Microsoft: Windows 7 release in August '09 Microsoft has officially dropped the façade on Windows 7 in 2010 and conceded that its essentially completed operating system will ship this year. Windows 7 will be released to manufacturing in about three months, pending feedback on the current release candidate, senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live …
>This operating system's a tuned-up version of Windows Vista that's largely finished<
Free upgrade for all us unlucky beta testers who got new systems with Vista preinstalled?
or do we have to p2p to get what's owed us - before p2p is outlawed and the internet becomes a slightly shady shopping / tv channel?
A "New" release for Windows.... where's my barf bag? I just ordered a brand new machine and it will have XP, as my Win2k machine is getting a little long in the tooth. I have just seen to many Vista machines with malware, and virii, and odd quirks in behavior not to mention those GD wizards to be bothered. I can't wait to see what kind of surprises this "new" os has for us.
Oooooooh, oooh, OMG I am having a vision! Oooh I see a microsoft press release in the new year! Golly gosh, it is acknowledging some faults with windows 7 and promising they will all be fixed in the new upcoming windows 8 release. Ooh, they say there will be an advanced filesystem and that Win8 has a lower TCO than linux. Oh, the vision is fading now. Fading...
"Microsoft is now in the standard, final phase of testing with features locked down. Nothing short of a major code re-write thanks to some hidden architectural flaw, overlooked security hole, or coding gotcha is going to prevent Windows 7 in October."
Really? Isn't that what they said about Vista at one point?
Have there been any hidden architectural flaws, overlooked security holes or "coding gotcha"s in any of their other products?
.... doubtless easier, faster and more secure (by design naturally) than any that went before. I wonder if there are any limits? A version of Windows that installs in 5 minutes, *completely* boots in 5 seconds and is immune to worms & viruses. Now that would be something to shout about.
"If the feedback and telemetry on Windows 7 match our expectations then we will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about 3 months. If we are successful in that, then we tracking to our shared goal of having PCs with Windows 7 available this Holiday season."
Obviously it will NOT be released in August.
I gave it a whirl the other day on my Mac bootcamp kit and I must admit it was pretty snazzy. Everything worked fine except the sound drivers, which I manually installed. I must admit too that playing my favourite game Fallout 3, it played pretty damn well and after 4-5 hours on WIn7 it hasn't crashed as it did under XP. Whether I bother getting an official upgrade for XP after the Win7 trial ends, depends upon if I am still playing F3 or not!
Seems that W7 is really what Vista was meant to be. Well done MS! ( You still have a way to go to catch up to OSX though! )
Since my XP install died rather spectactularly (the most visible problem was that the graphics went down to 4-bit mode!) I thought I might as well, so it's now on my 32Gb SSD and performance is really rather good.
Problems:
It can't see the SATA RAID controller card (with my 2 RAID1's) and the scanner is driverless so far, and for some reason it sees my RAID0 but won't let me access the drive
it does respond quickly and the interface is not too dissimilar to XP's to make it a pain - though of course I haven't tried any games yet (on the RAIDs) and I'll probably install openoffice this time around.
The big question is how much will it be, since I may also try out a flavour of linux and see if I can get the games running under wine, or maybe try out cedega.
ttfn
Fat, new virus hangover for New Years day then.
I'll stick to XPsp3 until that is no longer supported* or it otherwise no longer does what I need. Then it will be "Enter the Penguin". I'm not Linux fanboi, but spending £x00 for a new OS or installing a "free" one is a no-brainer really.
Even less of a no-brainer if Lexmark ever get their bloody act together.
*AFAIK properly patched versions of XP are still under support.
Try programming a piece of software with zero holes in it. It's not easy, even in a small release, to cover all the holes without testing. However, internal testing is never enough, as most of those involved in the test process will already be familiar with the system and its idiosyncrasies. Most of the bugs will be found by novice users using the system for the first time. Even expert users aren't as useful as testers, since they often find problems then try to work around them themselves. This has always been Microsoft's testing strategy, and while they certainly shipped Vista with more than its fair share of bugs, every version has had them, and each new version will too.
