More Indications Windows 7 Is Coming In 2009 369
An anonymous reader writes "Following on the news that Microsoft was going straight to a RC for Windows 7, the One Microsoft Way blog has put together some dates on the upcoming roadmap for Vista's successor. Microsoft has always said 'three years after the general availability of Windows Vista,' which was released on January 30, 2007, and that the release date was also dependent on quality. Internally though, Microsoft is saying other things. It looks like we'll see the RC coming in April, and a final RTM version before October 3. Yes, that means Redmond is currently hoping to get Windows 7 out the door in 2009."
Drivers (Score:4, Informative)
If I recall correctly (rhetorical, I *do* recall correctly) the problem with Vista was *not* the OS itself, but driver support from Vendors.
Even Nvidia were ironing out Video card bugs months past the release date. It took Creative almost 14 months to release a Vista Audigy driver. That's not even touching on people who had to purchase new Wifi cards because the likes of Netgear refused to even release *any* drivers for supporting 'old' hardware (801.22g is super old?).
Unless Redmond is putting pressure back to hardware Vendors, regardless of the much impressed SDLC Microsoft are displaying, the OS will only an *end user* disappointment.
But, DirectX 11 in Vista too (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3507 [anandtech.com]
"To be fair, the OS upgrade requirement also threw a wrench in the gears. That won't be a problem this time, as Vista still sucks but will be getting DX11 support and Windows 7 looks like a better upgrade option for XP users than Vista. Developers who haven't already moved from DX9 may well skip DX10 altogether in favor of DX11 depending on the predicted ship dates of their titles, all signs point to DX11 as setting the time frame we start to see the revolution promised with the move to DX10 take place. Developers have had time to familiarize themselves with the extended advantages of programmability offered by DX10, coding for DX11 will be much easier though OOP constructs and multithreaded support, and if the features don't entice them, the ability to run on downlevel hardware with a better coding environment might just seal the deal."
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
I am enjoying the Windows 7 beta on my gaming desktop and netbook and look forward to *gasp* purchasing a copy to replace Windows XP.
Clearest indication Windows 7 will be released soon?
Astroturf levels go well past "histrionic".
I'm also using the beta and will buy W7 to replace XP on my laptop. Why - it seems to run faster, especially when accessing shared drives.
Of course, I run it on Fusion on my Mac (I need to run the Win versions of Office for work, and W7 so far appears to do that better than XP.
Just because some has a reason to upgrade doesn't mean they're part of a astroturf campaign.
Now, if Snow Leopard allows seamless connectivity with exchange and i can replicate Outlook's functionality on my MAC then I may just pop for the Mac version of Office.
And yes, I run NeoOffice but it doesn't quite handle Office files properly in all cases so I can't rely on it for critical client work. I'd love an FOSS solution for Word/PowerPoint/Outlook/Excel/Visio; but everything I've tried is not quite there, yet.
Re:Don't focus on money! (OT) (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Drivers (Score:3, Informative)
Changing OS verions is almost as in depth and challenging for a business as completely changing OSs. And costly. There is no "low cost" upgrade path.
Drivers for us were THE issue. Big business class printers cost real money and not one driver was released for Vista. And that was spread amount several manufacturers, so it wasn't isolated. No drivers for our scanning solution either, which handles many thousands of invoices per month.
UI bugs you mentioned are quite legitimate problems preventing adoption. However these seem to have been (mostly) dealt with by SP1. But too little MS, too late.
I still don't expect that the driver issue will be fixed with Windows 7. However, the UI will be much more polished. (I wait to be proved wrong).
P.S. if you're haviing trouble starting apps, try turning off pre-fetch. Makes an appreciable difference to application startup. Downside is that when the app grabs some memory, there will be delays. Maybe these delays are noticable, perhaps not.
Re:Drivers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
A 2009 release or 'RTM' date shouldn't be a surprise at all.
The beta expires in July, so the 'Release Candidate' build should be out before then, and the final version soon after.
the beta expires in august. ms even tells you such when you sign up for your beta key.
Re:Don't focus on money! (OT) (Score:3, Informative)
I do not agree with everything RMS/FSF has to say, but in terms of proprietary versus free-libre licensing, they are spot on.
Your complaints above are not about the licensing, but the cost (albeit in an indirect fashion). If you are prepared to pay for an appropriate Windows license, all of your complaints are addressed.
Re:And as the fanbois over the internet (Score:1, Informative)
I will still be getting my Ubuntu for free and with an (often) significant upgrade every 6 months.
You mean like the significant upgrade you got in 8.04 which broke password protected windows share browsing in Gnome? Or the next significant upgrade in 9.04 which is that it will finally stop killing laptop hard drives.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:3, Informative)
I had the opposite reaction. I put Windows 7 Beta on a VirtualBox partition on my Mac and tried using it for awhile, and I find using it awful. Compared to XP it feels like a mish-mash of web interfaces and compared to MacOS X it feels like a toy. I would still recommend XP over Windows 7 any day of the week, and recommend neither to any non-geek or non-business user.
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting comment.
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.
Care to explain what makes it "better" enough to spend a couple of hundred dollars getting Win 7?
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Why?
What can justify the cost and performance hit of Windows 7? Yes, it is faster than Vista but it isn't faster than XP.
Last time I checked, all games support Windows XP. Also, why on earth would someone want to BUY an OS without it being bought/bundled with a new PC?
