XP Users Are Willing To Give Windows 7 a Chance 720
Harry writes "PC World and Technologizer conducted a survey of 5,000 people who use Windows XP as their primary operating system. Many have no plans to leave it, and 80% will be unhappy when Microsoft completely discontinues it. And attitudes towards Vista remain extremely negative. But a majority of those who know something about Windows 7 have a positive reaction. More important, 70 percent of respondents who have used Windows 7 say they like it, which is a sign that Windows 7 stands a chance of being what Vista never was: an upgrade good enough to convince most XP users to switch."
Try Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's stopping you from trying the beta ? Put up a new harddrive / empty a small partition, turn on your AHCI and install windows 7!
Time to put those 8gb of ram to some use besides in linux :)
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Any real geek has a machine with multiple partitions and multiple OSes already installed - VM not necessary.
For example, I've got the latest Ubuntu (32 and 64 bit) XP (32-bit) Vista (64-bit) ReactOS (32-bit) MenuetOS (64-bit) and just for shits and grins I have 98SE installed as well.
Also, if one OS dies, the other operating systems are still there to use. As long as the bootloader itself does not get screwed up, I'm fine.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go. Found it at the bottom of the RSAT forum page from MS. RSAT for Windows 7 [microsoft.com]
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Funny)
RSAT Tools were out on Friday. What kind of techie are you if you're unable to find them?
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Funny)
I tried the RTM on Friday. No Remote Server Administration Tools. Google turns up a blog on technet with a dead link to RSAT beta.
I guess going to download.microsoft.com [microsoft.com], typing "Remote Server Administration Tools Windows 7" [microsoft.com] into the search box and hitting enter is too hard?
Because that would have - surprisingly, I know - worked?
np: Kode9 & The Spaceape - Addiction (Memories Of The Future)
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My laptop came with vista about two years ago, and maybe 4 months in it pissed me off so much I switched to Linux. There were issues that I found annoying, like the broadcast flag you mentioned (my laptop was never powerful enough to play anyting outside the monitor at any quality anyway, so that was purely ideological) and the heavy resource usage. But there were also some dealbreakers, mostly hardware issues that were taken care of with Win98 - like my USB mouse, a plain-jane generic usb mouse, I had to
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Informative)
With Linux, often the assumption is made that you are running a similar configuration as the developer, and critical libraries may be missing and the response is just "well, you should have that already".
No.
All packages that are built from source automatically detect your libraries and will build whatever works with them -- as long as you install development packages if you use anything built from source. If libraries are missing, you just install them.
All packages that are provided for Debian or Ubuntu already refer to all dependencies, so unless you go out of your way to install them "the Windows way" (download package in a browser, use dpkg from command line to install it, instead of using a repository), everything happens automatically.
All packages that have their own installers, carry libraries with themselves (this is what all Windows installers do).
The only things that don't fit into those categories that I have seen recently are truly ancient applications that are a massive pain in the neck to install on any OS, Unix equivalents of DOS applications. Last example of this that I have seen was Xilinx FPGA Editor -- it insisted on Motif and portmap, did not recognize screen number, and was not packaged for Ubuntu, so I had to configure such an environment for it manually.
Well, I don't, and now I have to scour the web to find the missing libraries - which also aren't in the repositories - in order to install an app.
If they are binary Debian/Ubuntu packages, that's because libraries are in the maintainer's repository along with them. You NEVER "scour the web" for Linux libraries' binaries. The only way to produce a valid Debian package that depends on a library is to have another package with that library and refer to it -- so consistency is maintained.
If they are only available as source tarballs (what by now only applies to bleeding-edge development stuff), you see all their names in the output of ./configure, look up the repository, and only if they are not there you may have to look for them elsewhere -- usually in a README file that you forgot to read in the first place.
The difference between Linux and Windows is, in Linux if you want to do anything outside of what Debian, or Ubuntu, or Fedora
Or it's in Ubuntu Launchpad PPA for that package, where you can get pretty much everything that ever was released as open source and is somewhat maintained by someone. Or in a private repository.
think you should need to do you have to hack it. Hacks and workarounds are the norm in Linux, and don't tell me it's not because I've used it off and on for the last 15 years.
If installing from manufacturer/developer's package is a "hack", then all Windows applications require hacks to be installed as well.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're wrong. The Custom option can preserve your hard disks content, and you can transfer all your user settings using USMT (Corporate) or Windows Easy Transfer (Home User).
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You'd be wrong, though... XP is NT5 kernel, vista is NT6, 7 is NT6.1... aside from the numbering changes, though, Vista/7 make some pretty significant changes to the way that drivers talk to the hardware/operating system that mean that, aside from the UI changes, it's not really fair to call either Vista or 7 an extension of XP. Vista really is a complete rewrite, and 7 is more of a bugfix and new UI for Vista (which, incidentally, is a huge upg
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(Yes, there's a 64 bit XP, and yes, it has horrible driver support)
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
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To back up Freon, I've been using XP x64 since its release, as my primary (home, gaming) OS.
There are no driver issues. Even my no-name webcam works.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Funny)
^ This is the typical slashdotter.
