Ballmer Sets Loose Windows 7 Public Beta At CES 672
CWmike writes "The rumors turned out to be true. Microsoft will release a public beta this week of its next desktop operating system, Windows 7, hoping it will
address the problems that have made Windows Vista perhaps the least popular OS in its history. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will launch the beta during his speech at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Preston Gralla reviewed Windows 7 beta 1, noting 'Fast and stable, Beta 1 of Windows 7 unveils some intriguing user-interface improvements, including the much-anticipated new task bar.' MSDN and Technet subscribers should be able to get the public data tonight. The general public will have to wait until Friday."
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Interesting)
...or doesn't it count because no one even tried to take it seriously?
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista problems, at least in my experience, were due to hardware incompatibilities. Millennium was a terribly built OS that was rushed out way before ready.
But maybe that was their strategy, "Millennium who?"
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Funny)
It made the cross-country trip worth it
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say it was worse than "rushed out before ready." Maybe more like "pushed out even though their was no point." After saying that Win98 would be the last of its line, they turned around and apparently diverted resources to pushing an OS that was basically Win98+bugs. Bugs that would never really be fixed anyway, since they were about to start pushing people to the NT kernel anyway in the form of Windows 2000 and later WindowsXP.
It's like if I were discontinuing a model of car because of several huge design problems, but after releasing the replacement model, suddenly started reselling the discontinued model again-- this time, with a spoiler that somehow made it harder to steer. It doesn't make a lot of sense unless it's a half-assed money-grab.
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like if I were discontinuing a model of car because of several huge design problems, but after releasing the replacement model, suddenly started reselling the discontinued model again-- this time, with a spoiler that somehow made it harder to steer. It doesn't make a lot of sense unless it's a half-assed money-grab.
Windows 2000 was -supposed- to be launched as consumer OS. They even had a "Windows 2000 Home" edition planned in addition to "Professional" and "Server", but it was dropped from the plan fairly early on. The WinNT codebase simply wasn't consumer friendly enough - backwards compatibility with Win95/98 software, games, and piles of consumer hardware etc simply wasn't there.
So they backed off pushing consumers to Windows 2000 until 2002 with XP Home, and rushed out ME with a focus on multimedia features (that actually largely made it into XP) to have something new and shiny in the home market.
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but at the time 2000 had many of the same issues for early adopters that Vista did. Driver model and programming model was different enough to cause issues, the security features were tighter and "more difficult" to use, things were different and people were used to 5 years of Windows 95-esque OS.
As drivers improved, Win2K became a great system, as it supported the same stuff as XP, but was more stripped down. It wasn't until XP SP2 that XP really pulled ahead of 2K in any significant manner.
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:4, Informative)
Did they add it later?
In many many cases yes actually. A lot of app compatibility was added in the year or so after the Win 2000 launch, long after 2000 Home had been cancelled.
Starcraft (released in 98) worked fine on 2000, last time I checked.
Blizzard was really the exception not the rule. After all many of -their- games even supported Macs.
In contrast, nothing at the time from Ubi was supported on 2k/NT. This included the first Tom Clancy titles (e.g. Rainbow Six) I managed to hammer it into 2k, but had all sorts of issues.
LucasArts titles from the era were hit and miss... Dark Forces II, in particular comes time mind as a game that really didn't like being installed on 2k.
Stuff like Quake 2 ran, but with a markedly lower frame rate due to the much less performance optimized opengl, and the fact that Win2k was a lot more resource hungry than 98, requiring twice the RAM etc. Of course, the price of RAM dropped, and the opengl drivers improved significantly over time.
Half Life didn't initially work on Windows 2000 but this was eventually fixed in a patch.
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that Windows 7 will be a lot like Windows 98 SE was. It'll clear up a lot of the perception issues and also resolve some of the more substantial problems with the OS. I know I sound like a corporate shill for saying this, but I'm actually really excited for this release.
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be so, but I'd take the review here with a grain of salt.
Preston Gralla is pretty much the epitome of a breathless Windows fanboi. Try reading some of his articles about Vista...
To anyone who has been sitting on the fence over whether to upgrade to Microsoft's new operating system, I'll say it loud and clear: It's time to make the jump. There are plenty of reasons to leave Windows XP and install Vista.
Windows Vista: 15 Reasons to Switch [pcworld.com]
The conventional wisdom, that Mac's OS X is superior to Windows Vista, is flat-out wrong. In fact, despite much belief to the contrary, Vista is a superior operating system.
