Windows 7 RTM Reviewed & Benchmarked 792
An anonymous reader writes "The code is final, and CNet has reviewed the final version of Windows 7, with benchmarks to support the case that it's not only the fastest version of Windows to shut down, but also looks like 'the operating system that both Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for.' The review continues: 'By fixing most of the perceived and real problems in Vista, Microsoft has laid the groundwork for the future of where Windows will go. Windows 7 presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.'"
Fast way to shut down! (Score:5, Insightful)
Pull the plug!
Seriously.... they claimed all this same stuff for vista. and we all found out they were full of crap.
7 might be better than vista. but i still dont believe it's the fastest ever or any of their other bs.
This isn't news. it's an ad.
Great goals (Score:5, Insightful)
> fastest version of Windows to shut down,
Was that ever a problem? start shut down, and turn out the lights, It will be down when you come back in the morning.
How about boot up time?
This is why the tagging system sucks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:1, Insightful)
Pull the plug!
Seriously.... they claimed all this same stuff for vista. and we all found out they were full of crap.
7 might be better than vista. but i still dont believe it's the fastest ever or any of their other bs.
This isn't news. it's an ad.
Have you actually tried it or are you just writing this too look cool (in reality totally stupid?)
Not faster than XP, not faster than Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
Just FYI-- the claims of better gaming performance from 7 than Vista or XP have not materialized (not on my machine at least). It's just as slow as Vista.
That said, it's still worth having (like Vista) with UAC turned off, simply because the aggressive prefetching loads frequently used programs into RAM. Stuff opens faster.
granted, I've only played with the RC... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA: "Importantly, it won't require the hardware upgrades that Vista demanded, partially because the hardware has caught up"
Yes, but how does it do on my old hardware that struggled with Vista in the first place? I know Mac OS 10.1 > 10.2 > 10.3 > 10.4 gave me better performance on the same hardware. It wasn't until I moved to Leopard that I REALLY noticed my PowerBook 1Ghz PPC chip was at it's limit.
16GB? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great goals (Score:5, Insightful)
> fastest version of Windows to shut down,
Was that ever a problem? start shut down, and turn out the lights, It will be down when you come back in the morning.
If only...
Far more likely it will be sitting there saying 'StupidTaskbarApp.exe did not shut down. Press 'OK' to close this application' or some similar shit.
One of the reasons I hate Windows so much is that I can't even rely on the piece of crap OS to shut down if I tell it to shut down and then walk away. It literally expects me to sit there for up to five minutes while it 'saves my settings' and stops all the processes to ensure the bloody thing turns itself off.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. And this is where 7 wins. It "FEELS" extremely quick, because it responds to user input better. If you need to take a minor throughput hit for that, so be it. Most people multitask these days anyway - some fractional of a percentage point difference in throughput loss means jack shit if you can actually use the computer while its doing stuff in the background...
I've been running the RC since it came out, no way I'm going back to XP or Vista for Windows stuff.
Re:Wait.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:4, Insightful)
It's well past Windows in terms of usability and elegance
Get off my lawn. You were referring to OSX in that sentence... right? Or was this a joke/troll that was lost on me? Ok I'll bite:
What I have to point here is much to the disdain of a acute microsoftus haterii patient, we all know Linux is not elegant or stunningly usable by any reasonable and pertinent definition. Maybe you were more impressed with wobbly windows than most of us, but while there is an outstanding choice to customize and make it beautiful it just not pretty out of the box. I have yet to see a elegant Linux distribution that doesn't have amateurish desktop and default themes. Don't get me started on the ugly fonts. Multimedia is still broken on Linux. Usability is a very mixed bag, but I will concede that is getting very good.
I'm using Win7 RC to write this, which has been my main desktop OS when I'm not in a bash shell.
Linux is the far superior workhorse, OSX and Windows are better show ponies, don't get the them confused. Mod me down for saying it I don't care.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
"Remove Bash. That's right, no Bash, no Korn, no Bourne, no shells of ANY kind. Do that with a fresh install and see if it will run six months, with allowing updates, without any access to CLI."
