So I've been looking at the Windows 7 RC and it looks pretty sweet. Reviews have been saying that it's fast and all that good stuff.

I'm willing to give it a try and install the RC via ISO, but before I do: I know there's several allegroids here that are currently using Windows 7...how is it? Pros, Cons?

I don't hate it. not as much as XP or Vista. Strange as that may sound.

But I haven't had to use it full time. I bet I could grow to hate it as much as I hate XP given time.

I am using it on my laptop. I haven't used it for long enough to tell you anything useful. What I can say is that the installation went like a breeze. All the drivers were installed automatically, the wireless connection was detected in the installation process. All programs I have tried work flawlessly.

Its a great OS, I am looking forward to using it, maybe I'll even delete all my porn on this machine and install Windows 7... Maybe...

Does it really work faster than XP and Vista like the reviews claim? And does it deliver shocking orgasms to your eyeballs?

It does... PLUS, it makes you coffee! Something Linux could never do.

Maybe I'll just hold off on the urge to use the RC and wait until the full version comes out so I can get the awesome free in-place upgrade. Wo0oot. Micro$oft looks like they be doin' something right for once.

You can upgrade from Vista to the RC just fine, or so I read from the MS FAQ.

Vanneto: You know not of what you speak: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Coffee.html

@Venneto:

Yeah I checked into all that and even ran the upgrade adivisor from MS, but I'ma wait and not eat 16gb from my HDD right now..but damn this is tempting.

I tried the public beta in a virtual machine, and it seemed pretty good — I had to run without Aero, so I may be way off, but it looked like Microsoft had reined in the visual excesses and consolidated the bits of the OS people actually care about. Rolling QuickLaunch into the taskbar proper is something I'm a big fan of, but I now run OS X both at home and at work and we had RISC OS all the way through school so that could just be my familiarity with the Dock and, ummm, the RISC OS thing that's like the Dock.

I doubt I'll be an early adopter, but the chances of me picking up 7 to put in a VM so that I can catch up on all the latest .NET/XNA stuff is much greater than the chances of me picking up Vista.

I've been using it for a few months on my macbook, first in vmware and now via bootcamp. I really liked Vista but after running Windows 7, I think it's much better. It runs very well on just 512MB of RAM, it looks nice (I run with Aero off but Aero looks similar to what it looks like in Vista), and it's stable and compatible.

The main problem I have with the RC is that it's Vista Ultimate. I hate reinstalling my OS so when the time comes that the RC expires, I guess I'd have to pay for Ultimate (Which if it's anything like Vista, is ridiculously expensive) or reinstall my OS. Hopefully I'm wrong about that.

Per Ars Technica, Windows 7 pricing announced: cheaper than Vista. So a full copy of 7 Ultimate should cost less than a full copy of Vista Ultimate.

At last some good news for Europeans:

Windows 7 E is the kneejerk playing-to-the-crowd version with no Internet Explorer. So you should be able to import a copy without Internet Explorer for cheaper than a normal copy. It's win win!

There is an offer allowing you to preorder Windows 7 at reduced prices, which for Canada are "Windows 7 Home Premium ($64.99) and Windows 7 Professional ($124.99)". But Ultimate doesn't seem to be on offer, so it is currently more than double the cost of 'Professional'. The preorder prices are strictly time and quantity limited — see the Ars article for full details. The UK preorder starts on July 15 (substantially after Canada), assuming no surprise expenses crop up between now and then I'll probably place an order, depending on what goes on with E. It looks like my decrepit Windows 2000 licence entitles me to upgrade pricing, but I guess only for the Professional edition which costs twice as much as Premium Home...

It all feels very expensive, but I'm not aware of any other firm that makes most of their money from Operating Systems, so there's not really anything to compare the prices with.

MS actually makes most of their money from Office and other apps.

Even now that Office is so much cheaper? In any case, it'd be unfair to compare them to that hardware manufacturer with the custom OS that charges for upgrades who shall not be mentioned by name on any thread about Microsoft if it is to remain at all on topic.

Are you talking about that company that charges for service packs?

Only if the main thrust of this thread is about another company that charges for service packs but recently took six years to deliver one. My conclusion: big companies tend to be consumer unfriendly.

All I want to know is this: does Windows 7 have a useful explorer, or does it have Vista's Alzheimer's-suffering POS?

I'm curious as to how the Windows 7 upgrade version works, and how does it validates you can use the upgrade version? Anyone one here used the upgrade version of Vista?

Because you run it from within an existing Windows installation...

Does Windows 7 have a proper console? That's what makes me cry every time I try to use svn from cmd.exe...

It's been 8 years since winXP came out and we are finally seeing an upgrade to windows that doesn't make things worse. I almost laugh because it is the most widely used desktop operating system supported by everyone and yet people have lots more problems than me on my mac and linux. People should demand that stuff just works by now at the very least and not applaud that basic functionality doesn't cripple the system. It's bloody 2009!!!

While you're almost laughing, I am totally laughing at all of the fools that are stuck with Linux or OS X.

Operating Systems have yet to provoke a physical response in me.

I'm not stuck with linux, I chose it. And I keep choosing it. I give windows a chance every now and then to see if its improved any. And so far I see no redeeming factors in windows at all.