What features are there that are "must have" apart from the "ooh shiny" aspect?
That's not to mention the inevitable problems of early adoption...
How about being able to use all of the ram instead of being limited to only 3gb and also being able to use the 64 bit processor instead of being stuck with only a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit pc. Both of these situations mean that Windows 7 is actually faster than XP in some situations as being able to use all the memory and processor power not just part of it
Just 2 thoughts that come to mind straight away.
Shame XP64 never got fully completed. Still if it had then I guess Vista would have had even more problems getting any users.
Re:Don't focus on money! (OT) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't focus on money! (OT) (Score:3, Informative)
It may go to sporting infrastructure (you're a slashdot poster, so I assume you don't use it
In fact, the same argument not only holds true to your example, but right up to the state/national level. I know my taxes are in part going to building roads, but I don't own a car, it's going to emergency services, but as of yet I've never had to use an emergency service, etc...
My point is, it's simply not feasible nor arguably even fair to take the view that the only things you should ever have to spend money on are things that you directly use. I can fully understand why you or many, many others would never want to use Windows or any other Microsoft product, but for many, it's not only an indispensible product/service but their personal choice.
However, hopefully universities recognise this and provide support/infrastructure for the use of OSS operating systems. The thing is, even though the OS is free, there may still be costs associated with it: IT staff who know how to use it, IT infrastructure that supports it, potentially support contracts with Linux vendors, etc...
While you may be capable of doing everything on your own, many aren't, and you have to look out for these people as well, so bottom line, it all costs money, and someone has to foot it. Generally, it's the student body as a whole.
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
Really? I just pulled it off my son's machine because it refused to install America's Army, except for an old version. Nor would it take the patches.
On the plus side:
It boots noticeably faster than XP on the same machine.
It shuts down noticeably faster than XP on the same machine.
The from-scratch install was as easier than any previous Windows install, and damn close to as easy as Kubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10.
Aero *is* spiffy.
It recognized all my RAM using the 64-bit version.
The 32-bit compatibility on the 64-bit version was transparent.
It picked up my WiFi-N/WPA-2 network early on in the install and used NTP to set the clock.
On the down side, how hard is it for Microsoft to add some code to accommodate people who have their hardware clock set to UTC? I mean just put a damn check box there!
Re:And as the fanbois over the internet (Score:3, Informative)
For Linux users, it comes purely from the fact that we aren't using Windows.
It also comes from the fact that we didn't pay a premium for a stylish and well done product ;)
Re:Don't focus on money! (OT) (Score:3, Informative)
Which is a licensing issue. You need to pay Microsoft to get a license to use the same software in a different way. In the case of free software, that is not true -- you get a license, and from there, you can do what you wish with the software.
Also, the OP was trying to make the point that Ubuntu costs nothing. I was pointing out that, in fact, there are cases where Windows costs nothing, and that the real issue is the license: the costs may be equal, but the issue boils down to licenses.
Re:Drivers (Score:3, Informative)
Did you use the Vista driver or the native drive of the beta? The Vista driver should be more stable, but will reduce the functionality (not as drastic as using an XP video driver on Vista, which disables Aero, but GDI operations will be on par with Vista, while they will be faster in Windows 7 with a WDDM 1.1 driver).
It was always possible to run a stable video driver at Vista release, and that was the XP drivers. The reduced functionality made it a sour option.
Re:Great way to alienate enterprise customers (Score:3, Informative)
VMs, Games, and Photoshop.
Heck, *searching* brought explorer.exe up to 970MB.
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
The updated file browser (assuming it used the same one as Vista)
It is the best non-Linux default file browser I've used.
There's probably a few other little built in things that make life better too, but for me that is the one I use every day and really appreciate.
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
Strange. This 5 and a half year old PC here with 1Gb of RAM on XP/Ubuntu hasn't had any problems doing all the things you have listed.
So I would guess a current PC with 3GB of addressed memory would really struggle and have to upgrade the OS.
The things you suggested aren't that demanding. Nothing (that an ordinary user would use) demands anywhere near the 3GB cap of 32bit OS's. Not even the most demanding new games require 3GB.
Buying a new OS for a PC that someone already has is pointless and a complete waste of money.
Until things genuinely require more than 3GB of RAM, why not stick with XP?
The chances are, by the time that happens, the PC you have will be obsolete and you'll be looking to buy a new one. When that time comes (assuming it's been a year after Windows 7 release), then consider getting Windows 7 64bit.
If you do have some genuine need for more than 3GB, then you don't have much choice, however the ordinary user does not need more, and so should save their money for a time in the future when they do.
Re:Curious (Score:3, Informative)
but it also introduces some really nice usability changes. The Win-arrow key shortcuts, for example, are great (win-up to maximize, win-down to minimize, win-left to dock to left half of screen, win-right to dock to right half of screen).
*boggles*
These have been *configurable* shortcuts in KDE for a coon's age.
Re:Surprise to Anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
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 [msdn.com] blog.
Re:Cue the "W7 == Vista SP3" posts (Score:4, Informative)
Take a Windows XP machine & tell me what SP it's running without going to System Properties....just using it like grandma would. You probably won't be able to.
I can tell you if it has SP2 on it just by watching it start up (SP2 dropped the "Professional" and "Home" branding on the boot screen).