A long and detailed preview of Windows 7 appeared on ActiveWin. Many screenshots included. “It’s safe to say I am overwhelmed, overjoyed and most of all excited about Windows 7”, the author concludes.
Windows 7 Preview
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Too much Windows 7!
Too much Windows 7! Too much Ubuntu! Too much OS X! Too much whining! If you don’t want to read an article DON”T READ IT! Windows 7 is news, get over it. I’m interested in it, many people are interested in it. Just because you are not, doesn’t give you the right to try to limit what other people want to read, please, just don’t read the article.
Man, you’d think that this site should change it’s name to Complaining News, people complain about the articles, the mod system, the editors, even people complaining about the complainers! (that’s me, for those in the cheap seats)
Edited 2008-11-03 22:26 UTC
I’m interested in Windows 7 but I’m not interested in making love to it.
It would probably turn you down anyway, even Windows has standards.
Come on, 2 weeks ago, we got one article to tell how they would call it and one article to tell why they called it Windows 7. This is not what people expect from news aggregators. Now this article is actually interesting, but this should have been the only one. I know you get dollars by posting Windows articles but this is too much. I expect no more than one article per month for an OS that is not available but 1 article out of 3 talk about Windows 7 these days! If you want to know everything that is going on about Windows 7, Read the blogs on Microsoft sites, register to mailing lists but there is no need to post 3 article every single day with new screenshots.
Seriously though, the number of Windows 7 articles lately is quite staggering. It makes the flood of Ubuntu and OSX articles that happens on occasion look like a small forest stream.
And this for an OS that is not even remotely close to being released.
//Just because you are not, doesn’t give you the right to try to limit what other people want to read.//
Please explain how the hell his posting a comment “limits what other people want to read.”
It doesn’t, but it is an attempt. That’s the point of complaining, isn’t it?
So his post does NOT limit your ability to read the article … but yet you complained about his post … and noted “it is an attempt” (without clarifying what “it” is, since his post is NOT limiting anything).
Got it. Crystal clear, thanks.
“So his post does NOT limit your ability to read the article … but yet you complained about his post … and noted “it is an attempt” (without clarifying what “it” is, since his post is NOT limiting anything).”
That is the most circular logic I have ever heard. Try to Follow me here:
1. ) Strim was complaining about the amount of Windows 7 articles.
2. ) That is an attempt to get the editors to stop posting so many articles about Windows 7. you complain about things you don’t want to happen anymore.
3. ) If the editors decide to listen to people complaining about those articles then they would have limited the amount of articles on a given subject.
4.) therefore denying me my right to decide what I read, and the editors to decide what they want to post.
So while his post may not limit postings on it’s own, if the editors decide to stop publishing things based on people complaining, it then very well may.
So I spoke up to say, no I disagree with you, and to do a little complaining of my own. I like this site because the editors post a lot of articles on all sorts of stuff, which allows me to get a lot of different viewpoints from 1 site. I’ve been coming here for about 5 years. I just don’t read the articles that don’t interest me.
If people don’t want to read an article, they can not read it. If an article is not published, then I may not even get the chance to decide.
That’s why it is an attempt to limit what is posted, therefore limiting what I can choose to read.
Any clearer?
Edited 2008-11-04 22:03 UTC
Ah, my comment spawned ridiculous discussion! Let’s pretend that I’m just evil troll.
Here’s something for you: http://xkcd.com/386/
I’m a big fan of ridiculous discussion, it’s what the internet is about
Others people dosen’t necessarily want to read more about it. I don’t.
Love it or loathe it, it will be the next incarnation of the most widely used desktop OS and as such, is important and worth knowing about.
Personally, I don’t think “overjoyed” is a healthy reaction to any operating system.
And the game begins again.
Microsoft: “We screwed up with our last release but dont use something else we have something up our sleeves. The next Windows will do everything better, you can even cook your mother in law with it”
Press: “Lets praise the glorious geniouses in Redmond and hail to the glory of the next Windows”
Users: WTF
After the release: Worst Windows ever…
Put lipstick on Vista and you’ve got a brand new Windows 7. Then they tell you that you need to upgrade. So you pay more money for nothing. At least this time they don’t force you to upgrade you hardware as well. The only positive thing about Windows 7 is that it makes you feel good because it creates the illusion that you use a great OS. You are excited, overwhelmed just like the author of this article.
