Preventing Another Vista-like Release With Windows 7 396
CRE writes "An article at the OS News site details how Microsoft could best avoid Windows 7 becoming another Vista-esque release. The author advises Microsoft to basically split Windows in two. Windows 7 would be a new operating system based on the proven Windows NT kernel, but with a completely new user interface, with backwards compatibility provided by VMs. In addition, to please business customers and other people concerned with backwards compatibility, Microsoft should create 'Windows Legacy', basically the current Windows, which will receive only security and bug fixes. Relatedly, APCMag is reporting that Microsoft has moved Julie Larson-Green (the driving force behind Office 2007's Ribbon UI) over to work on Windows 7's interface."
Not reverting to 9x vs NT days (Score:5, Insightful)
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It works for ISPs, hardware and other businesses, think it wouldn't for software?
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10 years ago (Score:2)
I couldn't agree more. There's no way they're going to split again. They're going to continue what they're doing: same basic underlying framework, but the "Server" version has more features and services tacked on to the basic system. I can't believe that anybody who can remember 10 years ago would ever suggest going back to that again.
Why go back to 10 years ago and create many different operating systems? For most average users OS==Desktop environment and they don't give a rodent's fundament about what kernel it's running on top of. All MS has to do is expand what on you have already suggested. What's to stop MS from making two OS versions based on the same underlying framework? One version could be geared towards business. This corporate version would stick to the old crappy desktop environment to keep the bean-counters from blowing
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Because the existing framework is kludgy, unstable and insecure, but highly backwards compatible.
The idea is to build a whole new OS which avoids the pitfalls of the NT line and drops backwards compatibility to do so. Any legacy apps can run in "classic" Windows in a VM.
The analogy is closer to the Mac Classic/OSX divide than Win 9x/NT. Basically, the author of tfa is suggesting that Microsoft adopt Apple's approach t
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They tried "Microsoft Gates" at one stage, but people got confused.
Re:Not reverting to 9x vs NT days (Score:4, Insightful)
How about pulling a Mac? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:How about pulling a Mac? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If Linux or OSX ever manage to take over a dominant market share, I fully expect to see a 'nix-based Windows that has a WINE-like compatibility layer. Until then, Microsoft is probably best served by continuing as they have.
I love the idea of easy porting of my favorite KDE apps (K3B, Quanta Plus, etc) to Windows, but I just don't see a complete Windows rewrite as being
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I wouldn't expect OS X to take over dominate market share, (as I type on my Mac) The fact that OS X only legally runs on Macs, means that all the other people who sell PCs will put an other OS on it.
Linux could have a chance if they get some real inovation and developers who are willing to work on the booring deatils in the OS. Linux is as well polished as a wire brush metal. The sharp edges are now gone, but it still a far cry from a shiny lu
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The notion that there is some lack of "InstallShield for Linux" is one of the more absurd bits of FUD that's cropped over the years (now decades).
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I never said there wasn't a InstallShield for linux. But they don't use it. Either you need a custom application to connect to a Distribution Friendly internet site (Debian, Ubento), or some crazy package management software that has software packaged. That assumes that everyone has S0libKickADeadHorse installed as default on their OS.
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As a hard core geek myself, I used Ubuntu for over a year before it decided it hated the particular combination of my video card and monitor (neither of which changed). Four days of troubleshooting later, I still have no picture.
Sure, I'm doing something wrong. Sure, someone can come along and tell me how stupid I'm being, and explain the right modeline to put into my xorg.conf file. (Althou
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The platform that made them #1 was MS-DOS.
The rest was just inertia and network effects.
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Proprietary lock-in (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, it would take so long that GNU/Linux would have a huge window of opportunity, with the added benefit of low resources usage and true backwards compatibility.
Finally, it would be so different from MS Windows and so much like GNU/Linux or the Hurd that people would see the king is naked.
Re:How about pulling a Mac? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Win32 API is a complete mess. Backward compatibility is important to be sure. But the future of stable operating systems is also an issue. Apple couldn't have been bolder in their move to create OSX. They created an entirely new OS and provided some really buggy means to run OS9 software... believe me, it certainly sucked but it generally "worked." It was more than enough motivation for people to migrate to the OSX versions of the same packages they've been using, but for those not willing to make the move for whatever reason, they were able to limp by.
