Windows 7 to be Released in Next Year

[Ben]

What a ripoff. I am SO glad I didn't switch from XP to Vista. Looks like Vista will be another Windows ME.

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9911470-56.html

[Manedwolf]

What a ripoff. I am SO glad I didn't switch from XP to Vista. Looks like Vista will be another Windows ME.

Will be?

[Brad Johnson]

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday indicated that Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, could come within the next year, far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.

Scrambling to cover the dismal reception that Vista's received is more like it.  Until they have a product that works from day one on existing networks, they are going to have the same negative reaction from the business community.

Brad

[Manedwolf]

Nothing to do with which is better, but I use a Mac instead in the office, and I just see the contrast.

I go in, I turn it on, I do work all day, I turn it off. I turn it on, I do work all day, over and over. It just is sort of THERE. No unpleasant surprises, no fighting. Network is there. Printers are there. Software works. Tiger to Leopard did not destroy my productivity. Not much changed on the surface.

People who have upgraded to Vista on PCs lost a lot of productivity time fighting with the machine instead of working. There were major bottlenecks as they got things "fixed" again and again, and they still need to give a file to someone else to print on some of the printers.

Even people who upgraded software to Office 2007 discovered fun things like that Outlook 2007 doesn't use IE's HTML engine to render HTML emails anymore. It uses Word's HTML engine, which is a broken throwback that can't even understand GIF89a.

What is Microsoft doing? Do they not realize they're chasing AWAY people who just want to get their work done without a fuss?

[MechAg94]

Isn't that the common problem in a competitive environment?  The big guy gets slow and forgets the customers and lets new guys get into the market.  We'll see I guess.

[Standing Wolf]

What is Microsoft doing?

Microshaft is doing the same thing it's been doing since DOS days: churning out CrapWare".

[Boomhauer]

I'd STILL rather have ME than Vista- ME was troublefree for me...course, we just used it for GP home computing, nothing fancy...

I still don't see how a manufacture churning out electronic turds the way MS does gets to be huge and stay in business. The only stuff microsoft "made" that was worth a damn was some games that had been done by independent companies and purchased by MS. They've never written anything worth a damn. They are like the Century Arms of the computer world...

The only reason I use XP is that I have too, which results from software compatibility issues and technological idiocy on my part.

I try to use independent programs as much as possible- Firefox blows the socks of IE.

[Gewehr98]

Nope, no 95/98/ME for me.  NT3.5/NT4.0/2KPro was a far better operating system, with better memory and resource management, plus the extra stability of that technique.  98/ME was about it for gamers, and had a smaller footprint and resource requirement - but it was still sloppy code, and if anything hiccuped/burped/farted while running, it crashed the whole operating system via shared memory.  Not so with the NT derivatives, including the current version of XP Pro I run in all my workstations here at home.

[Boomhauer]

Well, I have to admit...XP Pro isn't too bad...I've grown to like it, actually...

But then again, I switched to XP shortly before Vista was released...after XP had been out for a while...enough to build up a long list of patches for it though...

[Gewehr98]

I'm no Vista fan.  When XP is no longer supportable, I'll go to some flavor of Linux.   

[The Annoyed Man]

That's good news.  I guess.  I wasn't looking forward to Vista when XP support expires later this year. Of course, I could run XP for several months to a year after support expires.  I almost never buy new technology anyway.  The discounts for being a generation or so behind are too attractive.  As long as I can keep up with the accounting and tax software system requirements, I'm good.

[Cromlech]

I have ordered a laptop with Vista installed, and that will be for all my DX10 gaming needs (plus it is actually more expensive to get XP installed instead these days). I shall keep XP Pro x64 on my main desktop rig for a fair while yet, it is damned stable.

[Manedwolf]

I have ordered a laptop with Vista installed, and that will be for all my DX10 gaming needs (plus it is actually more expensive to get XP installed instead these days). I shall keep XP Pro x64 on my main desktop rig for a fair while yet, it is damned stable.

Have fun with those drivers!

I forsee a statement you'll be saying soon while gaming. "Why did it just quit? Why does it keep doing that?" 

[RevDisk]

I have ordered a laptop with Vista installed, and that will be for all my DX10 gaming needs (plus it is actually more expensive to get XP installed instead these days). I shall keep XP Pro x64 on my main desktop rig for a fair while yet, it is damned stable.

Have fun with those drivers!

I forsee a statement you'll be saying soon while gaming. "Why did it just quit? Why does it keep doing that?" 

Yea, Vista drivers are a bit ...  less than optimal.  Especially the video drivers.  I believe only one company has a class action against them at the moment, so I suppose it could be worse.   

Couple folks have paid me to install XP on "Vista only" new laptops.  It can be done, but Gods what a nightmare.  My 'trick' is to get a list of every friggin component ANYWHERE in the laptop and find drivers for an XP machine that uses the same chipsets.  Same chips end up in a lot of vastly different hardware.  That'll eventually dry up, but I suspect it'll last until the next version of Windows is released.


Personally, over my dead body will Vista be installed in my company.  Any user that asks, I offer to rip out half their RAM, underclock their processor, and turn on all the flashy desktop figures XP has.  There ya go, you're upgraded to Vista.  But you can still actually get work done.  My biggest complaint is not of a technical nature.  I could upgrade someone from Win2k to XP with minimal issues.  Downgrading our work force to Vista would require at least a couple hours per user of training to get them functioning.  Plus x hours total of calling the Help Desk to ask how to do this or that.  That would probably end up costing us several times the OS price alone.  Add in hardware upgrades, buying new software to replace old software that doesn't run on Vista, etc? 

[zahc]

I'm no Vista fan.  When XP is no longer supportable, I'll go to some flavor of Linux.

What are you waiting for? The only catch with linux is hardware support, which is quite good but merely imperfect, and games.

Any version of *dows seems positively primitive to me compared to linux. It's actually fascinating hearing of all the things that *dows users do...antivirus programs, adware and spyware removal (not as an emergency thing but as maintenance), disk fragmentation (what's that?), restarting after installing programs (wtf, is it 1973?), paying $200 (or any amount) per computer for the priviledge, etc.

I used to run xp in VirtualBox so my wife could run a certain program. Installing it on the virtual machine was a flashback to 1998 for me. It's incredible Vista could be so bad that people still want to run it.

[Finch]

I'm glad I switched to Fedora. The only reason I keep a windows box is to game and for some web development.

[SomeKid]

Have they made a way for XP/Vista PC games to work on Linux yet?

[Gewehr98]

What are you waiting for? The only catch with linux is hardware support, which is quite good but merely imperfect, and games.

Trick question, right?

Probably because the majority of my Windoze apps don't do well under Linux without the WINE emulator, (let's add a clunky software layer, shall we?) and while I like Corel's WordPerfect suite, it's not what runs the business world yet.  As an MCSE and contract IT consultant, I love playing with the various flavors of Linux, but I also am painfully aware that it's not everyman's OS, nor is it even that close yet.  And yes, I play Brothers in Arms - Earned in Blood from time to time. My own customers get XP Pro, and I'll keep that going as long as I can.  Vista is purposely off my radar, until at least a Service Pack or two comes out, plus drivers and compatibility with software that runs fine on XP. 

This IBM quad-Xeon workstation I'm on right now has a removable hard drive cassette, and I run either an XP Pro or Ubuntu hard drive, depending on what I want to do.  It was a lot of fun getting Ubuntu to recognize the ATI FireGL 4 video card, and while I realize there aren't a lot of monster AGP-Pro video cards and motherboards out there for Linux developers to play with, that bothered me a good bit. 

[Cromlech]

Have fun with those drivers! I forsee a statement you'll be saying soon while gaming. "Why did it just quit? Why does it keep doing that?" 

I know what I am getting myself in for, having hopped on the XP x64 bandwagon back in 2005. Drivers for that were terrible back then, but Vista x64 isn't so bad to be honest. Though I am sure Vista will find a way to annoy me. 

[Manedwolf]

Have they made a way for XP/Vista PC games to work on Linux yet?

I have a copy of XP under bootcamp on my Core 2 Duo macbook pro, and it works just fine for gaming. I play TF2 and all on it all the time. Those machines come with whatever the latest Radeon or nVidia card is, they switch back and forth.

Linux is just not ready for prime time, especially in the business world. Servers, sure. Front office? Hell no.

There is one application suite that any business must run, and that's Microsoft Office. Depending on other needs, the other most common is the Adobe creative suite.

Microsoft Office and the Adobe products are available for two platforms. Windows, and OSX. All the programs are absolutely identical on both, as are the files they create. If there's specialized windows-environment programs needed, OSX will run them instantly and transparently in Parallels. In other words...Windows and OSX are the only two OSes that can use all current business applications without fighting.

Linux's hobbyist-made "kind of like" freeware just will not cut it in the business world, no matter how hopeful those hobbyists are.

[mtnbkr]

I'm still using Win2k on our desktop, but will be moving our stuff to the XP laptop we bought a couple years ago in preparation to retire this system (starting to show it's age after 5 years).  I don't *need* XP, but we're starting to acquire devices that do.  I'd never move off of Win2K otherwise.

We bought my FIL a Vista laptop for his birthday last year.  Since this was right before everyone started offering the option of "downgrading" to XP and because I didn't have time to try and load XP myself, that's how he got it.  I did turn off all the visual junk and set the system up in such a way to look like Win2k (as I do with my XP systems as well).  That went a long ways towards making it usable, but it still needs more ram than it shipped with.  I haven't used it since he got it, but apparently he loves it.

I haven't had any issues with Windows once I left the Win9x path in the 90s.  NT4-XP have been rock solid for me.  Before that, I was a Linux user (even used it at work, even though it's been deemed impossible).

Have they made a way for XP/Vista PC games to work on Linux yet?

A few years ago, a company called Lodi sprang up to port previously Windows games for the Linux platform.  I personally bought the latest version of Civ and Quake from them because I liked the games and because I wanted to support them (this was around year 2000 or so).  They didn't last long.  Not because the games were crap or anything (actually, they worked great), but because nobody bought anything.  I'm quite certain the "software wants to be free, man" community stole, I mean shared the software rather than buying it.   

Chris

[Jamisjockey]

There's a reason that I purchased 3 units from Dell over the last year.....they all were equipped with XP.  Two from thier outlet, one ordered with XP.
Vista blows.

[Iain]

I'm no Vista fan.  When XP is no longer supportable, I'll go to some flavor of Linux.   

With the birth of the inexpensive ultra-portable low spec laptops (Eee, cloudbook and many more to come) Microsoft has already announced a stay of execution for XP. Don't think XP support is going anywhere for a good while, it's a perfectly useable OS that a lot of people are comfortable with.

[Sindawe]

I play Brothers in Arms - Earned in Blood from time to time.

 

No Vista here until GAMES demand it. And then only ONE game wherein I get to follow Monty's lead to capture Berlin and end the war by Christmas '44.

XP does just fine, specially seeing how my sister has had to deal with Vista on her machine.

[JimMarch]

OpenOffice 3.0 will be out in about 150 days or so.  They're promising built-in PDF editing, a serious killer feature.  The 2.3/2.4 series out now is very good and almost all the "office app" anybody needs.