Windows 7 Is the Next Windows XP 504
snydeq writes "Windows XP's most beloved factors are also driving business organizations to Windows 7 in the face of Windows 8. 'We love Windows 7: That's the message loud and clear from people this week at the TechMentor Conference held at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. With Windows XP reaching end of life for support in April 2014, the plan for most organizations is to upgrade — to Windows 7,' indicating 'a repeat of history for what we've seen with Windows releases, the original-cast Star Trek movie pattern where every other version was beloved and the ones in between decidedly not so.'"
Screw you ms (Score:0, Interesting)
Why downgrade to an os that is dumb downed with eye candy when XP runs just fine and is a supperior os.
Dont get me started with win 8. Were keeping XP
No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, Windows 8 isn't even out out. It's not surprising that businesses are going to most likely migrate to Windows 7 first. From an administrative perspective, most admins already know how to deal with all the Windows 7 nuances.
Windows 8 is a bit of a black box right now, especially from an admin perspective. I suspect it'll probably be a couple of years before Windows 8 becomes more mainstream in corporate environments.
From a personal perspective... I plan on upgrading to 8 as soon as it's out. For $40 bucks (for a 7 - 8 upgrade), I don't see why not. As a developer, it's compelling to easily transition your desktop app to tablet (and vice versa).
can you still change the default shell? (Score:4, Interesting)
You used to be able to set a new default shell using a registry setting, way back in the days of yore.
Can you still do that, or has MS removed that ability?
It might be worth an experiment to place the win7 explorer.exe in a protected folder on a win8 machine, and then set it as the default shell. That should neuter metro.
I might pull the msdn evaluation copy and see if I can do that.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anybody else feel the "FUD" when XP was announced? It's evil, your software won't run on it, it will have stronger DRM than 98, etc. etc. etc.
I remember the same thing when Vista was announced, and now 8 is coming and they're playing it up as the big new scary OS.
I think it's a short-term ploy to drive sales of systems with the old OS "while you can still get it" without a downgrade charge.
The best thing Windows 8 has going for it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Interesting)
And you hit a key point. XP worked and does work. It worked from the beginning. Vista was crippled by know it all GUI designers who choked on their own fumes because they had their heads up their asses too long when designing things like UAC. Anyway, does it work or not? That is the number one point for business. If it works it wins. If you have two competing pieces, say Windows XP and Apple whatever, it doesn't matter how cool one or the other is (according to fans), to business it matters if it works. And once that is settled, the cheaper of the two wins.
A lot of people like to cut up Windows but the fact is, it does work solidly. And for a competitive price. It can't crash and get fucked up as bad as some say (at least not in offices/businesses, and not in a way that impacts the bottom line too badly), otherwise businesses would get rid of it. No, paying to have someone to blame is not the reason. Having someone to blame doesn't bring money in. Having working equipment does. Having someone you pay who is accountable and who won't get paid again if they don't solve problems does help make money. Getting something for free and not ever being sure something will be fixed doesn't make money. Paying 4 times what you need to pay on the cool product is a loser too. Especially once enough of the cool products sell to be a profitable target for malware makers.
No, Windows XP isn't really sexy, but it works, and it runs business software like no tomorrow. Windows 7 works even better. And as far as that goes, I thought Window 2K worked pretty damned good too. Now they hired the same hycrapsia victims to design the interface for 8 as they did for Vista. Hey, we can't use some retarded UAC to make people insane, let's dumb it down so we (the GUI designers) might be able to use it; who cares if the rest of the world aren't as stupid as us? Ah, marketing + graphic artist + pop psychology courses makes GUI designer from hell. They need to get interface designers who understand the real world and not just some abstract thing they got from university and inward focused "industry conferences". And as a bonus they should fire the president. The place has done nothing but go downhill since he took over. Ballmer not Oballmer.
Re:This has to be intentional (Score:5, Interesting)
At first, I thought it was just a silly conspiracy theory that they released an intentionally crappy OS every other cycle, but I'm really starting to think they do it on purpose
On purpose - probably yes. Sinister plan - rather not.
