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Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:18 pm
by Cakedaddy
What is it? Is it any good? When does it come out?
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:04 pm
by Leisher
What is it?
Microsoft's public apology for Vista.
Windows 7 is the next Microsoft operating system and has been described as XP with a Vista paint job.
Is it any good?
All early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.
Drivers have not been an issue this time around.
When does it come out?
The beta ends August 1st and the word I'm hearing is that you should expect it to hit store shelves before the end of 2009.
Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:15 pm
by thibodeaux
I'm really looking forward to this "Mojave" thing.
Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 5:46 pm
by Leisher
I'm really looking forward to this "Mojave" thing.
That little experiment reminded me of the old saying:
"Prayer is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
Maybe if they had tried using actual consumers in their focus group for Vista, they wouldn't have needed Mojave.
Another note on Windows 7, it will be bringing touch screen functionality to laptops and desktops.
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:25 am
by Vince
Aren't they using Vista's drivers for Windows 7?
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:27 am
by Vince
Leisher wrote:Maybe if they had tried using actual consumers in their focus group for Vista, they wouldn't have needed Mojave.
Eh... what that commercial really highlighted for me is that people were doing a lot of pissing and moaning about a product they wer so unfamiliar with that they didn't even recognize it when they were looking right at it.
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:22 am
by GORDON
It told me that had a lot of pc-ignorant people off the streets gushing about how pretty it looked, when the cosmetics of the thing was something no one was bitching about.
Microsoft didn't need to make those commercials because it just had unfairly-bad word-of mouth. It had bad word-of-mouth because it wasn't as good as XP (at least not any better). End of story. There was just no reason to upgrade to it from XP, and people forced to upgrade for whatever reason felt screwed. That isn't imaginary. A lot of people using that product felt like it was a joke. No amount of commercials with Jerry Seinfeld or "man on the street" testimonials will fix that.
I upgraded to Vista mainly because of gaming... now I wish I hadn't. I just don't see any benefit that balances out how much slower it is than XP.
Edited By GORDON on 1239460085
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:52 pm
by Leisher
It had bad word-of-mouth because it wasn't as good as XP (at least not any better).
That is an excellent point.
Why upgrade? Outside of filling Microsoft's pockets, why should the average user upgrade to Vista? What did it deliver that XP didn't?
Security? It might have been slightly more secure, but hackers destroyed it prior to launch at the annual security conference in Vegas (they did so at Microsoft's request to test the security). However, the security was so tight that most complaints were from users trying to do menial tasks yet were being stopped by the OS every step of the way.
Performance? Numerous tests proved that Vista did not perform as advertised. It did not blow the doors off of XP nor did it even surpass it every category.
Throw in the issue with drivers, the features that wouldn't work for most users as their PCs were not powerful enough, the blatant fraud with the "Ready for Vista" labels, the horrible new layout that rips off Mac, etc.
I cannot understand how anyone can blame the failure of Vista on the consumer. Only the most fierce Microsoft loyalists would dare.
I prefer Windows OSs and hate Macs with the red hot intensity of a thousand suns, but I did not drink the cool- aid on Vista.
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:58 pm
by TPRJones
Linux rules.
I'm just sayin'.
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 8:15 am
by Vince
Leisher wrote:Why upgrade? Outside of filling Microsoft's pockets, why should the average user upgrade to Vista? What did it deliver that XP didn't?
What did any Windows upgrade deliver that the previous version didn't? With the exception of 95, I really can't think of a lot. 98 was more stable than 95, but they probably could have fixed that with patches.
Security? It might have been slightly more secure, but hackers destroyed it prior to launch at the annual security conference in Vegas (they did so at Microsoft's request to test the security). However, the security was so tight that most complaints were from users trying to do menial tasks yet were being stopped by the OS every step of the way.
As someone that was getting hit once or twice a year with a new strain of the Vumonde virus with XP and zero hits with Vista, I'm not going to scoff at the added security. I've never gotten a virus with two years of Vista. And once you have the PC set up you rarely get the security prompt. I may see it once a week. This was one of those "blown out of proportion" non-issue issues.
