A Tale of Two Windows 7s 770
theodp writes "It was the best of operating systems, it was the worst of operating systems. When it comes to the merits of Windows 7, it looks like Slate's Farhad Manjoo and PC Magazine's John Dvorak are going to have to agree to disagree. Manjoo gives Windows 7 a big thumbs-up (a sincere one, unlike Linus!), calling it a 'crowning achievement,' while Dvorak is less than impressed, saying, 'Win 7 is really just a Vista martini. The operating system may have two olives instead of one this time out, but it's still made with the same cheap Microsoft vodka.' So, for those of you who've had a chance to check things out, are things really different this time?"
Multiple readers have also pointed out that there have been problems with the download and installation of Windows 7 upgrades obtained through the student discount offer, which Microsoft has confirmed.
Slashes still lean the wrong way (Score:1, Insightful)
As such, it is completely useless, unintuitive and uncomfortable for me. Will not use it.
Butterface (Score:1, Insightful)
It's like a hot chick with an ugly face...
On one hand, John Dvorak is saying something negative about Microsoft.
On the other hand, I would have to agree with something that troll John Dvorak thinks.
Quite the dilemma.
Let's get a few things out of the way... (Score:2, Insightful)
John Dvorak is...
Old, real old.
Out of touch.
An old fogey.
Stupid.
Really stupid.
A troll.
Illogical.
Ignorant of what he writes and says.
Now feel free to actually comment about the topic at hand: Windows 7, worth it or not?
Re:Vodka (Score:4, Insightful)
But for that matter, haven't it been established for long already that Win7 is basically Vista
Vista was somewhat unfairly blasted, Windows 7 is being somewhat unfairly hyped. The differences really are trivial, the Vista launch was just poorly managed. If you took an average customer and stuck windows vista and windows 7 in front of them they'd probably not notice the difference.
Different reasons (Score:2, Insightful)
Are desktop OS's really dying ? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article:
The desktop OS is besieged from all sides: More and more of our applications now run on the Web, and the idea of running huge, complex, and expensive personal systems will, in time, seem strange.
Does this remark seem strange to anyone else ? I, honestly, am not seeing this trend at all, but I've seen it talked about. What's the reality here ?
Re:Good and bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Overall, Windows 7 is acceptable
Yay! We have XP back. Only took 8 years!
MS snatched victory from the jaws of failure... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it looks like Microsoft has turned the Vista blunder into a Windows 7 success, money making opportunity... great move on their part. They did this by basically just waiting for drivers to mature, waiting for the hardware to catch up, and focusing on creating some fancy ads like these: Windows 7 Ad Campaign Kicks Off, Focuses on Features [osnews.com]
I tend to agree with Dvorak... Windows 7 is more like Vista SP3...plus some fancy interface updates but basically the same deep down.
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
Dvorak is saying that there's really not a lot new. He's saying that Microsoft didn't bring into the fold those things they promised in Vista prior to the launch (all the interesting technologies they cut out). He's saying that Windows 7 is really just Vista with a few new eye-candy like things. Yes, it is a bit less resource hungry but even with all that the amount of performance gain is only about 5% over that of Vista, which goes unnoticed by the average user.
The feature sets that they added are not that significant and some of them aren't even based on Vista, instead they are based on add-ins such as WMP.
Technically, Dvorak is correct. It's just another run on the laundry where some of the more significant stains happened to come out.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
If Linux could gain Windows binary compatibility, it could overtake Windows. If Apple would drop its price on Macs to more reasonable levels it could overtake Windows. But since neither have managed to do that, Windows still survives despite a terrible OS (Vista) and the new usable OS being almost too late (in 2009 not 2007)
Does anyone REALLY take Dvorak seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this stuff has been beaten to death, but here's a guy who:
A) thought the mouse was a waste of time
B) thought the iPhone would fail
C) proclaimed there was no way Google would ever buy YouTube
among other things. In a strange sort of way, I almost admire him. He's managed to make a career of just complaining about stuff with not much to back it up.
The only thing I sort of remember is Dvorak claiming he had the scoop on Apple switching to Intel, but IIRC the rocket scientists at MacOS Rumors made the same claim. The implication here is that that prediction may not have been the most difficult to devine (i.e., saying that in the future, there will be a cure for cancer or some other disease.)
