Windows 7

[JohnBoucher]

Originally Posted by jcatt

[Off Topic]
From the moment i first booted the laptop from the factory it ran slowly. Even after i uninstalled all the "junk-wear" that came pre-installed it still ran relatively slowly, and would often lock-up for minuets or just freeze completely. I had many BSOD's all with different causes, which made troubleshooting impossible. The boot up was slow, sometimes it would be 10 minutes before i could use it. I tried to improve performance by turning off most of the visual features and tweaked it as much as i could, but to little improvement.

The people that I know that have Vista running well have all reformatted and reinstalled Vista. Then Vista runs well.

[merybar]

Is windows 7 coming out for "public release" anytime soon?

[jcatt]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

The people that I know that have Vista running well have all reformatted and reinstalled Vista. Then Vista runs well.

That could be the case but i didn't have a standalone copy of vista to install, only the recovery partition built into the laptop. But i did have XP Tablet so i defaulted to that. Given the option again, even with the quirky drivers, i would still go back to XP.

[chris31]

Originally Posted by merybar

Is windows 7 coming out for "public release" anytime soon?

I think I read unofficially that it was later in 2009 but I cant seem to find the article to back that up.

Originally Posted by Maxpower57

I still don't understand what people's problems with vista are. it really got the short end of the stick. there's nothing broken about the operating system as people seem to think, and i have seen few people get any actual problems with it.
it sure did a whole lot better than leopard did, but no one called them out on that.

i don't get it.

I think the biggest problem was hardware and resources and the masses were trying to run this vista on machines that could barely run XP and it didn't do so well, myself included, when I got my new Asus F3 series laptop all my Vista issues went away.

The other negative was the licence, for some who like to build an rebuild systems and change parts and re-install it was a problem.

So far I have heard nothing but good things about windows 7, I want to get a copy of it when it comes out in Beta, anyone know how to get on the list?

There is somone in my weather newsgroup on yahogroups, (wxscan), jason L who has the alpha release but he won't share nor tell how to get it but apparently it comes out in beta in January. I want one!

m

Originally Posted by Nate Smith

Let me throw this out there...currently on Newegg, they have a total of 496 AMD & Intel motherboards available(not counting anything only listed under combo or server motherboards.) With this large of a potential install base for Windows, can we reasonably expect Microsoft to be able to test on every potential hardware configuration to ensure compatability, or can we say that they are doing their part by releasing documentation that tells the various hardware manufacturers "this is how you make your hardware work with Windows"? If the hardware companies are given this info, and then choose not to do anything with it, where should the blame really fall?

As far as Apple is concerned, I think the argument can be made that they are more in the CE (consumer electronics) business than the computer business. Apple's focus is on a system where everything "just works," and they are able to accomplish this by having a very small "supported" hardware base, and simply not letting their software not work on anything else, just as, for example, you could not take your iPod OS and install it on your Zune(I realize the hardware isn't as similar in that example, but I think it makes the point). Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with this approach, I just believe that because of it, MS and Apple can be considered to be targeting different markets.

You hit the nail on the head in that post, problem is alot of "consumers" don't understand why their computer won't work and can't think beyond pressing the on button, they just complain that MS put out a bad product. VISTA runs fine if you have the resources yet people with entry level machines are screaming that vista is no good.

I'm also thinking that MS should perhaps have different versions of their next OS and those being consumer, business, technical, the technical version would allow us to tweak and do what we want and the consumer version quite simpler to protect end users from themselves and be more for the people, the Mac type users who just want their system to work with as little tweaking and customizing as possible.

m

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Nate Smith

Let me throw this out there...currently on Newegg, they have a total of 496 AMD & Intel motherboards available(not counting anything only listed under combo or server motherboards.) With this large of a potential install base for Windows, can we reasonably expect Microsoft to be able to test on every potential hardware configuration to ensure compatability, or can we say that they are doing their part by releasing documentation that tells the various hardware manufacturers "this is how you make your hardware work with Windows"? If the hardware companies are given this info, and then choose not to do anything with it, where should the blame really fall?

As far as Apple is concerned, I think the argument can be made that they are more in the CE (consumer electronics) business than the computer business. Apple's focus is on a system where everything "just works," and they are able to accomplish this by having a very small "supported" hardware base, and simply not letting their software not work on anything else, just as, for example, you could not take your iPod OS and install it on your Zune(I realize the hardware isn't as similar in that example, but I think it makes the point). Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with this approach, I just believe that because of it, MS and Apple can be considered to be targeting different markets.

You have nailed why Apple is recognized as having a more reliable operating system. If OS X were required to run on even HALF of the hardware that Windows supports I think we would find that Windows is actually a better made operating system.