OSX looked interesting, but I loathe the Dock, The lack of real virtual desktops, and the uselessness of its multi monitor support.

I don't understand what you mean — it took them five iterations to add the things, but what's missing?

Well in kde they are fully integrated into the WM and task bar, you can assign certain windows, or applications to a desktop, so they always go there. You can also filter the items in the task bar to only show whats on the current desktop (and even on the current screen/monitor). The pager (desktop switcher widget/plasmoid) also shows small previews of the desktop if you want. Then theres the nice transition effects when switching desktops in KDE4.

Having the taskbar/dock list everything thats open ALL the time is utterly useless for me. The reason you want virtual desktops is to sort the clutter, how does it help if it isn't actually sorting the clutter in the taskbar/dock?

I also hate how Apple apps all hide in the dock, and don't close, unless you hit the exit menu item. Even things like the editor. Thats totally stupid.

Uhm, OS X does all of that, except the whole taskbar filtering crap.

I happen to like the dock. And it doesnt take long to get used to hitting command+Q to close a program.

What's so unproper about cmd? And why do you use svn from command line, instead of something like tortoise svn.

As far as Win7, it has some issues, but nothing show stopping. In fact, I see no differences between Win7 and Vista, except for a few UI changes (I think they are for the better though). Also a few annoying issues, but nothing too bad.

Memory usage and startup time are the biggest differences I've seen. Running Vista on 512MB of RAM is painful, with Windows 7 it runs just fine with that. And Vista takes a lot longer to boot for me than Windows 7.

Oh, and how is it any different using svn from the command line in Windows than Linux? I agree that gnome-terminal or konsole are better than cmd.exe, but svn is pretty basic command line wise.

Vista's was as bad as XP, it's still DOS compatible (i.e. too stupid to redirect stderr, blah blah blah) and the history is horrible. That's a major reason to love Linux right there. (well, if you're not addicted to a point'n'grunt interface)

You can redirect stderr just fine in the windows console.

You can? How? I'm still using the djgpp redir (renamed to redirect) thing in Vista.

command 2> out.txt

Same as Linux :p

I'll try it next time I boot it. I was on it a long time yesterday, trying to decipher the horribly undocumented datetimepick stuff for C yesterday, but I finally got it going...

And the explorer? Am I to assume it's still the piece of shit, completely unusable one?

No idea. I have no problems with Vista's or Windows 7 explorer. Couldn't even tell you the difference.

If it can't stay one size, remember what columns you want to display, remember the width of those columns, or, in fact, remember any goddamn thing for more than three sessions or so, it's the Vista one.

Win 7 explorer seems smarter - it can remember desktop icon positions when a program hijacks your resolution.

The history is great, better than bash's. You just have to know how it works. And I remember personally explaining it a couple times in response to your posts (and even reading ML explaining it too) so I'm not going to take the time to do so.

The 80 character width limit is what kills me. I don't like my lines wrapping. I can stretch out an xterm window wide enough so that I see everything and can read and understand what just happened. cmd.exe? Not so much. Also the tab completion sucks. Tab-tab should list all the files in the given path, it makes life significantly easier.

Click the icon in the window title, go to properties, adjust size.

Oh, wow. That's a step in the right direction. Now it just needs to work where I can resize the window and it automatically changes the width in the same way it changes the height.

Uh, they do accept feedback. That IS the whole point of the release candidate. Hell, if you could give them some really good advice and maybe some code along with it, you never know...you could end up working for the big M.

AFAIK, they do not accept feedback in Windows 7 RC1. The system automatically sends "telemetry" data to MS for analysis to see if previous bugs from the BETA have been removed.

So it says on the FAQ!

The two worst coders i know.. one ended up at mathworks and one ended up at microsoft. It all makes sense now.

I always did wonder why the latest version of Matlab takes five minutes to start....

I *totally* thought the wrong thing when I read that sentence.

Anyway, my dad is going to do a clean install of the 64-bit edition and I'll let you all know how things turn out and how it works.

This is a common thread in Windows, if you have significant network activity for no apparent reason, is it getting hacked again, or is it this?

That has nothing what so ever to do with Vista Explorer's amnesia.

It fits in with the Windows attitude of "I am a computer, you are a moron."

For me the Vista explorer works. I like having custom view settings for each directory and I haven't found it to ever forget given settings.^[1]

I just installed 7 30 minutes ago. I'll see how it goes.

edit: Well, it's not at least perceivably slower than 2008 32bit, that's for sure. I don't see any significant increase in ASIO underruns or CPU usage in FL using the same project files.

Windows Explorer at least runs in a predictable (yet stupid) way. Nautilus (gnome) seems strange and abstract sometimes, trying to be clever, makes a wrong assumption, and causing problems, (and is like explorer in the way that it eats the desktop.) I have never used Konqueror (kde) for file browsing, so I can't comment, but it can't be worse than gnomes attempt.

Edit: I have only used the xp and vista explorer, I can't comment on version 7, and my brother isn't home to ask his thoughts.

