

Hasta la Vista, baby: Ars reviews Windows - soundsop
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2009/10/windows-7-the-review.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

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StrawberryFrog
_Notepad, by the way, remains crap._ (page 11)

Ah, call me sentimental, but it's good to know that some things are still kept
the way they always were.

I agree with the basic statement on page one: Vista is not that bad, Win 7 is
Vista take 2, rough edges smoothed off, and the drastic difference is just in
perception.

~~~
scottjackson
To be honest, I hope they never "improve" Notepad (either of them:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/03/28/563008....](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/03/28/563008.aspx)).
I think every operating system needs a totally-bare-bones text editor. Because
of that, I think Notepad does exactly what it's meant to do, and "improving"
Notepad would change that.

WordPad, on the other hand... They can keep Ribboning the shit out of that for
all I care.

~~~
vetinari
Well, support for unix-style line ends would not hurt...

~~~
saurabh
Legacy software prevents this from happening.

~~~
vetinari
I would like to ask you: How? Microsoft managed to support Unicode in Notepad,
starting in Windows 2000; the heuristic used when detecting character sets is
fragile and has potential to break what used to work (mostly opening readmes
anyway). How would support for Unix style line ending break legacy software?

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GeneralMaximus
Nice to see in-depth coverage of technology in this Web 2.0 world of content-
free publishing. I think only Ars could pull off a 15-page review of an OS.

I'll now read this through, even though I haven't used Windows for over 4
years.

~~~
idlewords
And for the reader's convenience, they make 'single page mode' click through
to a subscription page.

~~~
mrkurt
Sorry, that's supposed to have a "Premier" badge on it so you're not totally
ambushed with the subscription page. I'm not sure where it went, though. I'll
go find it!

 __EDIT __

Aaaand there's some text there now.

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preview
My problem with Vista has always been the lack of a compelling feature that
would drive me to upgrade. If Microsoft is claiming that Vista (or 7) is a
solution, I'm still left asking "To what problem?" For new hardware, I would
stick with 7. It would work well on new systems with the memory to run it
(even though I might not be into the new UI). But for my existing systems, I
don't see a compelling reason to spend the money to make the change.

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barrkel
I'm not finding myself sympathizing with the reviewer. Perhaps I value
different things, but I find e.g. relentless bright white in the UI tiring for
the eyes, so when the reviewer comments on e.g. battleship grey used in the
Mouse control panel widget, I'm rather glad it's there - anything dimmer than
glaring white is better.

Windows 7 appearance is remarkably _uncustomizable_ compared to Windows 2000 /
XP in classic mode, at least with the tools provided in the OS. I normally use
a light blue background for my Window area, and that was respected in 2000, XP
etc. for e.g. Windows Explorer, but that's all gone now in Win 7 (and also Win
Vista I believe, but I never ran it long enough to find out). As a result, any
extended bout of file management leaves me with tired eyes.

The alternative is to fiddle with the monitor brightness, contrast and gamma,
but that affects whole system color reproduction. I _want_ bright whites, but
in their place, photos and the like, not as a default background colour.

I have many, many other annoyances with Windows 7, but they are largely niggly
little things. I've made a list, and I'll write them up eventually.

~~~
noblethrasher
You can still modify the window client area in Vista but I'm not sure about
Windows 7. In any case, I look forward to your list.

~~~
barrkel
You can modify the window client area colour, but relatively few applications
respect it. Even Firefox running under Win7 switches to white text backgrounds
in text entry areas like this very comment box; with theming disabled (and
only when theming is disabled), it respects the user's choice of background
colour.

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nazgulnarsil
article hits one of my biggest gripes with computer UI design in general: the
ubiquity of the yes/no option. programs are no longer a stack of cards people.
the options presented to the end user should be a list of the actions
available to them (with most common at the top) with a small blurb in non-tech
speak about what each option does.

~~~
Glimjaur
I dont understand exactly what you're getting at here, could you elaborate?

Also, could you give an example when the Yes/No option doesn't work and when
the added complexity of presenting several actions is justified?

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StrawberryFrog
It's not that Yes/No dialogs "doesn't work" at all, it's just that they don't
work as well.

Yes/No options are easy to get confused over as soon as there's a negative in
the question. A question like "Do you want to cancel the delete" with "Yes"
and "No" options is easy to get wrong - is that"Yes, delete" or "Yes, cancel".
You can work it out if you try, but there will be an avoidable percentage of
errors using it.

Two buttons with "delete" and "cancel delete" on them is better.

In both cases you are "presenting several actions", they're just better
labelled in the second case, so there's no added complexity to the user. To
the coder, maybe, but making good UI's is what coders are paid to do.

~~~
ugh
Write verbs on buttons. It's really as simple as that, but every OS I know has
a problem with doing just that. Even OS X is lacking in that respect (they
try, but miss too much).

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thetrumanshow
"But if you hated Vista's UI, you're going to hate Windows 7's. Worse, in
fact, because 7 forces you to use the new Start menu and taskbar, with no
possibility of reverting to the old behaviour."

Does this seem incredibly bull-headed to anyone else?

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sid0
Great review. I agree with Peter's claim about the lack of attention to
detail, but Windows 7 is still, as he calls it, a "fantastic OS".

At least the Install Font dialog from Windows 3.1 is gone. :)

