techwrench was one of several readers to send word that Microsoft has officially announced Windows 7 will be generally available on October 22nd. They also mentioned the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program:
"This program enables participating retailers and OEMs to offer a special deal to upgrade to Windows 7 for customers purchasing a qualifying PC. I'll be doing another blog post about this program with a date and more details when we get closer to availability. Obviously, Release To Manufacturing (RTM) is an important milestone on the path to GA. We anticipate that we'll be able to make the RTM code for Windows 7 available to our partners sometime in the 2nd half of July. We also expect to be able to make RTM code for Windows Server 2008 R2 available to our partners in this time frame as well."
Yeah, my windows usage is mostly work related. In essence, from our testing it's doing pretty well. One of the net admins here did have some serious issues with what I believe was video card drivers but that is somewhat expected at this stage.
You said, "In essence, from our testing it's doing pretty well."
I'm very skeptical. Our October 22, 2011 adoption date may be
delayed. Let everyone else have the hassles, as they did with Vista and
Windows ME, and several versions of DOS. Bringing out unfinished versions has
been very profitable for Microsoft.
Windows XP had very serious, but not obvious, problems until SP2.
Windows 7 is just another version of Windows NT, but Microsoft calls
it an entirely new operating system, and most people accep
...for Creative Labs to get on the ball and release 64bit audio drivers for the X-Fi series that don't cause constant crackling and odd behavior. I swear, past their XP drivers, the drivers for Vista and Win7 are horrid. Least I got a USB headset that works well. The rest of my Win7 RC test machine works wonderfully though, save for the sound, which is driving me insane.
Does anyone else have this issue? Am I insane? Will Dudley Do-Right save Nell Fenwick?
Aside from the history of Creative Labs, I'd suggest you get a new sound card. Not that it's any fun or anything to do so, but it'll be less aggravating in the long run.
Even the poor performance of having an integrated sound system beats a sound system that you don't even turn on, and there's plenty of alternatives.
The history of Creative Labs is anything but creative: they're a vendor. They have other people make their chips, and all they do is brand the product (and maybe, maybe, write a program or two
Aside from the history of Creative Labs, I'd suggest you get a new sound card. Not that it's any fun or anything to do so, but it'll be less aggravating in the long run.
Even the poor performance of having an integrated sound system beats a sound system that you don't even turn on, and there's plenty of alternatives.
The history of Creative Labs is anything but creative: they're a vendor. They have other people make their chips, and all they do is brand the product (and maybe, maybe, write a program or two).
...for Creative Labs to get on the ball and release 64bit audio drivers for the X-Fi series that don't cause constant crackling and odd behavior. I swear, past their XP drivers, the drivers for Vista and Win7 are horrid. Least I got a USB headset that works well. The rest of my Win7 RC test machine works wonderfully though, save for the sound, which is driving me insane.
I'm told (2nd hand anecdotal evidence: I've not used a Creative sound card in some time) that Creative have been somewhat lacking in the quality driver department for some time, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
If you are having trouble with their Vista drivers after all this time what makes you thing they'll get good quality Win7 drivers released in the next six months?
Well, they did have 'OMG Win7 drivers download here!' listed under their support. *sigh* I had hoped for too much perhaps. Any suggestions on a good 5.1 card?
Now that MS, once primarily an OS developer, is seriously in hardware business [xbox.com], Creative needs to think about a graceful exit strategy from the MS Windows market. Just look at what happened when MS decided to sell software. Previous partners like Lotus and SSI saw what happens when MS want market share.
...for Creative Labs to get on the ball and release 64bit audio drivers for the X-Fi series that don't cause constant crackling and odd behavior. I swear, past their XP drivers, the drivers for Vista and Win7 are horrid.
Until Microsoft can deliver drivers for popular off-the-shelf peripherals, Windows will never be more than a niche toy for geeks who like to spend more time tinkering with their OS than actually using it.