I like Linux, but from a GUI standpoint, KDE and Gnome both have too many issues and feel too "fake" (ok, "fake" is not the word I'm looking for...but close enough), I guess mainly because there are no real standards that everyone follows. I've always hated clicking a launcher icon and get the bouncing cursor, but then nothing...no message stating the program failed to launch, or it launches a few minutes later....even though the "busy" cursor is no longer active.

There are some things I am frustrated about with Windows 7, but so far...I kinda like it. It seems to be using the same code as Vista, yet some of the drivers that worked on Vista do not work in Windows 7. Strangely enough...my HP all-in-one printer does not work correctly. Pretty amazing as it's like forever old and every OS I've tried supports it one way or another. One of the biggest things for me was on my desktop I had to manually install the network driver from my Windows XP drive, as the installer program from the manufacturer dies every time under Windows 7. Pretty fun that Windows wants to look online for a solution (considering it should know I was not able to connect to the net ) I had some issues with my desktop computer during install...got the machine check blue screen of death on install. Nothing I'm not used to, as Vista did the same thing. It was because of the SATA controller...Vista doesn't like how my system handles the IDE/RAID part of the SATA controller. Nothing major, but for an inexperienced user, they would probably return the computer thinking something was wrong. I would think it would be far more important to have drivers for almost every SATA/IDE drive controller and network card...at least with those, the user could install the OS and then at least look online for updates/drivers for the rest of the system. Windows 7 does start a LOT faster. So much so, that I actually use the shutdown button now instead of the hibernate button. It's almost as fast on my system...seriously. Just can't WAIT to see the big ass sticker price the big $M will put on this. It's good, but I don't think it's worth the $300 that I'm sure it'll cost. One thing that still really pisses me off (Vista and Windows 7), is that the power save shit sucks ass! I set the CPU to use no more that 50% power (so I expect the system to never go above 1GHz), well...no dice. It's like it just says fuck what you say, I'm doing whatever. At least under XP I could use SpeedSwitchXP and could limit my CPU to 800MHz, 1600MHz, or full speed and it would never go above that.

Since you can't wait, try this.

Kinda what I thought...the Ultimate version (with which we are all using in the evaluation version) will be at least $300. Not enough meat there for me to justify that sticker price. If I buy a computer preloaded with Windows 7, then so be it...if not, then I will survive as well. Even though I doubt I'll buy a computer preloaded with Windows 7, as I build all of my own systems (with the exception of laptops, of course). Does anyone know if Microsoft will allow us to purchase a valid product key closer to the end of the evaluation that will allow us to continue using this version of Windows 7, or do we need to wipe and install a fresh copy?

As i understood it, we're supposed to be able to install a retail copy over it without losing anything.

Regarding the pricing, it's nice to see that Microsoft is starting to adopt the "you'll attract more flies with honey" policy.

We'll just see how the 7's translation is. In finland, Microsoft's translations have always been top notch, but vista broke that tradition by being poorly translated (for MS, but still significantly superior than any finnish localisation of any open source product i've ever come accross).

I do sometimes wish there was somewhere you could send corrections for those funny little manuals you get with imported electronics from south-east Asia. I guess printed documents are a lot easier than programs though, as the exact context for every phrase that is used is immediately visible.

They ship the cheapest shit with babelfished manuals but fortunately with the english one usually in tow.

In total, I've probably wastes hours of my life trying to find the language options in an open source program that had the translation quality of babelfish output. (Machine translation between indo-european and uralic languages is pretty much impossible.)

uTorrent for example, is a notorious example of poor translation. The poor translation actually encourages leeching as the 'seeding' status is translated into what means 'done'.

To clarify my earlier point, on a scale where XP's translation was rated at 10 and the babelfished unreadable far eastern electronics manual get a grade of 1, Vista's translation was an 8 and most open source software range between 3 and 6.

Funny. I've heard the exact opposite from people. Usually the language isnt even covered by MS, but if it is, they find translations from projects like KDE to be far superior to any MS translations.

This is also what I've heard.
I wouldn't know from personal experience though; I always communicate with computers in English.

I'm sure the Selkup speakers (all 1500 of them) are thrilled to have KDE translated to their language.

I can only speak for finnish translations, but apart from the Win9x swap file becoming the 'throw-exchange-file' in translation, MS had a very good track record until Vista came along with its typos and and sloppy compounds. Or maybe Vista translation was outsourced to a company in Lappeen ranta.^[1]

I had previously heard that part of the edge that brought Microsoft its current dominance was superior translation work. I've no idea about the period after they achieved monopoly though.

I don't know about translations, but in my experience so far, localization in Linux is a complete train wreck.

Really? they can't even be bothered to produce a British English version.

You're funny!

The German translation of most Linux apps is good. But there are some bad apps. Blender for example. It's half translated. Ugly.

A fresh debian stable installation is always well translated. But when I can't wait and install testing/ sid, I get problems some times.

Well, I use my computer on mac, windows, and linux in french. Windows always seems to think I'm in english anyways and it doesn't even seem to me like half the apps they do run in any localization. With open source, everything is always run in my local but the command line is probably the least "french". GCC is only half translated at best and most others are english only. Otherwise, with mac and open source, I just set my local to french and all programs seem to recognize it (even websites).

edit: and mac wins for dealing with unicode input œ, æ i can't seem to get windows to produce those characters (at least not in a standard way).

