Michael Dell Says Windows 7 Will Make You Love PCs 627
ruphus13 writes "In a recent talk at the Churchill Club, Michael Dell addressed several topics, including the fact that Windows 7 is poised to take advantage of the upgrade cycle. Dell has always been a strong MS OEM ally and it is now hoping to cash in again from the impending upgrades. From the post: 'Dell made plain several times that he sees the installed base of technology as very old, and sees a coming "refresh cycle" for which he has high hopes. "The latest generation of chips from Intel is strong, particularly Nehalem," he said, adding, "and Windows 7 is on its way." (The operating system arrives Oct. 22nd, although Microsoft's large-volume licensees are already getting it.) He pointed out that many business are running Windows XP, which is eight years old. "I've been using Windows 7 for a long time now," he said, "and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again. It's a dramatic improvement."'"
Not if you have a Vostro (Score:3, Informative)
It seems if you run a Vostro (like me) Windows 7 might not be your friend if you want your touchpad and video card to work.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/cf9bc301-e3c2-4c5b-b9cd-9eab8582f45f
Or maybe they will fix it in the next week, but I doubt it.
Dell Financials (Score:5, Informative)
Revenue Q2 2009: $10,623m
Profit YTD 2008: $1,400m
Profit YTD 2009: $762m
Yeah... If I was Michael Dell, I'd be working to sell the idea that Windows 7 is going to make you love a PC too. Especially if you bought a lot of other expensive shit.
win7 (Score:1, Informative)
i recently installed win 7 (move up from XP) and I can't say im loving any of it. The thing makes my head hurt. They've changed enough of the setup to make it a real pain to perform basic configurations and system mods.
I'll keep using it but my i'll stick to XP and my macbook for being productive.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:3, Informative)
Cheapest Nehalem Processor [newegg.com]: $199.99
Latest Office 20xx [newegg.com]: $119.99
Total : $459.97
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:4, Informative)
But you know, that (almost) nobody is buying this stuff at full boxed retail price. The OEM license for Dell will be around $50-70 for customers, the hardware is bought in big unit counts too, and gets appropriate discount, so the PC's will go somewhere between $600 - 1200 depending on some other factors like graphics, RAM and HDD models/capacities and branding.
Not many people MS Office boxed version. Most private people will pirate it (and Microsoft is actually more happy about it then if they would use alternatives like OOo). Many will also go legal and use OOo or get a copy from the company they are working for.
Businesses will go volume license, and the package of software / seat will also circle around $200 - $400.
That said, I'll still continue to use Ubuntu + OOo + other open source software. I also build my PC's myself, so I get the best fitting solution and opt out of the MS tax (and be it just because of the principle, though the financial aspect is also counting). Considering the current economic downturn (and the fallout that is following as we speak), more businesses are and will also go a more open source way, though not the majority and many only partially (i.e. Windows 7 + OOo).
One thing is true though, the Win 7 (re-branded Vista) will increase sales of PC's for a little time, especially since Christmas is approaching.
Re:Can somebody tell me why? (Score:5, Informative)
There are a few things that have improved, most of which were avalible in Vista too:
Much better use of multicore CPUs
GPU acceleration of the GUI
self healing system files(in some instances)
OS aware of SMART HD readings and able to prompt user
DLL seperation
vastly better RDP
vastly improved central managment and deployment features for businesses
Easy 64 bit usage with drivers
Faster installs
Better power managment and usage of hardware suspend
better usage of memory (cacheing for very noticible speed gains)
Media center!
transparent Bitlocker hard drive encryption (in pro and ultimate) with TPM
program execution isolation that redirects reg and file system calls to safe locations
epiclly better wireless support
support for propper GUI scaleing on high DPI LCDs
Integrated Touch support and Speech Recognition(not fantastic but alright)
Automatic driver retrival for most hardware right of Windows update without searching
Fast search and indexing
Document libraries for easy organisation
Faster boot times and UI responce on semi-decent hardware (compared to XP)
Better moniter support for HD TVs and multi moniters/GPUs (by default)
Child restricted accounts to limit games and allow usage limits for children.