Sitting around seething in hatred towards Microsoft, clinging to Windows until the Year Of The Linux Desktop finally arrives.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Informative)
Speak for yourself. For me, this is Year 5 of the Linux Desktop, and my "seething" at Microsoft has long since cooled to "very occasionally annoyed when forced to look at someone's Windows box".
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Insightful)
Clinging to the least necessary Windows as an annoying middleware to Adobe web tools running in a qemu VM after 8 years with a linux desktop. When I say least, I mean XP stripped down to barest classic view, barest servers and optimized for acceptable performance. If Adobe came out with linux versions of everything, a whole class of tech people wouldn't need Windows.
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OS X was designed in an era when 3D chips were pretty primitive, so it falls back onto the CPU if the graphics chips aren't up to snuff. If you check the system profiler, "Quartz Extreme" probably isn't enabled on your MacBook.
IIRC, MS eventually came around to the same conclusion and Win7 will emulate DX9 on the CPU for certain chipsets.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Funny)
The ancient GMA950 chip in my netbook runs Windows 7 Aero glass liquid smooth.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is important to add the 3d effects to the UI, no matter what anybody says.
I say, sorry, no, it's not.
Some of the 2D stuff that you get from these hardware-accelerated compositing window managers, like drop shadows and zooming, is actually useful. Most of the 3D stuff is complete eye candy fluff.
Not that I'm complaining -- I do think it's a step in the right direction, though I wonder if it's the right approach. (If I put SVG stuff on my KDE4 desktop -- even as a wallpaper -- and zoom in, what happens?) But at the same time, you shouldn't need a 3D desktop to use a word processor.
But it's funny how my wife's old Macbook with the ancient GMA 950 chip runs OS-X liquid smooth.
Try Compiz on just about any card. It's the main reason I'm not down on this stuff in general -- because it can be done right. But again, requiring it, or overplaying its importance, is a mistake. At the end of the day, the GUI, the mouse, the web browser and web apps, are all innovations that burn more CPU than they ought to, but pay off immensely. 3D effects in a 2D UI, so far, give you about two minutes of "Ooh, Shiny", and then it's back to work, with very little difference.
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Drop shadows help distinguish the window border, without making the border itself ginormous. By being sort of pseudo-3D, they tap into a part of our brain that's used to dealing with real 3D objects, and make it very easy for us to tell what's part of the window we're looking at, and what's part of another window.
Again, not important, but useful.
A similar example might be the fact that when I get a modal dialog box, that actually intends to block me from doing anything with its parent window until I deal wi
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once XP is completely dead, then I guess I'm done with Windows entirely.
The fact that you still run XP shows you need Windows. I bet you will be running Win7 in the future.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Funny)
As an XP user all I can say is GO TO HELL Microsoft. I am done with your carnival sideshow of needless upgrades and pointless eye candy.
Once XP is completely dead, then I guess I'm done with Windows entirely.
OK. So what exactly will you move on to next then? Mac OS X with the same number of upgrades and pointless eye candy? Other Linux/BSD distributions that also have the same number of upgrades and pointless eye candy? Or are you just going to forgo all that and use the command-line exclusively?
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just something to point out, necessary applications aside, it is fully possible to move to Linux with a minimalistic desktop. On an Ubuntu system (the flagship desktop distribution), one can either install XFCE or just grab Xubuntu and run with that.
With that said, I don't see it entirely as a bad thing that Windows, Max OSX, and modern linux distributions bundle eye candy into their newer offerings. Something that is easier on the eyes, or gives the user a bit of shiny will create an overall positive experience. I mean we all could have gotten along very well with our current GUI looking like Windows 3.1 in term of style but part of the user experience is how sleek and nice an interface is. It's why some people buy Macs, others install Compiz, and many XP users will go to Windows 7 even if all their previous applications work perfectly well in XP.
Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Interesting)
As an XP user all I can say is GO TO HELL Microsoft. I am done with your carnival sideshow of needless upgrades and pointless eye candy.
Once XP is completely dead, then I guess I'm done with Windows entirely.
I'm also a dedicated XP user. You are being unreasonable.
I have been using Windows 7 for a couple of months. Without having metrics to back up my personal experience, I find that it does everything at least as well as XP, and many things better.
Most noticeably, it has a user interface which doesn't look like it was designed in the mid 1990s. It looks and 'feels' a hell of a lot better, as well as being vastly more customizable. Maybe this doesn't matter to you, but it does to me and I would suggest to most computer users. Overall the UI in Windows 7 looks good and is very responsive.
Various other things work a lot better than they used to - for instance, my laptop has an HDMI port. This was a constant nightmare on XP, and frequently didn't work at all or did weird things like resetting my display settings for the laptop itself whenever it was connected to a TV. Windows 7 just figures out what it is plugged into and switches to the most appropriate video-out mode. Similarly, whereas switching screens under XP frequently causes issues with a video that was playing fine on one screen not transferring to another without restarting playback, in Win 7 this seems to happen seamlessly. Audio likewise is a lot simpler and easier to configure.