Five reasons why Vista beats Mac OS X [computerworld.com]
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
At that time you could choose Windows ME or Windows 2000.
MS had a hard time to get people off Win9x.
Windows ME fixed that in a jiffy.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
very very true.. sadly i know people that still run 98se.. honestly win2k was extreamly good.. XP was kinda annoying but turned out fine.. server 2003 is perfect in my mind - from a windows stand point.. there are some nice things in vista and server 08.. but server 2003 provides extreamly good reliability and stability compared to all other windows OS's
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
At that time you could choose Windows ME or Windows 2000.
I don't know about anyone else, but I loved Windows 2000 professional. I ran it on my personal machine for years, until I finally bought a Laptop that came with WinXP. Windows 2000 always ran very solid for me and didn't cause any problems (until I tried to install a HDD that was larger than Windows could recognize).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
SP4 handles drives bigger than 128GiB. In SP2 or later, you can patch the registry for the same effect:
EnableBigLBA [microsoft.com].
Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters\EnableBigLba to 1 (it should be a DWORD).
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the reason can usually be summed up in three words.
Windows. Genuine. Advantage.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unbelievable but true: I ran WinME on my home machine for quite some time with little ill effects. Apart from some hardware incompatibilities I've read about, what was _so_ bad about it?
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was basically a less-stable version of Win98 with a system restore that solved your problem half the time you got it to work (which was about half the time you tried it), and the other half fucked your system up worse than before. It also included a lot of bloat and new bells and whistles, at a time when apparently most people preferred drums that worked (even if it was just an upside-down bucket) over broken bells and cracked whistles.
Re:"Least popular"? What about Windows ME? (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, the biggest problem was the removal of real mode DOS access. For someone moving from Windows 98 and still relying on a lot of DOS programs that didn't always play nice with protected mode. At least with Windows 2000, you didn't have to deal with the 9x series' infamous flakiness and instability nearly as often.
The interface improvements (all of which were shamelessly taken from Windows 2000) were an improvement, sure, but in all other respects, Windows Me was less functional and less reliable than Windows 98SE. It wasn't that you it was so bad as to be unusable, but it was hardly worth the price of the upgrade.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
all of which were shamelessly taken from Windows 2000
I fail to see how taking features from one of their operating systems to another should evoke any shame in the first place.
Re:"Least popular"? What about "Bob" (Score:5, Informative)
Point taken, but, to be fair, Bob wasn't exactly an operating system. It was an alternate shell for Windows 3.1 and 95.
In all honesty, I find Windows 1.0 to be the least functional of all of Microsoft's operating systems. But the bar wasn't very high back then, so I don't think its really in the running for "least popular." MS-DOS 4.0 (not 4.01) is also definitely in the running for "buggiest software ever released by Microsoft," but that's another story....
Re:"Least popular"? What about "Bob" (Score:5, Insightful)
In all honesty, I find Windows 1.0 to be the least functional of all of Microsoft's operating systems. But the bar wasn't very high back then
I wouldn't say that. Us Amiga owners were using preemptive multitasking and virtual desktops that year, and Mac guys had a pretty nice system of their own.
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I'll agree with you there. I have a Pocket PC that runs WinCE 2002 and it was a total joke. Pocket Word was worse than useless because it would totally lock up opening anything bigger than a tiny document and was absurdly slow when it actually did work. "Closing" a program would actually "minimize" it and switching between open apps meant either launching it again or no fewer than 7 stylus clicks to switch among the open apps. It was like all the bad ideas from the PDA world and none of the good feature
Early reports say... (Score:5, Funny)
Not true... (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdotism (Score:4, Funny)
Balmer is a looser.
Re:Slashdotism (Score:5, Funny)
Man, I expected someone to get it. He's a looser, not a loser. You know, the headline is about him loosing something. Sigh.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You insensitive Mod!
You could have posted non-anonymously to remove your mod.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Whoosh!
(The "sic" meant that he knew what he was doing, and reflected on the loser <=> looser error with the shocks <=> shock's error; similarly to writing "greengrocers apostrophe's" as mentioned in the link.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I prefer using animals...
Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, Vista failed because they didn't provide a public beta for it?
How about addressing the increasingly long list of features people actually want instead of a resource intensive API to make my windows translucent? Or, making what was arguably Vista's best and at the same time worst feature (UAC) something that works without making itself so intrusive as to be the first time users desire to disable?!
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read two words of the summary to interpret its meaning? They are releasing a public beta AND hoping to address the problems. That's like replying to "Microsoft hired 3 new programmers to work on Windows 7" with "Didn't they hire programmers to work on Vista?"
