Windows 7 in for a rough ride?
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The biggest problem I heard about Windows Vista was that it broke people’s old programs. No one wanted to change their lives around by purchasing new printers, peripherals, or software to do the work that they had gotten done with few problems in XP. Here comes Windows 7 and it has not promised any new level of compatibility with older devices aside from the Windows 7 business and ultimate editions that will include an XP compatibility mode. Most customers will end up with Windows 7 home premium which does not include the XP mode.
The promise of Windows 7 seems to be that it is better than Vista and slightly faster than XP. Saying that the operating system that is better than the train wreck that was Vista and faster than an operating system released 8 years ago isn’t exactly high praise.
I’ve used Windows 7, it is a good operating system and it is much better than XP. However, I don’t have any peripherals or software that I wanted to use with it, all I asked of Windows 7 was that it ran and connected me to the internet. Whether or not in can slip in seamlessly in a Windows XP environment without any huge headaches has yet to be determined. But creating a good operating system isn’t everything, it also has to be marketed to the public - this is where Microsoft seems to go nuts. From little girls making cheesy powerpoint shows with kittens to campy release party ideas, Microsoft is doing their best to make us laugh at them without really giving us any reason to buy their product.
Is Windows 7 a good upgrade? Yes, for some. It is very possible though that small and large businesses will stick with XP because all their stuff still works perfectly with it and consumers will avoid it because Microsoft will run yet another cheesy and poorly thought out ad campaign.
6 Comments
the oracle
October 8th, 2009
at 10:03pm
On what do you base your opinion that Windows 7 is better? Prettier? Safer? Certainly not faster, because in the systems I’ve used it on, and friends, and clients systems, it is not.
So what is it exactly? (This is not to provoke argument, just discussion, as I have used XP for all of those 8 years, and the things that annoy with XP are still there in Windows 7.
Plus, for me, I see a regression to the look and feel of Windows 3.1, from 1993, just dolled up a bit - so I see basically no progress, outside that which is in the kernel.
SuezanneC Baskerville
October 8th, 2009
at 10:45pm
To run Blue Mars with all the effects will require either Vista or Windows 7. XP can’t run the latest Direct X. So for me, XP is about to be out of date.
mark
October 8th, 2009
at 11:37pm
“I see a regression to the look and feel of Windows 3.1, from 1993, just dolled up a bit - so I see basically no progress, outside that which is in the kernel”
For not trying to provoke a argument that is one of the most ignorant statements i have read in a long time…..Read what Mr walt mossberg said today about win 7…..Faster , elegant and in some areas works better than OSx….
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574459293141191728.html
the oracle
October 9th, 2009
at 7:17pm
Mark, opinions are like noses, everyone has one, and there are a lot of ugly ones.
Besides, when did Walt Mossberg become arbiter of all?
I use XP everyday, on a variety of hardware, and in [subjectively] 95% of cases, XP is better than anything else that Microsoft has come up with. the other 5% is not worth worrying about.
BTW, who are you to decide what is or is not ignorant? if you read enough, you’ll see that, though mine is not the majority opinion, I’m certainly not alone. the others are either mesmerized by smoke and mirrors, or have monetary reasons to be on the side of 7. Also, if you check what Jason Perlow on zdnet has to say, he agrees that the interface is atavistic, and resembles a dolled up Windows 3.1, with more colors.
Anyone can come up with a dissenting opinion, that does not mean the first one was not valid
Also, my comment was not addressed to you. You are giving the appearance of being among the mesmerized.
James Lehman
November 8th, 2009
at 1:36am
The new security of 7 is UAC? In my experience Vista-Win 7 users just click yes to everything without reading the prompts because it becomes habit.
He is correct about small businesses though as none that I know will move to Windows 7 due to hardware conflicts with expensive software/hardware issues.
As for the look of Windows 7 meh just change a few theme files around and XP looks just like 7.
I have problems with driver signing too because for several pieces of hardware I modified some XP x64 drivers to run on Win 7 only I can’t sign them so I have to run in test mode all the time (annoying). The hoopla about driver signing is supposedly to get good drivers. The only drivers that have ever given me problems are “offical ATI drivers”.
Kalin
November 13th, 2009
at 12:17am
i wish people would stop calling Vista a train wreck because it wasn’t. The OS was pretty solid and worked. The main issue that people tend to CONTINUE to blow out of proportion is it large memory footprint that was incompatible with older computers that people were used to. Yes it was slower and yes Microsoft decided making sure that your computer was secured was more important than making sure the dot matrix printer you were using still worked.
In addition, after SP1 came out most OEMs finally had most of the drivers written for Vista. Or they found out all they had to do was change some of the signatures and a few other tweaks to the XP drivers to make it work.
Yes it was slower, but it was hardly a train wreck. I’d been using Vista since it came out on a machine with only one processor and 1GB of ram. No it wasn’t the smoothest experience but the computer hardly ran train wreckingly slow (most of the time it work at just about the same speed as XP), and it crashed a lot less than XP. Whenever I would reinstall XP I would get so frustrated with the thing I would almost immediately reinstall Vista.
Vista worked. Seven works better. and both work better than XP.
Oh and the only reason I would ever go back to XP on my old computer was because ATI refused to write proper drivers for the video card so some of the TF2 effects wouldn’t render.