Secret Windows 7 screens leaked?

Despite Microsoft's efforts to keep Windows 7 information secret and safe within a close circle of partners and testers until its good and ready, another round of screenshots has found its way to the web. Over the weekend, the ThinkNext.net blog posted a variety of screenshots purportedly from the latest batch of beta code, …

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep coming back to..

..the fact that MS will undoubtedly mess up once again, and have a heavy fit because nobody likes the crap they're shoveling anymore.

DRM manipulated, we'll-lock-you-out-if-we-want, we-own-jooz licenses..

Do I reaaaaaally want this pain?

[Solomon Grundy]

Aero-y

Ha! Good term.

I like Aero if the hardware has enough horsepower to support it. I know that the thing is waaaay too resource intensive but meh, nothing is perfect and hardware is cheap. The Aero interface is what "most" people envision a computer screen looking like - transparent overlays and shitloads of data available at any time. It needs some work but I can't think of any tech product made in the last 10 years that doesn't.

BTW - the Windows7News site is currently experiencing serious traffic problems. It might take a while to reach the site, but it isn't worth it. As Mr. Modine said it's Aero-y - nothing new to see here.

[Stuart]

shame...

... they couldn't make a break from Aero. Its ok, but just reminds you of the pain of vista, nice clean break would do them good.

Mines the overly transparent reflective mac.

[Mr B]

Butt ugly or dazzly shiny ultra top fancy

does not matter ... I never got to the point where I could enjoy the Vista look nor the XP teletubbies.

So will it work at reasonable speed without a pair of 5 GHz dual socket octo-core CPU & triple PCI-e x16 GPU board?

Will they have a version that fits on the fashionable eeePC and the likes?

Win 7 will be Windows Astala.

/ mine's the one with penguins up the sleeves.

[Jodo Kast]

Why don't they hire some good designers?

There are better WindowBlinds skins than Aero...

... but maybe they don't want to spend the money.

[adnim]

What will be new?

Let me guess, it will be easier to access and use live services. ie: every external Internet based search, chat, document and image processing storage and retrieval service will be hard coded into the OS. They will point by default to windows live servers. Any attempt to change any of these defaults will be met with a host of discouraging dialogs. Unless one digs deep or uses a registry editor, messages such as "xxxxx is not your default search/email/browser/im client, should windows set xxxxx as your default email/browser/im client" will be a regular occurrence. It will be even harder to discover what windows is doing underneath it's "transparent" underbelly and/or change it. There will be more dumbed down wizards that set the system up to ms's liking. All administrative controls will be called something different from what they were called in vista, be in an entirely different place and require a different set of procedures to access them. Expect windows 8 not to work at all unless connected to ms servers.

Other than that I expect nothing will change.

[Jim Kirby]

Is it just me....

or does it seem that these "leaks" are not leaks so much as carefully crafted "previews" traveling incognito.

Mine's the one with the plain manila envelope in the pocket.

[Doug Glass]

Rats!!

"This account has been suspended"./ Oh well, Vista rev. 1 anyway. I got XP and I be happy.

[Daniel Gilbert]

Bandwidth

Presumably the site's bandwidth limit has been reached. I managed to see the Calculator screenshot before it went down. =]

It looks like it's following a soft button approach, similar to, say, an iPhone. I envisage an Aero-y look with smooth, glide-y transitions. Touch screen Windows, here we come =]

[Anonymous Coward]

@Aero-y

Just have to be the one to say that Beryl or Compiz-Fusion running on Linux (pick your flavour) kicks Aero's ass all over the road in every way.

[Solomon Grundy]

@Jim Kirby

You are new to the Internet aren't you.

[Anonymous Coward]

S.S.D.D.

/yawn. Same old crap from MS. Steal designs then butcher them horribly and make sure to implement said design in such a way that it requires almost super computer like specs to run at a barely acceptable speed.

Yup M$ is still on course with their bloat ware. However I say more power to 'em, cus as long as they keep putting out shit software I'll have a job.

Mine's the one with the "anything but M$" logo stitched on the sleeve.

[Beau]

Vistaseven

OK! So Vistaseven is coming with the same applications, plus more bells and whistles that we don't want.

What we do want is a OS. that is simple, light on resources and as bomb proof as possible.

Then we can install the applications we want, not those that MS. insist we use.

But as MS is a monopoly, a monopoly is a financial dictatorship, and dictators never take any notice of what people tell them, there is not much hope of that happening.

Anyone out there ready to start a revolution. Please!!

[Andy Barber]

,,,catch them there before they're gone.

They're gorn! {See, proper London English!}

[A]

It's not even beta 1 yet folks

IMO it's far too early to say what it'll look like, or what features it will have. I'd wait until beta 3 for that; FYI we aren't even at beta 1 yet.

[Herby]

Still DOS/Windows

As long as there is a "C Drive", it will be nothing new. Just a bunch of band-aids (UK: Plaster) stuck on top of a VERY old interface. Nothing really new but a "coat of paint".

Oh, some other stuff added like DRM junk just to slow you down because you DO pay your bills.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohh No

Lets hope that with the cancelling of the Jerry Sienfeld ads scumbag Balmer has enough money in his pocket to go out and buy a couple of reams of blank paper so the minions at

M$ have a clean slate to start with, and we don't end up with just ME 2.2.

[Solomon Grundy]

@Iam Me and Aero-y

You said it. Without MS you wouldn't have a job. MS may be lacking on some technical fronts but lets face it - without MS none of the people reading this site would have IT jobs...We''d all be living in our Mums basement and masturbating to the cover of Foxy.

It's quite techie/gay what you said about stealing designs. MS isn't doing anything that isn't accepted, and acknowledged, by the vast majority of computer users. Your analogy is sort of like saying "Ford stole the design for cars" or "Apple stole the design for iPod's". You're way out of your league pal.

@ Aero-y: What in the name of Christ are you talking about? I don't know what Beryl or Compidsapf-fcuked is; and that's where OSS drops the ball for major adoption. They have no idea how to market their products successfully. So you can Beryl on down the road and feel good knowing that 1.73 people feel you.

[Anonymous Coward]

@solomon grundy

Silly child making assumptions. I have been in the IT game for 20 years and not only do I currently have, but also have had many jobs in the past which don't put me into any contact with the shit that M$ puts out. However should I need a backup I can (if all else fails) trudge back into the world of windoze. So nice try but you only get a "D" for effort.

Oh and if you could pull your nose out of daddy gates' ass for a moment you would see that the mouth breathers at redmond have and continue to pinch and then butcher design elements from anyone with an ounce of talent. But widoze fanbois are just as blind as any other, sheeple being sheeple and all, will bleat the party line until the day they die.

I'm glad people like you are around though as you provide me an endless source of amusement with your close minded attitudes and myopic views. So with that said I'll close by saying fuck you and have a nice day :-).

[Webster Phreaky]

Stevie Gods snuck it out while stealing it to copy for OS X 10.6

Stevie has been LIFTING parts of Windows since 3.1, but always a generation behind or not at all. Remember that Windows had the "Start" menu first which then showed up in OS 8 and 9; THEN Stevie COPIED the Windows "Taskbar" and called it the Dock on OS X .... oh yeah Windows HAD THAT all the way back in Win 95 (OS X? 2001 and neXT or BSD never had it either - the two OS X progenitors).

Of course NOW Stevie has Stolen pop-up menus too from Windows for the fruity and boinging juvenile action Dock. Will the THEFT ever stop.

Well apparently not, since Stevie's crew of Apple "engineers" (copiers) morons can't seem to figure out how COPY Windows Vista's "ReadyBoost" instant USB Flash RAM addition to the systems RAM's reserves. (Turn your 4GB system into a 8 or 10GB just by plugging in a HS USB 2.0 Drive!) or the XP perfected one step "System Restore Point" that backs up settings/system files or restores a previous working condition if an app / malware, or / YOU. screw something up in Windows. (Stevie's solution to this is - "Reinstall OS X)

Oh and of course, despite the FACT that OS X FRAGMENTS worse and faster than Windows 2000, XP or Vista (as bad (horrible) as BSD and UNIX without a cache partition), Apple CAN'T seem to figure out HOW to include a defrag application that defrags automatically OR within OS X WHILE the OS is running!! How LAME is that???

Geez Stevie even had to steal "Widgets" from the poor folks at Konfabulator without tippng them even a cent. Remember that mail program that Apple stole for the iPhone??? It just never stops.

Well, I'm sure that we will see many of Windows 7 in OS X some day, probably 10.8 or 10.9 in 2012 .... when the world ends according to the alien / Mayan calendar nuts that all use Macs.

[Anonymous Coward]

@beveryoddy

Erm...I thought Apple has stolen the idea for iPods from Creative! Wasn't there some court action on this which led Steve Jobs to decree "There will never be any video capability on an iPod"

There is a plethora of copyright infringement law suits past and present against microsoft, lets face it they have mucho dinero to fight such things.

I'm sure in the outer recesses of my mind there was a suit against them in 3.1 for stacker or memcheck or doublespace or whatever it was.

[John O'Hare]

@Solomon Grundy

" You said it. Without MS you wouldn't have a job. MS may be lacking on some technical fronts but lets face it - without MS none of the people reading this site would have IT jobs..."

Quit wrong; without MS you would still have a job, but you would be spending your time being productive instead of wasting your time with 'reboot schedules', antivirus software and reimaging your servers regularly because they're buggered.

All that money that's spent on that crap, could be spent on actually something that's economically beneficial to someone else than MS. Like actually improving your IT infrastructure, instead of just 'keeping it working'.

