Introduction
Back when Vista was just released, it became clear that the operating system had some major, major issues. It delivered a boatload of new features and improvements over Windows XP, but they came at a huge price: increased hardware demands, in-your-face performance bugs, and application and driver incompatibilities. People didn’t buy it – figuratively and literally.
It didn’t take Microsoft long to realise that they needed to shift the attention away from Vista to Windows’ next version, whose name would soon be revealed as Windows 7. However, uncharacteristically for Microsoft, the company remained fairly mum on the subject until the D6 conference, where the ever lovely Julie Larson-Green gave short presentation about Windows 7.
Since that time, May 2008, we have gained a good insight into Windows 7, culminating in the several test releases put out by the company that have been received with almost unanimous praise, even by the hardest Vista detractors. However, in between Vista’s launch in early 2007, and the first official words in May 2008, speculation on OSNews was rampant.
Let’s look back upon what we were all saying, and how wrong or right we were. I’m going to talk about what we hoped Windows 7 would be, and what we actually expected Windows 7 would be – those are two different things. Because I want to fall on my bum first, let’s start with the uninformed gibber I spewed onto the web back then.
To keep this article from growing into a book, I decided to skip whatever news sites were saying, focussing on what you, our readers, and I have said. I also decided to sample random articles about Windows 7 for interesting comments, and trimmed it down to a manageable amount. Feel free to add your own in the comments.
What I hoped
In the article “Windows 7: Preventing Another Vista-esque Development Process“, I set out how I personally would have liked Windows 7 to turn out. Even though I acknowledged in the article that it was all just wishful thinking, it’s still fun to see what I hoped for, and how little (read: nothing) of that became reality.
In summary, I hoped Microsoft would rebuild the userland of Windows on top of the tried and true Windows NT kernel and associated tools. Contrary to some other people, I see no logical reason to use something UNIX-based, since Windows NT comes with features built-in that are only available as afterthoughts in the UNIX world. NT is also quite portable, well-designed, and scalable. No reason to start over from scratch, I wrote.
The userland is where the problems lie, and so I advised Microsoft to start with a clean slate on that end. Basically, I hoped they would do an Apple: build a new userland, and use virtualisation to still allow for backwards compatibility, much like Mac OS X and its Classic environment.
To make sure business users didn’t start crying in foetal position in the corner of their offices, I figured it would be a good idea to keep a Windows Server 2003-based “Classic” version of Windows available for businesses and enterprises, which would receive only security patches and bug fixes. In the article, I didn’t specify a timeline, but now I’d say that the “new” and “Classic” Windows should both be available for about 4-5 years. Obviously, support for the Classic version should extend beyond those 4-5 years; Microsoft has always been quite generous in its support cut-off points.
I didn’t just advise them to do this because I thought Vista’s userland was a complex mess; I also did so because it would give the talented folk at the company the breathing room to experiment and come up with new and radical ideas without being shackled by 15 years of backwards compatibility in mind. A lot of talented and bright folk are working at Microsoft, and I’d love to see them working without handcuffs and see what they come up with.
How much of this came true? Exactly – nothing. Luckily, I already stated in the article that this wasn’t a very likely course of action. In fact, I stated that “Microsoft has invested far too much time and money into Vista to make it sizzle out in such a way. In other words, I am afraid we are going to be stuck with another Vista-esque release.” This prediction can still come true if they royally mess up between now and the final release, but as it stands now, Windows 7 seems like a genuine improvement over Vista.
It will be what vista should have been, nothing else.
Vista should have had less than 5 versions. I had hoped that 7 would have gotten rid of these artificial limitations.
There are few things that piss me off more in the tech world than knowing that some of my money actually went toward paying a developer to make a product worse.
I wonder how many hours go into putting those locks in? How much time and effort was wasted on things like how many apps the basic users should be allowed to run simultaneously, and how to implement it?
If you had Windows 95, all knows the buzz that it has, but really less persons have a Pentium class to run it smoothly. So it have to wait for 3 years to make hardware better and to add small features and improve mostly the issues of the first spagetti OS.
