First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1 898
The other A. N. Other writes "It seems that Microsoft couldn't keep the lid on Windows 7 beta 1 until the new year. By now, several news outlets have their hands on the beta 1 code and have posted screenshots and information about this build. ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 column says: 'This beta is of excellent quality. This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with. Even the pre-betas were solid, but finally this beta feels like it's "done." This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled.' ITWire points out that this copy has landed on various torrent sites, and while it appears to be genuine, there are no guarantees. Neowin has a post confirming that it's the real thing, and saying Microsoft will be announcing the build's official availability at CES in January."
They're glowing! (Score:5, Funny)
The sound of ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 writers blowing their loads over this is deafening.
why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no new features in this build. If Microsoft has any new stuff lined up for the RTM then we're going to have to wait to find out.
All this talk about stable beta's seems a bit pointless. If you change the name and theme on the product, you can't real muck it up too bad. What's the point of this other than to try to put the name "Vista" in the grave?
Anyone know what these people are so excited about? Couldn't get much real info from the article. They comment that its snappier than other betas. How about compared to XP? That would be the real comparison I would like to see.
I am a linux person myself - Ubuntu on the computer I am posting from, but I did use Windows on my laptop before wiping it. I am also not opposed to having windows installed if I gain any benefit. That is what I want to hear from people, what are its compelling features (I don't play games).
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's slow as hell. as one of those that have ran it, I'll tell you right now. the speedy feel of the XP days will never EVER come back, until your computer has way more processing speed and data channel speeds that exceed what the newer Microsoft OS's will use.
I have Vista and Windows 7 running nicely. sata 15,000 rpm drives and hardware that is fricking insane fast makes it feel like XP on modern hardware.
posting anon to avoid being kicked by the MSFT NDA
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:4, Interesting)
KDE 4 has had that since the 4.0 betas
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Insightful)
UAC is far worse than sudo -- with sudo you have one point when application is started as root, and the only thing user has to say is to confirm that he actually wants to run something as administrator. Applications that run as root are still trusted to actually so the right thing because user isn't supposed to know what precisely a particular application should or shouldn't be allowed to do. When anything fine-grained is necessary, there is PolicyKit that controls access to services -- then user's input is only necessary if policy demands it.
UAC is all about not trusting the application or system configuration -- user is asked to make all the decisions. It's like bizarro PolicyKit -- fine-grained access control, but no actual policy behind it, so user has to make all decisions. The root of this problem is, of course, Windows' still-shitty IPC and per-process privileges/permissions handling -- until that is fixed, expect more braindamaged security from them.
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's slow as hell. as one of those that have ran it, I'll tell you right now. the speedy feel of the XP days will never EVER come back, until your computer has way more processing speed and data channel speeds that exceed what the newer Microsoft OS's will use.
Not true... It just won't come from Microsoft. Linux, Solaris, *BSD, and Apple all have that snappy feel. Maybe Microsoft should look at the code in Linux. It is open... ;)
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Funny)
I use OS X daily; it has many virues
Would that be virtues or viruses?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'll tell you right now. the speedy feel of the XP days will never EVER come back
They never left. I use Vista, and it's as snappy as XP ever was.
Did you turn off Aero? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most nerds seem to turn it off assuming it is "flasy useless eye candy". Little do they know they basically turned off hardware accelleration. You do know that Vista, with Aero enabled, will delegate most of the window drawing to the video card. In fact, the more ram on your video card, the better, Vista stores all the window data on that instead of your system RAM.
If you've got a card that does DirectX10 it will even hand the fonts to the video card and let the video card deal with font rendering and caching. Once you turn off Aero, the video card is just an old-school video card. Since a certain set of nerds seem to hate nice looking things, I bet most of them turn off the one thing that makes Vista way more snappy than XP--Aero.
Re:Did you turn off Aero? (Score:5, Informative)
Non-aero window drawing is also hardware-accelerated, just not 3D hardware accelerated. And it has been like that since Windows 9x or something.
Your computer isn't going to be more responsive by adding extra load on the GPU, only (possibly) prettier. Which is kind of subjective, I for one think Vista looks like multi-colored poo that gets in the way of working with the computer.
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
No I'm telling you video cards from 10 years back already provide hardware accelerated blitting (even translucent), filling, rectangle drawing, etc. So your desktop _is_ hardware accelarated by the video card without anything Aero, and it has been like this for years.
Of course you don't get all the fancy shader tricks but like I said, not everyone actually appreciates those.