Actually what they said is quite factual. The "23rd October" would have started on roughly 10/01/0023 and there's no way they'd be selling Windows 7 before then. If they meant the "23rd of October" then that's a different case entirely:P
Well, factually, the 23rd October would have come along 23 years after the start of the Julian calendar in 45 BCE, when the month named October was designated. So I think the date would have been more like (using American format) 10/01/-22?
That's why numerology is so pervasive. It's just too easy to find connections. Pick any two digit number and any major historical even in the past 100 years and I bet I can find all kinds of 'amazing' connections.
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
Before people pounce on him like the lynchmob this website is, it's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows. It's almost always the PHB or CEO who has been sold on it because he went to a big conference and they had a Windows 7 booth that gave him a free light up pen. I want to move to Linux in the company I work for, but people in the various departments will always drag their feet and be resistant to it.
It's almost always the PHB or CEO who has been sold on it because he went to a big conference and they had a Windows 7 booth that gave him a free light up pen.
That gives me an idea. We should set up a Linux light-up pen giveaway program. The pens will come disassembled in the package, and there will be no instructions on how to put it together. Oh, and the package will include the wrong size batteries. We can also include a little fold-up card that says "Open and read only as a last resort" on the outside. And when they finally give in and open the card, it will say "Figure it out yourself, noob! It's only a pen!" That's a surefire way of giving PHBs and other management the "true" Linux experience. : p
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday June 03, @10:15AM (#28196209)
Before people pounce on him like the lynchmob this website is, it's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows.
I work in IT and like to stay on Windows. I use Windows at work and with my lab at home for both workstations and servers. There have been times that I have used Linux for certain play projects, but honestly at the end of the day I end up going back to Windows. The only Linux/BSD variant I'm currently running is Monowall for my firewall. The last time I ran Linux as my primary workstation is when I played Quake and Team Fortress, and connected to the Internet through Netcom and my 28.8kbps modem:) I feel that I am a true IT geek too. I love working with computers, no matter what platform it is running. I love working with routers, firewalls, switches (I have a CCNA).
Maybe one can say that I'm not a real IT person, or that people like me are not that common, but the truth is there are a lot of people in IT who prefer staying with Windows.
I don't want to move to linux on the desktop for the ordinary users. With the range and amount of crappy software (designed for windows 98!) that their managers insist they MUST have that is windows only and doesn't have a linux analog, I can live without the grief of desktop virtualization.
Add to that the many staff than can't handle when an option moves two places down in a menu on office, or how to fix the 'problem' that I've already shown them how to fix three times this week, I'd spend my entire day ju
On my Dad's computer the only way I got him to use Firefox was by deleting all icons to IE. The only way to run it at this point was by Start>Run iexplore.
We explored Linux as a database server solution last year. We are not running Windows servers now (all AIX), but we still stayed away from Linux because of the lack of enterprise support. Initially the price looked really good, but then we added the cost of buying enterprise support from the few that actually provide it and the cost skyrocketed well beyond the cost of software and support for AIX.
You are thinking SERVER SALES... I'm quoting INSTALLS. Alot of servers that are sold with Windows on it get it removed to get BSD or another flavor of Linux installed; BSD/Debian/Slackware are not options from Dell after all and yet they are still within the top ten of server installs.
The desktop market. The computer illiterate market. The market most IT people have to deal with at work. The market that gets viruses, etc. Basically, if I interact with people with computers in a non-programming environment you will probably have to use/fix Windows.
It doesn't matter that someone uses Firefox whenever they corrupted a DLL you have to re-install.
while I don't personally use it for daily work. I do have to support users who do use windows. So in the end, yes I care. Until the day I can get Linux accepted I'm stuck supporting windows networks. I also do Linux server support and OSX client support so it's not all bad.
"Is there anyone on this website who cares a whit about Windows 7?"
/Raises hand/ That would be me. I want a stable 64-bit OS so I can run AutoCad with more than 3.5 GB of usable RAM. Our IT people intend to skip Vista so, yes, the advent of Windows 7 is indeed of interest to me.
