Windows 7 Release Date Moved Up... According To Rumors

[helmutcheese]

Well it’s for laughs really it only started as an info post and an opinion 2 people had on XP it is funny to me how some of you guys hunt this forum, think you should call yourself “The Vista Guards” I’m sure Bill would be very proud of you. But try to remember that good old Bill made XP as well and if people like it more that’s there bag.

Sorry to bail out but its bed time so I must switch of my very fast XP machine but I will leave you boys a bed time gift.

Happy dreams.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5knhdGNTYE

I do not hunt the forums and don't post much this section that much.

But I MUST say you talk 100% total rubbish and DO NOT have a clue what your on about.

I ain't been smart or boasting when I say I was very high up as part of #Winbeta (when it was big) and had early Longhorn Alphas through to early then official Beta/RC's given to me by MS.

I know it was buggy, I know its not what it was meant to be and lots of features never made it to end version.

That's why I never used it for 1 year nearly after I got my free copy of Ultimate from MS in Nov 2006 (public was Jan/Feb 2007).

It has came on a lot since then esp with SP1.

 

[Hudzy]

There's no getting through to some people. Vista has no performance issues in gaming at all.

 

[stoofa]

Considering there is no release date for Windows 7 it would prove to be a little bit difficult to move it.

And as has already been said in this thread - Windows 7 is being built on Vista.
It's basically going to be Vista2.

 

[PoD]

My only problem with Vista was that it was released to early.

It suffered the most from the fact that it was released when the hardware necessary to benefit from its underlying features was just not available to the general public and then combine this with the fact that XP actually ran better on the hardware that was present in the main core user market then you have a real blunder.

I dont see Windows 7 as being about adding new tweaks I see Windows 7 as being Microsofts platform for its full marketed launch of Windows Live and its features, which are clearly designed to carry Microsoft into the Web 2.0 future against Google.
The ideas behind Windows 7 seem to be to provide a much more agile operating system that offers its users many different ways to interact with new technologies that Microsoft clearly sees as being the internet and touch screen technologies (going off what we have seen so far).

Of course there will most definitely be a few rabbits out of hats that Microsoft are keeping secret because this is what Microsoft plan to use to keep its Market over its competition.

So we can expect

• customisable and sexy interfaces similar if not better than Mac
• Something extra to keep its hold over Linux users
• Windows Live integrated features to keep its users away from Googles (so expect to see everything Google is currently offering (which Live almost does now anyway)
• Touch technology integration

 

[HEADRAT]

99% of the problems with Vista were to do with drivers, not Vista itself. I hope that MS do a better job ensuring their partners sort their drivers for Windows 7 before it's release.

HEADRAT

 

[Sone]

Windows XP fans seem to forget that all it is is a slightly tarted up Win2000 that is nearly 10 years old now.

I loved Win3.11 but i wasn't still using it in 2003, times change.

 

[Things change I've changed]

Never in all my years have I seen consumers as reluctant to upgrade to an OS as they have with been with Vista, and I'm one those consumers, I have ears at call centres across all of the UK and all of them tell me that complaints about Vista are at an unprecedented level, far above the level of complaints from making the transition from Win98se to XP, yes XP had it's nay sayers back in the day but nothing on the scale of today's complaints, I still repair systems on a regular basis as a way of earning some extra income and I kid you not at least 90% of people that I encounter have issues with Vista, only last week I was setting up a laptop for a client and he was practically begging me to downgrade his OS (Vista Premium) to XP, I told him it would cost £150 (price of OS and setting up his laptop again) and he didn't even question me, he just said do it,

The only time I have ever had to downgrade an XP based system for clients was in the early years when they sometimes had expensive printers/peripherals etc that did have compatible drivers at the time, but never in my life have I ever had to downgrade an XP based system purely because they disliked it, I have honestly lost count now at the amount of times I've had someone ring me and ask if it's possible if they can have Windows XP installed on their newly purchased laptop/PC that they've acquired from 'a popular high street retail outlet' that came pre-installed with Vista.

I remember Dell having so many complaints that they were practically forced by consumers to re-add XP as a selectable OS with thier system,

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04...fers_xp_again/

"Dell is to once again offer Windows XP on new systems, responding to online customer complaints".


The above /\ is from 20th April 2007, now we jump to 30 Jun 2008 (XP's retirement date.) \/, over a year later, and they are actively promoting a loophole that enables business customers to downgrade from Vista to the more favourable XP,


http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...ll_xp_channel/

"Dell is actively promoting a Microsoft licensing loophole to channel partners eager to keep selling PCs installed with Windows XP, after Microsoft's official cut off.

The Dell channel blog is pointing resellers to the loophole in the Windows Vista license that enables business customers to downgrade from the unwanted Windows Vista to its dated, but comfortable and better-supported predecessor.

According to the blog: "Dell can sell what we've branded 'Windows Vista Bonus' which allows us to preinstall XP Professional with a Vista license (on select system categories). This lets customer's upgrade to the Vista platform when they're ready. And yes, Dell will support both OSs."

Dell's blog points resellers to further information here.

