Jack Webster claims that the Window 7 pre-beta is stable. I have a hard time getting excited about this. Surely Microsoft has learned from its mistakes and can make reasonably stable software now, right?
Will Windows 7 be all that?
Jack also enthuses
The install was complete in under an hour, and I was ready to go! It feels funny, as Macintosh users usually exclaim, that the computer is ready to use the first time you start up. Windows 7 has made a decent step towards this. It comes packed with more drivers than Vista, and I was able to plug some pretty obscure accessories that failed with Vista, but worked with 7.
Really? Under an hour to install a new OS at the end of the year 2008? I hate to play the GNU/Linux fanboy here, but complete Linux installs have been installed in under 30 minutes for years now, and they’ve included enough drivers for mainstream (and some esoteric) hardware as well. I can’t remember the last time I had to install a Linux driver for an Ethernet card, and yet on mainstream commodity PCs running Windows XP and Vista I still need to download and install an Ethernet driver! And of course, most GNU/Linux distributions bundle the full OpenOffice suite, too, so you’re ready to actually use your computer as soon as the install is finished.
Including a robust set of hardware drivers is a good thing, to be sure, but is that sufficient? Last night I had to print something, and Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop magically found and configured my HP 5850 wireless printer. No bogus “solutions suite” or bloatware bundle or any of that hogwash. It just worked. Assuming Windows 7 bundles drivers, will the installation be as hands-off?
Jack also cautions us that with Windows 7 “[y]ou will still need to install a security suite.” Why? It’s 2008, almost 2009, and Microsoft has been battling the bad press of security vulnerabilities for more than a decade. I understand the importance of backwards compatibility, but I think most (if not all) users would happily exchange that for a more secure foundation on which the OS is built. A better security model would demonstrate that Microsoft really does care where users want to go today.
I’m sure that Windows 7 will be an improvement — how could it not be — but I’m also of the opinion that it’s too little too late. Long-time Windows users I know are switching to Mac OS X in droves, and more and more people are experimenting with and liking GNU/Linux. I’m not saying that Microsoft is going to close its doors any time soon, but I think the strength of their hegemony is definitely waning.
BFD.
Win 7 installs in under 30 mins as well… more like 20
On what specs?
Can we benchmark a Linux installation on the same specs?
How much would a PC like that cost to an average consumer?
And yes, those are trick questions!
If you realy want to talk about the average consumer the questin shoul be more along the lines of How often does a the average consumer reinstall the OS. As for that matter how often does a power user install an OS (if you do it nore then once a month u must be insane). Unless u are an admin (in which case u must be a rather poor admin not to be using some sort of imaging sistem) u probably won’t realy care about the install time.
As for my specs, most of them don’t realy matter… the only important one is the HDD(as that is the mai bottleneck in the install process) which is a prety average Hitachi at 7200RPM.
Yeah… that’s what i would like to know; how you did this under 30minutes… cuz it took mean nearly an hour an a half yesterday not counting the download time of course. and I am being generous by using the term “nearly.”
I have a 250 Seagate HDD running @7200rpm on a gateway notebook with 4GB RAM and an AMD core 2 Duo.
Even the download from MS website was ridiculous yesterday; it took me an hour to download on a LAN not wireless.
But i have it now and i like it so far. Got my homegroup setup – probably one of the most valuable features yet. I like the extra added security when you setup a homegroup.
It really does not matter how long it takes to install an OS as long as it does it all by itself. And is that way since Vista.
What matters is responsiveness to user interaction and the performance while using applications in parallel.
And it seems Windows 7 accomplishes this even on older not quite for Vista designed hardware.
I was impressed. read here: http://max.zamorsky.name/2009/01/13/windows7-auf-einem-motion-computing-le1600-tablet-pcwindows7-on-a-motion-computing-le1600-tablet-pc/
I think droves is quite the exaggeration. And again, Windows still has ~90% OS market share, so there’s always going to be new vulnerabilities or security issues popping up. It’s one of the burdens of having that market share. And that’s why you need some sort of security software. And it’s not that big a deal since lots of security software is free. The other burden is satisfying all those customers whose needs are vary so much it’s ridiculous.