What is Vista? As a funny thing Vista tries to implement the Cairo pure abstraction OS. And at the end fails as Windows 95 fails as being BSOD Windows.
Windows 7 will appear close to 3 years, like Windows 98 did for 95. It improves the small glitches in UI, as Windows 98 did. It will not improve almost nothing in drivers, as 98 did (Windows 98 did add support for USB and dual-monitor, elsewhere you had to install professional drivers that adds this feature), have a bit updated software and that’s all.
So, for who knows the history, the love of 7 will mean that we get better hardware to run it, more applications are tested for Vista and we will perceive as better, not because is better, but is the same thing, but more adapted for marked and tuned a bit in the annoying parts of it’s past.
So, welcome Win98, version 2010!
windows 98(SE) was a good solid release. I welcome the Win 98 of the 21st century!
Yeah, but let’s not get too excited about it.
That is true Microsoft seems to almost get it correct on their third try. EG, Windows SE was the third Windows 95.
Windows 95 release 1, Windows 98 EG Windows 95 release 2 and Windows 98 SE EG Windows 95 release 3. I wouldn’t buy Windows 7 EG Vista release 2. I’d wait for Windows 7 SE. Vista release 3.
Oh! Oh! I can’t wait to see what they make or break in Vista release 2 and 3.
Uh! Just a question. If they’ve fixed it in Windows 7 does it now work in Vista? If so why upgrade?
Nice try, but no cigar. There were 5 versions of Windows 95 lol
1) The original retail
2) OEM Service Release 1 / Windows 95 Retail SP1
3) OEM Service Release 2
4) OEM Service Release 2.1
5) OEM Service Release 2.5
Windows 98 built upon the foundation laid by 95, but included much in the way of new features and improvements, such as being the first Windows to have the Windows Driver Model (WDM for short). This was later utilized in 2000 and XP.
Next time, know your facts before spreading rubbish.
carlleigh
Member since:
2008-06-19
Know the facts YES! I was trying not to be a bore! I was a long time Windows supporter. Most versions of DOS/Windows that Microsoft came out with from DOS 2.x to Windows XP I paid cash for.
More facts From Wiki, sorry MSDN library long gone.
Windows 95 Retail 4.00.950
Windows 95 Retail SP1 4.00.950A
OEM Service Release 1 4.00.950A
OEM Service Release 2 4.00.950B
OEM Service Release 2.1 4.00.950B
OEM Service Release 2.5 4.00.950C
Windows 98 4.10.1998
Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222A
Windows ME 4.90.3000
Frankly Windows 7 will be just like the 95’s and up. Programs that you’ve purchased and used in the past will break. Files that you’ve stored in XP will become garbage in Windows 7 and your new version of Office. Why buy it. Because you are locked in! Bad habits are hard to break!
Its not like there aren’t a number of great alternatives.
I think we have different definitions for the term “good” (or “solid” for that matter).
You mean Windows 98SE was a good solid release?
Back when Vista was still Longhorn, and all the tech community was fawning over it, I made the bold statement that “Vista will be the next ME”. I was sure I would be right, but I didn’t know how right I would be!
This time around, I wasn’t so bold. All I’ve said, aside from some “ooo wouldn’t it be awesome if…?” statements, is “While it won’t be make or break for Microsoft, a bad Windows 7 release could see a significant drop in Windows market share, and a big opportunity for Apple and Linux.” I won’t know if I’m right or wrong for a couple of years yet, but present signs say that Windows 7 will have a good release. Microsoft have realised that in the world of tech hype, sometimes less is more.
I remember people “fawning” mostly over how late Longhorn was.
I wouldn’t say Vista is the ME — honestly; I think it’s got more bad rap than it deserved. It wasn’t superseded in an year; it got service packs, and it was a technological upgrade for most part… Not to mention; it’s got more admirers ME ever did.
I visualized the next version of Windows to build a DirectX+Avalon API atop MinWin. It was more a dream; but seeing Direct2D and DirectWrite I feel more comfortable with that prediction… Think of it as a counterpart to Apple’s CF+Cocoa APIs
If Microsoft is lucky 7 will be as big a hit as Windows 98.