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love UAC. On XP, I used to have to de-malware my [anonymized family member]'s computer every couple of months. On Vista, I'm watching them use their machine, and UAC pops up with some spyware wanting to install. Box read, permission declined, no infestation I have to clean up.
Again, it works great for me!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I love UAC. On XP, I used to have to de-malware my [anonymized family member]'s computer every couple of months. On Vista, I'm watching them use their machine, and UAC pops up with some spyware wanting to install. Box read, permission declined, no infestation I have to clean up.
Average users compulsively click "yes" to any nagging dialog box without a second thought. That is what they have been conditioned to do. UAC doesn't change that, it's just one more box to click "yes" to. That's why it sucks.
Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
But most everybody using a computer is worried about spyware and viruses. UAC requires user education. You need to train your users (family, friends, etc) that when you see a UAC dialog, they better think. Tell them they should never see that dialog unless they are *installing* a program they bought (or downloaded). Train them to be nervous and worried about UAC dialogs... they should never see one unless they are installing software. It will encourage them to call you when one shows up.
UAC + user training = way better then XP. Your family can install crap easily, and they will call you before they do (so you can talk them out of installing yet another damn toolbar). Win win.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My mom or little sister installing P2P spyware or toolbars they voluntarily downloaded IS the problem, most of the time.
And no, I don't consider having my family call me every time they want to install something a "win win." More like a "lose lose." That's why I'm happy my mom decided to get a Mac. Not that it "just works" like the Mac guys always say, but it has completely eliminated the "OMG I'm getting a message that says my computer is infected" phone calls.
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:5, Funny)
But at least Vista now keeps track of when users install stuff - this has made my life easier several times:
Family member: "My computer is getting pop-ups all the time"
Me: "Did you install anything recently?"
fm: "No."
Me: "It says here you installed on , just before you started complaining about things"
fm: "Well, yes, there was that. But that was supposed to make things better."
me: "...."
Train them dude :-) (Score:4, Insightful)
The UAC dialog looks a lot difference then any other dialog that pops up. Train them to be very nervous and apprehensive when they see a UAC dialog. Hopefully they'll start calling you when they pop up so you can talk them out of installing $GOOGLE_YAHOO_TWITTER_TOOLBAR_#23.
Really though, I've been fairly successfull in explaining what UAC is and why they should pay attention to when they pop up. Nobody wants spyware, but most people never see the connection between "I just ran $RANDOM.EXE and now my computer is slow". UAC is an easy sell if you frame it as a barrier between $RANDOM.EXE and spyware-city. In fact, given a willing listener, it isn't too hard to explain "on XP, a program could access any part of your system you want, on Vista, it can only access a couple things like your documents and desktop.. the only way it can access your system and install spyware is through a UAC dialog".
PS: And yeah, I know UAC isn't a foolproof barrier. If UAC is used correctly by a user, the only real way for a program to get root access is the old-fashioned way, privilege elevation exploits. But you don't need to tell them that detail, it isn't relevant to them and will just confuse them. Only nerds like us will appreciate that :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like living in a house where the driveway is littered with dog poo and adding a detector that, instead of stopping someone with dog poo on their shoes from getting into the house, it merely records the fact for later recall. Ultimately, it doesn't stop you from having to clean dog poo off the carpets.
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Unless of course the user isn't an admin. In that case they're prevented from opening the door for someone with (or without) dogshit on their boots until an administrator comes along with the key.
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd think so, but it's actually not true. I find it amazing myself, but UAC actually works. I work at a PC phone support center, and we get tons of calls about computers infected with Antivirus 2009/Antivirus Pro/etc. Out of the dozens (if not hundreds) of these calls I've taken over the last few months, I got exactly one call about a Vista machine that was infected. A good 99%+ of those calls we get are for infected XP machines, and I can guarantee you XP does not have 99x the marketshare of Vista, by any measurement. I also had another call where the caller had gotten a popup that would have infected her computer, and she believed the popup and pressed "scan". Only problem for the malware was, the next screen she got was a "continue or cancel" screen from UAC, and that apparently scared her more than the panic popup had, and she clicked cancel.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
People also say homoeopathy, acupuncture and magnet therapy "works for them" too. First hand experiences mean jack all.
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Yes, just because it works for you, screw that! If the pundits say mean things about it, you're obviously mistaken. It sucks!