And then it hurts, but you don’t know why. It must be those hardware providers.
Hokay.
Don’t buy Windows 7 then. For the rest of us, the “lipstick” is actually quite damn useful. If the new Windows 7 UI makes me more productive, why is it mere lipstick?
Seems like a pretty important feature to me.
I doubt this time we’ll see anything different than the previous Windows releases. Most likely, it’ll be disappointing, and MS will soon start talking about Windows 8. Everybody will say “aaah well, windows 7 wasn’t that good, but I’ll stay on it ‘cuz the NEXT windows will be good!”
for those of us with internal builds (legaly) i can say that 7 will not disapoint. the only thing i wish was different is i wish clasic mode was still there, at least as an option. but trimming it out got the intal size down another 8 megs haha, and size does matter. plus the new UI makes this sooooooo much easier to use, puts apples dock down a peg or 2 on the usability scale (i love apples dock so i am not knocking it, but this is simply better at the time).
The best part will be when the former Vista anti-fanboys do an about-face and start bleating about how much worse the current version is. In the same way that XP was “OH NOES DRM!” and 2k was “OH NOES 500K BUGS!” when they were first released – but as soon as the next version was released, both XP and 2k suddenly became the OS that all the cool kids use.
Even though you have a point, you also willfully ignore the servicepacks here…
I hate when people talk all the time about productivity. It isn’t that you get even more productivity with each OS release, unless you were previously so damn unproductive with the OS that you need to switch; which makes me wonder, why did you use the previous version? Stop talking about productivity already; if you wanted it, you would be using Mac OS X (no, i’m not a Mac user or fanboy, I prefer Linux actually).
The quality of the user interface matters a lot – and, from what it seems, this seems to be the biggest departure since the Win 3.x-Win 95 transition. And it is change in the right direction.
Now, if users don’t think the gains in productivity is worth the sticker price on a nice Windows 7 box, so be it. But your suggestion (switching to Mac OS X) is a tad daft. If the productivity gains isn’t sufficient to justify buying a OS upgrade, I fail to see how the productivity gains would justify switching to Mac (especially when it involves buying an actual new computer, plus all the associated software). So the choice is not analogous. It is far easier to assume that there is a market for people wanting a better user interface than Windows XP/Vista.
The way *I* use a computer is very different from the way I use it some 15 years ago, or heck, 5 years ago. Clearly, a user interface that is designed for today’s use would be a marked improvement.
Your argument is about as dumb as you look in your picture.
Does that include free chicks?
No, you get chicks for free only if you play the guitar on the MTV.
Or you could’ve learned to play them drums.
I really like accelerators in the IE8 beta, and I am very glad they are going to be system wide in 7. It is the sort of thing you think is stupid and gimmicky until you use it. It is really the first thing I have ever seen out of IE that is both innovative and really cool.
The other thing that I like the sound of is the action center. There seems to be a drive to push tasks that were previously in vendor specific utilities into the core os. All I can say is that it is about friggin time.
The < 15 minute install time is just icing on the cake.
Usually I couldn’t care less about upcoming windows UI features, and it is Mac OS that I can’t wait to get my hands on. This is the first version ever that has me really interested. Going to poke around the interwebs a bit and see if I can get my hands on 6933
I really like accelerators in the IE8 beta,
they used to be called activities. You can have them for firefox as well.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6777
yet another article…
Windows 7 is what Vista should always have been…
Now that people are aware that they screwed up Vista, they are trying to buy people’s minds and make them forget with massive communication and cool “geek” articles for Windows 7.
come on…
you ain’t fooling nobody, or are you …
I dunno… I’ve used Vista (w/SP1) and didn’t have any issues with it. Though Vista was more about under the hood changes, looks like Windows 7 is going for the outer layer. As for me, I don’t really care. The main draw to Window is (and always has been) what I can run on it, so as far as I’m concerned, XP is still perfectly adequate, and probably will be for the entire life cycle of Windows 7. That’s not saying that I won’t upgrade, but it’s not like XP users are gonna be shit outta luck anytime soon, so they don’t have to move if they don’t want to.