Unlike Vista, MS seems to have done a good job of working out when additional security is appropriate - e.g. when software wants to actually make changes to installed components or add drivers to the system, a password or fingerprint scan is required, but I am yet to be annoyed at an inappropriate time as I was in Vista.
Games seem to work just as well as they do in XP, which is a huge contrast to Vista (which came with my laptop and ran games like an absolute dog).
It starts up and shuts down a lot more quickly than XP.
The media centre (can't remember what it's called) is actually pretty good for use on a plasma TV.
However, most noticeable is that most of the time I DON'T notice that I'm using Win 7, or any particular OS - stuff just works properly without any real need for fiddling around.
So, from one XP adherent to another, I say: maybe you should give it a go. Vista was a horror from the pits of hell as far as I am concerned. MS may be a big evil lumbering corporate monster, but someone there appears to have taken the problems with Windows by the balls and actually focused on making an operating system that has the following features: modern; actually works even on modest hardware; good user experience. My experience so far indicates that they have largely succeeded.
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Re:Try Windows 7? (Score:4, Insightful)
All the studies I have seen show W7 as being the same speed, or slightly faster than Vista, on the same hardware, even for gaming. There is no speed increase with W7, more likely you are using a newer computer.
I won't be moving to W7, I have no reason to waste time learning a new OS. Microsoft enjoy moving everything around, for no reason, like changing the control panel. Such a huge pain in the ass trying to do the simplest of stuff, because Microsoft love tinkering with stuff.
You don't get this on Mac OS.
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The UI is a huge leap backwards.
Looks and 'feels' aren't going to increase productivity. The complete lack of text on the task bar means I have to learn what each icon represents and then have to mouse over it or open the item to figure out what it actually is. In XP or Vista I can just look at the task bar and figure out which server's I've RDP's and SSH'd into,
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I think you're being a little unfair (or trolling). I'll bite. First, a qualifier:
I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I confess that I like Windows 7. (To qualify: I used Gentoo as my primary desktop OS for about 1.5 years, switched to XP when I had a semester of .NET development at uni, and then recently switched to Win 7 to try it out with the public beta--I've been impressed thus far.)
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I never said it was difficult.
This is not my issue, my issue is with the all icon interface, I do this anyway (it's second nature now so I forget that I even do it) but even if I do this I'm still stuck with the all icon (no text) interface. There is less information at a glance and they have taken away much pertinent information lik
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Agreed - I love how this story gets tagged "astroturf" simply because it presents news that's favourable to Microsoft.
Yet the daily Apple Slashvertisements (including today's news about the Iphone being the number one selling phone in Japan this month - god knows why that's news, we never get stories on all the other phones that are number one selling phones in any country, every month), oh, that's fine.
I could at least understand the pro-Linux / anti-MS stance, as at least that's embracing open solutions.
The real test is not users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real test is not users (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Sorry, but nope. SysAdmins are the ones who have to suffer from changes, they're not the ones that make or even decide them. There are 3 deciding factors when it comes to a system switch:
1) Requirements of a top important application
2) Golf partners of decision makers
3) Investment cycles
Only the first reason is one that is based on technical issues, and even in those the average Admin (and sometimes even CTO) has little if any say in. Essentially, if MS wants to "force" enterprise customers to update, they need to nudge the makers of important enterprise applications (Autodesk, SAP...) to require newer systems.
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Meh, that "proof" is as useless as ever. Enterprise customers are always, always slow and they try to minimize every possible upgrade they must make. But when push comes to shove they'll take the smallest bump possible, which will be Windows. The business case for an upgrade is almost always negative, for whatever small gains the OS gives there's the cost of software, hardware, updating any and all guides and training, administration procedures, scripting etc. which makes it basically a "dentist project". N
Users like Macs so it will go down well (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a pity that the 5 digits per seat software my users run starts and stop services just to put stuff on the screen so every user would need Admin access and UAC turne
DRM? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does Windows 7 have more DRM or less than Windows XP? I think my decision to switch will be primarily biased along that criteria.
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
The RC Release Candidate is downloadable for another 2 days (until the 20th, I believe)...so just try it.
The DRM seems like it always has...if you own the media, or it is DRM free, then you shouldn't have a problem. The amount of annoying dialogs for permissions is wayyy less than Vista. It is smooth, fast, better laid, and I've not had a single crash or let down over the last few weeks of trying it out. The layout is much cleaner, OS X users will immediately "get" the dock (whether you like it or not is another issue)...
My main curiousity was the Media Center (got a deal on a PC from a friend that is dedicated to that purpose, leaving me to do my "work" on an old PowerMac) and it is amazingly good vs. Vista's complete F%^%*!? dissapointment.
I was adamant that MS owed Vista MC users some love, and felt shafted to need an OS to finally get a WMC that works, but this is soooo much better all the way around...and @ the pre-ordered $49 goes a long, long way to fixing the hurt.
The RC will work well into 2010, so freakin' load it up and see for yourself...what do you have to loose...?
For the record, my main machines have been macs since 84, occasional Win and Nix experiences. I'm overdue for a new desktop, hate Apple's choice of iMac with fixed graphics and screen, or a $2000 Pro Mac sucks... This could really be the jump ship point for me to be a reverse switcher...
