There appears to be some kind of pan-industry collusion going on in the tech world, whereby nothing interesting can happen, ever. MacWorld was pretty ho-hum, and Ballmer's keynote at CES last night was mighty drab as well. (A true technology journalist would have written that it "failed to excite.") The only thing that stuck with me is the stuff about Windows 7. Am I the only one who's surprised at Microsoft's turnaround time on this project? They have a beta out this Friday? Vista only came out in January of 2007! What, did they outsource development to Apple? Hey, maybe they licensed that nifty new NeXT OS I've been hearing so much about.
Supposedly W7 is less of an almighty resource-devourer than Vista -- or rather it has the same almighty devouring capacity, but hardware has finally caught up -- and it's prettier and stabler. The touch-screen features strike me as flashy and useless, but I've seen the photo-sharing stuff demoed, and that was impressive. So cheers to that.
I'll retroactively retract my surprise if they don't release this year.
If W7 can run on current netbooks (which have the approximate power of five year old Intel computers, CPU-wise), and supposedly runs faster than XP in some ways (I find that hard to believe myself, but it has been confirmed by multiple sources), then no, W7 most definitely does not have the same "resource-devouring" capacity as Vista.
You are absolutely right about the tech community cabal's negative attitude about Microsoft (watching the video from the fracking senior editor of Wired acting like a 15 year old Mac fanboy, talking about the Microsoft keynote, was just beyond pathetic). You do realize that you have validated your membership in that cabal with this post?
Vista used more resources than XP. No fracking way. Are you really surprised at that? Vista definitely had its problems, but it was nowhere near as close to a failure as the tech community tried to pretend it was. The Mac has its problems too, and those fundamental, systemic problems keep most people from buying them.
0megapart1cle
Jan. 8, 2009 12:14:pm
at 12:14:pm
I don't think hating Vista makes you a fanboy. I'm one of the few Microsoft fans left, but Vista is a poor product.
Rorschach
Jan. 8, 2009 13:46:pm
at 13:46:pm
Just out of curiousity, what are those fundamental, systemic problems? I just bought a Mac (my first, I'm not a fanboy yet) and I haven't really noticed anything yet.
Cliff
Jan. 8, 2009 15:00:pm
at 15:00:pm
It's no secret that I'm a Mac fan. But I wrote a balanced review of Vista when it came out. And hey, I did say that MacWorld was boring.
Lev Grossman
Jan. 8, 2009 15:05:pm
at 15:05:pm
Hey Cliff - Macs are by far a better product, but there are a number of errors users experience when installing new software or updating their OS. A list of common problems (and their solutions) available at http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=235
alaskanturkey
Jan. 8, 2009 16:49:pm
at 16:49:pm
This reminds me of this satirical video;
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/92328
Watch it. It's hysterical.
tereglith
Jan. 8, 2009 18:12:pm
at 18:12:pm
I run Vista on both of my home machines, and I really don't have many problems with them. As a product, I'm surprised they're working on W7 already, because it seems like Vista's still fresh. There were some phenomenally stupid bugs (how does a local service account get taken out of the admin group?), but at the same time, Vista is hardly the Plague.
I'm sure there's some Ctrl-Alt-Apple-Backspace-Scroll Lock-Esc-F3 key combination that all Mac users know powers on the machine.
`
My wife and I were house sitting for some friends who have a Mac, and we had the hardest time finding the power button, of all things. I'm not sure which model it was, but it's the one where the whole machine is housed in the monitor with the power button in the back. Part of it was the desk setup, as there wasn't easy access to the back, but we were assuming that the power button would be, you know, somewhere convenient
Dave
Jan. 9, 2009 10:03:am
at 10:03:am
I thought Vista was fun, (until it's "update" ATE my HP!!!!!)
Sadder, but wiser, I raced out and bought a MacBook!
I DID pick up a new Vista,(A Gateway w/ ENOUGH RAM to run Vista...and it works pretty well). I still have a trust issue- why not just TELL us 2GB is NOT enough- then we buy more...
I just feel Microsoft was dishonest in order to sell more Vista units, despite the fact that they would fail.
I work from my laptops, so reliability is VERY important to me. I do love bells and whistles, but if it causes a major crash, that is a "bad thing".
pattiofdarkstar
Jan. 12, 2009 07:14:am
at 07:14:am
Hey, thanks for the link, alaskanturkey.
Cliff
Jan. 13, 2009 17:21:pm
at 17:21:pm
Good lord people, Vista is SUPPOSED to use all your RAM. Now, with that tidbit out of the way, Vista is at best a mediocre product.
W7, as it is in Beta, is an out standing OS. Now if anyone bothered to read up on why MS's turn around time is so quick is that they are using the same under lying kernel. And rather than adding in a bunch of junk they realized where they screwed the pooch and are ripping out bloat, SuperFetch and cleaning things out. Under all the garbage Vista's core is actually pretty dang quick. The other giant issue with Vista, if anyone bothers to remember, were the inexcusably poor driver support. This has been corrected. Hardware manufacturers are going to have to do very little, if anything, to update drivers to work with Windows 7.
Let me put it to you this way, I'm running W7 on a partition on my main machine, it flies (grain of salt time, my main machine can chew through most anything you can throw at it), and every component, every piece of software, every game, works perfectly. No crashes, no conflicts, no driver hunting, it just works.
shiftydevil
Jan. 14, 2009 12:31:pm
at 12:31:pm
Windows is the premature ejaculator of the OS world.
bloggit
alexandriacarpetone
Jan. 16, 2009 10:10:am
at 10:10:am