That's an absurd thing to say and betrays your ignorance here. The shell is an integral part of a Unix system. If you remove /bin/sh, the system will not even boot. Any Unix system will be this way, including OS X, because this specific interpreted language is part of what makes Unix Unix.
As far as not using the shell for day-to-day tasks, you can do that with Linux now. Ubuntu has all those point-and-click controls you love, and you're free to use them instead of the shell if you like. You'll get things done more slowly, because GUI configs suck, but that's your choice.
What may make you believe it's impossible to go without using a shell in Linux is the fact that Linux people tend to suggest typing shell commands when people ask how to fix problems on a forum. This is because the shell is the best, fastest way to fix problems in Linux, even when other options are available, and we won't suggest an inferior solution unless pressed for it.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
It's no longer 2002. Install Ubuntu and you will NEVER have to use the CLI. That's right. NEVER. I like it because you can do some neat things with it, but then I use CLI in windows too. But is it required for normal operation? No. It's not.
Do I think Linux is retard-friendly on the level of windows? No. But It's come a long way. And the old CLI complaint has officially died. Buried next to driver support qq and native-app woes.
Don't like? Fine. But leave your FUD at the door please.
yes, isn't it wonderful... (Score:2, Insightful)
to come back to your laptop after a few hours, which you thought was off or on standby, only to find it warm and with 8% battery remaining, displaying an unresponsive Windows desktop?
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it's less about superiority of the shell when I suggest a solution. Saying "Open the terminal and type..." is a lot easier than "See that thing there? Click on that, and then in the menu find..."
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a good point, but I consider the ability to easily communicate shell-based directions to be a legitimate shell advantage. After all, what you're basically doing when you say that is giving the user a script -- even if it's a script written with the human as a preprocessor since you didn't have enough info to actually write it out yourself :)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
Go play with Cocoa / Xcode / Interface builder, and you'll get a bit of an idea as to why Linux is even now, still trying to catch up to NextSTEP 1991.
This is why there is a lack of high quality applications.
Don't get me wrong, Linux is great and I'm trying to get into OpenStep development myself (so i can do OS/X -> Free unix cross platform application development), but the state and lack of standardization on toolkits on Linux is quite apparent.
Re:Great goals (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the reasons I hate Windows so much is that I can't even rely on the piece of crap OS to shut down if I tell it to shut down and then walk away. It literally expects me to sit there for up to five minutes while it 'saves my settings' and stops all the processes to ensure the bloody thing turns itself off.
Sounds like you hate computers in general and have likely chosen the wrong profession.
Why is his requirement unrealistic? I'm a computer professional, I love computers, and I fully agree with the original poster. Why should I wait and watch what should be an automatic, guaranteed to succeed operation? No user-mode application should ever be able to interrupt a critical kernel-mode operation like 'shutdown'. Not ever. There are several use cases where a timely, user-intervention-free shutdown is critical to the correct functioning of an operating system. It's an operation that must always succeed, or the OS is broken.
Have you ever done a remote reboot and had the machine not come back up, because the OS hung during shutdown, for whatever reason? I have, many times, and it's not fun. If you're not working on a server with an integrated management board, but a PC or a beige-box server in a remote lights-out environment, you're basically out of options if that happens.
What if it's a shutdown triggered by a UPS? The server now has just a couple of minutes to shut down cleanly. If it just sits there waiting for the user, it won't be a clean shutdown when it finally loses power, not to mention that it's wasting precious battery power when it doesn't have to.
Laptops and batteries come to mind also. I've once put a laptop into its bag, only to realize 10 minutes later from the hideous burning smell that the OS hadn't really shut off, it had just turned the screen black.
Your reasoning sounds like the excuse of a lazy developer. Why can't applications be written in such a way that they can be shut down quickly and reliably without user intervention? This has been standard for database systems for decades, but GUI application developers are only now catching up. Firefox can now recover almost all of its 'state' after even a crash, which is a good start, but why do trivial applications like text editors ask stupid questions like "Would you like to save this file?" and HANG the machine during shutdown? Is it so hard to respond to a "machine shutdown" event by serializing the application state to a temporary file, and then restoring it when the user runs the app again next boot?