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
, so freakin' load it up and see for yourself...what do you have to loose [sic]...?
Time,
and "time is money, friend!"
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows has never gotten in your way of doing anything. If we can conclude something, it's that you have failed at multimedia.
Learn to google? Doom9.net?
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Is that even a sentence? What?
If it supports more DRMed formats than before, is that "having more DRM"? If you mean Windows activation, it's business as usual.. you put in the key and it registers on the activation servers.
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Does Windows 7 have more DRM or less than Windows XP? I think my decision to switch will be primarily biased along that criteria.
You can do everything in 7 that you could do in XP (i.e. there are no new restrictions on existing stuff). On the other hand, it has new DRM for stuff which you can't handle without supporting some - such as BluRay.
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People who keep asking this are ill informed. DRM exists in whatever it is protecting not in the OS (besides a decoder).
Bollocks. Microsoft have been trying to get DRM into hardware (e.g. encrypted framebuffers for graphics chips) and the low level of the operating system for years... the only reason we don't have it is because it's a retarded idea that would trash the market share of any hardware company who implemented it.
I'm committed to Windows 7. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm committed to Windows 7. (Score:5, Funny)
I bet your VCR has 12:00:00 on it too :P
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Congratulations on being the minority on slashdot, if you don't ever re-install the OS on your machine or learn to switch out the one on there for a newer (or older, Vista -> XP) one then you most certainly aren't the norm here, I might even go as far as to say, you simply don't belong here.
so they've rebranded vista... (Score:3, Interesting)
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More less. FWIW having ran the RC for a while, I hope they improve it a lot between that an release. Truthfully, though I'm normally a Mac user anyways, on my Windows machines I prefer Vista to 7 (and XP to Vista in turn). I'm sure 7 has some nifty features that I haven't discovered yet, but it really drags on a machine that ran XP and even Vista ok. For a while it was eating 100% of my RAM until I noticed that the .NET Runtime Optimization service (or something named pretty close to that - not on the W
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If you have some ".NET Runtime Optimization service" running, you're doing Windows wrong. If you're going to use Windows you have to trim the fat.
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As someone running Windows 7 final (MSDN), I have to say that it's pretty ridiculous to expect end users to "trim the fat" from their OS.
That said, I haven't had any such issues except once when I opened the system information dialog and inadvertently triggered the refresh of my Windows Experience Index measurement. This spawned a background process to run some benchmarks, and continued running after I closed the dialog. Took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on.
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.NET Runtime optimization is actually one of the neater technologies in the MS world. In short, it's compiling native language libraries for commonly used interfaces that would have to be run in a VM. All you need to do is leave the computer alone for a short while so it can chug through. You can explicitly command it to finish the queued compilation tasks per the instructions here.
When it's working properly that's about the just of it - however my machine (a 2.5ghz Quad core with 4gb ram) had nearly a week of being left alone to chug through, with 3 or 4 reboots in between - didn't ever finish up. I also tried the stated command since it was suggested in a google query I had made, but it didn't clear anything up.
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A little of both, but I gotta believe it's mostly marketing combined with the maturity of Vista-focused third-party software development.
Windows 7 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
At my job, we're all learning linux, latex, openoffice and hiring programmers to get us off MS software all together. Granted, I'm the boss, so it makes it easier, but it is still a very gradual process. Also, my employees have started bringing in their personal laptops with Ubuntu on them -- I figure now is as good a time as any. Our IT department will try to get us to upgrade to Win7 but I will fight the upgrade train as much as politically sane to do, because I'm just not interested in learning it and I'm really tired of getting screwed by MS with every other OS. I keep XP around because lots of software runs only on it and nothing else, especially PCs that control equipment. These PCs will need to stay, but we no longer need dedicated windows desktops in the group, the last one is now dual-booting to debian. Everything else except the equipment drivers is mac or linux.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
I may get modded troll for this, but open source != quality code. In theory, it is more likely that that is the case, but I have seen some open source code that made me die a little on the inside. Microsoft's developers are generally smart people who know their job. Many of the issues that ships with the operating system results from very poor (and too much, IMO) management. (For the record, I am not a Microsoft employee...I just like following various companies, of which Microsoft is one.)
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Microsoft's developers are generally smart people who know their job.
This is something that's often puzzled me: the Microsoft developers I've come across seem to be smart and perfectly capable of producing a high-quality product. Yet the company perpetually churns out steaming donkey shit.
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There is no "learning" Windows - if your job requires you to "learn" your operating system, and you're not a desktop tech, you're spending too much time dicking around with fonts, themes, and control panel widgets.
As a certified office instructor (one of many side jobs), I'm required by my job to learn Windows. A lot of users are confused when they start Vista for the first time. Within 30 minutes, and a few "Where is" questions, they are up, running and playing with fonts, themes, and control panel widgets. As to Unix desktop bashing, I prefer KDE 4.2 to Vista. Everything is easy to use and it doesn't require 2GB RAM to run. But, to each their own...