I just get the feeling that most internet tech news bloggers and other tech media are trying really hard to dislike Vista for some reason. And I know they are, since most people I talk to these days (including my average consumer friends) really like it.
Droves isn’t an exaggeration. I’m not referring to some statistical poll; I’m talking about people I know personally.
My complaint against Vista is pretty much my complaint against Office 2007: it appears, at least superficially, to be change for change’s sake. I have a hard time trying to look at Vista from the eyes of a brand new computer user, because I’m not one. Anyone who has had any familiarity with Windows XP (and Windows 2000 before it) will find Vista to be a jarring change. The control panel is organized in an entirely different way, adding lots of little sub-menus that, frankly, aren’t very helpful.
I know that the Microsoft employees who worked on Vista probably did their best, and I’m not trying to knock their effort. But Vista, from top to bottom, looks like nothing more than a revenue stream for Microsoft. It wasn’t released to provide superior solutions to customer need; it doesn’t resolve deployment problems experienced by large corporations; and it offers little actual benefit over prior incarnations. It looks as though it was released purely to enhance Microsoft’s profit margins.
Hopefully Windows 7 will offer users a more compelling reason to upgrade.
I cannot disagree more about office 2007, and the direction Windows is taking. First, the ribbon toolbar combined with the quick menu that appears near your mouse when you work in the document have made my work with Word and Excel an actually decent experience (spreadsheets and memos are not exactly fun). Messing around with fonts and layouts used to be the most painful experience of office, saved for once you have finished writing whatever it is you want to say. Now its so easy that its faster to do it as I type. The biggest improvement for me isn’t even the ribbon, but the ease of working with tables and bullet-point layouts (horrific in 03, like pulling teeth), an upgrade on how I interact and get my work done, not a change for change’s sake.
Having said that I do agree with a few of your vista sentiments. It was released both late (5 years??) and early (not ‘finished’), and finally became, in my mind, worth using with SP1.
Win 7 may have the same transparency style as Vista, but it Feels like a whole new creature. Fast, Stable, capable, and its only ‘prebeta’ so far. People can muck around debating benchmarks, but at the end of the day, its about how it feels to the end user. The improvements to office 07 make the experience Feel better, I dont want to rip my hair out in frustration, and Win7 to me seems to be following this same path. If this path continues, I will upgrade.
The idea that change in Office was just for “change’s sake” shows poorly informed you are about MS. This is no crime but you look like an idiot commenting on this because MS was very upfront about why the changed it. Reason #1 is that 9 of the 10 most requested features were already in the software. Another was that the designers watched in horror as, again and again, users were unable to find their way around the interface. That makes the original UI a disaster. You can argue that the change is worse (but then every argues against change) but the idea they changed it for no reason makes you bother superficially and deeply uniformed.
Personally I never had any issues with vista or tiger/leopard but can’t see any OS release of the few years that offers huge benefits over previous versions. That space is stagnant as pond.
Having used Microsoft products since the days of DOS2.1, early products like Windows 3.1, W95, W98, W/NT, W/XP, W/2000 were, in my limited experience, pretty decent. But the moment I got a new laptop running Vista, it was a real letdown and I can’t help but feel that Microsoft has no respect for users. Connecting to the internet can sometimes be touch-and-go. With 2GB RAM and new hardware, Vista runs slower than my 8-year-old desktop with 512K running XP. Added to that the irritating cancel/continue prompts, and the seemingly thoughtless re-organization of things I was familiar with, I find using Vista a NEW experience; almost as if I have never used Windows before. Then the discovery of the ’scandal’ of how MS and HP sought to fool buyers with the Vista Ready label made me decide that enough is enough. I have since gotten two MacBooks and am loving it. Took me less time to learn to use MAC OS X than to use/fix Vista. I used to know my Windows OS inside-out. But with Vista, knowing I have to go find where everything is again, I simply give up. I think a computer should be a tool, a tool to help us solve problems. But with Vista becoming a problem in its own right, the reason for getting it disappears.
I can’t help but wonder if the two posts above come from viral marketing companies hired by Microsoft. Really, what’s good about Office 2007’s user interface? I have paid my freakin’ dues and learned the original one which had become pretty much seconde nature, so why make loyal Office users’ life miserable?