Re:I think modern window systems (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's just stop here because you obviously don't know much about how video cards work. You can 'cache' anything you like in video RAM without using the 3D capabilities at all, just like you can DMA stuff around without taxing the CPU, and draw stuff to the screen with just a few FIFO commands, it is not, (I repeat: it is NOT) what makes your system 'slow' unless you want to blur title bars, wiggle windows when you move them or add all kinds of other visual effects just because you can.
The only valid point you make is that with a full-blown GPU-accelerated desktop you can throw in much more eye candy without slowing down the system. My point is, that if you don't need/want/care about this eye-candy, about everything essentially already _is_ GPU-accelerated, even without Aero. Windows Vista doesn't NEED anything besides age-old window drawing, it just offers you the option to throw (in my opinion) useless eye at you that only distracts from the actual GUI.
Also I doubt your claim that Aero actually does TTF rendering on the GPU, do you have any references to back that up?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ask and ye shall receive:
Re:I think modern window systems (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you need to read those links again.
Read the description of Redering Tier 2, the highest level of acceleration. The TTF fonts are NOT rendered on the card. Instead, in ClearType mode, the raw pixels are sent to the graphics card in a format representing 3x normal horizontal resolution, and are then edge blended with the existing pixels for a convincing anti-aliased look on LCD displays.
Also note, they're talking only about DX9 there with no mention of DX10, and note the restrictions about what *isn't* accelerated.
Did you perhaps mean to give us a different link with relevant information?
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh really? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are telling me that there is no performance improvement in having a *graphics card* handle *graphics* instead of a CPU?
When the CPU runs at 3+ Ghz and the graphic in question is a 2 Mpx, simple 2D image? fuck no, there isn't. The difference in performance only starts when you add the idiotic extra 'flash', but no modern (or even not-so-modern) computer should have any trouble displaying a Win2K-like interface regardless of the GPU.
We have powerful video cards these days and only a fool wouldn't exploit them to speed up the windowing system. Me thinks some are too blinded by hate and narrow imagination to appreciate cool things.
Not all of us *have* powerful video cards, and despite your own blind hate and narrow imagination, plenty of us prefer simpler interfaces rather than the garish piece of shit that's Vista's default theme.
Re:Did you turn off Aero? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what you broke, then. My friend has it running on a Macbook Pro (which I can guarantee you doesn't have a 15,000 rpm drive!) and it's pretty damn snappy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The fact that modern hardware eats XP for breakfast, and shits out Windows 3.1.
Re:why aRe:They're glowing! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd guess that 'black hats' are glowing because this gives them a good jump on:
1) finding out which security holes still exist from prior MS work, and
2) a good look at the "new" OS structure to find out what other holes might be there, well before final release...
Re:They're glowing! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not the original poster, but I really wish Apple would let me. But they insist on selling OS X only with their own hardware, and then don't make hardware I both want and can afford. To my eyes, iMacs are stupid because it doesn't make sense to throw away a hundred or two hundred dollar monitor when you get a new computer. Hell, the bulk of my current system is about a year old, but I have components in there from 2004, and that's just what's in the main case. The Mac mini is probably even less upgradable than the iMac, and has for a moderately powerful system today is an underpowered processor and small amount of RAM. (For about $200 less what I paid for my current over a year ago, you get (1) dual core processor instead of quad core, (2) the same amount of RAM, (3) basically integrated graphics shared with main RAM instead of an 8800GTS. Wow, great deal.) Now at the other end is the Mac Pro. Beautiful systems, but start at twice the cost of my current system (this time I think about comparable in power), which is well out of my price range. Then you add on top of that the fact that I like to build my own system, and Apple has put itself out of my market. But I very well might actually get one if it weren't for those other problems.
On the laptop side, last I checked they're in the same ballpark as a Thinkpad, so that's not so bad. But if I were to buy a laptop now, I'd probably get either like a netbook or a tablet... again, neither of which Apple sells.
So from my standpoint, I'd love to run OS X... but I'm not going to pirate it, I'm not going to give Apple if they are going to call me a criminal for hacking it to run, I'm not going to buy Apple hardware, and Apple won't let me run it otherwise, so I'm out of luck on that point.
Re:God Damn! It's Good to be KING !! (Score:5, Funny)
World domination 201 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:World domination 201 (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the fate of 64bit future is being determined... [catb.org]
Not really off topic. XP can not really do 64 bit. Vista is a resounding failure. 3.2-3.5 gig is not enough memory. If Win7 is not a solid product, Microsoft will loose the workstation and power user market.
Re:World domination 201 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:World domination 201 (Score:5, Insightful)
Waporware (Score:5, Interesting)
And we can start quessing which of the mentioned fine features will actually be in the release version of Win7. This has happened so many times before.
Remember when during waiting of win95 many magazines were worried what will happen to McAfee and other virus-scanner companies when the new windows is fully virustolerant?
