5 ms·

Windows 7's milestones to nowhere

22 points by bdfh42 18y ago

mdasen 18y ago
So, as someone who has been a Mac user since before it was fashionable, I greet this kind of stuff with skepticism. I lived through the OS X transition - yeah 10.0. People are all talking about how certain things look off in Vista and how it can be a resource hog, but 10.0 was worse. 10.0 took forever to load on brand new hardware. Want to launch a web browser? Got a minute? Want to minimize that window, please hang on. Everyone on Mac message boards was complaining and many hoped Apple would just go back to the OS 9 codebase. Plus, since Aqua (the OS X interface) had such different dimensions from Platinum (the OS 9 interface), nothing lined up right even if they were native OS X apps. 10.1 helped a bit with the speed issue, but things still didn't look right and Windows XP ran circles around it in most cases. It was painful. I mean, I have been using Macs since the LC & Quadra days and 10.0 just sucked. But it turns out they were just growing pains. Today, OS X is awesome. I'm amazingly happy with it and its future, but it wasn't so bright a year or two in. 10.3 was really the breakout release IMO and it was 10.4 that started attracting the hackers in droves. I've used Apple eMates more than I've used Vista so I might just be full of crap, but while most current Mac users were on the sidelines for the OS X 10.0 growing pains, I was in the thick of it and I can say that Vista is a ton better than 10.0 was. Of course, we are nearing the two-year anniversary for Vista and that's about when 10.3 came out. . . Maybe Microsoft isn't able to smooth out the rough edges quickly enough.
- tomjen 18y ago
  As a customer, I will not use a system with "growing pains", unless it gave me some huge benefit. If they are unable to make it stable, at least make it great while it runs.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Of course, we are nearing the two-year anniversary for Vista and that's about when 10.3 came out... You've found the problem. It's not that it's necessarily fatal to release a poor interim product. It's that you have to keep the "interim" down below five years, which is how long it took to go from XP to Vista.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  "as someone who has been a Mac user since before it was fashionable" 1983? ;-)
- jcromartie 18y ago
  Ahh, those were the days. I remember being really excited when I went to install 10.0 on a beige G3 desktop. I was still excited when it was finished 2 hours later! :) The problem I see is that the jump between OS 9 -> OS X was way bigger than XP -> Vista. There are just too many vestigial bits in the core of Vista right now. It's not even close to Apple's Carbon situation. It's far, far worse. I am pretty sure I saw an icon from Windows 3.1 just the other day.
DabAsteroid 18y ago
bloated 4 gigs of DRAM costs less than $100, today. Who cares if software is bloated?
- Hexstream 18y ago
  I care. Bloated software tends to be less reliable and harder to use, as well as being harder to make.
- reazalun 18y ago
  Environmentalists care. The more bloated a software is, the more power it uses, the less greener it becomes.
  - neilc 18y ago
    "Bloat" typically means profligate memory consumption and unnecessary features, not rampant CPU usage: using a lot of virtual memory wouldn't significantly effect power consumption (unless you end up spinning up the hard disk to swap stuff out, but even then it should be marginal).
  - jm4 18y ago
    This has to be one of the more idiotic statements I've read on here. Sure, crappy software that uses more disk space, memory and CPU cycles probably requires more power, but you can't seriously believe this is a real issue. If you do, in fact, believe this nonsense then saying your priorities and efforts are misguided would be the understatement of the millenium. There are plenty more environmental issues that need to be tackled before even speculating about the power consumption of bloated software. I'm still holding out hope that your comment was a joke gone awry.
    - DougBTX 18y ago
      Expect more comments like the GP on the back of reports like this: The global information and communications technology industry accounts for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, a figure equivalent to aviation, according to a new estimate by Gartner, Inc. despite software itself being accountable for only a small portion of that 2%. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867
halo 18y ago