Really? Windows 98 is that last version of any MS operating system that I’ve ever bought, and after having had used Linux for 5 years, 98 was a HUGE disappointment. Still fiddling with 8.3 file names? No genuine user accounts with strict access controls? No SMP? No built-in firewall? Once, it displayed a message saying that IE had crashed. I wasn’t running IE at the time.
I am sure 7 will be much better. But please don’t let 98 (even for its time) be your standard of excellence.
While I do not disagree with your comment I think the parent was comparing the size of sales and popularity of the OS and not how awesome it was. THough I must say 98 was quite good at that time.
Actually, 98 was pretty awful. 98SE, on the other hand, was certainly the best of the 9x series, though honestly at least for me that’s not saying much. Best of 9x was still pretty bad by comparison to NT or *NIX.
I’ve been playing with 7, and while I like the stability, I just don’t care for some of the new interface. I didn’t like it in Vista, and the same things bother me in 7. For example, does the control panel really need to be so convoluted? It reminds me of one of those old choose your own adventure RPGs, there’s so many layers to it. Plus the keyboard navigation of that control panel is god awful compared to that in XP or the control centers in OS X or GNOME. Does the start menu really need a search box at the top? Seriously? Try getting used to that if you’re a power keyboard navigator that used to hit windows, p to get into your programs. Ugh.
Most of my gripes about the interface are from a keyboard power user’s perspective, so I know they probably won’t apply to the average home user. Still, that’s my opinion on it, and it’s enough of an annoyance that I probably won’t end up using Windows 7 as my primary os. I’m faster using the keyboard… but not when the os seems to go out of its way to make that needlessly painful. I’ll either end up sticking with OS X or Ubuntu for my primary os, I still can’t make up my mind between those two. Sorry Windows 7, but you’ll probably get religated to VM status for fixing others’ computers.
Now you press Windows, type the first letter(s) of the application you want to launch and hit Return. I don’t see how that is more annoying than trying to find apps in the mess called “All Programs.”
you are upset because the old paradigms do not work.
uhhh… grow up.
I agree that the control panel and general settings need serious attention. The last true change was task-based categories which only confused the situation. Windows has .msc’s, cpl applets, drivers, apps,… Most offer redundant, overlapping, complimentary (ie could be consolidated), or difficult to discover functions. Just under Administrative Tools, there are 3 msc’s to look at the same Services. Vista just shuffled some things around. And a favorite Vista app – the buried Software Explorer – is reportedly gone in 7.
Last year, I tried to map all of the possible configuration options and paths in mature Vista and XP machines, just to understand it. I gave up after a few days. It’s not hard, but it’s not something that can be memorized or logically followed. The situation is out of control. The Ribbon was introduced because the Office UI was out of control. They redid 7’s Taskbar for similar reasoning. If they pick one major thing to do UI-wise in Windows 8, re-engineering system configuration should be high on their list.
Edit: Also, thanks for the mention in the main article. Don’t tell my wife that someone thinks I was right about something:) I don’t know what it’ll do to her worldview.
Edited 2009-04-16 18:02 UTC
Eaxactly. Even in 1999 the Linux distros was far better than win98.
Steady on, let’s not go crazy. Redhat 6.0 was state of the art in 1999 and I remember the pain and suffering it caused me first hand.
I realy do think that Windows 7 will be the next Win98 of MS. They wanted to replace a solid OS that had a strong user base with something new, as they did with Windows 3.1. Windows 95 was ultra hyped at the time, but it was far from behing as efficient and stable than Win3.1 (Well, in fact, Win3.1 wasn’t that stable, and comparing Vista to XP, a fined tuned Vista IS more stable).
Anyway, that the normal way things go in IT. There’s something new with rough edge that comes out and it get pushed to consumer by corps. After a while, a more polished version comes out and everybody is happy to jump on the bandwagon.
For myself, I have been running Windows 2000 up to XP SP2 release!
I’ve been using windows 7 since the 1400 builds, and been keeping more or less current (running 7057 at the moment, which is almost the most recent in the beta branch).