Re:Waporware (Score:5, Funny)
Remember when during waiting of win95 many magazines were worried what will happen to McAfee and other virus-scanner companies when the new windows is fully virustolerant?
Well, whatever one might think about windows 95, "virus-tolerant" is certainly an apt description!
why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why this is surprising. This is just Windows Vista service pack 3 after all. Naturally the beta is going to be more stable than the initial Vista beta.
Re:why is this surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm hearing claims that it will run well on a netbook with 512MB on ram and an Atom processor, which is a huge improvement over Vista. However, despite the supposed lower requirements and multi-touch gestures, I'm not sure what the benefits of Windows 7 are.
Re:why is this surprising? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, but, well, lower requirements is a big one. I remember an article in /. that pontificated that "Vista runs fine on any processor 3 Ghz and above" which is a bar that none of my computers can reach. Some are limited by architecture to 2 Gbytes ram, another buzzkill. (And why should I buy bleeding edge hardware -- in this economy -- to run Vista when XP runs fine?) If Windows 7 (any version) can run on netbook-level hardware, it actually has a chance in hell of replacing some of my XP installations. [1]
And yet... and yet, when Vista was still in beta, we heard reports that it was faster than XP, and look how that turned out. So we really can't go by the beta, we have to wait for reports about the finished product. And then we find out if Microsoft really has made an effort to make the codebase more efficient, or if their real plan was to wait two more years for the hardware to catch up with Windows' gargantuan requirements.
Before someone brings it up, I'm aware that much of Vista's performance issue was the way DRM was implemented. But since DRM is part and parcel with the operating system, it counts. It's the total end to end performance that makes the user experience, so it's not legitimate to say "the new OS really is much faster than the previous release, all those pauses and long execution times you're seeing is because the OS has to check every bit to make sure you haven't stolen something".
Assuming, of course, there is some new feature I absolutely have to have. I didn't see any in Vista. Yes, it had a snazzy new interface. But since I turned off XP's snazzy new interface and all the irritating special effects when I installed it, why would I base a buying decision on yet another snazzy new interface I have to turn off?
What you are "aware" of is a lie. (Score:5, Informative)
Windows Vista's performance "problems" have nothing to do with DRM. If you aren't playing back a DRM'd file, then there is no DRM-specific code running, and no penalty of any kind. The idea that Vista had any more DRM code running than Windows XP was a myth propogated mostly buy people who knew it wasn't true, and others who were gullible and believed anything that sounded bad about Vista.
If you don't want DRM, don't buy any DRM'd media. Having support for DRM'd media in the OS (like BluRay / HDCP / etc) has absolutely ZERO impact on people who don't use DRM'd media.
Vista had its issues and they are well understood, there is no reason to make up myths to blame them on.
Re:why is this surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
1) It won't be named Vista.
2) Supposedly, UAC is much more configurable, especially from the group policy angle.
3) Not as much bloat is supposed to be bundled. If you want all the default MS software, you'll go to Windows Live to grab it. Bloat being: Media Player, the Movie Maker, Picture Gallery, etc. You'll get IE (cause you'll need something provided to go grab the stuff) and you'll get a pretty plain OS otherwise. I'm a huge fan of that.
Other than that, I'm not sure if anything else has changed... But I expect that they've also worked on handling "very large files" and other stability stuff.
It wasn't user training (Score:4, Interesting)
What failed was developer training, not user training. Developers could basically assume a user was running root. That let them take shortcuts like writing shit to "Program Files" or messing around with system files.
You have to understand the history as well. Microsoft grew up as a single-user OS and slowly morphed into a multi-user OS. They didn't grow up with the culture that unix-like systems have where the system was assumed to be multi-user.
Bottom line is we will always need some variant of sudo (aka UAC). UAC is actually the best sudo implementation there is so far, at least in my opinion. Granted, there is still room for improvement, but that mainly lies in "integration". For example, the common dialogs need a way for me to load notepad.exe, edit "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\Hosts", and give me a UAC prompt when I save the file. That way I don't have to remember to load notepad.exe with elevated privileges. Let me write a new file to a protected directory and UAC me then instead loading the app with elevated privileges. That kind of integration will make the new world of "dont run as root" more enjoyable. The goal is to make it so there is no excuse for nerds to disable UAC (thus running as root 24/7).
Insightful? It's ignorant and dishonest. (Score:3, Interesting)
"It is called "sudo" and if your theoretical linux games would need root access to install mods as well. Or do you run your linux box as root all the time?"
No, no it's not. It's nothing at all like sudo.
Sure, it pops up a box once in a while asking for extra permissions. That bit is like sudo, or graphical sudo, but that's not all that UAC does, nor is it the annoying bit.