Applying the same idea to a new Microsoft OS would probably work better. Virtualization environments on the PC have come a long way in a relatively short time. One might even suggest that it's fairly mature technology. (I'm not quite ready to say that myself though.) But to provide backward compatibility through virtualization while at the same time creating something like "Win64" and making it completely new, more modern and at the same time tossing backward compatibility out the window (figuratively speaking) would probably bring new life into the "struggling under its own weight" OS and the company who makes it.
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Re:How about pulling a Mac? (Score:5, Informative)
But what makes you think Windows is less stable and less secure than *Nix or OSX? Other than people and their dogs running Windows as administrators (that's more an education problem vs Windows security), Windows is not less secure than *Nix or OSX. In fact, things like file system security is better than *nix, IMO. Windows ACLs just own, it's a breeze to use them versus the obscure *Nix FS security.
And for stability? The only time my Windows box crashed was because of piece of shit ATI drivers. People need to get away from the Windows 9x crashing every 3 minutes mentality. XP is rock solid (didn't drive Vista enough to tell on it's stability). I am currently running a VWare GSX server on Windows 2003, the only time I reboot is to install OS patches. Crashes so far: zero, nada, zilch. Been running it for 7+ months. Hardware: Do it your own el-cheapo components.
The vast majority of Windows crashes are due to defective hardware and/or drivers. Ever installed an unstable driver on Linux? Ever had a hardware failure on OSX?
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The problems with Windows are all at the Win32 layer. This is a huge problem for Microsoft, since their biggest competitive advantage is backwards compatibility. There is a lot of Win32 software around. Hardly anyone runs Win
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The horrible state my work machine is. This is a win32 system managed by "professional sysadmins".
The horrible state my mother-in-law's Dell desktop is in.
The horrible state there other PC was in that led to them getting the Dell desktop.
The occasional problems that the clued-in engineer spouse has had with her various Windows machines.
A pre-OSX ma
Re:How about pulling a Mac? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The "current" Windows? (Score:2)
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Does anyone else feel Microsoft would do better to get a clue from customer service? First rule of thumb, find out what your customer wants to DO with your product as opposed to forcing a matrix of features upon them which they may or may not know they need or want.
From my own experience MS could offer the following flavors:
kiss (Score:5, Insightful)
"Windows Legacy" (Score:4, Insightful)
This convinces me that linux is going to make it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once the problem becomes well defined and stable, Linux will catch up and O/S will commoditize.
The longer the release cycles- and the more windows UI changes with those releases, the more likely people will change to linux. I'm ready except for Everquest. Everything else is open source on my boxes now.
Re:This convinces me that linux is going to make i (Score:5, Interesting)
The OSS model is working a lot better at spreading out the complexity and costs of innovating within an OS. Its simply a more sustainable "business" model than Microsoft's.
Re:This convinces me that linux is going to make i (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This convinces me that linux is going to make i (Score:2)
All I see are pointless changes to the UI and the occasional bit of inescapable DRM put in place to apease the RIAA or MPAA.
Most of what people "gush" about when they talk about Microsoft products where features available in non-microsoft products more than 10 years ago.
Ribbon UI... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, no...
As for the future Windows, I say build it to be a VM store, capable of taking on the personality of any VM---allowing you to have new fancy features as well as the legacy Windows (heck, maybe they should include everything, all the way to DOS, Win3.1, etc.). You don't really `need' an OS (assuming they figure out ways of enabling you to efficiently use the hardware from VM)---you might have a `primary' image that you use all the time, and a buncha others provided for compatibility with previous versions.
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Hrm. It seems to me that if you're running on a VM instead of an "Operating System" then your VM is your operating system. At least, the traditional definition of "Operating System" is "the bit of software that goes between the applications and the hardware as an abstraction layer." The only things I've seen that don't need "operating systems" are embedded applications which are the only t
Split = nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
"Make it go."
Release Success (Score:5, Interesting)
It's that simple.
Whether or not the Vista release was successful or not is generally troll bait but from my personal perspective it had none of the things I wanted and featured many things I didn't. I certainly won't be touching it until well after SP1 and even then only if there are several great games for me to play. It was a release "failure" to people like me who expected some goodies and a new Windows iteration but Microsoft delivered a more restrictive operating system. No thanks!
Office 2007 UI? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Office 2007 UI? (Score:5, Interesting)
I beg to differ. First of all, they're not going to 'mirror' the new Office UI into Windows 7. If they wanted to do that, they would just need some code monkeys. They moved the guy who did it into Windows 7 development, which I think is a good move looking at how he improved the usability of Office. Lets hope that he work a similar type of magic for Windows.