There are a few noticeable improvements over vista. The install time is very fast (although it has been getting a bit slower for me the last few builds), the boot time is better then vistas, and it doesn’t do that harddrive thrash for 30 seconds afterwards like vista did. Returning from hibernate is instantaneous now, on par with OSX. The kernel scheduler has been rewritten, and favors SMP. The whole library and homegroup thing.
But the thing that stands out over everything else is the move to a dock. It took me a week or two to get used to it, at this point the only thing that irritates me about it is having to go into the jump list to launch multiple instances of an app. But I have spent a lot of time playing with different operating systems and tend to pick up new paradigms fairly quickly.
I predicted the “power users” were gonna throw a fit over it, but it seems like the people who tried it love it so far, which has really suprised me. I am very interested in seeing what the general consensus is once it RTMs. The ribbon in office was an obvious improvement, but it took about six months for that to become generally accepted.
To avoid using the jump list you can shift+click to launch a new instance of an app.
dude…. you just made my day
glad to help
Or just middle-click.
I dont think a move to dock mechanism is really a problem, OSX has using it since the good old NexStep days, it is proven and works really well and many people aready have been in contact with OSX…
I have had a look at Win7 so far I liked from what I have seen, but as others said, it is what Vista should have been which is not necessarily a bad thing!
The only problem I have is that Microsoft probably again charges full price for what should have been a service pack to fix the broken Vista!
(There are not too many things broken in Vista but some definitely are, like the previously mentioned harddrive thrashing which makes the OS unbearably slow after bootup for a while)
This will be a very good OS. The problem for Microsoft is that most people allready use a very good OS, it is ually called win2k, XP or even Vista.
Home users will get it when they buy a new computer, but they are not likly to upgrade their existing equippment. Companies will try to stay on XP, as long as possible, if they allready have upgraded to Vista they will stay on that as long as they can. The main goal to them is to cut their IT costs, and that usually means “don’t fix if it aint broken”.
Changeing OS is a large investment, it is not just the new licences that costs money but also, the costs for testing and verifying that it works in your current IT environment, such as inhous developed applications, specialized hardware etc. Then there is the cost of training for users, as well as administrators.
In a way Microsoft suffers from the same problem as the Linux crowd. It is too expensive to change to something new, the low late of Linux conversions indicates that this cost is too high even if the new alternative is completely free in terms of licence costs.
The only reason this will not be a flop of the Vista magnitude is that you no longer can get hold of windows XP. After all people will need an OS,and if they have invested heavily in Microsoft they are likely to buy their next OS from Microsoft as well.
In the long run I believe that Microsoft will need to have longer intervall between releases, say 10 to 15 years so that people can get better return of their investment.
10 to 15 years between releases = stalling. We all saw what happens when they take even 5 years to release an OS, people stay with the previous version and we don’t get applications that take advantage of the new features.
If they can pull a kde and cut there resource usage by 30% over xp not vista. Give drm the boot and make or use a better media player I hate the windows player. I also would like a highly secure sandbox for those potentially dangerous downloads. I think it could give xp a run for its money
quoting myself from Dec 2007
I still can get an academic license for XP so I very much may hang back with XP if I choose to run Windows.
Edited 2009-04-16 02:07 UTC
Microsoft give the DRM the boot? It’s like asking Apple to allow OSX to be installed on regular pcs
But at least the Windows Media Player was improved. The interface got a facelift, it is more streamlined and there’s also a “mini” version, where you can just play your songs, see the cover, and get basic player controls – no library, or store stuff.
or like asking apple to remove the DRM from their machines. apple also has DRM you know. you cant even use a blueray disk or many dvd players without it. and some other content wont work without it.
Yeah, I known
Or asking users not to play movies and music on their PCs.
Funny to see my name mentioned in the article 🙂
The post was done in January 2008 and it was based on a number of assumptions:
1) The assumption of market share with Mac OS X was based on the recession being short lived; a quick turn around with the economy and there to be a minor impact of the economy on the number of Macs shipped.