" It's quite techie/gay what you said about stealing designs. MS isn't doing anything that isn't accepted, and acknowledged, by the vast majority of computer users. Your analogy is sort of like saying "Ford stole the design for cars" or "Apple stole the design for iPod's". You're way out of your league pal."

Alas, MS hasn't 'invented' anything. Ford created the first affordable standard car, Apple designed the iPod themselves. DOS was just a feeble attempt at copying CP/M. Windows a crappy attempt at what Apple was doing with the MAC. Try reading 'The barbarians of Bill' if you can get hold of a copy and read how Bill was ordering everyone to 'make windows look more like MAC'.

MS hasn't had an innovative idea in its entire existence (well maybe that's not entirely true, there's still MS Bob and Clippy).

" @ Aero-y: What in the name of Christ are you talking about? I don't know what Beryl or Compidsapf-fcuked is; and that's where OSS drops the ball for major adoption. They have no idea how to market their products successfully. So you can Beryl on down the road and feel good knowing that 1.73 people feel you.

Yes, it's so much better to eat what you're fed and keep the MS executives in a job, instead of using stable, fast and free technology to actually get some work done.

Be a sheep if you like. Just don't bleat at other people if they don't want to hang out with the herd and run away if the MS herder comes around with his gumboots. Please do your thing and let people with at least half a brain do theirs. That's the problem with IT nowadays. Any moron who can alter the background of his XP desktop is considered an IT professional.

And about the "We''d all be living in our Mums basement and masturbating to the cover of Foxy."

Please don't confuse yourself with other people.

[adnim]

@Solomon Grundy

Without ms some of us would still have a job, although job entry into the technical side of IT would be a little more difficult. Those of us who don't need guiding by the hand and understand some of the detail of what happens behind the pretty pictures would still have jobs. It only appears that the IT industry revolves around ms, and most people cannot see beyond the hype.

MS have in fact bought much if not almost all of their product line from clever innovative start ups and slapped the ms moniker on them. They have done far less innovation of their own than one is led to believe. Yes stealing was perhaps too strong a word.

Beryl and Compiz-Fusion are GUI desktops for those who want to click pretty pictures and animations to operate their computer. (The panels at the top and bottom of Gnome are enough for me). They make Aero look pretty pathetic. And what's more they don't need the power of a rendering farm to run smoothly. Perhaps if the Open Source community had the advertising budget of ms you would have heard of Beryl and Compiz-Fusion.

And who needs Foxy with Internet access? ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Why don't they hire some good designers?

Because it is not in their corporate culture.

MS have been able to get away with poor design for so long that it is entrenched. The corporate thinking seems to be: "People buy our stuff because they have to". With that mindset there is no room for good design.

Until MS has a Jon-Ives-like VP of Industrial Design, don't expect anything significant to happen other than Ballmer doing one of his famous single-word raves: "Design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design, design,...."

[Better be an AC]

[Alan Moore]

Wow!

It must be exciting to be a Windows user these days! A New CALCULATOR and TEXT EDITOR!! Oh, wait, I mean rich text editor. So much the better. Boy I can't wait! Just imagine adding, subtracting, and maybe even multiplying on a slick new Windows 7 calculator! And then dropping those snazzy sums and products into a sweet little .rtf by clicking "paste" on the ribbon interface. Oh it gives me chills! Chills!

[Roger Heathcote]

@solomon grundy

>They have no idea how to market their products successfully

Nothing to do with ideas Solomon, marketing cost MONEY, which of course FOSS entities don't have much/any of!

BTW: Compiz is like Aero but much much better.

Roger.

[phat shantz]

Microsoft Bailout

One more Vistaster from MS and Treasury will be bailing out Ballmer.

[Andraž Levstik]

@Solomon Grundy

A troll by any other name is still a troll.

Free Software doesn't need marketing that just the idiotic idea of the few business users that think it

does. The way Free Software spreads is by word of mouth from admin to admin to CIO etc...

Free Software has nothing to sell hence no need for marketing. Only crappy projects such as Firefox need marketing.

Lol without MS you would actually have users that would be able to sort things for themselves. Not dumb users from 0.0 to 7.0 and beyond...

As or useless pretty pics like Aero, Beryl/Compiz, etc... Keep it in lockup since it brings NOTHING usable to the whole user interface idea.

And no unlike your thinking MS does NOT innovate. It hasn't done so since the windows 3.X days. Win95 GUI was grabbed from OS/2 which they then shafted IBM. I actually used OS/2 Warp 4 and

compared to the junk that is windows I was impressed by it. It was remarkably usable.

Anyway do not feed the trolls...

[Les Matthew]

@Solomon Grundy

"You said it. Without MS you wouldn't have a job. MS may be lacking on some technical fronts but lets face it - without MS none of the people reading this site would have IT jobs...We''d all be living in our Mums basement and masturbating to the cover of Foxy."