Quite frankly, if Dvorak is shitting all over Win7, my first reaction is that it's probably going to do well. In some ways, Dvorak is to tech as Jim Cramer is to stocks: Do the opposite of what they say and you'll be fine.
Re:Vodka (Score:1, Insightful)
What if you put XP and Win7 in front of them (in classic appearance)?
I bet I could tell. For one thing XP doesn't crash. For another it doesn't take 2 minutes to open my external USB: drive and get a listing of files (I exaggerate but there is a noticeable difference). For a third, I don't have a stupid popup telling me, "You must type your administrator password to install Firefox.exe" and then after I type the password..... nothing happens.* And finally when I upgrade my RAM from 1/2 to 1.5 gig XP happily accepts it. Whereas when I did the same with Vista I was accused of stealing the OS and taken to a page where I was asked to pay $100 for a license.*** I bet Win 7 Vista 6.1 will have similar behavior.
*
* This just happened to me this past weekend.
*
*** At this point the mods are probably marking me troll. No buds it's an OPINION. Tolerate others views even if you disagree.
What Cloud??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Both reviews are based of the reviewers perception of what Microsoft needed to get right, and both are crap. Nobodys opinion matters as much as mine, cause I actually have to *buy* my copy of ... whatever.
My beef with the Microsoft fanboy's review is not that he got all mushy on 7, which I will admit is not a bad OS in my experience, but his insistance that its all pointless anyway, cause the 'cloud' is coming....
I know the mainstream media has to jump on the 'next new thing' bandwagon, but this particular bit of hype is baffling for a couple of reasons....
The entire concept of 'cloud computing' is moronic. Lets throw out 30 years of computer science innovation, turn our boxes into the computing equivalent of a toaster so we can use the internets, office software, Quake, and photoshop by subscribing to a never ending service that we cant actually even license...much less 'own'.
What could possibly go wrong? Once we all have thin clients on our desks hooked into the cloud, we can get rid of all the desktop programmers and put all the software innovation concentration on those super awesome AJAX developers out there, who can 'almost' pull off web apps that have the features of desktop apps we stopped using in 1998. Hype is stupid, the cloud is marketing fog.
Re:Vodka (Score:2, Insightful)
You need a new profession if you can't make Vista stable.
Windows hasn't crashe-prone since pre-XP, end of story.
Re:Are desktop OS's really dying ? (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article:
The desktop OS is besieged from all sides: More and more of our applications now run on the Web, and the idea of running huge, complex, and expensive personal systems will, in time, seem strange.
Does this remark seem strange to anyone else ? I, honestly, am not seeing this trend at all, but I've seen it talked about. What's the reality here ?
The reality here is various business interests with a large stake in server farms and service based software fee structures are pushing cloud computing. Hard.
You will see it talked about as if it is reality a lot, but it really hasn't fully materialized yet.
This is like someone in the 50's talking about things in "The Jetsons" as the way the future will be, for the time being. A "personal robot" will not seem strange in the future, and so on.
--
Toro
A page from Apple's PR book... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dvorak complains in his rank that "Somewhere along the line, Microsoft apparently decided that it only wants to deal with those amenable suckers who will give it a pass on everything". This has been the apple strategy for years, any new hack who doesn't write glowing reviews (or even has the slightest criticism) is cut off from Apple. The hacks, like Mossberg, who praise every apple-touched product are showered with special treatment--including preview samples and preferred access.
When Apple does this it's called brilliant marketing (you better call it that if you're a hack who wants your calls returned), when Microsoft does it, it's unfair competition.
Dvorak...why should MS give you special access?
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly it sounded like Dvorak was annoyed that he wasn't being treated like the big cheese that he thinks he is:
"I haven't received a single personal note from a Microsoft PR person for roughly four years."
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Linux is still hampered by -perceived- usability problems
That's because it's written for programming geeks, not your average idiot. Heck even an engineer, like me, has a difficult time using Linux. (Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done.)
Windows and MacOS are idiot-friendly. Even the ancient AmigaOS and C=64 GEOS are idiot-friendly. That's what Linux needs to become if it wants to be a universal replacement desktop, instead of just an isolated tool for technicians.
Uh oh. Here come the mods...
