Comments on: Windows 7 could change our perception of PCs

Can Windows 7 be the savior that manufacturers like Dell and HP have been waiting for? Don Reisinger thinks so.

[amarino0427]

That entire article is why I use a mac. They are not just better looking, more efficient simple and just plain easier to manage.

[dadsgravy]

Jesus. You guys got nerd all over this page. I bet most of you wear briefs.

[Angmarr]

Rofl
& its boxer-briefs my friend!

[kevinskrause]

Yeah, boxer-briefs here also. Room in the pouch and snug everywhere else. The ladies love'em.

[cg0def]

I think you are missing a major point. The study was about how satisfied the user was with the customer service and the product itself. If the computer breaks down and the customer service is horrible no improvements in the OS will alleviate the situation. Unfortunately the problems with Dell and HP come down most of the time to poor construction of the computers and terrible and incompetent tech support. Also Apple has a huge advantage over both HP and Dell just because there are Apple stores in every major city and you can get help there as well. With both HP and Dell you end up having to deal with a person over the phone and then sending your computer off to the repair center. Of course people will be dissatisfied when a thing like that happens. Sure Apple computers break but taking it to a store and getting help there on the spot is a considerably more satisfying experience. ( provided that the problem is not a major one ) Even if you have to leave the computer for repair the fact that you have a face to face contact leaves you with a much more satisfying experience. I really don't see how Windows 7 will address any of those features. Oh and it really isn't such a huge improvement over Vista although it is truly better.
Almost every PC maker still believes that they are simply gluing pieces together rather than creating a finished product. There is not way that the user will get the same satisfaction level from a product like that as he/she will get from a fully integrated product such as an Apple computer.

[megustansalchichas]

is there going to be a windows 7 NT version for those of us who still want to be productive and are not 'burning' pictures of 'the kids' to 'CDROM'?

[JP-Peterson]

I'm running Windows 7 Beta 64 bit, in a VirtualBox on my Mac. My last PC ran Vista Home Premium.

Those expecting some major departure from Vista are going to be disappointed. Visually, it's cleaner. It works fine, so far. I can't fairly judge performance because of the way I'm running it. This is not the major transition MS is going to try to convince the world it is.

If you like the OS X dock and Stacks, you'll like the Taskbar.

Joe Consumer is not gonna be wowed by this.

[Henzapper]

My problem with Vista is the way it fixes problems and stuff. For instance, my PC hasn't been able to read PDFs for a few months now. Every time I try, it just tells me to go close Adobe Acrobat, software that I wasn't able to find on my computer. Now, on my Mac, every time one of these problems pop up, they always lead me to how to fix the problem. I can't find any way to fix my PC problems though, cuz everything's so hard to find.

Now my question is, will all of this be fixed with Windows 7? I seriously want a PC as my next computer. As much as I love my macbook, I want to do some gaming. But finding things on my computer and trying to fix problems with Vista is just so frustrating that I'm not sure I can go back to that.

[shellcodes_coder]

They should stop installing bloatwares and trial versions and just give the customers what we want. Buy a new PC and it will come with crap wares preinstalled.

[Angmarr]

but you see that's a key factor in bringing the price down, And a "majority" of them can be removed easily through add/remove programs. I personally dont mind a few random stuff which i can easily delete if it brings the price down.

Lenovo, Acer have very little Crapweare when you buy them, Sony on the on-the-hand ....

[SeanBlader]

Don's post is right on. a major part of my dislike for my HP tablet was the poor performance of Vista on it. So I tried linux and found it lacking in the touch screen department, and then when I got the Windows 7 Beta on it, my interest in Microsoft was somewhat restored. 7 still has a LONG way to go, but then again neither MacOS or any of the Linux distributions are perfect yet. At the moment though, I'd say if you have the right hardware to get all the drivers working Ubuntu is close to what people would expect from their computers, that may change after 7 is released.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Palm Pre has been spotted in the wild !!!

[zyxxy]

I find this whole thread humorous. I have been running Vista Home Premium 64 (SP1) on a Dell XPS420 since January. No issues. None. Some of the weirdness that I occasionally run into with XP is fixed. Which weirdness you ask? One example, you get email with an attachment, you click "save as" and the machine just blocks. Nothing happens. The explorer is halts. Mouse moves but buttons have no affect. Then sixty or ninety seconds later everything wakes up. What is that all about? Vista has never done that.

Vista also handles multicore better than XP. I have XP Pro and Vista both on Core 2 Quad, and Vista clearly balances the load better. Unless I am really beating on the machine with software builds, you barely perceive McAfee running under Vista, but under XP there is a clear hit.

Windows 7 is based on Vista. That should not be a surprise to anybody. That is much of the reason that the beta worked so smoothly. If they can make it boot faster and launch application faster, that would be great.

I have had exactly two issues with Vista 64 and they both have to do with Vendors, not MS.

1) Cisco is taking forever to support their VPN client on Vista 64.
2) HP has not updated the software for their 25xx series AIO printers (ancient) for the 64 bit version.

Point (2) is less of an issue since I am thinking of abandoning HP for a Kodak AIO.

[BenGarbe]

Mac users want something horribly dumbed down OR if they operate in highly creative fields they need a very powerful computer with a dedicated tool like Final Cut Pro or something.

The bottom line is that Vista was just a new skin on XP and it worked phenomenally well, but was just a marketing disaster. It's far and away better than XP and so much more useful than Mac OS.

[pentest]

It is still just Windows, eye candy doesn't change that.

The funny thing is all that crap people said about Vista beta is being said now. How did that work out? Polishing a turd doesn't improve it.

[santuccie]

My Windows experience is good overall, although savvy has a lot to do with it. Hopefully, we'll never see a "Shaken Baby" app in Windows Marketplace, like we just saw on the iTunes App store. I'll never buy from Apple after this one.

[santuccie]

PART 1

"re: A+ and my experience - I'm not saying you are not talented... just that holding such a certification is not *necessarily* meaningful. When I got my Novell CNE, there were two ways to do it... experience and study, or pay for classes that prep you for the tests. I suppose you learn some either way... but in the field, the difference was obvious. An actual university degree is a bit more meaningful, as it requires a higher level of work to obtain... but again, I've met people with degrees who can't do much of anything in the real-world. I don't have a degree in comp.sci., nor do I have many certifications. I got my CNE because it was the requirement for a pay-grade change... I had already been installing and maintaining Novell networks for several years before I got it, for companies like Rockwell Int., Mead Paper, etc. I've also worked as an independent consultant to companies ranging from small business to ones as big as ABB. Most recently, I worked in IT for a Fortune 50 company for about 6 years. I think that is well more than you need to know."
>>>>I am 99.9% certain that you are making this up. And until you provide evidence to support your arguments, and/or show some competence, I will remain certain. You've missed way too much for a professional.

"re: market-share - I agree with you web market share counts for web-based attacks. There are other non-web-based attacks as well, but your general point taken. I agree with what you've said about why Vista has been targeted and compromised... and that you know ways to keep that from happening... but I'm talking real-world for the average user. They are safer on OSX, period (at this time). But, my point, if Vista were really so much more secure than XP, the XP exploits wouldn't work. So, either Vista really isn't that much more secure (for the average user), or for some reason the hackers are specifically targeting an OS with a pretty small market-share (in relation to other versions). Take your pick."
>>>>You make one good point here, regarding non-Web-based attacks. True enough, Conficker is spreading on flash drives as well as drive-by downloads, OE, and network shares. And I understand you when you ask why XP exploits would work on an OS as "secure" as Vista, but there are some points you should know. First, not all of these are "critical" on Vista like they are in XP. Vista has file integrity self-checking, which Windows XP does not. With XP, you would have to insert the disc and run a scan, and that would roll back files. Vista is also much more strict with service/driver associations. This and SDL help to reduce (not eliminate, but reduce) exploitable vectors.

In addition, IE protected mode and UAC are enabled by default. This protects novice users out of the box. Then there's ASLR, which the Mac doesn't have. Novices won't turn off UAC, they'll accept it just like cattle and pigs eat whatever you put in their troughs. What remains is Trojan horses. And like you yourself said, anyone who downloads warez and doesn't know how to check for infections deserves to be infected, whether they use Windows or OS X. But if they use OS X, they're less likely to find out about it, because of all the memes telling them that OS X is invincible.

"re: experts - whether or not they are on M$'s payroll or not, their statements (you quoted) were overblown. Maybe they are just M$ fanboys."
>>>>Overblown how? Are you saying you're offended by Miller's pompous tone when he says it takes less time to find an OS X exploit than a Vista exploit, or are you saying he's outright wrong? Like I said in my previous post, anyone who knew better would have set him straight by now. They would also have something to say about Dai Zovi's claim that he finds Vista's code, at least in terms of security, to be much better overall in Vista than Mac OS X 10.4." But that one has stood for over two years. How much longer do we wait, while assuming "guilty until proven innocent" in the interim?

First it's "paid for by M$," and now it's fanboyism. You're ducking and dodging the apparent truth, trial-and-erroring as you try desperately to conjure up an alternate explanation, rather than simply accepting the unanimous declaration by security researchers (the people this industry depends on) that Vista is indeed tougher than OS X. This is fanboyism in and of itself; there is absolutely no objectivity in this.

[workerThread]

I do a lot of online business with Vista (previously with XP). Santuccie gets the thumbs up for a great summary of the security advantages coming with Vista. Vista Home Premium is sometimes annoying because something is missing that i expect just because I work with Windows Server and other levels of Vista.

my Vista 64 Home Premium is much better than XP Pro I used to have. No problems with a sophisticated home network and various peripherals and fast for software I use. Microsoft OS shows a lot of quality and security. Early problems with Vista were mostly problems with 3rd party drivers for video, networking and the like. ONce the revisions for the drivers came in, then the OS settled down. Of course the whiners blamed Microsoft and were clueless about the dependency on the 3rd parties. Then the culture accepted the lie and we live with the consequences now.

MAC benefits from a more closed architecture, and it looks like Windows 7 is going to get the same benefits from controlling all the garbage apps that OEMs like DELL put on consumer computers that end up trashing the experience. One clear cut advantage for MAC-- it has Final Cut PRO.

Programming for UNIX is sort of a dubious pasttime in light of the Microsoft developer platform that is really great, especially for Internet applications. I have a Windows 2008 Server 64-bit machine running on bare-bones hardware that is truly superb; makes me wonder how i ever tolerated SUN machines. No problem with 32-bit apps from reputable vendors and developers.

In the end for the typical consumer the experience is not only about software, not only what you get from the OS, but also apps like TurboTAx (tenaciously resilient to take over attempts by Microsoft), Excel, the games, and all the rest; BUT the experience is also about the hardware. My home Vista entertainment system is awesome with surround sound, big monitor, lots of system resources. There is just nothing as good in the price range from the MAC.( It seems like the higher end the comparison the smaller the difference in price between MAC and MS; but for me that high-end is over=kill and not worth the $$$$$).

Back before NT, Windows absolutely was the most dismal thing around. Truly M$ was the evil empire. But with XP and Server 2003 the quality and security of the Microsoft platform made it the top market choice. So good and successful that upgrades were not as frequent as Microsoft would have liked.

MAC used to be the only choice for Desktop Publishing a long time ago. Just that market niche alone kept the company from going bankrupt, one can argue. But now? What does MAC offer? To generalize and oversimplify--Just a boutique shooshy-foo-foo computer.

[NikEst]

I want Windows 7 to be better than Vista. There really needs to be 2 major operating system choices for the mainstream consumer. I use Mac for school and Windows for work. It's nice using Windows for work because Microsoft's .NET is far better than Apple development tools, but I am getting sick of XP, I've been using it for almost a decade. The best thing in the Windows corner though is that I get paid to regularly re install the OS. In the end, having to beat the other company is really good news for us. It creates a need to make things better and both MS and Apple have a lot they need to make better.

[ghostradio]

Had so many problems with microsoft vista im ready try anything else for a change.

[FCBarca]

More nonsensical rantings from Cnet trying to prop up Microsoft...Let's face facts, Apple is simply superior

[cosuna]

Guess your check on the mail from Microsoft.

BTW. Windows 7 can do even greater damage than Vista. Why?
Introducing a Vista twin that differs slightly from the original will create a nightmare for software developers, most of them already derailed by Vista. Now new software must be made into three mayor formats: XP and previous, Vista and 7 formats. Installation programs must give instructions for the three variants.

Vista is not going away as easily, cause thousands and thousands of us, users were stuffed down our throat damn Vista. We aren't gonna pay for an "upgrade" and neither can downgrade to XP.

So beware of the "Seventh Heaven" Microsoft is trying to sell. Things don't change much after Windows 7. That is.... after Vista.... it's gonna be hard to return to where XP left us.

[jmans1212]

I have built and see how vendors such as Dell and others load the software that will not be best optimization for the hardware it is loaded on. In Vista's case they would leave the aero setup on even if the hardware is not best to run it. This is especially the case for lower end laptops.
I will agree that Microsoft should do update for speed and user interface which I submitted to them while Beta Testing Windows 7. However I do believe that companies like Dell and others should ensure that the image they load on their devices.
Also with companies like Dell etc they load crapware. And as anyone knows that crapware is software that is preloaded on computers that is for trial use or not needed. In the past year I purchased two laptops. One for myself and my brother-in-law deploying to Iraq. Dell was not the company however as an example both out of the box had vista and about 70 some process running after startup. After clearing out the crapware I was able to reduce this to about 40 some. Not only did this increase performance of the laptop.
So for Dell and Microsoft to get a better customr ratings they have to work together and ensure a good running machine with no crapware.
Apple doesn't have to load crapware as they know for any new programs they don't have other stores selling their product because the end user license agreement from apple doesn't allow people to obtain the software and load on a custom built computer.

Companies will always be slow to upgrade as with any upgrade of software there is cost not only for software but also hardware. I saw the same items with XP and XPservice pack 2. The IT department had to fight for exta funds to upgrade the hardware to best run XP and the vast amount of programs the business required for the business line.