There's a dirty little secret that's extremely unfashionable to say but is completely and utterly true: Vista isn't that bad. The problem with Vista is that it was bloated, didn't add much of value over XP and was initially MS forced it to be rolled out on low-end machines that couldn't handle it. Hardware support was initially flaky too, adding problems for the tech-savvy crowd who also were underwhelmed considering its long development cycle. All these things gave it a bad reputation, especially as the good largely didn't make up for the bad. Windows 7 will likely be appreciated, even if it's not a radical change from Vista. Access control should have settled down now it's been introduced to developers and MS have got its act together to make it less annoying. Since there's no driver changes, it's no longer an issue. It'll likely not be significantly slower than Vista. Everyone loves eye-candy, and hopefully Microsoft have added another layer of sheen to Vista's above-par sleekness and removed the inconsistencies left from XP, integrated everything together better, added some niceties and improved the UI a bit. I don't think a huge departure is needed, just a lot of tidying up. Oh, and having an upgrade path doesn't really matter to most people - people tend to buy new PCs that'll come with it and most of those running XP won't be able to handle Windows 7 anyhow.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Your post may be entirely true, but it's conspicuously missing a reason to spend $150 for something that "isn't that bad". Particularly if I'm a business, and the true cost of switching (measured in IT time) is way, way larger than $150. "Windows 7 will likely not be significantly slower than Vista?" Wow, what a great selling point. "Everyone loves eye candy and UI improvements?" Perhaps -- but those who do have bought Macs already. "Now with better access control support?" Gosh, that's what I really hate about XP -- it doesn't have enough DRM to slow down my machine and lock me out of my own data! The best selling point for Vista would probably be security. But Microsoft seems oddly reluctant to play the "switch to Windows 7 because our earlier products are so riddled with flaws that they put your life at risk" card. ;) (I should point out that I'm joking -- I'm no security expert, and in fact I'm not sure that XP is really that much less secure than Vista. And that, itself, is part of Vista's marketing problem, isn't it?)
  - 18y ago
dougp 18y ago
The crap that the average enterprise shop loads on the disk image does way more to slow down the os than anything that comes prebundled with windows. Password managers, sketchy rfid card reader drivers, short cuts to help desks and enterprise portals ugh it makes me sick.
chaostheory 18y ago
I do remember one of Windows 7's biggest features is virtualization for backwards compatibility... then again I still remember a lot of Longhorn's promised cool features too. Most of them except for the new UI never made it into Vista.
quasimojo 18y ago
well with laptop prices in 2009 likely to be under $600 for numerous choices of decent hardware, the notion of adding another $150 to the price just to boot the thing is no longer competitve. the pc vendors should just throw weight behind ubuntu, or go download freebsd7, do some work on wine tuning, and ship it. only 20% of people who bought vista will buy 7...the numbers are starting to dwindle, xp is and always will be the most used windows version
- newt0311 18y ago
  What makes you think that PC vendors need to pay $150 to get a copy of windows on a laptop?
- Jem 18y ago
  > only 20% of people who bought vista will buy 7 Do you have a source to back that up? It's an interesting figure.
Hoff 18y ago
Vaporware? Yawn. Speculation? Boring. The Bill and Jerry cartoons? Eh? Call me back when it ships, and I'll look at whatever it might be then, and whether it's competitive with whatever else is available then. Until then, I really don't care.
jwilliams 18y ago
The flash on this site made this unreadable for me - after the ads obscured the page for the third time I had to give up.
trezor 18y ago
That is the longest way I have ever seen anyone write "Windows 7 as an OS will fail completely because I might not be able to upgrade directly from XP". And I'm pretty sure that was the only argument the writer had.
jksmith 18y ago
"Whether due to pride or stubbornness, Microsoft's refusal to create a more accessible migration path from XP to Windows 7 is simply inexcusable." I'm amazed that industry mouthpieces still don't get this. It has nothing to do with pride or stubbornness, and has everything to do with helping pc manufacturers sell new plastic. OS upgrades don't sell new plastic.

22 points by bdfh42 18y ago

So, as someone who has been a Mac user since before it was fashionable, I greet this kind of stuff with skepticism. I lived through the OS X transition - yeah 10.0. People are all talking about how certain things look off in Vista and how it can be a resource hog, but 10.0 was worse. 10.0 took forever to load on brand new hardware. Want to launch a web browser? Got a minute? Want to minimize that window, please hang on. Everyone on Mac message boards was complaining and many hoped Apple would just go back to the OS 9 codebase. Plus, since Aqua (the OS X interface) had such different dimensions from Platinum (the OS 9 interface), nothing lined up right even if they were native OS X apps. 10.1 helped a bit with the speed issue, but things still didn't look right and Windows XP ran circles around it in most cases. It was painful. I mean, I have been using Macs since the LC & Quadra days and 10.0 just sucked. But it turns out they were just growing pains. Today, OS X is awesome. I'm amazingly happy with it and its future, but it wasn't so bright a year or two in. 10.3 was really the breakout release IMO and it was 10.4 that started attracting the hackers in droves. I've used Apple eMates more than I've used Vista so I might just be full of crap, but while most current Mac users were on the sidelines for the OS X 10.0 growing pains, I was in the thick of it and I can say that Vista is a ton better than 10.0 was. Of course, we are nearing the two-year anniversary for Vista and that's about when 10.3 came out. . . Maybe Microsoft isn't able to smooth out the rough edges quickly enough.

tomjen 18y ago
As a customer, I will not use a system with "growing pains", unless it gave me some huge benefit. If they are unable to make it stable, at least make it great while it runs.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Of course, we are nearing the two-year anniversary for Vista and that's about when 10.3 came out... You've found the problem. It's not that it's necessarily fatal to release a poor interim product. It's that you have to keep the "interim" down below five years, which is how long it took to go from XP to Vista.
rbanffy 18y ago
"as someone who has been a Mac user since before it was fashionable" 1983? ;-)
jcromartie 18y ago
Ahh, those were the days. I remember being really excited when I went to install 10.0 on a beige G3 desktop. I was still excited when it was finished 2 hours later! :) The problem I see is that the jump between OS 9 -> OS X was way bigger than XP -> Vista. There are just too many vestigial bits in the core of Vista right now. It's not even close to Apple's Carbon situation. It's far, far worse. I am pretty sure I saw an icon from Windows 3.1 just the other day.

DabAsteroid 18y ago

bloated 4 gigs of DRAM costs less than $100, today. Who cares if software is bloated?

Hexstream 18y ago
I care. Bloated software tends to be less reliable and harder to use, as well as being harder to make.
reazalun 18y ago
Environmentalists care. The more bloated a software is, the more power it uses, the less greener it becomes.
- neilc 18y ago
  "Bloat" typically means profligate memory consumption and unnecessary features, not rampant CPU usage: using a lot of virtual memory wouldn't significantly effect power consumption (unless you end up spinning up the hard disk to swap stuff out, but even then it should be marginal).
- jm4 18y ago
  This has to be one of the more idiotic statements I've read on here. Sure, crappy software that uses more disk space, memory and CPU cycles probably requires more power, but you can't seriously believe this is a real issue. If you do, in fact, believe this nonsense then saying your priorities and efforts are misguided would be the understatement of the millenium. There are plenty more environmental issues that need to be tackled before even speculating about the power consumption of bloated software. I'm still holding out hope that your comment was a joke gone awry.
  - DougBTX 18y ago
    Expect more comments like the GP on the back of reports like this: The global information and communications technology industry accounts for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, a figure equivalent to aviation, according to a new estimate by Gartner, Inc. despite software itself being accountable for only a small portion of that 2%. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867