I find the new Ribbon UI leaps and bounds ahead of the UI in Office 2003. The menus are just way more accessible instead of navigating through a labyrinth-like maze of dropdowns. You are more likely to use many features while you never knew even existed earlier because navigating was a chore. Also, I think it makes very good use of the extra pixels that modern screens have(a few years ago, it would have been a colossal waste of screen space).
Take the anecdotal evidence for what it's worth, but almost every person at work seems to love the new interface. I think that this is a good move by Microsoft.
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No they didn't the moved the gal that did it.
She is a woman at least from the pictures I saw.
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Once regular people get used to having mighty-morphing-menus everywhere,
imagine a "Joe-user" trying linux or OSX after that.
YAWV (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a a better way is to do smaller incremental releases. Sure MS may only want to make people drop the 200$ every 4-5 years, but they could make make their service packs yearly and include more new features (similar to XP SP 2). Then when it comes to the next Windows release it hopefully will not be such a drastic change for users.
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Software assurance doesn't function like a true subscription based license model, both because if yo
Another Windows? (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, M$ won't do that and this product will be hyped to the max and actually provide a lackluster experience for users.
This is a serious question: (Score:2)
Seriously when did that happen? When has anything Microsoft done as regards any of those points been undertaken as a panicked reaction to market complaints and screaming after the fact? Every single time.
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The whole "VM" thing is something they should have done with an XP-esque release made in 1992.
First thing they shouldn't do (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I doubt that's the reason for the bomb (Score:5, Insightful)
Add various real and perceived problems with privacy, the data hunger of MS, the dread of DRM/TCP and other rather negative reviews, and you see the reason why Vista wasn't the next Win95 hype.
The problem is that XP already has everything the user wants. It can play games, it's compatible with almost any current hardware right out of the box, there is no USB (WinNT) or WiFi (2k) that would require him to update, whatever hardware he wants to plug in, XP can take care of it. Whatever software he wants to run, XP can do it. DirectX10-only games are still far from reaching the shelves, and no business software that I'm aware of requires Vista. The user interface of XP has all the main features that make working, surfing and playing in Windows enjoyable, and all the kinks and wrinkles were also taken care of by third party software vendors (where "vendors" does not necessarily mean you had to pay anything for the soft).
Basically, the reason why Vista didn't sell like hot cakes was simple: It was not needed.
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Just a side note... DirectX 10 only games are out... but the only ones I've seen are the ones released by MS themselves...
Nephilium
Re:Well, I doubt that's the reason for the bomb (Score:5, Interesting)
Install was easy if not quick. The UAC pop ups were expected and not so annoying to begin with. I started clearing them and changing the factors that caused them. Everything I did caused another one. I started trying to get my SLI and dual screen setup to work. Vista would never see the second screen. I went to download the latest nVidia driver (~60Mb) via IE 7. It took it nearly 12 minutes over my 15Mb FiOS connection. Installed the driver and still Vista would not see my second monitor. That did it for me. Three hours was enough time wasted when I should have been surfing at the speed of light and playing.
Installed XP and updated it in less than 2 hours. Downloaded the same ~60Mb patch via Firefox in less than one minute. By hour three I was playing World of Warcraft faster, more smoothly and more richly than I'd ever seen it before.
I could have eventually worked through the technical glitches, but there's no way I can improve Vista and IE 7's sluggish performance THAT much.
Re:Well, I doubt that's the reason for the bomb (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm saying is not that software as a whole can't evolve. What I say is that Vista offers not enough additional value to warrant switching, and that the average user is quite fine with XP as long as architecture or system requirements don't force him to move away from it. Vista offers nothing the average user misses in XP. And that's actually a first since WinME.
Win2k was the quite successful "merger" of the NT line with the 9x line. It offered the stability and sturdyness of NT along with the "game compatibility" of 9x. It was a huge step forwards for both lines of products, not to mention USB support that NT lacked completely and 9x's support was
XP offered less additional value, but it did. More stability, better support for certain drivers, easier integration of WiFi equipment, easier update support, a bit more security.
Vista doesn't offer anything really measurable that you can't get easily with free third party tools. More importantly, its performance is not on par with XP due to a lot of changes that appearantly aren't really optimized yet.
Vista's problem is that there was no need for it. There is no new hardware that isn't supported in XP, as it was with USB and WiFi. There's no must-have new architecture out that requires Vista. And the only Vista-only software we'll see for quite some time to come are games, and even that only if studios dare being DX10 only.
That's why I said it's not needed. There will be a need for OSs that support future developments, no doubt. But Vista, in its current state, has no selling point.
