

Windows 7's milestones to nowhere - bdfh42
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2008/09/windows_7s_mile.html

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mdasen
So, as someone who has been a Mac user since before it was fashionable, I
greet this kind of stuff with skepticism. I lived through the OS X transition
- yeah 10.0. People are all talking about how certain things look off in Vista
and how it can be a resource hog, but 10.0 was worse.

10.0 took forever to load on brand new hardware. Want to launch a web browser?
Got a minute? Want to minimize that window, please hang on. Everyone on Mac
message boards was complaining and many hoped Apple would just go back to the
OS 9 codebase. Plus, since Aqua (the OS X interface) had such different
dimensions from Platinum (the OS 9 interface), nothing lined up right even if
they were native OS X apps. 10.1 helped a bit with the speed issue, but things
still didn't look right and Windows XP ran circles around it in most cases.

It was painful. I mean, I have been using Macs since the LC & Quadra days and
10.0 just sucked. But it turns out they were just growing pains. Today, OS X
is awesome. I'm amazingly happy with it and its future, but it wasn't so
bright a year or two in. 10.3 was really the breakout release IMO and it was
10.4 that started attracting the hackers in droves.

I've used Apple eMates more than I've used Vista so I might just be full of
crap, but while most current Mac users were on the sidelines for the OS X 10.0
growing pains, I was in the thick of it and I can say that Vista is a ton
better than 10.0 was. Of course, we are nearing the two-year anniversary for
Vista and that's about when 10.3 came out. . . Maybe Microsoft isn't able to
smooth out the rough edges quickly enough.

~~~
jcromartie
Ahh, those were the days. I remember being really excited when I went to
install 10.0 on a beige G3 desktop. I was still excited when it was finished 2
hours later! :)

The problem I see is that the jump between OS 9 -> OS X was way bigger than XP
-> Vista. There are just _too many_ vestigial bits in the core of Vista right
now. It's not even close to Apple's Carbon situation. It's far, far worse. I
am pretty sure I saw an icon from _Windows 3.1_ just the other day.

------
halo
There's a dirty little secret that's extremely unfashionable to say but is
completely and utterly true: Vista isn't that bad.

The problem with Vista is that it was bloated, didn't add much of value over
XP and was initially MS forced it to be rolled out on low-end machines that
couldn't handle it. Hardware support was initially flaky too, adding problems
for the tech-savvy crowd who also were underwhelmed considering its long
development cycle. All these things gave it a bad reputation, especially as
the good largely didn't make up for the bad.

Windows 7 will likely be appreciated, even if it's not a radical change from
Vista. Access control should have settled down now it's been introduced to
developers and MS have got its act together to make it less annoying. Since
there's no driver changes, it's no longer an issue. It'll likely not be
significantly slower than Vista. Everyone loves eye-candy, and hopefully
Microsoft have added another layer of sheen to Vista's above-par sleekness and
removed the inconsistencies left from XP, integrated everything together
better, added some niceties and improved the UI a bit. I don't think a huge
departure is needed, just a lot of tidying up.

Oh, and having an upgrade path doesn't really matter to most people - people
tend to buy new PCs that'll come with it and most of those running XP won't be
able to handle Windows 7 anyhow.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Your post may be entirely true, but it's conspicuously missing a reason to
spend $150 for something that "isn't that bad". Particularly if I'm a
business, and the true cost of switching (measured in IT time) is way, way
larger than $150.

"Windows 7 will likely not be significantly slower than Vista?" Wow, what a
great selling point. "Everyone loves eye candy and UI improvements?" Perhaps
-- but those who do have bought Macs already. "Now with better access control
support?" Gosh, that's what I really hate about XP -- it doesn't have enough
DRM to slow down my machine and lock me out of my own data!

The best selling point for Vista would probably be security. But Microsoft
seems oddly reluctant to play the "switch to Windows 7 because our earlier
products are so riddled with flaws that they put your life at risk" card. ;)

(I should point out that I'm joking -- I'm no security expert, and in fact I'm
not sure that XP is really that much less secure than Vista. And that, itself,
is part of Vista's marketing problem, isn't it?)

~~~
halo
Most people don't spend $150 on an OS, they get it "free" with their PC.

The business sector, as it is, inevitably upgrade to whatever Microsoft puts
out once they pull support on old versions of their OS. Microsoft have
basically no competition in the business sector - they're pretty much only
competing with themselves.

A large proportion of people dislike like Vista because they've either heard
it's bad or have had bad experiences using it on low-spec computers. This is
unlikely to happen with Windows 7, especially considering improvements in
computer speed in the meantime.

Apple products make up around 10-15% of the market in the west and much, much
less worldwide - a relative minority. People like pretty things whether or not
they own, or can own, a Mac.

"Access control" isn't DRM, it's a security decision, and actually a good
thing that had to be introduced into Windows eventually to improve its much-
criticised security model. There was always going to be some criticism over
it.

Microsoft don't need to make a great product, just a better one. Their product
is the natural upgrade path, they just need to create a "Windows 7 fixes the
problems with Vista" message which looks like the direction they are going.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_The business sector, as it is, inevitably upgrade to whatever Microsoft puts
out once they pull support on old versions of their OS._

I agree with this. And, yet... once you cross the line from nominally working
_for_ your customers to overtly extorting money from them, you can't go back.

So I doubt that Microsoft will pull support for XP until the demand is gone.
And the demand won't be gone until there's a _real_ reason to upgrade to
Windows 7. A "Windows 7 fixes the problems with Vista" marketing message will
be nice and everything, but I'm guessing that IT departments will not be
easily fooled. They've heard a lot of marketing doubletalk; they're pretty
used to it by now. They will have to have to be given actual reasons before
they will switch.

If you think that it's "inevitable" that XP will eventually be retired... I
know some Cobol programmers that I could introduce you to. ;) Not that I
believe that XP will last as long as Cobol. I find it hard to believe that it
could possibly be supported for much longer than another decade.

------
dougp
The crap that the average enterprise shop loads on the disk image does way
more to slow down the os than anything that comes prebundled with windows.
Password managers, sketchy rfid card reader drivers, short cuts to help desks
and enterprise portals ugh it makes me sick.

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Hoff
Vaporware? Yawn. Speculation? Boring.

The Bill and Jerry cartoons? Eh?

Call me back when it ships, and I'll look at whatever it might be then, and
whether it's competitive with whatever else is available then. Until then, I
really don't care.

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jksmith
"Whether due to pride or stubbornness, Microsoft's refusal to create a more
accessible migration path from XP to Windows 7 is simply inexcusable."

I'm amazed that industry mouthpieces still don't get this. It has nothing to
do with pride or stubbornness, and has everything to do with helping pc
manufacturers sell new plastic. OS upgrades don't sell new plastic.

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chaostheory
I do remember one of Windows 7's biggest features is virtualization for
backwards compatibility... then again I still remember a lot of Longhorn's
promised cool features too. Most of them except for the new UI never made it
into Vista.

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jwilliams
The flash on this site made this unreadable for me - after the ads obscured
the page for the _third_ time I had to give up.

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trezor
That is the longest way I have ever seen anyone write "Windows 7 as an OS will
fail completely because I might not be able to upgrade directly from XP".

And I'm pretty sure that was the only argument the writer had.

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quasimojo
well with laptop prices in 2009 likely to be under $600 for numerous choices
of decent hardware, the notion of adding another $150 to the price just to
boot the thing is no longer competitve. the pc vendors should just throw
weight behind ubuntu, or go download freebsd7, do some work on wine tuning,
and ship it. only 20% of people who bought vista will buy 7...the numbers are
starting to dwindle, xp is and always will be the most used windows version

~~~
Jem
> only 20% of people who bought vista will buy 7

Do you have a source to back that up? It's an interesting figure.

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DabAsteroid
_bloated_

4 gigs of DRAM costs less than $100, today. Who cares if software is bloated?

~~~
reazalun
Environmentalists care. The more bloated a software is, the more power it
uses, the less greener it becomes.

~~~
jm4
This has to be one of the more idiotic statements I've read on here. Sure,
crappy software that uses more disk space, memory and CPU cycles probably
requires more power, but you can't seriously believe this is a real issue. If
you do, in fact, believe this nonsense then saying your priorities and efforts
are misguided would be the understatement of the millenium. There are plenty
more environmental issues that need to be tackled before even speculating
about the power consumption of bloated software.

I'm still holding out hope that your comment was a joke gone awry.

~~~
DougBTX
Expect more comments like the GP on the back of reports like this:

    
    
        The global information and communications technology 
        industry accounts for approximately 2 percent of 
        global carbon dioxide emissions, a figure equivalent to
        aviation, according to a new estimate by Gartner, Inc.
    

despite software itself being accountable for only a small portion of that 2%.

<http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867>

~~~
jm4
I don't find that report the least bit surprising. I would only expect that
figure to increase. But it's completely ludicrous for anyone to suggest that
it's the result of bloated operating systems. I'm not surprised I was modded
down given my tone, but I don't why on earth anyone modded up the GP.

