Comments on: What is Windows 7, really?

By: dean

dean — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:12:45 +0000

@jj:
I don’t have an opinion on W7, because I haven’t tried it. My point was that neither beta testers nor reviewers can be viewed as any type of random sampling of users – they all have biases towards windows, have skills/experiences general users may not have.
dean

By: Rorschach

Rorschach — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:47:26 +0000

As I said in the other thread, W7 seems to be doing what an OS is meant to be doing, be stable and just f’ing work.No need to praise it for that.I’ve had it for a few months now and it does that.

Now Ubuntu seems to falter, the beta of Karmic is disgusting, I’m appalled actually.Been running Ubuntu alpha versions for 2 years and despite the odd hickup as to be expected, they ran well all in all. This beta is just awful.

By: Treppenwitz

Treppenwitz — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:01:48 +0000

Maybe it’s just because I waited until SP1 (and because I don’t use a lot of old proprietary software/hardware), but I had no problems with Vista. Nevertheless, 7’s definitely an improvement.

I’ve been running Windows 7 x64 for a few months now, and I love it. I can’t put my finger on one big thing that makes the difference, but there are a lot of nice small changes, like the new taskbar (probably the most visible change), adjustable UAC settings, built-in wallpaper rotation (finally), replacement of fixed “My ____” folders with “libraries” that can point wherever, replacement of the sidebar with gadgets that can be dragged anywhere, etc.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:30:29 +0000

A friend of mine wrote a science fiction story in which a character is put under a spell so when he talks about a certain topic everyone thinks he’s lying. This applied as well to his own personal computer, which is a very advanced sort of laptop with legs, arms, head, personality, etc. When he realized he could not get his laptop to believe him when he communicated about this particular topic using the usual user interface, he opened up a terminal and went to the command line. That worked.

I’m just sayin’

By: rpsms

rpsms — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:26:59 +0000

FWIW, I have had vista 64 installed for a long time now (pre sp1 IIRC), and have been a little bemused by the *decibel level* of anti-vista sentiment. My primary interest at home is games, but I do use quarkxpress etc as well, and it is “just as stable” for me as xp ever was. Then again, I don’t run the sidebar because that is an obvious point of failure, especially with real-time 3d applications, despite compositing.

I hit up the site linked in the original post from time to time because I like to understand criticism (the inaacurate messages with respect to system updates for instance is a fair assessment), but I was dissapointed in that particular post because the “start menu being completely gone in windows 7” is quite inacurate. Indeed, the main difference is that you must scroll through the menu, rather than have it fly out.

My main complaint with vista is the folder views: I am a details only guy, I could care less what star rating my mp3s have and I definately don’t want to auto-preview 32MB CMYK TIFFs.

By: jj

jj — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:06:15 +0000

@Irene
That’s my problem! No wonder I don’t get paid for beta testing, I’ve been doing it all wrong

By: jj

jj — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:01:44 +0000

Wow, blockquote, spelling, grammar fail on my part.

By: Irene

Irene — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:01:37 +0000

We do things that the average user will never attempt, so we can find the wholes before the general public has a chance.

That’s the problem right there. You’ve been looking for wholes, but you should have been looking for holes.

By: itzac

itzac — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:59:46 +0000

Vista fixed a lot of significant security flaws in windows, and made a lot of architecture decisions right. Unfortunately it also did everything wrong when it came to actually using the OS. Windows 7 seems to take all the good things that happened in the background in Vista and rebuild the user experience around it. I’m looking forward to it.

By: jj

jj — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:58:06 +0000

@Spiv
RE: Ribbon in Office –
When office 2007 came out, I would have agreed with you. So would have my entire office. Now, a few years later, I’d say everyone here thinks it’s an improvement. We had to re-learn where everything was, and how to do even the most basic tasks, but once we got used to it, everyone likes it. We have 2003 on our Citrix server and 2007 on local systems, so everyone has a choice which they use. 2007 everytime.

As for the start menu, going from XP (I always use the ‘Classic’ menu style) to 7, I actually like the new menu. now that’s personal preferences, but since I output my video to an analog SD 480i TV, I don’t have enough screen space to deal with an older style start bar (I can’t wait until I get an HDTV)