UAC blocks you from running programs at system startup on your own computer. It helpfully says that your administrator has set up a syste
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How hard is it to open a terminal window (or use a Gnome applet which puts a terminal line on your taskbar) and type "sudo system-config-display" or whatever you need to run as root?
How hard is it to click a button when the UAC UI pops up? Still we have a lot of bitching about it going on. Users, especially non-power users, don't like anything that gets in their way of installing smileys.exe
Re:Linux has UAC too (Score:5, Informative)
UAC pops up asking you to elevate to delete a shortcut on the desktop, and then annoys you a SECOND time, asking if you're really sure you want to delete it. In Linux, you don't need root to delete a shortcut from your desktop.
You misunderstand why the UAC dialog pops up. It's not the act of deleting the icon from your desktop. That doesn't require admin privs. What you fail to realize is that is a side effect of a feature of Windows called a "common desktop". Icons in the common desktop are shared with all accounts, they are meged with the icons in the users profile to create a single view.
If you delete an icon from only your set of icons, no elevation is required. If you delete an icon from the shared desktop elevation is required because it affects multiple user accounts. The same feature exists for the start menu, in which you can have "shared" and "non-shared" shortcuts. You can delete the non-shared ones without elevation, but you can't delete the shared ones.
I find the majority of people are like you. They simply don't understand why the UAC prompt is coming up. Perhaps that's a failure of Microsoft's, but one user should not be able to affect other users without elevating privilegs. It's working the way it's supposed to.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see why this is surprising. This is just Windows Vista service pack 3 after all.
Not really, the idea of a service pack is to add new features and plug a bunch of holes, like when XP SP2 added the security center. My hope is that Win7 guts most of the 'features' that were in Vista.
Doesn't look finished to me (Score:5, Insightful)
The task bar needs quite a bit of work. I bet that is one part of the OS that will change quite a bit from Vista. Looks like it is still a work in progress because right now it looks boxy and ugly.
It also looks like Aero wasn't turned on for these screen shots. Probably a driver thing. Vista without the glass doesn't look nearly as good.
I think like Vista, this version will be a lot of little things that improve the OS not huge ones. Then you'll go back from Windows 7 to Vista and go "jeez... how did I live without this Windows 7 feature" just like when you go back to XP and get pissed how crappy the taskbar is, how "in your face" the windows were, how crappy the file dialogs were, how crappy taskman.exe was, or how generally insecure the default setup was. Vista is a huge improvement over XP but it is hard to describe what improved. Just a lot of little annoyances are gone or smoothed out. Windows 7 will probably be the same.
And can I rant for a second? Look, I know why the ZDnet guys are doing this, but we live in Web version 2.0 these days and they could easily have made it so their gallery [zdnet.com] didn't require a complete page-load between images. But like I said, I know why they do require a page-load.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Javascript = bad
Letting me load screenshots in multiple tabs = good
Poorly implemented javascript = bad (Score:5, Insightful)
You can write javascript that enhances a page. One can quickly write an implementation that keeps each image a standard page (good for SEO, good for multi-tab) but can also swap the image and not reload the page. Then you can right-click "Open new tab" or just click on it and not refresh the entire page.
Javascript = good.
Shitty Javascript = bad.
Task Bar?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are we so concerned about eye-candy? How about the actual system underneath?
Is it stable, scalable, administrable? What sort of resources does it need? Ram? CPU?
Sure, 'pretties' are nice ( especially for the end user ), but its a lot like a cake: If the cake is full of holes, lopsided or not fully cooked, does it really matter what flavor the icing is?
Re:Task Bar?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to share the parents opinion of eye candy, until I tried out Mac OS. The shadows on the windows really make them look like they are layer on top of each other in a way that Vista doesn't. It actually makes the system that little bit more intuitive, that little bit easier to interpret the information on the screen and work with it. It's subtle but an improvement none-the-less.
Considering how well Mac OS runs on even old Radeon 9200 hardware I don't think it's much of a resource drain or bloated either.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Win7 is supposedly designed to run on netbooks (I'm guessing that the current trend of netbooks that can only run either Linux or some eight-year-old version of Windows that Microsoft desperately wants to kill off kind of scared them a little) so system requirements should be lower than for Vista, which is a bit of a relief.
Re:Doesn't look finished to me (Score:5, Interesting)
The task bar needs quite a bit of work. I bet that is one part of the OS that will change quite a bit from Vista. Looks like it is still a work in progress because right now it looks boxy and ugly.
It also looks suspiciously like Mac OS X's Dock. Hmm, single icon per application, where I have I seen that before?...