æ is alt+145 on the numpad in Windows if I'm not mistaken.
I can't test it right now since I'm on my laptop.

Back to Windows 7. Is it still recommended to go for the 32 bit version on a 64 bit computer as with Vista, or will my 64bit laptop now get better mileage on Windows 7 64bit? I assume 32/64 issues/problems are driver related and not software/application related? I know there's a 64bit geforce 8600 driver...

I'm thinking of upgrading tonight

When's the last time you've been to windows? Most every application I use on Windows has it's own GUI kit and shortcuts etc. Have you seen MS Office 2007? You get a far far more consistent enviroment on Linux (as long as you stay exclusively in KDE, or GNOME... if you mix and match, you just fall back to the Windows' level)

Ah, you can't upgrade from 32bit to 64bit so I'm stuck with 32bit w7.

But Microsoft are still claiming that upgrade editions won't be available in Europe, the full E version being available at the upgrade price instead.

Are there any significant improvements or features available only to 64bit users? I'm on a wholly 32bit machine (a Core Duo) and in any case don't currently intend to run Windows 7 anywhere but in a virtual machine.

If you're talking about me Tommo, then I've got a MSDN licence

Well, I upgraded last night and I got a BSOD on startup! however I traced it to superantispyware so now I'm up and running and like the immediate changes to the desktop and task bar.

One thing though, the fonts at allegro.cc have changed completely to a horrible serif font and I don't like it, they are all a lot thinner and the kerning is much closer. I assume it's Windows cleartype goings on or they've changed time roman or whatever it is that is at the this site.

We finally installed the RC on my dad's computer.

• The first iso burned to DVD incorrectly, but it worked on the second try. (This appears to be a common problem with the RC iso.)

• UAC is still a pain. Everything needs to be confirmed twice. I haven't tried turning it off yet.

• Some sound/wallpaper themes come with it that you can choose from by right clicking on the desktop and selecting Personalize.

• The mouse options appear to be unchanged.

• Control panel has been reorganized a bit. Didn't see any option for classic or list view.

• The taskbar seems to function well. There's an unlabeled "show desktop" button on the right side of it, which seems kind of odd.

• It's nice to be able to shake a window around to minimize all other windows (and again to restore them).

• Desktop backgrounds can change automatically by using a slideshow feature.

• Calculator has been updated with a "Programmer" option. It allows you to see the binary representation of your number. Haven't gotten a chance to explore that option fully.

• Paint has some new brush features that look like they could be drawn with an actual paintbrush. The status bar at the bottom displays info like mouse coordinates, image size, and a zoom slider. Shapes like arrows and stars can now be added to the canvas. Freeform selection is still just a stupid version of box selection. When using the pencil tool, some pixels are eliminated to make the line smoother. The line and curved line tools are now antialiased (making it useless for making old-school game sprites). Text can now be added at any zoom level.

• Chess Titans appears to be unchanged.

• Inkball was not present.

• Seems to run faster.

• No crashes yet!

Does it do any more than that? You could already do that with every version of Windows Calculator I've ever used.

I was just going to take a screenshot, but once I tried to access my laptop on the W7 computer the Network window locked up at the user/password prompt. I tried to close it, but was forced to kill explorer.exe. I tried to start explorer again, but I was unable to open any folders. It seems that you can have multiple copies of it running, which screwed everything up. (I also tried a reboot, but it's taking a ridiculously long time to log off and I just gave up.)

Anyway, after selecting Programmer from the View menu, Calculator resizes itself and shows underneath the input box a 64-bit binary representation of whatever you type in. This means you can view binary without switching input modes. I'll get that screenshot tomorrow.

Windows 7 Calculator

That works too.

Here's an image of it:
{"name":"windows7calculator-thumb.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/b\/1bf6917b42f6e3c22595405fdf5bc7ea.png","w":438,"h":401,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/b\/1bf6917b42f6e3c22595405fdf5bc7ea"}

Note how you can switch between hex, decimal, octal, and binary and you can always see the binary representation.

The XP powertoy calculator still seems much better than that one. Microsoft seems to have some good software up its sleeve, but for some reason they hide it. I'm thinking of all the powertoys and the sysinternals stuff: free high quality tools for Windows, owned by Microsoft. Why aren't they installed by default?

Windows XP runs very well with 128 MB of RAM. It's when you have to install an antivirus that things start to get ugly.

Anyway, I can't use Windows 7 on my machine. The most recent drivers for my graphics card are from 2005 and only up to Windows XP.

Windows 7 looks nice, though.

I hate to say it , but that looks almost exactly like the calculator in OS X:

{"name":"598914","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/8\/e8a315754c6047fa38613844967e0cda.png","w":369,"h":368,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/8\/e8a315754c6047fa38613844967e0cda"}

Convergent design, I'm sure. Still, I hope the calculator isn't a decisive factor in anyone's choice to upgrade to Windows 7 or not.

I'm sure some pointy haired boss is saying "If we include this good software, people will come to expect all our software should be equally good. Then where would we be?"

I think they're converging on the wrong thing, trying to mimic desk calculators. What I want is the ability to type decimal, hex or binary into the number box without having to reach around and switch things with my mouse.