Edited 2008-11-03 23:20 UTC
Judging by the numberof articles lately that praises an OS that is in its very early stages and years away from production they’ve fooled a lot of people.
That’s not a very profound statement, since the same could be said for any series of OSes. OSX Puma is what OSX Cheetah should’ve been. And that’s literally true, as OSX Cheetah was literally beta-ware, and totally abysmal in terms of speed, stability, and polish. OSX Puma was the first usable version of OSX, yet OSX Jaguar is what Puma should’ve been. And on and on. Your statement that OS version N+1 is what OS version N should’ve been is almost an axiom and as such adds nothing to the conversation.
Edited 2008-11-04 07:37 UTC
Windows Vista isn’t what XP should have been though.
Windows 7 is closer to what Vista was meant to be… Check out youTube and other sites for Longhorn and see what it was going to be… (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=E8XFAaqIVI4&feature=related)
But that’s a good thing. OK, they didn’t deliver what they wanted to deliver with Vista, but it’s good to see that 7 will be a much nicer OS than Vista currently is (and Vista isn’t as bad as a lot of people would like it to be btw). I am looking forward to seeing it when it comes out.
I hope they include Expos~Af^A(c), that is one feature in OS X that I would like to see in 7.
Next year will be good for OS’s, Linux is moving along nicely, Snow Leopard looks like it will be a very nice upgrade and 7 is coming long too…
I would like to see MS and Apple implement a SSD file system like Linux has too… I’m not sure if ZFS can do that or not (I should check)…
As I looked at the screenshots, and all I kept seeing is KDE.
But, I did like that calculator…
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that. When I saw the “panel” at the bottom of the screen, I thought it looked like KDE with a few Gnome icons thrown in (the volume control icon, for example).
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.1/screenshots/desktop.png
Doesn’t look very similar (unless you’re saying KDE was the first to have large icons). There is still a difference between application launch icons and opened windows in KDE 4 (in KDE 4, opened windows have an icon-plus-text button similar to Windows 9x/2k/XP/Vista). And, something that hasn’t change for Windows and remains different, the Windows/Start-button icon is distinguished from the other icons on the the taskbar in Windows 7. The Start menu resembles more a cleaner version of Vista’s than KDE 4’s take on it.
I’m not saying Windows 7’s taskbar is the height of creativity and innovativeness, but to say it resembles KDE 4’s Plasma is stretching it.
I have to agree with the guy suggesting there is too much complaining going on. I’m also interested in Windows 7. I’m surprised that no one has brought up the bloat factor yet. I’ve heard rumors that Win 7 is closer to XP in memory usage. I would like to see some data on this point. I am interested in replacing XP with Win 7 for my Eee pc with Atom CPU. It has 2 Gigs of memory. XP/Ubuntu run nicely on it. Anyone try this on a netbook yet?
Actually, I can see why some people say it looks like KDE, but I do think that this is going to be a good OS release. Honestly, I can’t wait to try this out! I think that linux (and other factors) has really lit a fire under Microsoft’s butt and we are finally seeing a better quality product in Windows.
Very unlikely, given that Windows 7 uses the Vista kernel.
Hands up all those who think that Windows 7 will be more secure than OpenBSD. No-one? I agree – it won’t even come close.
Hands up all those who think that Windows 7 will be more robust than Linux and the BSDs. No-one again – agreed again. Can’t wait to see the first Win 7 BSOD…
Edited 2008-11-04 06:58 UTC
Because OpenBSD is a commercial OS meant for mass consumption….?
Do you mean commercial OS for mass consumption should be designed to be less secure ?
Mass consumption & security are totally orthogonal.
Quite simply, OpenBSD is secure because it is used by users that can keep it secure without feeling annoyed. If Windows users already feel extremely annoyed of UAC, I don’t think OpenBSD’s approach would fly here.
