Forbidden Donut

Had the opportunity to dabble with a fresh install. Looks like Vista got rebranded and another service pack.

Its much more than a "service pack".... everything that everyone hated in vista isn't in 7.

Vista,
1.slow search indexing
2.poor networking
3.driver issues
4.slow graphics processing

7
1.streamlined search indexing
2.fast, userfriendly networking
3.mild driver issues, but can easily be worked around with the compatibility mode, or worst case, the built in xp vm. Also this will be fixed as more companies get on board and actually release working drivers.
4. the aero theme code was updated (at least as far as I know) and seems to be a big improvement.

I'd call search indexing improvement a patch. I was of the understanding that the network problems were largely driver related, and that throughout it's lifecycle vista made continuous improvements to driver support. So I wasn't really counting them as anything more grandeous than more improvements. I'd thought the same about the graphics problems. In conjunction with the ass-tarded Apple-ization of the Windows GUI, the whole system performs slow, and I've seen the same problems in my brief excursion with 7.

But the driver situation with 7 and vista is, as far as I've been able to tell, identical.

Welcome to using the newest windows OS with untested hardware. Enjoy your stay. It will get better, we promise*.


*YMMV

I'm not actually trying to contradict you. Just clarifying what I meant with my ridiculously vague post earlier.

Huge improvement for myself when going from Vista to 7. I highly recommend it.

I have XP pro and am currently wondering if it's worth the upgrade.

Personally, I'm waiting until MS either completely abandons XP, or a full year after 7's release. Which takes us out to July 2010.

It's part of a more general approach to computing I advocate: Let other people figure out what's fucked up.

Since Andrew's opinion is always right, we can close this thread.

I enjoy windows 7. It's sooper sexy

Since Alfy is homosexual we can close this thread.

You know, it's a terrible burden.

But back to the trolling.

I just can't get over how dumb Windows must think people are. After 20+ years of computing, they've made this sudden shift towards Appling everything up and I think it's bullocks. I don't need the option to put a moveable weather widget that eats 25 kb of page files every 30 minutes on my desktop, I don't need semi-translucent windows. I don't need some 3-d visualization for my alt-tabbing activities. Some people might. I'm not feeling it.

I resent this, and I think you're naive (or at best stubborn) for saying it.

Those moveable widgets provide an added level of convenience to their users. With a single keystroke, I can use extremely simple apps (like calculator), see the current weather information outside, or see the current calendar. It's not suppose to be anything groundbreaking, it's just suppose to be convenient, and it is definitely just that. It saves time by putting the burden of making apps conveniently accessible on the operating system itself rather than in the hands of its user. So basically, it is doing exactly what its job is.

I, like most people, admire style -- it doesn't matter if it is in clothing, architecture, furniture, cars, hair, electronics or whatever. We all have different opinions about what is stylish, but ultimately we all have opinions. You certainly have opinions about style since all of your clothes, and your hair, and even your beat up car fit together to form your own style. It isn't at all unreasonable to assume that exact same admiration can be applied to the device that we use for hours every single day. That's exactly what those semi-translucent windows are attempting to accomplish. While I generally dislike Microsoft's sense of style, I can't bash them for attempting to update their extremely antiquated appearance and functionality.

You can say that Microsoft is "Appling" everything up all you'd like, but ultimately they are simply adding new levels of functionality and style to their previously insufficient product. Windows is not and has never been a lightweight operating system. For years it helped pave the way in terms of operating system user interface, and every single release was blasted by a good portion of its current users by adding too much "bloat" and such. Windows XP was one of the biggest advancements in Windows history, and it was also one of the biggest leaps in terms of bloated features, yet you happily use it every single day, and today you even use it as the standard that windows should be living up to.

The fact is, Microsoft isn't breaking their habits or traditions at all with the new features it added in Windows 7. If it is bare-bones that you seek, then you should be looking away from Windows. It is not and has never been considered a lightweight. But whatever your hangups are, that doesn't mean anyone that actually likes when their technology makes their lives more efficient, convenient, and stylish are dumb. That's why we use all of our technology to begin with.

tl;dr

I'm not seeking bare-bones here. I can already set up single key stroke launching of my most used programs. That's been built into windows since 95. And XP was bloated for quite some time until it was substantially patched and updated.

I don't buy cars because of their paint job and I don't advocated buying software for it's eye-candy. Appreciate it all you like, but my experience with an Operating System is largely dictated by the speed with which activities can be undertaken and completed, management of resources, and ease of file system maintenance. Somewhere down in the list I suppose "doesn't look like it's from 1991" can be found in the requirements, but IMO it's not a primary concern. I don't hold up some standard of OS nirvana, personally. But I am certainly opposed to moves that seem, at least on the surface, to be attempts to eat some of Apple's piddly 9% market share. It's not worth their time, or their integrity.
Right now, Windows reminds me of this:


Too concerned about what's on the outside, while showing only passing interest in the practical utility of the product or service. They're building a flying car with grocery cart landing gear. A jet pack with paper mache fuel tanks. I care less about whether the windows I have open can snap to the edges of the screen, and more about whether the add/remove programs utility can populate in under 2 minutes with a brand new install of the OS.

I'm just picky I guess.