Performance? Numerous tests proved that Vista did not perform as advertised. It did not blow the doors off of XP nor did it even surpass it every category.
And XP didn't out perform Win 98 on same hardware either.
Throw in the issue with drivers, the features that wouldn't work for most users as their PCs were not powerful enough, the blatant fraud with the "Ready for Vista" labels, the horrible new layout that rips off Mac, etc.
Drivers are the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers. Always have been. And XP had the same issues. Manufacturers were slow getting drivers out for XP as well.
I will absolutely agree on the "Ready for Vista" labels. Not sure what that was all about.
As far as ripping off Mac's interface, the Vista interface was in the public domain after a public conference that Microsoft did while Vista was under development. Mac released the interface in an actual product first, but Bill Gates did a presentation of the new interface some three years or so before Vista was released and before Apple had released anything with it.
I don't drink the Microsoft kool-aid either, but I don't think Vista was plagued with problems that hadn't been seen before with previous new OS releases. But where we had become used to a 2 or 3 year cycle, there was a 6 year cycle between XP and Vista. People forgot that the same issues were out there when XP came along as well.
Upgrading an OS sucks. Sometimes there are HUGE problems. Sometimes there are less than huge problems. XP had big compatibility issues with software compatability coming from both the 98 platform and the NT workstation platform. The NT only platform being the worst.
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 8:52 am
by GORDON
The HUGE thing XP brought to the table was stability, with ease-of-install a close second. This is my own observation. Vista brought nothing new to the table. I resisted XP a long time... for no other reason that I was accustomed to and comfortable with Win95/98's blue screens, and lengthy, involved installs. When I finally plunged to XP, I was IMMEDIATELY impressed. I realized the BSOD was not something I needed to live with. That says something, I think. I HATE Vista's slow boot times, and I always get irritated when yeah, it gets to the desktop only slightly slower than XP, and that was that much-ballyhoo'd "time to desktop" rating, but you still can't do anything with the OS for several seconds after that, so it's like a lie.
Add to all of the "DX10 IS GOING TO LOOK SOOOOOOO MUCH BETTER THAN DX9" hype, which in the end... it makes almost no difference at all...... and I personally feel like I was lied to.
Not a great OS image.
Now that I think about it, the "DX10" hype was often done in PC Games magazine, which had been bought out by Microsoft, renamed to "Games for Windows" magazine, and shut down about a year after Vista launch. How about that shit. Angrier, now.
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 12:44 pm
by Malcolm
Vince wrote:Upgrading an OS sucks. Sometimes there are HUGE problems. Sometimes there are less than huge problems. XP had big compatibility issues with software compatability coming from both the 98 platform and the NT workstation platform. The NT only platform being the worst.
Yeah, it does.
Let's even buy your argument that XP sucked when it came out. Doesn't change the fact that Vista also had well-documented problems.
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 2:10 pm
by Vince
Malcolm wrote:Vince wrote:Upgrading an OS sucks. Sometimes there are HUGE problems. Sometimes there are less than huge problems. XP had big compatibility issues with software compatability coming from both the 98 platform and the NT workstation platform. The NT only platform being the worst.
Yeah, it does.
Let's even buy your argument that XP sucked when it came out. Doesn't change the fact that Vista also had well-documented problems.
Vista DID have its well documented problems. And some of them took way too long to get fixed with SP1. But the biggest complaints I heard about Vista where also problems that were out there for XP when it launched.
I think the biggest thing they had to overcome was a 6 year delay (thus faulty memories of the previous OS launch) since the XP launch.