What utter tosh. If there was no Microsoft it would just be some other company. Microsoft weren't even IBM's first choice for the PC.

[Tim Miller]

"it's" = "it is" or "it has"

"Back before the ponderously maligned OS made it's debut ..."

=

"Back before the ponderously maligned OS made it is debut ..."

This is the third time I've seen this on The Reg today. Gah.

[Geoff Johnson]

Windows 7 has symlinks!

Sorry, I had to say that.

It's traditional for a rumour to start about now that the new version of windows will support symbolic links.

[Sceptical Bastard]

Missed it!

Quote: "Windows7news is presently hosting the images. You may catch them there before they're gone."

Too late. They're gone. At 07.47 (UK time) I got this "This Account Has Been Suspended" here

http://host.connectedinternet.co.uk/suspended.page/

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Herby

> Just a bunch of band-aids (UK: Plaster) stuck on top of

Nah, it's "just a bunch of plasters". In this case it has to be plural, because "just a bunch of plaster stuck on" means the stuff you use for coating your walls or making sculptures out of. Although, amazingly, we are quite familiar with the term "band-aid".

As for Windows 7, enough said. I'm waiting for the next big thing AFTER Vista, which doesn't include different versions of Vista, which I believe this is. Having said that, Server 2008 is built on the same kernel, and that's supposed to be pretty good, so maybe there's some hope yet.

@ Solomon Grundy/Aero-y: If you don't know a product, that's part bad marketing and part crap research on your behalf. However, I do agree: if FOSS types actually gave reasonable names to their apps instead of naming them after their grandmother's cat, they might actually be memorable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Beta?

Why are you completely misreporting this as Beta? It's nowhere near Beta yet it's still in Alpha, hence the M (Milestone) Builds, Beta 1 will, oddly enough be the first Beta version and that has yet to surface.

[Hans]

@Solomon Grundy

So, you are proud of your ignorance, I guess you also only listen to music that gets pumped through the major radio stations, watch cnn, drive a Ford (LOL)? You are a victim of ultra capitalism and deserve all you get.

Using the word gay in an offensive way just shows how immature you are, last time I did that, I was at school, maybe 14 years old ... before you ask, I am not gay. ;-)

I would certainly have a job without MS, I have never paid microsoft for a license, and never used a Microsoft license illegally ... and at some point became a Microsoft guru ... but, no, I am also an early linux adopter ... even before I went to work for a company.

I have never, even when I was 14, "jerked" off at covers of a magazine ... I used to practice on females ;-).

As to Microsoft stealing stuff from others, just browse the web and you will see that there are many, many, no really many ppl that agree, show proof ... so cut your crap.

I think you are way out of your league, here. Ford stole design for cars? new to me, as for Apple? Nope, they hire very good designers, they need exclusive design, otherwise they could not sell their goods at a higher price than the competition and still be number 1 ... for music players that is.

Please, do not become the new Webster, we already have one, and Webster IS funny, you ain't.

[Tezfair]

toolbars

MS, drop the ribbons as they are rubbish. It used to be 1 click to print, now its 3. How is this an improvement?

Trying to program an Access 2007 is insane now

[Ken Hagan]

A cheap shot

"hardware is cheap"

Deskbound are you? There are cheap laptops and there are laptops powerful enough to run Vista, but, well you can guess the rest.

"The Aero interface is what "most" people envision a computer screen looking like - transparent overlays and shitloads of data available at any time. "

I thought the complaints with Vista were mostly that the data *wasn't* available, except after a long wait. Anyway, "most" people these days expect a computer to look like Teletubbyland, don't they?

MS seem to have taken a real step backwards in the last five years. For a while they were all "Windows Everywhere", trying to push the same UI onto just about everything from a watch to a warehouse, but in recent years it has been clear that what they choose to run on the desktop is so resource intensive that it will never be the same UI on the smaller devices. Funny thing is, they're still pushing the Windows Everywhere message. It's like they haven't noticed the divergence within their own product line. Is anyone managing "Windows" these days, or has MS just fragmented into half a dozen companies all owned by the same bloke.

[alan]

@herby

herby - i would have said that if i didnt have the presence of mind to read it first :)

I also agree completely with the super-comp-specs argument, which is there for all to see if you look on the recommended specs of any new-ish (also released on a next-gen console) pc game, there are usually 2 sets of specs - one for xp, and considerably higher ones for vista.

Crysis wants 3.2GHZ on vista, but only 2.5 on xp? 1GB ram for xp but 1.5 on vista? Whoever said hardware was cheap!? DDR2 800 isnt that cheap......neither is a shiny new 3 GHZ dual core!!

@solomon grundy - I would have a job without MS, I work for an open source company. In fact micro$hit not being there would make my job easier. And my mum doesn't have a basement.

[Ken Hagan]

Without Microsoft...

"...none of the people reading this site would have IT jobs."