Windows Vista is a good product (Score:5, Insightful)
I have Macs on my desktops, and I run Linux for my number crunching machines. So, I'm no Microsoft fanboy. However, it seems to me that Microsoft actually tried to do the right thing with Vista... namely they built a reasonably secure operating system from the ground up and decided to actually enforce the programming paradigms. The problem isn't with Vista, it's with the antiquated applications that still need tons of shims to work. For example, I recently installed Quicken on my father in law's XP machine and discovered that it wouldn't work unless running as an admin account, which is simply absurd! So, I worry that Windows 7 is just a light weight version of Vista with most of the security rolled back so that insecure applications will be able to continue running and users won't complain about their favorite applications breaking.
Re:Windows Vista is a good product (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it seems to me that Microsoft actually tried to do the right thing with Vista... namely they built a reasonably secure operating system from the ground up and decided to actually enforce the programming paradigms. The problem isn't with Vista, it's with the antiquated applications that still need tons of shims to work.
Nope. And thats part of the problem. Vista started life as the Server 2003 SP1 code after the restart on Longhorn. UAC and such was just bolted on, .Net was kicked to the curb inside the OS, and the OS was rushed out the door from code restart to ship in 18 months. This quick cycle left driver vendors hanging, leading to compatibility issues day one. It also lead to some horrendous bugs, like Direct X apps using up twice as much memory as they should and so on.
A proper new secure OS from Microsoft would have to pull the same trick Apple did. Throw the old OS in a box, allow it to run in the new OS, and kick all old APIs to the curb. A good start would be the Singularity OS Microsoft has in it's research labs.
Re:Windows Vista is a good product (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently put Windows 7 on my Bootcamp partition and I've been pleasantly surprised. It runs pretty snappy on this older MacBook with 2GB of ram. All of our Windows based apps work fine. I could even get it to boot in Parallels Desktop 3, but not do much. (Need to upgrade to Parallels 4 to get it to work with Windows 7). Hell, it recognized the Airport card out of the box. Same with the Intel GMA drivers. Only thing I needed from Bootcamp was the "Restart in OSX" option.
I've even installed Windows 7 on a number of friends vista machine and they all are much more impressed at how snappy it is compared to Vista even on older hardware.
secure! (Score:5, Funny)
And this time, unlike Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista, Windows 7 really will be secure. Really!
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It is. A lot of old exploits don't work anymore, just as every time. And just like every time before, we'll get new exploits.
Generally though we'll see a lot more social engineering and "you have to install this or something horrible happens", as well as a shift more towards third party applications, as we've seen already. The security hole in MS systems these days isn't Windows anymore. It's mostly plugins for Browsers, at least for now. The new Windows is Flash and PDF reader. At least 'til Adobe gets its
pretty much have to (Score:2)
Do the users/sysadmins want to change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our university department is cash strapped right now and despite heavy discounts we will NOT be moving to 7 unless it comes installed on a computer. We might if we are lucky get it in the 2011 FY budget. Unlikely though. Our users are so used to the look and feel that they likely would balk at the 7 upgraded look, and ask us to put back in the "classic" look. Yes the Windows 2000 look. Not that new XP Luna stuff. 2000. Thats why we are not switching to 7 anytime soon. The users could care less and our administrators wont give us the money.
Plus, were a little lazy and dont want to reinstall all of those comptuers.
Mohave (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember the Mohave ads? Microsoft showed people a "new" OS and supposedly they liked it (although they could only really see it under very controlled conditions that would not show the faults, like driver incompatability). And then it was revealed that the OS was really Vista, which no one liked.
Now jump forward to the present. MS finally has a service pack that will fix many of the problems in Vista (although not all, and it still has very Vista characteristic performance benchmarks). Someone at M$ wan
I'm (sorta) one of them (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been a 99% Linux user since 2000, including 3 years of law school where I really only used Windows during exams because of Exam4 requirements. However, I'm starting a job at a (small) law firm and my laptop has Win 7 all loaded up and running. My prognosis so far: I can live with 7, especially because it runs Firefox and Cygwin runs Bash and basic UNIX utilities OK as well. I can even use VIM.
Is it particularly fast? No, but it is not insanely slow. My laptop is recent but not super-high end, 2.2Ghz Core2 with 4GB of RAM is the good part, the Intel graphics are the bad part. Frankly, the Aero effects on Windows 7 work just as well as the compositing effects from KDE 4.3, meaning that they do work, but not blazingly fast like on my desktop with the Nvidia card. As for memory usage... despite claims to the contrary, Linux using a modern, fully featured desktop uses a little bit less RAM, but not significantly less. I'm not even close to filling up my 4GB even with office, firefox, and miscellaneous junk running, so no biggies there.
I'm not a fan of Windows, I think that Windows 7 is somewhat boring for a "huge" release, but it does get the job done. My new job is concerned with me being able to write office documents and access Exchange + a small windows network, which Win7 makes stupidly simple. Do I miss virtual desktops? Sure. Am I annoyed that Windows still doesn't have very good window management and that I can't get rid of the annoying borders on my windows that the Bespin [sourceforge.net] KDE theme lets me annihilate? You bet. At the same time, Windows does make certain configuration tasks easier (especially graphics & wireless even though I can and do use graphical utilities under Linux).