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 2:37 pm
by Vince
GORDON wrote:The HUGE thing XP brought to the table was stability, with ease-of-install a close second. This is my own observation. Vista brought nothing new to the table. I resisted XP a long time... for no other reason that I was accustomed to and comfortable with Win95/98's blue screens, and lengthy, involved installs. When I finally plunged to XP, I was IMMEDIATELY impressed. I realized the BSOD was not something I needed to live with. That says something, I think. I HATE Vista's slow boot times, and I always get irritated when yeah, it gets to the desktop only slightly slower than XP, and that was that much-ballyhoo'd "time to desktop" rating, but you still can't do anything with the OS for several seconds after that, so it's like a lie.
Add to all of the "DX10 IS GOING TO LOOK SOOOOOOO MUCH BETTER THAN DX9" hype, which in the end... it makes almost no difference at all...... and I personally feel like I was lied to.
Not a great OS image.
Now that I think about it, the "DX10" hype was often done in PC Games magazine, which had been bought out by Microsoft, renamed to "Games for Windows" magazine, and shut down about a year after Vista launch. How about that shit. Angrier, now.
DX10 was another thing that I'll give you that they shouldn't have been harping on. That was really stupid since it would require the software industry to get on board and MS had no control over that.
As far as your delays getting to a usable desktop, I'd bet you have some crap software loaded that isn't using MS standards in their coding practices. The WORST offender of that has been virus protection.
MS established new practices before XP came out but didn't start to enforce them on XP's release due to an outcry from the software manufacturers. But MS said at the time that they WOULD start to enforce those standards when the next OS was released and they were true to their word.
I remember reading an article somewhere along the 6 months after Vista release time, and the guy wrote about that and grabbed up every coworker's machine where they complained of slow boot times and traced it back to at least one crappy written software package on their machine in every case. And the software companies haven't been too quick to fix their shit since MS has been getting blamed for the issues their software has been causing. I use One Care for that very reason. Not because I think it's the best. It's okay. But I'd heard bad things about third party virus software killing system speed.
People would complain "why buy Vista other than to give MS more money" and then turning around and getting pissed at MS because hardware manufacturers were forcing you to buy new peripheral devices because the manufacturers weren't writing drivers for Vista on their pre-existing hardware. But somehow the peripheral makers weren't subjected to the same outcry that MS was. In an irony of ironies, MS took the blame for that as well by most people.
Besides Gordo, weren't they on SP 2 by the time you got around to upgrading to XP? 
XP wasn't very stable when it first came out. That was one of the complaints was that it was blue screening too often. And until the day I went to Vista I was still getting occasional BSD's from my soundcard when it got overloaded. But BSD's are generally hardware issues anyway.
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 9:24 am
by GORDON
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:36 pm
by Vince
Interesting. I suspect this will be the last 32 bit OS they make. My fear is that the 32 bit version of this is going to be a slug. Vista 32 already seems to be hitting the wall.
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:37 pm
by Malcolm
Saves me the trouble of putting another instance of Virtual PC on the machine. Groovy.
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:40 pm
by GORDON
Have you played with Vista's "run as" settings? In any executable you can set it in properties to "run as Win 95"... "run as Dos 6.0"... etc. I've had to use it a couple times to run an old piece of software, and it has worked.
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 1:03 pm
by Malcolm
I'm still running XP. Got to play w\ Vista a few times, but never knew about the "run as" thing. There's some softs I got that run only on 95 that I fondly remember. May need to break those out.
Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 9:24 pm
by Vince
For a company that supposedly got to where it is through slick marketing, they sure didn't get word out about a lot of the working and decent features in Vista. Which has made me start to wonder if it wasn't so much the marketing as the IT trade journals gave Microsoft their edge in the past.
With Vista, the trade publications weren't on board at all, and few of these features are known to the general public (even to a lot of Vista users).
And speaking of marketing, is anyone else starting to think the PC guy in the PC vs Mac ads is starting to be a more compelling character simply because he's developed way more personality over two years of ads? I noticed that the other night when one of the ads came on. They used to piss me off. Then they just annoyed me. Now the PC guy seems like the likeable underdog with the spunky personality. Just seems like Apple may have gone overboard and are just preaching to the already converted at this point.