Lately, a lot of technology-deficient people have been asking be about Windows 7. Apparently everyone is extremely eager to get off of Vista as soon as possible. I can tell you right now, that the sales of the next release of Windows will be nothing like those of the current one. Next release is going to fly of the shelves and sell like hotcakes because the unwashed masses can’t wait to get rid of this piece of shit that is currently making their dual core computers with maxed out RAM run as if they were using hardware that was built in 1995.
The common folk has developed an unparamount hatred for Vista. Get this, they actually hate it more than we do. How funny is that? Normal people hating a Microsoft product more than Linux geeks – I didn’t think I would live to see this day. Of course they are not ready to switch to another OS – let’s not be crazy here. They are still deeply locked into the MS monoculture. But they fucking had it with Vista and they want a new shiny OS from Microsoft that doesn’t suck. Let’s face it, the Vista experience is rather painful.
So they come to me, and ask me about Windows 7 cause I am “the computer guy”. So for the record, I just wanted to say that I have not downloaded and installed the Windows 7 Beta. I have no clue how is it going to run on your system, and I don’t know what are it’s new features. All I know is that they did not scrap Vista code completely so it will still suck underneath the hood. It also seems to be suffering from the same syndrome that Vista had in it’s early development – it will probably ship with the quarter of the promised features, and 80% more useless UI bullshit that doesn’t fucking matter.
Still, it will probably be slight improvement over Vista:
Every review of the beta I read, failed to tell me anything substantial about the new OS. It’s probably still to early to talk about performance, but supposedly it is not that much different that Vista. If you are expecting it to be faster, then you will probably be disappointed. On the upside, the beta testers did not see any excessive bloat either.
Which means that all these people who are waiting for Vista to save them from shitty performance issues are in for surprise. Or maybe not – perhaps Moores law will bail them out. If Microsoft manages not to make W7 any slower than it already is the hardware is going to catch up and it will feel faster when run on the new computers. Maybe…
Most reviews keep talking about the silly new UI tweaks. Apparently MS Paint is getting a Ribbon interface. Whooptie do! Who the fuck cares?
Here is my take on Windows – it used to be a decent gaming platform. Unfortunately, Vista made it sluggish and unresponsive. These days it is common knowledge that the same game will run twice as slow under Vista than on XP. In other words, if you are building a gaming rig you need much more expensive hardware if you are planning to run Vista on it, just to get he same frame rate and speed as you used to get on XP. That in itself probably wouldn’t kill the PC gaming market – just undermine it a bit.
Unfortunately there seems to be some sort of joint effort perpetuated by the top gaming publishers who try to sabotage PC gaming with draconian DRM, sloppy ports from consoles and plain old hostility towards end users. Consoles (other than Playstation) are getting more games, more mainstream interest and they are much cheaper to buy and maintain than a decent gaming PC. Can you detect a pattern here? If things continue going he way they are, PC will become less and less attractive platform to both gamers and game manufacturers.
If the PC gaming market shits away from the PC and I can’t find any decent new games to put on my computer, then I will no longer have a good reason to keep windows around. Seriously – I don’t actually need that OS. I don’t really care what happens to it. Linux meets all my other needs just fine. In my honest opinion, we would all be much better off if Microsoft dropped dead tomorrow. They have been brutally ass-raping their own users for so long now, that no one notices anymore. Most windows users think that the pain in the lower back is just the normal Windows end user experience. If Microsoft was not around we would probably store all our documents in open, standardized formats most of the WWW would be W3C compliant or close to it, DRM would be a non issue (due to multitude of different platforms) and hardware vendors would be forced publish their specifications so that their stuff can be supported under most OS’s.
I really think world would be a much better place without Microsoft and Windows. So you are really asking the wrong guy about this stuff.
Woah! The hate is really strong within you. My eyes are still burning from that rant! :P
And how does one “review” a beta? How can it be done anyway? :|
@Mart: Really? I wasn’t really aiming at that much hate. :)
And yeah, you can review a beta just fine – it’s not the same as the final product but it does give you an idea what that product is going to be like. People have been benchmarking the Beta against Vista and XP ever since it was released.
I tried the beta, I didn’t go to the hassle of dlding it like others, but I have a friend who’s geeky enough to care, but not geeky enough to try Linux instead.
Personally, I thought it was Vista, but ran better and took less resources. I didn’t spend much time with it, but it seemed like what you would have thought Vista would have been.
I firmly believe in the right tool for the job, hence I don’t dislike M$… or love them. I use Windows every day (but ‘My’ time is spent in Linux). Since I control what software is used at work, I use M$ because it suits my needs perfectly. But I do prefer Linux for my ‘real’ computing.
I currently have a duel boot Vista/Ubuntu machine. And Honestly have not installed ANYTHING in Vista… there simply doesn’t seem a need.
I understand (to a degree) your subconscious hate for M$, but I disagree. I like(d) XP, didn’t like paying for it but then again I don’t like paying for anything. I also like the look of Vista… if W7 is just ‘Vista done properly’ then I’d be happy with that. But I wouldn’t switch back.
For me, the perfect OS at present is Linux with XP running in Virtualbox.
Let’s just hope that the ‘dumbing down’ approach to computing (that we are currently seeing) doesn’t continue. Making things easier, doesn’t mean Making them better (unless your stupid!).
