Windows 7 Discussion

[Karma]

But I blame the Vista griping on consumer ignorance more than anything. Most of these people weren't there for windows 3.1 and they don't know what a real driver issue is.

Er... you just said yourself what I felt you were saying.

The real fault is not specifically Vista's but instead Microsoft's. SP2 should have been the final major edition of XP, the last one before Longhorn. Instead, they killed Longhorn (Which would have competed with OSX at the time, rather than picking up its scraps three years later like Vista) and went ahead with Vista, for whatever stupid reasons they had. They allowed XP to become extremely entrenched, which quite completely marginalized all the improvements Vista brought, as they were far too little for a six year wait, not nearly enough to overcome the two extra years of development XP received. XP became extremely stable and widely applicable. If the upgrade had come along in 2004 as originally planned, that sense of security people now have in XP wouldn't have had time to settle in, and there would have been more incentive to upgrade. The bloated feeling Vista gives would have been far lessened, because in 2004 the hardware differences wouldn't have been nearly so drastic, which is why XP is so exceedingly fast now. Vista's problem isn't centered on consumer ignorance or some essential flaw in itself, but in Microsoft's absurd timing. Vista is far too little, far too late. Windows 7 has gone a long way towards correcting some of the larger issues with Vista, and for me, is the turning point that allows the positives to finally overcome the negatives associated with Vista.

Regardless, if this discussion stays centered on Vista for much longer, I'll leave the thread, because that's not why I spoke up in here, to say nothing of the title of the thread.

[Karma]

I noticed like six features in Vista that were straight out of Mac and I notice one in 7 that is too. Also, how come Mac OS costs less and seems to have more?

Applications can't stay competitive if they don't have similar features to their opponents. You might as well be blaming Pepsi for having a cherry flavor because Coke does. Also, Mac OS costs less because Mac hardware is stupidly expensive.

[Cythieus]

I'm confused now, isn't Longhorn Vista's codename from before? I thought all OSs that were MS made had them? I mean I remember some other software and hardware did this (the Wii for instance had another name before it came out.)

Likewise I don't think you can have much of a 7 discussion without Vista, if Vista had gone off without a hitch, we wouldn't have 7 or 7 would have been a new version of Vista. This whole thing just wreaks of Microsoft using bad PR to make more cash. But sorry if you thought I was calling people actually stupid, consumer ignorance isn't for lack of their trying, its for lack of anyone telling people or notifying them. It's the fault of a lot of people (salespeople, computer makers, other software companies and so on).

And Mac Hardware is expensive, I guess I never pegged that for the lack of OS cost.

[Karma]

Longhorn may have been retained as the project name, but they scrapped a ton of code and started over in 03-04. I can't remember why. OSX came out in 03 if I recall, Longhorn was slated for 04, but we didn't see anything until Vista reappeared in 05-06. Meanwhile, XP was well on its way to being awesome, when it should have never been allowed the time.

[Cythieus]

Odd, I never knew they were working on Longhorn as standalone. Oddly enough I think I remember why they scrapped it and where confusion comes from. Basically I heard that there was a lot of bad news from beta testers or something like that.

So far with Seven I have noticed one big difference, they got Aero not to be such a memory hog. I cut Aero off before because of its madness with my memory. Now I have Firefox to do that >.>

[Karma]

The gadgets use far less memory now as well, and the OS itself is smaller even. (5GB as opposed to 7GB installed.) Overall it's a much more compact OS than Vista, as evidenced by the fact that my old laptop and my netbook can both run it surprisingly well. My laptop came with Vista and was barely usable. I switched back to XP on the netbook because 7 was just a bit too sluggish, but I could definitely use it in a pinch.

[Cythieus]

The gadgets use far less memory now as well, and the OS itself is smaller even. (5GB as opposed to 7GB installed.) Overall it's a much more compact OS than Vista, as evidenced by the fact that my old laptop and my netbook can both run it surprisingly well. My laptop came with Vista and was barely usable. I switched back to XP on the netbook because 7 was just a bit too sluggish, but I could definitely use it in a pinch.