Re:Well, I doubt that's the reason for the bomb (Score:5, Interesting)
Also XP brought us things like a built-in firewall, clear type, remote desktop, 64bit support, etc.
It also brought some unwelcome things like product activation and DRM, but on the whole it is widely agreed that XP is a respectable upgrade over 2000. This is where your argument pretty much falls apart, it is not widely agreed that Vista is a worthwhile upgrade over XP, in fact it is quite the opposite. So your statement that "But XP, in its current state, has no selling point." isn't really true. If it had no selling point then why are people still clamoring for XP and why are we seeing vendors who had moved to Vista had to cave in to the huge demand to bring XP back?
That simply did not happen on such a large scale with XP. I remember the XP haters(I was probably one of them) and the complaints about speed when XP first came out but they pail in comparison to the revolt I'm seeing against Vista. IMHO this is new and different then any other MS transition to date. Or maybe I should just say this is the worst Microsoft OS transition to date and when you look at what happened internally during Vista's development cycle nobody should be surprised at the outcome.
Your right that in 200x when Windows 7 comes out that these same old arguments will crop up, but unless MS pulls a rabbit out of their asses with Vista SP1 your going to see a huge amount of users sticking with XP until Windows 7 comes out.
Virtual Machines (Score:5, Interesting)
That just gave me an interesting idea: Why doesn't MS ship fully functional versions of previous OS's, wrapped in a VM, with newer versions? What would they lose? I know I'd be far less worried about upgrading to Vista if I knew I could load up a built-in VM of DOS 6.0 or Win98SE or WinXP and play all my favorite shareware games from the '90s as easily as the latest-and-greatest. Same goes for here at work...it would be nice to know that some of our older software could just be loaded in a VM until the vendors catch up with Vista. As long as they maintain security on the sandbox itself, they wouldn't need to worry overmuch about keeping the old OS up to date, and it's not like people would be buying Vista just to exclusively use it to run XP, but it would make for a much more obvious upgrade path than the current hard cutoff in backwards compatibility.
Go Fornucate Yourself (Score:2)
How about FINISHING Vista first? (Score:2)
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Isn't it a little premature for Microsoft to be working on the next Windows release?
It's not premature to be generating hype and interest, remember, Gabo is coming!
I'm afraid we'll have these "articles" (and I say that word with the highest level of irony and contempt) everyday (or every other day) from now until 6 months after the release of the next MS OS, at which point their generously budgeted marketing department will spam us with "news" about their next product.
simplicity... (Score:4, Interesting)
For Server: no client access licenses. When you buy a copy of the server software, you can have as many clients as you want. Each server version is capable of everything, including clustering, load balancing, and everything else.
For Workstation: one interface. It could be new or old, whatever, but exactly one. If it's new, we all need to learn the new version. Don't like that? Get Linux or a Mac.
Finally, both server and workstation should support a single hardware compatibility list. If your hardware isn't on the list, you can't load it; update the list monthly through Windows Update. There is Driver Signing already, but you can get around it by ignoring the warnings. Eliminate getting around the warnings.
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Keep XP, fix Vista (Score:2)
That's a good idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
What they really ought to do is something more like what Apple did with the Classic Mode environment for supporting OS 9 applications, which ran within OS X. Thing is, MS will probably have to support theirs indefinitely, while Apple was able to successfully kill Classic Mode within about 5 years.
Windows is unprofitable? (Score:2)
If Microsoft wants to survive, they'd better concentrate on what is profitable and leave the whole Windows behind or better make it 'Open Source' and let the
MS Already Failed At This A Couple Of Times (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft has already failed at all of these things people want them to do, you have to look elsewhere and fast because Windows 7.0 is just one release after Vista (6.1) it is going to be mostly the same. Microsoft Research hasn't fixed major architectural flaws. The sloppy security of the app platform is just one problem. For example the apps are all hard-coded to 96 dpi and nothing ha
Vista is not a failure (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been using Vista since November of 2006, essentially days after it was released to MSDN, and it is without a doubt better than XP. The improvements are both obvious and subtle. I'm not going to list them all here, because others have done a good job [wikipedia.org] already.
So if Vista is superior to XP technically, which was deemed by most as a great success, then Vista being a failure must be attributed to sales data. Many early reports showed Vista having poor sales, but those reports were flawed due to the fact that they compared the launch of Vista to the launch of XP. Vista launched Jan. 29th, long after the holiday season was over, where as XP enjoyed the entire holiday season to boosts its sales.