For further confirmation that this is Window's take on the Dock, take a peek at this screenshot [zdnet.com]. Hmm, "Unpin this program from the taskbar"... Seems a bit like dragging the application onto the Dock, thereby "pinning" it. (Although at least Window 7's little "launched border" is easier to see than the glowing dot on the Dock.)
Of course, I'd have to use it to see if it actually works. Mac OS X's Dock works the way it does due to the way Mac handles applications - each application gets a single instance and has a single menu bar but can have multiple windows. Windows does it differently - each window is essentially its own application. So directly ripping off the Dock probably won't work.
Still, it's nice to see that Microsoft's stance on innovation hasn't changed. :)
Look, I know why the ZDnet guys are doing this, but we live in Web version 2.0 these days and they could easily have made it so their gallery didn't require a complete page-load between images.
I don't - Slashdot seems to have found a way to load ads via Web 2.0 in the new discussion view; I'm sure ZDnet and their advertisers can come up with a way to rotate ads using Web 2.0 techniques...
Re:Doesn't look finished to me (Score:5, Insightful)
> And can I rant for a second?
Certainly. May I?
Who amongst non-geeks really cares what the desktop looks like? Am I the only one who thinks that perhaps we've lost sight of what an operating system is for? I really don't expect my desktop to look and operate like Myst. I expect an OS to be a robust, secure, program loader and a robust, cohesive collection of resources that applications use. Yes, I know I used "robust" twice. It's important.
The desktop is a way to start and manipulate applications. It is not an end in itself. It shouldn't suck the life out of the machine for the sake of pretty graphics.
And this Linux desktop vs Windows desktop thing totally misses the point. Yes, I played with Ubuntu's cute rubber windows for awhile, and then I turned all those features the hell off. What a waste of resources.
I think it comes down to why one buys a computer in the first place. Is it to do actual work, or to play with the pretty jellyfish? I think that if pressed, most people who make their living on computers would admit that all the cuteness is at best a distraction.
I mean, from a technical standpoint, the design and implementation of cutting-edge desktop presentation is interesting, don't get me wrong. But on a day to day basis, would you really sacrifice the majority of your computer resources just for presentation? Amongst other things, that doesn't seem very Green to me.
And don't even start with "let's all go back to the command line". Office 2000 was a huge increase in efficiency over vi/troff and I'm never going to go back. But Office 2007 is just Office, only annoying. We've reached a point of diminishing returns. Until there's a significant Xerox-PARC-grade paradigm shift, we're just rearranging the furniture. And each remodel significantly increases clutter and expense.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
The changes and additions that Windows 7 brings are more significant than you think.
But apparently not significant enough that you can actually name any of them.
Re:why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Although you are right that part of Windows7 success is [...]
Woah, partner -- it's way too early to be calling Windows 7 a success.
Do these get better just because of time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone seems to have the opinion that Vista was a failure. My wife (a non-techie) hates Vista because her ancient accounting app periodically crashes ever since switching to Vista. I assume many other people had the same sorts of issues with many other apps.
But now three years have gone by, and many of those apps have been patched, become obsolete, or replaced with working alternatives. That means the remaining apps are now in an ideal position to work correctly in Windows 7. Is it possible that Windows 7 could be exactly the same crap as Vista, but because so much time has gone by it doesn't matter as much?
I think we saw the same thing with the transitions from Windows 98 to Windows ME to Windows XP.
Re:Do these get better just because of time? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one other possibility, of course - that Vista never was crap, and the MS excuses about driver and application incompatibilities (such as your wife's accounting app) unfairly being blamed on Vista were actually true. And, if anyone were to give Vista a fair fresh look (Mojave? Win7?) they might conclude it's actually a really solid OS.
Nah, on second thought, that doesn't fit well with my world view. MS Sucks! Linux roxors!
Re:Do these get better just because of time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well done.
But - You could see Vista as MS finally paying the piper for the insecurity that was MS-DOS, Windows 3, 95, 98, ME... And then still not enforcing any sort of security in 2000 and XP.
It all depends on what your angle is I guess. Vista finally made people annoyed enough that software writers had to actually think about running software in a moderately secure context... In that regard, it was a good thing. I might not particularly love the way MS handled it (say, compared to Mac OS), but it was still a step in the right direction.
If the Windows user base can finally be trained to run in a standard user mode, with proper mechanisms to perform administrative tasks, we'll all be better for it... and I'll give a lot of credit to the *nix communities for really pushing this need for all those years. A lot of us might hate MS for various reasons, but if they really can put out a better product, good for them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista is a lot like ME - a transitional stage where you have both the old and new stuff side by side, with just enough of each to make it crap.