Re:Are desktop OS's really dying ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't feed the trolls. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
Change an Ubuntu screen to 640x480, and then try to change it back, without using secret hidden commands. Can't be done
While this begs the question of why you changed it in to that in the first place, I just did it, so yes you can.
As for idiot friendly, I just had to fix a Vista-AVG combined bug that kept my brother from being able to download ANYTHING. AVG was nixing everything (without even functioning as an anti-virus). Had to reboot to safe mode to remove it to fix the problem. Could never happen in Linux (because of sane software design principles).
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you. I have had vista on my PC for a while and I like it except for annoying security features.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardly a good metaphor at all since everyone knows martinis are made with gin, not vodka.
Everyone does know that, right?
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. And theres lots of random issues like that. Once I installed Ubuntu some text we're randomly either really, really small and some we're huge. All the font sizes we're still normal and it was a fresh install. While I, who run linux servers daily, even couldn't solve the issue, how will a normal user do it?
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>it is not usability problem
Yes it is. It's a lack of bug-checking by the Linux crew. Ubuntu's Display Preferences window does not fit on a 640x480 screen, which makes it impossible to access the "OK" button because it's off the bottom of the screen. So you'll be stuck in 640x480 mode forever.
Or until you can get some geek to reveal the secret ALT-CNTL-X-NUM-+ whatever key combo. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0 [youtube.com] - QUOTE: "Linux works for you, because with youses guys computers, YOU work for the computers, and, and, and....."
Seems to me if the average user gets stuck in 640x480, and can't out, it's the computer that has the control not the user. Not consumer-friendly.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're blaming Vista as a OS when the problem clearly was other program, AVG?
And yes, it would happen in Linux too. Linux antiviruses would go as deeply in the OS as in Windows too, and same kind of bugs would appear (as they have intercept downloads).
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows and MacOS are idiot-friendly. Even the ancient AmigaOS and C=64 GEOS are idiot-friendly. That's what Linux needs to become if it wants to be a universal replacement desktop, instead of just an isolated tool for technicians.
The day that happens, a new operating system will be created so that programming geeks can have a usable operating system...
Re:Vodka (Score:1, Insightful)
>>>While this begs the question of why you changed it in to that in the first place, I just did it, so yes you can.
I don't believe you. When I changed my Ubuntu laptop to 640x480, and then tried to change it back to standard 1280x1024, there's no way to select the "OK" button because it's off the screen! I struggled with that problem for several hours before finally saying "fuck it" and reinstalling the whole damn OS from CD.
I've been told that if I use some secret key combo like ALT-CNTL-something I can drag the window around, but you see that makes the Linux non-user friendly. Your average consumer is not going to know that secret key command.
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest difference is that Vista required a major hardware upgrade to run properly. Then when MS realized that there weren't enough "Vista capable" machines in existence to sell enough copies, they tried to shoehorn it into some platforms where it really couldn't perform. So Vista's failure was mostly the fault of the marketing people overriding the engineered design. Although the performance tuning of things like memory caching and the search service were also big problems.
Windows 7 has a much better chance of success because hardware sold over the past couple of years will have no problem running it. In fact, even some machines that couldn't run Vista should be able to run Win 7. However, if you are already running Vista on a dual-core machine with a couple gigs of memory, there's no real reason to upgrade unless you find the UI changes compelling.
Ironically, apart from the one-liner about the "cheap Microsoft vodka", Dvorak has absolutely nothing to say about the operating system itself. He spends the whole column railing about the incompetence of the MS marketing department and whinging that he is no longer treated like a press god. Looks like he's finally catching on that the industry has passed him by.
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MS snatched victory from the jaws of failure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agree what with Dvorak? Apart from the one-liner about cheap vodka, Dvorak doesn't discuss the operating systems at all. On the other hand, you're spot-on about Win 7 being a success because the rest of the market finally caught up with Vista. Reminds me of Windows NT, which never really succeeded until NT4 when the hardware finally caught up.
John Dvorak : tech :: Sean Hannity : punditry (Score:4, Insightful)
Piracy - Just Say No (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't a much simpler - and more honest - solution to the piracy you're advocating be to simply get people to switch to Opera or Firefox?