Once this was corrected, reports showed that Vista was selling on pace with XP. Indeed, as of March 2007, Vista's sales were double [zdnet.com] that of XPs.
In addition, despite being released to consumers and businesses separately, Vista's sales were only 4% behind XP, which was released to both simultaneously. In other words, Vista beat expectations [seekingalpha.com] by a long shot.
So it must be that sales of Vista have stagnated since March... opps, that's not true either. Apparently, Vista sold so well [cnn.com] that it offset the massive hit Microsoft took as part of extending the Xbox 360 warranty to 3 years.
And then there is the wonderful story that Vista has somehow boosted XP sales [computerworld.com], which is completely silly. It didn't boost XP sales. There was a larger proportion of XP sales than were expected, but the breakdown is about 80% Vista, 20% XP. Part of this is thanks to the FUD machine (good job guys) prompting some large OEMs, like Dell, to offer XP on lower end machines. Microsoft underestimated the FUD machine's ability to influence the market. (By the way, there were 7% more XP sales than were expected. Hardly a tidal wave of XP purchases.)
Sorry guys. I know you desperately want to believe that Vista is a failure, both technically and in terms of sales. But you're wrong on both accounts. 2 years from now, when 90% of PCs are running Vista, you'll probably still claim it's a failure, although you'll fall back to the technical side of things.
I'll be sure to bookmark my post and repeatedly link to it in all those flame wars.
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I still refuse to use an OS that will cripple or remove my ability to view HD content, or that will require an expensive license from Microsoft to allow me to build any drivers for the 64bit version, or that, if you turn off the non-security "feature" of UAC suddenly disallows programs to write to the TEMP folder
First, Vista doesn't prevent you from viewing HD content. I don't have any "trusted" media path hardware (like HDMI), yet I can view HD content just fine.
Second, you can develop 64bit drivers all you want. Vista, by default, will only load signed 64bit drivers. You can either obtain a signing cert from a company like Verisign (for about $400), or you can TURN OFF THAT RESTRICTION. Wow, is that so hard?
Lastly, I have no idea what you're talking about regarding UAC. If you turn it *off* it disallows admin's
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Unfortunately, since my "upgrade" to Vista, the pace at which I get that stuff done is noticeably slower.
Why? Is it that your PC is slower, or is it that you can't perform the same actions you used to as fast as you used to because of UI changes. If so, what are those UI changes that are causing you the most problems?
I've already disabled UAC
Why?
don't use Aero
Why? For performance reasons? Fair enough, although a Dx9 video card with 128MB of ram runs turned off the sidebar Understandable. The sidebar is almost useless right now. Most of the gadgets suck. It has potential, but it's not there yet.
As far as I'm concerned the "improvements" Vista have brought are completely superfluous to the computing experience
Well, the only things you've mentioned are the visi
The thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why another 'new' interface? (Score:2)
What the **** for?
How will repainting, and then moving all the icons around help anybody get the next quarterly reports or respond to an email faster? Sheesh! An OS is supposed to facilitate a user's management of their hardware and software. Another 'new' interface that just shifts things around doesn't help anyone, and there is very little else that CAN be done.
I don't mean to put Li
First things first. (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to be under the impression, there is competition and if MSFT does not do what is best for the customers, they will desert it in droves. Time and again MSFT has proved that its customer base is loyal to a fault and is a sucker for punishment. Now go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan for Windows-7 that will force all the weary recently upgraded to Vista finally dudes to plunck down more money to upgrade to Windows-7.
Cut down version of 7 (Score:2)
In windows 7 Unsigned code will be locked down.... (Score:2)
M$ has said they are working a kind of VM like set that will sandbox all unsigned code for the next mayor release of windows as well as fully redone UI.
First of all if they are this alot of people will dump windows for mac or linux at that point and / or there may be a lot of anti Trust lawsuits.
also fully redoing the UT / forcing unsigned code to be locked down will brake so many apps that Up take of this will be a lot slower then Vista slow up ta
Businesses don't want the "Advantage" (Score:5, Informative)
For example. here where I work, we had Vista running everything most office workers need; Office, IE, SCT, Even wintegrate, which is an ancient terminal program from 96. There was three reasons we didn't go to vista. One was the System requirements we were not ready to meet, another was that F-secure did not have an official Vista version at the time, but the real reason we decided to stay with XP was simple. The Genuine Advantage is for lack of a better word a total pain in the ass.
