Steven Sinofsky has said that Windows 7 will enter the “release to manufacturing” stage in about three months from now, meaning August ’09. This means that the actual Windows 7 release would be well in time for the holiday season. ” If the feedback and telemetry on Windows 7 match our expectations then we will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about 3 months. If we are successful in that, then we tracking to our shared goal of having PCs with Windows 7 available this Holiday season.”
Is it ready? I haven’t tried it yet, but the stuff I’ve read so far has has been overwhelmingly positive, which is in stark contrast to the Vista RCs. A lot of people (including the main IT guy at work) have been using the beta as their primary OS.
The one thing that seems to not be ready for prime time is the ‘XP mode’ feature, as I’ve heard it is still quite glitchy. Hopefully they can get that fixed in time.
XP Mode: total waste of time. I wanted to review it for you guys, but I’ve got nothing to say about it.
Windows 7: my new main OS of choice since the beta. Definitely up to par with Mac OS X, with the added benefit of not requiring me to shell out boatloads of money on a piece of restricted hardware (Mac). This is the first time a Windows release doesn’t drive me nuts.
Is it a waste of time because you don’t need it, or because it doesn’t work?
I don’t know. I’ve used the beta and am running the RC full-time on my machine. While I definitely think it’s a good step-up in terms of UI polish and usability, and I am inclined to FEEL like it’s a “great OS”… I’m kind of suspect that we all may have succumbed to a bizarre phenomenon. Namely, XP (SP2) was a fairly strong OS and has been “good enough” (or ‘great’ to some). I kind of feel as though VISTA lowered the bar so much and left such a sour taste in all of our mouths that they really could only go up from there. (Unless, of course, they wanted to go bankrupt on another dud release.)
XP has served many of us well. But we’re all rearing for something fresh; something modern; something that really drives today’s hardware to its full potential. While Windows 7 sees that through in some aspects, I can’t objectively measure the functional benefit over XP other than a few minor items. The panel has seen some love in this new release, but we’re still doing the same shit: START BUTTON, TASKBAR, SYSTEM TRAY, CLOCK.
Homegroup and Libraries are the only nice semi-innovative items in Win7 that immediately come to mind. But most of Windows7 is “let’s try our best to scrape all of the crud off of VISTA, and re-release it as a “new” operating system with a new name.”
I like Win7 better than VISTA, no doubt. But really… we all just want/need something new, and Win7 is what they’ve given us: Better than VISTA. XP can’t serve that *new* feeling despite having almost identical functionality. It’s just like a used car can get you from point-a to point-b, but it’s still a used car (not pretty, not fresh, not new).
So yeah.. as I said, i LIKE Win7 a LOT more than VISTA. But I believe the monopoly on software/games/office compatibility is what really drives us to see this as an “awesome” upgrade. If Linux (or Mac) could run my windows apps with the same clean/integrated feeling, the playing field would be leveled and we would see Win7 for what it really is… an “eh, not bad” Operating system.
Just my 2-cents…
I kind of feel the same way. It’s a decent os, and I don’t really see a lot wrong with it… but I don’t see much right either. It’s just Vista with the polish that Vista should have had in the first place… and after Vista, anything is better. I do wonder what would have happened if Vista had been Win 7, i.e. with all the polish that W7 has now. If that had been the case, and it was the immediate successor to XP… would everyone be getting as excited? All the Win7 reviews I’ve seen have the phrase “better than Vista” or some equivalent wording in them, usually more than once, and the same for the user comments. Is being better than Vista the best it has going for it, then?
I’m just not able to fly off the handle with excitement the way most have been. W7 is ok… but I just don’t find it the wonderfully awesome innovation everyone else seems to.
It’s still very much Windows though, I’m not impressed. But Thom likes flashy, he’s a Mac user. 😉 I don’t like these kind of things.
All that flashy stuff is to much ‘in your face’ for me. Something like an Ubuntu GNOME-desktop works better for me. I’m moving away from brown though. 😉
In Windows 7 and Vista all the options/screens with settings are stucked so far away it’s really annoying. You need to click and wait a bit like 4 times to get the same screen that was in Windows 2000 already in certain cases. That’s just silly. Why do they keep doing that ?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t have any use for Windows anymore (I never found the time to play games and when I do it’s just the non-3D stuff: mahjong, sudoku, tetravex).
Except for an interesting bug I ran into involving a Partition originally made by Vista, seeable by XP, but un-discernable by Windows7. Very odd.
It’s quite good used as a consumer level OS, but I’ve been having some issues running it on a Windows 2003 domain (upgrading to 2008 would probably fix many of the issues) with group policy…some of the settings simply refuse to be applied to any of the Win7 machines I have running. Most corporations are still running Windows 2003 DC’s with no plans to upgrade to Windows 2008, though if they want to run Win7 they are going to have to take the plunge since I’ve seen no word from MS on Windows 2003 compatibility.
My favorite new feature by far is the taskbar. I hated it initially, but after getting used to it I couldn’t imagine going back. I have a feeling most users will make the mistake of putting the taskbar back into Vista mode without giving it an honest chance. All that’s left to do to make the taskbar perfect is adding virtual desktops (which *nix has had for decades it seems)…why they haven’t added this is beyond me, seems like such an easy feature to add. Perhaps there isn’t much of a demand for it?
its ready for prime time. its more stable than XP when it was first released, and way more stable than Vista when it was first released. AND! it won’t be out till August so that means even MORE time to perfect every little thing (and introduce yet another few features that are still in beta, also there will be some news on XP mode that might make a few people happy. stay tuned this month).
I’ve installed the Beta and RC and find very little to get excited about.
I run XP and OS X on other computers and Windows 7 lacks anything that would tempt me to switch.
If anything it looks (to me) a little nicer than Vista.
I tried to install W7, but it kept asking me drivers for my dvd drive …
Let’s use the word ‘Christmas’ instead of ‘Holiday Season’ as it’s pretty meaningless outside of the US.
I thought the holiday season was my (UK) summer as that’s when people go on holiday here, which made me a little confused with the article.
Wikipedia to the rescue….
RTM Return To Manufacturer?
No, RTM – Remember the milk
or… Release To Manufacturing