Take how they changed the filesystem layout and had shortcuts for all the old XP directories, or introduced annoying UAC messages when programs tried to do nasty things like adding start-up items that was common in XP, for example.
Hopefully there will be none of this in Windows 7. Anything that hasn't learnt to do things the right way in Vista by now will just stop w
I don't want excuses... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're trying to install a new OS on an old machine, that's one thing. You definitely need to do your homework to make sure that the off-brand network card you bought will work with the new OS. However, a new machine pre-loaded with the OS should run. If MS can't make sure that the OEMs have working machines before they slap a "Vista" or "Win 7" sticker on the damn thing, they should stop making software, period.
Re:I don't want excuses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming them is putting the blame in the wrong place.
It is if MS demands a "Vista Ready" certification programme from the vendors before said vendors can claim its suitable for Vista.
Re:Do these get better just because of time? (Score:5, Informative)
Ask and ye shall receive (Score:3, Informative)
What you ask exists. Vista Virtual Store [microsoft.com]. Basically, if your crappy app writes to "C:\program files" in vista and you are running as a standard user, Vista will do exactly what you describe... it will redirect the file IO to a place owned by the user, not the system.
Shill me one more time!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are Magazines/Tech review sites/Editorials real anymore or are they just industry backed reviews (aka advertisements)? Is advertisement driven content real journalism?
I remember almost every tech journal I picked up a couple years ago reviewed Vista as the "New Coming". Yet, a year later these journals are bemoaning how Vista "sucks" (which it does btw).
Excuse me for being cynical but I will take this review with a pinch of salt as other reports show that, at least benchmark wise, there is absolutely no difference between Vista and Windows 7.
As for Windows 7 feeling "so much more responsive".. well, depends who is paying you to write that review innit?
Re:Shill me one more time!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Excuse me for being cynical but I will take this review with a pinch of salt as other reports show that, at least benchmark wise, there is absolutely no difference between Vista and Windows 7.
There was one set of benchmarks that showed no improvement: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/10/46TC-windows-7_1.html/ [infoworld.com]. There was another set of benchmarks done on a later build that showed improvements: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3182&page=1/ [zdnet.com].
As for Windows 7 feeling "so much more responsive".. well, depends who is paying you to write that review innit?
Cynicism, conspiracy and an ad hominem attacks all in one. You're going all the way to +5 insightful!
This beta exceeds the quality of any other Micro.. (Score:3, Insightful)
"This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled."
Is this person a politician because that is saying nothing.
Too bad 2009 is going to be another year of hearing Microsoft lies and exaggerations regarding yet another Microsoft OS release. BFD, is what I say after 20 something years of the same junk year after year after year. I gave up when Windows 2000 came out and they started shoveling more user level stuff into the kernel and they never fixed the security system. That was in 1999, over 8 years ago and they still are trying to build an operating system worth a hill of beans. Well, it's all about marketing at MS so what you see in print is not what you get and never has.
in 2009, I'll be wading through the MS marketing drivel for what's going on in the embedded, netbook, and MID areas with regards to the ARM Cortex chips and especially the A9 dual core versions. A8 is amazing on the performance front and power front. This should prove very interesting along with what Android, Ubuntu, and others do on these platforms.
So long MSFT, 2009 is probably going to be another tough year of marketing against real solutions. And though you may have smashed the OLPC and dashed their plans of helping millions of children, they kicked off a resurrection of the light weight small form-factor device you just can't compete on. IMO.
LoB
No Idea what the techspecs are on this but (Score:5, Interesting)
(Unfortunately, the existence/popularity of 32 bit windows precludes the vendors of software such as Cubase and the likes from actually doing a proper job of putting out 64 bit software).
Re:No Idea what the techspecs are on this but (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, please drop the 6 editions and go back to home and pro. If you want windows in a developing country, either pay for it, download it, or make microsoft price it at what the local market will bear.
Re:No Idea what the techspecs are on this but (Score:4, Insightful)
There is simply no way for them to do that without alienating TONS of business customers.
Look at it this way, I work at a college, we have thousands of computers. Only maybe 100 of which replaced in the last year are able to support 64bit operating systems and those still only have 1 -2 gigs of ram. If they released 64bit only the chance that we would switch anytime in the next 7 years (which would be how long it is going to take on our 5 year amortization cycle) is zero. We would be forced to continue to use XP, or migrate to linux.
I suppose vista could be an option in that case. However, our plan was to skip vista in the hopes that by the time Win7 was released many of our software vendors would have upgraded their applications to run properly on vista and windows 7. If microsoft released a 64bit only win7 then many of those vendors would probably skip fixing their 32bit apps to run on vista and thus require us to move to 64bit windows 7. Faced with such a huge cost in hardware to do that, I'm not sure what we would do.