In vista there are two ways of handling corporate keys. One with a Key Management server and the other with a Multiple Activation Key. Under KMS. You are required to have a KMS server on your network, tie it to DNS and give it your VLK (which can be changed if your old key is disabled and propagated to networked PC's). once you do that it will activate any Business version of vista automatically every 3-6 months without entering any keys, but if the computer is no longer on the network (say a Laptop) after 3 months, the system locks you out in a reduced functionality mode which can be described as useless.
The Second method; MAK isn't much better. basically MS handles the KMS for you. this means that you don't have to worry about traveling users not being disconnected from your network for too long since it works over the internet, but now MS is handling your activations, and you have to contact them every time you hit your quota in order to activate more windows. (which isn't as bad as it sounds. According to MS activation isn't counted against your licence count, and you can request indefinitely) However, if MS sees a huge activation spike. (say your activation rate average goes from 100 a day to 10000000 a day) they disable your key (which brings us to reduced functionality mode for all MAK'ed PC's) and then you must go to each and every MAK managed PC and change the key to a new one supplied by MS.
So basically, to use Vista you either have a server on your network and pray no one's laptop cripples while their on a business trip, or you contact MS until the break of dawn and pray that no one pirates your key so you don't have to touch 1000 Crippled PC's with the Dreaded "YOU ARE A PIRATE!" message
Office 2007, however, doesn't have the "YOU ARE A PIRATE!" system built in it and still has the old VLK licencing system like XP. I can guarantee that it's adoption in business is much higher than Vista. I know we're using it here, but Vista is sitting on the shelf.
Deja vu (Score:3, Informative)
An OS lesson from... STAR WARS??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Old computers that still kick A55 and would be a shame to throw out. I have a PIII-400 that stills does what it needs to, and a Mac 8500 that still does nearly everything I ask, except that IE Mac doesn't work on most sites. What we need to do, sometime <BLINK>REALLY SOON</BLINK> is to freeze a subset of computers and OS forever into an R2-Unit standard.
Recall that the R2 unit loaded into Luke's X-wing was the SAME unit that Obi-Wan used. How likely is it that ANYTHING we have on a computer now will even physically plug in, let alone work in 40 years. Some computers can do 90% of what we need from now until at least 20 years from now. Can we PLEASE pick a set of standards and let that class of computer be supported? For example, ATA-100, USB 2.0 (or Firewire800, I don't care), DVI, RJ-45... I have peripherals in my garage with no computer capable of connecting them. I still have a copy of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter... as if. Something. Anything.
And Windows Whatever. XP, XT, 2KSP17. I don't care. That way, as we retire, the Geek Squad can say, "Do you want us to replace your computer? This one's seen a lot of wear." "Not on your life. That G4 Titanum and me have been through a lot together."
PS: The blink tag was fake.
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The nearest equivalent in mundane computers is the serial or parallel port printer, which will attach to and work with just about any PC from any era. (We'll ignore the problem of driver availability for this discussion... tho I use the HPLJ2 driver across over 20 years worth of PCs and a dozen OSs, and it works with a wide variety of printers... so even that isn't an insoluble problem
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"I want to buy a computer. What should I get?"
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I dunno, email, surf the net, word processor... Is Dual COre 3GHz with a 500GB hard drive enough?"
"You could do that on my kids PIII-400."
A lot of great advances have shown up since '95. USB, 500GB drives, LCD monitors, Wireless networking, DVD burners. Sure, Moore's LAw has boosted CPU speeds 128 times. Hard drives and RAM has gone up nearly that much... But ha
Dimsal failure (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's obvious that MS is pushing the PR now in order to draw attention from Vista. Vista is a trainwreck, so they're playing the "look, shiney!" game.
No. That won't help. (Score:4, Insightful)
What we need is Three things.
A. Make features, not bullet points. This means give us features to help us. Not a newly designed interface that just looks pretty. Make stability and bug free a FEATURE. Look for features we can't get elsewhere, and ways for us to extend it. That means don't worry about firewalls (ship with Zonealarm) don't give us a weak anti-virus and pretend that's a major feature. Don't pretend "integrated music player" is a feature. Microsoft's current beliefs are bullet points are better than other goals. Games that run at 60 fps are more important than games that are "fun". Office suite that integrate perfectly are better than bug free. Get over it and get us actual innovation. And if you offer Backwards compatibility with old windows code make sure it's 100 percent Backwards compatibility before you ship.
