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....there are so many things wrong with your post, i mean.... wow.

i could comment on every inacuracy, but I just don't have time.

Win7 is not vista SP3. there are a LOT of changes that warrant a new release and not a service pack. vista was a stepping stone to windows 7, we all know it. not that vista was particularly bad per say, but it's no windows 7.

Microsoft did good, as much as some some people hate MS (insert your own reason here), you have to hand it to them when they do something right. Been using windows 7 since before the official beta and its been great. no waiting for SP1 here.

Hardly a stepping stone.
Vista was basically a completely new platform, 7 is an enhancement to Vista.
I'm not saying it is a service pack, but don't call Vista a stepping stone.

to be honest, all this "7 is great" stuff is pretty freaking iritating. Most of what is in 7 is in Vista. The reason why Vista was iritating was because things like drivers had to be re-written from scratch, so they sucked, things weren't in the same place so people were no longer comfortable with where they were, people had to get used to UAC (people say UAC is annoying, it is really no different than sudo or OS X's pirvleage elevation system, people just weren't used to it), etc...

Vista hate was all hype (negative hype), 7 love is all positive hype.
In the end, it's ALL hype, and sheep go along with it.

I didn't even wait for it to be released. :-)

OK. So you want to tell us that everything in this post is wrong............but you don't want to say why.


I think you need to re-read that and understand the implications of it. The 64-bit criticisms were certainly valid and worth exploring as well as the braindamaged approach for Windows 7 XP mode. You address none of that.


Sorry, but I'm afraid shouting "Everybody hates Microsoft, pity them!" is not any kind of response or rebuttal.


Good for you, but that doesn't answer the criticisms of the OP.

If you mean the UI works because people just happen to know where the features they need to use are, then sure it works because people learned where the features they need are.

But if you mean works as in that 90% of all features requests from already existed in the existing software, then no, the old UI did NOT work.
The whole point of ribbon is to bring all features of the software to the user contextually rather than the user having to go around and find what they need, often times getting frustrated because they can't find it.
Does it suck that in the new version you can no longer find what you need? Sure, but if you take the time to learn it, those problems will be gone, and you'll probably even find that you know how to do more faster.

Nope. Photoshop. Illustrator. Proof you are wrong.

Not everyone has a 30" monitor you need to offset the disgusting amount of screen real estate that garbage ribbon takes.

Also, WYSIWIG, nah, not even on 30" in portrait with the ribbon sucking up space.

For people who actually WORK on a computer, Ribbon is nothing.

Have fun with the new mspaint ribbon. Its great, right? Not enough to make anyone ditch a real program for it.

We should all upgrade to 7 for that.

Edited 2009-10-22 23:13 UTC

An ever changing UI is hardly a way to optimally use a program. They screwed it because they need to put as much "features" as possible with each release to keep selling their shit. True is 99% of people don't ever user more than Bold, Save as, Underline, Change Typography, Align, and a couple of other expected features. I don't think a program should have so much features, it makes it very difficult to learn/master. Don't even mention having to relearn how to use a damn word processor with each new release.

And idiots keep saying something like LaTeX is too hard to learn.

as dumb as it is, I really hate the new start menu

Agreed, though personally I've always hated the start menu concept. Browsing through your actual application folders rather than shortcuts is the way to do it imho.

I see people saying they hate the new start menu. I bet 90% of them still hunt in the All Programs menu.

The new menu is supposed to be searched, and to have quick shortcuts to important system directories. Everything the old menu had is there anyway, just moved around.

No, the biggest leap in innovation was from VMS -> NT

/ducks

The best you can say about windows 7 is that it's not as bad as it used to be. It has lots of good stuff under the surface but looking at the competition it barely serves to bring the operating system up to date.

I'm still waiting for a usable shell in windows and a comprehensive command reference (like we've had in OpenVMS since version 7.1). Powershell is admittedly more powerful but you also end up writing almost as much code as you would if you just wrote a C# program anyhow and the entire documentation for how to write a usable Powershell script is hardly supplied with the operating system.

I'll wait for the series of commercials called "Windows 7 was my idea and they f--ked it up".

