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Cutting Through the Windows 7 Hype
I don’t understand it. When it comes to Windows, everything either sucks or is the best thing in the world according to the press. There seems to be no intermediate point, despite the fact that that is where most Windows releases would fit. Recently, I have been getting very tired of anything with the words “Windows 7,” “killer,” and “linux,” no matter what order those appear in.
I am using the beta now in a virtual machine and, to be honest, there is not a lot of changes. Sure, Microsoft messed with the taskbar some (I don’t like it, but I’ll leave that to you to judge), made some networking improvements, fixed the messed-up UAC, and added a few more desktop effects (some useful, such as moving windows to the side of the screen to make them cover half the screen, and some annoying, like strange colors floating all around your taskbar in place of standard, subtle effects), but the truth is that only one feature from Windows 7 is likely to have a major effect (and of course PR): performance.
Performance in really important, but it is really just a bug fix. It’s pathetic that Vista had the poor performance that it did. Now they fixed it. Now we can move on.
The fundamental daily annoyances of using Windows have simply not changed. Here is what is still true:
- It still blue screens. (Yep, I can confirm that – I returned to the VM while it was booting up from a hard shutdown to see the end of a blue screen followed by a reboot).
- It still treats you like a baby and nags you about turning on automatic updates.
- It still is susceptible to malware.
- It still lacks any form of multiple desktops.
Windows 7 will probably be a good release as far as I am concerned, if only for the performance improvement. It just won’t be the ground breaking, new, and amazing release that some people say it will be. What do you think?
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I personally don’t get the hype. How is press..drag-to-side-edge..release..press..drag-to-other-side-edge..release (which is convoluted as hell to do with the notebook touchpads) easier than click on taskbar..tile-vertically? IT’S NOT!! This is why I think Micro$oft has a major stake in carpal tunnel cures.
Have to agree with Yoko, it might take 20 years but it seems inevitable that the retail based desktop OS is on borrowed time.
Whats the carrot for Windows 8…..
I haven’t used Windows 7, and I haven’t worked with Vista to any real extent. I thought the latter was very pretty, but I’ve been using Ubuntu for the last three years so I can’t say much beyond that. If I were to guess their merits as operating systems, I would hazard that they are satisfactory. Maybe better, I dunno.
Ultimately, operating system cock fights are futile. Yes, Windows or Linux may be “better” now, by whatever arbitrary rubric we may assign. Neither will die today. But looking twenty years from now, I’m willing to place money on which will be left standing.
Operating systems are reaching a fundamental barrier of how much you can improve a text editor, an email client, an audio player, a web browser. All the big advances in personal computing are up in a cloud; the basic desktop suite is near complete. As we approach the fundamental barrier, users will adopt the free alternative. That’s how the dice fall.
Barring a paradigm shift over the role of operating systems, Linux or another free alternative has the trophy of victory in hand. I think myself very pragmatic compared to my evangelists peers in the Linux Desktop, but I see this prediction as quite uncontroversial.
Until we reach that inevitable, use whatever works best for you. But the gnu will win out in the end.
I’m sure Windows 7 will be good. I’ve had a little play myself and performance wise it’s more or less as good as XP.
As an Ubuntu user I can’t see it offering me anymore of a user experience.
As it has always been with the current Windows Vs Linux debate, Linux will fail without support for good commercial games.
It has to be said that a large majority of PCs at home will infact have at least 1 commercial game installed and at least having the option of playing commercial games is appealing.
Linux is superb and I’ve been an avid user for many years now, but until developers start considering Linux as a gaming platform, the success of Linux as a desktop home OS is limited.
Every year the same hype. And in the end it’s just a new windows, way more complicated, instable and everybody will hate it. Use Linux or die hard..
- bluescreens don’t happen on official releases?? When I test beta releases of Ubuntu on a VM, I notice bugs yes, but that doesn’t mean my test don’t work.
- I’m used to test a new os as well on my oldest and new hardware. The 98se – xp period where every driver automatically worked is past tense, even for xp and vista.
- I don’t know if you like to make 1000 changes to your system before you can work with it… I know I don’t.
- If you know the security problems of your system: do something about it!!!
- It’s always the same story, add this, add that, and again you are spending time on a machine. Installing drivers, extra tools, tweaking… no thanks, please try Linux, no necessary tweaks, almost never driver installation, software updates that don’t take a half day, …
Surely its not about performance, stability, or anything similar. Its about bowing to The Man, or living free.
-Blue screens have two primary causes: Bad hardware or poorly written drivers. Talk is cheap, so it remains to be seen if you even ran the beta at all, but running a beta OS in a VM is asking for trouble.
-It treats “you” like a baby. The rest of us who know how to configure our machines don’t have this problem. Automatic Updates, UAC, and Security Center can ALL be configured to stay out of the way.
-Yes, any machine with an install base as large as Windows will be the target of all forms of malicious software. Here, the best defense is an educated user.
-Multiple desktops have been available on windows for years via a PowerToy add on or other 3rd party add ons. You can even replace “explorer.exe” with another shell if you wish (ie Lightstep). It’s not a useful feature for many, and is nowhere near as useful as multiple displays.
meh……..
……….still windows.