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i'm sure i will be modded troll for this one, but Linux has its fair share of crapware. Case and point, gnome, orbit, kde, you want to talk about crapware that runs at the root level? How about xdm, several generations of sendmail, inetd, and a myrad of ftp daemons. Linux also has an issue where the crapware doesn't always exist in the form of an executable, but a library. Things like oracle more often than not requires you to revert back to a vulnerable version of certain libraries. Oh, and our lovely tool
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, the bed is getting awfully crowded with all of us sleeping with woman. Maybe we should try to find more than one.
Well, kinda (Score:5, Insightful)
Sudo is a different beast then UAC to some degree. It lets the admin control what programs can get elevated (/etc/sudoers). Ubuntu doesn't tap into all the crap you can do with sudo. It just does what UAC does... pop up a dialog to confirm privilege escalation, then run said program under the requested privileges. Well, only kinda.
Windows (.NET anyway) lets the program specify what privileges it needs to run under and which privileges are merely a luxury. .NET will run the program under only the privileges the application has asked for. I've yet to actually need this kind of stuff so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but it is my understanding the application has to request UAC, Vista doesn't just monitor the programs interaction and go "hey, this guy wants to write to a protected file, lets pop up a UAC and ask". Any program that doesn't request a UAC dialog and tries to write to a protected file will get a permission error.
What is my point? You are incorrect saying "not because I visited a website, or because I connected a photo frame to my PC. It also doesn't happen every time that I need those privileges". Vista will not pop up a UAC dialog in any of those cases (have you used it?). If it does, some software you have installed is trying to pull some seriously fucked up shit and obviously you should "cancel".
Re: (Score:3)
UAC seems to work pretty well. Alot of the excessive nagging seems to come from older applications assuming they have free reign over the system. The only other times I've seen it I would have also had to use sudo on Unix.
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they did provide a public beta for Windows Vista. I was pretty excited to get the next version of Windows to "beta test" before it was released. The whole "oooh new and shiny" factor.
But, the nice thing about the "resource intensive" API is that it actually uses your video card. Running Vista on a repurposed workstation at work, Aero without glass performs better than the software-only "classic" mode. (Though, this is anecdotal. The machine has 768 MB of RAM and an older Pentium 4.)
The funny thing is Vista tries to put the hardware you have to use. Have 8 GB of RAM? It'll use the unallocated memory to cache programs. Have a discrete graphics card? It'll be virtualized and time slices doled out to applications. Have System Idle Process running at 99% 'cuz your CPU is bored? It'll index files, or defrag your disk (if your disk is also idle.)
But, using hardware that would otherwise be idle is "resource intensive." It's a matter of perspective.
+1 rambling for me? I'd settle for a cookie.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Other operating systems don't need to defrag, this is not a feature.
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:4, Insightful)
I for one don't like it thrashing my harddisk all the time. How do I know the Vista defragging is good? I like my O&O Defrag software, it defrags based on times that the files were accessed. How do I turn off this auto-defragging? I have yet to find an option for this. So, instead of bothering to google for how to do it, I just run XP. I have full control that way.
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:4, Informative)
Strangely enough, the easiest way to turn it off is to start Disk Defragmenter, uncheck the "Run on a schedule (recommended)" box, then click OK.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista is smart enough not to spin up your disks constantly or do CPU-intensive busywork while on battery.
Then again, so is Windows 2000 and most flavors of Linux.
Right click on the shortcut (Score:4, Informative)
Or the program executable. Click "Properties". Click on the "Compatibility" tab. Check "disable desktop composition". Then the next time the game gets run, it will drop out of Aero for you so you can alt-tab to your hearts content.
BTW, isn't this were having a video card with more RAM on it would help? It would seem to me the answer is yes.
Re:Oh, that's what made Vista fail!? (Score:4, Informative)
Please read what they said before complaining about it.
They ARE fixing UAC, and they ARE slimming down Vista. I quote from the article.
Among the new features in Windows 7 are an updated interface, including a redesigned task bar; tools to make home networking simpler; and a reworking of the User Account Control feature, which annoyed many Vista users with its constant prompts. It also aims to give better performance than Vista and supports a touch-screen interface, though few PCs are likely to use that feature at first.
The minimum recommended hardware for the beta includes a 1-GHz processor, 1GB of system memory, 16GB of available disk space and support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (to enable the Aero theme), Microsoft said.
(emphasis mine)
My mistake about this - it wasn't this article that had the "lean" part... it was this one [pcworld.com]:
At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced a free public beta of the new OS, which reportedly will be less of a resource hog than Vista and may even run well on netbooks. The Windows 7 public beta is reportedly "feature complete" and will expire on Aug. 1, 2009.
Microsoft says Windows 7 is a leaner, stripped-down OS that will require as little as 1GB of memory. Then again, it's fair to be skeptical here. Vista has the same memory requirement but runs sluggishly on systems with 1GB of RAM.
(emphasis mine)
New Task Bar -- wow! (not!) (Score:3, Insightful)
New Task Bar? Do the words "Titanic" and "rearranging the deckchairs" come to mind here?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that's what I thought too. Who gives a flying crap (other than Preston Gralla obviously) about a taskbar?
Solve the incompatibility problems between Vista and XP if you want to impress me. Plug security holes. Drop useless bulk. Or at least provide a way to optionally include it at install time. Streamline. Make it run faster than XP. [cnet.com] Vista performance is embarrassingly atrocious. Fix THAT instead.
All these known problems and complaints, and the best thing you decide to do is to tout a new
I care. I'm surprised to say that I actually do. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, that's what I thought too. Who gives a flying crap (other than Preston Gralla obviously) about a taskbar?
I do, actually. It seems at first like a huge rip-off of Mac OS X's dock, and Microsoft is nothing if not consistent about trying to rip-off Apple.
However, after now having seen some videos of it, I've gone from fear and loathing to interest and appreciation. It looks like MS somehow learned from all the horrible mistakes of Mac OS X's dock and made their new taskbar act like the dock should have. Icons stay in place and don't dance around requiring you to hunt for things. Separation between different apps is easily visible, and the use of color makes it easy to tell what you're hovering over without having to look directly at it. Multiple windows from the same app are grouped together instead of creating clutter. There is clear separation between active apps (in the bar) and the list of apps you'd like to run (in the Start menu).
It brings tears to my eyes. I've hated Mac OS X's dock from the first day I had to use it. As a Classic Mac OS user, I missed my pop-up folders, my segregated menus, and having all my stuff stay in place so that I could click it without looking or even really thinking about it. I bemoaned how with Mac OS X and its "lickable" Aqua interface, Apple was putting flash over functionality when better UI was the whole reason I was a Mac user in the first place.
This jaded old Mac user who has moved to using the command prompt to do everything out of hatred for the new Finder and dock feels something akin to warmth for an MS product for the first time. *sniff*
Re: (Score:3)
Except the task bar is something you use all the time. So an improvement could have a big impact. I have used Computers for so long that I have no problem moving from Windows to KDE to Gnome to OS/X. None of UI differences really seem to affect me too much.
I will give Windows 7 a chance. It may actually be a good OS and a worthy replacement for XP.
Re:New Task Bar -- wow! (not!) (Score:5, Insightful)
By the look of it, they have fired their entire R&D team and using betas of kde 4.2 instead.
Re:New Task Bar -- wow! (not!) (Score:4, Funny)
Microsoft isn't rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Vista is soaring! If anything, Microsoft is rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg!
(With apologies to Stephen Colbert.)
Re:New Task Bar -- wow! (not!) (Score:5, Funny)
New Task Bar? Do the words "Titanic" and "rearranging the deckchairs" come to mind here?
I think the phrase "rearranging the deckchairs" comes to mind ANY time Balmer is involved.
Least popular?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly. If anything, it's the *most* popular. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean that something is liked, but having a lot of people dislike something as in the case of Vista means it's pretty damn popular. Just not for the reasons you'd like. It's easy to tell which is the least popular Windows ever: Windows 1.0. (It would be Microsoft Bob, except that's not actually "Windows".)
However, even for the "most hated" award, it's a tight race between ME and Vista. I'd say the hatred of ME is more intense, while the hate for Vista is more widespread.
Re:Least popular?? (Score:5, Funny)
However, even for the "most hated" award, it's a tight race between ME and Vista. I'd say the hatred of ME is more intense, while the hate for Vista is more widespread.
I don't know, YOU seem like a nice enough guy. Though your self important need to have references to YOU in all caps is a little annoying.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
but having a lot of people dislike something as in the case of Vista means it's pretty damn popular.
I think the word you're looking for is notorious, not popular in its common usage.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In the same lacking sense of logic, you've equated sales to popularity. In today's computer market if you buy a PC it will have Vista, like it or not. You actually have to go out of your way to get something else installed. Sales do not reflect popularity.
Compared to XP, for starters (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking absolute numbers, any software company in the world would be thrilled to sell ~10 million copies of their flagship product every month. So before you call Vista "unpopular" I'd like to ask: "Compared to what?"
Any company except Microsoft. As to your question: compared to XP, obviously, but more importantly to the rate at which the newest Windows replaces the old one. This one's not getting traction.
From a quick look online, it looks like Vista sold less total units than XP in the first 6 months, which is appalling since the total number of installed computers increased a great deal. Additionally, XP is still killing Vista for business sales as of 2008, two years after Vista was launched. And you can't trust MS's numbers, because the XP boxes they're selling now come with Vista licenses and XP pre-loaded, which they do so they can try to inflate their Vista numbers.
Going back to the story, Vista is so good that Microsoft has to run a "Project Mojave" campaign to convince people Vista doesn't suck. It's so good that Microsoft won't even mention it by name and are rushing it's replacement out the door as quickly as possible.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Vista-struggling-to-match-XP-sales/0,130061733,339282002,00.htm
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205210375
http://apcmag.com/xp_still_killing_vista_in_sales_volume_hp.htm
Discount for after July 1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Purchase of Vista?
One of the primary reasons Vista has slow adoption has been the tiers and pricing.
What's it is printed, the development costs are sunk. The need to have one tier of windows 7, and change 99 bucks for it.
It is far better for them to get everybody onboard the new system, then it is dealing with the hassle of corporations ahving so many versions.
It is also in there best interests to set the stage to ditch all legacy 32bit apps they sell.
Hell sell it for 59.99 and they would move 100 million the first year. Everyone on Vista will move over, as would people holding out on XP.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One of the primary reasons Vista has slow adoption has been the tiers and pricing.
Microsoft is a price maker. (look it up on wikipedia) They can charge whatever they want. Charge too much and some regulator/law enforcement authority will have to pretend to do something, eventually.
They don't have to charge too little because it's just throwing money away. No one else will capture the value, so it's their loss.
Discounts are a bad, bad thing. Like coupons, discount shoppers are your worst customers.
Hell
OS or GUI??? (Score:4, Interesting)
So the bulk of the article gushes all over the taskbar, with a bit of Aero thrown in...
Are the pundits so brain dead that they don't know the difference between an OS and a UI? A taskbar is not an OS.
The koolaid must be good.....
I want to hear what they did with the DRM. I want to hear what they've done to make the system more stable under load. I want to hear that they now have a package manager, instead of DLL hell. I want to hear that drivers now ship with the OS, and I don't have to install 70 MB of bloatware just to "install" a keyboard.
Oh wait, but look at that icon on the taskbar..... Slurp, slurp, damn that koolaid tastes good.
Re:OS or GUI??? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're confusing issues. They are reviewing the new version of Windows. The specific definition of Operating System is ultimately meaningless in this discussion.
The new taskbar and other UI tweaks are a part of the new version of Windows.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
You want an analogy that isn't a car analogy? You've got your "the OS is just a wrapper around the BIOS. Applications should do whatever they want" folk. These are the tech equivalent of "government is the root of all problems, remove it from everything"... call them Regan republicans or perhaps Ron Paul style republicans.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the "your OS should do pretty much everything, applications aren't able to making proper decisions without OS intervention". Are these guys the far-left who want government to do everything? Are these guys the tech version of socialists? Dunno.
And if you want my opinion, the OS is more then a shim around the bios. Operating systems (like the government) had to evolve to meet the needs of a growing, more complex set of applications and requirements (ditto with our governments). Going back to a "pure" operating system that just wraps the Bios and presents a green console just wouldn't work, same with going back to a razor thin US federal government. The OS needs to enforce rules and needs to dictate what applications (citizens) can and cannot do or else the whole thing will fail.
On the other hand, if you let the operating system do too much, you will piss off your developers and worse, probably piss off various governments (think anti-trust). Let your government get too big, you'll piss off the citizens and worse, risk bankruptcy.
I'll let somebody else flesh this out.
Re:OS or GUI??? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the bulk of the article gushes all over the taskbar, with a bit of Aero thrown in...
Are the pundits so brain dead that they don't know the difference between an OS and a UI? A taskbar is not an OS.
The koolaid must be good.....
I want to hear what they did with the DRM. I want to hear what they've done to make the system more stable under load. I want to hear that they now have a package manager, instead of DLL hell. I want to hear that drivers now ship with the OS, and I don't have to install 70 MB of bloatware just to "install" a keyboard.
Oh wait, but look at that icon on the taskbar..... Slurp, slurp, damn that koolaid tastes good.
Then you should go read the Engineering Windows 7 blog, not Slashdot. The audience for this review are the general crowd, not Slashdotters. What DRM are you talking about? I keep hearing about it, but no real life examples of how it's hindering ANYONE. DLL hell? When was the last time it affected you? Also, shipping all drivers will make the OS around a few TB. They actually try to include most drivers that are in popular hardware. Are you okay with that?
Shipping most drivers are stupid anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
By the time you get the CD they are already out of date. If you assume the end user has an internet connection, you can leave out all but drivers for the IO and the netcard. The rest, like video card drivers can either come off the driver CD that came with the video card (i.e. a non-internet user) or get downloaded off the magical inter-tele-tubes.
Seriously, I'm a nerd so this doesn't count... but isn't the first thing you do with a new piece of hardware is throw away the CD and download the current drive
Codename (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, won't sign up until it's given a cool name like 'Moab', 'Durango', or 'Rumplestilskin' and a slick marketing campaign designed to fool me into upgrading.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sets loose? (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, that title just invokes thoughts of Gandalf sitting there saying "Escaped? Or was set loose?" Followed by a freakly looking Windows 7 Beta slinking around in the shadows.
Windows 7 admin/root accounts and 64-bit (Score:5, Informative)
From what I understand, Windows 7 is Vista with some GUI improvement, significant performance enhancements, and new features. It's not a rewrite. It doesn't break backward compatibility. It doesn't solve the 32-bit 64-bit dilemma that both Linux and OS X are addressing. It doesn't eliminate the behaviour of configuring user accounts to be admin/root by default. It also doesn't force application developers to break old habits.
It's definitely an improvement over Vista, but Microsoft is bound by backward compatibility requirements to keep shipping OS's that are fundamentally broken and that do not allow for 32-bit apps and drivers to run out of one 64-bit OS.
They missed a golden opportunity to fix these problems to keep their OS relevant in terms of keeping up with OS technology.
Re:Windows 7 admin/root accounts and 64-bit (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't solve the 32-bit 64-bit dilemma that both Linux and OS X are addressing. It doesn't eliminate the behaviour of configuring user accounts to be admin/root by default.
So, you've never actually used Vista x64 then?
Windows vs Apple 64-bit on the desktop (Score:5, Informative)
... Microsoft is bound by backward compatibility requirements to keep shipping OS's that are fundamentally broken and that do not allow for 32-bit apps and drivers to run out of one 64-bit OS.
Here's a run-down on Windows and Apple's 64-bit support on the desktop:
As you can see, Microsoft has been clearly in front of Apple regarding 64-bit application support. The fact that Apple did not support graphical 64-bit applications until October 2007 is frankly embarrassing, considering that 64-bit Windows has had this support since the first 64-bit OS in 2001.
It should also be noted that Microsoft was really important in bringing AMD64 (x64) to market. Intel was dragging its feet with Itanium, issuing press releases downplaying Itanium on the desktop, stating that 64-bit computing only made sense for servers. Microsoft's David Cutler reportedly went to Intel, asking them to introduce a set of 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set. Intel refused. So Dave started working with AMD, and in 2004 the AMD64 Hammer CPU was born. Intel was basically forced to come out with an AMD64 clone they dubbed "EMT64", about 6 months later. It is unlikely that Intel would have supported x64 unless Microsoft had agreed to support the new AMD CPU. Dave Cutler reportedly had Server 2003 running on the Hammer prototype a few hours after receiving it.
You can still see a remnant of the close AMD relationship on 64-bit Windows by opening a shell and typing "echo %processor_architecture%". Hint: it doesn't say X64.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
People with older 32-bit chip sets? Not everyone has a new computer. You do realize that most Linux distro's specifically offer 32-bit and 64-bit versions, don't you? How is that any different?
What I do know is that when I ran Vista 64 bit I was running a plethora of 32-bit applications. I do know that system-level drivers required 64-bit versions, but I had no issues finding those for my hardware. I don't anymore as I lost my MSDN subscription when my job changed, and frankly Vista isn't worth paying
Re:Windows 7 admin/root accounts and 64-bit (Score:4, Informative)
For older hardware. Windows 7 has the same requirements as Vista (it technically runs on much weaker hardware, but for now thats the official requirements anyway), so it is likely to be used on the same machines in some cases. So still need a 32 bit version. Windows 64 bit does 32 bit backward compatibility -really- well, there are extremely few exceptions, but for all practical purpose, the only reason people with Vista don't use 64 bit, is because for whatever reason, many OEMs don't ship it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it is a minor waste if you *don't* need the extra registers and address space? If they're seriously designing this to be more fleet on 1Gb of RAM (and hence possibly older systems as well as the more "netbook" style very low power/slim portables, quite a few of which may not even be x64) why *not* release a 32-bit compilation as well as the 64-bit build for newer systems?