Just to name a few, it has been a long time since XP and things have progressed.
On the cons side I still don't like the superbar much, you can change it to be simmilar to the Vista one quite easily though. They have also removed the email client probably due to the EUs meddeling but live mail is still avalible.
Current generation is 'good enough' (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:1, Informative)
For that kind of money I might as well get a mac.
You'll still have to shell out $194.99 for office (current amazon.com price) to get a similar package and the next Office iteration is likely to be more expensive than Office 2008. The OS X 10.6 update will also set you back $25 (current amazon.com price). Of course that won't matter if you buy a Mac now since you'll get the latest OS with it. You may, however, want to upgrade in the future and the price you will have to you pay for OS X 10.7 will probably be significantly higher than the $25 you currently have to pay for 10.6 since the current price is likely to be a knee-jerk reaction to the recession.
Disclaimer: I'm a Mac user myself and Windows 7 still hasn't made me want to run out and buy a WinDell. I just thought I'd point this out in the interest of fairness.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:5, Informative)
Why buy Office 2008 when it's crippled and buggy on the Mac? Might as well spend $60 for iWork '09. For occasional use, it seems that Open Office 3 runs many of the macros, but any more usage than that and you'll start having problems and using your work.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:1, Informative)
iWork '09 is $58 from Amazon, NeoOffice is free. I exchange documents with MS Office users all the time, and nobody knows I never bought Office. Meanwhile, the next OS X upgrade (no matter what the price) is probably two years away. If Apple has a price increase under 900%, they will still beat Windows 7 pricing. And this is to buy the system that people allegedly pay a premium for, just to avoid MS.
Re:Can somebody tell me why? (Score:3, Informative)
As someone who's used the beta / RC of Win 7 64-bit since it came out, it has plenty of useful things.
The easisest to see, and one of the nicest changes, is the new taskbar. The quick launch toolbar has been merged with the taskbar (sort of like the dock in OS X). All open tabs go under the icon for the program running and if you mouse over the icon you see a preview of every open window (and in the case of IE, each open tab as well) which you can then click to select or close. It makes things cleaner and it makes it faster when searching for an open window. Also the "show desktop" is now a part of the taskbar (on the far right edge) so it's nice and clean.
Windows Update does an amazing job of finding the right drivers for your system and with one click you can download them all and after one reboot, you're good to go. Much nicer than downloading individual drivers and installing them when you do a clean install, especially for hard to find drivers like the video card on a laptop.
Probably the best part is that it's a 64-bit OS where basically everything 32-bit works 100%, so you don't have to worry about legacy software not running after switching to 64-bit for more RAM (especially important for gamers since you can buy a new video card with 2 GB of RAM on it).
It's also incredibly responsive - much faster than XP when it comes to opening programs.
Another feature that will become much more important as time goes on is that it does a great job of load balancing with multi-core processors, especially when it comes to quad-core processors.
I use Windows (for gaming), OS X, and Linux regularly. I promote Linux use all the time (which gets me lots of flack from my fellow IT guys at work who've never tried Linux) and am about to purchase a new Macbook Pro, but Win 7 is the first OS from Microsoft that I intend to pay money for.
Re:Tricky talk, in my opinion. (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft did not want to finish the work, apparently, and provide a way to convert automatically from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Um... You can transfer your profile, and programs can be reinstalled using the same MSI's.
If you're in a managed network (and business users should be), you throw a Windows 7 machine into an Active Directory OU, and all of your policies, including Software Installation ones, apply to the machine and it behaves just like the XP ones in the same Unit.
Business users don't "Upgrade" operating systems in the classical sense anyway. When it's time for an OS upgrade, the disk gets nuked and re-imaged. There's nothing at all about Windows 7 that changes the validity of that procedure.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:2, Informative)
So, for $459.97, I can get a computer from a line that starts at $599 [apple.com]? What black magic do I need to do this?