XP-x64 is really Windows Server 2003 with the XP appearance tacked on top. It's a fine OS, but it's also an orphaned child that's often left aside. It was cooked up as a temporary stop-gap until Vista64, and it served its stopgap purpose.
Drivers are non-existent for some pieces of hardware. Pretty much any hardware needs to have XP and Vista drivers, but XP-x64 isn't actually XP (it requires 64-bit drivers), so the drivers aren't necessarily a drop-in replacement. With the release of Vista-64 as Microsoft's 64-bit desktop OS, XP-x64 is also a complete dead-end in the driver department; new hardware comes out, and since Vista64 and Windows Server 2008 already exist, there's not as much reason for companies to bother with driver support for XP-x64. It's not worth the testing or support resources necessary for an OS that only ever commanded a tiny fraction of the market. On top of that, plenty of install applications fail because they check for XP or Vista but not XP-x64; even though the program will run, it can't be installed without some irritating workarounds.
On top of that, his IT department may be unwilling to dedicate the resources necessary to maintaining one or a few workstations with a totally different OS and image than the rest of the systems. You may argue that it's IT's job to do that, but they also need to weigh costs and benefits; perhaps they've already determined that the hardware or critical software isn't supported under XP-x64, or perhaps they're about to migrate to Win7 and it simply isn't worth the extra cost and hassle until they start migrating people in 9 months.
I run Kubuntu. I consider other distros, I consider Gnome, I consider getting a Mac, I'll consider Windows 7 too. I did switch to Linux because of Vista but it's not like I've seen the light and would never ever use anything else ever again. It works, it has warts, if other companies are better at fixing their warts eventually I'll switch away again. Overly optimistic? No, but XP followed Windows ME, Intel Core's followed Pentium IV, in short I'm not ruling out the possibility that Microsoft learned a lot l
But XP is nearly 8 years old now. Yes I understand that if a software isn't broken, then don't fix it approach. (look how long windows 3.1 lasted) But the fact remains that there is software coming out that has built in native support for newer hardware types and can better take advantage of what the hardware has to offer. XP has 3 service packs that increase the ability for the operating system to fully take advantage of current hardware. Even still, XP64 doesn't fully scale to fully utilize more than a 2 core processor.
I am not advocating that windows 7 will be all glory and shine. But I am merely expressing that as a whole the XP platform is becoming dated and should be replaced to better support emergent hardware.
Before you start going off and saying "With Linux you don't ever see this" Wrong. When XP was released in 2001, the linux market was comprised of Redhat, Debian and Suse. From then, in 2004 Ubuntu was released. Ubuntu was a great leap in consumer level linux desktop enviroments. I would like to see people running the original Ubuntu 4.10 with only hot fixes.
The thing I am getting at, is that no matter how much you hot fix a operating system. After some time the underlying core will have to be rebuilt.
The point is that unless you are running a server with multi-year uptime (which means that you are likely running with an unpatched kernel), you are probably not running the same linux kernel as you were in '01, when WinXP was released.
There is always progress in OS design. XP (in retrospect) is a good OS, but it likely cannot be patched to take full advantage of the latest hardware without breaking something. Hence Vista and 7.
Vista didn't "take advantage" of anything. It was bloatware which forced people to finally start buying new and faster computers again. I kept my company on XP and so I benefit because I can buy $250 pc's that came out in 2005 and still run everything just fine.
Forced? I can't think of many pieces of software that work on Vista and not XP. If you have an ancient PIII, then by all means keep XP. If you have any relatively recent multi-core CPU, then the performance difference between XP and Vista is negligible at best, and the stability improvements are welcome.
Does Vista run poorly on older hardware? Yes. Would you complain that blu-ray video doesn't look good on your 14" CRT?
Frankly, some of the window management techniques are crazy awesome, imo. Move it to the side, and it takes up half the screen? Easy side-by-side comparison! Have a custom desktop that has your system info displayed? Move to the bottom right for a quick look without minimizing or alt-tabbing. Minimize other windows by giving the current one a quick shake? Could be useful if you need more screen space and a bunch of open windows. Maximize by dragging to top, then minimize by moving it away again? Yeah, if I
And it will finally be time to argue definitively how fast and slick Windows 7 is. I'm tired of people saying "Windows 7 is great!" when it isn't even out yet.