It isn't like everything has to be the One Right Answer, you know.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting note on the MSDN download.... (Score:5, Informative)
'To protect your MP3 files' - uhm, wtf?!
Re:Interesting note on the MSDN download.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody Upgrade During a Depression (Score:3, Insightful)
Because during a recession/depression, people are tightening their belts. Statistics already show that people are not spending and have already done their nesting spending and are putting everything else into the bank in case something terrible happens which is causing the economy even further troubles.
So who is left to buy their OS (which most likely will require a new computer as they always do)? Not consumers as they are hurting. Not businesses as they are cash strapped. Not the government as they are tryiong to make up for a deficit.
I say good luck getting those sales. This one may be a good OS (*cough* recycled VISTA *cough*) but it will most likely fail on release due to the economic collapse.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 7 has the same requirements as Vista, and in the real world, runs on the same boxes as XP easily (it IS being designed for netbooks, after all), so I doubt hardware will be an issue.
Keep in mind that many of Microsoft's customers go through subscription-like volume licensing...so they're paying for it recession or not, too. Considering the enthusiasm I see on various forums and community about it...it will do decent. Not a Win95 launc
Hatred for Vista is so over-blown (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, Microsoft is right about one thing: if you set people down in front of Vista and dont' tell them it's Vista, they love it. Tell them it's Vista, and they hate it.
People are PRIMED to hate the OS based on the name and based on really over-blown and inaccurate Apple ads, and really bad experiences SOME users had in the first year (due to the "Vista Capable" debacle mostly).
Since SP1, Vista has been very usable. I've been using it almost since it came out, and it's a perfectly decent OS. In fact, I sorta hate going back to XP now... I miss too many good things about Vista, like the instant search features, new Start menu, and just some of the look and feel.
Nobody seems to remember how much people HATED the old "XP" when it first came out. It didn't really become popular until SP2 was released.
Most of the anti-Vista sentiment is simply irrational and baseless.
Are there some things not to like? Sure. I turn off UAC immediately. There are a few quirks in the new Windows Explorer that I don't like (and which seem to be unchanged in Windows 7). But really, beyond that? It's much more stable, and full featured than XP, and it looks a hell of a lot better. Yeah, it's a memory pig, but I run with plenty of memory for my needs, and have no problems. And after 2 years of use, it's "slowed down" far less than comparable XP machines have (the old "Windows Decay" problem).
Am I looking forward to Windows 7? Definitely. It seems to fix the memory-pig and performance issues that Vista admittedly does have (a bigger issue on laptops than my desktop), but the fact will remain that it's little more than Vista with some spit and polish... and everyone will love it because it's "not Vista".
Vista-hate is getting to be tedious and facile, and it really is more psychological than real.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to agree... Vista works just fine for my needs and while it's far from "amazing", it works without a hitch and doesn't crash.
Isn't that what folks always tout about Linux? It doesn't crash? Rock solid stability?
I don't get all the brouahaha.
Re:What about us Vista users? (Score:5, Informative)
http://linksubmit.net/?8e8296 [linksubmit.net]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have one Vista PC in the house and it is only used for gaming. CoD4, CoD5, Left4Dead, Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2 etc.. In 8 months I have not had a single issue with it unt
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
See Mark Russinovich Explains MinWin Once and For All [windows-now.com].
MinWin is there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What you're looking for is called VMware Workstation.
Re:pRivacy Issues (Score:5, Informative)
here's a preview (Score:4, Funny)
http://xkcd.com/528/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is that twitter, all his supposed sockpuppets, and all his accusers are in fact the same person with a severe case of multiple personality disorder.
Shhhh. Who cares? If he says something insightful, he'll be modded as such. If he says something, well, kinda meh, like he did above, it'll just settle under the radar of most people, like it has here. That's the brilliance of the Slashcode moderation system. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters what you say.
Everyone who's yelling about twitte
A Glowing Review (Score:5, Funny)
They've...taken Vista, polished it up and threw in some nice UI tweaks...It's much snappier, and I really like the facelift given to apps like Paint and Wordpad
Well, we couldn't ask for a more compelling review than that! I don't care what people say about 64 bits, UAC, DRM, or corrupted mp3's. Paint and Wordpad have always been there for me!~
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, it clearly shows how good their marketing department is: selling 80 million copies of software that noone wants to use -- an achievement of its own.