2) Windows 7 wasn’t going to be released until around 2010 at the earliest as I expected Microsoft to at least attempt to milk Windows vista for as much as they can whilst at the same time developing an operating system that can address the issues of Windows Vista (memory bloat, lack of taking advantage of new API’s within the operating system and by Microsoft (and third party) developers).
3) ZFS would be the holy grail and Apple would orientate their operating system strategy around moving to a new file system. The reality is that the ZFS project on Mac OS X has been dead for 9 months. Its disappointing that they spent so much time getting ZFS to Mac OS X – only it to end up having it die.
4) Wine is pretty much on track though, if you look at the 1.x development builds so far there has been a lot of focus thanks to the release of 1.0 and a series of milestones set down with each release. I don’t expect wine to be the holy grail for the *NIX world but if it means that one of the barriers to adoption (lack of commercial applications from big name vendors) can be lifted – it definitely breaths new life into the operating system market.
Although I was a little off in my predictions – I have to admit though my view of Windows 7 has become increasingly more pessimistic over the last several months. As more information emerged from the Microsoft the less and less optimistic I was that things would improve.
Take Direct2D and DirectWrite; two new API’s introduced to replace GDI+. Fully accelerated 2D and font rendering functions and yet all the components of Windows 7 still use GDI+. Not a single attempt to move GDI+ to Direct2D and DirectWrite so that GDI+ calls can be translated into Direct2D and DirectWrite calls so that legacy applications can reap all the benefits and yet don’t require major re-writes.
Microsoft has had many widget kits (common controls) over the evolution of Windows and yet we have every single component use a different widget kit and a different way of doing things. This should have been a release to move all the components to the latest widget kit and technology integrated with the operating system, the simple fact of the matter is that for me it appears that they’re doing the least amount possible to actually address the short comings when it comes to fit and finish.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I’ve watched many videos on channel 9 over the improvements made in the Windows 7 kernel and lower levels – but at the same time the experience for the end user isn’t just about the low levels. The user experience is dictated by the care and attention given to the UI elements.
For me I have always been bitterly disappointed in the way Windows has been designed from a UI stand point. Having come from an IRIX, Amiga, RISCOS, Mac OS X and Atari background – all the choices they make are counter intuitive to me. I’m not expecting them to transform Windows into a clone of any of those but a happy medium to be would be something similar to IRIX.
The basic elements (the design – not the theme/look and feel etc) of IRIX always felt as though they were well thought out. Say what you will about the out of date theme and feel of it – its basic design is clean, simple and easy to use. I’d love to see something like that used for a future Windows UI with a nicer look and feel ontop. Have a consistent look and feel and I’d be more than happy to move to Windows.
I don’t think it is going to happen because from what I have found – most of the Microsoft employee’s live in a bubble. I’ve yet to find a single Microsoft employee who has used anything other than Microsoft Windows for an extension period of time. This lack of experience by way of using alternative means of UI design and implementation really show through in the lack of creativity and willingness to think outside the traditional Windows paradigms.
Like I said, I had much hope for Windows 7 16months ago but a lot has changed since then – Microsoft have proven they are the same Microsoft as always and one should simply expect yet another release of Windows with little attention to fit and finish – or fixing the UI (and command line) experience over all. What I have learned is that in future I should have zero expectations of Microsoft so then at least when Microsoft doesn’t meet them I don’t feel disappointed.
Edited 2009-04-16 04:18 UTC
Agreed. I think this example speaks a lot about those who develop Windows’ UI: why can’t I drag & drop a file or folder in an open/save dialog and have the target of that dialog changed? OS X does it, GNOME does it AFAIK, even Haiku does it. Here’s hoping that they will fix it in RC/RTM.
I’ve completely lost hope that Microsoft will ever produce another good OS.
XP (for me) is great, but now I’m forced to upgrade
Vista was a pointless upgrade and a waste of my money. This ‘upgrade’ made my newer laptop run like crap. I feel like Microsoft suckered me.
Windows 7 won’t completely install on my laptop. I don’t care why it fails. I don’t have time to piss around with making an OS work. I actually have ‘real’ work to do. Unless Microsoft gives me a free copy of Windows 7 to compensate me for the shit I was already suckered to buy, I’ll never run Windows 7.
