It's a sad day when Slashdot moderators mod parent post insightful. He is basically saying that he doesn't touch a feature that requires touches. On a related note, I am allergic to poison.

Why are people still modding these comments as funny? Granted, Vista required quite a bit of power on the day of its release, but performance has since then improved and new hardware is more than capable of handling Vista.

I bought a medium range computer a year and a half ago and it runs Vista as fast as XP.

I used to think just like you do now. When XP was released, I forced the ugly Windows 2000 theme because I didn't want graphical interfaces left and right. Then I realized that it's not really cluttering anything, just that I am not used to the looks.

I think that a modern operating system must look good and flashy, but more importantly, configurable. It should appeal as trendy and nice to those who don't care to look under the shell, yet configurable enough to appeal to geeks who want features on or off.

Finally, I'd like to say that features like the bat signal should be included in Windows 7, but disabled by default.

"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

- Ronald Reagan

Before you read my reply to your post, I must inform you that I am no "Microsoft fanboy", but I find your submission kind of disturbing.

What exactly were we not ready for? Can you please give us a few items within the operating system that caused this "flop"? I would say that the long wait and the rather unsatisfying list of improvements caused it to "flop". Vista did many things that made me choose Vista over XP. Granted, it wasn't a smooth start for Vista, but today it's actually a very good operating system.

As for the word "flop", I wouldn't use that personally. It's actually selling really well. Look for older Slashdot articles on this topic. I think Vista is mostly a "flop" within the geeky community, which is hardly more than just a few percent of the market share.

I am not going to whine directly at you on this one, but I find it interesting that people say this about Vista and not about OSX, which has received similar updates to Vista -> 7. Obviously, it would be silly if Microsoft changed the architecture completely with every new OS release.

Some people say that 7 is just a Vista upgrade and claim that they shouldn't have to pay for it. This is a bad statement for many reasons, but as a fan of car analogies, I would say that Vista and 7 is what a car model is to its replacement the following year. It's only slightly improved and looks about the same.

My 5c.

I wouldn't class Sony's rootkit 'malware' as much as it was a security risk. This is not even remotely close to how stupid Sony's decision was.

Having said that, I wonder if this update is stated anywhere in the ToA.

The Slashdot summary is absolute nonsense. It's like listening to complaints about MS Paint; that people are going to ruin their camera shots with its horrible tools.

This product is obviously not intended for the average Slashdot user, but rather to children, parties and whatnot. Furthermore, this tool has the potential of helping people understand how music is built up.

Personally, I think this is a really interesting idea and I wonder what the reception would look like if this was an iSongsmith product.

Try a Linux dist with a spiffy look and you'll notice that even this won't run that well on an older machine. It's ridiculously obvious that if computers improve, developers have more resources at their disposal.

Vista runs really well on all of my computers. How exactly did you manage to get Vista run slowly on a quad core?

There, fixed that for you. I have Windows 7 along with Vista on one of my machines and to my experience, it works incredibly well.

But it's not really just a game, is it? People are paying a premium price because they need the controllers for it as well. And where's Halo 3 on that list? After all, it sold for 300 million in just one week.

I experienced the same thing as you and so did a lot of other people. The thing is that Anandtech doesn't mention what system they tested Windows 7 on, but it sounded like a decent machine. Vista runs really well on modern computers so it's obvious that you won't notice a difference if you already have a speedy system.

If you test it on a Dell Mini or a netbook, here's where the little extra matters. I installed it on my Eee and noticed a LOT of extra speed that I didn't have with Vista.

Also, the summary at Slashdot is really misleading. They say Windows 7 wasn't slower than Vista and also claimed 10% speed increase here and there, so what they are basically saying is that you won't notice the speed-up on a fast machine and it IS faster than Vista.

Last but not least, I agree with people that Microsoft needs to be roasted over its many disappointments, but we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt when we're talking about a pre-RC release as many things are yet to be improved. And at least this public beta release is a step in the right direction, because now they will have a plethora of feedback and enough time to make the changes that need to be done. However, if they fail despite this, I bet the pro-Linux community at Slashdot will have hot finger tips for a few more years.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please note that we are working hard to provide you with state of the art firewalls. As you may know, the internet consists of literately THOUSANDS of web sites and it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to tell you what you may and may not read.

Kindly report this issue to the authorities and we will take the necessary steps to ensure that your REGULARIZED FREEDOM is maintained at the highest level.

Best regards,
Mao

In that case, expect a reverse-reverse: a virus that redirects piratebay to a site that downloads Troj/Qhost-AC for you.

Except on April 1st when it's actually June 23rd.

An entire hockey team can depend on the performance of one player. A religion can lean on just one character/thing. Apple is obviously not successful only because of Steve Jobs, but you have to admit that his performance in recent years changed the way we look at things.

It is easy to sit here and look at Apple's products and think "yeah, I would approve that product too, and make millions". It's an entirely different thing to have a deep understanding of how the industry works, predict products, functionality, timing and investments.

So, yes, I would say that Apple needs Jobs because Steve is Apple and Apple is Steve.

Profit has nothing to do with layoffs. If they get rid of 17% of their work force, they also have more money to spend on other projects, which in turn lead to an increase in work force. This is just a clean-up of a company that has grown so massive.

I also suspect that outsourcing plays a big role here.

Last but not least, remember that only a fragment of the 90,000 employees play a key role in the company. Windows is developed by a team of 1,000 people, XBox by roughly 170 plus outsource staff, etc. I suspect applications like Office require a not so significant work force.