Last time I checked, even my employer's discount program only knocked it down to $549.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:1, Informative)
Then they need to stop making crap and go back to quality. High priced Studio laptops are built like low grade toys, the keyboards squeak and a host of other problems of flimsy... how about the screen hinge screws backing out making the screen floppy...
Desktops don't seem to be to bad. I bought their cheapest model last year to run Ubuntu (model 530 as it was then) and I was pleasantly surprised by the build quality.
Re:Dell & Win 7 (Score:3, Informative)
Windows has had x86-64 versions for over four years [wikipedia.org] now. Just because manufacturers are starting to catch up doesn't mean that Microsoft is behind the curve here (at least on the OS side).
Oh, and those signed drivers people keep complaining about? Microsoft is using this as a bludgeon to get manufacturers to write 64-bit drivers by refusing to sign drivers unless they have both versions.
P.S. Fun Fact: Windows NT 4.0 had an Alpha version.
Michael Dell: Vista will win out in two years (Score:1, Informative)
In 2007 Michael Dell said that Vista will win out in two years. It's 2009 now.
I've been running it for months too (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the amenities are nice - the Explorer changes (mostly done in Vista) are very helpful, but at the same time the Explorer interface now takes up much more room than it needs to. The only thing I actively like about 7 is the new taskbar -- but even that has its frustrations, primarily that it's not friendly for running applications that are configured based on command line options. An example is java -- while it recognizes java apps that you "pin" as JRE-based, it loses any additional information/parameters when you attempt to launch a jar file from the pinned menu. Another is putty, which lets you specify a parameter controlling startup profile, but this is not available to pinned instances.
All in all - it is definitely better than Vista. Whether it's better than the XP-based configuration that Dell is talking about... I think that's very much up for debate.
Re:Balance Sheet (Score:1, Informative)
>> For that kind of money I might as well get a mac.
No, for that money, you might as well get two-thirds of a Mac.
===> WARNING, WALL OF TEXT > I would be shocked if anyone was willing to fork over more than $900 for an entire computer these days.
I bought a $1400 computer, here are the specs.
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Hard Drive: 656 GB Total
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (1GB)
Monitor: SCEPTRE X246W-1080p Black 23.6" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LCD
Sound Card: Speakers (Sound Blaster Audigy)
Speakers/Headphones: Altec Lansing VS2521 2.1 speakers
Keyboard: Microsoft Comfort Keyboard 2000
Mouse: Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical
Motherboard: ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
Computer Case: Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX
I put the Win7 RC on it, as well as Ubuntu 9.04. I "fell in love with my PC again" because I had a freaking awesome PC. The operating system came secondary.
HOWEVER I was using XP before and I had not bothered with Vista, and when I first started using Win7 I was quite giddy. The interface was GORGEOUS, much more attractive to me than a Mac (though Compiz Fusion is still more awesome than Aero). I am a hobbyist photographer so I took about a dozen of my favorite shots I had ever taken and set them to be a wallpaper slideshow and now when people visit me, they always ask "where'd you get those awesome wallpapers?" The search function in the start menu is infinitely better than XP's search, and having skipped Vista I couldn't help but love it.
'Course, I can't say anything about Win7 never being slow. I'm on a quad-core with 6GB of RAM. But I -can- say that the interface made me "fall in love with my PC again." And I suspect that, with the performance increase rumors over Vista, a lot of Vista users are going to appreciate the extra speed, as well as the further prettify-ing.
(Aside: I paid as much as a Mac costs for a computer that out-performs a Mac by as much as 100% in some areas, and around 50% in most others. I'm not running OS X, and that's a shame, yes, but I'm pretty damn content with Windows 7 and Ubuntu, which together give me all the "security" (read: lack of virus attention), performance (UNIX-like functions of Ubuntu), and visual effects (Win7 is beautiful, Compiz Fusion is awesome) of OS X.)
FURTHERMORE. I am running Win7 on my netbook and it's a huge improvement over XP. It's about as fast, but it offers new functionality that XP didn't have, and it's more up to date and secure. The only thing I can complain about is that Ubuntu Netbook Remix made my netbook run cooler than Win7 is, but I had to use Windows so I could get Python 3.1 to install correctly (I'm a bit of a compiling failure).