Err.. You do realise OSX and Linux also have UAC, but they call it sudo/policykit. Its just as annoying, except that it prompts you for your username and password. Same thing pretty much. And because its missing in Windows XP, in windows XP, if a hacker compromises one of the programs you are using, boom, every account is compromised, and it could happily rootkit the entire OS. But I guess you are one of those people who will blame Microsoft if your computer starts crashing after your IRC client got hacked?

Also Microsoft offers "Microsoft Security essentials" free to download. They probably would have included it, but they are getting sued left right and centre for anti-trust violations (because instead of sucking less, companies like opera prefer to complain). Microsoft security essentials can be installed for free in XP mode too (and I'd imagine Microsoft will probably integrate it into the installation process to automatically install in both too). You don't need XP mode really either, because unlike Linux and OSX, Windows 7 has excellent backwards compatibility, and is still capable of running many programs designed in 1998. Just because new editions of Windows don't constantly break older application's (unlike Windows/Linux upgrades do), doesn't mean it isn't more useful to developers either.

And 64bit support I don't think is that bad. OSX its good, but 3rd party hardware support is shockingly bad, and the entire linux filesystem is a mess. I agree I would like to see the Program files directories merged, but overall, 32bit/64bit support I feel works well.


You also are forgetting features such as Bitlocker to go (which is VERY useful to enterprises, and those networks of yours) and homegroups. In fact, clearly, you aren't as professional a user as you claim, if you can't recognise many changes aren't cosmetic. Because there are plenty of features improved under the hood. In fact, Apple charges money for even small updates, and I don't see you complaining about that (Windows users will get the primary new feature of Snow leopard for free, OpenCL). And a huge amount of their improvements were actually developed by the open source community, they simply take credit for it (such as the improvements to windows sharing).

So 2 words, "you fail". And you fail even more as an admin, if you believe that UAC is nothing more then an annoyance.

That is not correct. Sudo/policykit in OSX and linux do not work like the UAC. First of all sudo on Linux is a token based system where you have super rights for a limited time and can do several superuser functions without getting prompted for the password again. Both OSX and Linux only prompt you to escalate rights when its something that will affect the system, UAC asks you to escalate even if its something only affecting you, which is silly. Also the user is still an admin on the machine meaning that UAC is only prompting the user to escalate privileges and not asking for a password to escalate privileges unless the user is not specifically set up as admin, which by default they are. UAC and sudo are not the same, there are subtle differences mostly due to culture and differences in architecture but if you've used both the differences would be very apparent.

Auzy astroturfed...

Not even remotely close to being the same thing.

I can't speak about policykit, but I know at least in Ubuntu when I get hit by sudo and have to elevate permissions I get that password request--which proves that I have rights to the system. Moreover it remembers that I have elevated rights for awhile, so I can get whatever it was I was trying to do done.

UAC just looks over at me through bleary eyes and asks: "Are you sure you want to do that?" Then once I've told it that, yes I know that I'm performing a potentially dangerous system task, that might require elevated permissions to be granted--it doesn't ask me to authenticate myself. It just hits me up with several more warnings as I go along, never once asking me to prove I have the right to perform these potentially dangerous actions.

Yes, with sudo may be a bit annoying to have to play "Simon says," but at least the OS is aware that I AM Simon! UAC is a joke.

Auzy astroturfed...


How quickly they forget...
http://www.osnews.com/story/19620/_Vista_s_UAC_Security_Prompt_Was_...

Read the article and you'll see quite clearly that yes, UAC was designed to irritate you, not to be functional.

--bornagainpenguin

*sigh*
The whole "Product B is a service pack for Product A" is getting quite tired.

It's goal of the "service pack" argument at this point is to say Product B has something in common, however tenuous, to Product A, so Product B cannot therefore be an actual "new" product.

Wouldn't Windows XP be more of a "service pack" for Windows 2000 because of how similar they are, just reskinned with Luna and changed a couple things?
Windows XP is very popular for a long time now for it just being a "service pack".

Since poundsmack won't dissect your post .. I will.

Then don't get ultimate .. you probably wouldn't need it anyways seeing as how the professional is a superset of home premium with xp mode and enterprise level support and ultimate is a superset of both with more language packs, and did you really use Ultimate Extras anyways??



yes .. but you can still get all the icons to show if you really want them.



