Linked by Kroc Camen on Sun 9th May 2010 12:34 UTC
"Dear Ubuntu, for the last couple years life has been good. Every time I've shown you to a friend or family member, they've compared you to what they're familiar with--Windows XP or Vista, mostly--and by comparison you've looked brilliant. Yeah, your ugly brown color scheme was a bit off-putting at first, but once people saw how secure, simple, and reliable you were, the response was almost universally positive. But recently, things have changed ..."
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Member since:2009-08-26
A family member bought a top-of-the-line computer with Vista a couple of years ago. The specs of the machine were amazing for the time, and still competitive today, but she was constantly frustrated with the slowness and instability of Vista.
She probably had junk running in the background or hadn't updated the system past SP1.
Windows 7 is a little better for older machines but on something new there is really no difference. I have machines with XP, Vista and 7 and my opinion is that upgrading from Vista to 7 is a waste of money unless you are running an older single core machine. There are plenty of benchmarks that support this assertion. Upgrading from XP is worth it though for the security and aesthetic improvements.
Speaking of Vista the screenshot on that post is clearly Vista and not 7. Not only does it have the older taskbar but the root drive in the explorer Window is labeled Vista. That blogger has zero experience running Vista or 7 and is not in a position to make comparisons. This story should be removed.
Member since:2009-04-10
Actually it probably is Windows 7.
You may notice the task bar still has the show desktop button that didn't exist in Vista. Also, Vista had a much darker task bar. To make the Windows 7 taskbar look like that, select Properties and select 'Use small icons', and change 'Taskbar buttons:' to 'Never combine'.
About the drives: just because C is the standard root letter, doesn't mean it has to be. It very well could be the E drive is root.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."More News »
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2005-06-29
I would tend to agree with you here; as great as Windows 7 was in my nearly 10 months evaluating it, Ubuntu is still a better fit for me. Granted, if I bought a new computer with 7 pre-installed I wouldn't remove it, but I don't foresee me buying a copy of 7.
I can't speak for everyone, but I've noticed major differences between the two, mostly under the hood. Remember, the UI is only a small fraction of a modern OS. On my test computer, Vista was dog-slow and had some stability issues. This was with SP1. With the Windows 7 Beta and RC, my system was much faster and more stable. The only issues I had with 7 was an incomplete bluetooth stack and driver support for a 10-year-old MP3 player. Even XP had issues with that device.
Another example: A family member bought a top-of-the-line computer with Vista a couple of years ago. The specs of the machine were amazing for the time, and still competitive today, but she was constantly frustrated with the slowness and instability of Vista. Once 7 was released to retail, I suggested she give it a try. Another family member bought her the copy and I installed and tweaked it to her preferences. She was absolutely floored by the difference; she now has a pleasant experience every time she uses her computer, as opposed to the constant frustration under Vista.
Again, I wouldn't run 7 as a main OS unless my computer came with it preinstalled, and even then I'd run Ubuntu and Haiku side-by-side with it. But it's only the second version of Windows I can faithfully say I really like (Win2K being the other one). Microsoft finally got it right, in my eyes.