics engine to implement window compositing and offload window drawing to the GPU and allow virtualization of GPU resources. The filesystem was upgraded to include file versioning so you can go back and undo changes to files. They added priviledge seperation (like sudo), a process sandboxing mechanism, address space layout randomization and NX support for security. They added a prefetching engine which intelligently knows what disk pages to cache. They added IPv6 and bluetooth support. They added an imaging based installer system which makes it infinitely easier to create and deploy system images.
And according to Slashdot, Vista adds nothing of value to XP. So is it any wonder Windows 7 is mostly focused on polish and user interface?
Re:Hardware demands match? (Score:3, Interesting)
"feels faster" is when they wait 2 seconds before changing the cursor into an hourglass. It's still nonresponsive in those two seconds leading to the zombie cursor, but it doesn't "feel" as unresponsive because it still looks normal.
Also makes it harder to tell when it's doing something that it's been toggling in and out of zombie mode every other second for the last two minutes.
It'd be nice if there was a clean, clear way to tell for example, how fast it really boots. I don't mean to the point of the desktop, or even to where you can start actually clicking things, but to the point of where it's stopped hammering the resources to the point of near-unusability and you can actually start to get things done.
Re:Hardware demands match? (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience doesn't match their assessment. I'm running Windows 7 on my Dell Mini and it runs faster than Windows XP Home ran on this exact same machine.
I experienced the same thing as you and so did a lot of other people. The thing is that Anandtech doesn't mention what system they tested Windows 7 on, but it sounded like a decent machine. Vista runs really well on modern computers so it's obvious that you won't notice a difference if you already have a speedy system.
If you test it on a Dell Mini or a netbook, here's where the little extra matters. I installed it on my Eee and noticed a LOT of extra speed that I didn't have with Vista.
Also, the summary at Slashdot is really misleading. They say Windows 7 wasn't slower than Vista and also claimed 10% speed increase here and there, so what they are basically saying is that you won't notice the speed-up on a fast machine and it IS faster than Vista.
Last but not least, I agree with people that Microsoft needs to be roasted over its many disappointments, but we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt when we're talking about a pre-RC release as many things are yet to be improved. And at least this public beta release is a step in the right direction, because now they will have a plethora of feedback and enough time to make the changes that need to be done. However, if they fail despite this, I bet the pro-Linux community at Slashdot will have hot finger tips for a few more years.
Re:What's the point?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Be very careful measuing disk footprint of Windows installations - Vista's actual on disk footprint is a lot smaller than the apparent size of C:\WINDOWS.
See, Vista maintains a backup copy of a whole pile of files - and it manages these using NTFS hard links. (Yes, NTFS supports them.)
Re:What's the point?? (Score:3, Interesting)
It looks like today the "News for Nerds, stuff that matters" just got replaced and instead we have a spot where the majority of people think technical details or even communication no longer matter.
Technical details matter... when they're important. How many horsepower your engine provides is less important than the handling and accelleration of your vehicle.
If I read a review or an automobile I don't care how many liters of displacement the engine has. I don't care if it's a V4 or a V10. What I care about is the end user experience. The Driving Experience.
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. I spend 14 hours a day in front of a computer. Stuff that matters to me is not what kernel build Windows 7 is. How much RAM it takes. Whether or not it uses SATA 2.1 or SATA 2.2 Spec. What I care about is how the computer performs. Windows 7 to me offers an advantage to Vista and an even greater advantage as an end user.
To me what matters is the User Experience. I don't use an OS to spend all day inside the control panel. The control panel is to me a necessary evil to be avoided. An unproductive, useless and worthless region of the operating system whose very existence is an admittance of a cruel and uncaring world. What I care about are the applications that run on top of the operating system and how those applications interact with one another.
So yes. I will redefine an Operating System's worth as its Polish and User experience. But it's not a redefinition because I don't use the registry. I don't use the DRM drivers. I don't use the AGP bus. I don't use the SATA interface. I don't use the video drivers. I don't use the network stack. I don't use the sound card. I don't give a flying bat how they work. What anachronistic technical detail makes them work what I care about in an OS is how it enables me to use the applications that do enable me to be productive.
That's the true technical detail that matters. How well does all the engineering and design come together to hide everything from the user so that they can get work done? If I work faster, more efficiently and more happily with less stress and pain then it's successful.
I appologize that I didn't spell check or proof read my post. You're right communication does matter. But I was attempting to offer another perspective to a conversation before leaving to grab a bite to eat--the contents of which was more important than spending 2 weeks writing an essay on my views of operating systems.
You want to go read white papers on Windows 7? Be my guest. Honestly as a nerd who uses his computer all day and night what matters to me is how well it'll enable me to do work that really does matter.
Re:Hardware demands match? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:smithers! (Score:5, Interesting)
Recent versions of VLC have left me very disappointed. Video quality is just bad; VLC isn't even doing decent upsampling (I just get nearest neighbor!). Plus performance is abysmal on Linux. Hence, I have switched allegiances and now use SMPlayer [sourceforge.net]* on both my Linux and Windows machines. SMPlayer has better video quality, a nicer GUI, and proper subtitle support. There is a codec pack to download, but installation is trivial.
(* It's really just a nice frontend for MPlayer.)
It's a pity, because VLC can do a bunch of awesome network streaming stuff. Sometimes I get the feeling that VLC's mission isn't very clear. There was a time when it set out to be something more interesting than just another movie player.
Re:Hardware demands match? (Score:3, Interesting)
One problem is that "runs faster" and "feels faster" can be viewed as a subjective situation.
Windows Server 2003, while not scoring any higher than XP in almost all benchmarks, has been seen as "faster" by a large portion of the Windows enthusiast community simply because it defaults to a menu-delay of zero.
Who is gonna pay for this? (Score:1, Interesting)
They call it Windows 7.
Technical version number is 6.1.
I call it 6.0.1.
Seriously, what do we have here? Some UI upgrades, one or two new features in WMP and MSN.
And they are gonna sell it the same price they sold Vista, only two years after??
The changelog reminds me more of Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 (which included things like IE 1, Drivespace, Task Scheduler, Themes Management, Wallpaper resizing, High-res icons and Pinball).
This is definitely an expansion pack, not a new version. I could have bought it for 50 bucks, but certainly not for 300+