Every other version is pushing boundaries, taking chances, kind of like KDE 4.0 or Gnome 3.0. Then MS learns what did not work and releases a polished version. So you have Win 2000 followed by XP, then an ambitious failure of Vista followed by Win7. Now it is time for another push with Win8 and ideas tested with it will return in usable form with Win9.
So "stable" versions provide income while "experimental" versions provide UAT.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows 8 isn't big and scary. It's just horridly designed.
The issues with the bootloader are one problem, that might pose a problem for linux, but are actually a relatively small part of what is problem with windows 8, because windows 8 is a badly designed mess.
A good overview of some of what is wrong with it http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-i-m-uninstalling-windows-8 [slashdot.org]
This isn't a DRM issue, a compatibility issue (although there is some of that), it's not even particularly evil, at least not any more than anything else MS does. It's that it's a nightmare to use because the design is wildly inconsistent for no apparent reason, and it doesn't seem to actually get you anything for that. If you want to use 10 GB of my RAM that's fine if I actually get something out of it, if you're going to change how to shut down the machine, or how apps work etc. it's just unnecessarily confusing.
The article you linked is not a good overview of what is wrong with Windows 8. It's an overview of what is wrong with Metro. What I've learned in my toying with the betas and my week having RTM installed on my home desktop/gaming computer is that you really can ignore Metro. The desktop is not "an app for Metro". Metro works more like an overlay. The only time I ever see it is when I bring up the "start" menu. The new start menu exists in the Metro overlay but when properly set up isn't all that bad. The problem is with the default layout. It is covered in shitty metro apps. You can uninstall all of them however and pin any and all of your favorite shortcuts. If you need to see the shortcuts that your desktop apps install into the old Windows 95 Start Menu hierarchy you can right click then click all apps. You can of course always type in a search too as in Vista/7.
So do Metro and the default presentation of Windows 8 suck total ass? You bet, but if you can get over your new giant customizable start menu(and the time spent setting up) Windows 8 is quite the improvement over Windows 7.
The new File Explorer or Explorer.exe is really great. The ribbon is hidden by default but is there quickly when you want to do things like show hidden files that used to require digging through control panel options. I also really like the quick access to administrator features that pops up when you right click the start button(or what is now the bottom left-hand pixel). MS needs to make that as easy to edit as the start menu. There are built in ISO mounting and burning tools. There are many other little improvements made to the desktop experience. Though I will admit that shutting down is also a little wonky as you need to put the mouse in the lower right corner then then click on settings and shut down. That's the only time I need to use the weird overlay activated in by that corner and all it does is pop up 5 little icons along the right-hand screen edge.
The biggest disappointment for me in Windows 8 so far has actually been Client Hyper-V. I was really looking forward to this feature and still hope to use it in the future but when the hypervisor is installed my 3D gaming performance takes an fps hit. Most games were still pretty playable but having Quake Live's fps dip down into the 60s is unacceptable. Complaining about 60 fps in a game probably sounds unreasonable to most of you but if you know the Quake 3 and Quake Live engines you understand. Games do run great without the hypervisor in the way though. Hopefully MS can eventually optimize their tech or more likely future/faster hardware will take care of it.
So yeah take my Slashdot card away, because even though I do hate Metro and agree it has no place on the desktop. I really am digging Windows 8 in spite of that.
Re:Excellent News! (Score:5, Interesting)
Which was one of Microsoft's biggest mistakes. They backed down from the original requirements for Longhorn (which 2g BTW). They cut them again because the OEM's were concerned about a falloff in sales. So they had "Certified for Windows Vista" and "Works with Windows Vista" which was a disaster. Hopefully they don't make the same mistake with 8, though it seems like they are going to.
If Microsoft just announced that capacitive touchscreen or high end trackpad (min) was required for Windows 8 a lot of the complaints about hardware would go away. By pretending that Windows-8 is going to work well on traditional hardware Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot.