4 ms·

I actually found the Start menu incredibly useful in Windows 7. Admittedly it was a usage pattern they indicated: I would pin commonly used apps to the Start Me

by cletus 15y ago

I actually found the Start menu incredibly useful in Windows 7. Admittedly it was a usage pattern they indicated: I would pin commonly used apps to the Start Menu and would rarely if ever open up beyond that. I would also use the auto-complete to find things as a second (distant) use case. One thing that always annoyed me about the Start Menu was how companies would use it. For example, shortcuts notwithstanding I would have to go: Start > Programs > Firaxis > Civilization IV > Civilization IV Beyond the Sword The part that really annoyed me was putting the company name in there. I don't care. In fact it may not even be obvious who the company is that makes something you want to use. I actually bought a copy of Windows 7 retail version for the explicit purpose of using it from computer to computer for years to come, probably in XP-like time frames (ie 5-10 years). Microsoft needs to realize that these infrequent expensive upgrades (largely for features nobody cares about) are a decade out of date. Honestly, there's still nothing wrong with XP. Microsoft just went out of their way to kill it by deliberately not supporting it with things they definitely could've. One of the great things about XP was the low resource requirements (minimum 128M of RAM). IIRC 64-bit Windows 7 is at 2GB minimum now. For what exactly?

vogonj 15y ago
When Windows XP was released, the newest Mac computers were the Power Mac G4, the PowerBook G4, and the white iBook G3. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#History) The iBook shipped in only one model, with 128MB of RAM. The PowerBook G4 started at 128MB of RAM and topped out at 256MB of RAM. The Power Mac G4 started at 128MB of RAM and topped out at 512MB of RAM. The smallest amount of memory you can get on a Mac nowadays is 2GB, and you would've had to buy an entirely new computer at least once to get Lion running in the intervening time. (Whereas, if you didn't buy a new computer since Windows XP came out, you could run the 32-bit version just fine with 1GB of RAM.) Methinks you doth protest too much about expensive upgrades.
- vogonj 15y ago
  Incidentally, the total upgrade price from Windows XP to Windows 7 Home Premium is $109 at Amazon right now, and to Windows 7 Ultimate it's $171.(http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=windows+7+upgrade&x=0&y=0 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...) By comparison, OS X 10.1 was the latest version of OS X available at XP RTM. OS X 10.2 would've set you back $129, 10.4 another $129, 10.6 another $30, and 10.7 another $30. (I don't believe that you can skip OS X release-level updates, but I'm not a Mac user, so I don't know; if you can, feel free to correct me.) Even if you magically bought a computer in 2001 which would still run Lion today, you would've spent $310 on OS upgrades, for a period of time for which upgrading Windows cost less than half as much.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    The point is that Apple has made the switch to lower cost OS upgrades while Microsoft has not. But then again, Apple has the benefit of being in control of the hardware, which makes up the lion's (haha) share of their revenue.
    - vogonj 15y ago
      yeah, Microsoft's main competitive shortcoming against Apple in desktop strategy is twofold: - Apple can let OS X be its loss leader, whereas Microsoft doesn't have a thing to let Windows be a loss leader for (the Windows Store, maybe, post-8?) - breaking backward compatibility hurts Microsoft's sales, since there's no single source of application updates, and since so many Windows licenses are in the enterprise; it doesn't affect Apple's sales (maybe even helps them) because it sells shiny new Macs for shiny new features and because Apple doesn't live or die on OS X revenue. its saving grace is that retail sales of Windows licenses are probably dominated by people refreshing their computers.
    - brudgers 15y ago
      Microsoft provides free updates in the form of service packs rather than calling it a new version.
      - dasil003 15y ago
        That's a charitable interpretation of their inability to ship for most of the 00s.
        TallTalesOrTrue 15y ago
        Service packs have been there before and even after 00s.
        dasil003 15y ago
        OS X has free sub-point releases. What's your point?
sliverstorm 15y ago
Deliberatly not supporting it? It takes developer time and thus money to continue supporting old software- and the older it gets the more it costs to support. The developers were probably happy to see it go after working on it for 10 years, too.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
As far as windows and ram requirements, it is possible to install windows 7 on very low-end systems (even 128mb of ram) with some tricks. But aside from the novelty the utility is questionable. A 512mb stick of PC133 (the functional minimum for a Windows 7 32-bit installation) costs a mere $10 or less, which is a tiny fraction of the cost of buying Windows 7 itself. Setting the minimum requirement that "high" saves a good amount on testing, and it also ensures that customers don't end up with extremely underpowered machines (a problem that plagued the Windows Vista launch and led to law suits). It's not entirely difficult to shoehorn Windows 7 onto such systems either, I suspect it's sort of designed that way, to ensure that the only people who do it are the people who know what they're doing and won't be disappointed by the results.
T-hawk 15y ago
> Windows 7 is at 2GB minimum now. For what exactly? Multiple user logins is a big part of it. All editions of Windows 7 above Starter let an additional user log in when the machine is locked without disrupting the locked session. It's an expected usage pattern that a family of 4 to 6 users will often be all logged in at the same time. The windowing environment for each user takes on the order of 50 to 100 MB, plus figure 200 - 400 MB for the programs each user is likely to run, and you can get to 2 GB pretty quick.
- Roboprog 15y ago
  Would it be a crime to send the "background" login sessions to swap? (I suspect that might be what's happening when the wife and kids swap between 3 or 4 sessions on one of the Ubuntu machines at home -- but Linux isn't dumping actual running programs out to swap as fast as possible to make room for the 500 MB Word doc you might open, either)
benvanderbeek 15y ago
> I would also use the auto-complete to find things as a second (distant) use case. I launch programs and find files like this every day. I find it one of the most useful features of 7 vs earlier versions (though I skipped Vista so maybe it was there too).
CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
<i>Honestly, there's still nothing wrong with XP.</i> There are a number of ways in which XP is objectively less secure than successor versions of Windows.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  That and a usability nightmare. Does anyone have a pleasant experience with the Wireless Connection manager in 2000/XP? I thought it was me until me less-than-super techy friend informed me that it plagued her and her mother and my technical father told me that he hated it with a passion as well.
  - scq 15y ago
    To be fair, back then hardly anyone had WiFi.
SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
I actually found the Windows 7 Start Menu killed a primary bit of usability that I'd been relying on: The ability to have folders of links in the start menu. I use nearly 20 programs on a regular basis, and another 20 I use occasionally and would like the be able to find without digging through the Program Files menu, and I don't want to clutter the task bar with all of them. The way I have it set up in six folders on the top of the Start Menu (NOT inside "Programs", but above Programs), I can pull any of them up with a Ctrl-Esc and few hits of the arrow keys. The text search feature works great when you can remember the name of the app you're looking for. My brain doesn't always work that way, though. Since I have the various apps sorted by category, I don't have to look through more than about 6 at a time to find the one I need. I'm actually using a "Classic Windows Start Menu" app that replaces the new Windows 7 Start Menu with one that behaves the way I've come to depend on. Until I found the Classic Start Menu app, I was getting stuck on the search line a lot, trying to remember what some tool was called. No fun.
- TallTalesOrTrue 15y ago
  Exactly. I think Windows will have to do an awesome job at finding the tool for me. Because my mom and dad won't remember that the program that they use to view pictures is called irfanview.
  - thomasz 15y ago
    you don't type "irfanview" into the start menu, you type "xmas pictures 1999" and click on the result.
- maratd 15y ago
  Just an FYI. You can create a folder and place multiple folders of links into that folder. Then create a toolbar on the taskbar pointing to that folder. Then reduce the toolbar to the smallest possible size. You will find that you can now traverse the multiple folders of links by highlighting them. No need for any extra apps.
  - SomeCallMeTim 15y ago

by cletus 15y ago

vogonj 15y ago

When Windows XP was released, the newest Mac computers were the Power Mac G4, the PowerBook G4, and the white iBook G3. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#History) The iBook shipped in only one model, with 128MB of RAM. The PowerBook G4 started at 128MB of RAM and topped out at 256MB of RAM. The Power Mac G4 started at 128MB of RAM and topped out at 512MB of RAM. The smallest amount of memory you can get on a Mac nowadays is 2GB, and you would've had to buy an entirely new computer at least once to get Lion running in the intervening time. (Whereas, if you didn't buy a new computer since Windows XP came out, you could run the 32-bit version just fine with 1GB of RAM.) Methinks you doth protest too much about expensive upgrades.

vogonj 15y ago
Incidentally, the total upgrade price from Windows XP to Windows 7 Home Premium is $109 at Amazon right now, and to Windows 7 Ultimate it's $171.(http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=windows+7+upgrade&x=0&y=0 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...) By comparison, OS X 10.1 was the latest version of OS X available at XP RTM. OS X 10.2 would've set you back $129, 10.4 another $129, 10.6 another $30, and 10.7 another $30. (I don't believe that you can skip OS X release-level updates, but I'm not a Mac user, so I don't know; if you can, feel free to correct me.) Even if you magically bought a computer in 2001 which would still run Lion today, you would've spent $310 on OS upgrades, for a period of time for which upgrading Windows cost less than half as much.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  The point is that Apple has made the switch to lower cost OS upgrades while Microsoft has not. But then again, Apple has the benefit of being in control of the hardware, which makes up the lion's (haha) share of their revenue.
  - vogonj 15y ago
    yeah, Microsoft's main competitive shortcoming against Apple in desktop strategy is twofold: - Apple can let OS X be its loss leader, whereas Microsoft doesn't have a thing to let Windows be a loss leader for (the Windows Store, maybe, post-8?) - breaking backward compatibility hurts Microsoft's sales, since there's no single source of application updates, and since so many Windows licenses are in the enterprise; it doesn't affect Apple's sales (maybe even helps them) because it sells shiny new Macs for shiny new features and because Apple doesn't live or die on OS X revenue. its saving grace is that retail sales of Windows licenses are probably dominated by people refreshing their computers.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    Microsoft provides free updates in the form of service packs rather than calling it a new version.
    - dasil003 15y ago
      That's a charitable interpretation of their inability to ship for most of the 00s.
      - TallTalesOrTrue 15y ago
        Service packs have been there before and even after 00s.
        dasil003 15y ago
        OS X has free sub-point releases. What's your point?

sliverstorm 15y ago

Deliberatly not supporting it? It takes developer time and thus money to continue supporting old software- and the older it gets the more it costs to support. The developers were probably happy to see it go after working on it for 10 years, too.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

As far as windows and ram requirements, it is possible to install windows 7 on very low-end systems (even 128mb of ram) with some tricks. But aside from the novelty the utility is questionable. A 512mb stick of PC133 (the functional minimum for a Windows 7 32-bit installation) costs a mere $10 or less, which is a tiny fraction of the cost of buying Windows 7 itself. Setting the minimum requirement that "high" saves a good amount on testing, and it also ensures that customers don't end up with extremely underpowered machines (a problem that plagued the Windows Vista launch and led to law suits). It's not entirely difficult to shoehorn Windows 7 onto such systems either, I suspect it's sort of designed that way, to ensure that the only people who do it are the people who know what they're doing and won't be disappointed by the results.

T-hawk 15y ago

> Windows 7 is at 2GB minimum now. For what exactly? Multiple user logins is a big part of it. All editions of Windows 7 above Starter let an additional user log in when the machine is locked without disrupting the locked session. It's an expected usage pattern that a family of 4 to 6 users will often be all logged in at the same time. The windowing environment for each user takes on the order of 50 to 100 MB, plus figure 200 - 400 MB for the programs each user is likely to run, and you can get to 2 GB pretty quick.

Roboprog 15y ago
Would it be a crime to send the "background" login sessions to swap? (I suspect that might be what's happening when the wife and kids swap between 3 or 4 sessions on one of the Ubuntu machines at home -- but Linux isn't dumping actual running programs out to swap as fast as possible to make room for the 500 MB Word doc you might open, either)

benvanderbeek 15y ago

> I would also use the auto-complete to find things as a second (distant) use case. I launch programs and find files like this every day. I find it one of the most useful features of 7 vs earlier versions (though I skipped Vista so maybe it was there too).

CurtHagenlocher 15y ago

<i>Honestly, there's still nothing wrong with XP.</i> There are a number of ways in which XP is objectively less secure than successor versions of Windows.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
That and a usability nightmare. Does anyone have a pleasant experience with the Wireless Connection manager in 2000/XP? I thought it was me until me less-than-super techy friend informed me that it plagued her and her mother and my technical father told me that he hated it with a passion as well.
- scq 15y ago
  To be fair, back then hardly anyone had WiFi.

SomeCallMeTim 15y ago

I actually found the Windows 7 Start Menu killed a primary bit of usability that I'd been relying on: The ability to have folders of links in the start menu. I use nearly 20 programs on a regular basis, and another 20 I use occasionally and would like the be able to find without digging through the Program Files menu, and I don't want to clutter the task bar with all of them. The way I have it set up in six folders on the top of the Start Menu (NOT inside "Programs", but above Programs), I can pull any of them up with a Ctrl-Esc and few hits of the arrow keys. The text search feature works great when you can remember the name of the app you're looking for. My brain doesn't always work that way, though. Since I have the various apps sorted by category, I don't have to look through more than about 6 at a time to find the one I need. I'm actually using a "Classic Windows Start Menu" app that replaces the new Windows 7 Start Menu with one that behaves the way I've come to depend on. Until I found the Classic Start Menu app, I was getting stuck on the search line a lot, trying to remember what some tool was called. No fun.

TallTalesOrTrue 15y ago
Exactly. I think Windows will have to do an awesome job at finding the tool for me. Because my mom and dad won't remember that the program that they use to view pictures is called irfanview.
- thomasz 15y ago
  you don't type "irfanview" into the start menu, you type "xmas pictures 1999" and click on the result.
maratd 15y ago
Just an FYI. You can create a folder and place multiple folders of links into that folder. Then create a toolbar on the taskbar pointing to that folder. Then reduce the toolbar to the smallest possible size. You will find that you can now traverse the multiple folders of links by highlighting them. No need for any extra apps.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago