Windows 7

[Spectere]

Beta version is here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

I played around with it for about a half hour and I'm pretty impressed so far.  It kind of surprised me by picking up my dual monitor setup immediately after installation.  I didn't have to touch a thing!

I haven't tried running OpenGL applications in a window yet...I'll have to remember to do that.  That is probably the biggest disadvantage that Vista has over XP (at least when Aero is enabled...as long as you're not running DWM it performs just as well).

The new start bar is...interesting.  It's definitely Microsoft's take on the OS X dock, but I find Microsoft's version a lot easier to chew on simply because it isn't centered (in OS X, you can't reliably select programs by "feel", you always have to look because the bar constantly expands and contracts), but I'm still not too crazy about fully icon-driven interfaces.  I haven't really played around with it enough to really know whether I really like it or not, though.  One thing that is very nice about this is that, as a result of this change, the icon size has increased.  Rather than having tiny 16x16 icons, the task bar now has what appears to be 32x32 icons.

Some of the UI oddities in Vista have been addressed, with many dialog boxes being cleaned up.

UAC is now more adjustable.  By default, it won't prompt the user for changes to system settings.  I still doubt it'll get people to stop BAWWWing over it since the problem that plagued UAC is third-party software, but that, plus the fact that UAC has been out for two years at this point (i.e. if you haven't modified your badly written application to work with it, shame on you), things should be a bit smoother.

The classic Start menu (i.e. the Windows 2000 one) has finally been removed.  The only start menu available is a tweaked version of the Windows Vista one (the only change I noticed at a glance was that the shut down button gives a full text description of its default action).  Thank goodness.  Forcing people to use the new start menu might finally get them to realize how incredibly backwards the old one is from a user interface perspective.

The Security Center was replaced by the Action Center.  Same basic layout, but the name is a bit more all-encompassing.  It keeps the alerts separate from the list of things checked, making it much easier to see what it's fussing about.  As always, the alerts can be disabled.

The system tray and the notification area appear to have been combined again (in Vista, some system controls, such as the network connection icon and volume control, were separated from the system tray).  As always, it gives you the option of hiding unused system tray icons.  That's pretty useful, but now it's even better.  Windows 7 lets you selectively disable balloon notifications for each system tray icon (disclaimer: I didn't get to play with this yet).  Each balloon pop-up also has a little wrench icon that appears next to the close button that allows you to change the notification and icon appearance settings.

The Windows Sidebar doesn't appear to be in Windows 7 in its normal state.  Instead, Windows 7 moves the Sidebar gadgets right to the desktop, ala DesktopX.  Since one of the advantages of the Sidebar, as it appears in Vista, is that you can always access your widgets regardless of what's running, Microsoft went ahead and provided a little button to the right of the taskbar that allows you to very quickly page back to the desktop.  I'm not sure if this works like Win+D (i.e. working great unless you make the mistake of popping open a new window) or if it's properly implemented feature, ala OS X's Expos

[Bobbias]

Sounds interesting, I think I'm gonna try it out, hopefully it'll work well on this laptop.

[淫蟲]

I'm definitely going to check this out, assuming my PC can handle it.  I disagree with removing the classic skin to be a good thing, because I feel that the XP and Vista skins are too eye catching, and thus distracting.

[Spectere]

They didn't remove the classic skin (they keep that for accessibility and performance purposes), they removed the classic start menu.

[Alice]

they removed the classic start menu.

am I gonna have to choke a bitch

[Bobbias]

am I gonna have to choke a bitch

Honestly, I used to be a huge fan of the classic start menu. I still hate the XP start menu, and would use the classic one any day over the XP one. But the Vista one is a whole new story, I love that thing to death. It's such an improvement over the classic menu. I haven't used the windows 7 one yet, but by the sounds of things, it's at the very least on par, and most likely much better than the Vista menu.

[Sneaky]

Microsoft needs less new OS' and more IMPROVING THE OTHER ONES WE ALREADY FUCKING RELEASED.

This is my only beef with microcock. I love XP just fine, and I probably won't get Vista at all. Or at least until they plan to stop supporting it, which for m$ means they've released all service packs and won't do anything else. It's the 'best' that it possibly could be. We just got everyone loving on XP now, then Vista came out and people shat all over it, and is in the slow process of [again] getting everyone to love on it. Now this fucking shit with Windows 7. CUT THE SHIT ALREADY.


Good christ this is like paying cancer researchers to go work on a special side project instead of tackling the bigger picture.

Anyway. I probably won't get this beta seeing as it requires at least a Gig of ram. Not only is that ridiculous, but that's all I have on this machine anyway. How much is enough? How much fucking god damn RAM will we need in 4 years? 20GB minimum for Windows VR 4.0?
:/

[Bobbias]

Microsoft needs less new OS' and more IMPROVING THE OTHER ONES WE ALREADY FUCKING RELEASED.