What the incentive is for me to buy this thing in the first place, other than that it is likely to be preinstalled on any system bought after the next couple of months. It seems to do nothing that XP doesn't, or at least nothing that benefits me, so what's the point? On the other hand, it seems to suffer from a desperate urge both to break an existing user interface and as many as possible of my existing applications. This is helpful how?
As far as I can see, the main USP is that it's 'WIndows 7' which is about as logical as observing that the Winslow is indeed the supreme being since it displays the fourteenth accepted sign of divinity: Be the Winslow. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winslow)
Mine's the one with the Winslow and a copy of Kubuntu in the pocket, thanks.
Hopefully Microsoft isn't letting any of the "second round" of soon-to-be-laid-off employees work on anything important, such as Windows 7 or whatever. <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2009180671_microsoft06.html>
After reading on The Register of so many instances of fired employees *sabotaging* stuff, or employees who just *think* they're going to be fired soon, one can only imagine the potential for mischief among Microsoft workers who perhaps have already received their lay-off notices but who are still temporarily on the job for a few more hours/days/weeks or whatever... just considering the possibilities makes we want to totally steer clear of any new Microsoft products in the foreseeable future. What's stopping individual workers from putting in backdoors and stuff? I mean, more than what already exists ;) in Windows.
If I was running things at Microsoft, I would make workers leave the premises IMMEDIATELY upon notice of their impending layoff, with a supervised escort to the edge of the company property, and take other security steps as necessary. It would be cheaper to just go ahead and pay them their 2 months' (or whatever) worth of upcoming wages than to risk having them screw things up that could jeopardize the company's reputation, such as it is. (That's assuming there was no possibility of hiring them back again when/if things ever pick up again.)
It would be a bummer for MS customers to discover a few months down the road, that some former employees had put some weird code in Windows 7 that caused... some new horrible security problems... of course I'm thinking if the unauthorized alterations were REALLY good, they would do their dirty-work undetected :O
A side note for MS haters, you'll no doubt enjoy that the link above cites that "[Microsoft] said its economic outlook remained grim." It wouldn't help that grim economic outlook to have angry employees deliberately sabotaging things.
Just something to think about.
(And yes, I know the definition difference between fired and laid-off, but it often ends up being the same thing, especially in the current economic climate.)
Not to pick on Michael Walsh or anything, but supposedly there's no such word as virii :)
For what it's worth - maybe not much - Wikipedia says this, about halfway down their long-winded and incomprehensible-to-normal-humans ;) webpage:
"The form virii is impossible as a plural of virus, since we only find the suffix -ii in the plural of masculine and feminine words ending in -ius. For instance, radius is pluralized by removing -us and adding -i. The -ii ending of the resulting word radii is not a real suffix: it is simply the consequence of adding i to a stem that has an i as its last letter. An example of this in English is adding the suffix ing to the word ski, resulting in skiing. Thus the plural virii would be that of the non-existent word virius."
Above quote is just a brief excerpt of a much longer dissertation (most of which I confess I don't understand) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
Anyway, hey Michael, I *do* get your point, and agree with some of it :) and besides, we all know how language is - if enough people use a certain word (or new word) in a certain way, it becomes "correct" eventually because, well, because that's how language works... and that's a good thing otherwise we'd all still be saying thee and thou and stuff like that, depending on how far back one wants to go. Nevertheless, I felt like being silly and nitpicky today about the virii thing :)
Now... on to more important things ;) such as what's the plural of a computer mouse: mice? meese? mouses? The word "mice" just doesn't seem appropriate for a non-animal device...
</pedant>
Oh, sorry... what is it again that we're supposed to be discussing here, um, Windows 7 or something? ;)
<back to the topic now>
What about all those claims from MS about how good Vista was.
All we hear about W7 is how much better it is than Vista, that its a meaner leaner Vista.
So when will MS finally admit that Vista is a crock and that they rushed out an unfinished and defective operating system? Mine still takes about 20 seconds of windows showing "Not Responding" if I decide to delete a folder structure with a few thousand files in about 70 subdirectories, and there seems to be no fix for that.
Will they have the decency to give people who had Vista thrust on them by OEMs when it really was never up to the job, a discount on W7? Will they give people who are buying machines today free upgrades?
My wife's laptop is dying. I'm not going to go out and by one with Vista on it now am I? I'll keep it staggering along until W7 is shipping, and I imagine a lot of companies who are maybe feeling the purse strings are a bit tight will now sit on orders for new windows PCs until W7 is shipped.
I've been trying the RC on one of my work machines. The sound driver doesn't work right--claims no speakers are attached, and the network driver is a little flaky---less so since I turned off IPv6 support. And oddly, trying to install a piece of software by choosing "run" instead of saving the download and then launching it results in a very long transfer time. I'm running it on a "mainstream" HP desktop, not a home brew system, so these things really shouldn't have been overlooked.
Other than these gripes I actually like it and may someday use it upon being offered no other alternative :P
It doesn't matter whether or not Windows 7 is 'great' or just 'OK'. This is a mass market product, there will be niche exceptions but basically it will be taken up and Microsoft will soon be patting themselves on the back.
Medium to large businesses would rather stick with XP; they have a large installed base of hardware, apps and staff who are familiar with both. They have no (great) gains to make from upgrading and lots of cons; hardware upgrades, application replacements and staff retraining (users and technicians), all high cost items. XP mode is not a great help because it is tied to CPU technology which is not universally available on the installed kit. However they cannot afford to lag too far behind the Microsoft product line, they need the security patches ,support, etc. They've had one let-off with Vista but new machines will be purchased as old kit fails or new staff arrive and it will not make any sense to try and manage a mixed environment (because of application incompatibilities, staff cross-training, etc.). So medium to large business will migrate to Windows 7 because it is cheaper than ripping out AD, all of their management and monitoring tools and using MAC or LINUX (sorry guys).
Smaller companies can get by with older kit and apps (I've come across Windows 98, NT,etc. in the very recent past). They will carry on using what they have and shoulder the burden of Windows 7 as it arrives on new machines. These companies don't really have IT strategies and just muddle on with what they've got while they concentrate on running a business.
Windows 7 is coming, it will be successful and that's just the way it is. (I wish i was wrong).
Most of us are not actually Luddites but people who have heard all this before and will be waiting for a year or so before leaving XP behind. We were called the same after XP came out and stuck to 98SE (note the SE bit), eventually XP got sorted and we moved.
The same is likely to happen with W7 unless the penguin-fanciers get their act together and come up with something that ordinary mortals can use. Until then it's M$ O/S and Open Source stuff for the apps.
We don't fear change, we understand markets and new products. It's not an IT issue, more like waiting for a product to become reliable enough to use for ordinary folks.
"......new machines will be purchased as old kit fails or new staff arrive and it will not make any sense to try and manage a mixed environment (because of application incompatibilities, staff cross-training, etc."
Emmm...No.
Most if not all of these medium to large businesses will be using imaging for their environment, not using the configuration pre-installed from the vendor.
I assume Anon that you're using Luddite in the correct technical sense? Someone who will stand up and not be pushed around by others hellbent on shoving product X down our throats for the sake of it. People who want respect and consideration and help adjusting.
The followers of the mythical Ned Ludd fought to get compensation for the weavers about to lose their livelihoods, they fought to ensure that weavers got the respect they deserved and they would be given a chance to learn the new automated weaving technology they were being replaced by!
doesn't mean I don't know worthless technology when I see it. Sorry, but just what business benefit will Windows 7 actually deliver, that we don't already have. Will it actually do anything that matters, faster and better than XP on my Core 2 Duo with 4gb of Memory.
So all you windows fans, what are the top 10 reasons to switch to Windows 7, that actually make business sense, and will deliver a return. Oh and while you're compiling that list, think about the costs involved, you know training, upgrading hardware, deploying new versions of applications that 7 can't support, and testing old ones to make sure they are compatible, then perhaps you'll realise why, in a recession, a lot of us aren't keen to spend large amounts of money deploying a new version of Windows. Sorry that's just how it is.
"All we hear about W7 is how much better it is than Vista, that its a meaner leaner Vista."
Yeah , alll we heard from them when xp came out was that it was better than 2000, all we heard from them when 98 came out was that it was better than 95.Why would they say otherwise?
"The sound driver doesn't work right--claims no speakers are attached, and the network driver is a little flaky---less so since I turned off IPv6 support. And oddly, trying to install a piece of software by choosing "run" instead of saving the download and then launching it results in a very long transfer time. I'm running it on a "mainstream" HP desktop, not a home brew system, so these things really shouldn't have been overlooked."
Err you know they can't include every single driver for every single setup right? You know that the drivers currently will be in testing phase right?
"Will they have the decency to give people who had Vista thrust on them by OEMs when it really was never up to the job, a discount on W7? Will they give people who are buying machines today free upgrades?"
1. vista did its job, its main issues were people buying the lowest spec machines and then complaining about the performance
2. why should they, by your argument simply buying windows once should give them the right to any and all future versions of the software for free, so you buy windwos 7 and get windows 24 when it comes out. How the hell is that going to work business wise
I'm a PC enthusiast and I can't get enough of Billy Gate's products. I've been playing around with Windows 7 since the first beta, much in the way that I did with Vista. I can see a huge leap between the two, in particular the way that the jumplists work and just how effortless it is to get something done without being pandered to by little UAC warnings or speech bubbles.
As a gamer, I want my OS to boot fast, launch the game fast (without any crashes due to crap drivers or broken .exe's), connect to the internet seamlessly in-game and just pretty much work. Windows 7 RC1 is doing that better than even XP did - I can't understand why people are hanging on to XP. Granted, I can understand people skipping Vista, which has been a bit of a farce tbh, but trust me, Windows 7 is leaps and bounds ahead.
Try it on a spare partition and see what you think, I imagine you will be pleasantly surprised.
Love because I think we need to spread the Windows 7 love!
User Experience
1. Modern GUI
2. Superfetch
3. Faster startup / shutdown
4. DirectX10 (CAD)
Admin Experience
5. IPv6
6. Fully removable IE / WMP
7. Policy based firewall with outbound filtering
8. Driver support
9. 64bit support
10. Hybrid / ATA8 HDD support
11. XPM
12. Makes your winky bigger.
MS, please send my cheque to the usual address.
I'm just going to say it and face the inevitable backlash with my head held high.
I bought a new laptop the other weekend that had vista on it. I really don't get the hate. Admittedly i'm only a light user, using Word, downloading the usual bits and bobs and basic functionality. It's not *that* bad. I don't like it prompting me 15 times when i delete a file but it's not a major issue. I think sp2 is going to resolve a lot of other issues with it too.
*gets coat*
When are they going to stop releasing different versions of their OS.
I mean, really, ffs, vista ba(sic) is less able than 2k or xp home.
Premium and ultimate do not warrant the price increase.
Sadly, i HAVE to use vista else my hd tv just doesnt work properly on my hd laptop if i use (much preferred) XP.
I was lucky??, i got a vista ultimate key from technet as an old company subscribed but i am not paying 300 quid for the top end W7 flavour.
I am an MS man, makes my life easier but i'll be arse fucked with an open ended tube of wasps
before i pay MS top whack for W7. I want a huge discount (they can disable and blacklist my vista keys) for the W7 release.
Every version of Windoesn't that's been released since 3.11 has been hawked as the best OS ever created. Only XP was really worth buying and it was barely so. Everyone got duped on Vista. The only ones who should be crowing are the hackers and virus writers of the world. They'll have something to do for a couple of weeks.