I'm not saying that I couldn't do this just as well in Linux, but I am saying that I don't have the time to get my system tweaked to the rest of the office... at least immediately. This is a small law firm with technically proficient lawyers, and being the most junior associate I won't be shocked if I get some IT related tasks from time to time, but my day job is to be able to use nice boring office software, which Windows 7 allows for in a reasonably secure way.
As for the XP part of this... I had an old XP license that I did purchase fair & square (for $10 from my University back in the day). It could have gotten the job done for a while, but Win7 really does have better security and like it or not it is the path forward. One major feature that Win7 has over XP is the find option in the start menu. Since MS keeps screwing with the Control Panel and everything else, I almost never bother to hunt through menus. Instead I just type in what I want to do in the search bar and it does a very good job of finding what I want. In fact, it's likely faster that me clicking menus even if I did know where stuff was. I'm not sure if XP even had this feature but Win7 makes it very easy to use by default and I've saved quite a bit of time with it... so there ya go, one actual reason to upgrade!
Re:I'm (sorta) one of them (Score:5, Funny)
I was the second person to download Linux 0.1, have been a Linux devotee since then, spend weekends installing Red Hat on laptops at best buy for fun, weekdays hand out free DVD with Ubuntu, and have converted all the University machines to Scientific Linux.
Said that, I walked past an billboard advertising W7 and I was sold. It was so good, even on a huge paper display, that I am fully Microsoft now. I have become a c# developer over the last 20 minutes, and I am now as proficient in that as I was in C/C++. I have bought all the MS hardware, as well as all my clothes have little Microsoft icons on them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just a tip: you can run (and build) POSIX apps (including bash, ssh/sshd, svn, gcc, and even things like httpd or window managers) in Windows without Cygwin. There's a POSIX-compliant subsystem for the NT kernel (just as the Win32 API that people are used to is implemented as a subsystem on top of NT). It's only available in the higher Windows editions, but it's faster and better integrated than Cygwin, and avoids a lot of Cygwin's silly restrictions (executables needing a .exe or similar extension, for exa
Re:I'm (sorta) one of them (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah yeah. I hear what you're saying. Unfair comparison. Well, his parents can use XP and Vista just fine. They can use MacOS more or less easily, but they keep using him for tech support for it. He convinced them to use Ubuntu. He gets tech support calls every day from them. Which is supposed to be easier, again?
Cut maintenance 90% with Ubuntu or OS X (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like you're a liar, alternately a shill. Based on several hundred first and second hand contacts, not counting schools, tech support calls go away after upgrading parents or non-technical users to Ubuntu or OS X. Really. If you failed to give a quick orientation, then you'll get a few days of 'how do I' calls. After that it's smooth sailing. Maintenance is a major savings once you leave M$ products behind.
A hidden savings is found with the end users. The end users are more productive as well, once you leave M$ products behind. Interestingly, even crusty, old KDE 3.5 is easier to use than XP [kde.org], even for those with a Windows legacy.
YMMV, but I find the above based on several hundred first and second hand contacts, not counting schools.
SOL Vista user (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SOL Vista user (Score:4, Funny)
Sucks for those who bought Vista - service pack used to be free before.
Well, they say Microsoft has always been stealing ideas from Apple...
Same shit, different decade (Score:5, Insightful)
We get the same story every time. People don't want to upgrade from [2 versions ago] to [next version] and [last version] sucked.. but it always happens.
A lot of people wanted to stick with 98, thought Me sucked, and didn't want to upgrade to XP until they absolutely needed to. Same shit, different decade.
Well of Course (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course the people who've "tried" Windows 7 are gonna like it. They more than likely have used it on some special demo machine with the specs and thorough setup to make it usable. Just like Mojave, when users try it in a custom environment designed to make them like it, they'll like it. But that's not what they're getting on their Compaq POS-9000. They'll eventually realize they're unsatisfied with 7 and look forward to the new version of windows without realizing they're going to be duped again just like before.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They more than likely have used it on some special demo machine with the specs and thorough setup to make it usable. Just like Mojave, when users try it in a custom environment designed to make them like it, they'll like it. But that's not what they're getting on their Compaq POS-9000.
Yeah, it's not like the beta and the RC1 have been publicly available for months now...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To the best of my knowledge, nobody has been getting "special demo machine[s]" with Win7. It's hardware requirements are pretty easily met by any desktop and the vast majority of laptops from the last 2 years, even including many netbooks. You can build a new computer for about $500 that will exceed Win7's requirements in every aspect by at least a factor of 2x, but honestly you probably don't need to. Hell, I've got a severely underpowered (ultra-low voltage, essentially extreme underclocking) tablet PC, a
Anyone with Windows 7 experience confirm these? (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't tried windows 7 yet. Before I even consider buying it (just to get away from Vista) can anyone tell me if Microsoft have continued the ongoing trend of assuming the users IQ and knowledge of computers is seriously diminishing with every new windows version?
