XP Users Are Willing To Give Windows 7 a Chance 720
Harry writes "PC World and Technologizer conducted a survey of 5,000 people who use Windows XP as their primary operating system. Many have no plans to leave it, and 80% will be unhappy when Microsoft completely discontinues it. And attitudes towards Vista remain extremely negative. But a majority of those who know something about Windows 7 have a positive reaction. More important, 70 percent of respondents who have used Windows 7 say they like it, which is a sign that Windows 7 stands a chance of being what Vista never was: an upgrade good enough to convince most XP users to switch."
Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
The real test is not users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's stopping you from trying the beta ? Put up a new harddrive / empty a small partition, turn on your AHCI and install windows 7!
Time to put those 8gb of ram to some use besides in linux :)
I'm committed to Windows 7. (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows Vista is a good product (Score:5, Insightful)
I have Macs on my desktops, and I run Linux for my number crunching machines. So, I'm no Microsoft fanboy. However, it seems to me that Microsoft actually tried to do the right thing with Vista... namely they built a reasonably secure operating system from the ground up and decided to actually enforce the programming paradigms. The problem isn't with Vista, it's with the antiquated applications that still need tons of shims to work. For example, I recently installed Quicken on my father in law's XP machine and discovered that it wouldn't work unless running as an admin account, which is simply absurd! So, I worry that Windows 7 is just a light weight version of Vista with most of the security rolled back so that insecure applications will be able to continue running and users won't complain about their favorite applications breaking.
Do the users/sysadmins want to change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our university department is cash strapped right now and despite heavy discounts we will NOT be moving to 7 unless it comes installed on a computer. We might if we are lucky get it in the 2011 FY budget. Unlikely though. Our users are so used to the look and feel that they likely would balk at the 7 upgraded look, and ask us to put back in the "classic" look. Yes the Windows 2000 look. Not that new XP Luna stuff. 2000. Thats why we are not switching to 7 anytime soon. The users could care less and our administrators wont give us the money.
Plus, were a little lazy and dont want to reinstall all of those comptuers.
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
The RC Release Candidate is downloadable for another 2 days (until the 20th, I believe)...so just try it.
The DRM seems like it always has...if you own the media, or it is DRM free, then you shouldn't have a problem. The amount of annoying dialogs for permissions is wayyy less than Vista. It is smooth, fast, better laid, and I've not had a single crash or let down over the last few weeks of trying it out. The layout is much cleaner, OS X users will immediately "get" the dock (whether you like it or not is another issue)...
My main curiousity was the Media Center (got a deal on a PC from a friend that is dedicated to that purpose, leaving me to do my "work" on an old PowerMac) and it is amazingly good vs. Vista's complete F%^%*!? dissapointment.
I was adamant that MS owed Vista MC users some love, and felt shafted to need an OS to finally get a WMC that works, but this is soooo much better all the way around...and @ the pre-ordered $49 goes a long, long way to fixing the hurt.
The RC will work well into 2010, so freakin' load it up and see for yourself...what do you have to loose...?
For the record, my main machines have been macs since 84, occasional Win and Nix experiences. I'm overdue for a new desktop, hate Apple's choice of iMac with fixed graphics and screen, or a $2000 Pro Mac sucks... This could really be the jump ship point for me to be a reverse switcher...
Re:Resigned to it (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista got bad press and users think they're being smart by eschewing the upgrade. "Vista, I heard bad things. XP is fine." But this is the same crowd that bought an ipod because all their friends had one. They would upgrade just for the newest thing, if it weren't suddenly hip and edgy and retro to claim to be an XP purist. So when they hear Windows 7, they automatically kick into MUST UPGRADE mode and, lacking any bad press, don't have any reason to adopt the negative position.
If Vista was so awful, Windows 7 isn't all that different. Vista was fine (when heavily reconfigured); Microsoft just needs to shed the bad reputation of the Vista name to get the dumb users back.
Mohave (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember the Mohave ads? Microsoft showed people a "new" OS and supposedly they liked it (although they could only really see it under very controlled conditions that would not show the faults, like driver incompatability). And then it was revealed that the OS was really Vista, which no one liked.