You are tired of people talking about how nice a release candidate is? Perhaps you should stop reading about operating systems. Tech websites talk about OS's all the time before they release. That's a major part of what they do. Its been this way for 10 years at least. Not just about Microsoft either. They talk about Mac OS's, Linux OS's, Microsoft OS's and more. If you don't like hearing about Operating Systems, and what people think about them, perhaps you are on the wrong site by accident or something.
I guess I would have to disagree with you then. Windows 7 feels faster than vista, and has a lot of features I like way better than XP, and somewhat better than Vista. When they allow you to install an RC on your computer and use it, and it is stable and fast, that seems about as honest a beta or RC as you can have. I don't know what would make you think Windows 7 is a "demo". You think Microsoft will intentionally break their code now? I somehow don't think they will.
Great (Score:3)
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I'm very skeptical. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm very skeptical. Our October 22, 2011 adoption date may be delayed. Let everyone else have the hassles, as they did with Vista and Windows ME, and several versions of DOS. Bringing out unfinished versions has been very profitable for Microsoft.
Windows XP had very serious, but not obvious, problems until SP2.
Windows 7 is just another version of Windows NT, but Microsoft calls it an entirely new operating system, and most people accep
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Vista SP2 is already out there.
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Even a gold plated, extra shiny, polished turd [discovery.com] is still a turd at heart.
More than enough time... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone else have this issue? Am I insane? Will Dudley Do-Right save Nell Fenwick?
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Aside from the history of Creative Labs, I'd suggest you get a new sound card. Not that it's any fun or anything to do so, but it'll be less aggravating in the long run.
Even the poor performance of having an integrated sound system beats a sound system that you don't even turn on, and there's plenty of alternatives.
The history of Creative Labs is anything but creative: they're a vendor. They have other people make their chips, and all they do is brand the product (and maybe, maybe, write a program or two
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Re:More than enough time... (Score:4, Insightful)
...for Creative Labs to get on the ball and release 64bit audio drivers for the X-Fi series that don't cause constant crackling and odd behavior. I swear, past their XP drivers, the drivers for Vista and Win7 are horrid. Least I got a USB headset that works well. The rest of my Win7 RC test machine works wonderfully though, save for the sound, which is driving me insane.
I'm told (2nd hand anecdotal evidence: I've not used a Creative sound card in some time) that Creative have been somewhat lacking in the quality driver department for some time, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
If you are having trouble with their Vista drivers after all this time what makes you thing they'll get good quality Win7 drivers released in the next six months?
Parent
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Now that MS, once primarily an OS developer, is seriously in hardware business [xbox.com], Creative needs to think about a graceful exit strategy from the MS Windows market. Just look at what happened when MS decided to sell software. Previous partners like Lotus and SSI saw what happens when MS want market share.
Re:More than enough time... (Score:4, Funny)
...for Creative Labs to get on the ball and release 64bit audio drivers for the X-Fi series that don't cause constant crackling and odd behavior. I swear, past their XP drivers, the drivers for Vista and Win7 are horrid.
Until Microsoft can deliver drivers for popular off-the-shelf peripherals, Windows will never be more than a niche toy for geeks who like to spend more time tinkering with their OS than actually using it.
Parent
Acer actually wrong then? (Score:5, Funny)
That statement could not possibly be more precisely wrong, as it turns out. They will actually be selling Windows 7 a day before the 23rd of October.
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"'We won't be actually selling [Windows 7] a day before the 23rd October" [slashdot.org] That statement could not possibly be more precisely wrong, as it turns out. They will actually be selling Windows 7 a day before the 23rd of October.
Actually what they said is quite factual. The "23rd October" would have started on roughly 10/01/0023 and there's no way they'd be selling Windows 7 before then. If they meant the "23rd of October" then that's a different case entirely :P
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Am I the only one... (Score:3, Funny)
... to discover that?