B. Ignore the side projects. Windows 7 is about WINDOWS not Media player, outlook, office, and the rest. Want to include those? Great make them bug free, and allow us to uninstall all of them, otherwise focus on Windows. Giving us 30 programs along with windows doesn't make you my friend, when I have to work around 29 of them to get MY functionality back.
C. Cut the price, cut the fat. Two versions of Windows. Upgrade for 100 dollars, Full for 200 dollars. don't try to nickle and dime us saying "well ultimate has..." Ultimate has shit. Either an upgrade or full and make them AFFORDABLE. When Windows costs more than any of 4 tvs I own. (Including a 52 inch CRT) that's a problem.
Vista died because no one needed it and no one wanted it, but Windows is slowly forcing it's bloated corpse on us. That's what caused the Vista Like release, an unwanted unneeded product who's only benefit is making Microsoft more money and looking pretty.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Windows NT Kernel is actually a very good kernel. It is the fact that the rest of the OS is designed in a way that cause problems to occure.
Re: (Score:2)
Coke Classic (Score:2)
Microsoft selling Windows Legacy looks suspiciously similar Coke selling Coke Classic. Tell everyone they like "New Coke", realize the don't, and start selling "Coke Classic". Tell everyone they like "Vista", realize they don't, and then sell "Windows Legacy."
I am already bracing myself for the "Windows 7 the operating system that was supposed to ship in 2007" jokes. Microsoft picking Windows 7 as a product name in 2007 appears unfortunate.
Re:Coke Classic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Coke Classic (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
though i'd prefer XP as the base rather than 2k (they're mostly the same, but i'm more familiar with the former), this is a reasonable idea.
take XP, take the stuff originally planned for vista (WFS, DX10, etc.) throw it in with security upgrades (like doing UAC properly) and bug fixes, then sell it for the cost of an OSX upgrade.
sounds reasonable to me.
Try Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Try Linux (Score:5, Funny)
I mean seriously, when you have driver troubles in Linux, it's NOT going to be solved by running a self-executable installer downloaded from the hardware manufacturer.
Re:Try Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that Microsoft can't figure out that making a massive non intuitive change to the UI (when it isn't required for functionality) is insane. Business needs simple and straight forward solutions. It doesn't need a 'cartoon' interface.
BTW - How come their new, more secure OS lists EVERY USER NAME at login? (and you can't turn it off...)
Lets play "Guess which user has a weak password"! The game is much easier if you start with all of the user names.
Re:Try Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Lets play "Guess which user has a weak password"! The game is much easier if you start with all of the user names.
Nice rant there. You can turn it off (first), and second, the username is not supposed to be part of the secret, just the password is (I know for example your Slashdot username is Gription. Got weak password?). Ubuntu will also show (among other distros) list of users on startup.
Re:Try Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Win95 ran happily on a 1GB HD, with several hundred (maybe as much as 700, IIRC) MB left for apps, and I can't really think of more than one or two very minor new things that XP does that I actually use. Image/video thumbnails are nice, I guess, and having a CD/DVD burning program integrated into the file manager seems like a no-brainer, except that the one they made sucks so badly that I only use it as a last resort, usually on someone else's machine, so frankly I could live without it. The new network management system is obviously better, but doesn't justify more than 2-3MB of extra disk space usage, tops.
Why are XP and Vista so huge? Is there something I'm overlooking, or has MS' code really become so bloated that it takes 1.5+ GB to accomplish what 200-300MB did before? Hell, I can fit a Linux desktop that does SIGNIFICANTLY more in that much space, with Openoffice and a real CD burning app, full-featured media player and all kinds of other goodies. Why does the basic MS OS take up so much room?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Animated system tours
High resolution graphics (especially Vista)
Backup copies of most important system files (XP is essentially installed twice, FYI)
Drivers for every printer made before the OS was released
Backup copies of every patch and service pack ever installed
Speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis engines
Larger dictionaries for spelling and grammar checking
Fonts for foreign languages
Registry and filesystem snapshots (System Restore and Shadow Copies)
Thumbnail caching for pictures
Re:Try Linux (Score:4, Informative)
(Oh, and I just told Synaptic to mark Gnome and every package that depended on it for removal, and it said that 315MB would be freed. Vanilla gnome with no other apps installed, then, must take up less than 315MB. I think KDE uses a bit more. Linux+basic terminal apps+X takes up MAYBE 200MB, so the 500MB low end of my estimate was closest to reality for a no-app (or, rather, apps comparable to a vanilla Windows intallation) system with a full-featured GUI.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of games don't run on it. If I want a nice, lean system that doesn't run games, I'll use Linux :)
Wow, I can't believe how many people subscribe to this misconception. "Lots of games don't run on Win2K"?? I can only assume the last time you used Win2K was at least 5 years ago. In all my years of gaming, and all my old games (yes, including DOS games) I found exactly one game that ran more or less "properly" on XP that did not run on 2K. That's right: one. And that one required a number of special tweaks to work on XP, and mostly worked on 2K as well with those same tweaks. (For the curious, this was th
Re:Try Linux (Score:5, Informative)
If you take any fundamental feature of the NT product base that has become XP or Vista and try to compare it to a DOS/GUI hybrid OS you need to stop and compare what 'weight' the differences would have.