Vista hides much useful information that XP shows, and has introduced even more pointless, time wasting and just annoying "are you sure" dialog boxes even with UAC turned off. Can anyone confirm if the following stupidities have been fixed in Windows 7 or is the trend still downward?:
XP's copy progrss dialog clearly states the filename and full path. Vista's doesn't even mention the name of the file you're copying any more and it only tells you a small part of the path of the source. It leaves you guessing which copy operation it relates to which is mindnumbingly clueless whenever you're doing multiple concurrent file copies.
If you move a folder containing files to a different place that already has a folder with the same name, XP merges them fairly quietly and properly. Even with UAC turned off, Vista introduces extra supremely annoying and unavoidable dialogs to confirm each file in turn (yeah I know theres a "do this for all" checkbox but its still annoying). This extra dialog is not disableable and is really a pointless intrusion if you have any knowledge of what a move operation should do. Worse, even after a successful move, the source folder is left behind. I'd love to meet the marketing moron who thought of these new semantics just so I can kick him in the nuts.
If there's even one file in a folder that Vista thinks might be a media file, Vista forces a media-style display on the contents of the whole folder. This results in all the useful info you need (such as file attributes and modified dates) getting hidden and replaced by a retarded popularity rating you will probably never use. It does this every time you create a new folder and you can't turn off this unwanted 'helpful' (snort) functionality.
Vista's DRM means it can't play MY media to ME. XP can play it without problem.
Vista still frequently forgets the last view settings you set ("sort by" choice etc) even if you set "remember each windows settings" and even do "apply to all folders". This is a problem Windows has had even way back to Windows 95 as I recall.
Feedback about how Windows 7 works in these respects would be much appreciated. I'm not giving Microsoft even more of my money just to find out its no better (or even worse) than Vista for the stuff I do most.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Use a different file manager, and your problems are gone."
I'm sorry, but 'swap out the standard system shell to work around braindead behaviour' is an automatic OS DESIGN FAIL.
You just don't bypass Explorer in production environments. Not optional.
Heathen (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I admit it, I like Windows 7. I've been running Enterprise x64 at work since it was released on Technet and it's really good - driver support was almost flawless out of the box (Although when I tried to install the latest Catalyst drivers they consistant BSOD it, but that's really an ATI issue) and it runs much better than Vista on the same machine. The only things I've had problems with so far are old or stupid apps with hardcoded OS detection limits or 32-bit only libraries and so far all of them have worked via the XP Mode VM (Although there are some quirks with multiple monitors). My current plan is to upgrade my home PC from XP Pro to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Technet again) in the coming weeks. One completely awesome feature that they should have added years ago is the ability to right-click on a DHCP lease and convert it into a reservation, which saves me a hell of a lot of time.
There are still negatives - there are some real issues with pinning certain apps to the taskbar, especially if they're located on a network drive (though there are workarounds), I'm not a fan of the way that they've over-simplified some of the menus making it difficult to find the advanced settings you want and the libraries are annoying, though I suspect they'll grow on me; also, Sharepoint still behaves inconsistently when trying to save documents directly to the site via Office 2007 as it did in Vista, especially with Visio for some reason. Oh, and even the new and improved UAC still annoyed me, so I had to turn it off completely - though I'd imagine non-power users probably wouldn't have as many issues with it.
All in all, I think we all know that Windows 7 is the OS Vista should have been - and probably would have been if Microsoft hadn't decided on an arbitrary release date for it whether it was done or not (ignoring the business implications of letting Vista development continue for another 2 years) and I for one am very impressed with it so far.
Win7 is do or die for MS (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you know that the ONLY reason why Windows 7 was 'trimmed down' (ram, cpu and resource hog that Vista was)... was simply BECAUSE of Linux running on NetBooks?
It is well known fact, that internal to MS, and to the top executives there, that they did not think Vista had ANY issues at all. Why do you think they spend all those MILLIONs of dollars on Mojave and the silly SienField commercials? They actually THOUGHT it was PUBLIC perception problem, not a technical one.
It was not until the massive influx of the Netbooks, running Linux, that MS went 'Oh SH*T' we better do something. So, they HAD to make Win7 run on a Netbook.
THIS and mostly only this, (seriously) was the reason for the 'trimming of the fat' and the rest was MASSIVE investment into WHY people hated vista. Hense, why the security popups are now GONE.
Just remember, MS does not innovate... they simply copy others or react to negative things. If it were not for LINUX...MS would STILL be pushing out retarded Mojave ADs and others...
Kinda ironic isn't it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe all these Vista's "famous" problems was about bad or incompatible hardware and/or drivers. I have Vista on our other laptop, which is mainly in my wife's use, and we've had zero problems with it. I used to have a desktop PC with Vista and it worked like charm also. My coworker on the other hand has had some major problems with Vista. His desktop had some old hardware on it when my desktop had the latest state-of-the-art stuff inside.
