Hating Windows 7I’ve been playing with the Windows 7 Build 7000 (Beta 1) for several days now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that like Vista, it’s not a major improvement over what most users are currently experiencing with Windows XP, and is at best only a slight improvement over Vista SP1. In a number of cases, I think they’ve gone even further down the user rejection hole.
Really? How can it be so bad?
Me? I'll reserve judgement until I've had time to play with 7 but, if it performs as well as it is said to perform and if the excessive user protection features of Vista have been trimmed back, then I expect to be able to live with it, if not actually love it.
Category: Software
Technorati: Microsoft Windows+7
1. Bryan Schmiedeler06/01/2009 21:34:46
I am a frequent MS critic, but I am finding it odd that Windows 7 is taking the abuse it is. One of my biggest complaints against previous MS Beta software was that MS would announce a bevy of amazing features that you just *knew* weren't going to get included in the final product - just go back and look at what was first promised in Vista. So now MS changes and is going to release an incremental upgrade, try to fix things they didn't get correct before, and they are being criticized? This just may be what they should be doing....
2. Paul Gagnon07/01/2009 01:34:31
mainstream support for XP ends April 14, 2009. Small system builders can still buy copies of XP until Jan 31, 2009. Extended support for XP can be had for another 6 years or 2014.
One bright spot I'm seeing with Win7 is the verbage around virtualization licensing... Vista was downright hostile here. VDI products like View, Panologic, and XEN Desktop are gonna be huge in the next 2 or 3 years as companies look to save pennies with virtualization technologies on the desktop like they have in the data center.
XP came into its own with SP2. Win7 is really Vista SP2 isn't it?
3. Richard Schwartz07/01/2009 05:02:20
Homepage: http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com
No classic menu? The first thing I do on any Windows machine is restore the classic menu. I want My Computer on the desktop, right next to dozen or so shortcuts to all the useful folders that I keep there.
Type a command in the search box? Yeah, right.... that is intuitive. And typing notepad.exe in the search box actually runs notepad, then does typing notes.ini in the search box actually open notes.ini into notepad the way it does from the Run dialog? And how do I actually search for notepad.exe?
Windows key + R? I have a ThinkPad T43. What's a Windows key?
I'll give it a chance, but I'm not looking forward to it.
4. Chris Linfoot07/01/2009 09:08:09
@Rich - Start Run now answered parenthetically above.
5. Conrad Longmore07/01/2009 09:19:13
Homepage: http://www.dynamoo.com/
The first thing I do on XP and Vista is make the machine look as though it is running Windows 2000, which is the interface I like. MS would be daft to take away my ability to customise the environment as I see fit.
Still, it's early days for Windows 7 and there's plenty of scope to fix things and to bugger other things up completely. Fundamentally though it seems to be a better OS than Vista, more closely based on the Windows 2008 Server product which also seems to be pretty good.
6. Paul Gagnon07/01/2009 14:23:45
@5 - "Fundamentally though it seems to be a better OS than Vista"
Microsoft smoke and mirrors. That is what M$ wants you to believe. Perception becomes reality:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2008/11/windows_7_perce.html
Windows 7 is NOT a new OS, but really Vista SP2 with some lipstick.
7. Dennis Ellison07/01/2009 23:46:31
The O/S is a utility. Moving the functionality from here to there during Windows/Office upgrades is a waste of user productivity. Compatibility, stability, better security and improved performance are probably better questions to answer in terms of is it better? MS has a major issue on their hands. Specifically, Vista backlash. In over 12 years of IT I have never had any user come to me and tell me Windows “whatever” (not even ME) was enough of an issue to revert back to the previous O/S (XP in this case). It has been common over the last year and the comment unsolicited on my part. It’s useable, but I’m basically underwhelmed by it. Why should we spend hundreds of thousands of $$ on it? We'll upgrade when we see some tangible benefits and delay the expense.
8. Conrad Longmore08/01/2009 09:33:20
Homepage: http://www.dynamoo.com/
@ Paul.
Gotta disagree. From what I can tell, the core is derived from Windows 2008 Server, at least in part. Sure - 2008 is derived from Vista (but you can play this game all the way back to NT 3.1). But saying that an OS is better than Vista isn't saying much.. it's a bit like saying a disease is not as bad as rabies.
@ Dennis.
MS have had failures before - you mention ME which was a clanger, in the dim and distant past there was MS-DOS 4 too. The problem for Microsoft is that in the past they have always recovered by coming out with a good product next time around. Windows 7 is absolutely critical for MS to get right in this respect, because two bad OSes in a row is going to tax the patience of even the biggest Microsoft fans.
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