Now jump forward to the present. MS finally has a service pack that will fix many of the problems in Vista (although not all, and it still has very Vista characteristic performance benchmarks). Someone at M$ wants to release the service pack, but someone higher up who understands the M$ way of doing things better says "If we give people this service pack, even though it fixes many things, it will still have the stink of the Vista name on it. Lets do this: change the GUI around just enough that we can claim it's a new OS. Then rather than give people a new service pack for Vista, we can charge them for a whole new Operating System. Call it something other than Mohave and no one will get wise."
An so, with much hype, they release Windows 7. Everyone who bought Vista and was entitled to a workable OS gets screwed. M$ charges anyone who wants their Vista fixed for a supposedly different OS, even though Vista was so broken that even M$ executives called it a disaster. Profit.
Re:The real test is not users (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Sorry, but nope. SysAdmins are the ones who have to suffer from changes, they're not the ones that make or even decide them. There are 3 deciding factors when it comes to a system switch:
1) Requirements of a top important application
2) Golf partners of decision makers
3) Investment cycles
Only the first reason is one that is based on technical issues, and even in those the average Admin (and sometimes even CTO) has little if any say in. Essentially, if MS wants to "force" enterprise customers to update, they need to nudge the makers of important enterprise applications (Autodesk, SAP...) to require newer systems.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:2, Insightful)
(Yes, there's a 64 bit XP, and yes, it has horrible driver support)
I'm (sorta) one of them (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been a 99% Linux user since 2000, including 3 years of law school where I really only used Windows during exams because of Exam4 requirements. However, I'm starting a job at a (small) law firm and my laptop has Win 7 all loaded up and running. My prognosis so far: I can live with 7, especially because it runs Firefox and Cygwin runs Bash and basic UNIX utilities OK as well. I can even use VIM.
Is it particularly fast? No, but it is not insanely slow. My laptop is recent but not super-high end, 2.2Ghz Core2 with 4GB of RAM is the good part, the Intel graphics are the bad part. Frankly, the Aero effects on Windows 7 work just as well as the compositing effects from KDE 4.3, meaning that they do work, but not blazingly fast like on my desktop with the Nvidia card. As for memory usage... despite claims to the contrary, Linux using a modern, fully featured desktop uses a little bit less RAM, but not significantly less. I'm not even close to filling up my 4GB even with office, firefox, and miscellaneous junk running, so no biggies there.
I'm not a fan of Windows, I think that Windows 7 is somewhat boring for a "huge" release, but it does get the job done. My new job is concerned with me being able to write office documents and access Exchange + a small windows network, which Win7 makes stupidly simple. Do I miss virtual desktops? Sure. Am I annoyed that Windows still doesn't have very good window management and that I can't get rid of the annoying borders on my windows that the Bespin [sourceforge.net] KDE theme lets me annihilate? You bet. At the same time, Windows does make certain configuration tasks easier (especially graphics & wireless even though I can and do use graphical utilities under Linux).
I'm not saying that I couldn't do this just as well in Linux, but I am saying that I don't have the time to get my system tweaked to the rest of the office... at least immediately. This is a small law firm with technically proficient lawyers, and being the most junior associate I won't be shocked if I get some IT related tasks from time to time, but my day job is to be able to use nice boring office software, which Windows 7 allows for in a reasonably secure way.
As for the XP part of this... I had an old XP license that I did purchase fair & square (for $10 from my University back in the day). It could have gotten the job done for a while, but Win7 really does have better security and like it or not it is the path forward. One major feature that Win7 has over XP is the find option in the start menu. Since MS keeps screwing with the Control Panel and everything else, I almost never bother to hunt through menus. Instead I just type in what I want to do in the search bar and it does a very good job of finding what I want. In fact, it's likely faster that me clicking menus even if I did know where stuff was. I'm not sure if XP even had this feature but Win7 makes it very easy to use by default and I've saved quite a bit of time with it... so there ya go, one actual reason to upgrade!