halo 18y ago

There's a dirty little secret that's extremely unfashionable to say but is completely and utterly true: Vista isn't that bad. The problem with Vista is that it was bloated, didn't add much of value over XP and was initially MS forced it to be rolled out on low-end machines that couldn't handle it. Hardware support was initially flaky too, adding problems for the tech-savvy crowd who also were underwhelmed considering its long development cycle. All these things gave it a bad reputation, especially as the good largely didn't make up for the bad. Windows 7 will likely be appreciated, even if it's not a radical change from Vista. Access control should have settled down now it's been introduced to developers and MS have got its act together to make it less annoying. Since there's no driver changes, it's no longer an issue. It'll likely not be significantly slower than Vista. Everyone loves eye-candy, and hopefully Microsoft have added another layer of sheen to Vista's above-par sleekness and removed the inconsistencies left from XP, integrated everything together better, added some niceties and improved the UI a bit. I don't think a huge departure is needed, just a lot of tidying up. Oh, and having an upgrade path doesn't really matter to most people - people tend to buy new PCs that'll come with it and most of those running XP won't be able to handle Windows 7 anyhow.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
Your post may be entirely true, but it's conspicuously missing a reason to spend $150 for something that "isn't that bad". Particularly if I'm a business, and the true cost of switching (measured in IT time) is way, way larger than $150. "Windows 7 will likely not be significantly slower than Vista?" Wow, what a great selling point. "Everyone loves eye candy and UI improvements?" Perhaps -- but those who do have bought Macs already. "Now with better access control support?" Gosh, that's what I really hate about XP -- it doesn't have enough DRM to slow down my machine and lock me out of my own data! The best selling point for Vista would probably be security. But Microsoft seems oddly reluctant to play the "switch to Windows 7 because our earlier products are so riddled with flaws that they put your life at risk" card. ;) (I should point out that I'm joking -- I'm no security expert, and in fact I'm not sure that XP is really that much less secure than Vista. And that, itself, is part of Vista's marketing problem, isn't it?)
- 18y ago

dougp 18y ago

The crap that the average enterprise shop loads on the disk image does way more to slow down the os than anything that comes prebundled with windows. Password managers, sketchy rfid card reader drivers, short cuts to help desks and enterprise portals ugh it makes me sick.

chaostheory 18y ago

I do remember one of Windows 7's biggest features is virtualization for backwards compatibility... then again I still remember a lot of Longhorn's promised cool features too. Most of them except for the new UI never made it into Vista.

quasimojo 18y ago

well with laptop prices in 2009 likely to be under $600 for numerous choices of decent hardware, the notion of adding another $150 to the price just to boot the thing is no longer competitve. the pc vendors should just throw weight behind ubuntu, or go download freebsd7, do some work on wine tuning, and ship it. only 20% of people who bought vista will buy 7...the numbers are starting to dwindle, xp is and always will be the most used windows version

newt0311 18y ago
What makes you think that PC vendors need to pay $150 to get a copy of windows on a laptop?
Jem 18y ago
> only 20% of people who bought vista will buy 7 Do you have a source to back that up? It's an interesting figure.

Hoff 18y ago

Vaporware? Yawn. Speculation? Boring. The Bill and Jerry cartoons? Eh? Call me back when it ships, and I'll look at whatever it might be then, and whether it's competitive with whatever else is available then. Until then, I really don't care.

jwilliams 18y ago

The flash on this site made this unreadable for me - after the ads obscured the page for the third time I had to give up.

trezor 18y ago

That is the longest way I have ever seen anyone write "Windows 7 as an OS will fail completely because I might not be able to upgrade directly from XP". And I'm pretty sure that was the only argument the writer had.

jksmith 18y ago

"Whether due to pride or stubbornness, Microsoft's refusal to create a more accessible migration path from XP to Windows 7 is simply inexcusable." I'm amazed that industry mouthpieces still don't get this. It has nothing to do with pride or stubbornness, and has everything to do with helping pc manufacturers sell new plastic. OS upgrades don't sell new plastic.