Bollocks. Without MS, IBM would have launched the PC with CP/M or some flavour of Unix and the PC revolution would have happened anyway. (I expect we'd all be using Linux.) Look at the way Sun and SG stole IBM's market in the 80s. (And converted the customers to Unix.) The technology was there and the demand was there. Microsoft's contribution was to monopolise the rewards, and make sure no-one ran Unix. All credit to Bill's, er, "business acumen" for that, but to suggest that there wouldn't be a huge IT industry in the 90s and 00s is just daft.

[Gulfie]

Too late...

The alternative source of the images now displays an 'account suspended' banner. Sounds like they also got 'the call' from M$.

If you listen carefully you can just hear the helicopters leaving...

[ben]

The good old days

@Solomon Grundy

'We''d all be living in our Mums basement and masturbating to the cover of Foxy.' aka the good ol days

[Vincent]

@ Mr B

"So will it work at reasonable speed without a pair of 5 GHz dual socket octo-core CPU & triple PCI-e x16 GPU board?"

Eh? Aero runs fine on my computer, which has a 2.4GHz (And i'm willing to bet it works smoothly at a lower CPU speed than that) and Intel integrated graphics. So I don't know what planet you're on, i'm afraid.

Mines the one that's flameproof.

[Matthew]

Did anyone grab the screenshots?

Would be nice to see what everyone's talking about. All the links in Google seem to point back to the same 'account suspended' page...

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Webster Phreaky

Does anyone actually listen to this idiot anymore? I thought such "my dad is bigger that your dad" arguments between OSs became passe in the 90s?

[David Kelly]

@Webster Phreaky

As usual Webster, you write a load of bollocks. The OS X dock stealing from Windows 95? Please, don't make me laugh. Applications on a dock style bar have been around on UNIX OSes way before Windows 3.1 existed. M$ did nothing innovative in that area. Why don't you read up on ancient X11 window managers and come back with your tail between your legs.

As for fragmentation, I have never seen any of my OS X boxes get more than 5% fragmentation. Why is there no defrag app in OS X? Because it doesn't need one! OS X automatically defrags files in the background if required, although this doesn't need to happen very often. Only an idiot like yourself would think it's a Good Thing [tm] that M$ bundles a defrag app with their OS.

Regarding Widgets and Konfabulator the same can be said for M$ so your point is, well pointless.

Have fun with your C: and D: drives. Meanwhile OS X is heading towards ZFS which will make Windows look more archaic than ever.

[Rick Eastwood]

Entertaining

Forget all the Windows is great / Windows is shit crap. Ive just loved this good old fashioned flame war between random strangers. Just like the good old days !!!!

Now come on Solomon Grundy, say something else ridiculous/offensive/childish/Banal (delete as appropriate) just to start everyone off again

[Andrew Robinson]

Optical Illusion?

Completely off-topic, but if you view this story from the Reg homepage - does the icon for this story (the Windows one) look as if the left hand edge is all askew? It's either my eyes or these cheap capuccino sachets. Or devil gates. Yes, devil gates will do for this one.

MIND-BLOWING I TELL YOU!

[The BigYin]

Is it...

...less resource hungry than Linux?

...faster than Linux?

...more secure than Linux?

...more stable than Linux?

Unless they get 3 out of 4; I see no reason in returning to the Windows world at home. At work I have to use Windows...but even that is changing. We're getting sick and tired of MS bloat and poor performance.

I run Ubuntu 8.04 on a 1gb laptop and a P4 cpu. It's sweet as a nut even with all the fancy compiz-fusion wizardry turned on. Way, way faster than the XPsp2 install it replaced.

[Vincent]

Re: Did anyone grab the screenshots?

I think that there are two pictures on Wikipedias article about Windows 7:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#Milestone_3

I only think though, I don't know for sure because I didn't see the originals.

[Mark]

Microsoft jsut make crap these days..

Opera > Firefox > IE

Apache > IIS

MacOS > Linux > Windows

PS3 > Wii > 360

Google > Yahoo > MSN Search

About the only thing still half decent, is their development tools, and office. Everything else hardware and software just sucks badly.

[The BigYin]

@solomon grundy

I will agree that OSS needs to learn some marketing and make things much easier for newbies. It's very confusing to be told "Oh, you just need to set x,y,x in nautilus and it all works" when you (as a newb) have no idea WTF nautilus is. (I think it's the "File Browser" in Gnome, but am not 100% sure - there is no documentation I can find to tell me). This does not happen in Windows. The Windows docs will explain Explorer, the equivalent on Linux is not always the case.

Each "component" has it's own project name (e.g. Samba for sharing stuff on Windows networks), these may or may not be obvious and may or may not be installed on your Linux distro. They tend to be documented separately and the documentation assumes that you have a high knowledge of Linux (plus networking, computer science etc), understand what all the various components are and how they differ (what is X, how does Gnome differ to KDE, why do they differ etc). This is not always the case.

