Is Microsoft Improving Its Image? 746
nk497 writes "Writer makes the case that Windows 7 is a turning point for Microsoft, and we all might start liking them soon ...
'While it's not winning everyone over, there are real signs that Microsoft has taken criticisms on board where it matters most: in the software and services that it provides. The idea of a faster, slimmer Windows is one that most Vista owners would automatically put on their wishlist, and it seems that Microsoft has genuinely done something about it. It's not just reignited interest in the Windows product line, but it's got users appreciating a fresh approach from Microsoft as well.'"
but (Score:4, Informative)
But isn't Windows 7 just a service pack for Vista? From what's been touted about it doesn't look and leaner or meaner they've just put some speed improvements into the UI to make it look faster.
The majority of the stuff under the hood is still vista so people will probably have the same problems.
*sigh* (Score:4, Informative)
The real problem is that Windows 7 is just a service pack for Vista.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 [wikipedia.org]
Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:2, Informative)
I don't care about Bloat if I still have the ability to turn off what I don't want. In that case, give me all the bloat you want. I may need features you don't, and rather than having to hunt for them online and download a virus posing as a function, I can just turn on or off the function in Windows.
Re:No. Microsoft Goal is unchanged. (Score:3, Informative)
I think what he means is he doesn't want to plunk down a wad of cash for an OS, then be forced to keep paying a monthly fee or his OS stops working.
It's a preference for an ownership model vs. a subscription model and I agree with him. I'm aware that Windows today is licensed as I'm sure he was, but it's a license with a fee that you pay once. The same with Office. What MS probably dreams of is moving to a subscription model where users have no choice but to pay monthly for continued use of their OS.
The numbers were made up because they were largely irrelevant, it was the model he saw them wanting that he objected to, not the particular made up fees.
utter rubbish (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, but this is laughable. With a marketshare that is measured in fractions of a percent, Opera isn't going to force anybody to do anything. It might have something to do with threats from the EU. And before you start: no, Opera didn't force the EU to do that either.
Re:No. Microsoft Goal is unchanged. (Score:2, Informative)
What if the EULA says you cannot sell the product to someone else? What if the EULA says you cannot use the software on sundays?
EULA's are dodgy at least in the US: there is more info on applicable court cases here [wikipedia.org].
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:1, Informative)
sudo apt-get remove [program]
or run synaptic, yum, etc...
or simply delete the files
Yeah, that's really hard in Linux.
So if you don't want IE in windows you can remove it? Go ahead and try. I'll wait.
You really don't know what you're talking about, do you?
Re:Is Slashdot Improving its Image? (Score:3, Informative)
> allowing computers to be affordable to greater portion of the populace.
PCs finally managed to come down to the price of early home computers about 20 years after Atari and Commodore achieved the same thing. ...nice historical revisionism there.
Windows 7 Appears to be SHILLTASTIC!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
I see the Redmond shill machine is in full swing now. First it gobbles up MSZD.Net. Now another publication is releasing "features" on how "performant" and "fantastic" Windows 7 is.
Bull Fraking Shit.
Windows 2000 and NT 4 was as lean as it got! Want a reminder? Load up Windows NT Server 4.0 in a virtual machine and see how much resources are being used.
20 fraking MB!
Even XP is bloated! Ever wonder why Windows Explorer sometimes takes a few seconds to create a folder on a Quad Core 3.0GHZ 4GB machine? A second on this machine has probably 1000 times more processing power than the Voyager probe and the Apollo 11 Moon lander (if you believe in all that). Yet I have to wait and twiddle my thumbs...
Its been downhill since Windows 2000. That OS ran gorgeously on my dual Pentium III 350 (250MB). XP pigged that machine in the space of time it took to install XP.
I company I worked at recently still used NT 4 to run SQL Server... and it ran like the wind... until a US company took us over and due to Sarbanes Oxley (read "license to print money" from a Redmon/corporate friendly regime) we had to upgrade to SQL Server 2099 (which sucked and was oh so .Net slow), Exchange 3059 (which sucked and was oh so .Net bloated) and a Server OS that gobbled up about 15 gig RAM just on startup.
OK. I exaggerate... but you get the picture.
I was tempted to pull out my old faithful PIII 350 (which happily runs Linux now) and install Windows 7... but why bother?
These days I console myself by liberating PCs from Windows and getting refunds for bundled Vista + Works licenses (thats £120 + vat in Blighty) on all PC purchases.
Re:Is Microsoft Improving Its Image? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
The "average" Linux user, if he wants a leaner install, can just choose one that is already pared down. He doesn't have to start with a kitchen sink DVD and try to trim it himself, he can get Damn Small Linux, 50 MB, for example. Windows users cannot buy a legal cutdown version. (There are plenty of DIY Windows versions online, but all are illegal and/or require a great deal of knowledge to install.)