For example, when you start adding in Multi-languages, full Unicode support, or even the Font sizes to support the Unicode specifications, you are adding literally 100mb of space there ALONE.
Next add in security which DID not exist in Win9X, and this is NOT light security it is a full token based security system that EXTENDS beyond just the FS. And this is not even mentioning NTFS encryption abilities, journaling abilities, compression abilities, etc.
Also realize that a significant amount of the OS install is for a backup of the install media and drivers so you don't have to grab the DVD when adding new hardware or if a system file gets changed so the OS can self repair. Just in drivers alone Vista supports approximately 500 times the devices Win95 did, and just the INF files for this alone for these devices, not even including the binaries is over 40mb of data.
See how quick this starts to add up?
Now let's add in basic system disk usages, like shadow copies, system restore, larger pagefiles and hibernation file support ALL OF WHICH Win9X did not have to deal with with the exception of the pagefile and it was usually dynamic and around 200mb in Win9x. So once Vista is installed the OS is already shadowing files, managing at least one restore point, and has 2-6gb of data just for the pagefile and hibernation store.
Arguing the difference between any NT based OS and Win9X is easy for anyone that understands the massive changes in OS over the years and the difference between an assembly optimized single purpose OS to a portable scalable OS. As for features this gives users that you DIDN'T have in Win95, there is better threading, better caching, security, full networking services, multi-cpu support,(Vista even adds multi GPU support, preemptive GPU scheduling, and GPU RAM Virtualization ), and with NT there is also platform independence like running on anything from Itanium to x86 to x64 with barely more than a recompile because of the code portability that doesn't 'quite' compile as tight as was allowed with the Win9X OSes. You also have a lot of 'high' end services, servers, and features from things like *nix based printing support, SNMP management all the back to user seen features like RDP (remote desktop/terminal services), concurrent multi-user login support, etc etc.
Now to argue why Vista uses more HD than XP, start with the basic features of XP, then add in Media Center, Tablet PC Edition, and then start with support for a NEW API system for the graphics, audio, networking, printing, video, and even the animation API sets as well as the communication APIs, and this has to CO-EXIST with the older APIs as Vista still allows basic GDI based printer drivers, kernel XP video drivers, XP audio drivers in addition to the new driver models, and it also has internal compatibility layers so that the XPS printing system 'seamlessly' talks to older GDI printers or older applications printing using GDI technology or old Audio software or old Video software, and will ensure that they all convert BOTH ways so that old and new applications can use both old and new devices.
To further the XP Vista comparison, you then have to add in all the 'Vista' visible features like the search system(which even indexes ink, can do OCR on image documents, and even index voice notes so that recorded conversations can be text searched), the Text to Speech, the speech recognition, the
Re:Try Linux (Score:5, Funny)
How dare you, sir? How dare you?
I hope you go to GNU/Hell for such slander and heresy. I hereby declare GNU/Fudwah upon you.
The Prophet, holiness and peace be upon RMS, will surely smite thee in the name of the All Sharing GNU. There is but one GOD and GNU is its name, and RMS is its Prophet, and its Holy Writ is GPL (now in the GNU and IMPROVED, heretic ass-kicking, version 3, call now GNU/Operators are standing by).
"Uh, just one question, what does GOD need with a driver?" - James T. Kirk, Star Trek
GNU/Linux, although written by a heretic and apostate, is GOD's perfect design the Prophet has claimed as His own, GNU/Peace be upon his posterior. It is the weapon to crush the Infidels of Redmond and their Satanic Gospel of Commerce and Property.
Face east, kneel, and pray towards MIT before it is too late.
GNU/Fudwah has been proclaimed.
Re:Gee.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is at least somewhat correct. Legacy support is responsible for a lot of Windows's problems.
However, it's also perhaps the biggest single reason for its success.