
Microsoft's Quiet Success Story: Windows 7 - ALee
http://www.newsweek.com/id/235725
======
yesimahuman
Honestly, it's good to hear. I really like Windows 7, and I appreciate that a
lot of work has gone into making me more efficient as a user. I'm a
Mac/Windows/Gnome user currently and I have to say Windows 7 is my favorite
desktop OS so far (except for web development, I like a native *nix shell).

It's great to see progression and what MS is capable of in the face of
competition.

~~~
sankara
I'm in the same boat too. W7 is my favorite OS so far and I do miss the shell.
I adapted myself to use Cygwin to fill the gap though. Windows powershell,
while a good effort, is not exactly what I'm looking for. The goodness of a
shell extends beyond the raw commands. cygwin + rxvt + zsh is my current shell
setup and it works pretty well for me.

~~~
yesimahuman
VirtualBox+Linux usually satisfies my shell needs, and the rest I'll use putty
for (which is definitely showing its age)

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doron
We started a transition from XP to windows 7,for staff. and after the dramatic
drop in support calls, the gained speed, and the general approval of users
many of which are natives of Apple, our only problem is that we are not doing
the transition fast enough.

7 is a very solid experience, Without fanfare it seems under the radar
Microsoft is gaining ground, i have a suspicion they are actually using the
lack of limelight to their advantage.

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whereareyou
Windows 7 is so much better than vista. I almost switched to a Mac, but gave
Microsoft one more chance. I am glad I did.

~~~
baskinghobo
Vista wasn't so bad, to me Windows 7 is Vista with more speed and better UI.

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CWuestefeld
Most of the article is pretty good, but in its analysis at the end, I think it
loses it.

 _It may be that as the computer market has grown more mature, it has
developed what consultants Al and Laura Riese call the "mushy middle." That's
the huge dead zone that lies between sexy, expensive products at the high end
and the low-end products that appeal to bargain hunters. In computers, Apple
holds the high ground with its expensive laptops. The low end ... is also
becoming Apple territory, thanks to the iPhone and the iPad, both of which are
basically small, simple computers._

The author seems to be redefining his terms in the middle. Yes, Apple does
hold a fancy, expensive high ground. However, I think it's a stretch to think
of the iPhone and iPad as a simple _inexpensive_ low ground. These products
cost more than a typical "middle-ground" desktop (if you're only looking at
price), and more than a cheap netbook like my eeePC (if you're considering
capabilities and price).

As far as I can see, Apple _only_ holds the expensive high ground, across
several markets (notebook, phone, ultraportable tablet/netbook, media player).
Each of these markets has a midlle and low ground beneath the Apple boutique
range.

------
enjo
While it's technically a huge leap forward, I still just can't grok the UI. My
wifes machine is on Windows 7 and it just (for whatever reason) is unusable to
me.

~~~
rbanffy
Same here. The control panel is absolutely baffling. I never know where a
given feature is hidden.

I've been a Linux user - from XP to Red Hat to Debian to Ubuntu - for a while
now and every time I have to do something more complicated or unexpected on
Windows, I waste an unpredictable amount of time.

It's not user-friendly, unless you choose your users with great care.

There are reasons to run Windows: Office (mostly specialized Excel plug-ins),
Visual Studio (if you develop for Windows, it's not like you could get away
running something else), games and specific hardware support, but, apart from
that, I can't imagine why I would want to use it.

Just last night I was on my company-issued laptop, wondering why I could view
pictures I took with my phone, but not drag them to a folder on the desktop. I
had to e-mail a couple of them and spent a good 15 minutes trying to figure
out a way not to copy them one by one, something that, oddly, I could do.

For me, the most effective setup is a Linux (or other Unix-ish OS) with
Windows on a VM for the Windows-specific stuff.

And for games that won't run well on a VM, there is always the Playstation.

~~~
mistermann
When you're in control panel, in the upper right hand corner, start typing
what you're looking for and it will ajaxy filter down to what you're looking
for.

This is such a useful feature that they should have delivered years ago, and
they should make this WAY more obvious in the UI, as I doubt most people
realize this.

You can often find what you are looking for just by doing the same from the
start menu now rather than going into control panel.

As for your photos issue, if they were still physically on your phone, I
suspect this would be caused by your phone not properly supporting some
standard interface, but that's just a guess.

~~~
rbanffy
> As for your photos issue, if they were still physically on your phone, I
> suspect this would be caused by your phone not properly supporting some
> standard interface, but that's just a guess.

Works flawlessly on Ubuntu... In fact, that's simple enough I would never
suspect Windows would fail me on _that_.

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initself
Windows XP isn't long in the tooth. With a good set of registry edits, an SSD
drive, Firefox and Google Chrome, I don't even notice it's there.

~~~
Locke1689
You should be careful. A lot of security features that we take for granted
nowadays (stack protection, privilege separation, etc.) are poorly featured or
nonexistent in Windows XP. If you aren't running any services and are running
behind a firewall it may not be a big deal, but it's a good thing to keep in
mind.

------
sliverstorm
In my personal opinion, because of Windows' position in the market place, they
do not need or want glam and glitz and 'gushing reviews'. The best result for
them is the silent, global adoption of a product that simply does it's job,
and does it well. No one raves about *nix, but it dominates the server market,
and encapsules the high-end computing market almost entirely.

flash-bang-whiz is a hallmark of the underdog, the has-been, the also-ran.

It could be said, for someone in their position, no news is the best news.

(Some flash can be useful; see the 80's and 90's, with hot sports cars working
to bring average Joe's into the showroom to buy other things. Similar concept
to loss-leaders, except it functions through image instead of discounts.)

~~~
aaronbrethorst
What does that make Windows 95 with its insanely hyped launch?

"Windows 95 was an event. People lined up for blocks outside computer stores
(like Egghead) at midnight to get their copy of Microsoft's newest operating
system. Rolling Stones' song "Start Me Up" set the tone for the launch."
([http://www.betanews.com/article/10-Years-On-
Windows-95-Remem...](http://www.betanews.com/article/10-Years-On-
Windows-95-Remembered/1124901092))

~~~
sliverstorm
Win95 was kind of the creation of a new type of computing. Now that the market
exists, it doesn't need to be sensationalized to get a toehold.

At least, that's my first thought.

------
dan_sim
During March Madness, they pitched Windows 7 with the feature "shake a window
and all the other windows minimize". It's not really related to this article
but I just felt it was very odd from them.

~~~
clammer
Yeah, I almost never use that. But I really like how I can drag a maximized
window and it normalizes or drag a normalized window to the top and it
maximizes.

I got a mac mini for some iPhone development and I'm constantly perplexed at
how their window managment works. It seems everything is always normalized. I
like the mini well enough, it just feels weird to me.

~~~
dan_sim
Plus, it is so hard to use. Sometimes I shake a window and it doesn't work.
Like if there was a concept behind it that I couldn't understand.

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zoba
As an owner of a Windows Mobile 6 phone, I am hoping that 7 is also a magic
number for their mobile OS as well. I can certainly agree that the move from
XP to 7 and Vista to 7 was excellent.

~~~
billybob
As a guy who does tech support for cell phones, I am hoping that Windows
Mobile phones disappear from the earth.

------
henryw
on a side note, the author looks a lot like the PC guy from the mac ads.

~~~
nanexcool
The author is Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs.

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mkramlich
I suspect it's because Apple's success story is louder. (ie, bigger, more so,
better, etc.)

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mkramlich
Let me guess: somebody near the top of Microsoft said, "Apple's kicking our
butt. Time to copy^H^H^H^Her, I mean, try to catch up again." And somebody
else said, "Yes, boss." And the result: Windows 7.

I haven't used it as much as I have Vista and XP, but from the amount I have
it feels like that's what the case is again.

~~~
mkramlich
Posting to HN is like playing roulette. Post a comment in one thread that you
think is true and funny, bingo, gain 26 karma. Do it again in another thread,
bang, lose 4. I never know ahead of time which case it will be. The net trend
is positive, at least.

On-topic: just went to Microsoft's site and read their Top 10 Reasons why
Windows 7 is so cool, and, as I suspected previously, 90% of the gee-whiz
features touted were already in Mac OS X. One could argue that Apple is
historically treated by Microsoft as a sort of external, unwitting R&D arm.
Except it's better than their internal R&D in one crucial area: Microsoft
doesn't have to pay for it!

~~~
jacobolus
> _Posting to HN is like playing roulette._

A hint: your comment that got dumped on here (1) has little/no useful content,
(1a) is only barely related to the article, (2) is a tired cliché, (3) is
snarky to the point of being mean spirited.

I hope that even if you get a “positive net trend” with similar comments, it
doesn’t encourage you. If you’re going to angle for “funny”, the joke has to
be some combination of surprising, new, or especially relevant. Because most
throw-away joke lines fail these criteria, they tend to get voted down:
they’re mostly an uninteresting distraction from whatever other conversation
is going on.

Also, your second comment is just a repeat of the lame joke of the first
comment.

~~~
rbanffy
And, BTW, the maximize-when-dragged-to-top and normalize-when-dragged-out-of-
top was lifted straight from Unixes (Gnome, I think, but it could have been
done earlier somewhere else), not from OSX.

OSX is an amazingly well-designed OS and has been a pleasure to use since the
time it ran only on NeXT's black cubes, but it's not the source of all of
Microsoft's ideas.

To be fair, they come up with some good ones from time to time too.

~~~
mdg
> To be fair, they come up with some good ones from time to time too.

Bing is a good example. I cant stress enough how much I enjoy using that site,
whether its the infinite scrolling image search, mouse over video preview, or
even just the new picture everyday.