Re:Most of us XP users don't have a choice (Score:5, Insightful)
since Microsoft will soon stop XP support and updates, and refuse to patch any more security exploits.
"Soon" is not until 2014.
Most Windows XP installs don't make use of dual core or higher systems as one has to by the non uniprocessor version of XP to use more than one core or processor.
Cores and processors are different things in Microsoft's view. Cores are processors cores, while processors are the physical CPU packages. XP will use dual and quad core processors fine (7 arguably does a better job of distributing load across the processors, but that's beside the point), just you can't use a uniprocessor version of it on a machine with 2+ CPU sockets.
Re:The real test is not users (Score:2, Insightful)
Meh, that "proof" is as useless as ever. Enterprise customers are always, always slow and they try to minimize every possible upgrade they must make. But when push comes to shove they'll take the smallest bump possible, which will be Windows. The business case for an upgrade is almost always negative, for whatever small gains the OS gives there's the cost of software, hardware, updating any and all guides and training, administration procedures, scripting etc. which makes it basically a "dentist project". Nobody wants to go but if you don't it'll only get worse and the toothache in the long run cost you more than going. But with the "not on this quarter" mentality nothing gets replaced until it really has to. I expect most enterprise customers to finish their upgrades around a year or two before XPs end-of-life, no sooner.
Re:secure! (Score:3, Insightful)
It is. A lot of old exploits don't work anymore, just as every time. And just like every time before, we'll get new exploits.
Generally though we'll see a lot more social engineering and "you have to install this or something horrible happens", as well as a shift more towards third party applications, as we've seen already. The security hole in MS systems these days isn't Windows anymore. It's mostly plugins for Browsers, at least for now. The new Windows is Flash and PDF reader. At least 'til Adobe gets its act together.
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
, so freakin' load it up and see for yourself...what do you have to loose [sic]...?
Time,
and "time is money, friend!"
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
I may get modded troll for this, but open source != quality code. In theory, it is more likely that that is the case, but I have seen some open source code that made me die a little on the inside. Microsoft's developers are generally smart people who know their job. Many of the issues that ships with the operating system results from very poor (and too much, IMO) management. (For the record, I am not a Microsoft employee...I just like following various companies, of which Microsoft is one.)
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Most of us XP users don't have a choice (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not? It's been available since the RC. You do need hardware virtualization support, but that's easy to check [grc.com] (I dislike GRC because of his irrational fearmongering of UPnP, but this tool is the quickest way to check if you have virtualization available on your CPU). It's based on the mature VirtualPC product and running full XP, so if an app worked in XP it should work fine in virtualization.
First, read about why Windows 7 is 6.1 [windowsteamblog.com]. Cliff notes: app compatibility, because too many apps are stupid and don't handle major version bumps properly (witness all of the apps from Windows XP that wouldn't install on Vista simply because it was 5.1 to 6.0 and the installer assumed major version would always be 5 and so just checked minor version, resulting in 0 less than 1 == not supported). Win7 is certainly an enhancement on top of Vista, but then Vista was an enhancement on top of XP (really on top of the Server 2003 codebase, but that came from XP), and XP was an advancement on top of 2000, and so on. Some things haven't changed, like the new WDDM driver model that Vista introduced (though Win7 did bump to WDDM 1.1, which allows for easier/better drivers, especially in the realm of gpus). Other things have changed dramatically, though you wont really notice such as the DWM now being much more efficient, especially if coupled with a WDDM 1.1 driver (nVidia, ATI, and Intel already have such drivers available). In Vista, DWM memory usage would grow linearly with the number of windows open. In Windows 7 with a WDDM 1.1 driver, memory usage is now constant regardless of the number of windows (and with a 1.0 driver, it's still ~50% more efficient than Vista). Another example, Win7 is much nicer to SSD storage. But you should look at the list of new features [wikipedia.org] yourself.
1GB is fine. I've used Win7 on netbooks with that little RAM and they were just as snappy (if not snappier) than when running XP. Of course I also like to upgrade netbooks to 2GB, and when you can do so for $20 why wouldn't you? You don't need a new video card, especially if you already have a DX9-capable card (DX9+ required for Aero, will be snappier with a 10.1 card but Aero will still work well). Win7 fits quite well into 16GB on netbooks with plenty of room to spare for your own content, and you can even hack it (though it's not recommended or supported) to get down into 8GB. Win7/Vista definitely have more startup services, but that's also a bit of a red herring as there are new things like the Aero Destop Window Manager and the new Audio server that show up as services now.
XP Pro supported 2 processors, so for most people that would be fine (assuming most people have single or dual-core CPUs, not quad-core). What's more important than that is 64-bit really shines in Win7 (it worked well in Vista as well, but it's even better in 7; for XP
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once XP is completely dead, then I guess I'm done with Windows entirely.
The fact that you still run XP shows you need Windows. I bet you will be running Win7 in the future.
Same shit, different decade (Score:5, Insightful)
We get the same story every time. People don't want to upgrade from [2 versions ago] to [next version] and [last version] sucked.. but it always happens.
A lot of people wanted to stick with 98, thought Me sucked, and didn't want to upgrade to XP until they absolutely needed to. Same shit, different decade.
Re:Windows 7? (Score:1, Insightful)
Except that Windows 7 is really version 6.1
If you start a DOS prompt under windows 7 you are presented with the following
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7100]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
And just to prove it the ver command says it too
C:\>ver
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7100]
Re:Do the users/sysadmins want to change? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct. The commercial software industry has always treated version numbers as a marketing element.
It doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to look good on the box.
Re:I'm (sorta) one of them (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah yeah. I hear what you're saying. Unfair comparison. Well, his parents can use XP and Vista just fine. They can use MacOS more or less easily, but they keep using him for tech support for it. He convinced them to use Ubuntu. He gets tech support calls every day from them. Which is supposed to be easier, again?
Re:Windows Vista is a good product (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it seems to me that Microsoft actually tried to do the right thing with Vista... namely they built a reasonably secure operating system from the ground up and decided to actually enforce the programming paradigms. The problem isn't with Vista, it's with the antiquated applications that still need tons of shims to work.
Nope. And thats part of the problem. Vista started life as the Server 2003 SP1 code after the restart on Longhorn. UAC and such was just bolted on, .Net was kicked to the curb inside the OS, and the OS was rushed out the door from code restart to ship in 18 months. This quick cycle left driver vendors hanging, leading to compatibility issues day one. It also lead to some horrendous bugs, like Direct X apps using up twice as much memory as they should and so on.
A proper new secure OS from Microsoft would have to pull the same trick Apple did. Throw the old OS in a box, allow it to run in the new OS, and kick all old APIs to the curb. A good start would be the Singularity OS Microsoft has in it's research labs.
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone with Windows 7 experience confirm these? (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't tried windows 7 yet. Before I even consider buying it (just to get away from Vista) can anyone tell me if Microsoft have continued the ongoing trend of assuming the users IQ and knowledge of computers is seriously diminishing with every new windows version?
Vista hides much useful information that XP shows, and has introduced even more pointless, time wasting and just annoying "are you sure" dialog boxes even with UAC turned off. Can anyone confirm if the following stupidities have been fixed in Windows 7 or is the trend still downward?:
XP's copy progrss dialog clearly states the filename and full path. Vista's doesn't even mention the name of the file you're copying any more and it only tells you a small part of the path of the source. It leaves you guessing which copy operation it relates to which is mindnumbingly clueless whenever you're doing multiple concurrent file copies.
If you move a folder containing files to a different place that already has a folder with the same name, XP merges them fairly quietly and properly. Even with UAC turned off, Vista introduces extra supremely annoying and unavoidable dialogs to confirm each file in turn (yeah I know theres a "do this for all" checkbox but its still annoying). This extra dialog is not disableable and is really a pointless intrusion if you have any knowledge of what a move operation should do. Worse, even after a successful move, the source folder is left behind. I'd love to meet the marketing moron who thought of these new semantics just so I can kick him in the nuts.