Now I can’t find my way around doing simple tasks in office and no, I WILL NOT take the time to learn it, as won’t dozens of people I know who are like myself either installing Open Office or downgrading MS Office to the previous version.
Microsoft Office 2007 is, like Vista, a complete disaster – and MIcrosoft knows it. By the way I also happen to know a LOT of people turning away from Windows, either to OSX or Ubuntu.
win7 installs in 20mins unless u r trying to install it on a ENIAC or an iMac
Well, Vista 7 may install in 30 minutes, but then there’s security configuration, virus updates, patches, and re-arranging menus (if you can find out how to do that) which will take another day.
Then you have to find out how to make your programs run on it, since many won’t be compatible.
It’s not like Kubuntu or Ubuntu, where you can just click on a package to install from the Package manager.
By the way, I found this list of free programs in Kubuntu/Ubuntu on Kubuntuguide/Ubuntuguide:
Virtualization: Virtualbox or Xen or VMWare
100’s of games, including OpenArena, Nexuiz, Tremulous, Frets on Fire, etc.
Edutainment, including professional graphs, 3-D modeling, engineering apps
Video editing: KDENLive, Kino, Cinelerra
Diagram Editor: Dia, Kivio
Graphics: Gimp (like Adobe Photoshop)
Vector Illustrator: Inkscape (like CorelDraw)
VOIP/PBX system: Asterisk
Groupware: Kolab, eGroupware
Wiki software: MediaWiki, Twiki
Web content publishing: Drupal, Joomla
Web filtering: Dansguardian
Web server: Apache, MySQL, PHP
Electronic health records: WorldVistA
Parental controls: Timekpr
Internet Cafe: OutKafe, OpenKiosk
Enterprise Accounting: SQL-Ledger
Enterprise Universal threat Management: IPCop, Endian, SmoothWall
Java Server: Tomcat
Email/POP3 server: Postfix with Dovecot
Personal Finance: GnuCash, KMyMoney
Home automation: LinuxMCE
Media Centers: Boxee (with Netflix), XBMC, MythTV, LinuxMCE
BitTorrent clients and many other utilities
That alone is about $30,000-$50,000 worth of software (if you buy it for Windows platforms) available for free in Kubuntu/Ubuntu, mostly installable with a few clicks.
To assemble, buy, and install for Windows would take you a long, long time (if you could afford it).
So just installing the operating system is just the tip of the iceberg.
http://kubuntuguide.org or http://ubuntuguide.org
Care to tell me how you calculated that number? Or did you just pull a random value out of your ass?
I noticed that you didn’t even bother to mention that the majority, yes, MAJORITY, of freeware apps available from the Ubuntu Package Manager can’t even come close to comparing to their paid equivalents and have similar freeware available for Windows as well.
I cannot believe you even tried to compare freeware games with retail games… much less gaming on Linux.
In Response to Scott’s post, I think you saw my post differently than the way I wrote it. I was meaning to say that Windows Vista has the ‘looks’ of a good O/S, but failed to be one. It is exciting to see that Windows 7 is fairly stable at the pre-beta stage. I do however think that it is a bit childish that the supposed pioneer of software this century, Microsoft, can release a piece of software such as Vista, and themselves, call it stable.
J
You never had to install drivers for linux? Then I guess you were lucky enough to not have a sodding wireless network card from fucking Broadcom. That’s the only reason I’m using windows atm, because otherwise I wouldn’t have wireless internet.
First of all…….. isn’t this article supposed to be about Windows 7? Why did you turn this into a Windows vs Linux debate?
“Jack Webster claims that the Window 7 pre-beta is stable. I have a hard time getting excited about this. Surely Microsoft has learned from its mistakes and can make reasonably stable software now, right?”
This confuses me, stable? Windows has been more or less stable since 2000. Since 2000 Windows has crashed on me LESS than Ubuntu has. Vista has yet to crash on me. The few times when Windows 2000 would bluscreen was when I found out I had faulty ram installed in my system.
“Under an hour to install a new OS at the end of the year 2008? I hate to play the GNU/Linux fanboy here, but complete Linux installs have been installed in under 30 minutes for years now, and they’ve included enough drivers for mainstream (and some esoteric) hardware as well.”
Not to play anti-fanboy here, but just yesterday I was reinstalling XP for a friend and it took about 20 minutes or so from a quick format to a completed install.