When you do find docs, they are often years old and do not apply to the version of the distro you are using. This can make things really tough for a newbie. And there seems to be no central hand-holding doc which walks you through the major components in a coherent manner. With even simple config changes often needing the use of the Terminal (or extra components installed), it is vital for news to know what is what.

That's my one biog grips about the Linux world - the docs. Oh, and the need to use the bloody Terminal for everything. Having to do things with "sudo" all the time is an annoyance as well, but at least that is an annoyance which get be logically explained (it's called "security", something Windows could do with).

[N]

Pointless

Most of our clients have decided they will remain with Windows 2000/XP or find alternatives.

Such bollox, I mean ooh a screen saver, really tells me to dash out and reserve a copy now dosnt it? is probably botched up Vista with some more crapware added & an even more fucked up user interface with the same crappy code beneath it.

But when the time comes for its release to the great unwashed at PC Rip of Wurld Ive no doubt it will be the best thing since sliced bread according to the sales people there - requiring a kilowatt or two to run a couple of quad core processors & wont be compatible with any other software at all apart from Malware viruses & trojans...

[Waggers]

"You may catch them there before they're gone"

They're gone.

[Waggers]

Aero?

I prefer Wispa.

[Anonymous Coward]

vista vista vista

stinks of shit, and this story has been totally fabricated to get all you goons to get into an argument.

you all need to get lives.

im already outta here!

[David Hayes]

http://digital-lifestyles.info/2008/09/22/windows-7-beta-operating-system-screengrabs-leaked/

Maybe this will help with the masses trying to view the new screenies

[Toastan Buttar]

@Hans

"I have never, even when I was 14, "jerked" off at covers of a magazine ... I used to practice on females ;-)."

When you were 14 you jerked off over females (*) ? I trust you had the decency to tell them it was good for their hair before doing the deed.

Paris, cos her hair's seen a fair bit of protein-enhanced conditioner.

(*) What species, out of interest ?

[nick]

Without Microsoft...

...we would have many more IT companies with us today that weren't destroyed as a result of MS's monopolistic business practices. The result would be much more competition in the marketplace and more technical innovation. Microsoft has probably set the development of IT back 10 or 20 years.

[alphaxion]

@Andraž

Oh dear, fallen for the "users are capable" dream have we?

Regardless of the OS and regardless of how easy to use an interface it sports, a user is a user.

The software (and/or choice of) doesn't improve them, only heavy objects to the skull.

I know a depressing number of users that struggle with simple mouse use, those who can't store any more than a single password in their brains.

That's not mentioning how the simple concept of file and folder management is totally beyond them.

Users just want you as an IT staff member to do anything that falls out of the "write documents and send emails" bracked cause they can't be arsed to think for themselves.

When I started in IT I foolishly thought I could train them to figure things out for themselves and that it was their fear of breaking the PC that held them back. 9 years has taught me that it's not fear, but abject failure at independent thought.

Windows, OSX, Linux, RISC OS, Amiga OS... doesn't matter what you give them, they're too stupid to use anything more than a pen.

[Jaimi]

Windoze bloater

Yes M$ windoze is bloatware+ with each release, and we are all sheep because we don't know any better (I will never buy another windoze machine again)... but you have to hand it to that Gates fella - he's no dumbass, having cornered the market in the way he had done.

[Law]

started off good...

... but quickly turned into a fanboy flame fest! lol

Personally, I'm hoping they drop drm, speed up the OS - and keep a light implementation of Aero. I hate Vista now, but they had some good ideas, just failed in the execution.

Yes, they steal idea's - but so do Apple and Linux. So come on, there is room enough in the market for all 3.... personally, I hope M$ steal some idea's from the linux group and make Aero more like Beryl and Compiz... that way we will be able to skin our own windows, implement nice new 3d affects, and it runs fast on old hardware too. I had a pc that couldn't run Aero, but was amazing using Beryl, so I ended up running Beryl and switched between cube sides - as one side was XP running in VMware full screen... was nice setup really... but after a few updates it became a little unstable. Now I do the same thing using osx and spaces, with xp running in vmware full screen on a space window

Oh - and I hope they take some idea's from Apple too, like on have cmd+space for opening spotlight, which essentially becomes an application launcher... but they should keep the task bar, I'm not a fan of osx's launcher at the bottom.

Without a doubt, they need to implement stuff that is now standard in both linux and osx - like Spaces (linux did it first I know, but I can't remember the catchy name for it), widgets that hide until you press a function button, and active corners to do stuff like display all windows, switch screen, and other stuff.

I hope they manage to do all that - I would love to go back to windows and not vomit when I have to use visual studio.

[Chris]

Here we go again...

"Keep in mind the code is still deep in beta country"

Oh shit!

So, retail release by the end of next month then?

