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What's your take? How soon do you think they'll get this version of Windows out the door?
[theregister.co.uk...]
Kaled.
I would rather wait until Q1 for a really robust OS than a tatty old thing that needs to be updated every time I turn my machine on...
We shall see.
Acer, the world's second-largest manufacturer of PCs, last month nailed the Windows 7 launch date as October 23.
i am thinking they are trying to release before black friday, so they don't have to let go of the first block of pc's cheap.
. The general consensus seems to be that it looks like Vista, but it's a solid and fast as XP.
I'm on 7 right now....it is really buggy and the "blue screen" that was so famous with the version of windows prior to XP has come back.
Do not want.
We still have all our "work" machines on XP as we've found no reasons to go to Vista.
ditto
Or is there a gap between the two which means your system dies?
That's funny, I've read a lot about Windows 7 and I've yet to see a comparison where it's faster than XP. The consensus I've seen is that each Windows release has been slower than the prior. This happens because MS realizes they can continue to push more software at faster hardware.
The knock on Vista was the nag screens and drivers. I've yet to see a BSOD, which I have on XP.
My experience is that Vista was better than XP, which was better than 2000 Pro, which was better than NT.
I am running Windows 7 on a P.O.S. laptop to test and I absolutely love it. I can't say enough good things about it. It's easy to get around, it looks beautiful, and it's quite fast (Even on crappy hardware). I actually like the graphics and UI more than my MAC.
I think M.S. found their way again with this O.S.... assuming it doesn't shut down your PC on the last day of 2009.
As for performance, the benchmarking indicates it will actually run faster than XP, in spite of being bigger. It takes better advantage of multi-core processors and the leaps and bounds overall chip architecture has made since XP came out. DirectX 10 for graphics... Just a whole lot of code optimization to take advantage of the improvement in hardware that's happened in the nearly decade since XP came out.
They're also getting rid of some of the bloatware that has crept into windows over the years. Things that nobody really uses anyway like Windows Movie Maker.
The Kernel is bigger, as far as I can tell, but like I mentioned, this is more than offset by the hardware optimizations.
I wonder if it will run on a typical netbook; such as the many which won't manage Vista?
There's a couple of answers here.
Answer 1 is yes, it will run fine on a netbook. Haven't tried it myself, but people I trust who have tried it on netbooks say it runs as well as XP.
Answer 2 is yes, but it will be crippled. MS has said they're going to release a "Netbook Edition" of Windows 7. They realize that they can't charge the same OEM fee for netbooks and have the devices compete for market against Linux driven netbooks (and that's a pretty scary thought for MS to contemplate), so they're cooking up a special crippleware version of windows 7 that will, among other things, limit the OS to running a max of 3 apps at once.
A pretty dangerous choice, but they're painted into a corner. If they charge full price and deliver the full OS on netbooks, then they'll be crushed in the market by open source alternatives, solely based on price point. If they release the full OS, at a reduced price, on netbooks... Well, how can they justrify that to their business partners? "Our OS costs X in most cases, unless you install it on cheap hardware, in which case we'll only charge half as much." Can't you just see the gymnastics hardware makers will go through to justify the cheaper price?
Overall, if the production release of Windows 7 holds true to it's current form, it might even tempt me to go back on my pledge to never build/buy another Windows box. I dunno.
The only reason I keep a Windows system anymore is video games. And mostly, I'm too busy for video games lately, and when I have the time, casual flash games usually fill the void.
Oh, and the digital video one of my rockets captures is only comprehensible by Windows. Strange but true.
MS is going to release a "Power toy" like app that creates an XP "compatability mode".
Windows Team [windowsteamblog.com]
I've done a fair bit of reading on this in some tech blogs, unlinkable here.
What it looks like they're going to do is have a very specialized Virtual PC appliance that allows semi-transparent installation of legacy apps inside an XP VPC "wrapper". The apps will leave an icon on the desktop, or the taskbar, or start menu, or whatever, just like normal applications. When launched, they'll run inside a normal looking window.
But this is all smoke and mirrors around the VPC appliance, which is what's really handling the application and the interface between the application, the underlying OS (Windows 7), and the hardware.
It's an interesting bit of kit.
It's also interesting that MS is finally realizing that there are plenty of reasons why people and corporations need to maintain legacy applications. If they'd figured this out for Vista, it would have faced much wider adoption.
I wonder if it will run on a typical netbook; such as the many which won't manage Vista?
There will be a Windows 7 Home Basic version that will be offered by most Netbook makers.
I used Windows 7 beta on Acer Aspire one netbook with 1 GB RAM and found no major issues in 2 months of use. Performance wise it was on par with Win XP home on the same netbook.
The Windows 7 kernel is the same as Vista. Hardware compatibility issues will be minimal with this release because any hardware that now works with Vista should work with Windows 7.
MS has been trying to get people out of the "wait for the first Service Pack" mentality. The Vista service packs were evidence of this. they really didn't add any functionality. They were more like cumulative roll-up packages of all the patches and security fixes.
[edited by: engine at 8:21 am (utc) on May 30, 2009]
[edit reason] See TOS [/edit]
Windows 7 to launch October 22 [news.cnet.com]Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that it is planning for Windows 7 to hit retail shelves and start showing up on new PCs on October 22.
I guess Acer's slip up was the real deal. ;)
Congrats to:
Continued here [webmasterworld.com]
