With Snow Leopard finally been given a release date and a price, the comparisons with Windows 7 are starting to pop up all over the place, especially focussing on the price aspect of things. While Apple's move to price Snow Leopard at 29 USD for Leopard owners is a very welcome one, the move doesn't mean that Microsoft is getting a price beating from Apple.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2007-01-08
I was going to post a comment as soon as I read Thom's opinion that Win 7 Windows Explorer has been "improved" because for me, the new "improved" Windows Explorer is one the main reasons why I will not be moving to Win 7 from XP. (Lack of a "Classic" Start Menu, the new and broken Search (mal-)function, and the downright offensive Once-Click crap are some others.)
The new Explorer is pretty much nothing but severely reduced functionality and difficult navigation. The status bar is even less useful than before; the one-click functionality - which can not be reverted back to standard pre-Win7 behaviour - is not unlike a personal affront: I have been doing it one way for 15 years and now have to relearn it, for no benefit whatsoever. This new functionality has caused me nothing but problems on the desktop and in Explorer. Thanks to the light-gray font in the Folder Pane, using Win Explorer is now a constant eyestrain. The absence of vertical lines in the Tree Pane make it almost impossible to understand complex folder structures.
Not being able to right-click on a folder or drive and call up a search dialog from a context menu is a real problem because this has been replaced by a search box at the top of the GUI... which is kind of a throwback to the long-ago depreciated "Multiple Document Interface" which separated the menu bar from the window it was controlling. To me, this is about a retrograde, obtuse, and awkward a way of building a GUI as can be conceived. The "point your cursor at a file or folder and wait a moment and the focus will shift to highlight that item" is horrible: Microsoft says Win7 has "less clicking" but what they actually need to say is "Win 7 - Less Clicking, More Waiting". I can no longer work at MY speed, I must work with constant pauses so that the computer can catch up. And now almost every part of the file pane is live, and I have to be careful about where I rest the cursor...
Well, I could go on, but my initial impression is this: For anyone who has to do any significant amount of file management, Win 7 is absolutely unworkable unless you want to invest in a decent replacement for the new Windows Explorer. (And a slavish clone of XP's Windows Explorer would be perfectly acceptable, even though that too has a few obvious flaws...)
One the other hand, I really do not need to upgrade and can put it off until such time as my main apps no longer support XP. "Main apps," you know, the apps for the sake of which I have a computer in the first place. And that will be quite a few years yet.
Member since:2006-04-22
Wow, just wow, I am speechless.
I actually just now looked, and sure enough you can NOT set multiple file's permissions within a folder. I would sure love to see the response from the dev team at to the logic of this?
As for the status bar. This is one thing that has bugged me to hell. ALL the status bar shows now is the number of files within a directory. Pointless enough that it need not be selected, and should either be removed, or maybe actually show something?
As for the Search options, these can be restored through registry editing. Under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\find
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\find
Then delete "LegacyDisable".
Correct if I am wrong here, but I thought this came about back in Vista's SP1 so as to be compliant with complaints filed by Google?
Member since:2007-02-11
Try Explorer++. It's as close you can get as possible to the original XP Explorer and it uses the shell namespace so we get lots of post-XP benefits (new file copying engine, Previous versions etc) . Submit feature requests to its developer to clone the real Explorer. The shell team has been on a rampage since the beta 1 of Longhorn I remember it started becoming horrible since then. Now they've even spoiled some of the taskbar and Start menu functionality. Explorer++ also supports libraries/XML saved searches. Unfortunately, bits and pieces are not there like the original Explorer but it's less annoying and close to XP's Explorer. It's fast, free and supports tabs too.
Again most of the damage was done in that abomination called Vista (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_removed_from_Windows_Vista#Wi...), (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_removed_from_Windows_Vista#Wi...) and people still ask "What's wrong with Vista?) but the shell team was commited to pulling more functionality for sake of cleaning up the UI and simplicity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_removed_from_Windows_7#Window...).
Edited 2009-06-11 19:16 UTC
Member since:
2007-02-11
I disagree with the file manager bit. Explorer in Windows 7 is the most ridiculous piece of shit/junk/garbage/filthy zilch since it was introduced in Windows 95. I've stated my reasons here:
- You can't undo more than one delete like XP.
- Advanced file type functionality gone. Can't create secondary user actions/set default action, customize file *type* icon, MIME type, can't even delete defined file types OOTB, can't show or hide extension for only particular file types
- You can't set permissions/ACLs on multiple selected items
- Standard actions like Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete require more than 2 clicks for mouse users (Organize menu instead of toolbar) - I thought menus was passe so where's the consistency here?
- You can't set customize your own toolbar buttons. The command bar is fixed and devoid of icons
- You can only edit metadata for JPEGs, MP3s, ASFs not for PNGs, AVIs, MPEGs, MP4/MOV, GIF. In XP you could edit metadata for any file.
- Column handlers in Explorer can't display custom information from shell extensions
- Free disk space is not quickly accessible except from (My) Computer or drive properties
- Size of all files in a folder is not shown unless you select it
- Size of 15+ files requires clicking "Show more details", again changing selection of a single file + 15 again requires "Show more details"
- You can't map a network drive without assigning a drive letter
- Can't customize folder background using desktop.ini
- Can't set folder thumbnails using Folders.jpg
- Alt+Enter to see properties of selected items in left/navigation pane of Explorer doesn't work
- Files are compulsorily autosorted, 100+ files pasted in another 100+ set get scatterred all across.
- Rename or new folder creation also autosorts assuming you won't be doing any more action on that same item again. Several times, quickly pressing the New folder button and hitting Enter has given me the error message "Can't find new folder" because it has been autosorted
- You can't do batch actions on 15+ files from the GUI. The registered verb handler disappears after selecting 15+ files.
- You can't open two different files types by selecting them and pressing Enter, e.g. DOC and DOCX. Must open them individually.
- WMP's thumbnail preview lacks volume unlike the earlier DeskBand
- You can disable combining taskbar buttons but not grouping. Two windows of the same app e.g. Explorer, IE are always grouped, can't set them to appear on extreme right as you were accustomed to for years
- Network activity animation isn't shown in notification area. Dial-up users are screwed.
- Simple right click actions now require keyboard+mouse usage that is, Shift+right click
- There's no UI to customize your search, you must memorize the search syntax
- Default setting of new taskbar requires 2 clicks to switch, first on button then on thumbnail instead of 1 click directly on non-combined button
- Common dialogs for Open/Save don't remember their views
- Auto arrange and Align to Grid are not available in Windows Explorer
- The horizontal Sort bar that appeared for ANY view in Explorer now only appears for details view
- Left/navigation pane doesn't automatically scroll horizontally for longer folder names like Vista, there's no horizontal scrollbar either for manual scrolling
- Arrange By/Stack By is only available for libraries, not regular folders
- Restore previous windows at logon feature gone and not working anymore