And let's be clear - you claim to be a web developer. So the pages you develop have nothing to do with anyone's products or ideas? You couldn't simply sense IE 6, state that it's not fully supported on your pages, and put in friendly links to Opera, Firefox, Safari, Chrome or the Microsoft Win7 homepages?
No - you come here and advocate piracy.
How about we track down every page you've developed, copy the source for public consumption, and tell the people that you work for that you don't believe that people who work for a living putting out software products should get paid for their efforts if it makes your life harder.
Sheesh!
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
-nod- I suspect most people who've been using Linux for a while are spoiled by alt-window-dragging, which renders that problem moot
I'm sorry but on what planet is knowing a "secret handshake" to see a UI element you should never have to search for to begin with being spoiled?
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
In the past 2 weeks. I had my Ubuntu Box crash on me twice, actually a 3 weeks ago it was a lot more because I was looking at the screen savers. My Debian server crashed running only one Virtual Box VM, My Mac Crashed and needed to be restored from backups. Saying windows is more prone to crashing then other OS's is false. Prone to viruses is an other thing, but a clean un-virused WIndows actually is more stable then Both Linux and Macs in my opinion. However Windows vulnerability to Viruses makes it rather quickly from a stable system to a flaky slow OS the breaks.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>Its hold alt and drag. Its hardly a "secret key combo".
It's certainly not documented anywhere inside Ubuntu's Help Files. I looked. It wasn't there. I swore at being stuck in 640x480 and then reinstalled from CD
.
>>>you think the typical user is going to change screen resolutions?
Yes. (This is the problem with talking to geeks. They assume if a user has a problem, it's the USER who is the idiot. It couldn't *possibly* be a flaw in the precious code.) Why wouldn't a user change screen resolutions? It's one of the easier-to-access settings on a computer.
IMHO *all* functions on a computer should be controllable with a mouse and ONE single key "Enter". If an OS can enter a state where it can't be controlled with the mouse/enter combo, then the OS is not consumer-friendly. It needs to be updated.
Re:Vodka (Score:4, Insightful)
"While this begs the question of why you changed it in to that in the first place"
No, it really doesn't. The fact that a user *can* change it is the only thing that matters. This is the issue with many (not all) devs in general. Say something they wrote isn't easy or is unintuitive and instead of fixing it they say "well nobody with a brain would do that" or "if they don't know how to figure it out then too bad for them". These are not valid comebacks.
I get that most devs are analytical and if there is at least one way to do something then it's "good enough". But UI's are subjective and as such just because there is a way to perform a given task in your software it does not mean that there isn't a better way to do the same thing for a larger number of people. When we say "the user experience sucks" we're not saying *you* as a dev suck. We're saying we simply want a better experience. This is something many designers learn early on (we create designs and get shot down on them all the time), but something many devs seem to never fully grasp.
Not everyone (Score:1, Insightful)
First I have heard of that. And I have been using computers since the 90s (just as a joe sixpack user, not professional at all). Not an admin or programmer, but never realized you could recover hidden or obscured windows like that, and yes, I have been nailed with that before with rank resolution then trying to fix it. I have different skill sets, as do tons of other people, what seems obvious and old hat to some might be brand new and not known about to others, just depends. Hidden entry fields off the screen are a REAL annoyance, I can see if people didn't know how to alt drag they would just give up and reinstall. And you can't resize from the top,(why not, why can't you resize windows from the top like you can from the bottom??) so if the bottom is hidden, you are screwed.
And this is why the old idea of boxed sets with a damn printed out dead trees manual with USEFUL information like that, not just rehashed MAN pages, should come with operating systems, not just a factory install and nothing else, or just download some ISO and burn it and install it and cross your fingers. If the information you *need* for an emergency repair is only on the machine itself, or you need to go online to find out, and you can't get to it because the machine is now dysfunctional, it is useless. It's the real little things like that taken as an aggregate that really turn people off of new and shiny. Once they get something that works, they are relucant to change it and DAMN I just don't get it why computer professionals and designers can't grok this. They are shipping stuff that is suitable for them to use, not others it seems, yet they want it to be good enough to be a commercial product.
You know, people aren't that cheap, they can and will drop coin on a product as long as it doesn't suck and as long as it is very easy to find out exactly how to fix little annoyances like that or how to actually use this or that application, etc.