I fail to see the problem with a ONE-time install taking an hour, the OS isn’t exactly small by any means, and it took YEARS for Ubuntu to finally support my video, audio, and wireless hardware.
“I can’t remember the last time I had to install a Linux driver for an Ethernet card, and yet on mainstream commodity PCs running Windows XP and Vista I still need to download and install an Ethernet driver!”
How far in the past have you been living? I haven’t had to install a driver for my ethernet hardware since Windows 98 even when buying obscure cards.
Now, getting WiFi to work in Linux (when it works perfectly in Windows) is ANOTHER story.
“Jack also cautions us that with Windows 7 “[y]ou will still need to install a security suite.” Why? It’s 2008, almost 2009, and Microsoft has been battling the bad press of security vulnerabilities for more than a decade.”
Because unlike Linux, the majority of people who use Windows do NOT know what they are doing or how a computer works, THAT is why they fall for those bogus “your computer is infected” sites and willingly grant admin privalages to spyware to infect their computer, THAT is why.
The day Linux becauses as “user friendly” as Windows is the day its “hacked” to hell due to the ignorance of the user.
“A better security model would demonstrate that Microsoft really does care where users want to go today.”
I see you haven’t used Vista.
And no, hearing stories about how Vista sucks on random internet blogs or trying a demo station for 5 minutes at Frys does not count as “using Vista”
I noticed that a large amount of your arguments are “it dosen’t come with drivers!”
What hardware DOSEN’T come with a driver disk AND the option to download drivers from the manufacturer’s website anymore? Coming from someone who uses Linux, complaning about not having pre-installed drivers for everything and neding to install them yourself seems like a rather shallow thing to argue about. Are you sure you woulden’t rather switch to an iMac if having to do anything with your computer on install to get it working is such a big issue to you?
“Because unlike Linux, the majority of people who use Windows do NOT know what they are doing or how a computer works, THAT is why they fall for those bogus “your computer is infected” sites and willingly grant admin privalages to spyware to infect their computer, THAT is why.”
This “majority” would mean everyone, won’t it? Everybody must start using Windows as a newbie first before they know what security is all about and how best to manage it. Since “majority of people who use Windows do NOT know what they are doing or how a computer works”, should we not then expect that Microsoft knows what they are doing and build the OS such that it protects itself well? Or does the “majority” includes Microsoft’s programmers?
““A better security model would demonstrate that Microsoft really does care where users want to go today.”
I see you haven’t used Vista.”
Your expert conclusion is awe-inspiring. Guess all of us (the majority) ought to get certified as MVP before we can share our experiences and perceptions.
What kind of logic is that?
Majority means everyone? No, thats why I said MAJORITY, not EVERYBODY.
There is a difference between knowing about computer security and not knowing a thing about it, not everybody who just started using Windows uses it as their first system, or uses it without taking a computer class first. The majority do yes, but not everybody.
Regardless, that point is null because I was NOT talking about somebody who is new to a computer. I have met many people who have been using a computer for years but still don’t know OR care about security or how it works in order to repair it. The most general mentality I have heard to not using security is “I don’t do anything important on it nor have any personal information on it, I don’t care if it gets infected”, not realising the fact that an infected machine could infect others as well as impact their use of it. Most of the people who don’t care about being infected only seem to care if the infection causes annoying popups to appear.
And Merrill’s post was a run of the mill textbook case of the typical rants I hear about Vista and Microsoft in general when said person has pretty much almost never even used the operating system and just goes by the internet hate mentality. I mean, just look at his post, he turned a Windows 7 article in a Linux vs Windows rant with clear bias and misinformation against Windows.
I also love how you cut out the part where I mentioned “using it for 5 minutes at a demo station dosen’t count” yet you take the logical extreme of claiming only people with a MVP are allowed to be considered as using Vista.
I don’t know what kind of PC you used, but I installed 7 on a 2.0 Ghz generic PC with 2 GB of RAM with integrated Intel graphics, under 30 minutes. That’s way far from “elite” PC specs.
So your Ubuntu installed your nVidia driver did it ! Wow !
I bought a Macbook this year, took it back after 2 weeks, the Mac hype is just that , hype. Power users will be very dissapointed with Macs.
Bought a Sony Vaio SZ, dropped XP on it and now I’m happy.
Hurrah for Linux! Stand up for what you believe! Start the revolution!
But please stop calling it GNU/Linux. Sometimes idealism must give way to pragmatism. Stallman’s naming crusade has failed for the simple reason that Guh-nuh-slash-linux is an awful name. Yes sir, awful! It was never going to catch on, despite the idea behind it being solid. Everyone is calling it Linux. Why don’t you?
That will be all.
Did they say all these wonderful things about Vista before it was released?
Jon
http://WoodMarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
Another geek trying to talk up linux, you need to get into the real world, it dont matter how much you love linux, Microsoft has helped deliver the dream of a home PC, and the vast majority of home users are not geeks therefore will never touch linux…
I agree with saf
I am not a techie type person very far from it and I use linux, initially for me it was a bit tricky but only because it is different, now I would never go back to microsoft thankfully the memories of the trench warfare required to keep a microsoft system running are fading.
you douche-bag Mac fan boys are all the same. Enough already with the whole Linux taking over the world. It ain’t going happen, you f’ing bozo!!!
This should not be a pseudo religious issue, nor even a tribal issue, and not even a silly little boys pissing highest up the wall issue. You should use the OS you want to. After we have all had our say; some time in the future what will happen is going to happen.
The author of this article has never used Vista. Windows 7 6956 will install in less than 30 minutes. There are billions of Windows users, so why won’t people care? Windows 7 will rule
To previous poster, you have convinced me to go and do something else
My last Linux installation took roughly 70 hours and suspend still doesn’t work,
To be honest i found most of that to be crap. I installed the 6959 build of W7 recently and its very stable. The install, from booting the cd to getting to the desktop mustn’t take any longer than 25 minutes. All my drivers apart from an inbuilt memory stick reader were automatically installed, even my wireless drivers which no operating system up until now has automatically installed.
I do agree that the changes in Vista were very minimal for the end user, but if it only served as a solid base for W7 then its served its purpose excellently.
As for the security suite, MS simply can’t provide an in-built AV as this will push out the large majority of package bought AV and therefore is illegal. Also everyone knows the very large majority of computer users use Windows, therefore creating a linux or Osx based virus simply won’t hit their target market, therefore a decent AV will always be needed.
Oh and no…i’m not a MS fanboy by any means, i actually just installed Ubuntu on my laptop last night.
I am running the windows 7 beta now, and I found a lot of stuff I didn’t find on Opensuse nor (K)Ubuntu.. I think you linux fans should try this too, I would get back to Ubuntu if I weren’t addicted to a lot of games that are only available for windows, and won’t run (or very crappy) on Wine..
If you want to play games, you should try windows 7, if you don’t, enjoy yourself with what linux distro you want!
Ok.. Driver support for linux is top, but windows 7 is getting close! Just the HP drivers aren’t included (and probably some more which I didn’t need:D) because they want you to agree with the terms.. The installation of drivers that aren’t included is in some cases pretty hard, but try to install stuff on a beta version of a linux distro, it won’t be any easier..
Another “Linux is better than Microsoft” blog :)
No kidding, some Linuxians (surely another planet) should realise that the most important drawback with open source is…that it is open source, so ANYBODY can read it.
And guess what ? Some of us are devs as well and when you find some classes in your so beloved open source linux programs that are handling more than 100 different objects and are doing more than 100 different things you should wonder yourself if you should really be confident with so poorly designed stuff.
I mean com’on, Apache Devs aren’t aware of Design Patterns, for example ? Apache isn’t a tiny Open Source project, is it ? Just check every piece of their code and you should realise Linux is just like any other OS : it MAY be good but it isn’t because devs are just humans.
I work on different systems for more than 15 years now and I can tell you Microsoft OSes aren’t the worst ones. FreeBSD (and other BSDs) are for the most part very good OSes, Mac OS (since based on FreeBSD) is a pure Chef D’Oeuvre but Linux is far from being so good.
Now, you can think everything you want but thinking an OS isn’t good enought just because another can install faster is plain retarded, period.
I just reformatted my macbook (which i gave to my parents).
Took an hour to install, as well.
Just a heads up.