Microsoft no longer thinks Linux poses a threat to its desktop Windows business.
Directions on Microsoft's Wes Miller pointed out via Twitter how Microsoft has changed the boilerplate "Competition" section in its last two annual financial filings with the SEC.
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Member since:2009-08-18
Neolander stop making stuff up.
I have a 1.2ghz laptop with 2GB of ram (maxed out) ... Windows 7 runs with a bit of lag while running Visual Studio, Firefox and SQL server management studio ... While debugging a WCF webservice.
Reboots are quicker than Windows XP 64bit on the same laptop and all Windows 7 accounts are essentially limited due to UAC (try debugging a website in IIS in VS when not running as Admin).
The only time when I saw Windows 7 take long than about 30 second to login, is when I was running 2 VMs on the same box ... one of them running sharepoint 2010.
Why do people lie on this website? I dunno what it achieves
Member since:2010-03-08
Well, I don't know why it works so differently for both of us. My work machine is a C2D @ 2GHz + 2GB RAM, and my personal machine is a Ci5 @ 2.27GHz + 4GB RAM, so I'd naively agree that they should run faster.
Perhaps the difference is in the hard drive (5400 RPM for you too ?). Or in software tweaks (have you applied something like nLite to your Windows DVD or altered the service configuration ? Or perhaps your antivirus is less bloated). Or perhaps you're just used to the Windows lag, though the 30s objective metric you bring here makes it unlikely.
>30s time to login is frequent here (especially on the work PC, which I don't turn off during the day because it takes a bit more than a minute to boot), and after login you're good for a prolonged period of strong lag. On a running system, responsiveness and prioritization of competing tasks is poor : strong disk access from a random background daemon is all it takes to glitch out audio playback, and to kill the responsiveness out of just about every mouse action in unrelated software (opening the start menu, right-clicking...). Occasionally, I even get a laggy keyboard, something I thought had disappeared in the 90s or so.
On my home machine, where I can compare both systems, there is a strong difference between F14+GNOME2 and Windows 7 in terms of responsiveness. Basically, when running similar software (openoffice, firefox, thunderbird, VLC, and compilation jobs...), Linux is relatively bad (imo), and Windows is worse.
Edited 2011-08-13 13:27 UTC
Member since:2005-11-13
I'm not sure how you get it to reboot spontaneously, but mine just pops up and asks me to reboot or suspend. I can tell it to suspend for 4 hours, at which time it just pops back up again with the same dialog.
If you don't like that behavior, you can set Windows Update to not automatically install the updates. And if you don't have admin privileges, well... you always get stuck with somebody else's shitty defaults that way, no matter what OS you use
And I agree with you 100% about Windows Explorer missing an 'up one level' button... somebody should be executed for taking that out. But hey, no self-respecting power user uses Explorer anyway, so... *shrug*
Member since:2010-03-08
Yeah, I have my home computer set up to do that too, but on the work PC, I get this dialog instead : http://i41.servimg.com/u/f41/11/71/91/00/_10.png
As mentioned in the beginning of the paragraph you quote, this problem indeed wouldn't exist if I had admin privileges on that machine
The point was to show the sadistic genius that has been put in the defaults of Windows Update, which is to the best of my knowledge the sole desktop update system which forces reboots on you this way roughly once a month.
Out of curiosity, what would you suggest as a replacement ?
Edited 2011-08-13 17:43 UTC
Member since:2010-09-23
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
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Member since:
2010-03-08
And the OP's description of Linux of Windows 7 made me wonder if we are running the same operating systems.
See where I'm going ?
(PS : If you really think that the Windows 7 updater is fine, I guess you have always got an admin account on your computers. May I suggest that you also try it as a limited user who has some work to do ? Believe me, it's fun.
Before that, I too just found Windows Update annoying, and unconsciously quickly adjusted the settings to something that makes it more tolerable. It's only on my current work PC, which I don't own and can't tweak, that I've discovered the level of carefully-crafted sadistic design that has been put into this thing's default settings.
You have to experience it firsthand to understand, I think. This backwards counter, like a bad Hollywood bomb detonator, popping up silently behind the active windows so that you don't notice it right away, counting the minutes you have left with your work, second by second. The disabled "Later" button that's laughing at your stressed face as you attempt to finish what you are doing in time, and the enabled "Reboot now" button that's here just to make fun of you a little more. The magical moment, at the end of the 15 minutes, where all applications you were using get brutally killed without a warning or a chance to do something for your unsaved data, in one very rare example of instant responsiveness from this OS. Then, as you wonder if that mail you sent during the last minute was actually sent or not, the frustration of waiting as the machine sluggishly install part of its updates, sluggishly reboots, sluggishly installs some more updates, sometimes reboot again...
I see two possibility as to how this thing could come to existence. Either the guy who coded it never actually tried it with a limited account, or it was a military experiment somewhere around Guantanamo which no one ever knew everything about...)