10/22 = 10 2 2 ... Maybe a subliminal message?
substract 1 to each number: 9 1 1
yeah... should stop working and go back home.
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I'm sure it will be (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
Parent
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
Before people pounce on him like the lynchmob this website is, it's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows. It's almost always the PHB or CEO who has been sold on it because he went to a big conference and they had a Windows 7 booth that gave him a free light up pen. I want to move to Linux in the company I work for, but people in the various departments will always drag their feet and be resistant to it.
Parent
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
That gives me an idea. We should set up a Linux light-up pen giveaway program. The pens will come disassembled in the package, and there will be no instructions on how to put it together. Oh, and the package will include the wrong size batteries. We can also include a little fold-up card that says "Open and read only as a last resort" on the outside. And when they finally give in and open the card, it will say "Figure it out yourself, noob! It's only a pen!" That's a surefire way of giving PHBs and other management the "true" Linux experience. : p
Parent
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That's a surefire way of giving PHBs and other management the "true" Linux experience. : p
That, my friend, is what consultants are there for.
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Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
Before people pounce on him like the lynchmob this website is, it's rarely the people in IT who want to stay with windows.
I work in IT and like to stay on Windows. I use Windows at work and with my lab at home for both workstations and servers. There have been times that I have used Linux for certain play projects, but honestly at the end of the day I end up going back to Windows. The only Linux/BSD variant I'm currently running is Monowall for my firewall. The last time I ran Linux as my primary workstation is when I played Quake and Team Fortress, and connected to the Internet through Netcom and my 28.8kbps modem :) I feel that I am a true IT geek too. I love working with computers, no matter what platform it is running. I love working with routers, firewalls, switches (I have a CCNA).
Maybe one can say that I'm not a real IT person, or that people like me are not that common, but the truth is there are a lot of people in IT who prefer staying with Windows.
Parent
Re:So? (Score:4, Funny)
(I have a CCNA)
I do too, and I have karma to burn so I am going to say this joke:
How do you get a CCNA off your porch? Pay for your pizza.
Parent
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I don't want to move to linux on the desktop for the ordinary users. With the range and amount of crappy software (designed for windows 98!) that their managers insist they MUST have that is windows only and doesn't have a linux analog, I can live without the grief of desktop virtualization.
Add to that the many staff than can't handle when an option moves two places down in a menu on office, or how to fix the 'problem' that I've already shown them how to fix three times this week, I'd spend my entire day ju
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and the big e IS the internet)
On my Dad's computer the only way I got him to use Firefox was by deleting all icons to IE. The only way to run it at this point was by Start>Run iexplore.
Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
They used LTSP and tftp to boot the image off the server, essentially making the desktops terminals.
If I were setting up an office, that would be the way I would go. Everything is centralized and easily backed up.
It is an office environment, after all. The users probably complained the first month, then got over it and did their work.
Parent
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you work in IT, it's difficult not to care about Windows when it's 90% of the market.
True, but I am getting better at it every day.
Parent
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It doesn't matter that someone uses Firefox whenever they corrupted a DLL you have to re-install.
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/Raises hand/ That would be me. I want a stable 64-bit OS so I can run AutoCad with more than 3.5 GB of usable RAM. Our IT people intend to skip Vista so, yes, the advent of Windows 7 is indeed of interest to me.
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Wan can't you use XP 64bit?
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
XP-x64 is really Windows Server 2003 with the XP appearance tacked on top. It's a fine OS, but it's also an orphaned child that's often left aside. It was cooked up as a temporary stop-gap until Vista64, and it served its stopgap purpose.
Drivers are non-existent for some pieces of hardware. Pretty much any hardware needs to have XP and Vista drivers, but XP-x64 isn't actually XP (it requires 64-bit drivers), so the drivers aren't necessarily a drop-in replacement. With the release of Vista-64 as Microsoft's 64-bit desktop OS, XP-x64 is also a complete dead-end in the driver department; new hardware comes out, and since Vista64 and Windows Server 2008 already exist, there's not as much reason for companies to bother with driver support for XP-x64. It's not worth the testing or support resources necessary for an OS that only ever commanded a tiny fraction of the market. On top of that, plenty of install applications fail because they check for XP or Vista but not XP-x64; even though the program will run, it can't be installed without some irritating workarounds.
On top of that, his IT department may be unwilling to dedicate the resources necessary to maintaining one or a few workstations with a totally different OS and image than the rest of the systems. You may argue that it's IT's job to do that, but they also need to weigh costs and benefits; perhaps they've already determined that the hardware or critical software isn't supported under XP-x64, or perhaps they're about to migrate to Win7 and it simply isn't worth the extra cost and hassle until they start migrating people in 9 months.
Parent
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I run Kubuntu. I consider other distros, I consider Gnome, I consider getting a Mac, I'll consider Windows 7 too. I did switch to Linux because of Vista but it's not like I've seen the light and would never ever use anything else ever again. It works, it has warts, if other companies are better at fixing their warts eventually I'll switch away again. Overly optimistic? No, but XP followed Windows ME, Intel Core's followed Pentium IV, in short I'm not ruling out the possibility that Microsoft learned a lot l
Not neccesarily, it is time for a new core. (Score:5, Insightful)
But XP is nearly 8 years old now. Yes I understand that if a software isn't broken, then don't fix it approach. (look how long windows 3.1 lasted) But the fact remains that there is software coming out that has built in native support for newer hardware types and can better take advantage of what the hardware has to offer. XP has 3 service packs that increase the ability for the operating system to fully take advantage of current hardware. Even still, XP64 doesn't fully scale to fully utilize more than a 2 core processor.
I am not advocating that windows 7 will be all glory and shine. But I am merely expressing that as a whole the XP platform is becoming dated and should be replaced to better support emergent hardware.
Before you start going off and saying "With Linux you don't ever see this" Wrong. When XP was released in 2001, the linux market was comprised of Redhat, Debian and Suse. From then, in 2004 Ubuntu was released. Ubuntu was a great leap in consumer level linux desktop enviroments. I would like to see people running the original Ubuntu 4.10 with only hot fixes.
The thing I am getting at, is that no matter how much you hot fix a operating system. After some time the underlying core will have to be rebuilt.
Parent
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I happen to be running my 4.10 Warty install just fi
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The point is that unless you are running a server with multi-year uptime (which means that you are likely running with an unpatched kernel), you are probably not running the same linux kernel as you were in '01, when WinXP was released.
There is always progress in OS design. XP (in retrospect) is a good OS, but it likely cannot be patched to take full advantage of the latest hardware without breaking something. Hence Vista and 7.
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Re:Not neccesarily, it is time for a new core. (Score:4, Interesting)
Does Vista run poorly on older hardware? Yes. Would you complain that blu-ray video doesn't look good on your 14" CRT?
Parent
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Sometimes less, is more.
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Frankly, some of the window management techniques are crazy awesome, imo. Move it to the side, and it takes up half the screen? Easy side-by-side comparison! Have a custom desktop that has your system info displayed? Move to the bottom right for a quick look without minimizing or alt-tabbing. Minimize other windows by giving the current one a quick shake? Could be useful if you need more screen space and a bunch of open windows. Maximize by dragging to top, then minimize by moving it away again? Yeah, if I
Re:Finally the time (Score:4, Informative)
And it will finally be time to argue definitively how fast and slick Windows 7 is. I'm tired of people saying "Windows 7 is great!" when it isn't even out yet.
You are tired of people talking about how nice a release candidate is? Perhaps you should stop reading about operating systems. Tech websites talk about OS's all the time before they release. That's a major part of what they do. Its been this way for 10 years at least. Not just about Microsoft either. They talk about Mac OS's, Linux OS's, Microsoft OS's and more. If you don't like hearing about Operating Systems, and what people think about them, perhaps you are on the wrong site by accident or something.
Parent
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