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
The correct answer was, "guess what, Google is evil!"
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:5, Informative)
See, that's precisely the problem.
In Windows, IE has been shoved into places where there's really no good reason for it to be, other than for MS to be able to claim it can't be removed.
Why is an HTML rendering engine needed to access network shares? Why is it needed to access FTP? Why is it needed to get updates?
Even MS had to recognize that updates through ActiveX in a website have disadvantages and had to code an actual application (the systray update applet) to do things that they couldn't shoehorn IE into. But of course they had to stop one step short of making it fully functional, because if it was, the windows update site would look stupid, and one of the places it's not possible to remove IE from would no longer exist.
Re:Uh, but you don't own anything in FOSS. (Score:3, Informative)
"You don't own any application you use, unless you wrote it. Even under the GPL, you are permitted to modify and copy it, but the original copyright belongs to the author of that product. If you just -owned- the software you got, but could copy it freely,"
I must respectfully point out that you're talking bollocks.
If you have a book, you own that book. You own that copy of the book. You own that copy of the copyrighted material which is printed therein.
No, you do not own the copyright to the book. No-one has ever suggested that by owning a copy of a book that you own the copyright to that book.
If you have a copy of a piece of software which you have legally obtained, you own that copy of that software. Like a book, that does not mean that you own the copyright, or that you can exercise the rights of the copyright holder. It just means you own that copy. You are not allowed to make copies yourself, except where permitted by fair use, other relevant statutes, or a license from the copyright holder.
But, like owning a copy of a book, you own your copy of a piece of software.
You are, of course, free to give up some of the privileges of such ownership. So if you voluntarily agree to a binding EULA contract in which you consent to never engage in some otherwise-legal activities, and possibly give up your ownership of the copy of the software you have, that is your choice.
Fortunately, Free Software does not ask you to enter into any such agreement.
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:2, Informative)
Just get rid of the shortcut, it's a lot easier than trying to rip out vital parts of the OS because you'll just get all whiny when removing the only web accessing part of the OS too.
You'll whine that you can no longer use FTP, you'll whine that for some reason you can no longer connect to network shares, etc. What you want to get rid of, sir, is the shortcut. After all, IE is basically a wrapper around the internal engine (Trident.)
Anyway, there are still some applications you should not remove from most distros. Remove apt from Ubuntu and have fun setting it up again, stuff like that.
As long as you have another browser/ftp client installed, there is no issue with removing IE. Its as easy as Start --> Control Panel --> Add/Remove Programs --> Add/Remove windows components and uncheck IE and hit next a couple times. Finish with a reboot and you are IE free. If you want IE gone, get rid of it, your OS will not stop working because IE is gone. As to network shares, in an IE free environment, ohh!!!! wait... oh, they work the same as they always did (Which may not be the best way, but MS isn't known for doing things the best way). If you want to be lazy, delete the shortcut, if you want to remove it (And remove it properly), just make sure that you have a web client and ftp installed already and you are laughing. Don't buy into the Whine Scare... your OS wouldn't stop working. Besides, even if you do run into issue, you can go right back into add/remove programs and put the checkmark back in and hit next.
Re:Duh (Score:2, Informative)
I don't have much problem with memory on my Vista system. I run idle with 150 MB of total Kernel Memory, and 645 MB of total physical memory used. This includes 44 processes. Also includes background tasks of Incredimail, Truecrypt, Logitech drivers, Spybot-SD Resident, Nvidia driver stuff, and a couple of other small things. That's not really a big deal with 2GB of DDR2 800 running @ 4-4-4-10.
What a lot of people on here don't seem to realize is that while Vista is bloated by default, you can unbloat it quite a lot. Turning off services, disabling or un-installing unneeded features, and general tweaking make a huge difference with Vista.
I suppose that if I was doing a lot of heavy video/audio/photo editing/creation, it would be a noticeable issue. But then, if I were doing all that, I wouldn't be using Vista either.
I was one of the people who said "I'll never install Vista on my machine." until I got it as a gift from someone. It sat on a shelf for about 2 months, and I finally decided to try it just for the heck of it. Well, it's been almost a year, and I can readily say I'll never go back to XP. Sure, XP was slimmer and a slight bit faster (compared to the way I install and configure Vista), but Vista is much cooler to use and has more features that I like, and is actually more stable in my experience. I've never had a blue screen with Vista, and only one reboot-requiring crash. And that crash was because of a motherboard problem, not a Vista problem.