Re:yes, isn't it wonderful... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes. About 1 in 5 times my laptop wouldn't suspend when I closed the lid, and I'd get home to see the "Your computer crashed because it overheated in your laptop bag" boot message. I've given up on ever getting suspend to work reliably in Windows or Linux.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not true. I've installed Ubuntu on three different computers (two laptops and a desktop) and with pretty much every major update (8.10->9.04 for example), I needed to use the CLI to fix crap. Hell, even recently I (in vain) attempted to get my ATI card to work properly with hardware acceleration in 9.04 and had to drop into CLI to fix my now-broken X.org.
Look in the forums of any distro (even Ubuntu) and I bet you'll find the vast majority of the fixes don't start with "goto System->Preferences/Administration ..." but "open a terminal, and paste this into the shell".
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when is checking SMART info a standard task in Windows?
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, your anecdotal evidence is rock-solid, ergo he must be an idiot. If only there were a counter-point... Oh, here is an anecdote "proving" that you are an idiot!
I installed Ubuntu on my Vaio laptop. I've had to use the CLI to...
Guess what? In Windows, all of those features *just worked*. No CLI. No sudo apt-get update/install/whatever. In Windows, when I hit the power button the machine suspends. Click here [claudiocamacho.org] to see the instructions on how to get it to *maybe* work on Linux. Sure, you could edit all those conf files and write the scripts without using the CLI but we're still talking about a decent amount of scripting.
Of course part of this is due to the machine being intended to run on Windows, but there's no need to call someone an "idiot" just because you survived 4 weeks without CLI.
More importantly than how many times you've had to run CLI in the past month, can you tell us how many times you had to use the CLI when you first configured your machine? Did everything work right out of the box?
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:4, Insightful)
I like to conserve energy, so I don't leave my PC running when I'm not using it. I also don't use "standby", it's a useless power draw. When the PC is off, I physically separate it (and all the periphery) from the grid - so I do have to wait until shutdown is complete.
Hence, like booting up, shutting down is something I do once or twice a day, and it's comfortable to have it out of the way as quickly as possible so I don't have to sit around twiddling my thumbs.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
You have an operating system with buttons or icons you can click to fix any sort of problem you might ever encounter? Must be an insanely cluttered GUI then...
Also I don't see how 'Open the control panel, click on the hardware icon, open the driver panel, click on the devices tab, find small icon with the plus sign before it that reads audio devices, expand it, find the audio card in the expanded list, which would probably be the one that doesn't have the word codec in it, see if it has an exclamation mark before it, right click it and pick properties, go to the resources tab, write down all the values in the list of ports/interrupts en post them here' would be easier than to say 'open the terminal application from the menu and first type 'dmesg' and copy paste the results here, then type 'lspci -v -v -v' and post this output here as well'
Point is, the CLI is much more efficient for many, many tasks. Maybe not the common everyday ones, but that's what we have GUI apps for. Linux is no exception. If you have system problems or have to do crazy stuff to fix something at least in Linux you are able to do that through the CLI and to post instructions for other people to help them, even though they have no idea what they're actually typing. In Windows you're generally stuck unless you know a friend or relative you can offer a beer to fix it (which would be the guy I used to be for half of my family and friends until I finally ditched Windows for OS X and Linux. Now officialy "I know nothing about Windows PC's" anymore ;-)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if it's standard? It still doesn't require a command line in Windows.
A good operating system is discoverable and user-centric. At the moment, the desktop environments available for Linux are somewhat discoverable (but the second you drop to the command line, you've thrown discoverability out the window) and process-centric* rather than user-centric. Windows is not perfect at either task (OS X is much better), but Linux is really, really bad at it.
*: Process-centric operations don't focus on what the user wants to do, they focus on what the computer needs to do to accomplish the task. Frame everything around the user or you'll lose them.
Slowest windows yet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this article a joke? I clearly see that vista beats Win7 in 3 out of 5 benchmarks, and XP beats Windows 7 in all but one (how can we forget the all-important "shutdown time" benchmark.
Yet CNet is telling me that *this* is the version of Windows I've been waiting for?