But what's ironic about MS wanting to compete on netbooks? I thought
Same Old same old (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact remains that most businesses won't change from XP, which runs on primitive machines, to Win7 (alias VistaLite) which still, for the most part, requires hardware upgrades. You could run a serious office with AppleWorks on a 2E, for shitsakes, and that (mercifully) went to its reward 20 years ago. Primitive spread sheet, word processor and data base...and Mail Merge. For the most part, subsequent improvements have been more devoted to eye candy (sorry...I know I'm oversimplifying a bit). The computing power of an average desk-top computer today is more than sufficient to run just about every small company in the world. Why would a guy running a body shop with a P2 give a crap about upgrading? The machine does everything he wants, and rudimentary security will stop all the nasty things from reaching his rarely-online machine.
And if you honestly believe that The Boss gives a flying fuck about whether his staff have pretty transparent windows to look at while they're figuring out how much to charge for the bumper repair, you're smoking something I'd kill to get hold of.
The average home computer has been kicking the ass of the average work computer for at least 10 years, and that situation isn't going to change any time soon. Win7 may be better than Vista. It's still going to be irrelevant until they start giving it away along with a free multi-threading P4 (which these days is worth just about as much as a bag of chips).
Special package just for disgruntled Vista Users (Score:3, Insightful)
Special upgrade package just for disgruntled Vista Users
Windows 7: Fool Me Twice Edition(tm)
Re: (Score:2)
7 is a lucky number.
They needed it!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Lucky?
No, it's named that because that's how many years bad luck you'll get from installing it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct. The commercial software industry has always treated version numbers as a marketing element.
It doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to look good on the box.
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95
98
98se
nt
2000
xp
Microsoft believes the 7th time is the charm.
Re:Windows 7? (Score:5, Informative)
They arrived at 7 for the version number in this way: Windows 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 lines are self-explanatory. The NT4 and Windows 95/98/ME family were all part of the 4.x version of Windows. Win2000 and XP were 5.x, so naturally Vista was 6.0. That leaves us at 7 for the new Windows.
Re:Windows 7? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've thought about this a lot. I feel Microsoft is trying to say that its returned to the roots of Windows. It's been many years since a Windows release was formally identified by a standard version number. It's very common now for software to have more eye-catching abstractly descriptive version identifiers like Pro, Lite, Special Edition, etc. Standard version numbers for an OS like Windows communicates a sense of a return to old school software efficiency and productivity.
Sounds a little silly maybe, but follow me a sec. "Windows 3.11" was just a piece of software; cold and boring. NT was "new technology". It communicated a sense of industrial strength computing. The Year-based Windows releases were all about being modern. You needed them to be modern. "Me" and "XP" were attempts at being trendy. Multimedia was standard, and Windows XP communicated a new kind of "Xcitement", "Xperience", etc. Vista is the post modern, post multimedia OS, communicating the idea that it's forward looking.
Windows 7 is simple, plain, and in the West, comforting. It's lucky number seven. It sounds like it's a serious operating system that is focused on doing its job, and not blinding me with flashy trends. It sounds like an operating system I can trust. In any case, that's the marketing strategy I got from the name. I have no specific insight into Redmond's actual reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Keep in mind, MS owns Bungie... [wikia.com]
Re:Resigned to it (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista got bad press and users think they're being smart by eschewing the upgrade. "Vista, I heard bad things. XP is fine." But this is the same crowd that bought an ipod because all their friends had one. They would upgrade just for the newest thing, if it weren't suddenly hip and edgy and retro to claim to be an XP purist. So when they hear Windows 7, they automatically kick into MUST UPGRADE mode and, lacking any bad press, don't have any reason to adopt the negative position.
If Vista was so awful, Windows 7 isn't all that different. Vista was fine (when heavily reconfigured); Microsoft just needs to shed the bad reputation of the Vista name to get the dumb users back.
Re: (Score:2)
Vista is the new coke...
But it's not different from any other MS OS. The first version sucked huge balls. Just as much as the original XP did. XP was inferior to 2k before SP1, some would argue even until SP2. The same applies to Vista. Vista SP1 is a fairly good and well supported system. Better than XP... I have both on different machines and I see little difference in performance. But that also means Vista is no "must upgrade" system. I don't get any more out of Vista than I get out of XP.
I took a look a
Re:Resigned to it (Score:4, Interesting)
Vista objectively sucked on release, before hotfixes and service packs came along. By the time it became a usable OS, it received too much negative publicity.
The difference with Win7 is that the latter works great out of the box (this isn't hearsay - I was using it since beta, and I use Win7 RTM since the day of its release for MSDN subscribers).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd recommend installing Linux Mint, and seeing if that works better for you.
It's literally pick your poison with OS's though. They ALL suck, just use the one you think sucks the least.
Re:Most of us XP users don't have a choice (Score:5, Insightful)
since Microsoft will soon stop XP support and updates, and refuse to patch any more security exploits.
"Soon" is not until 2014.
Most Windows XP installs don't make use of dual core or higher systems as one has to by the non uniprocessor version of XP to use more than one core or processor.
Cores and processors are different things in Microsoft's view. Cores are processors cores, while processors are the physical CPU packages. XP will use dual and quad core processors fine (7 arguably does a better job of distributing load across the processors, but that's beside the point), just you can't use a uniprocessor version of it on a machine with 2+ CPU sockets.