

Windows 7: The almost-there operating system - tszyn
http://blog.szynalski.com/2010/01/20/windows-7-almost-there/

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motters
Windows 7 might be ok for some users, but I don't think it's ready for the
desktop.

~~~
swernli
I'm curious; what do you think is the OS that's ready for the desktop? By the
high score of your comment, I'm guessing a lot of people agree with your
sentiment, and I don't understand your distinction between what is "ok for
some users" and "ready for the desktop."

~~~
iron_ball
I don't know the original quote, but it's often repeated that Linux is "not
ready for the desktop." So, irony.

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hazzen
As someone who recently moved from XP to 7, my review can be summed up as "it
works".

Feels just as fast as XP, and the new UI is a neutral/positive change. The
best feature is the configurable systray settings (always show, always hide,
hide but show notifications).

Admittedly, I use my desktop for video games and internet, and 7 seems to work
great for that (as opposed to the launch version of Vista).

 _edit_ Forgot to say that "good enough" may not be good enough to restore
faith in Windows for those burned by the Vista launch, but if you bought a new
computer and it had 7 no tears would be shed. That alone might be enough to
keep users.

~~~
barrkel
I would pay about 500 USD for having the XP interface on Windows 7.

And for what it's worth, XP has configurable systray settings. They are
"Always show", "Always hide" and "Hide when inactive".

The biggest features I miss, in order, are:

(1) The XP start menu - I had it organized just perfectly for muscle memory.
If I want to start apps by typing I can use the console, thanks. Start Menu
Search is just fine, but I don't use it.

(2) Windows Explorer. I have my toolbar / menu / location bar in Explorer in
XP tuned for maximum vertical space. The folder treeview in XP works
correctly, unlike the buggy one in Win7. Here's a demo for you: open up
Explorer with the treeview visible. Select a folder that has subfolders. Then
expand the subfolders by clicking on the little nub next to it. Observe that
the treeview scroll position jumps so that the expanded node's children are
aligned to the bottom of the visible area. This drives me up the walls. Other
things include the giant file drag icons, the all or nothing approach to
thumbnails, the file locks held on Thumbs.db on folders across the network
(prevents deletion from Explorer itself!), the weird listview selection
semantics, the lack of a Favorites menu, the way the treeview disappears when
the Control Panel is selected, the lack of a selectable Network Connections
submenu / subfolder in the Control Panel shell namespace, etc. I could go on.

(3) User colour preferences are not respected. I like my sky blue window
background, and in XP it is correctly used for the treeview and listview in
Windows Explorer. Not in Win7 - no, it's glaring white everywhere. It's
interesting to see how inconsistently the user preference for window
background colour is applied. Lots of text areas sometimes show white,
sometimes the user colour, depending on their focus state, the application,
etc. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It scans like a shoddy joke.

I guess I should clarify one thing: the XP interface I use is not the Fisher
Price one that it comes with out of the box, but rather the Win2000-alike one
but that still has the XP start menu and other XP-level accoutrements .

~~~
JadeNB
> the XP interface I use is not the Fisher Price one that it comes with out of
> the box, but rather the Win2000-alike one but that still has the XP start
> menu and other XP-level accoutrements.

Amen to this. I am still running XP on the Windows box that I have, so can't
speak to the Vista or 7 experiences; but I know that the first thing I did
when I upgraded from 95 to 98, and then from 98 to XP, was to hunt for a way
to disable as much of the eye candy as possible and just get a familiar start
menu.

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DougBTX
However, certainly the best version of Windows so far. The MathML you can
understand - MS wants to sell Word 2007 to lots of student's who don't want to
"bother" learning LaTeX.

~~~
amichail
Students should be using TeXmacs, not LaTeX/TeX nor Word.

~~~
DaniFong
TeXmacs keeps crashing for me! At least LaTeX and Word are stable.

~~~
amichail
Which version of TeXmacs did you try and on what platform?

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andreyf
_The official rationale is that it is not the firewall’s job to block
malicious applications from accessing the network_

Then what is it?

~~~
trezor
Make applications on your machine comply to whatever network policy you have?
I honestly don't want to have to whitelist every single one program I run to
be able to do access the network. Do you?

I'm also pretty sure changing firewall-rules requires administrator
priveledges, and hence it's no different than it is on Linux. Except ofcourse
on Linux, the firewall isn't application-aware, so you can't even control
which processes are allowed to open inbound communication.

This really is a lot of noise over nothing.

~~~
tene
> Except of course on Linux, the firewall isn't application-aware, so you
> can't even control which processes are allowed to open inbound
> communication.

You certainly can set application-level network privileges, and Red Hat
derived distros do by default. For example, to list all the applications that
are allowed to bind to port 80:

    
    
      [sweeks@kweh ~]$ sudo sesearch --allow -t http_port_t -p name_bind
      Found 15 semantic av rules:
         allow httpd_t http_port_t : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow kerneloops_t http_port_t : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow varnishd_t http_port_t : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow dnsmasq_t port_type : udp_socket { recv_msg send_msg name_bind } ; 
         allow svirt_t port_type : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow svirt_t port_type : udp_socket { recv_msg send_msg name_bind } ; 
         allow squid_t http_port_t : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow corenet_unconfined_type port_type : tcp_socket { recv_msg send_msg name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow portreserve_t port_type : tcp_socket name_bind ; 
         allow corenet_unconfined_type port_type : udp_socket { recv_msg send_msg name_bind } ; 
         allow portreserve_t port_type : udp_socket name_bind ; 
         allow varnishd_t port_type : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow qemu_t port_type : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ; 
         allow qemu_t port_type : udp_socket { recv_msg send_msg name_bind } ; 
         allow squid_t port_type : tcp_socket { name_bind name_connect } ;
    

Any processes running under other domains won't be allowed to bind to port 80.

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keltex
Windows 7 backup is horrible. I tried to backup my 200 GB of data to a NAS
drive. After 5 hours (35%) it just stopped. No reason. No explanation.

~~~
chaosmachine
I've had good experiences with DeltaCopy. It's an open source rsync-based
backup solution. Saved my data when one of my drives died last year.

<http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp>

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Jaykul
Dang, when the thing people complain about in an OS is the "math input panel"
and the "sticky notes" apps, I'd say the OS must be pretty freaking perfect.

I can't believe you couldn't think of anything more substantive to mention.

~~~
elblanco
Having skipped from XP to OSX (skipping Vista completely), I dropped using my
Mac almost as soon as I got Windows 7. It has so many little convenience
features, that even the trouble of learning the new ins and outs of the OS was
so much smoother than learning the similar ins and outs on my Mac, and the
results were so much more productive. All of the major OS interactions are
pretty much amazing.

On my Mac I kept going "oh, so that's how you do that" when getting to know it
while transitioning from XP.

On my Windows 7 PC I kept going "Oh! that's such a much better way".

It also doesn't try to overwhelm with glossy shininess, it just _does_ stuff
that's natural and intuitive. The new taskbar is pretty much magic in code.

~~~
weaksauce
Natural and intuitive is a loaded phrase. It's natural and intuitive because
you have prior experience with the prior offerings from one vendor. People
going from OSX 10.4 to windows 7 to OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard are going to be
parroting your comments just in the other direction.

~~~
elblanco
I personally think that OSX has more in common with XP than 7 does with XP or
OSX.

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josefresco
Isn't the reason why Microsoft's OS is always "almost-there" the fact that
they have the US government (and every tech competitor) looking over their
shoulder every second, analyzing every new feature to make sure it doesn't
sqaush some poor helpless competitor?

It's the reason we went 5+ years without any browser innovation, and it's
probably the reason why we don't have a _good_ built in Firewall, Anti-Virus
or even paint application. Some of it might be MS protecting their software
partners (which is ok in my book) but if I had big brother analyzing every
move I made, I wouldn't spend millions building something only to have it
excluded because some whiny EU/US politician think it's unfair.

I don't think it's fair to criticize MS for half-baked features when you
realize that they _need_ software makers to stay happy, and they _need_ big
brother to keep their nose out of their tech.

MS doesn't release it's own PC (ala Apple) because they can't or don't know
how, they don't because it would piss off Dell/HP and the politicians who
represent the districts where those companies reside.

~~~
petewarden
Microsoft's been quite willing to play hard-ball and jump into areas where
they can attempt to aggresively compete and hopefully squash competitors. Look
at Zune, Silverlight, Windows Mobile, XBox. The trouble is, they've largely
failed in the marketplace, with the XBox as the only success.

Blaming this failure on 'the politicians' is unconvincing, to say the least.

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kprobst
If they had added a working backup solution everyone would be up in arms
accusing them of anti-competitive behavior.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
It would only be anti-competitive if they made it difficult for users to
choose a 3rd party solution, or made it difficult for 3rd parties to achieve
the same levels of integration. Just including a "good" feature isn't anti-
competive on its own right.

~~~
kprobst
It has never been difficult to use another browser on Windows.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Unless you want to use windows update, or activex content, or integrate with
windows explorer, or...

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mhb
Is 35 hours to back up 500GB over USB actually unreasonable?

~~~
trafficlight
Yes. It should be more in the order of 3 hours.

~~~
barrkel
Presuming the data is being backed up at the block level on the disk, so that
no random seeking is involved. If it's on a filesystem basis, involves many
small files, and we're talking spinning hunks of rust, 3 hours is a
ludicrously optimistic estimate.

~~~
jsolson
Time Machine can do it on a full 500GB filesystem in a little over 5 hours, in
my experience. YMMV.

~~~
barrkel
Is that an incremental backup, or the full backup? I would expect a full
filesystem backup to be easier to do in block mode for large parts than only
part of the filesystem, while incremental backups could be made much easier
with filesystem support, such as what ZFS can do with the increment from one
snapshot to another.

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wanderr
Former XP user who upgraded to Windows 7 here. I am hugely impressed with
Windows 7 and the annoyances listed here are valid complaints, but on the
whole extremely minor.

My big complaints are: 1\. Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 is a
horrible experience if you made the mistake of buying an upgrade license. 2\.
Windows 7, presumably borrowing from Mac, does a lot more to hide details
about errors from the user. Maybe this makes the computer less scary
(questionable IMO, but at least arguable), but it /definitely/ makes it more
frustrating to diagnose and fix problems.