Re:The fastest version of Windows to shut down? (Score:2, Insightful)
reboot = shutdown + boot
So every time you reboot, you shut down.
Re:This is why the tagging system sucks... (Score:5, Insightful)
How long and how many versions did it take? (Score:2, Insightful)
> "...but also looks like 'the operating system that both
> Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for."
Lets see...
The first officially released version of MS Windows was released way back in 1985 (1.01) - two years after Apple released its first version of the MacIntosh and 12 years after Xerox developed the Alto.
Microsoft has subsequently re-released it 21 times.
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.1x
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 4.0 (marketed as "Windows 95")
WindowsNT4.0
Windows 95A
Windows 95B
Windows 95B USB (included basic USB support)
Windows 95C
Windows 98 (original release)
Windows 98 ("Second Edition")
WindowsNT5.0 (marketed as Windows 2000)
WindowsNT5.1 (marketed as WindowsXP)
WindowsNT5.2.x (marketed as Windows Server 2003)
WindowsNT5.2.x (re-released and marketed as Windows Server 2003 R2)
WindowsNT6.0 (marketed as Windows Vista)
WindowsNT6.0 R6002 (marketed as Windows Vista Service Pack 2)
WindowsNT6.1 (marketed as Windows Server 2008)
WindowsNT6.1.7600 (marketed as Windows Server 2008 service Pack 2 and also as Windows 7)
Now this review of Microsoft's most recent re-release of Microsoft Windows describes it as the "operating system that Microsoft and its consumers have been waiting for".
That is truly a _long_ awaited piece of software that is neither original nor innovative!
MS Windows is crippleware - in that the full version is always installed, but features are crippled depending on how much $$$ has been paid. Not even this fact is innovative.
Please feel free to contribute additional facts about the history of MS Windows.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows Vista and up automatically checks the SMART data for you and will display a warning to the user in case SMART data reports critical status.
I've found SMART to be almost useless, though. But that's another story.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:5, Insightful)
Try reinstalling that VAIO with a different Windows version, one that hasn't been customized by Sony, and then post your luck getting all the right hardware drivers and configuring the system. You're comparing a PREINSTALLED version that has all the kinks already worked out by some guy at Sony, to a MANUALLY installed operating system you have to configure yourself. It's like saying how much easier it is to just drive that new car you just bought from the dealer to buying the same car and then swapping the engine yourself.
As a counter-example: I once bought an HP pavilion laptop with XP home on it (which I couldn't remove or have upgraded to another XP version by the way because HP tied the license to the machine and didn't offer anything but XP home). Because I needed to logon to a Windows domain, I upgraded to XP pro. After that, I didn't have 3D acceleration, the TV-out stopped working, no wifi until I installed drivers from directly from the card manufacturer and it took 4 months before HP finally released downloadable drivers for the ATI chip that was in it, the stock ones didn't recognize the card because HP screwed with the PCI ids, and the only way to get the machine to work fully was to do a full system recovery. Using the XP home recovery discs...
Re:Start-bar aka Dock! (Score:5, Insightful)
The other problem with KDE is "everything" is named starting with a "K" which makes it harder to scan to find stuff quickly.
This drives me absolutely batshit insane...
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
"Also I don't see how 'Open the control panel, click on the hardware icon, open the driver panel, click on the devices tab, find small icon with the plus sign before it that reads audio devices, expand it, find the audio card in the expanded list, which would probably be the one that doesn't have the word codec in it, see if it has an exclamation mark before it, right click it and pick properties, go to the resources tab, write down all the values in the list of ports/interrupts en post them here' would be easier than to say 'open the terminal application from the menu and first type 'dmesg' and copy paste the results here, then type 'lspci -v -v -v' and post this output here as well'"
As a Windows user, I definitely prefer the former. Precisely things like 'lspci -v -v -v' are what's keeping me from using Linux - I don't _want_ to remember 500 different console commands.
Never having seen a Windows PC before, using common sense and your ability to read, you can figure out how to get (almost) anywhere. On Linux, if you don't know the console command you're looking for and don't have anywhere to look it up, you're SOL, because the GUIs don't fucking work half the time (yes, using Linux _has_ frustrated me)...
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:2, Insightful)
"It's no longer 2002. Install Ubuntu and you will NEVER have to use the CLI. That's right. NEVER. I like it because you can do some neat things with it, but then I use CLI in windows too. But is it required for normal operation? No. It's not."
Bullshit. Even setting up display resolutions and refresh rates (don't get me started on xorg and nVidia's proprietary driver) or sound on my setup required CLI in 7.10 and 8.04...
Sure, it's great when everything works out of the box for some people, but everyone else is fucked.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, I choose to do most of my file management from the command line just because it's usually the quickest way to go about it.
There's only one situation I can think of where the GUI is better, when I need to select a number of arbitrary files from a directory. Since globbing or find can't be used to quickly match the files you want I find control-clicking a bunch of icons is quicker than typing out a bunch of file names. That's the exception though, the rest of the time the CLI is better.
The joy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
You have obviously never done tech support over the phone.
Wait until you are trying to figure out what the person on the other end of the phone is looking at and where they clicked wrong and you will understand why tech support people love the shell.
When I am helping people fix osx over the phone I am more likely than not to wind up telling the person to type commands into the terminal.
Re:Vista was the fastest Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell most Mac and Windows users don't even know there IS a CLI interface, and they sure as hell don't want to be using it!
You're so mad that you're bordering on saying nonsense.
How come you know that the users don't want to use something they don't even know about?
Are you the god thinking for all these people?
What did strike such a nerve into you? Seriously. It's hatred at this level.
Look, I'll be the first to admit that Linux rocks on servers. It is rock solid, secure, a real tank of an OS. But we are talking Windows 7 here, which is most definitely NOT targeted at servers. It is targeted at home users. Home users, I might add, who often can't even find their way around control panel without someone holding their hand. Windows is quite good at that BTW.
I agree with everything you say, even the part where you say that Windows is quite good at making people unable to find their way around control panel.
Me too, I always have problem finding the correct option in control panel, usually I have to parse all of them. Just because they're inconsistent. It's sad really, after all these years.
But Linux? You better be bestest friends with Mr. CLI if you want to play in that sandbox. It seems like every time there is an update something breaks and requires CLI. Sound broke? Ooops..CLI. Monitor isn't showing the right resolution? CLI baby.
Now you're really looking like an ignorant fool. You didn't use Linux in the latest 10 years, right ? You shouldn't talk about what you obviously don't know about, seriously.
And server admins live and die CLI and hate GUIs, as they just suck precious resources.
This shows clearly that you have no idea what the CLI is in Linux and Unix OS. ... interface.
You seem to believe CLI in these OS is just some kind of, well,
Which shows just how ignorant you are about it.
These are shells, and are much more powerful than DOS.
Being a fanboy is one thing, being delusional is another.
Yet you are both.
I can make an example that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Linux isn't ready for home users. Ready? Remove Bash.
Now you're retarded. You just said "remove the OS".
I hope you didn't believe you were smart. Seriously...
Go learn what Linux is before talking about it, you're not qualified, at all.
But Windows home users will NEVER use CLI. Let me repeat that: Windows home users will NEVER EVER use CLI. In fact most power users don't care for it either. They don't like it, don't want it, and if you make them use CLI you might as well say "please have someone go install Windows for you" because that is EXACTLY what will happen. I truly hope that a day comes when you can actually remove CLI from Linux and still have a usable machine, but I won't hold my breath.
LOL. Repeating wrong things won't make them true. But I agree this part is done like a good fanboy coupled with a delusional guy. You know also perfectly well what people want and what they hate. But do you have any evidence of what you're saying?
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Whilst removing the shell is obviously going to break the OS, and therefore nonsensical, I think the spirit of this post is worthwhile. Can a user survive without the CLI in Ubuntu, for example?
My experience is: not really. It's not that far off, but it's not perfect. People who argue that Linux users spend all their time configuring things on the commandline are exaggerating, but equally it's unrealistic to say that a GUI can be used for all configuration.
In my current Ubuntu install, I've had a wireless problem that I've fixed with a small amount of messing around in the shell. Besides that, I've not been forced to use it. Having said that, previously I've had X Server issues that have required lots of CLI use to resolve.
I'm not interested in "my OS is more user-friendly than your OS" arguments, but I'd prefer it if people didn't big up / write off Linux on the basis of exaggeration.
RS
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:5, Insightful)
You might like to actually test it, people have been telling good things about Windows 7, and the interface and updates do look quite nice.
You missed the point! CNet and PC World seems to be very much just reproducing Microsoft's marketing material, just like they did when Vista came out.
And the benchmarks doesn't prove anything, if you ignore shutdown time, it looks to be slower overall then xp AND Vista..
And since Vista came out, both Linux and OS X have improved tremendously when it comes to performance and boot times.
Is Snow Leopard mentioned anywhere or compared to earlier OS X versions + all the Windows versions? NO..
Sincerely yours,
Vista 64bit user
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:2, Insightful)
I would say that windows don't have a standard GUI application development platform either.
But how do you define standard anyway, and in what way is QT less standard then the "roll your own gui, because Win32 sucks" that so much software(Including anything from Adobe and microsoft office*)
And what is non-standard about QT? I have not seen QT break anything since between the switch between QT3 and QT4. (Unlike MacOS X where an upgrade suddenly required some gui callback methods to be reentrent, breaking lots of software.
*Just take the ribbon interface as an example. They developed an entire new gui system, just for office.
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:3, Insightful)
:) Glad to hear you think these small latencies are important too.
Because they're typically hard to measure and sporadic (with the smaller ones not even consciously noticed by many), I tend to think it's a very under-rated and unspoken about metric (similar to the way input lag was 'unknown' and argued against on some LCD monitors for a while).
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a "sophisticated" user, installing client PCs for just about everyone around me, including some small companies. I'm having a very hard time getting into Linux on the desktop.
I just managed to install Linux for the first time 4 days ago. All other times (about 10), installation failed, due to MB drivers I suppose. That was very disappointing, the PCs were very vanilla, with no expansion cards, and XP installed without a glitch on them.
I don't mind using a bit of CLI since I'm a nerd, but, believe it or not, I can't find how to mount a windows networked share via fstab. I can do it in the graphical thingy, but it mounts it only after I've clicked on it. I need it mounted sooner, and.. I need to know where it gets mounted... I did find how to install VNC, but could not make head nor tails of how to install an RDP server on the linux PC.
My question about it in the forums has been answered by the usual 'you're an idiot', or "you don't need it with our wonderful graphical interface". I'm not an idiot, and I need it outside of Gnome. And remember, the hardest part of any problem is asking the right question, so yes, I didn't ask clearly the first time around.
So, again, I think Linux needs
- more and better drivers. It's progressing, but still. Having to turn off the compositing thingy to be able to use VLC sucks, too. Then again, Aero in Vista causes problems with many games, too.
- better documentation. there's lot of good stuff and how-tos, but out of date.
- nicer community attitude. Yes, I'm an incompetent idiot that not only does not know how to do things, but doesn't even know where to look for the answer nor how to ask the question. I'm trying to change !
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:2, Insightful)
If by discoverable you mean click everywhere until it works, then yes. That's how I find most folks "discover" stuff on Windows.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Organising the start menu by software manufacturer name is user centric? Sometimes windows seems easy to use *because you have been using it for decades.* I hope they haven't, yet again, shuffled around the *user centric* control panel. Every time I get asked to help someone fix their windows computer it gets harder to find anything now.
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't news. it's an ad.
Wait - a review of the finished latest release of the most dominant OS on the planet, from the biggest software company in the world, isn't news? Yet the daily stories we get of every possible random rumour about the Iphone and the "[do mundane activity] On Your Iphone!" stories we get aren't advertising?
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO that's usually better than staring at a blank screen prompt not even knowing what command you're even looking for, let alone what options you need to actually use it.
Re:Great goals (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, perhaps you have a valid point in all of this, but now you've totally changed the topic. This whole thread was about the OS, it's improvements, and whether faster shutdown was a noteworthy feature. Now you are talking about what applications should do, not the OS. If you can demonstrate the linux apps and OSX apps all serialize their state when the OS shutsdown, then maybe you've got a valid and relevant point. But the point is, most apps for any OS do not do that at present, and nothing the OS itself can do will change that. Well, nothing other than serializing the entire app, but when you consider how many dependencies it could have on other things in the OS, you've essentially got to serialize the entire OS, and every OS (including windows) already has that feature.
So now the point is, you've got a computer where the user has requested an actual shutdown (rather than hibernate), and an app is refusing to close. What do you do? Do you just kill it and not care about the data loss? In some cases that may be desirable, but for most users, I think the right thing to do is leave it up to them to decide. So a faster shutdown is a noteworthy feature since it means less time they have to wait to see if they forgot to close something.
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:3, Insightful)
You missed the point! CNet and PC World seems to be very much just reproducing Microsoft's marketing material, just like they did when Vista came out.
Are you even surprised by that ? CNet and PC World are the biggest Microsoft shills of them all. They've been doing this since the beginning of times.
I'll say it again, pre-release Hype of a new Windows release is always like this. Windows 95 Betas, RCs, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP... always the same story : "Best ever release of Windows yet! Stable! Fast!". Then reality hits and everyone finds out the new release is more bloated than the last. A few useful features were added, some useful features were changed into unusefulness and generally people start to say they miss the old version. Some go back. A few years later, when hardware specs have changed enough, the new release is ailed as the best Windows ever, the next one won't be as good, then the pre-release hype begins, and there we go again.
I know the Microsofties on here don't like to hear it but that's how it is. Every. Time. Windows XP was ridiculed on release, it was called bloated, heavy and fisher pricey. People stuck with Windows 2000 for productivity and with Windows 98 for gaming. Now you'd be hard pressed to find anyone would doesn't just love Windows XP, "it's the bestest evAr!".
Re:Fast way to shut down! (Score:3, Insightful)
"You cant magically get more CPU power."
Sure you can, get rid of the bloat caused by features that users never use, asked for, or wanted. Then, out of the box, turn off all services not necessary for the user to boot up, and train the OS to turn them on as the user uses stuff that needs them, instead of defaulting every whiz bang service to on.
It's not magic, it's common sense.
Re:Great goals (Score:3, Insightful)
The GP said what the difference is. Many times.
The OS should:
1) Silently serialize application state for each application
2) Force-close each application
3) Shutdown
4) On restart of each application, restore the previous application state
The CLI shutdown command does the following:
1) Force-close each application
2) Shutdown
Application state and/or data is potentially lost
The GUI shutdown command does the following:
1) Ask each application to shutdown, waiting for response if necessary
2) Shutdown
The OS is not guaranteed to shut down
See the difference? I agree with the GP. Windows shutdown has been a buggy mess for a long time. Hopefully windows 7 resolves some of the issues with it.
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:2, Insightful)
RTFM then :-p
Re:The competition is OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
Win32? The gui system which don't even have a split pane. (Yes I have developed for Win32, an interesting job but not one I care to repeat).
I can not mention a major application released within the last 4 year, with an interface based on pure win32 widgets. Not even microsofts own software. Win32 miss far to many things. (Even the toolbar in Microsoft internet explorer 6 is different from the Win32 toolbar).
Here is an other example: The menu that popup when you press the right mouse button: Does it come when you click or release the button? Answer: That depend on the application, because win32 don't even handle that stuff.
So if the only standard interface for windows is win32, then I can't mention any major application released within the last 5 years which have used the standard windows interface. Nothing released from Microsoft. Nothing released by Adobe. Not a single 3D editor, nothing released from Apple. Not a single browser. Well nothing (Except google earth, that is the only pure major win32 application I can mention).
Would you call MFC* part of the windows interface? If yes, then how does it differ from Qt? Developers who use MFC/QT both have to download MFC/QT, and both does a static link to (part of) the library, so the user don't have to download anything.
MFC is not part of windows. It comes with Visual studio and you are not allowed to static link to it, unless you have a license to Visual Studio which is in no way part of Windows.