I’m not saying it is impossible to have a certain level of security with a mass consumer OS. But after a certain point, there is a trade off.
Windows doesn’t have to be more robust than Linux, it just has to be robust enough not not crash under normal use. My Ubuntu machine is no more or less stable than my Windows XP machine. There are things I can do to reliably hang my Ubuntu desktop every time. Sure those things are technically the ‘fault’ of things like graphics drivers or compiz or Xorg or whatever, rather than Linux as in the kernel, but from an end user perspective it really doesn’t matter. I can’t remember the last time XP hung on me under normal use, while with Linux it was yesterday. The whole Linux is a more stable desktop OS than Windows is largely a myth at this point.
Linux with a robust minimal WM, running only robust well tested apps and drivers with no ‘exotic’ features enabled I’ll agree is very stable. Linux running with all the latest bells and whistles that your typical Ubuntu insall provides cannot really make that claim. Exactly the same is basically true for Windows as well.
Are you sure it wasn’t X that crashed, and not the whole kernel?
If you’d actually read the two sentences above the one you quoted you’d have seen that I already covered that point.
He spent a whole paragraph explaining that yes, if you only use the well-tested and reliable (read that as *old*) parts of Linux that it is very stable.
So of course you skip all that and ask if its the fault of the X server.
Windows Vista can now recover from a video card driver failure more reliably than Linux or BSD can.
Put Linux in a 3D desktop with ATI or Nvidia binary drivers and you’ll soon be needing the reset switch. Often I can log in via SSH but do NOT try a X server restart or it’ll be a complete system freeze.
On my Vista gaming system it’ll have a video system reset about twice a month or sometimes a screen corruption I have to log out and back in to fix, but I haven’t had a system freeze or blue screen since I quit trying to use ReadyBoost.
Another problem seems to happen to me in Linux but not Windows: Last night on my Linux laptop, Evolution decided that it needed 3 GB of virtual RAM to filter email. If I’d actually needed to use the machine I’d have had to reset it. As it was I left it alone and saw in the logs that at about 4 AM it had finally decided to OOM evolution.
When a Windows program does that, generally ctrl-alt-delete and Task Manager can kill the offender in a reasonable time frame. Linux could maybe do that if anyone cared enough to fix the X server to mem-lock itself and to run a mem-locked, high priority GUI task manager.
Honestly, the Apple and Windows user experience has been getting steadily better while the Linux experience has been declining.
And I’m sure you’ll get around to explaining why that means Windows 7 will be identical to Vista… any minute now. (waiting…)
And since neither point has made a single whit of difference to the successes of previous versions of Windows, it’s clear that either:
A) Windows is so fantastic that people will use it anyway. Or…
B) No one gives a damn.
Excellent argument, color me convinced.
If Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, i hope they will give away free upgrades to everyone who has bought Vista. Why pay twice for what you should have gotten the first time around???
There’s precedent for what you’re saying because Apple did make OSX Puma free to OSX Cheetah users. But that’s because Cheetah was betaware, much worse than Vista RTM was. The Puma fixes were required to make OSX usable, which is why it was free.
As for Vista, Vista SP1 is what Vista should’ve been, and SP1 *is* free to Vista users. It could be argued that SP1 is required to make Vista usable, and so should be free, which it is. But only the most rabid Vista haters would maintain that Windows 7 is required to make Vista usable. Vista SP1 is quite usable as is, so there’s no need to make Windows 7 free. That being said, Microsoft always provides upgrade pricing, so Vista users won’t pay the full amount for Windows 7.
BTW, I would argue that Windows 3.1 should’ve been free to Windows 3.0 users, since 3.1 is what 3.0 should’ve been, not just in the colloquial sense, but literally, almost in the same way that OSX Puma is what Cheetah should’ve been.
Why Should they? No one here seems to mind that Apple has charged price for a beta OS along with its five glorified service packs (and counting).
I agree. It’s almost like Microsoft is saying, “Sorry about Vista.”
The whole Windows Seven hype that is going on is just a version of Microsoft saying “sorry about Vista”.
Why would they start developerblogs, spaming the internet with all these glorius “windows Seven” ( The Psycopath serial killer OS ) articles years ahead of any realese date???