Why can’t I just use a version of Windows that actually works? Idiots.
Edited 2009-04-16 04:15 UTC
I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I used Vista on several computers and none of them became slower. It was the same using Vista than using XP on them. The only thing got slower was boot time…
Imo it’s much better to use a GUI with hardware acceleration and fresh design and integrated search and superfetch and new network stack etc than an outdated old system where the windows show trails and feels very sluggish.
I can imagine it doesn’t work for all users but I’ve never met anybody face to face who didn’t like the latest Windows – only on websites like osnews.
It’s boring to read FUD about Vista when it’s a decent operating system. At my workplace I use OS X which gets slow easily and has the same stability issues like Windows and it’s still a better feeling to boot up Windows at home than OS X – for me.
About installing Windows 7 on your laptop… it’s still beta so you’re just unlucky.
Edited 2009-04-16 10:33 UTC
Amen!
My old job bought a brand-new HP laptop for me, unfortunately it was pre-loaded with Vista. I tried to install and use Visual Studio 2005, but there were tons of problems. Microsoft’s buglist for “vs2005 on Vista” was a total showstopper. The official recommendation was “wait for VS 2008”. My response: “Go f–k yourselves.” I wasted a week trying to get it to work properly, eventually giving up and using the company’s last XP license.
Vista’s a sad piece of ass, just like Millennium Edition.
Make it so I can go more than a year and a half between format/reinstalls to keep the machine performing at near-original levels (Linux has its share of issues, but this isn’t one of them in my experience).
Make it easier for me to troubleshoot thorny problems when they arise, even if it’s 3rd-party software that is the cause. Right now on XP the Workstation service hangs for a minute or more on boot, can’t figure out why despite an hour with Process Monitor and other tools. A craptacular Belkin bluetooth driver did it, I’m sure, but uninstalling and rolling back to a restore point did not fix things. All Google reveals is, “Hey I have that problem, too, plz help”.
I do not have these issues on any Unix-ish OS I use. Yes, I’m pretty technically savvy, but I seriously think I spend less time and gray hair adminning those installations (I have 3 or 4 of them) than I do my one Windows box. I’d like to believe Thom, that Windows’ kernel is a thing of beauty, but she’s still wearing rags and lying on, rather than scrubbing, the floor, tripping you as you walk past.
I’ll probably eventually do what one other gent on here said, and resort to easily-refreshable VMs for my “Windows experience”.
One of the best features of NT kernel is ability to run multiple user-lands. They are called subsystems. Currently Win32 subsys is default one and this is where all theproblems live. One of the first additional subsystems was OS/2 subsys allowing to run OS/2 software natively (hey, no virtualization!). And also POSIX subsystem is available (called SFU for 2K/XP, SUA for Vista+). Installing it will add ability to run any 100% POSIX compliant software after compilation (binaries are COFF AFAIK, not ELF which is used in Linux/BSD/Solaris). And they will run as a first class citizens, not inside any emulator or via cygwin hacks.
So I thought that Microsoft would build a new subsystem for Windows 7 and make Win32 a downloadable options for those who need it (ok, for lazy guys it can be installed as a part of Windows 7).
I don’t understand why they did not follow that path. To put it simple Microsoft already has a good subsystem – .NET. A bit of programming magic could turn it into proper CPU-native user-land which could be mapped directly to .NET improving overall performance of both “native” and CLR software. .NET is a big improvement API-wise over Win32.
They were originally called “personalities” or something similar to that, and the OS/2 Personality was the original one (NT was originally supposed to be OS/2 v3). The Win32 Personality came second (once Windows 3.x took off), with the Posix Personality third.
Personally i always found Windows 95 OSR2.5 the best of the 9x followed by ME.
I never had any more of a problem with ME than any of the other 9x’s
Windows 95 was a must needed upgrade from Win 3.11 which was slow, incredibly unstable and limited in many ways.
DRM in OS’s is not something the manufacturers like putting in, but it’s something they have to put in. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be able to play DVD’s, BluRay’s etc.. For the vast majority of consumers they don’t care to much about DRM when they purchase a laptop being advertised as a bluray player and stick a bluray disk in. Of course they care when they find out the music they brought from store x can’t be played on device y.