If there's even one file in a folder that Vista thinks might be a media file, Vista forces a media-style display on the contents of the whole folder. This results in all the useful info you need (such as file attributes and modified dates) getting hidden and replaced by a retarded popularity rating you will probably never use. It does this every time you create a new folder and you can't turn off this unwanted 'helpful' (snort) functionality.
Vista's DRM means it can't play MY media to ME. XP can play it without problem.
Vista still frequently forgets the last view settings you set ("sort by" choice etc) even if you set "remember each windows settings" and even do "apply to all folders". This is a problem Windows has had even way back to Windows 95 as I recall.
Feedback about how Windows 7 works in these respects would be much appreciated. I'm not giving Microsoft even more of my money just to find out its no better (or even worse) than Vista for the stuff I do most.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just something to point out, necessary applications aside, it is fully possible to move to Linux with a minimalistic desktop. On an Ubuntu system (the flagship desktop distribution), one can either install XFCE or just grab Xubuntu and run with that.
With that said, I don't see it entirely as a bad thing that Windows, Max OSX, and modern linux distributions bundle eye candy into their newer offerings. Something that is easier on the eyes, or gives the user a bit of shiny will create an overall positive experience. I mean we all could have gotten along very well with our current GUI looking like Windows 3.1 in term of style but part of the user experience is how sleek and nice an interface is. It's why some people buy Macs, others install Compiz, and many XP users will go to Windows 7 even if all their previous applications work perfectly well in XP.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:1, Insightful)
Man, I'd really hate to work in your department.
You make your employees run Linux for their desktop? Leave Linux where its meant to be: for running specialized software on a stripped down OS
Let me try to invite your employees to an outlook meeting or send them a powerpoint to edit or any of the 90 other applications needed on a daily basis that they need to run. Oh, and please don't tell me that they can use that joke of an office sweet, OpenOffice, lol.
I don't work for MS, and I am a developer for a commercial OSS company. No one, and I repeat no one, uses Linux at our office because it's more trouble than it's worth. Everyone wanted to kill the SA's when they made us switch from Exchange to Gmail's crap server (which is much better now that they added Outlook support). However, our software that we distribute on VM's and appliances is all running on a stripped down version of Linux, but it makes sense because we hide that from the users.
Vista is alright. I bet 99% of the negative publicity stems from the fact that the vendors ship it with 64-bit Vista installed, on which, no drivers / software worked right away. 32-bit Vista had no problems for me once I reformatted. If they would just fix the issues with the slow file copy, moving, and deleting it'd be much better!
Re:Mohave (Score:1, Insightful)
What you say is not based on fact - if Win7 was really a Vista service pack then there would be no Vista SP1 and SP2. Or no Vista SP3 coming down the line. The fact that Microsoft is shipping Win7 and also shipping Vista SPs shows the continued support for the existing OS i.e. Vista and also a new OS - Win7. There's no other vendor that provides as much support (10 years) for a product after it ships.
(I am also not inclined to profusely explain that I am not a MS fanboy, etc though that seems to be the trend for anybody saying anything not negative.)
Re:Windows 7 (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft's developers are generally smart people who know their job.
This is something that's often puzzled me: the Microsoft developers I've come across seem to be smart and perfectly capable of producing a high-quality product. Yet the company perpetually churns out steaming donkey shit.
Re:Resigned to it (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd recommend installing Linux Mint, and seeing if that works better for you.
It's literally pick your poison with OS's though. They ALL suck, just use the one you think sucks the least.
Same Old same old (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact remains that most businesses won't change from XP, which runs on primitive machines, to Win7 (alias VistaLite) which still, for the most part, requires hardware upgrades. You could run a serious office with AppleWorks on a 2E, for shitsakes, and that (mercifully) went to its reward 20 years ago. Primitive spread sheet, word processor and data base...and Mail Merge. For the most part, subsequent improvements have been more devoted to eye candy (sorry...I know I'm oversimplifying a bit). The computing power of an average desk-top computer today is more than sufficient to run just about every small company in the world. Why would a guy running a body shop with a P2 give a crap about upgrading? The machine does everything he wants, and rudimentary security will stop all the nasty things from reaching his rarely-online machine.