In fact, the only complaint I have about Vista is because of the version I have. Home Premium. You can't access/use gpedit.msc in Vista Home Premium. This miffed me a bit. But, other than that, no problems at all. And no, I don't work for Microsoft or spread FUD for them. I just haven't had a problem with Vista, and thought I'd share that with everyone.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Informative)
Windows XP has been out for -eight years-, can you name a Linux distro that old that you can still get support on?
First, bear in mind that there have been 3 XP "service packs" during that period, which were, in effect, pretty significant upgrades (not to mention 3-4 Internet Explorer versions which also tinkered with the core OS). Genuine question: can you get any XP support that doesn't start with the instruction "first install SP2 or later"?
Second, Open Source makes a difference: once Microsoft withdraws support for something, that's curtains. If an old version of an open source project is in widespread use, you're likely to find someone, somewhere backporting patches - or you can do it yourself. Not a solution for Joe Endluser, of course, but Microsoft doesn't do long-term support for Joe Endluser's benefit either.
Thirdly (and this is less of a defense and more of an explanation), XP is "just" the core operating system, GUI, admin tools, a few bare-bones apps and (until the EU gets its way) web browser. A typical linux distro is a full-blown, all singing, all dancing application and development suite, often with a choice of 2-3 GUIs, a couple of office suites, 2-3 DBMSs, various web and file sharing servers, TeX/Latex, PDF creation and viewing utilities, 1000 elephants and a hard-boiled egg. Its pretty inevitable that you can't support that lot for too long. If you really were looking for a long-term support solution, the "mugs eyeful" desktop distros might not be the best place to go.
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:2, Informative)
I routinely try to install Thunderbird to replace Outlook (where clients don't object), and I haven't seen residual Outlook updates afterwards.
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:5, Informative)
Why is it needed to get updates?
Even MS had to recognize that updates through ActiveX in a website have disadvantages and had to code an actual application (the systray update applet) to do things that they couldn't shoehorn IE into. But of course they had to stop one step short of making it fully functional, because if it was, the windows update site would look stupid, and one of the places it's not possible to remove IE from would no longer exist.
Apparently you've not seen Vista yet, but that's ok.
In Vista, the Windows Update site does nothing, other than tell you to open the Windows Update app.
As for why they had to code an actual application? It's so it can run in the background. Otherwise you'd need to open your browser every day to check for updates.
Why it is impressive (Score:5, Informative)
But is 10.3 and 10.4 being faster than 10.0 and 10.1 really an achievement? Early OS X releases, if we are to be fair, were crap.
They were only "crap" in the sense that not everything in the window manager (essentially) had been worked out as much. People didn't like Finder as much as the old, there was not as much software - but the core was in OK shape.
Even the earliest releases were still based on a lot of solid components, like BSD and Apache and so on.
So yes, it's impressive that the CORE system is faster overall with less bloat than the original OS X versions. Just look at what Apple did with launchd to replace a number of different processes and speed up boot as an example...
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe; just maybe, Microsoft isn't the evil machine some slashdotters make out.
How about, Microsoft isn't the evil machine any more. They used to be, but they've turned around. They're still encumbered by a legacy code base and compatibility requirements, but they're trying to do the right thing as best they can, which they certainly weren't a decade ago.
Microsoft realizes that a lot of their old code is complete crap, and is not maintainable. The only way to fix it is to rewrite it from scratch, using a modern language. They didn't have a modern language they liked, and they do still have issues with "Not Invented Here", so they created a new language (and associated dev tools) that they could start rewriting things in. Note that the company has been in the language business longer than they've been in the OS business.
Internet Explorer, up through IE6, was developed with the old evil monopoly mentality. They reached their goal of market domination, then terminated the project and scattered the team. Then Firefox started becoming popular, and they realized that IE would soon be forgotten if they didn't do something, so they started working on it again - but this time, they're operating in a competitive/cooperative environment, where they're trying to develop a better product than their competitors while adhering to web standards to ensure compatibility. This process began with a few minor enhancements they added to XPSP2, some of which (such as the information bar) have since been adopted by other browsers. Microsoft has contributed resources to help the Mozilla team improve Vista compatibility in Firefox, and they chose to license Mozilla's RSS icon for use in IE7. IE7 certainly didn't fix all the bugs, but it was an evolutionary step. IE8 is even better; it passes ACID2 and they've finally fixed things like the "view source" command.
People bitched about shoddy security in XP; because so many applications were designed for Win98 which didn't have any concept of security, those apps require Administrator privileges on XP in order to work correctly, so for most people running as an unprivileged user is simply not practical. Running everything with Administrator privileges, of course, is part of the reason so many XP machines become infected with malware and turn into spambots. Another reason is, XP has a ton of useless services enabled by default, allowing non-firewalled PCs to become infected remotely over the Internet.