[michael]

no

"Apple designed the iPod themselves"

I think creative may have a bone to pick with that statment

[alphaxion]

beta code

I always love it when people speak of beta as some half done code.

Beta is functionally complete and in bug hunt mode iirc - someone please let me know if I'm mistaken in this belief.

Too much gets passed off as beta now adays when they should be at best alpha and at worst concept code.

[andrew checkley]

And for those who missed the pics!

http://www.bysoft.se/sureshot/bluesaver/screenshot.gif

For those who did not see before the were pulled..

enjoy

[Marty McFly]

What if Win7 also bombs...

I was hoping Win7 would be a return to a decent OS and scrapping most of the Vista crap (aero, DRM, etc). What happens if Win7 is really Vista 2.0??

Will this be the catalyst which drives the industry to a non-Windows OS as the preferred standard? (No, I am not a Linux raver either). Heck, most productivity can be done on-line these days anyway. What is a client OS needed for? Most work can be done via a web browser on a free OS.

[David Kelly]

@alphaxion, @law

alphaxion, sorry dude, I have to disagree with your "all users are morons therefore will never figure out how to use any OS" attitude. Most of my family has switched over to OS X. I used to get loads of "how do I do / fix this" calls but now it's a rare thing when one of them can't work out how to do something. Likewise the company I'm contracting to right now switched all their machines over to Macs a couple of years ago. Instead of running around to one desktop after another fixing problems or showing people how to use the OS the desktop support guys are spending their time optimizing servers. Little details like being able to press cmd+, in any app to get your preferences make a huge amount of difference in terms of making an OS more intuitive. (Note to Microsoft, try a little *consistency* if you want Win7 to be better than previous Windows versions !)

@Law, give Quicksilver a go (http://blacktree.com) It's pure heaven in terms of app launching and does a lot more. I personally only use the dock for stacks now.

[Scott Evil]

If it was left to ibm?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/30/farewell_gates/

Gates is hailed as the visionary who changed our lives by delivering on the vision of a PC in every home. Certainly, Gates and Microsoft came along at the right time. Ken Olson, former chairman and president of computing pioneer Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), is famed for saying in 1977 he saw no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home. It was also IBM's lack of interest in building software for PCs that gave Microsoft its first break.

Had it been left to companies like DEC and IBM, computing today would likely be a different, analogue, green-screen world.

The challenge of Gates, though, is to put him - and Microsoft - into context. The dictionary defines a visionary as someone “given to fanciful speculations and enthusiasms with little regard for what is actually possible” or “a person with unusual powers of foresight”.

Gates turned computing into a mass market by his focus on “experience” on a low-priced Intel box. He had the “vision” to see what Olson couldn’t when it came to PCs: that given the accessible and affordable tools ordinary people - not just those individuals staffing corporations or the engineering and scientific communities served by IBM and DEC - could do great things with computers. His success, though, turned him into another Olson, a man whose beliefs became contained and defined by the market his company had carved out.

[Law]

@ David Kelly

Thanks for the tip - looks like a useful tool, will give it a try. It looks like an osx version of the firefox extension Ubiquity which I've been getting used to recently, although much cooler.

Stacks are a very cool feature too, almost like a decent version of toolbars in windows which I use often for quick access to drives under My Computer.

Oh - and to back up your point to alphaxion - I got my father-in-law (nearing 70 years old) a mac mini for his hd-tv, so he had a place for all his photos and music, and could do better slideshows for the family, this was a good few months ago now. First week was a nightmare, with phone calls of how to get to his photos, and how to import them from his camera. Not heard anything from him since, yet he's been using it alot. This week is first time in a long time he's asked for help, he asked where to install the BBC iPlayer to. I told him he just goes to the same site he does on his PC, and it will stream normally... he's now caught up on last weeks tv after his trip to spain... and it was all pain free.

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a way to fix this

Make windows 7 like Xp on steroids...not like vista on hemorrhoids.

'nuf said.

[phat shantz]

@andrew checkley (Screenshots)

Sure. Kinda what I expected.

But the real question is whether it crashed faster than Vista, or just as slowly.

Paris, because she's not bad looking, is a resource hog, has succeeded solely on marketing, and goes down a lot, too. Dump Jerry, Paris is VistaME/Windows 7's ideal spokesperson!

[Anonymous Coward]

SAY WHAT!?!?!?!?!

"Reports indicate that a feedback tool included in Milestone 1 lists some coming features: the ability to store Internet Explorer settings on a Windows Live account, updated versions of Paint and WordPad, and a 10 minute install process.[33] In addition, improved network connection tools might be included." (Stolen from Wikipedia on 9/24/08)

Let me edit out the parts not relevant to my freaking out here. . .

A 10 MINUTE INSTALL PROCESS!!!!!!?????

Ummm why do I have a feeling that the "10 minute" install process will be for the alpha releases and by the time it hits Beta it will be closer to 30-45? Not I dont support M$ because I think they are great and the next best thing since sliced bread but because I game and therefore I am. Anyway that being said Im going to freak out some more.

OMFGSOABATMIFMSIASITWIGTEPGHM

For those thats are wondering what that means. . .

Oh My Fucking God, Son Of A Bitch A Ten Minute Install From Microsoft, Say It Aint So Is The World Going To End? God Help Me.

/Anon because I dont want Jimbos rabid crowd on me for lifting information they "wrote"

/Black Chopper because I think they know who I am anyway

[alphaxion]

@law @david kelly

The overwealming number of users I have encountered simply can't cope with anything like that - my own personal experience over 9 years of being a sysadmin.

If you have a bunch of people that have been able to actually use their machines then great.

But from my own experience (I'm not just toeing a well worn tech meme) the majority of the users will struggle with anything you give them. If an application doesn't have an icon on their desktop "it's not installed" instead of having the presense of mind to actually look for it on their systems.

I've had some of them come up to me with their spiffy new macbooks and ask how to use the damn thing. I've had them stumble over and quiz about their mobile phones. Almost all of them can't understand how to swap out a toner or clear a paper jam.

As I said, if you've encountered users that were able then great. But I've encountered a lot more who aren't no matter what device it is.

[Law]

RE: @law @david kelly

"But from my own experience (I'm not just toeing a well worn tech meme) the majority of the users will struggle with anything you give them. If an application doesn't have an icon on their desktop "it's not installed" instead of having the presense of mind to actually look for it on their systems."

Unless you work where the general IQ is around 50, I am absolutely shocked you have so many comp-u-tards asking for that sort of basic help on a daily basis - they should be sacked if it's a regular thing, as they obviously can't do their jobs properly.

I can understand when users think it's quicker to annoy sys-admin than look themselves, they see it as your job to make sure they know where things are, not theirs. I've worked in those places before, hell, I've been a sys-admin for a smallish company before, and even upgrading their outlook and exchange caused an uproar - but that's work, people leave their brains at the door... I highly doubt they would be like that at home on their pcs! :)

[Ken Hagan]

Re: If it was left to ibm?

"Had it been left to companies like DEC and IBM, computing today would likely be a different, analogue, green-screen world."

Improbable, to my mind, but irrelevant since there was always Apple to show what a small machine was capable of and Sun or SGI to show what mid-range hardware was capable of. The market in the early 80s was pregnant with solutions looking for customers. As the price of hardware fell, the customers started buying. That was always going to happen.

Microsoft's contribution was to recognise how hard it was to switch OS and therefore how important it was to make sure it was *your* OS. All those workstations made the "mistake" of using the same basic OS, so customers saw a competitive market. Apple tried to do the same as MS, but controlling the hardware instead of the OS, and they had only limited success because they couldn't compete with Intel.

20:20 hindsight is a wonderful thing. You should try using it.

[mittfh]

Eye Candy

So far, it looks little more than a minor makeover for a few bits of Vista. It's still got Vista's default Aurora wallpaper and Paint looks just as rubbish as ever from what I can see in the ribbon.

If only the WINE project could get its hands on a few disgruntled former MS coders...

Oh yes, eye candy. Someone mentioned Compiz Fusion earlier. If you haven't discovered it yet, search for it on ewe choob and drool in amazement. And unlike Vista, it doesn't wreck your system performance whilst it draws all those pretty effects.

Meanwhile, somewhere else on Windows 7 News, there's mention of possible tighter integration with Live Services. So probably instead of installing gigabytes of barely functional MS ripoffs of any rival's market leading software, it'll just provide links to MS online versions, which of course will be designed to work so much better with W7 than any other OS. By seemingly only providing URLs to Live Services, they'll probably get around regulatory hurdles - but what they won't reveal is how closely the Live and W7 teams worked, or how much code you'd need to download from Live to get the apps working if you don't have W7 installed...

if(browser != "IE8")

{

printf("You need to upgrade your browser to IE 8");

return;

}

if(os != "Windows7")

{

printf("You need to upgrade to Windows 7 to make use of all the functionality of this website.");

return;

}

[bssharpy]

My two pence

Well i guess if all the idiots cant figure out how to use Vista Changing the name to Windows 7 and charging a little more for it is an ingenious money making strategy. If they cant figure out how to do a google search on how to turn off user account control they deserve it. But o dear you shouldn't turn off user account control as you wont be protected from yourself? Well I say if you used XP without it you can use vista without it too. Go get yourself a good firewall. And turn the crap off. You should never run anything Microsoft makes on the internet without a good firewall in my opinion XP 2K or anything. What Microsoft should do is embed a good firewall into the kernel like linux. And people that cant figure it out will just have to hire someone with a brain to set it up for them. There is something to be said for making somthing idiot proof. It is that when you finally do it only an idiot would use it. "User acount control" point in case!

Just my two cents