Why dont we see Ubuntu already talking about 10.04 ???
Debian talking about 6.0? and so forth…
Edited 2008-11-05 09:43 UTC
From TFA:
“Windows Vista has been Microsoft~Ac^AEUR^ATMs [snip] most important release in the Company~Ac^AEUR^ATMs history”
I stopped reading right there. Vista the most important release in the companys history? Uh, no. Just no.
Also TL;DR.
I think the image below speaks for itself.
http://mylro.org/forwindowsuser.jpg
I’m going to mod you up as funny because there’s no way you’re being serious.
Well, if Windows 7 is like KDE and it finally gets released at 2009 or 2010, that means we will have at last a working version of KDE4 in a reasonable timeframe
No wonder that Windows looks like KDE. In fact, KDE is the one who always looked like Windows…
i will but i didn’t like vista and i’m not sure ehmx dock will fix it. i like the concept though. gimme less control panel icons that will make it more productive to me. i really hate scrolling through control panel items in start menu that is 2 times bigger than my 22″ display. and categories won’t help i just can’t get used it and pleeeease if it updates itself and then asks me if it should restart with OK and Wait 10 minutes buttons
make it wait by default. few days ago i was flashing firmware in my dreambox-like receiver and vista nearly restarted. not sure Bill would pay me for bricked receiver.
… Like the last years, MSFT is sure to be able to release a desktop-ready OS on or before 2010! Be exited.
To ease the development process and to decrease the cost generated by “creative” folks, MSFT decided not to create a new UI. They will rather create a (terrible) combination of Vista, XP, KDE, OS X.
Well, bash me for flaming. But I’m seriously shocked that such a wealthy company is unable to create a great, customer focused product.
My recommandation to MSFT: Get yourself a few SixSigma or other brainstorming tools, create a _CUSTOMER_ requirements table, create a house of quality … AND don’t guess the data you fill in there, gather it from those users who are so disappointed from your work. Don’t ever try to expose this users again as you did it with Mojave.
Best Regards
Patrick
I don’t know, I found the changes to be quite a step forward in productivity.
They’ve reduced the number of clicks substantially to perform operations, that is always good.
Do you have a specific issue? Have you used Windows7? I mean, I know people will always flame no matter what, but I’d like to believe you actually have some merit in your complaints.
Where is the killerfeature for Win Vista or Win 7 … I just see no reason why anyone should buy a new product which has no real improvements over the previous one. I want Microsoft to surprise me, to create something new, to be creative. I want to WOW about what I see.
Win Vista and Win 7 look to me like a reaction to what Apple and Linux WMs, Firefox etc does.
Microsoft should use it’s resources to create, to be creative. They have great potential (biggest userbase, widely known and used product..) they are just not using it in any way.
Regards
Edited 2008-11-04 20:16 UTC
Windows 7 is an incremental update to Windows Vista. It improves on the foundations laid out by it’s predecessor and provides some pretty neat changes.
You need look no further than the article to see an early example of some changes coming to Windows 7 I personally think they are exciting.
Funny how the author notes how Windows 7 is supposed to be UNDER hyped – yet MS has already claimed it will fix all issues with Windows Vista…
And as a KDE team member, you know a thing or two about hype. *Cough*KDE 4.0*cough*.
Sorry Jos, couldn’t resist
. You may smack me.
Ofcourse the key difference being, that Microsoft are the ones hyping their crappy useless piece of garbage up, whereas the overhyping of kde 4.0 is from users that couldnt understand a simply versioning scheme even when explained countless times..
“Ofcourse the key difference being, that Microsoft are the ones hyping their crappy useless piece of garbage up, whereas the overhyping of kde 4.0 is from users that couldnt understand a simply versioning scheme even when explained countless times..”
Now this confused me..
The general accepted versioning scheme is that when something hits a .0 release it is fully ready for consumption. .1-whatever fix bugs and add minor features. kde 4.0 was not ready for general consumption at 4.0, and was barely ready for developers. You can explain it all you want differently, but it does not change how a versioning scheme works.