Windows 7 is as others have said exactly what Vista should have been. Although pretty good vista still has it’s quirks even to this day. I was begining to like vista but recently the network performance is really starting to grind. So at work i have moved back to Windows XP x64.
The jist of the article sums up my feelings exactly. The core of Windows NT is incredibly well done. NTFS is a very fast, very reliable File System, the Kernel is excellent, being fast and matured over time. It sports some excellent features and i highly recommend anyone to watch the video’s on Microsoft’s Channle 9 relating to changes in the kernel and NT’s kernel architecture.
The problem with Windows seem’s to be that the desktop / userland is run by engineer’s which are controlled by either managers stuck in the past and are afraid to change anything for fear of rocking the boat and/or marketing.
The new dock like experience is a step in the right direction, which i can only put down to Steve Sinofsky due to his previous teams efforts to radically change the UI of Microsoft Office (2007). However a lot of things need to be changed. Many users are reporting a huge increase of mouse clicks and navigational steps to reach standard most often used settings in Vista. Sometimes you can really feel the pain of the kernel having to wade through a process a molasses style UI and other junk which has been collected and dumped onto it over the last decade.
Windows 2000 runs so quick because it doesn’t have a bloated userland on top of it.
As voiced in the article i highly agree that this legacy bloat needs to be thrown out, designers and engineers should be allowed to work on radical new ideas, ideas fit for 21st Century computing.
The average joe doesn’t have a problem with change. Netbooks, mobile phones (including touch screen) all prove that average joes are not just simpletons and can learn and adapt to new controls and functions put before them.
I started at Microsoft at just around the beginning of the Windows 7 cycle, so I was running milestone builds and reading specs at the time when I made that comment about the unliklihood of subscription-based OS service. I kinda had insider information on that statement.
I’m quite proud of what we’ve produced so far and I enjoyed working on my feature areas. In particular I’m happy with the results of the scheduler scalability work that we did (though frankly it was not a rewrite as google_ninja implies and in fact we already scaled well on typical server machines before the change… we’re not talking BKL or GIANT here). It’s hard to know when everything will be done, but the quality of the daily builds is quite high.
Maybe soon we can start making predictions about Windows 8
.
I listened to the DotNetRocks! podcast with Arun Kishan a little while back, and the way he made it sound was that there was a substantial difference both architecturally and philosophically between the old one and the new one. If not a rewrite then it sounded like a major refactoring went on.
There was a lot of code churn (every function was touched and it turned out to be about 30-40 KLoC of change), but the algorithm used to decide the scheduling policy hasn’t changed. There were a few very important functions that were totally rewritten to work with the new wait entry model (basically the wait loops, the object signal routines, and the timeout timer handling functions), but the architecture of the scheduler is still the same and Arun didn’t have to modify other parts of the kernel substantially (that’s why I’m saying that the Dispatcher lock is not like GIANT which is used across subsystems of BSD unixes).
By the way.. the amazing thing about this project is that even with this scale of change in extremely tricky code, there were only 2 bugs found when we were ready to integrate it. I’d like to take a little credit for that since I wrote a few tests to exercise the changed paths in the scheduler, but mostly it was Arun’s bug-free and self-testing code (we use a lot of assertions in the ‘checked’ builds) and his constant self-review.
I bought my wife a laptop with Vista and I’ve rued that decision ever since. Vista is awful – it’s layer upon layer of crud. The UI is ugly, confusing and too busy. Can the legacy support and move forward like Apple. Stop living in the 80s. Ok, that’s true for Apple to as they’re using a BSD derivative I think. But still, strip the cruft or start again with a secure, lightweight OS. I’m tired of anti-virus software. It still has that annoying registry that is the equivalent of the mountains in Afghanistan – god knows what’s hiding in there. I had to turn off so many services just to stop the disk from being hammered constantly.