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Now, if they're only released a 64 bit for OEM (forcing new computers to have support), that could help the switch.
Then we would have a headline on Slashdot shouting "MS forces 64bit down the throats of people" and stories about how poor grandmas are unable to run their 32bit drivers for knitting.
Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm no fan of MS, but what exactly do you propose they do? They offer 64-bit variants that can run 64-bit applications of their supported platforms. They provide the platform to allow this specific thing. They provide the tools to develop for this.
What you have is commercial application providers flat-out ignoring 64-bit capability, as it is easier to target the 32-bit subset that works both on Pentium 4 and such and new. You have to make the vendors release 64-bit enabled builds. Linux suffers from thi
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Compare with XP (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing Windows 7 to Vista is useless, at least to someone like me. I love XP, having never had any serious problems with it whatsoever. It's by far the most stable OS I have ever used. Tell (and prove to) me that Windows 7 is better than XP, and I will show great interest in switching. Tell me 7 is better than Vista, and you don't have a chance.
No, Compare with 2K (Score:5, Interesting)
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I was of the same mind, till I tried OSX. Maybe you should try more OS's?
List of changes between it and Vista plz. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:List of changes between it and Vista plz. (Score:5, Funny)
"What are the improvements? Have they added in WinFS yet?"
They tried to - they're in the process of copying the files now ... the dialog box says "Copying files" and to please wait another 10.459 years for the operation to complete ...
Re:List of changes between it and Vista plz. (Score:5, Informative)
Heh, WinFS... It's such an easy troll target... ;)
The storage system (not its own file system) called "WinFS" was released as Beta 1, but later cancelled, with components of it ending up in SQL Server 2008. It was later assumed to be dead for good, but Ballmer said in late 2006 that it was still being worked on, although he was not clear on in which products it would end up in. For all we know, the team could be working with the SQL Server team now.
This is among the last pieces of good actual info on this project:
http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx [msdn.com]
Windows 7 will not include WinFS, and it was never announced for it.
All the fun of a recession (Score:5, Insightful)
All that being the case, why on earth do we care about Windows 7? If Microsoft couldn't get people to migrate off XP with benign economic circumstance and ready availability of credit, why do we think it's going to happen this time?
ian
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With Vista as my only option, my plan was to stick with XP as long as humanly possible. I have my own volume-licensed copy of XP Pro, so it's a somewhat realistic plan. If Windows 7 proves to be as high-quality as the pundits claim, that might just be enough to make me leave XP.
As for the axioms, while they may be generally true, they're not universal:
Re:All the fun of a recession (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All the fun of a recession (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, your sister sure is stupid - she should know better and use Emacs for that!
Links to the torrent (for Google impaired folks) (Score:5, Informative)
Size: 2,618,793,984 bytes (2.44 GB)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2123650 [mininova.org]
Viruses and Trojans Still a Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I just had to repair a friend's Vista PC which had 3 Trojan programs running that had taken control of her internet even though Kaspersky antivirus was installed. The Trojan had worked its way onto her computer via a P2P program that her daughter was using to get music, and that stopped Kaspersky from being able to update its definitions, which it was set to do every day. I couldn't even go out to Microsoft's Windows Update site to get Windows updates, and Windows Defender (which was also installed and running) was disabled by one of the Trojan programs. It took me over an hour to clean it all up and get her machine running properly again.
Not even 2 antivirus programs could stop this from happening on the latest Windows PC.
This is what is stopping me from being even the slightest bit excited about Windows 7.
Re:Viruses and Trojans Still a Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
A bigger problem was Kaspersky AV not recognizing the trojans.
The biggest problem was a teenage girl who didn't think it mattered if she downloaded britney.mp3 or britney.exe
Sounds to me like a pebkac (Score:3, Informative)
A female kind. Probably underage.
Those are hard to get rid off. It usually takes years before you get the ship em off to college or marry em off.
How sweet of them! (Score:4, Funny)
Who would want the pirated version? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's Reiterate... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as Windows 7. This is not a new code base, it is not an overhaul of Windows framework. Windows 7 is Vista Service Pack 2. The Windows 7 bullshit coming out of Microsoft's propaganda machine is a concerted and direct effort to bury the name Vista and all the bad press associated with it. That anyone has bought into this crap is astounding. Vista was several years delayed. Now we have hordes of people believing that MS got a new OS out the door in 18 months? Wake up already.
Re:Let's Reiterate... (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. This is Windows 98 compared to Windows 95. No major change in theme or interface, but more stable and with a few of the sharper corners rounded off. See also windows 3.0 and windows 3.1. :)
It's apparent (Score:5, Funny)
It's apparent that Windows 7 represents a radical name change from Vista. A bold new direction in OS branding.