I gained 10 Gigs on install, I was wondering what happened.

[Callie Del Noire]

Oh yeah, Windows needs to stop doing a lot and start trying to actually innovate and also be more open. Because I mean they lock themselves off from other programs and block them out. I noticed like six features in Vista that were straight out of Mac and I notice one in 7 that is too. Also, how come Mac OS costs less and seems to have more?

The twist is this though.. The folks at Apple have a more rigid design criteria for the hardward (they set a criteria of what they want the system to do.. and how it does it.. )

Basically it's a difference in Design Criteria..

My MacPro is a powerful system, yes, but I paid more for it than I would pay for a simular specced MS system. The twist is it's more stable but the abilty to configure and install a wider variety of hardware into the architecture  is more available in a MS system.

You can do it with a Mac.. it's just going to take longer to get and more to pay for it.

[Karma]

I believe they stripped out unnecessary drivers during the installation process, so only what you need gets installed, and the rest are easily accessible from Windows Update (the new version of which was one of Vista's shining additions).

My MacPro is a powerful system, yes, but I paid more for it than I would pay for a simular specced MS system. The twist is it's more stable but the abilty to configure and install a wider variety of hardware into the architecture  is more available in a MS system.

Indeed. The way I see it, Macs are tools while PCs are toys. Macs have excellent usability in commercially creative settings (Video production, music production, etc) due to top of the line software that is available, which has as rigid a design ethic as the OS itself. Macs are always very similar to each other, which allows easy transition from one system to another. This is perfect in settings where you need homogeny (sp?) of your systems, and especially for users that don't have in-depth knowledge about computers. They don't need that knowledge because Macs are so similar.

PCs on the other hand are wildly variable, with Windows attempting to be compatible with everything it possibly can. This allows hardware costs to plummet, allowing the super cheap desktops we've seen for years and now laptops and netbooks with similar price points. Of course, with this variability comes the need for more knowledge and maintenance, creating organizations like Geek Squad *grumble* but at the same time allowing us to get down and dirty with the hardware, swapping it on the fly and creating the perfect, specialized system just for us. This, of course, is at the root of why new versions of Windows will always have driver issues, unless they somehow change the driver model to fix that, but I don't see that happening soon.

Vista was a troubled child, but it bloomed into a competent adult. Certainly not a revolutionary one... I guess we'll see what MS has in store for the next OS. I seem to recall some exec mentioning that 7 would be the last version of "Windows as we know it." I have no idea what that means, but I'm intrigued.

[Callie Del Noire]

Vista was a troubled child, but it bloomed into a competent adult. Certainly not a revolutionary one... I guess we'll see what MS has in store for the next OS. I seem to recall some exec mentioning that 7 would be the last version of "Windows as we know it." I have no idea what that means, but I'm intrigued.

I don't know..don't really care too much myself. Unless they do a RADICAL change in design and stabilty.. Vista Ultimate will run on my Mac's Parallels particition for a while.

[Morven]

Also, how come Mac OS costs less and seems to have more?

It costs less because Apple are a hardware company, primarily.  That's where they're making the bulk of their money.  OS releases, even if they're not officially an "upgrade" price, really are, because all you can install them on is an Apple machine you already paid them for.

Apple have also quite unashamedly ripped off MS ideas a few times, or other peoples'; e.g. the Dashboard, ripped wholesale from Konfabulator (later Yahoo Widgets).

[Serephino]

Griping about Vista is not just from ignorance.  It was a huge pain for many people, me included.  When my ex-friend was staying with us she got a new computer that came with Vista.  Then since we had 3 computers in the house her and my boyfriend decided to get a wireless router. 

So my boyfriend goes to set it up.  This was a brand new router and Vista had been out a while, so there shouldn't have been a problem.  Well, my boyfriend didn't want neighbors to be able to leech off our signal so he set it up to be a secured network.  Our computers had XP and it was all set up for us and working in 20 mins.  Not so for the Vista machine.  It wanted to automate everything, and refused to save the network password.  It took us 3 days and Several calls to both the manufacterer of the router and to Dell until we finally got someone that could help us fix the issue.  That's not something I will soon forget.  And since we've given in and upgraded to Vista we can't use the wireless router anymore.  The only computer in the house that reads is is the laptop with XP I'm on right now. 