Dell, meanwhile, is also making Windows XP available as an image to those partners using the company's Custom Factory Integration service.

The blog was designed to coincide with the last day Windows XP was officially available from Microsoft. From now on, you can only get Windows Vista. Officially.

Dell has taken a leading position in continuing to offer Windows XP. Earlier this month Dell vowed to keep selling PCs running the operating system until "at least 2009"



Dell saw that offering Vista only systems was starting to have a negative impact on their business model and they decided to take action, I've been using PC's since the days of MS Dos 6.2 and have been following the industry since then also, never have I seen a company like Dell make a stand to continue offering an older OS in this way, well, not until Vista arrived, have a read,


http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;323914935

"Several tier-one PC vendors have announced they will follow Dell's lead and continue offering Windows XP on new machines after Microsoft's June 30 retirement date."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/09/24/cnpc124.xml

"DSG International, which owns two of the leading high street chains, said it was forced to discount laptops after a lacklustre response to Vista."

Windows XP fans seem to forget that all it is is a slightly tarted up Win2000 that is nearly 10 years old now.

I loved Win3.11 but i wasn't still using it in 2003, times change.

Yes times are changing but lets actually go forward instead of taking a sidestep.

 

[HEADRAT]

People are just "used" to XP, I've installed Vista for family and they've asked to go back to XP because they just felt lost.

Now for many Vista was "too much like XP", why they thought that MS would throw out decades of HCI collateral is beyond me. For other users who had spent 10 years getting to know XP it was a move too far.

Lots of companies don't want to roll out Vista due to their IT policy and lecagy applications that would need to be reworked in Vista.

I've had Vista on my work laptop for about 3 years and I've never had one problem with it!

 

[Burnsy2023]

but never in my life have I ever had to downgrade an XP based system purely because they disliked it

This half the battle. Vista as a consumer OS, isn't a awful lot different to use than 2000 was to XP, but the media have made a huge mountain of negative perception about the OS. People don't like it becuase they've been told by friends and relatives not to like it. Apart from the performance user who had problems with drivers and gaming, the huge majority of users only use their PC for Office apps and the internet and for them Vista is fine. There is no reason for people to have this perception, it's simply unfounded.

 

[Things change I've changed]

People are just "used" to XP, I've installed Vista for family and they've asked to go back to XP because they just felt lost.

Exactly, and to me that is just wrong, MS hailed Vista as being allot more user-friendly than XP but that's completely the opposite from my experience, they need to simplify the OS and acutally really make it more user friendly, this is the future, advanced technology and software with an intuitive and simplistic ergonomic interface, Google understand this more than any other major corporation atm, Microsoft need to shock everyone and radicalise their next OS/GUI, they are in a very influential position and have been for over 3 decades, they have the power to change how people use computers, how they interface with them, yes they may of did that 30 years ago with the introduction of windows 1.0 but have things really evolved dramatically since then, beyond just aesthetics ?, do you really believe that from windows 1.0 to Vista is really 3 decades of good software evolution, 3 decades and we have vista, I'm sorry but I think it's a joke.

 

[HEADRAT]

You use Google as an example, I don't see any ground breaking stuff from Google in terms of a user friendly interface, there mail/search/maps are all pretty standard fair tbh.

MS are damned if they do and they are damned if they don't, if they had throw out all their old HCI stuff and been completely radical in Vista people would have had a cow!

I think there is a limit to what you can do with a WIMP environment, multitouch is an interesting tool but to be honest I'm not sure their it too much more to do with WIMP, it's only going to be an iteration of what has gone before.

I really like what Apple has done with the Ipod Touch and Iphone, that's fine for those kinda devices, we need some of that in the OS but I'm not sure how easy that transistion will be.

 

[barnettgs]

I think it has little to do with user-friendly interface of Vista. It's mostly performance-related, Vista is a dog slow especially on Dell or Sony PC/laptops stuffed with junk software/trialwares. Many time I was asked to set up clients' new computers, they were very slow and unusable (especially within few minutes of startup) until I removed most of unwanted applications and disabled windows search/defender.

Opening, saving and closing seemed to be ok with Vista, however the length of installation/uninstallation time for some tiny applications like Windows Live Messenger is ridiculous. Especially with Vista updates as well. They are just taking ages, no matter how small the updates are.

For apple, it is only a matter of few seconds for updates and applications to install or uninstall (I am not kidding!) so that I can promptly go back to working.

It doesn't surprise me a bit that Microsoft is back to the drawing board and I hope that they will come up with much leaner and faster OS than Vista. Look up the net for some interviews with Microsoft about their Vista and upcoming Windows 7, they're even singing the same song sheet as us.

 

[Lysander]

Very interesting, I didn't expect this so soon. Any idea what hardware requirements we'll be looking at? Can't be too different from Vista.

 

[Slinwagh]

99% of the problems with Vista were to do with drivers, not Vista itself. I hope that MS do a better job ensuring their partners sort their drivers for Windows 7 before it's release.

HEADRAT

I agree with that, Creative for example have been shocking when it comes to Vista driver support.

 

[HEADRAT]

Creative were shocking, I suppose in their defence MS did completely re-design the way sound was produced in Vista but they new it was coming.

HEADRAT

 

[Uhtred]

I always thought MS should not have gone so far with XPSP2, it made it too good. XP was always the best upgrade for me, the day I installed RC1 i never looked back to 98se, it was just a different level.

Vista has always been a disappointment for me. It looks pretty and has some really nice additions, the search is great (although i miss the classic search option), loving the breadcrumb, love the sidebar, love the new 'start' menu (i don't like the fact they don't call it start anymore, it makes it more difficult to explain to people where to click), I like the new network icon (although right clicking on said icon often takes a few seconds to respond), superfetch is good but has issues (like it can try to cache a DVD ISO, eat 99% of my 4GB meaning I have to hard reboot the box).

Another great thing is the security built into vista, it works well and it’s very rare now to find a machine infested with spyware but this can be put down to IE7 more than vista.

Driver support has never been a problem for me, as long as you research before you buy you shouldn’t get caught out and gaming performance has been fine. Yes, vista uses more resources than XP but this is to be expected with a new OS, the hardware caught up very quickly.

The dislike list is longer but it is mostly minor things, and a lot were present with XP. It's frustrating that MS could not have ironed them out by now.
The main vista only issues revolve around printers, constant hard disk thrashing, slow startup, very very sluggish performance with laptops, even with oodles of RAM. Folders not remembering settings, a registry hack is required and even that isn’t 100%.

I quite often come across occasions where a programme will crash in a particular way and it will be impossible to end the process in task manager. This never happened with XP. I actually find the stability of vista quite bad, resuming from standby causes issues every now and then and I’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve had hard reset machines because vista grinds to a halt. I’ve also had a number of machines which fail to start for no known reason meaning a system restore is required. The startup repair feature has fixed a couple of problems and is a good addition but I think it could do more. I’ve also found a lot of machines seem to lose their trust relationships with the domain, seemingly at random.

I am an impatient user, I expect things to work and work quickly. If vista is just sitting there doing nothing for any discernable reason then I get angry. Disk thrashing is a big problem, even if you turn off superfetch, defender, AV, indexing, close all programmes there will still be periods of 30minutes + of constant thrashing. This reduces the speed that vista will respond to a request you make.

There are other things, like with vista business, you can’t join a domain when you go through the initial setup like you could with XP, the logon screen is very user unfriendly and i’m at a loss to know why MS took out the domain drop down list, you actually have to type it all out and why when I type administrator does it revert to local admin and not domain and yet if a UAC prompt comes up it will revert to domain administrator??

UAC is great for locking down computers, it makes it much easier to administrate than XP for users with no admin rights but WHY DO I HAVE TO TYPE THE WORD ADMINISTRATOR EVERY SINGLE TIME as well as the password?!?!?! Why doesn’t it remember it?! The run as option is also another sad causality (as in, if you have local admin rights you can’t right click on a exe or a snap in and choose which credentials you run it as, vista will only give you the option of local admin.

I also miss the advanced file type menu, the defrag options, you even have to use a command line to re-enable the hibernation file. The volume mixer is pants, very unintuitive and I can’t stand the fact that half the OS has nice new flashy menus but if you want to do anything remotely complex then vista will present you with the classic XP/98 menus.

Lots of tiny little things which add up to make it a frustrating OS and not a great one.

I’ve used many vista machines, the company I work for is rolling it out with every new machine for the last year or so. It’s not been easy for us admins and we’re left with something which doesn’t do a lot more for the average user and just frustrates them because it just isn’t as quick or snappy as XP which is what you want for a business OS and I expect home users are similar. MS should have made the OS more modular and tailored the different editions more effectively.

I find vista inconsistent and incomplete, and very unpolished. Yes, it’s still a good OS still, and i will never go back to XP, there are things about vista I would just miss too much, but it will always be a letdown for me, MS should have done more after so many years.

Hopefully windows 7 will build on vista and improve the finer details and I really hope it’s released sooner rather than later.

 

[Uhtred]

People are just "used" to XP, I've installed Vista for family and they've asked to go back to XP because they just felt lost.

I don't accept this, the reason being office 2007. Now this was more radical than vista in terms of user interface and office has been the same for years and years but I find very few people have a bad thing to say about it. I put this down to that it performs well and is more stable than 2003.

 

[Burnsy2023]

I don't accept this, the reason being office 2007. Now this was more radical than vista in terms of user interface and office has been the same for years and years but I find very few people have a bad thing to say about it. I put this down to that it performs well and is more stable than 2003.

It's funny that Office 2007 wasn't slated by the media on launch either.

 

[Uhtred]

Well the media have a lot to answer for! The standard of technology reporting is pretty poor and biased with lots of MS bashing...not helpful

 

[Strife212]

It has 10 to 15% performance loss to XP in 3D games, and if you really didn’t know that and use Vista as a gamming PC it is you that’s the nOOb.

Love Vista all you want my PC is faster than yours my games play better than yours and running it on XP means it goes even faster.

LOL you sucker.

Yeah, that is true - if your PC sucks balls.

Also, enjoy your DX 9