@mcai8sh4: Yup, the right tool for the right job is my mantra too. Whether we want it or not, Windows is the dominant system in Business World and if your deliverables are mostly Office files then you should by all means use MS Windows and MS Office on work machines.
That said, my cousin works at a local medical center and her team was able to almost completely phase out MS Office from their machines. They are also planning on slowly phasing out Windows. It works for them because it allows them to cut costs (no need to buy licenses) and time spent doing SAM related crap.
I can’t imagine doing the same thing at my work, since we actually need to share and exchange files with our clients and we already are having MAJOR issues with the Office 2003 vs Office 2007 conversion quirks (as small as they may seem). Add OpenOffice to the mix, and you have a recipe for mayhem.
I guess I ramped up the hate for teh funnies here. ;P
95 was interesting but broken. 98 was pretty fast but leaky. 2000 was slow and stable. XP was a decent mix between 98 and 2000 after it had been out a few years. I’ve barely touched Vista, but I watch my brother get pissed off within minutes of using it. “Did you mean to click that?” “Are you sure?” “Do you want to install the thing you just installed?” It’s simultaneously humorous and sad.
I was off Windows for so long that it’s been an interesting experience getting back to it (XP, that is). I have to add office software. I have to add software for making PDFs. I have to add software for viewing PDFs. I have to add software to properly support most archives (e.g., rar). I have to add virus protection. I have to add an instant messenger. I have to add a good graphics program. I have to add Putty and other related software. I have to add a torrent client. Now I have to wonder why my Start > All Programs menu is 1000 pixels tall….
@Ian Clifton: I think you’ve summed it up well there. And yes… “Do you want me to run the program you asked me to run” is REALLY annoying. There needs to be an option “Yes I know what I’m doing, stop treating me like a child and I’ll suffer any consequences for my actions” button.
When Vista was revealed to be the OS equivalent of a sack of dead kittens I was thinking “if they don’t do something special with Windows 7 then XP will probably be the last version of Windows I use”.
Right now I’m thinking that Windows 7 has about as many compelling reasons to switch as Vista did – it’s the same basic engine underneath and Microsoft’s idea of a pretty interface is my idea of stupid-looking. MS Paint with a ribbon? I don’t like the ribbon even in more featureful programs where it might have a use in organising stuff into tabs… MS Paint does NOT need a ribbon. If they were to make Paint more useful… maybe support transparency or layers or an undo queue longer than 3 items then that would be a legit improvement – I like Paint for it’s ease of use on little things, but really it’s painfully limited (at which point I switch to Paint.Net)
But no… they forge ahead with the extra shiny-ness, and I hear little to nothing about things that will actually make it better for me, over XP. Fuck’em, XP FTW.
@Ian Clifton: Don’t forget drivers. I think I blogged about it before but I had the following happen to me more than once:
I install Ubuntu on a laptop and everything works out of the box (including Wifi)
I install WinXP and it doesn’t recognize audio card, video card, ethernet card, wifi card and my resolution is 640×480 with 8 bit color.
This is why most people with no clue buy computer with preinstaled windows, and then just trash it and buy a new one when it stops working.
@mcai8sh4: I believe you can disable it somewhere, but it is all or nothing option. Ideally you would want to leave some of these prompts in there for added security.
@Matt`: Of course – if they don’t revamp the UI then no one knows anything changed. Supposedly the calc.exe in Vista was completely rewritten to be much more accurate, and more powerful but they left the UI intact.
Then every single blogger in existence was like “Yea, Vista is nice and all but I can’t believe they didn’t even touch calc.exe – that app really needed to be updated.”
Sad but true.
I have tried the beta on my laptop and in a vm. I must say that it is faster than vista as far as I can tell at this stage from my limited vista experience. I also prefer the interface and the changes they have made to the control panel, task bar etc. They have also made UAC pretty much like the linux way of doing things, where it asks for a password for administrative tasks; these are much more infrequent than the many accept, deny pop-up boxes in vista.
Anyway…despite the improvement over Vista imo, it’s still windows. It still gets viruses, it still hogs system resources and it still limits my use of my computer to how Microsoft envision me using it.
So I will be staying firmly with some Linux distro or another, probably still arch. However I will recommend it to those poor Vista users who refuse to try Ubuntu.
I met a techie at the bar last night. Once he identified me as a tech minded person he asked if I had tried the new beta’s for windows 7. Apparently even though he is a Ubuntu user, he was claiming that windows 7 appears to be sleek.
I thought that was an interesting comment from someone in our own community. I’m still sticking to my Ubuntu though.
If I could get a Adobe Photoshop Album working on Wine or equivalent opensource product that has the same tagging features, my desktop would lose Windows faster than you can blink.
Well I tried Vista about 4 times. The install and force yourself to use it for a week 4 times. Twice I went back to XP. Then I tried Ubuntu and tried XP and Vista but still went back to Ubuntu.
So now it has been exclusively Ubuntu for me since 8.04. I’d probably still be using XP if it had some of the basic features Ubuntu has out the box. It just takes too much cruft and too many downloads to get a modern and usable XP machine.
Vista made me switch. That said I’ve got nothing that says I won’t switch to Windows 7. It’s just not likely. I’ve come to appreciate the other side.
I’m with you dude! I would be 100% Linux if it could run Autocad