No one expects upgrading to be trouble free, but good lord...  When I upgraded the biggest problem I had was getting my sound to work.  Still, that was a big hassle and shouldn't have been so much trouble for a computer geek.  Also, a large chunk of my harddrive seems to have disappeared....  And having to wipe my harddrive sucked ass.

I'm glad you didn't have any trouble, but lots of people did.  And naturally, people tell other people about their trouble, and those people decide it's not worth it.  It's how the world works.  Haven't you ever heard a friend talking about how awful a certain product was and decided not to try it?  Or vice-versa, heard them raving about how great something was and ran out to buy it?     
[/]

[Cythieus]

Lol, this is like the second story I have seen where you ex did something bad...am I starting to see a pattern to why they're an ex?

[Karma]

Vista had a huge problem with sound cards. They introduced a new permissions layer to the sound stack which required sound cards to jump through hoops to access it, resulting in at best crackly popping stuttery audio and at worst none at all. 7 doesn't seem to have that problem, although Creative may have corrected their drivers to account for it by now.

[Cythieus]

I don't even know what kind of Sound Card I have in this since I didn't build this one this time. But it's worked with everything I've tried it in. My video card sucks though >.>

[Karma]

The sound issue is what broke Vista for me. I could have borne the decrease in game performance, but not even being able to use Winamp properly when nothing else was going on was unacceptable. But again, that's been corrected.

[Cythieus]

Didn't realize Winamp was still around. Right now I am trying to figure out how to get Campaign Cartographer working in 7. It's not acting right.

[Karma]

Winamp is quite alive, and still gives me the best sound even after all these years.

[Cythieus]

I just use iTunes (which oddly enough Windows made me erase before upgrading >.>) It's worked pretty well so far, but its nice to see 7 has some support for it, say I hover over it on the taskbar, I can pause or change songs.

[Cythieus]

lol

[Chris Brady]

Apparently, Microsoft was comparing Vista to Millenium, and were making apologies for Vista's lackluster performance.  I can't honestly say, because I skipped Vista.  I do know that my little brother worked extensively with both Vista and 7, and claims that 7 is much better.

[Serephino]

I probably won't have 7 for a while, but that'll give them the chance to work the bugs out.  I just hope it doesn't have Vista's annoying habit of asking you to verify every application... twice...  I get the security angle, but why does it have to ask twice?   *twitches a little*

[Karma]

UAC hasn't changed. As before, I turned it off completely.

[Serephino]

You can do that?  How?

[Zorak]

Ok... having read all of this.. I offer the following :::

Last year, I bought a nice new PC - it came with Windows Vista Ultimate.  AMD Quad-Core... a ROCKING fast machine (or at least, it was supposed to be).. 

It spent more time in its own self-repair processing than it did running and doing what I wanted it to do.  No help from Microshaft of course, because... customer support doesn't exist there - or at least, if you CALL for customer support, it goes like this...

               HP :: The problem is with Microsoft, call them.
               MICROSOFT :: HP is responsible for giving you support
               HP :: We can't really help you here.
               MICROSOFT :: We can't really help you here.
               AXE :: Please... don't smash me into your computer, it's brand new. 
                        Consider smashing me into the skull of a Microsoft
                        employee...
               JIMMINY CRICKET :: Don't even think of it...

OK.. so what to do?

I liberated myself, and my entire household.  I offer you all the following EXCELLENT solution, and the total cost to implement?  $0.  Special skills required?  None.

HTTP://WWW.UBUNTU.COM

My quad-core now runs like the rocket it's supposed to be.  Crashes?  0.  Grief?  0.  MS Office compatibility?  YES !!!  Cost... FREE!

Do yourself a favor and give Linux a shot - it's now easy enough for home use, and doesn't have to be confined to gurus and corporations anymore.