Author Topic: Microsoft 7 (Read 13362 times)

slinks · « **on:** May 21, 2009 »

I never thought I'd find myself saying this, but holy shit, does the new MS o/s look amazing! I can't recall being so excited over an o/s since, ever!

The features already appealing to me are;

Microsofts promise that this version 'won't be annoying': I can hold them to that later.
Virtual Windows XP: I can't winge about compatabliity anymore
The new layouts and themes: look so much more user-friendly, and a lot more customisable, which I'm all about
Updated paint and calculator programs: finally!

The new taskbar layouts and ability to 'snap' windows (whatever that means) also sound cool (although I hope you can change it back to normal, incase they turn out rubbish).

While there's still plenty of time for them to mess this one up, It's looking hopefull for now. What features are you hoping they'll include? Mine are;

User-created themes: XP had blue or silver. The ammount of times I wanted to change this to other shades and colours, move bits around, change the shapes of certain bars or button to fit my screen ect. were far too numerous. Especially the chunky buttons, they were too much for me, so I opted for a modified '98 theme. Hopefully They'll add more options this time, instead of just pre-sets.

Task bars: I like task bars. A lot. On my home computer, I have one linked to 'my documents' taking up the left side of my screen, giving me instant access to my pictures, music, videos, downloads, games, blitz basic apps ect. At the sacrifice of maybe 50-100 pixels of screen space. Why can't this just fold neatly in the corner, and expand when I mouse over it? Wouldn't that be better?

Anyone else got any thoughts on this matter?

benny! · « **Reply #1 on:** May 21, 2009 »

Interesting to read ... personally I haven't used 7 yet. Would like to hear more opinions
of it. Guess it was about time that M$ releases something that is stable, userfriendly and
astonishing after the release of Vista.

Jim · « **Reply #2 on:** May 21, 2009 »

I've got the RC on my desktop and my netbook now. It's great!

There won't be any new features, just bug fixes, so if you want to know what you're going to get give us a shout!

Jim

zawran · « **Reply #3 on:** May 21, 2009 »

I am running Windows 7 on two out of three computers right now. One of them my gamer another my media center. Both runs really well, and both installed really quickly and without having to install any drivers myself. It seems to be what Vista should have been and I am truely impressed so far.

Clyde · « **Reply #4 on:** May 25, 2009 »

I signed up for the beta / RC releases, but unfortuneatly not realizing I dont have 1gb of memory installed. So im kind of a fool, unless you can install it onto a machine with 512mb.

I saw a preview of it on the BBC News 24's click programme, and they mentioned about the touch screen stuff being a gimmick. Do you think this is so to coincide with Iphones / and would you use such a feature?

Paul · « **Reply #5 on:** May 25, 2009 »

I'm using windows seven and I think it's great. There are many great features, and many of the included programs are upgraded.
I'm actually writing this and browsing this page using the built in speech recognition. It's more practical using the keyboard but this is more fun. And hopefully the computer will learn the more I use it.

post

Shockwave · « **Reply #6 on:** May 25, 2009 »

Quote

Anyone else got any thoughts on this matter?

Yes

Quote

Microsofts promise that this version 'won't be annoying': I can hold them to that later.

A bit of a Wooly statement.. What annoying aspects of Vista are they promising to fix exactly?

Quote

Virtual Windows XP: I can't winge about compatabliity anymore

I never installed Vista so my XP is 100% compatible with XP

Quote

Updated paint and calculator programs: finally!

m$ paint sucks shit anyway, there are much better things free on the web... When they remake Dpaint4 I'll sit up and take notice

Quote

User-created themes: XP had blue or silver. The ammount of times I wanted to change this to other shades and colours, move bits around, change the shapes of certain bars or button to fit my screen ect.

Buy a mac instead, or better still get an Amiga and use Workbench3

.. Just playing Devils advocate but the day that a Microsoft OS lives up to it's hype I'll eat my underpants.

Pixel_Outlaw · « **Reply #7 on:** May 25, 2009 »

Hmm I wonder what the new Paint program looks like?

Shockwave · « **Reply #8 on:** May 25, 2009 »

Like this?

Pixel_Outlaw · « **Reply #9 on:** May 25, 2009 »

Jim · « **Reply #10 on:** May 25, 2009 »

Quote

What annoying aspects of Vista are they promising to fix exactly?

Resource hoggery, annoying UAC, slowness/lockups of the UI caused by GDI architecture.

Quote

Hmm I wonder what the new Paint program looks like?

It's had the Office treatment (see attached). The calculator's been upgraded to do graphing too.

Jim

Pixel_Outlaw · « **Reply #11 on:** May 25, 2009 »

Looks a lot cleaner.

I mostly use Paint for drawing game graphics since my heavily outdated version of Photoshop lacks any pen tool.

It is good to hear that they are making it less powerhungry too. However I wonder if it will ship with the same system requirements that Vista had? One of my main gripes with vista (among many) is that it treats the user as a three year old and really tries to play police officer with restricted files and the user account control.

I will purchase if it goes good.

Jim · « **Reply #12 on:** May 26, 2009 »

System requirements are going to be much the same. I'm running it on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom with 1Gb of RAM and 16Gb flash drive. That's in spec, and it's working really, really well.

The nannying is called UAC - User Access Control. It's been made less annoying and easier to turn off in 7. But I actually appreciate the idea. Microsoft got slammed for their OS security, allowing any user to change any setting under XP. Now you need to be an admin to change most things, just like Linux, and just like Ubuntu where normal users are not super user. That makes everything so much more secure, but more frustrating for Windows users who are used to being able to do anything. Vista took it a bit too far, 7 is supposed to fix that a bit. Imagine, if you're a super user and you download some spyware or a virus, then that means the malware is also super user. If you're just a normal user, the malware is likely only to be able to do things that you can do.

