

Hands on preview of Windows 7: Hey, it looks surprisingly good - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2008/10/28/windows7/

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tdoggette
Remember when Longhorn had a whole new kernel, and WinFS, and was going to
breathe new life into Windows?

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gecko
In this case, nearly all of the changes are architecturally minor, and though
this looks like a very nice Windows release, it largely looks that way
precisely _because_ it is __not __a radical reënvisioning of Windows à la
Vista. What we have here is Vista 2.0, with the sucky parts removed, the good
parts (yes, there were good parts) kept, and some new, surprisingly well-
thought-out, but relatively small enhancements to replace some of the poor
features. I am actually pretty confident Microsoft can deliver this one. If
they're smart, they'll have a similar incremental improvement scheduled as
Windows 8, and get on an OS X/Linux-style rapid release schedule.

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lux
This does highlight a few more changes than the Ars Technica article, but it
still looks very unimpressive. A slidebar setting for how often you to be
notified about changes you made to your OS? Really? Is that a "can't live
without" feature? Or even a mildly useful one?

Most of these are rip-offs of toolbar previews from Ubuntu, and Expose, smart
folders, and file previews from OS X. These aren't original ideas.

Ooh, I like this part "Gadgets now sit directly on the desktop…which they
could do even in Vista if you preferred." Wow, so they changed a setting's
default value. I'm sold.

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bprater
Bah, humbug. I read through the changes and thought they were a breath of
fresh air for the dinosaur OS. Doesn't all good art borrow from a previous
generation and add it's own spin?

We've learned that it isn't sweeping changes that make a gadget great, it's
the subtle reconfiguration and simplification that does.

If Windows 7 can help give my parents a better experience on their computers,
I'm all for it.

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lux
Subtle reconfiguration isn't always enough though. I'd love to see the Windows
Control Panel cleaned up, for example. That would take a bigger overhaul to do
properly.

On the flip side, where I agree with you, are subtle things that could be
improved like removing all the nag screens they added to Vista. Unfortunately,
many of the subtle changes in Vista were steps in the wrong direction, like
moving the buttons around in IE7. What did that help? It just confuses users.
At least some things, like adding extra protection against phishing, were a
good thing.

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litewulf
You know it was redesigned in Vista. The default work image has it set to
classic (I assume because some options are difficult/impossible? to find in
the "new" view).

I actually prefer it. Some items are 2 clicks instead of 1, but it beats
scanning/scrolling.

(Then again, I like the UAC, and it doesn't bother me that much. I keep it on,
and I basically only see it when installing programs or configuration changes,
which I have to sudo in ubuntu anyway...)

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greyhat
I don't understand this guy's rage against the tray. Almost every desktop
system, be it OS X, KDE, Gnome, or XP has something similar. What would he
prefer? A taskbar entry for wireless networks? No information at all?

He also comments that we are "finally" given options to control tray icons...
he must not be too observant then, because starting in XP you could choose to
always hide or always show icons, or leave them alone. (e.g. to tell your
Antivirus to always hide until you expand, but make sure that your instant
messaging app stays in view.)

Maybe its just me, but these new OS reviews and previews are always the most
ignorant, half baked and opinionated pieces of tech journalism...

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dcurtis
Unlike KDE, Gnome, OS X, etc, Windows' taskbar never shuts up. It always pops
up annoying bubbles, makes clicking sounds, randomly shows and hides icons,
and doesn't standardize the way you can add/remove icons.

OS X fails a bit in this area, too, as it's not intuitive to remove items from
the menubar.

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greyhat
Hmm, maybe more people agree with this guy than I thought. I have used all of
the windowing systems I mentioned, and I vastly prefer being able to see open
_windows_ , with the few things that need to run in the background being
tucked away in the tray. The OS X dock just seems wierd to me, in terms of
being able to quickly access open windows and to get a good idea what is
running on your system.

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lallysingh
So, how many people run windows today? I would've thought that most of the
hacker community would be on OSX, Linux, or another *nix.

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axod
Meh. It's an operating system... How exciting can an o/s get these days.

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bprater
You fail at hacker, friend. OS wars are just getting warmed up.

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axod
In what way? What innovation is going on in the O/S world? What has changed
radically over the last 5 years?

I used to care about the O/S, when you had little choice, when redhat was this
small little sapling with a ton of things to do to get to windows. When macs
were this weird other world that wasn't so unixy. When windows 95 came out and
suddenly this whole new world opened up.

In those days, the O/S was the platform. Now, it's probably more important
what browser you use than what O/S you use for most people.

But we're past all that now, an O/S is an O/S - there are a ton to choose
from, they all do pretty much the same thing, and work the same(ish).

Now, the main aim for an O/S is to stay the heck out of the way IMHO.

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snprbob86
There is A LOT of innovation going on in the O/S. Depressingly, not a lot of
that truly revolutionary work is going on in the commercial/productized OS
world.

Sun is doing great stuff with ZFS. Microsoft Research's Singularity is
absolutely brilliant. Apple and Google are pushing mobile operating systems
further than ever. I'm sure others could cite many more examples.

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jcromartie
Let me know when they actually make some usability breakthroughs instead of
slapping more translucency on the widgets and throwing more things to read on
dialogs.