So, Microsoft added a software firewall, which they turned on by default in XPSP2. A few people complained because it broke things, but the world is a better place - we still have botnets, but most of the worms have stopped functioning (which is good for all of us, including Linux users; worms eat up our bandwidth too). Then they started fixing the privileges problem.
Microsoft can't force third-party vendors to fix their broken code. What they can do, though, is make it really annoying for users to run broken code. Vista's User Access Control feature was designed to be annoying: if your CD-burning application is designed so the GUI won't run without Administrator privileges, instead of using privilege separation so the unprivileged GUI communicates with a privileged daemon in the background, the user gets a warning every time they launch it. If your printer driver puts a little icon in the systray that needs Administrator privileges, UAC won't allow it to run unless the user explicitly enables it every single time they log in. If a malicious application tries to modify your system configuration, even if you're logged in with Administrator privileges, you get a warning and the option to cancel. That warning can't be automatically skipped by simulating a mouse click on the "Continue" button, because Windows switches to a secure desktop before displaying the dialog box.
Unfortunately, although Microsoft's intentions were good, their implementation left something to be desired (for one thing, the switch t
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:2, Informative)
I really don't see how it's terribly different from KDE's Konqurer. The web browser and file browser use the same engine. That's not especially wierd. Internet Explorer itself -- iexplorer.exe -- is, like someone else said, just a wrapper for the underlying engine, Trident.
As far as Windows Updates go -- the client that creates a tray notification (wuauclt.exe) is for automatic updates. wuauclt cannot do on-demand updates. The website is for on-demand updates only. One does not exist because the other sucks. As a matter of fact, it took me a lot to get used to the idea of only using wuauclt for updates, because it doesn't have any feedback. But if you're using WSUS to deploy updates, you HAVE to use wuauclt.
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:3, Informative)
Well, precisely.
Why did they even have to bother with the website when they had to go and redo a lot of the work to do background updates anyway?
Re:*sigh* (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No. Microsoft Goal is unchanged. (Score:2, Informative)
Hello.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_v._BnetD [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(bot) [wikipedia.org]
Good day to you.
Re:Uninstall what you don't want from Windows too (Score:3, Informative)
Not anymore. KDE 4 has Dolphin and KHTML as separate Kparts.
Konqueror can still use both, but they are fundamentally separate.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
Speaking from a consumer viewpoint, (non-geeks would say "the real world") I see that the wholesaler where I get my system components has a range of products from 1.6G celeron to 3.33G core 2 duo. Of the 30 processors they have for sale as of today, only 5, or a tad over 16 percent, three years after Vista's release, are "fast enough to run Vista".
Firstly, the 3Ghz number is way too high. A 1.5-2Ghz Pentium-M class CPU is quite adequate assuming you have enough RAM.
Now, even ignoring the inaccuracy of the '3Ghz' number, you are still disingenuously comparing merely the clockspeed of a single-core P4 class CPU with the clock speed of modern dual-core CPUs. Not only are modern CPUs far faster per clock, but in terms of interactive responsiveness, a 1.6Ghz dual-core chip will run rings around a 3Ghz single-core chip.
You can't be serious. This is the problem with these discussions -- we have no common frame of reference. I suspect our definitions of "run" and "fine" are different.
I was working on your benchmark of "OS X" and "5 year old hardware". A mainstream, 5-year-old Mac is going to be a single CPU, sub-1Ghz G4 "Lampshade" iMac. I know from personal experience that OS X and G4-anything cannot be described as "fast", and that a ~2Ghz P4 (of roughly the same vintage, albeit likely a lower purchase price) running Vista will be *at least* as fast.
Or, on other words, I was being conservative against Vista. Personal example: not long after Vista was first released I threw it onto my old DOS gaming machine for a laugh - ~900Mhz P3 and 1G RAM. It was no slower to use than OS X on my 1Ghz/768Mb iBook.
Just to use one counterexample, I'm pretty sure that the Microsoft execs who were privately badmouthing Vista's performance in 2005 (as revealed in other /. articles) were probably using better than $600 machines.
You could build a $1000 machine that would run Vista poorly. Just crank up the CPU and video, and leave the RAM at single-channel 512MB. Heck, it was only relatively recently Apple even started selling their machines in a default configuration with enough RAM (1-1.5GB+) to run OS X at anything approaching "well".
Vista, like OS X, is RAM-hungry. Give it enough (1.5GB+) and it will run fine, even on 2000-era dual-P3 class machines (throwing in a $30 video card to offload the GUI helps as well, as does a decent thumbdrive to take advantage of ReadyBoost).