Jim

va!n · « **Reply #13 on:** May 27, 2009 »

i am working with the first public beta of win7, 64 bit !!... i just only intalled it parallel to my XP version to check out the new windows 7 and its features/compatibility/speed... Since i just only played a bit with Windows 7 (i am no friend of vista, even not with latest SP installed) i thought Win7 may be just another slow/dirty VistaClone.... but after installation i was very suprised... It detected ALL needed drivers of my old A8V Deluxe Mainboard and my old Radeon9600... Just the onboard sound chip drivers was not installed by win7!

So i created the inet connection and thought, see what happens when Win7 should check for updates... and windows found a new 64 bit driver (automatical update) and installed it with success... so the full old system worked very fine... and due fact it seems that Win7 works faster/more stable as my XP, i loved Win7 more and more... since this time i have no longer tried/use my old XP installation

Until now i didnt had the time to install the Win7 RC 64 bit on my system... but this will follow as soon as having some time for it... i installed it for a friend on a modern notebook and it realy rulez!

However, i created myself a new and modern PC containng Intel Q8200, 6 GB DDR2 800, 640 GB SATA HDD, ASUS P5Q and at least a Radeon 4870 with 512 MB...

I am absolutly NO gamer... but i have tried FarCry2 (nice gfx but dont really like the game after playing some hours).... then a friend told me... hey, you have build a new PC with Radeon4870? Coool... come on, check out the game "Call of Duty 4"... i have no idea about PC games... i must say, i was shocked... the game runs even in highest resolution extreme fast/smooth and the engine is really asbolutly awsome.. so photo realistic! COOL!

Booting Win7, working with Win7, starting games like Call of Duty (shows more of the potential as much of the pc demos) == just great! The only thing, some stuff (most only packed files like game or demos/intros from the scene)... dont work on Win7... esp all packed stuff with CRINKLER... (to sad, that even so called "compatible" versions in the archives are often packed too and dont work... why does the scene not include a pure original unpacked version to the archive?

)

Facit:
I have never used/worked with a OS before it was released for the mass market (final)... but with Win7 this point changed in my history! I will never again work with XP nor Vista.... Just only Win7...

Jim · « **Reply #14 on:** May 27, 2009 »

64bit doesn't really mean faster, it just means BIGGER! You can have more programs running, and individual applications can have more memory to use. With programs like Photoshop CS4 and Maya or 3DStudio all running at the same time, 4Gb is nowhere near enough and the swapping to disk is painful. Even the C# project I'm working on at work in VS2008 is getting near that limit for editing.

It'll be interesting to see if crinkled programs can ever be made to run on 64bit Windows. Do they run on XP64?

My next PC will definitely be 64bit Windows.

Jim

va!n · « **Reply #15 on:** May 27, 2009 »

@jim:
normaly i dont see any useaga of 64 bit for myself... but when having a modern QuadCore with 64 bit and >3GB RAM (32 bit limit), so why not use an 64 bit OS like Vista or Win7 (i prefer Win7)... ^^

I think if ppl really do a great job with coding and compiling code for 64 bit, some parts could be a bit faster... One point i am really wondering... When having 64 bit since a special XP64 version... so why are there so less 64 bit compiled appz? For example:

- Firefox (official only 32 bit... 64 bit is a afaik no official and a hacked version, where 32bit plugins does not work?)
- DaemonTools
- Aimp (great alternative to the %/!)(=X Winamp)
- and many many more appz / games...

Jim · « **Reply #16 on:** May 27, 2009 »

As far as I can tell, it's not too tough to build 64bit versions any more. There are some portability problems and you need to write your apps with it in mind - the Windows API has been extended in some places and pointers will no longer fit in an unsigned int if you're a C or C++ programmer. Other than that, just pick the right compiler options.

It'll just take demand of users to drive software in that direction. Many of the big productivity apps are 64bit now already. 64bit is still a bit niche.

Jim

slinks · « **Reply #17 on:** June 01, 2009 »

Quote from: Shockwave on May 25, 2009

Quote
Microsofts promise that this version 'won't be annoying': I can hold them to that later.

A bit of a Wooly statement.. What annoying aspects of Vista are they promising to fix exactly?

I think they mean all the pop-up dialogue boxes telling you rubbish. I am fully aware I haven't cleaned my desktop in six months, my devices COULD be running faster and that restarting my computer is highly recomended. The thing is, I don't care.

Quote from: Shockwave on May 25, 2009

Quote
Updated paint and calculator programs: finally!

m$ paint sucks shit anyway, there are much better things free on the web... When they remake Dpaint4 I'll sit up and take notice

MS paint is a great program for doing proper pixel art/spriting without all the extra crap getting in the way.

The screenshot of Jim's looks a bit rubbish though. All they've done is changed the layout!

Clyde · « **Reply #18 on:** June 20, 2009 »

Is Windows 7 ( Though there are about 10 versions of Windows ) being produced as there's a lot of complaints about Vista? Or was this version always on the cards? Also is that proper final name of it?

zawran · « **Reply #19 on:** June 20, 2009 »

Windows 7 was always in the cards, Microsoft is looking to release a new OS each 3-4 years. The final name is Windows 7, and it will be available in various forms just like Vista is, and should be in stores around 22nd of October.