Re:Does anyone REALLY take Dvorak seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
I like Dvorak. He's an outlier and a contrarian. A thousand guys can write essentially the same article, but Dvorak is different. And we only get new and interesting things in this world with people who think differently than the crowd. Sure the contrarian view will often be wrong and therefore unremarkable. But when a contrarian is right, it's a brilliant leap. And Dvorak isn't just a contrarian for its own sake, he presents a logical argument *why* he takes a contrarian position. Yes, I like Dvorak.
Calicanis on the other hand is an arrogant douche and I don't even download TWIT when he's on anymore.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is not written for the programming geek. You are living 5+ years in the past when it comes to Linux. And, frankly it is foolish to attempt a demeaning of Linux based on your standard of measure since Windows was years ago far less user friendly than Linux is, and there were plenty of people using those unfriendly versions of Windows back then.
In the realm of Windows 5 years is nothing as Windows didn't change for a good 7 years. But 5 years to Linux is like a decade in the computing world.
I know old and young (and everyone in-between) that use Linux and don't have the problems that you allege.
Re:Vodka (Score:2, Insightful)
I have 25 years of computer experience from large businesses to my own shop. I have managed large networks where I flew back and forth across the country setting up servers and dealing with all levels of computer support.
Vista has stability issues because it is Vista. My point pal, was to point out that I have more exposure to computers that have Vista on them than you probably do, and that the majority here posting do.
There are just too many endemic issues with Vista to create a stable environment without a lot of user intervention, which most people don't have the knowledge to perform.
Please, work on your reading comprehension.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>Alt-drag a window then
And I was supposed to know to do that - How???
>>>similar as you did in Windows on 640x480
FALSE fucker. On Windows all you have to do it press Enter. Ditto Mac. Windows/Mac doesn't hide their commands in obscure locations.
.
.
.
The more I read, the more I realize the Linux motto is: "It's not a bug. It's not poor documentation. It's not unfriendly design. It's the user's fault. Every time. It's the idiot user, not Linux."
I obviously disagree. It's the programmers' fault, not the user.
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting.. I'm counting 2 BSODs, 6 complete lock ups and a few failures to activate disk drives waking up from sleep mode since Monday
If I saw this behavior I'd be thinking I'd had serious hardware or driver issues.
Run the GUI - not the Computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh good. Yet another iteration of a Microsoft product. They can't just add features or make the old ones better; they have to put them in new places. Take the "Run" command and put it somewhere new. Change the Control Panel. Screw up the Networking configuration screens beyond belief. Change for change's sake. They do this crap in all their products not just the OS; Outlook, Office, etc. It's to the point that customers don't want to upgrade because they don't want to have to re-learn everything.
People ask me how I can remember all the Unix/Linux command line instructions and I tell them that it's easy. They have not changed much in 25 years. Once you learn them, you've learned them.... all you need is to learn any new ones or any new switches to the old, reliable commands. Contrast this with every Microsoft product ever stole...er, innovated where you'll find new locations for old commands. We know what we need to do but we can't find the stupid command to click on to make it work.
MS has truly lost their way. The single greatest Apple commercial was the one where John Hodges decided to put all the money on PR and spend nothing to fix the product. It's so typical.
Re:Vodka (Score:4, Insightful)
I do agree with you to a point though, Windows does handle this situation a bit better. However, you can't just take a single pet peeve and use it to claim that one OS is better than the other. Do you think WIndows is entirely without similar usability screw-ups? Or Mac OS? As a long-time Linux user, Windows frequently leaves me fuming, simply because it insists on doing so many things in a way that seems brain-dead from a Linux user's perspective.
Maybe Linux isn't as beginner-friendly as Windows. Maybe not though. Comments such as yours do nothing to prove it either way.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
So, your claim is not actually that "a Windows 7 machine at Staples is $300, and an equivalent machine from Apple is $1500", it's "Staples has a product I'd be interested in purchasing that comes with Windows 7 and costs $300, and Apple has a different product I'm not interested in purchasing that costs $1500". That's really a much weaker comparison.
Re:Revisionist History (Score:4, Insightful)
Longhorn was the code name for Longhorn. When they couldn't deliver on their promises, they throttled back and delivered a subset that you know as Vista.
Removing significant features != Eventually becomes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS [wikipedia.org]
From that page: 'WinFS was billed as one of the pillars of the "Longhorn" wave of technologies, and would ship as part of the next version of Windows.'