I have to develop using MFC and it’s an awful API. I can’t wait until I’m 100% Microsoft free. My next computer will be an Apple laptop (yes I know Apple isn’t perfect) and our server at home is already running Linux. We’re slowly moving to Linux at work so one day, yes one day, I will be free of Microsoft. Good riddance.
Windows Vista isn’t that bad, my girlfriend has a Vista laptop and has no problems with it, she likes the UI and it runs quickly even with Anti-Virus software installed. She hated Linux when I asked her to try it for a day.
I’ve tried Windows 7, and it is a big improvement over Vista and XP for me, I prefer using it over my Mac OS X system. My Leopard laptop has become slow, and there are so many little things on it that annoy me, especially the finder and startup times.
Starting Windows from scratch would be a nightmare unless they could find a way to continue to support legacy applications, similar to the Mac OS 9 to X transition. The people who upgrade would only suffer in the end.
In work, we have both Windows Server machines and Linux servers. The Linux servers have been rebooted, and also compromised at one point. The windows server has sat happily running without any issues since we purchased with it. To me, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
It’s funny how MacOS X is faster than Vista, on the exact same machine. And I’m not talking about Boot Camp here.
Prediction: WinFS would be dropped from Windows 7 (yet again!)
Did I get that right?
WinFS has been dissolved ages ago. It no longer exists. Components of it have found their way into other MS products.
I had heard that, Thom….. but come on.. after n attempts at fooling people around by telling them about this new “File System” that would be used in Windows (since NT 4 or so?), it wouldn’t have been weird if they had advertised about it for Windows 7 (which they didn’t….. gave up finally?).
It was very funny for me (well…. not really) that months ago a co worker told me about this great file system that one of her teachers had told her about at college that would be included in windows (“So Microsoft can be really inventive sometimes, you know?”). That’s kind of sad. Who was that teacher? A Microsoft Public Relations agent? And didn’t people realize that Microsoft announced winfs would be included in windows (and dropped) every single time?
In other words: It was just sarcasm what I said about WinFS in the first place.
Sometimes, do you feel like Windows is just a fat girl who refuses to go on a diet?
Winfattie.Vista.girl said, “I can’t get laid! Help me get laid. I will be wearing a Win7
beta corset. It will make my boobs bigger and waist two inches smaller. I will be popular.”
Linboy says, “Hey honey. Why don’t you start eating less and do some exercise?”
Winfattie7girl said, “NEVER! My daddy made me an exclusive OFFICE2007 dress! I will get laid
by many blind BSOD boys!”
The story goes on…
The truth is: WinblindITBoys do drink a lot.
Reposted without permission (… hoping the Boston College police don’t find me).
What’s the most annoying thing you’ve ever seen in Windows Vista’s UI or Windows Seven’s UI?
I think it’s this:
http://ameba.lpt.fi/~aspiant1/media/kuvat/w7configuringupdates.jpg
It just fckscks and drives me nuts everytime I see that off positioned non moveable mouse ball like object which replaced the hourglass and indicates action in exactly this particular screen which tells you about procedures going on when you start/shutdown Windows Vista/Seven… It jumps here and there and never ever stays in one place for a long while because it moves with the text.
If they will fix it then I will be very happy.
Now how about writing your annoyance story here? What should be changed in UI. It should be something which can be actually done. Not something like “remake luna theme for seven” or something like it.
Talking about themes. Another thing which highly annoys me is that Classic look of Windows is still retained with Seven. It should be dropped as it doesn’t work or even look as good as it did in Windows 2000. :/
…being mostly a Mac OS X user at home, XP and Redhat at work. But my in-laws and friends who had purchased new laptops that were pre-installed with Vista were not (and still are not) impressed.
I have been running the Windows 7 beta series since they started being released and honestly I have mostly good things to say about it. There are some honest to goodness improvements over the Vista UI that make it more pleasurable to use (at least based on playing with my MILs laptop) and I have not had any trouble finding drivers (and 64 bit drivers to boot). I do have a pretty vanilla system.
If MS manages to not freak out and do something stupid last minute, I think Windows 7 will become the “standard” for Windows OS’s for the near future, with little effort to change anything about it.
>and what we actually hoped Windows 7 would be.
Does anybody care anymore?