Since it's about one hour's work, I guess I'll just write my own calculator as soon as I'm at a computer other than at work.

I think that's been possible since the windows 3.1 calculator at least. You can even type in hex, and the application is hacked so that keyboard focus is always on the the number box, so you can conveniently use the mouse for those operations that have a tricky keyboard shortcut (or none at all).

I think you're mistaken. When I last used the Windows calculator, you had to click 'hex' before entering a hex number — e.g. if Schyfis's picture were the GUI of the last version I used, then as presented above, it would not allow you to type a hex number without first changing a radio control.

Quite probably the last version I used was that with Windows 2000, but that's at best an aside.

F5-F8. You're welcome.

So how would you do it? Prepend '0x' to the front? That's two keystrokes.

You're trying to claim I'm ungrateful because you rolled your eyes and told me something that isn't true, then I dared to say so?

I'm not bothered about keystrokes, but as a top-row number typer I am bothered if I have to move a hand to the mouse. I'd be grateful to jhuuskon for introducing me to F5-F8 had he not more than destroyed any general sense of goodwill. Since it's not necessarily implicit when a user has switched to/from any particular number base, I can't see how it could be less than the one keystroke that Microsoft's calculator currently accepts.

To be honest, I'll probably write my own calculator anyway, but more because the Apple one is extremely deficient in a bunch of areas (no inverse trigonometric functions, seemingly no keyboard shortcuts for switching hex/oct/dec, no binary input at all) and I'm not really interested in any of the things it does that would take particularly long to implement (reverse polish notation, unit conversions, speech), and the really complicated stuff like 2d/3d graphing is a separate program anyway.

Can't say I use it for anything other than doing monetary/unit conversions (I have a calculator called "pemdas" on my dashboard), but...

There's an up-arrow key in the top left corner on mine that gives you those.

To be honest, I never use it for hexadecimal calculations (just don't think to do it, I always write them out on paper or use a quick commandline calculation if I can't be bothered). There don't seem to be any keyboard shortcuts for functions though, which is a bit silly.
However, the aforementioned calculator I use on the dashboard can do all of those (well, sortof, it doesn't have keys for functions, but you can type in an expression and it evaluates it, which is what I normally do anyway).

I agree there.

Oh, thanks!

I think I might just go back to keeping a real calculator on my desk. I like the Sharp DAL ones, even if they seem to suffer a bit from trying to do too much with too little screen real estate nowadays. The one I had all the way through school (probably a circa 1992 model) was perfection, and again quite different from the Casio-style desktop ones. If you want to know what sin 23 equals, you press 'sin' then 23, then equals for example.

The whatnow? I'm not quite following your logic.

Oh yes, I do that too. The battery is long since gone (I got it when I went to high school), but the solar cell still works, so it's fine as long as the room is lit.

Not only the OSX calculator is looking similar. This is the gnome calculator. But which one is the original. Maybe none of them.

{"name":"598915","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/4\/f4d3726638ba72b69541a8bb75ed3349.png","w":567,"h":561,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/4\/f4d3726638ba72b69541a8bb75ed3349"}

• Forgot to mention, the ctrl+pgup and ctrl+pgdn shortcuts are reversed for some reason in the new version of Paint. In previous versions, ctrl+pgup zooms out and ctrl+pgdn zooms in, but it's backwards now.

  
  

• It seems that the virtual copy of XP is a separate download, but it's free at least.

  
  

• W7 takes a long time to log off while shutting down (at least for me), and usually ends up rebooting during shutdown.

  
  

• Sometimes at startup the monitor is not detected correctly. The image is distorted and discolored, but it's fixed once you log in.

  
  

• LogMeIn sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. It seems that you need to use the username your_computer_name\your_user_name instead of the usual your_user_name when connecting.

I have this one, cost about £9 at Asda and it's superb. Even lets you write your fractions as proper fractions

http://www.casio.co.uk/Products/Calculators/Scientific%20Calculators/FX-85ES-S-UH/At_a_Glance/

That would be it installing updated on shutdown. I go into windows rarely so there's always SOMETHING for it to install.

Same here for Ubuntu... "There are 103 critical updates to install."

Yeah, same here. But then ubuntu doesn't by default automatically download and install them regardless of your Update policies.

I have mine in windows set to only download, and ask to install. Even when I don't install any updates theres a few that seem to sneak through.

When it's installing updates, it says "Installing update 2 of 5..." or something similar. It's actually trying to log off, as it says "Logging off...".

There's almost never anything to download for the Mac. And you all thought Apple ignoring security holes was a bad thing!

Apple tends not to notify people of updates... It's a marketing thing. If it notified you that there was an update it would be admitting to you that it is flawed. That is something that Apple would never do.

This windows machine here has QuickTime installed and whenever there is an update available it also automatically selects to download and install iTunes and Safari which I'm sure would only complicate things for the other users of this machine. This computer is supposed to remain clean with minimal essential apps and QuickTime is just one of them. Unfortunately some day I'm sure they'll be asking me "What the hell is Safari and why is it on my computer? Who the fuck installed iTunes!?!?" I hate it when Apple does that shit to me And then a few months later someone forgets that I explained it all to them and it happens all over again... Bass tirds...

Yes... Apple makes trojans now

But then again MS started it.

i use windows, my company uses windows, my family uses windows, my girlfriend uses windows. windows just works well on the desktop and users can easily be trained to use windows. linux is for ubergeeks/neckbeards/virgins.

Since when? Software update always pops up for me when there are updates.

As far as Safari and iTunes, does it really bother you that much? Sure its crappy how they try to push it on everyone's machine, but at least its not malicious.

With knowing close to nothing about Windows 7 some of you will hate me for stating this but there are several things fundamentally wrong with Windows 7. I'm assuming it's still a ripoff, I'm assuming it's still not "free" software, it's still protected by ridiculous copyright laws, it's still "illegal" to modify it, it's still has those nagging and nasty advertising gimmicks, it's still using underhanded manouvers to hold back other OS's like Linux, in one word - no matter how good it looks or even works which I really doubt - it STILL sucks balls !

With that being said I'd like to try it...someday...maybe

Yeah. Damn those commercial software developers! They should all rot in hell for the damage they have caused. It should be illegal to even buy software at all.

FTFY

They always notify me. The Software Updater appears, which is my first clue...

How would you know if they always notify you? Isn't that a bit like a teacher asking any student who is missing to raise his hand?

It's not just the fact that they push it onto computers it's that since I'm responsible for maintaining a lot of these computers I get a lot of shit when it re-appears mysteriously when it is not supposed to be there...

I also get more complaints from Mac users about Windows computers they never use then from the people actually using the Windows computers... But I also don't get complaints about Macs unless there is a file format that they can't figure out...

That's what they want you to know about

You never really hear about those really serious bug fixes unless it becomes common. It's not like the huge bug that crashes your hard drive when you select View Desktop as List bug they had on the original colorful iMac. All you had to do to crash the drive was close all windows in finder and select the proper menu item to view the desktop as list or details or something and it locked up and could not boot up again... I see nothing about it now on the internet anywhere but I remember after discovering that little bug on the iMac computers at my school the computers were devastated and many of them were shipped back when they couldn't figure out what was wrong. If I had kept my mouth shut around the other kids it probably would not have been so bad. But even though I made it clear what was happening no one ever actually fixed the real problem. They just blamed it on the kids "doing something wrong" or "malicious" and the problem was never fixed. The computers just had the OS re-installed every time it happened which became less often as time went on and the kids got bored with it... The whole thing kind of pissed me off because everybody I warned about the problem kind of had the impression that the computers were not flawed and instead blamed the kids (including Apple). All of that was a long time ago though...

The whole Apple sucks thing just became that rant that I carried with me everywhere after that just because no one could admit a serious flaw...

But yeah Windows 7 \o/ Woo. New OS means new bugs... and some old ones

Not so much, since absent students physically can't raise their hands. But respecting the "a bit like" qualification, it's more like a teacher asking any student who is missing to raise his hand, while simultaneously knowing that there's a million websites that would relish in being able to report it if any students weren't present and were not raising their hands and students not raising their hands had measurable effects in a bunch of other places.

In fact it's nothing like that. Since OS 9 and OS X share not a single line of code, the updating mechanisms are not at all related. You're also not comparing like for like — you're comparing the level of community coverage of a decrepit operating system sold by a company with almost no customers to the level of community coverage of a widely (note: NOT universally) admired operating system sold by a company that has increased its sales at least tenfold since transitioning.

And I'm not even sure why you arguing that in the past Apple have failed to correct bugs is at all relevant to whether they notify people when they do push software updates. In fact, it would seem to be closer to my original charge that they have a habit of ignoring security threats.

Why?

Microsoft needs to make money with this OS, just like they do with their other products (yes, IE too, although there is no direct revenue).

The fact that Linux exists doesn't automatically mean all other OSes are morally or legally obliged to be like it.

The owners own paranoia...

Honestly I have nothing against Apple and wouldn't mind working for them... It's just Mac's and I have a history... So Thomas Harte, it's my baggage and I'll bitch if I want to

My understanding is that they've still yet to make a profit on the XBoxes. At a guess, the plan was to push the first out to establish their credentials, then transition very quickly to the second and wrongfoot Sony, winning the entire market. I guess Nintendo and the numerous faulty iterations of XBox have made that more difficult than expected. They also seem to keep pushing out Zunes, though the rumourmill has it that the iPod Touch clone Zune that's due this year is a last-ditch attempt at a standalone player, all the Zune staff having already been moved to other departments.

Most of the things they've cancelled since the recession hit (at least Money, Flight Simulator, Encarta, OneCare and Equipt) haven't been particularly profitable, but they keep pouring money into their internet sinkhole projects, so positioning must count for something...

EDIT:

Work for Apple? Doesn't sound like fun to me. I've had nothing but highly positive interactions with Apple since becoming an iPhone person, but I tend to show at least a little humility during job interviews, so I'd be straight out the door. Though I guess maybe I could just set up a projector and incorporate a 30 minute bit on how I once implemented copy and paste, and here's a lengthy demonstration of how copy and paste works in case anybody in the room hasn't used a computer since 1980.