Kinda matches my memory - and I do believe that there were other promised techs as well with Longhorn, also not delivered.
Longhorn didn't disappear, it was the code name for what eventually became Vista.
Wanting a thing to be true does not make it true.
You're spouting more revisionist history as well.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
He got you to read his article, didn't he? I think he decided to make a bad review of 7 just because, in a sea of decent reviews, his would stand out and get more pageviews.
I refuse to read Dvorak, because I really don't think he has anything useful to add.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
The words above should be framed in gold. Ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes is pretty rare.
Also, regarding this specific case, a system friendly to a random consumer, should take care to provide visual clues for escaping from such situations.
Assumption that a random new user is to know standards of a system they are hardly familiar with, is flawed.
Regards,
Ruemere
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Windows 7 is a Microsoft marketing and PR brilliance myself. They basically just slapped a lucky #7 on Vista, added just enough new features that they could say it wasn't Vista with a straight face and apparently succeeded in transforming from complete failure to at least a reasonable, if not raging success. Its a tribute to the power of marketing to make lemonade out of lemons. It will probably open an opportunity for them to end of life XP, which they desperately want to do, and force everyone to upgrade to Vista... err ... Windows 7, which will massively boost their profitability and stock price.
They are also skillfully playing the psychology of all the Windows fanboys who know deep down in their heart that they don't really like Vista, and Windows 7 is really just a slightly updated Vista, but are desperate to not be embarrassed about Windows anymore, so you KNOW they are gonna say its the greatest thing ever even if it really isn't. Microsoft marketing had a huge tail wind on Windows 7 since all the pro Windows bloggers, press and early adopters were going to sing praises of it even if Microsoft did just put a different title on a Vista box, which is practically what they did. If they'd put Vista 2.0 on the same box that is now Windows 7 it would have gone down in flames.
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
Specs or gtfo
Re:Vodka (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like he's finally catching on that the industry has passed him by
Three cheers for progress.
Re:Windows 7 Will beThe Death Knell For Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed the point. It's not the learning curve gp was complaining about.
It's:
- speed
- stability
- requirements
- actual substantial improvements over XP.
In gp's experience both Vista and 7 failed on all 4 fronts. Slow, crashy, expensive and not better in any way.
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
except for annoying UAC messages
So I take it you don't like knowing when you or any software steps over the user/administrator boundary?
Whenever I get one of those I didn't anticipate, it's time to hunt for malware.
Dvorak Sliding Down Into the Tar (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno, after reading Dvorak's screed, I'm guessing that he is just sad that if are no junkets where "journalists" like him are invited to Vegas, receive their talking points, and then go gamble and drink afterward. No more Comdex. No more twenty-foot high convention center displays. No more huge ad-revenue funded parties where vendors "give back" to the publications that so shameless promoted them.
Good riddance.
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
By that logc, you should not blame Linux is a driver does not exist, or is not full featured, for some piece of hardware.
Re:Vodka (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't really effective security if it bugs the user so much that he'll reflexively click on permit.
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
IDLE-TIME PROCESS. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right.
Nice going mods! Veeery informative...
Re:Vodka (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind that Windows 7 *is not* Windows 7.
If you're running what claims to be Windows 7, open a command prompt and run `winver`.
It is Windows 6.1. In other words, a dot release of Vista. The actual Windows 7 that was talked about after Vista was released was the complete re-write you're referring to, however after Vista bombed, they re-skinned Vista and touted it as Windows 7. Make no mistake, you all bought the same thing as the mac users going from 10.5 to 10.6. It's not a whole new OS - it's the same old OS shipping with a new skin, and few new minor updates. Nothing more, nothing less. The whole thing is a ploy to finally get people to move off of XP. If it succeeds, it's the ultimate example of sheeple-ship.
Re:Vodka (Score:4, Insightful)
Being able to drag any window without finding the title bar is being spoiled.
In this case it also helps get around minor UI issues at low resolutions.
Holding alt and dragging with your mouse is no more a secret handshake in Linux than Win+E or Win+R is in Windows. You may not know them personally, but they're well documented and almost any geek will show them to you.
PS Win+R opens the Run dialog and Win+E opens an explorer window.