And people say innovation is dead in Redmond.
Features? (Score:5, Insightful)
Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista? As someone else pointed out, a name and theme change does not really qualify as substantial change. Ok, so WinFS was never promised for this version. What exactly are they offering this time besides a fix to the taskbar? I have yet to see an article that outlines changes outside the UI. Is this an elaborate prank?
Features New to Windows 7 (Score:5, Informative)
Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista?
Features New to Windows 7 [wikipedia.org].
Enjoy!
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Much ado about nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO MS just "doesn't get it" and is doing stupid things by design, maybe the problem is too much "design by committee" or something.
The problem with Vista / Win7 / etc. wasn't that they tried to do TOO MUCH, it's that they tried to to TOO LITTLE. They're about 10 years BEHIND the current hardware (the mainstream CPU has been '64 bit' for YEARS even on low end parts). Given Moore's law it'll be even more pathetically inadequate in 2009/2010 when we're supposedly to be using Win7. By then we'll have at least cheap 16GB RAM, 64GB SSDs, 2TB HDDs for a song, 8 core 64 GFLOP CPUs, 2 TFLOP GPUs, better HD screens, 4Mbit/s+ broadband into more and more houses, and still we'll be stuck with .... notepad .... and corrupted registries and driver cleaner / crap cleaner / applications that won't install / uninstall / backup / transfer properly most of which being 32 bit.
Now for netbooks / mobile internet devices, OK, yes, for those, design a lean efficient low bloat OS. That is not the same product as your desktop / laptop offering.
I have relatively little problem with 'bloat' if it gets me major new generations of CAPABILITIES. Wake up, the HARDWARE we use today is LIGHT YEARS ahead of the SOFTWARE's capabilities to even USE it in 99% of the cases. Lack of 64 bit applications and applications that intelligently use RAM is one example -- 8GB of RAM costs as little as $40 today. Every one of my family's desktops has 8GB installed now, and if it wasn't for the stupid limitations of the motherboard / chipset, I'd have put 16GB or 32GB into the heavily used machines for these kinds of (commodity) RAM prices.
My quad core CPU is still something like 90% idle doing most OS / web / desktop stuff even under Vista with all the eye candy on. If I complain about it being *slow* it is probably because it is ALGORITHMICALLY broken in some buggy brain damaged way (like the horrible network throughput when you're playing audio or something) not because it is inherently trying to do something that exceeds the capabilities of my actual hardware given well designed software.
The main problem is that we can't even take good advantage of the multi-gigabytes of RAM, multi-terabytes of disc, multi-cores of CPUs, multi-teraflops of GPUs we have. A typical 'power user' desktop today exceeds the compute / RAM / storage capabilities of a 'supercomputer' in the 1990s, yet we're using a OS design / implementation that is BARELY any better than what we had then -- e.g. NTFS, FAT32, 32 bit OS being the most common, et. al.
I wouldn't care too much if they wrote vast portions of the whole OS in something uber bloated / slow like VB or JAVA as long as the performance critical bits were fast and the overall thing was well designed for reliability, stability, and easy extensibility to take full advantage of the system.
There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like filesystems (say start with ZFS then migrate MOST EVERYTHING to use a full featured relational database model on top of that with MAJOR emphasis on metadata, schema use, RDF, et. al.). There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like BACKUP. Ever had a 1.44 MB floppy or CD go bad on you and lose valuable data? Didn't that suck? The average joe in 2009 will be having 1TB drives! Can you imagine losing a LIFETIME of data in one catastrophic event -- ALL your family pictures / movies from maybe 3 generations of family, ALL your documents, ALL your personal files, et. al.? That's going to be a common occurrence due to viruses, hardware failure, or whatever, and the OSs like VISTA are just PATHETICALLY mis-designed to help people manage their storage / data / metadata, do backups, do searches, synchronize, transfer, etc. -- basically they're beyond uselessly bad at giving storage management resources. Heck not a day goes by that I am not even limited by the silly 128 character 'path length' 'limits' even in the latest VISTA 64.
No, Windows Home Server is not a solution. Forget backwa
All I want to know is .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can it copy files from one place to another in a reasonable amount of time now? Without tweaking?
Does the interface still hang for no apparent reason when browsing for files?
Are they still using hard links for the user profile directories?
I've tried Vista several times and as of a few weeks ago, with the latest beta SP, it's still crap at some of most basic things an operating should be good at.... navigation and pushing data around.
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Re:Bye bye Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Kind of like how AMD came out with the Athlon XP line around the time that Windows XP shipped?
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