No, I mean, why is QuickTime essential? Do your users have to play some obscure video formats that QuickTime can play but VLC Player cannot?

EDIT:
Thomas: My point is that they are a commercial company, and while they certainly have enough assets to back a few projects that carry a higher risk of not being profitable, they still have to make money with something. And Windows, being their flagship, is certainly one of those things, if only because of the huge target audience.

Yes... It was just so they could watch certain videos that Media player didn't support... I'm not sure if it supports them now, but I think was necessary for some .mov or .mp4 video file or some kind of streaming video service they were signed up for...

Blah blah, back to the topic, blah...

Windows 7 preordering has begun today for the UK, France, and Germany. Microsoft's own store seems to have fallen down under the traffic, but Amazon are offering the same prices. As stated before, while Microsoft are trying to make a point about Internet Explorer, the Europe-only complete 'E' versions are available for the same price as the rest of the world pays for upgrade copies. And during the time-and-quantity limited preorder period, that price is substantially reduced.

Me? I've preordered Professional (E).

Didn't bother to read all the posts as the thread has probably derailed a couple of times by now.

My question is, is there anything that actually is better than in Vista (besides speed on lower end computers) ?

[Fake edit]
Could be faster on my somewhat high end PC, but I really can't justify an upgrade just because of that since I think Vista runs smoothly as it is.

I read the BBC article today on W7 and it says you need a clean install. I have the pre-release candidate and that allows you to install over vista happily. I'd hate to have to reinstall everything come the time when it runs out. Anyone know if this is true?

Per Wikipedia:

And further goes on to explain that beyond the performance fixes you mention, the most obvious difference is the new taskbar and a bunch of other less-obvious additions include improvements to or implementations of multitouch gesture support, handwriting and speech recognition, 'libraries' as a new file organisation tool (a bit like search folders, but with smarter backing store so that you can also save to them), a redesigned notification area and a bunch of minor window navigation improvements.

From my point of view, as a Mac user whose most recent version of Windows is Windows 2000, the relatively minor update to 7, the inclusion of XP compatibility mode (a copy of XP that runs in virtualisation and pipes window contents via RDC so that htey are composited normally in the native display), the cut-price sale and the self-imposed idea of the 'E' edition meaning that I don't even need a qualifying older version make it a smart time to update. Plus, I would like to try .NET, at least for the purposes of Silverlight 3 — those apps being deployable on Windows and Mac but developable in Windows only.

i use windows, my company uses windows, my family uses windows, my girlfriend uses windows. windows just works well on the desktop and users can easily be trained to use windows. linux is for ubergeeks/neckbeards/virgins.

Sounds like it might be a misfeature of the E version, based on this PC Pro blog. Since the ever-poorly informed BBC have decided to go with:

I suspect it's yet more Microsoft gurning.

Also true for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is pretty easy. When I tried it out, everything worked straight out of the box with my hardware setup.

I imagine it's not so easy to get help when things go wrong however, at least for casual computer users. There's far less support sites for it, and those that are assume a far higher level of expertise than most Windows support sites.

EDIT: One thing I hope they definitely fix for Windows 7 is file sharing. I don't know what they did to it in Vista, but it sucks. I've been trying to set up a shared folder for the last 10 minutes, and it's just saying "This may take a few minutes." Setting up a similar folder on the XP machine takes less than a minute.

I'm not so sure about that. Ubuntu even has its own forums (does ms? ). Then theres places like linuxforums, linuxhelp, linuxquestions, etc.

Some solutions to problems might be beyond the average user though.

You didn't have to rise to it.

Should we also mention that it's FREE?! And any user can buy a version of Linux
that comes with a year of technical support. Maybe when they start pushing out $150 dollar computers because the don't have to pay $M the licensing fees, then users will start the push towards Linux. Walmart has a line of these computers...just not widely available yet.

It actually defaults to sharing your files if you set the connection to Home Network. Was a simple operation of opening My Network and finding the PC(s) that I wanted to get my files from...just worked for me.

My only real grip right now with Windows 7 seems to be that the disk access (only seems to be during the write operation) seems slower than in Vista and/or XP. When compiling something or creating a new file/folder it seems to take a little longer than normal. Maybe it has something to do with the locking mechanisms in the kernel, but I know it is slower than under Vista or XP. It might not even really be a disk access issues...it might be something with how it handles security in the background. At least it doesn't hound you to death with the this program needs your attention crap like Vista did...it's still there, but not NEAR as bad.

Oh...and I almost forgot. The stupid taskbar where program notification icons go...some programs do not always show up there (they are there but you must click the little up arrow to see them) even if you tell it to always show the program notifications for that program! Finally got tired of that and just told it to always notify me.

Let me guess, you're now using a terabyte drive, right? Vista chokes on my I: & J: drives when trying to display the contents of a folder (1TB drive vs. the 320GB drive C: is on)

God I hope you didn't attempt to use any kind of FAT fs on a 1TB drive. That would be insane.

No, the restore partition doesn't give you an option for file system, you get NTFS and that's it.

No...actually I have the same issue on two separate systems. On PC has a 500GB HD, an 80GB HD, and a 40GB HD. The 40GB drive is an IDE drive, the other two are SATA. On the laptop, it has only one drive which is 120GB SATA. It doesn't have any speed issues with starting up...it's extremely fast. It is faster for me to actually shutdown and restart than to use the hibernate feature....on both machines. Under XP and Vista, the hibernate feature was faster. I've also noticed that if I get impatient / in a hurry when rename a folder or file and open it right away Windows 7 gives me an error saying it can't find the "old folder/file name here" folder/file. I am getting the impression it's some sort of locking mechanism going on in the background. I've noticed that Vista and Windows 7 copy files to the user's temp directory before making them available at their "real" destination...maybe something there is causing the slowdown. It's just really annoying though.

Yeah really! What would the file table be like? Something like 1GB? Can FAT even handle a drive that big?!

Fat can address up to 2TB on drives with 512 byte sectors.

On the general topic, are there any serious players competing to be the filing system of choice for removable media once it hits the terrabytes? Presumably Microsoft recognise that people will one day want to be able to format SD-type cards of that sort of capacity and use them with both a Windows machine and a non-Microsoft peripheral such as a digital video camera?

I don't think so, but I just created an ext2 partition on an external harddrive that needed to store a 4GB+ sized file (and I only cared about whether the file was available from Linux). Some sort of readily available (dare I say "open"?) and supported (that's where ext2 doesn't cut it) filesystem seem highly overdue...
If I only ever cared about my Mac, I'd be fine picking HFS+ to format external media and if I only cared about Linux, I'd be fine using ext2 (or one of its descendants). However, I care about both and then FAT32 is more or less the only option that is guaranteed to work hassle-free.

Maybe it's time to do another check for ext2 drivers for OS X...

MS is creating a new FAT format for this use. Not sure of non MS OS will be able to use it soon though.

I thought linux already had an exFAT driver. Could just be my imagination though. But a LOT of parties are interested in trying to move away from FAT due to the pattents. No idea if it will actually happen though, many device makers just don't care enough.

Oh, something else that seems strange in Windows 7... my touch pad driver's virtual scroll feature does not always work. I'm trying to recreate the issue...but seems random at the moment, other than the fact that Visual Studio Professional was running. The driver itself actually picks up the finger's location and seems to be sending the scroll data as I can see it in the driver's configuration window...but Windows doesn't seem to be getting the messages. Strange.

My 1.5TB hard drives work fine in Win 7, just as they did in Vista.

Duh, of course MS has their own forums.

Also, whenever I've had a crazy Windows problem, I've gotten people to at least try to help me. Having crazy Linux problems? Your posts get ignored, people don't read your whole post and make irrelevant remarks, and generally act like they're better than you because they think they know more. Given Windows vs. Apple vs. Linux communities, I'll take a Windows community any day, they seem to be the most level headed. Most Apple communities are full of Apple fanboys, and most Linux communities are filled with zealots who expect everything to be handed free on a platter (and people like the douchebag who made X-Chat for Windows shareware, breaking GPL, and somehow gets away with it).

I mostly disagree with most of what you said there. but this isn't the time to get into a flamewar

I agree with that, support for windows is much more level headed, the other problem that linux dorks dont get is that people most people have lives and dont want to spend a billion years understanding the little intricacies to get something relatively simple working (i.e.: wireless). Linux dorks, stop blaming vendors. The end user does not care about excuses, we want results.

I've gotten help with stupid easy stuff on Linux forums. When I was trying to get APM working on my laptop, I hit several roadblocks. I ended up with several threads with different "hard" issues over the course of a few weeks, and they all either had no replies, trolling, or totally unrelated suggestions. I only got the "buy new hardware" line once, surprisingly.

At least OS X is pretty standard, hardware wise, so there's not too many issues, so the OS X geared forums tend to be pretty helpful after you sift through the fanboyism. Hackintosh is probably among the best support I've received from a group, surprisingly.

I've had some luck with Linux forums, but even my friend who introduced me to Linux gives me the "read the man pages" line whenever I ask for advice. I would like to eventually, but I'd rather get stuff working first and be productive. Sometimes a simple yes or no would suffice, ya know.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one too, the tools who take the time to type out a RTFM rant when they could have spent less time and given the answer.

Exactly...goes back to my original idea that if you have nothing constructive to say when a question is asked, then just don't post anything. Sometimes we have many things to work on and a quick answer is all that is needed. It doesn't even have to be the full answer...just a point in the right direction is better than a damn RTFM comment.

Exactly... Its better than using the same tired arguments about something you probably haven't even had happen in some time

I've read the entire Windows manual. It's only like four pages long.

I remember back in the day when computers came with like 20 books, and the books for DOS and Windows where like mini novels. Does that make me old?

Yup.

I still have a combined manual for MSDOS 6.22/Windows 3.11 though, so you're not the only old one. It's a good sized brick too.

I liked the manuals that came with othe original IBM PCs. They were in ring-binders. I actually still have a few pages form the IBM PC-DOS 2.0 manual floating around, and sometimes still refer to the Character Set table from it.

Once you skip past the self congratulation pages of how great Windows is, you're left with 3 or 4 pages of useful informantion.

I believe we still have a Windows 3.11 box somewhere in our basement. I'll have to look around.