Yeah .. it new thing on the start menu called 'Devices' where .. oddly enough .. it shows all the stuff connected to your computer .. wow, what a concept.



it's called change .. get over it. I personally like the fact they combined the quick launch and taskbar into one .. it's less cluttered and oh look, if you hover your mouse over the icon you can see the thumbnail or multiple thumbnails if you have more of the same app open so you can switch between them easily.



no .. it's for security. If you were really and IT person you'd know that, oh and you can TURN IT OFF TOO



That is complete and utter BS and you know it. The problem with Vista is that MS made it without interaction from the 3rd party makers. That changed with 7. MS sat down with them and collaborated to make sure everything worked. After Vista you bet your ass they made sure things would work out of the box.



Well yeah they wanna attract people to it .. it's called growth and competition, and as for pissing people off. I've used just about every incarnation of windows myself. From 3.0 and 3.11 on dos 6.22 on up to win95, then 98, then 98se, then me, 2000, then xp (not really used NT4 except at school labs) and in my professional opinion this is the best one. I'm not knocking xp .. I used xp for a damn long time before I knew it was time to change.



what the hell is harder??? you have to learn things??
GET OVER IT. You're in the computer field for a living which means you're going to have to learn new things. Technology is changing at a rapid pace and if you can't keep up then get out of the way for people who can.



Again .. this is your personal opinion and you are entitled to it, but also realize that those are 3rd party applications not created by MS. They can make the interface anyway they want to. I personally find the Ribbon quite useful. It's the fact you got used to the old way and think the old way is the way it should be for all time. Again, GET OVER IT.



Not gonna disagree. The introduction of the NT kernel was a huge leap, but over time you have to move beyond it to cut the dead weight to support the new innovations.



Again, your opinion.



I'm wondering how someone who works in the tech field with this much experience can be so bitter about change. Once upon a time Linux and FreeBSD weren't as polished as they are now, know why? THEY CHANGED. Things were added and removed to make things work better. 7 is no different.



Ah .. so this is why you're generally pissed eh? They could but they won't because it's time to move on.



Then don't flippin use it. I've thrown just about every 32bit app I can at Windows 7 and it's barely blinked. Oh lord if you're still using 16bit apps .. you need to really get the coders to upgrade the app.



Home users can get a free antivirus from MS .. it's called Security Essentials or you can get AVG or Avast. If you mean IT, then no. That would mean it's for a corporation and you have to pay for it. Yet again, get over it.



'hacky'??? I'm on the 64bit windows 7 now and it's not at all 'hacky' .. like I said, I've thrown about every program I can at it and it runs like a champ.



Then I think you should get out your line of work then. If it makes you that angry, you need to leave and let other people who will learn and adapt with change take over since, obviously, you won't.

Start Menu --> Devices and Printers. Is that really so hard? UAC has been fine-tuned, and it's still better than the binary security model on XP (Or 2003, for that matter) of "Admin or !Admin".



Why is Microsoft the only company not allowed to change their UI? Vista's the first new UI since Windows 95, and you know what? It's significantly easier to use as a result. I *do* wish they hadn't taken out the "Group" functionality in Explorer, and the lack of Virtual Desktops still drives me crazy. But Aero peek, while it sounds silly, rocks, and the keyboard shortcuts for launching / moving windows are very useful.



Ok, that's three non-OS examples, but do you REALLY think we should all still be using program manager?



Well, I'm not sure if you mean NT 3.1, or Windows 3.10, but really, NT 4.0 was just NT 3.x with the Windows 95 UI. And there things stopped. I'll let you in on another secret-- Windows 2008 is better than 2003.



I have yet to see a real need for XP mode. We'll probably have a few legacy applications that need it, but for the most part, XP mode is a nice bonus that most people won't use. Oh, and make sure you write down the password.



Probably due to all those pesky lawsuits, but I guess you haven't heard Microsoft Security Essentials?

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/



You mean like this?

# ls -ld /usr/lib*
drwxr-xr-x 102 root root 28672 2009-09-19 18:42 /usr/lib
drwxr-xr-x 199 root root 135168 2009-09-19 18:48 /usr/lib64