So yes, it was overhyped by people that expected something, and then told that it was more or less a developers release. Whoever forbid that a .0 release should actually *be* a .0 release.
I don’t fully agree with Redeeman on that the users were responsible for the hype surrounding KDE 4.0. To a certain extend we, as KDE marketing team, certainly are to blame. Mostly in the wording of the release announcement. We’ve learned our lesson, and the 4.1 announcement was much more carefully worded.
But your claim of a .0 release being fully ready for endusers is not entirely true either. Neither Mac OS X 10.0 nor Gnome 2.0, linux kernel 2.6.0 (!) or Windows Vista were fully ready. KDE 4.0 certainly wasn’t that much worse compared to those, and we’re approaching feature-parity with 3.5 faster than the others did as well.
It’s ok, keep blaming the users. That strategy seems to be working nicely for desktop Linux.
The development cycle for Windows7 is radically different than that of Windows Vista. Compare PDC08 to PDC03 and the difference is night and day.
Microsoft basically allowed everyone’s science project into the Longhorn build that went out at PDC03, which resulted in them promising the world and delivering a fraction of it.
Now, more importantly is the new aim they’ve taken in development. They are indeed being very hush-hush about this whole thing, the way they develop the entire Operating System has been streamlined to be much more productive. It shows.
Windows 7 is extremely stable, and from my experience it is faster than Vista. This is Pre-Beta1 mind you, and I think the level-headed approach they’re taking this time around is refreshing.
In comparison to everything else they showed at PDC08, we actually saw very little Windows7 and more Windows7 platforms. We saw Direct2D, DirectWrite, the new C#/.NET4, actually programming the APIs for the features in Windows 7, the new audio capabilities, etc.
All of these things are impressive in their own respect, and incredibly mature, I don’t think this is something to sneeze at.
Hmmm. That sounds positive. Let’s see if they can deliver.
I can’t believe Vista can be improved upon. Period.
What have you been smoking?
I’ll believe Window 7 is great when I try it – but a skinned Vista with extra bloat and a clumsy dumbed down interface won’t cut it.
Maybe MS can get it right this time we’ll see but I’ll evaluate on my user experience not hype.
He’s obviously been smoking sarcasm weed. But you knew that. Right?
…I am going to try and not get my hopes up since I have been disappointed before. XP x64 is technically doing great on my system and I got no complaints. Everything just works…but I also kind of want to try something new. Hence I am optimistic. Oh please dont let us down Mr. Sinofsky.
A question for anyone who’s had a chance to play with Windows 7. Can you drag and drop to applications on the taskbar to load documents in them?
This was possible with the RISC OS Iconbar and NeXTSTEP Dock back in the late 80s, so it’d be nice to have drag and drop loading in Windows 20 years later.
One of the screenshots says: “You are currently running Windows7 home premium”. I guess that is all i need to hear.
its a pre beta, not of that has been desided yet. that kind of stuff happens latter. they more then likey left in testing stuff.
again: *pre-Beta*
-Nex6
Alpha version of Windows 7 got less bugs than Linux and is more usable. It looks great and works fine- this is what Vista supposed to be.
will there be X-Fi drivers? Evva..?!
XP is my last Windows version. Anything beyond that is just DRM infected spyware/Treacherous Computing. I am not knocking W7 – their ideas of reducing bloat by modularizing are great – they should have done that years ago. My problem is trust – I stopped trusting them years ago because of their business practices and their shoddy products. Since I only use Windows for gaming, when XP stops functioning on available hardware, I guess I’ll need to buy a PS-whatever and get used to the gawdawful controllers…!
Sorry to say it, but if you have a pdf reader capable of dealing with protected documents, you have been DRM infected.
Only solution is to throw your computer out the window, douse it liberally with gas, and then set it on fire (only way to kill all the DRMs)
Sorry to say it, but if you have a pdf reader capable of dealing with protected documents, you have been DRM infected.
Only solution is to throw your computer out the window, douse it liberally with gas, and then set it on fire (only way to kill all the DRMs)
I use OpenSource software only. The only reason I have a Windows box is for gaming. No DRM on my Linux system, never has been, never will be.