(Final note: I am a MSDNAA member so when the RC runs out I am downgrading to Professional for free. I realize that in order to get Win7 Professional you will have to cough up a couple hundred. Then again, you get service packs for free, while Apple makes you pay for them. I personally hate paying for software either way, and if you can get by using free software, then God bless you.)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:1, Informative)
And besides, Vista on proper hardware has always been better than XP for security, stability, and several usability features (especially the file explorer) -- it's just that the perception of it, due much to bad press and late availability of drivers made it appear terrible and far worse than it actually is.
You're completely right that Windows 7 is just Vista SP2 (though with very good touchscreen capabilities), but in the land of marketing and corporate sales, the name means a lot. XP is relative garbage unless you're running 5 year old hardware, so I mean really, what is false about Dell saying that Windows 7 will bring a big positive spin to PCs?
I've read a lot of posts here, but not one including the immediate parent has actually explained why Windows 7 wouldn't make (a non-biased) you love PCs. That's an open invitation, because I'd love to hear the answer.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Informative)
That was Vista's worst crime as far as I'm concerned. Listing system requirements when in reality what was needed was the "Certified for Windows Vista" sticker instead of the infamous "Vista Capable" sticker. But, you couldn't just tell people to look for the sticker, because they're just going to look for a sticker that says "Vista". And you really couldn't tell people to go by the system requirements for an upgrade either (I did and the system is a dog). Point blank, there is absolutely no reason to put Vista on "Vista Capable" hardware.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7/ [msdn.com]
Re:Can somebody tell me why? (Score:5, Informative)
I know you're just trolling, but I'll bite.
"- Multimonitor support is terrible"
No it isn't. I hook my Macbook up to projectors periodically to give presentations, and it mirrors when I want to and extends the desktop when I want to. Keynote has this cool "presenter mode" where it shows the slides on the secondary display and things like time elapsed and a timer and the next and previous slides on the primary.
I don't run a flight simulator or Cowboys stadium out of my house, so I don't really have a need to hook up more than two displays at once. I did manage a workstation for a pro once who had three 23" ACDs (in the day this was a $6000 setup) and that was always plug-and-play as well even though it needed two graphics cards.
"- 64-bit? With drivers? You're kidding, right?"
I don't know what that means. I don't have to install drivers, except for things like printers. I've never had a problem with 64-bit mode in Snow Leopard; even though I have an older printer with some pretty ancient Panther-era drivers it prints just fine.
"- Games? Child restricted accounts? Nope."
I'm kind of boring, all I play is Warcraft and Civ 4. Restricted accounts have been around since System 7, and although they just refined all the user restrictions in Snow Leopard that kind of functionality has been around for ages.
"- Program Execution isolation"
If you mean NX, it's been transparently integrated since 10.4, and seriously improved in 10.5. If you mean some Windows feature that keeps your 16-bit crapware from blowing up the rest of the OS, Mac OS X doesn't really need that.
"- Transparent Bitlocker"
It's called FileVault, and Apple had it in 2003, years before Vista. Argue the merits of full-disk encryption all you like, I think it's stupid unless you work for a bank, hospital, or government, and then you'd better be using OpenBSD and fancy encryption hardware instead. For non-spook intrusion it's just as effective and much faster.
"- Central management and deployment for businesses"
Dude, Apple Remote Desktop, and it's much cheaper than anything nearly as powerful on Windows. Clearly you never worked in an Apple production environment.
Me? I managed large labs of Windows PCs and Macs in an academic research environment for three and a half years. I've seen the good, bad, and ugly on both platforms. I know what's realistic and what isn't on both sides. Most critically I know when idiot trolls like you are full of crap.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Informative)
I can't complain about their consumer support too much. The keyboard on my boss's personal laptop died and they sent someone from two hours away (closest certified Dell tech apparently) to come to our office and replace it.