I got sick of Windows years ago. The last straw was when I was upgrading to XP and my PC was attacked from the net during the install process. I bought a Mac and never looked back. Now I just use my computer instead of trying to fix it 80% of the time.
you know I was thinking the same thing actually I thought it was just me ;)
the current RC IMO is actually inferior to the first beta they released
But I guess the current RC is where they started adding in all the DRM crap to keep the big companies happy
So it looks like I'm staying windows 2k till nothing new works than maybe linux
or maybe someone will hack the first RC and remove its time constraint
Have been using the Windows 7 RC1 for a week or so now.
Its biggest downfall and the reason Windows XP will be around for several years to come is Intel Graphics Support, or should I say lack of it.
The Intel 'Centrino' Chipset was one of Intel biggest sellers for Laptops - that is the 82855 Chipset, which was followed more recently by the 915 Chipset.
Both these were developed before Microsoft issued the minimum standards for the Aero interface - neither of these chipset meet them. This meant that Aero was never supported by these chipsets on Vista and the reason to quite a lot of dissatisfaction with Vista - driver issues.
In 2008, 14 million Netbooks were sold using the 915 Chipset - and these aren't going to be supported by Windows 7, even though frustratingly it will run perfectly well on both Centrino and 915 Machines, other than the graphics. With Vista it didn't matter it was such a resource hog - there wasn't worth bothering trying - so you just stuck to Windows XP. But with Windows 7 is runs well (except the graphics), or should I say intel graphics.
When you install on a 82855 Chipset at the moment - it says no driver found - and defaults to standard VGA fixed at 800x600.
So any laptop with a centrino chipset 82855 or a 915 Chipset gets a better experience with Windows XP, that is DVD's work with hardware acceleration, iplayer/flash player runs smoothly.
Under Window 7 is appears as though your making an Aardman animation.
The scenario is this
You have a older Centrino Chipset Laptop. Your thinking of purchasing a new laptop (you've heard good things of Windows 7 and are thinking of giving your old Centrino Laptop to your kids. They want the latest and greatest. You decided to try out Windows 7 RC1 on your Centrino. You find driver issues ie. no graphis support - you decide Windows 7 is a heap of shit - and continue using XP. The new laptop (if you still buy one) you purchase it with Windows XP Downgraded or you just stick with your Centrino running XP.
Instead if there was a basic driver (ie no Aero, but graphics as good as XP), your find Windows 7 works happily on this old bit of kit, pretty fast - no issues, but iplayer in HD doesn't run smoothly as it might- you give this laptop to your kids. You buy a new one for yourself and are happy to have Windows 7 because you have had a good experience running on your older laptop, it was slightly slow hardware letting down Windows 7 rather than an issue with Windows 7. Intel don't get the blame / Microsoft don't get the blame.
Intel need to get their act together and get some basic support otherwise Windows XP is going to around for a hell of a lot longer. And many companies just won't make the jump.
And Microsoft... either allow a transistional hybrid driver that doesn't meet the specs - just to make sure Windows 7 is the experience it should be.
Its all the more frustrating because 5 years ago I was searching around to install Linux drivers to get dual display. Today Ubuntu - it just installs and I actually have an Aero type interface which works on the Centrino Chipset, not superfast but well enough. How the tables have turned regarding the effort required to get Windows 7 working compared to the new Version of Ubuntu 9.04.
That's a really useful insight on the Windows 7 vs Windows XP debate...
You probably don't use your PC for the same reasons as me, and that's fine. I'm no techie geek but I know how to build my own PC and make it work - and it seems that Windows 7 as the OS does a pretty good job of it.
Holy cow, what a bunch of girls.
You could actually try Windows 7. The RC is free until March 2010. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you will not. But at least you'd have some experience, eh?
Or, you could post a load of uninformed whiny shite on a Reg comments page, go all pouty and declare your undying devotion to XP, win2k or the Apple Tax.
Panywaists.
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