Vista is a nice operating system provided you have the drivers and the hardware to run it.

In my opinion, Windows 7 needs to be stable, needs to trim down on the hardware (hard drive space especially), and it needs to get rid of UAC. Meet those requirements and I think we might have a winner. I would personally like to see their new file system that was promised for Vista.

Just to keep things open, I am a Mac user who only uses XP for Cad.

And I have to agree with Craig, for rock solid uptime very few things can beat linux. My Ubuntu box has an uptime of nearly 60 days and that was only because of a power outage.

[Nate Smith]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

In my opinion, Windows 7 needs to be stable, needs to trim down on the hardware (hard drive space especially), and it needs to get rid of UAC. Meet those requirements and I think we might have a winner. I would personally like to see their new file system that was promised for Vista.

Stability: Check - During my short time with the 6801 build, the only real problems I had were with applications flat out not liking the new OS - didn't really expect anything different there, since it was still in Alpha at the time.
Hardware: Don't remember for sure, but supposedly things have been trimmed at least so that Aero can run on machines that it was previously not able to. Also, the default "clean install" sets up a separate "System" partition, which (theoretically) makes sure you can at least still boot to a console if your Windows partition gets FUBAR'd.
UAC: I actually agree with what they are trying to do with UAC, and they made the settings much more flexible with Win7. Rather than the simple UAC On/Off option that you had with Vista, there's actually about 5 different levels of UAC that you can choose from - basically from Off to "Protect me from Myself" and everything in between.
New File System(WinFS): It's my understanding that WinFS has been all but abandoned by MS, but some of the work on it is being rolled into future versions of SQL Server(since WinFS was SQL based anyway)...so, it's my guess that you'll never see it as an actual part of the OS, but it may make an appearance as an add-on for those who might need it. I actually played around with the Beta they released a while back, and honestly was not that impressed...the idea is nice, but could be implemented just as easily by allowing tags on files to categorize them. You see a little bit of this in Vista, where your default "Documents", "Pictures", "Music", etc folders in the user directories are not folders at all, but rather what I would call "meta-folders" (I think Win7 calls them "collections"), where you can specify multiple locations, that get combined into one for easier access. The physical folders still exist, of course, but you don't see them unless you go looking when you go to open or save a file. I used this to my advantage while I was using Win7, linking my music(stored on an external HDD) to show up in the "Music" metafolder, without having to use up the extra HDD space on my internal drive.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Thanks Nate, maybe instead of WinFS they will focus on reading/writing to other file systems. I am also glad that they added levels of UAC, protecting people from themselves is nice in a world where grandma doesn't know that sudo rm -R / is a bad idea.

[Bsteckler]

How did those who have beta copies get them? I have an MS account (and in fact, a beta of Server 2008). But I cannot find a download page.

[MrForbes]

from Microsoft, in big red letters: "If you are inquiring about being a beta tester for Windows 7, be advised that they are not accepting new participants at this time. Please do not submit a Feedback item to request participation in any programs.

Please visit the Connection Directory for all programs that are available to participate in."

http://beta.microsoft.com/Connect

[DtD]

As long as I can get it with my MSDN Subscription, I'll definitly be trying it. However, I'm not too thrilled about the "Super Bar", it look like Microsoft's version of Apple's Dock, and I never liked it at all.

@Bsteckler
Microsoft was giving them out to some special people, or people that attened thier presentations and stuff. I think we'll be getting it once they announce it at CES in about a week, since that is when the official beta is supposed to begin.

~DtD

[Heretic121]

being a gamer i dispised vista with a passion when it first came out with all of its problems espically in the driver department... since SP1 they have fixed a lot and it has gotten progressivly better...

with windows 7 it is using the same kernel base as vista which means it should be a seemless transfer for developers creating software + drivers...

i still use XP to this day... its not broken so why change over??? if windows 7 isn't broken to the gaming community i will switch over...

@Bsteckler: It is VERY possible to "beta test" Windows 7 without being on the official registry. Due to forum rules, I urge people to not discuss the method here. If there is true interest in learning this, PM me and I'll tell you a great method to get sued.

With early software, it's best to not play games with piracy.

That being said, I've got a friend on the beta list and I get to try Windows 7 next week! Woohoo!

[killerofkiller]

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

Windows 7 has potential, assuming M$ doesn't FUBAR this one like they did Vista. It's not the stability of Vista that got me, it was the ugly bloated theme that sucked down a HUGE portion of your power.

You do know that you can turn Aero off, and run the 'classic' theme just like xp.. invest in some ram, i'm running a 2.5 year old thinkpad with an old ati x1300 video card and it runs great with 2 gigs of ram...