This is my only beef with microcock. I love XP just fine, and I probably won't get Vista at all. Or at least until they plan to stop supporting it, which for m$ means they've released all service packs and won't do anything else. It's the 'best' that it possibly could be. We just got everyone loving on XP now, then Vista came out and people shat all over it, and is in the slow process of [again] getting everyone to love on it. Now this fucking shit with Windows 7. CUT THE SHIT ALREADY.


Good christ this is like paying cancer researchers to go work on a special side project instead of tackling the bigger picture.

Anyway. I probably won't get this beta seeing as it requires at least a Gig of ram. Not only is that ridiculous, but that's all I have on this machine anyway. How much is enough? How much fucking god damn RAM will we need in 4 years? 20GB minimum for Windows VR 4.0?
:/

Dude, do you have any idea WHY it requires that much ram? It, like Vista, uses aggressive caching. I bet it would work on systems with less ram, but slower.

This isn't about the public image stuff. It shouldn't take people this long to begin to love XP. I used to hate on Vista. But it hardly took me any time at all to realize that Vista is much better than XP. It runs smoother, it makes more sense, it looks nicer. I don't miss anything from XP.

And no, windows needs to get back into the habit of releasing more OS's. First off, if you end up with a generation of employees who's only job was to maintain, patch, and otherwise deal with one operating system, and who for the most part have no experience writing another OS, when it does come time to make a new OS, your employees will not be seasoned in the OS development/release process.

XP has been out for a LONG time. XP is old, and outdated in a number of ways. But the codebase is WAY too large to simply rewrite entire core components. It is necessary to start a new OS and design it to be better than XP from the start. Vista was designed as a bit of a stepping stone. Now Windows 7 is there to refine it. You can't just say "well, our cache system in this OS sucks, so we're just going to release a patch that completely rewrites the entire caching mechanism and replaces our old one". That sort of thinking is what turns programs into spaghetti code, making them harder to manage, harder to work with, harder to debug, and less stable, because they are harder to follow.

You can't release a perfect product, but you CAN learn about different ways of approaching problems from what worked and what didn't in your old OS.

Plus, it would be impossible to implement so many of the security features that are in Vista by rewriting XP stuff. Vista's internal design is FAR different from that of XP, and windows 7 probably only makes minor changes, but those changes could be the different between forward compatibility, and being locked into older technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7

[Spectere]

Microsoft needs less new OS' and more IMPROVING THE OTHER ONES WE ALREADY FUCKING RELEASED.

Uh, four years passed between XP and Vista and at least three years are going to pass between Vista and 7 (remember, this is the first beta version released to consumers.  The beta process is far from short...we're not going to see 7 before 2010).  That's pretty much been the norm since...well, forever.  Also, there are significant internal and interface changes between XP and Vista and Vista and 7.  It's not something they'd simply be able to roll into a previous OS even if they wanted to.  The NT kernel and the system services were practically rewritten between XP/2003 and Vista (hence the jump from NT 5.1/5.2 to 6.0) and the changes between Vista and 7 are far more extensive than any other minor version bump I've seen (such as going from 2000 to XP or XP to 2003).

As for complaining about Microsoft not improving their previous operating systems, that's simply not true.  XP has come a long way since its RTM release.  Hell, even Windows 2000 is under extended support until 2010.  I can probably count the number of operating system vendors that support their products for ten years on one hand.  Also, don't forget that XP SP3 came out long after Vista was released.

If anything, Apple's had the worst track record as far as insignificant updates are concerned.  Between the time that XP and Vista came out, Apple users essentially paid about $500 for what amounts to the changes between XP RTM and the free XP SP2 update.  If Microsoft were like Apple, your XP installation would be useless.  My PowerMac G4 (which came out at the same time as XP and is borderline useless due to Apple's switch to Intel and the horrible performance of newer OS X versions, even 10.4, on older hardware).

Anyway. I probably won't get this beta seeing as it requires at least a Gig of ram. Not only is that ridiculous, but that's all I have on this machine anyway. How much is enough? How much fucking god damn RAM will we need in 4 years? 20GB minimum for Windows VR 4.0?

For one thing, RAM is cheap.  Secondly, you should seriously educate yourself on what an OS does that makes it require so much RAM.  Even the open source advocates can't make arguments against Apple and Microsoft about this anymore because even your average Linux system requires at least 512MB of RAM to run well nowadays (and, based on extensive experience, I can tell you that Windows and OS X run much smoother than any Linux distribution I've used due to the way that they use that memory).  The simple fact of the matter is that the more operating systems do for a user, the more memory and hard drive space it takes up.  It's logical progression.  We can do more things now with a basic, off-the-shelf computer system than most high-end workstations could do five years ago.  The services and built-in applications included in any modern OS make things easily possible that were only feasible with expensive, hard-to-use packages.  And, finally, operating system developers are finally able to leverage vast amounts of RAM to cache commonly used applications to offer a better user experience.

Also, I believe I clearly stated above that Windows 7 works better with 1GB of RAM than Vista does.  It does not require 1GB of RAM.  That alone should tell you that 7 is more efficient with RAM than Vista is.  Every test I've seen even clearly indicates that Windows 7 is more efficient than XP, even on lower-end systems.

am I gonna have to choke a bitch

You do realize that the XP/Vista/7 start menus are exactly the same with more flexibility and functionality, right? :/

Edit: Dang, ganked by Bobbias. D:

[Bobbias]

Haha, yeah, but I was going from a more technical standpoint of why they would release a new OS instead of simply integrating those changes into the existing OS.

[淫蟲]

They didn't remove the classic skin (they keep that for accessibility and performance purposes), they removed the classic start menu.

Excellent...

The Windows 7 system requirements are the same as Windows Vista (Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate).  1 GB of RAM costs maybe a little more than $10.  Installing it takes less than five minutes.  Stop BAAAWWWING about it, especially since it hasn't even been released yet, commercially.

[Sneaky]

Its more personal with me more so because I've had this computer for quite a while, and have asked it to do a lot. It came with XP, so that's what I was used to, and the laptop I have was given to me by some chick that thought it was broken.  The processor I replaced from the stock 1.8GHz to 2.4 was from another machine with the same chipset that my grandparents got rid of. The 2 different video cards I've put in this machine have been gifts that I've specified for xmas/birthday etc.  The only thing I've personally had the money for myself is the RAM and wireless card. I've never had enough money or availability to be able to have a RECENT computer that could run HL2/source games all high settings, which is what I'd like. I have to sit here with these 2 machines and do what I can with what I have.

Don't argue this either, it's pointless, I'm just informing you where my rant came from, and didn't mean to start a nerd jackoff battle between spec and boobies. I'm not saying I know more than you, because my original post wasn't even formed as a damn debate question/paragraph. You need to save your big guns for someone else worth your time, since I was just stating my own personal opinion. I post that, and you fuck me in the ass like I was challenging your all godly fucking knowledge.

To be back on topic in the most simplest of ways, I see this Windows 7 beta release just so close to when Vista came out I guess. It just seems weird that they bust out working on a new OS right after making a new one, and still upgrading THAT one. But I suppose if anyone has the money to do these kinds of things, it's them.

edit: RAM costs money if you want your system to have the best of the best. Sure, there's 1GB sticks made by Kingston for around 10 bucks, but what about the Crucial 1GB for 135 bucks?

[Spectere]

Are you seriously saying that the reason you're so pissy about Windows 7 is because you can't afford an upgrade?  Before I got this computer I didn't complain that my old system probably wouldn't run Vista well, I just stuck with XP and kept my mouth shut.

Then there's the fact that I explicitly pointed out in the original post that Windows 7 outperforms XP on older hardware with 1GB of RAM you still screamed about how Windows is ballooning when it comes to memory consumption.  Did you even bother reading it at all?

Honestly, why would you even think that somebody wouldn't call you out on that?  You completely ignored important details from the original post that nullify much of your argument.

Then you have the audacity to flame us because we corrected you in what was supposed to be an informational thread.  If you want to rant about it without having to worry about people replying, start a blog and disable comments.  The point of forums are to discuss topics, not flame everyone who have the nerve to reply to you.

To be back on topic in the most simplest of ways, I see this Windows 7 beta release just so close to when Vista came out I guess. It just seems weird that they bust out working on a new OS right after making a new one, and still upgrading THAT one.

As I said before, Windows 7 is following the 3-4 year release schedule that Microsoft has always employed.  The beta generally comes out over a year before the final release (longer, in the case of Vista) and Windows 7 is no exception.

edit: RAM costs money if you want your system to have the best of the best. Sure, there's 1GB sticks made by Kingston for around 10 bucks, but what about the Crucial 1GB for 135 bucks?

The more expensive RAM is better for attaining lower timings and is more tolerant to overvolting.  It's made to be overclocked.

I've been running cheap Corsair Value RAM in my old system for years and it's worked perfectly well for me.

[Spectere]

K, now to desuckify this thread and bring it back on-topic.

The new taskbar, it seems, is fairly configurable.  In addition to providing something similar to OS X, it also allows something sort of similar to the old style but not quite.

The first method is kind of a blatant ripoff of OS X, aside from having the static nature of the Windows taskbar as opposed to the annoyingly dynamic nature of the OS X dock.  Everything appears as an icon on the bar.  When you open new programs, a new icon pops up.  If you want to keep the icon on the bar, ala QuickLaunch, you right-click the icon and pin it.  Simple stuff.

The second and third methods are pretty neat.  It essentially wraps the new behavior around the old model.  Each window that an application opens up spawns an entry on the task bar, complete with text label.  As with the default behavior, right-clicking on any of the task bar entries allows you to (un)pin the application to the taskbar.  The only difference between the second and third options is that the second one will collapse the program's windows into one icon (to look like the first option) if you run out of room on the taskbar (like XP and Vista's default behavior) while the third won't.

In all cases, the way that Windows identifies which window is which is pretty slick.  It has the thumbnail preview like Vista does but, in addition to that, the window manager will also make every other window transparent if you hold the pointer over a window for a few seconds.  While it's certainly not as slick as Expos

[annon]

I think I'll give it a shot. I'll need to do some partitioning first, but that's no problem.