Yes, adding more code to an OS is not adding to bloat at all.

The speed at which XP runs has nothing to do with the hardware it is running on. /sarcasm When it was released (in 2001), the average machine running it was a Pentium 4 running at 1.5 GHz with 256 MB of RAM. When Vista was released in 2006, the average computer was running a dual core processor, and 2 GB of RAM. With Windows 7, it was even faster dual core processors, with 4 GB of ram.

You are not comparing Windows XP fairly to Windows 7. XP was designed on much older hardware, and will run faster on the new hardware. Windows 7, from what I can tell and my experiences with it so far, have been that it runs just as fast, but on the current generation of hardware. You put XP on a machine from when it was released, and tell me if it feels as snappy as it does on your machine now.

lol, wrote fatersang when trying to log in.

Anywho.

I guess my biggest selling point was being able to put windows 7 on machines that ARE older, and having it run pretty decently I might add. I just upgraded my dads computer that is nearing 6 years old now and 7 runs GREAT on it. I wouldn't have even DARED put vista on it.

It might just be my general bad experience I had when vista came out and we were being forced to upgrade every one of our work computers (all 400 of them) with added memory or even scrapping the entire computer for a newer model just to get vista to run at a speed that our users werent upset about, and they STILL complained about how slow it was. I cannot even begin to describe the amount of band-aids and hacked installs we had to perform just to get our existing software to play nice with it.

A university computing environment is different I guess, in that you are always challanged with the limitations of what software you can use and what you arent allowed to install as far as newer versions of software. With 7 we wouldnt have had those issues. I got all of my dad's old xp software to work on 7 with its improved compatibility modes over vista.

I'm using a Dell Optiplex GX270. It has a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor and 512 MB of RAM. I'm also running an email client, a full office suite, and a slew of extremely poorly built third party software that I need to do my job. No, it's not as fast as my core 2 duo powered 2 gb RAM having, NVidia rocking home PC that is also running XP, but it's not as bloated as it was when it first came out.

Also I'd just like to point out that OS X has 86 million lines of code compared to Windows XP which has 50 million or so. 7's SLOC number hasn't been released yet, but it may be upwards of OSX's.

But yeah, I'm just neglecting that hardware has advanced. That's it.

You realize that a large portion of 7's lack of issues arises from the fact that it's code base is effectively Vista, which has been around for 3 years+ now. Slowly getting better and better hardware support from vendors.

They redesigned the taskbar to make it more like OSX's toolbar. And they talked up a bunch of functionality I remember already existing, like the quick lauch bar, and the ability to drag files onto shortcuts of programs to open said file in said program. It also creates previews of windows so you can see a teeny tiny view of the window that you could look at if you clicked the taskbar icon instead of hovering over it.

The whole, drag to the top to maximize, bottom to minimize, sides to half screen and shake to minimize all other windows, functionality was added. I guess that's neat.

Explorer is still explorer.

IMO the ribbon is one of the worst "enhancements" to one of the most well understood and accepted pieces of UI functionality in the history of Windows. People have paid good money to learn how to use office 2003, and office 2007 basically took a huge dump on all of them for a largely aesthetic improvement. And then they embraced that as a core enhancement. If it were incredibly better or easier or more efficient or more logical I could be fine with it and learn to love it. But all my play-time with these things leads me to believe it's a re-skinned version of menu bars.

Libraries were improved, which doesn't affect my computing at all. I keep my files organized the way I want to keep them organized. I dislike iTunes for this reason, as well.

Some security enhancements were made, but probably could have been rolled into Vista if MAC hadn't spent millions upon millions of dollars convincing America that Vista will destroy your most important files, download goat porn to your computer, and light your house on fire.

Better touch support than Vista. Better UAC than Vista. Better Searching than Vista (again, I know where I keep my files, so searching is... meh.)

While no benchmarks exist for performance (as far as I've found) people universally "feel" that 7 is faster.

Some control panel improvements were made.

Download speeds were improved, upload speeds got worse. Games are said to run faster with certain hardware configurations. This performance increase will likely get better with *gasp* patches.

There. A non-inflammatory post full of information directed at mungo. This is everything I've ever heard or read about the improvements to Vista in 7.

last little 2 cents...you should see the new 2010 office /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

lawl!

hopefully they fixed excel in office 2010, cause vista/office 2007 pretty much castrated it

I can without hesitation say that two programs that I essentially couldn't run on Vista run flawlessly on 7: BF2 and COD4. Both would usually crash in a matter of minutes under Vista, and nothing I could do to fix it. Both are extremely stable on 7, as is everything else.

Honestly, I don't mind updating the showiness of the software. It looks better, I'd imagine the actually programing was minimal compared to some of the other features, and while it might have eaten up valuable resources a decade ago when XP came out, I can't imagine that it really has an effect on things with how powerful computers are today.

Budlight says Windows 7 is to good, and would be a waste for an old duff like me!

So I have XP pro on the new PC, but he did load up the new Office and WOW!

I've fallen in love with W7 for a variety of reasons however my lover recently backstabbed me... I tried to install Starcraft... Ya know the one for Win98?? I'm finding it impossible

Isn't that what XP compatibility mode is for (I'm not being facetious)?