And if you honestly believe that The Boss gives a flying fuck about whether his staff have pretty transparent windows to look at while they're figuring out how much to charge for the bumper repair, you're smoking something I'd kill to get hold of.
The average home computer has been kicking the ass of the average work computer for at least 10 years, and that situation isn't going to change any time soon. Win7 may be better than Vista. It's still going to be irrelevant until they start giving it away along with a free multi-threading P4 (which these days is worth just about as much as a bag of chips).
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing that's stopping me from saying "100%, will buy when released" is that they're trying to charge a retarded amount for it and I can get near-enough functionality for free in Linux.
Re:DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
People who keep asking this are ill informed. DRM exists in whatever it is protecting not in the OS (besides a decoder).
Bollocks. Microsoft have been trying to get DRM into hardware (e.g. encrypted framebuffers for graphics chips) and the low level of the operating system for years... the only reason we don't have it is because it's a retarded idea that would trash the market share of any hardware company who implemented it.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're wrong. The Custom option can preserve your hard disks content, and you can transfer all your user settings using USMT (Corporate) or Windows Easy Transfer (Home User).
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is important to add the 3d effects to the UI, no matter what anybody says.
I say, sorry, no, it's not.
Some of the 2D stuff that you get from these hardware-accelerated compositing window managers, like drop shadows and zooming, is actually useful. Most of the 3D stuff is complete eye candy fluff.
Not that I'm complaining -- I do think it's a step in the right direction, though I wonder if it's the right approach. (If I put SVG stuff on my KDE4 desktop -- even as a wallpaper -- and zoom in, what happens?) But at the same time, you shouldn't need a 3D desktop to use a word processor.
But it's funny how my wife's old Macbook with the ancient GMA 950 chip runs OS-X liquid smooth.
Try Compiz on just about any card. It's the main reason I'm not down on this stuff in general -- because it can be done right. But again, requiring it, or overplaying its importance, is a mistake. At the end of the day, the GUI, the mouse, the web browser and web apps, are all innovations that burn more CPU than they ought to, but pay off immensely. 3D effects in a 2D UI, so far, give you about two minutes of "Ooh, Shiny", and then it's back to work, with very little difference.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Insightful)
All the studies I have seen show W7 as being the same speed, or slightly faster than Vista, on the same hardware, even for gaming. There is no speed increase with W7, more likely you are using a newer computer.
I won't be moving to W7, I have no reason to waste time learning a new OS. Microsoft enjoy moving everything around, for no reason, like changing the control panel. Such a huge pain in the ass trying to do the simplest of stuff, because Microsoft love tinkering with stuff.
You don't get this on Mac OS.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
The UI is a huge leap backwards.
Looks and 'feels' aren't going to increase productivity. The complete lack of text on the task bar means I have to learn what each icon represents and then have to mouse over it or open the item to figure out what it actually is. In XP or Vista I can just look at the task bar and figure out which server's I've RDP's and SSH'd into, what page my browser is on, any IM's demanding my attention and who they are from. I'm going to lose a crap load of productivity from this alone and probably some hair as well. There are good reasons we favour text based language over a pictogram or hieroglyphic language, complex text is far easier to read.
That stupid "network and sharing centre" is still there, still trying to tell me that it knows what to do with my network. Why do I have to assign a "location" popup to every different DHCP address I get, the OS should handle this invisibly.
Customisability is a two edged sword, with customisability comes more chances for something critical to fail. I'm not saying that extenisve customisability is a bad thing but most users will only change their screensaver and background. Some will pick a different pre-selected colour "theme" but most will leave it as default. Most users do not care about customisability beyond major superficial points like the background.
Game performance is nowhere near the level of XP and the old games which didn't work in Vista still don't work in 7. I'm not completely cynical however, I know 7 is still immature and many of the drivers will have issues. It will take time for the drivers (esp graphics drivers) to mature.
The RC does not start nearly as quickly as a fresh install of XP. As a gamer I reinstall XP every 3-6 months. Vista slowed down at the same rate as XP if not faster and I expect 7 to be the same.
Windows 7 is what Vista should have been released as. It's nowhere near as good as XP and tends to nanny the users a bit too much. It is better then vista which managed to refine annoying pop-ups and disruptions to a weaponised level but basic OS functions in Windows 7 are still several order of magnitudes more disruptive then in XP. Many OS tasks which should be invisible to the user are quite obvious and very annoying. I think MS spent too much time on the "look and feel" and not enough time on getting the codebase to run quickly and reducing Vista's extreme level of annoyance to the user.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the parent got it a little bit backward. It's not important to add 3D effects to window managers, but it's important to add 3D rendering. That doesn't mean wavy windows, desktops on cubes, or whatever, but the ability to do hardware-accelerated compositing, to render to a texture so you can have easy window previews, scaling, etc. More importantly, by using only the 3D pipeline vendors can simplify their hardware and software because they don't need to worry about 2D acceleration anymore, and desktop environments can seamlessly switch between "2D" and 3D. Visually, nothing has to change. You don't need to have "glass" effects or anything else just because you're doing 3D compositing. That's just eye-candy to get users to use it. In the end, everybody benefits, even the luddite who just wants to run a bunch of full-screen terminal apps.
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows has never gotten in your way of doing anything. If we can conclude something, it's that you have failed at multimedia.
Learn to google? Doom9.net?
Re:Mohave (Score:1, Insightful)
Somewhere in there when you started using $ for S, I stopped reading.
Re:DRM? (Score:2, Insightful)
On XP I can play my Blu-Ray movies (legally purchased) in PowerDVD (legally purchased) on my LCD monitor connected via DVI (legally purchased).
On Vista and Win7, I can't. Instead, I get a message about "upgrading" to a display with HDCP.
Sure, I can buy a HACK like Slysoft's AnyDVD HD to work around it, but why the hell should I have to?!
To the people who blame the content instead of the OS: note here that ONLY the OS has changed. It worked in XP, it doesn't in Win7 or Vista.
Bottom line: It's still TEH EVILZ0RZZZZ, and anyone who says there's less DRM in Win7 or Vista is either ignorant, deluded or lying (astroturfing).
Re:I'm (sorta) one of them (Score:1, Insightful)
So, Windows fileshares are easier to use in Windows than Ubuntu?
I'll bet that if you changed it around, and used NFS (the unix filesharing protocol), He'd be the one who can do it with his eyes closed, faster than you find the NFS driver for Windows (yes, it does exist. Or did back when Windows 2000 was the latest and greatest).
Re:Mohave (Score:1, Insightful)
I thought Microsoft went out and said that they'd give a Windows 7 license to anyone that had bought Windows Vista.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Insightful)
Clinging to the least necessary Windows as an annoying middleware to Adobe web tools running in a qemu VM after 8 years with a linux desktop. When I say least, I mean XP stripped down to barest classic view, barest servers and optimized for acceptable performance. If Adobe came out with linux versions of everything, a whole class of tech people wouldn't need Windows.
Re:Win7 is do or die for MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe all these Vista's "famous" problems was about bad or incompatible hardware and/or drivers. I have Vista on our other laptop, which is mainly in my wife's use, and we've had zero problems with it. I used to have a desktop PC with Vista and it worked like charm also. My coworker on the other hand has had some major problems with Vista. His desktop had some old hardware on it when my desktop had the latest state-of-the-art stuff inside.
But what's ironic about MS wanting to compete on netbooks? I thought that's the idea of the whole free market economy. And I've always thought that one of the major points about open software is about choices. Would you like to reduce users choices to The One True OS For Everyone, Linux?
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
Special package just for disgruntled Vista Users (Score:3, Insightful)
Special upgrade package just for disgruntled Vista Users
Windows 7: Fool Me Twice Edition(tm)
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:2, Insightful)
It really all depends on what you are testing, and your setup.
If you're running a bare-metal VM, fine. But if you're installing the beta in something like VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox, etc, you can run into issues. If you're looking at hardware, graphics performance, etc, the use of craptastic VM drivers in place of your real hardware renders any testing worthless. The potential lack of working guest tools can further complicate tests.
My VirtualBox VM at home has a handful of VMs (XP, SuSE, Debian, OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD), but for anything but the most basic of beta tests, I'd rather slap it on one of my spare drives and add an entry to GRUB. VMs are great, but testing inside one adds an unwanted layer of complexity that can affect the reliability of your tests.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
Any real geek has a machine with multiple partitions and multiple OSes already installed - VM not necessary.
For example, I've got the latest Ubuntu (32 and 64 bit) XP (32-bit) Vista (64-bit) ReactOS (32-bit) MenuetOS (64-bit) and just for shits and grins I have 98SE installed as well.
Also, if one OS dies, the other operating systems are still there to use. As long as the bootloader itself does not get screwed up, I'm fine.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
My laptop came with vista about two years ago, and maybe 4 months in it pissed me off so much I switched to Linux. There were issues that I found annoying, like the broadcast flag you mentioned (my laptop was never powerful enough to play anyting outside the monitor at any quality anyway, so that was purely ideological) and the heavy resource usage. But there were also some dealbreakers, mostly hardware issues that were taken care of with Win98 - like my USB mouse, a plain-jane generic usb mouse, I had to manually apply the generic usb mouse driver because Vista couldn't find it (it was sitting in with all the other drivers, btw). I found that unacceptable, and was on the verge of switching when suddenly Vista stopped recognizing my laptop keyboard. It was 100% Vista doing this, there was no hardware problem, this was a standard laptop keyboard with a standard interface protocol, and I was pissed. I could have fixed it, I do that sort of thing as my day job, but I found it unacceptable.
Fast forward a year and a half, and I started having issues with Linux. Little stuff, fixable stuff (most of it I actually did fix), the biggest two annoyances were getting good sound on all my apps and not being able to reasonably expect that a non-repository app would make and install correctly. Again I could fix all these problems, but I shouldn't have to. I wasn't doing crazy things with my laptop, just using it, and occasionally I'd see an app I wanted and it was a crapshoot whether or not it would actually compile and run correctly without work on the code or script itself.
That's probably my biggest gripe with Linux. In Windows, great effort has been put in over the years to ensure an application will reliably install and work on any windows machine. The OS may be different, which could break the app itself, but the install process is the same and - provided the executable is compatible with that version of the OS - you can expect the rogram will install without a hitch. There are even simple tools that snapshot your before and after system and build the install script based on that, ensuring that you won't miss a thing when you deploy the package. Why doesn't anybody do something similar for Linux? It would make things a hell of a lot easier for the end user, for anybody who wants to install a program that does not exist inside the repositories.
With Linux, often the assumption is made that you are running a similar configuration as the developer, and critical libraries may be missing and the response is just "well, you should have that already". Well, I don't, and now I have to scour the web to find the missing libraries - which also aren't in the repositories - in order to install an app.
A month or two ago I switched back to Vista, this time with SP2, and I'm happy with the switch. It's clean, nice, and works like it is supposed to. I probably didn't pay for Vista retail, but since it came with my Laptop I'll use it, and since SP2 I'm pleased with it.
Unable to configure the system as I see fit (unless I install a hack to make it work right).
The difference between Linux and Windows is, in Linux if you want to do anything outside of what Debian, or Ubuntu, or Fedora think you should need to do you have to hack it. Hacks and workarounds are the norm in Linux, and don't tell me it's not because I've used it off and on for the last 15 years. In Windows that only happens when you want to do something that is technically illegal (like removing/working around the broadcast flag). DRM definitely sucks, but you should be bashing your senators and congressmen, not Microsoft. If not for the broadcast flag and HDCP compatibility, the only way to watch BlueRay movies would be on a set-top box.
When you can play BlueRay discs on your Linux box, then you can feel superior about DRM in Vista. Till then, DRM isn't necessary in Linux, because you can't do it anyway, and that seems to be a common theme.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Windows is