Windows 7 Review
Submitted by BruceCyr on Thu, 01/08/2009 - 21:32.
PCMag, amongst others, has a look at the Windows 7 Beta:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2333407,00.as...
Since its stilll unbelievably bloated and built on the Registry, it sounds like SP2 (or whatever) for Vista, but what do I know? Certainly its not what the hoopla suggested the new Windows might be. Hopefully we can go on running XP or 2K indefinitely until M$ figures out how to write a good OS. If they were really clever they would buy, borrow or steal and then rebrand QNX (http://www.qnx.com/) as Windows 8 
Bruce
Windows 7 (beta)
I successfully installed the Windows 7 32 bit beta on my Sony VAIO desktop (Pentium 4 2.6ghz with 1mb of RAM). My first impression is that it feels like Windows XP with the look of Vista. (less bloat). Some of my favorite programs have to run in XP or Vista compatibility mode, but they run. Some will install, but not run and some won't install at all. Be advised, this is the initial beta. Anyone who is dissatisfied with MS Operating Systems, this is an opportunity to become involved in producing a better product. If you have an extra machine and some spare time, download the beta and make direct comments to Microsoft. Oh, yes Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred 10 runs on the beta.
Penrod wrote: Anyone who is
Anyone who is dissatisfied with MS Operating Systems, this is an opportunity to become involved in producing a better product.
I suppose it would be bad form to ask you to post scans of your pay stubs
It is an insult to our intelligence and a testament to your partiality to argue that testing the Beta is a means of influencing the OS's design. The design was basically locked down over a decade ago and hasn't significantly changed since then. I don't think M$ has the personnel to design a new OS, and even if they did the folks wouldn't have much of a career chance there.
Bruce
It's Windows NT++ and we all
I am retired so my paystubs show Social Security and Boeing Retirement. Want to buy a rocket engine? Microsoft is not buying any more operating systems from third parties. They already bought Q-DOS from Seattle Computing. It's Windows NT++ and we all know it. So a beta tester is not going to influence the design of the software, but they can reduce the amount of bugs in the release version. Those bugs that so many people take perverse joy in relentlessly complaining about.
Eh, sorry, Penrod. You're
Eh, sorry, Penrod. You're clearly free to put out for free.
Nevertheless, there is no way participating in a Beta test will influence the design or features of the OS. Basically its just a form voluntary servitude.
If you really want to work with a M$ group that will pay some attention to your input (but still won't pay for play), try the WSR folks.
Bruce
Individual Preferences
Anyway if any of you prefer the classic UI, by classic I mean Win95, NT4.0, and Win2K themes rather than the XP and Vista default UI themes write your congressman or email Stevie Ballmer 'cause it ain't included as an option in win 7. Not yet anyway. The Redmond Juggernaut is on the move.
Hopefully is right
Hopefully we can go on running XP or 2K indefinitely until M$ figures out how to write a good OS. Bruce
Windows 7 will upgrade a Vista installation, but it won’t do that with Windows XP. Microsoft has decided that the only way XP users will get to put Windows 7 on their systems is to blow away the existing operating system and start over. Given that there are so many people out there who skipped Vista and are interested in Windows 7, I’m not sure about the wisdom of that choice. However, that’s the way it is — if you upgrade an XP machine, here’s hoping you have all your critical documents and data backed up.
Pen
Penrod wrote: Windows 7
Windows 7 will upgrade a Vista installation, but it won’t do that with Windows XP. Microsoft has decided that the only way XP users will get to put Windows 7 on their systems is to blow away the existing operating system and start over. Given that there are so many people out there who skipped Vista and are interested in Windows 7, I’m not sure about the wisdom of that choice. However, that’s the way it is — if you upgrade an XP machine, here’s hoping you have all your critical documents and data backed up.
Pen
Upgrading an existing Windoze installation makes as much sense as putting lipstick on a deflated sex doll.
Bruce
A Stroll in Altos PARC
Upgrading an existing Windoze installation makes as much sense as putting lipstick on a deflated sex doll.
Bruce
I gather you have tried both.
Penrod wrote: I gather you
I gather you have tried both.
Oh, gather your gaithers -- cute but fussy non sequitur for an advocate who, one the one hand, has sold himself too cheaply to the richest software company while, on the other hand, handing out inept advice. I credit you with having the smarts to try to recover from an obvious screw-up by trying to change the subject.
Even M$ suggests a fresh install rather than installing over an older installation. Anyone with an iota of OS experience would understand this.
To bring the discussion back to SR matters: Why wouldn't a M$ proponent like yourself give WSR a spin? In my experience WSR is more competent as an SR product than Windoze is as an OS. Of course, WSR is a much more recently acquired product line than Windoze. WSR benefits from fairly recent external technology, while Windoze harks back three or four decades to the antiquated mindset of DEC's OS -- every hacked, patched, band-aid iteration simply drives the inherent contradictions and dead-ends further into its users' lives. A M$ OS is becoming the equivalent of a hyper-reflexive machine that does nothing useful except drive itself itself into its users' growing frustration. Its like an old dog that's asphyxiating itself on its own effluvia and vapors!
The company excels at acquiring promising technology lines and then driving them into mass mediocrity in the labyrinths of its bureaucratic bowels. Like its former aegis, IBM, it needs a deep business shock to galvanize it out of its growing paralysis.
The demise of Windoze will happen as rapidly and unpredictably as the passing of the mainframe computer. People who have allied themselves with it as with a faddish brand, like sports fans or camera nuts, will be stunned when it happens -- until they latch onto the next big brand that gives shape to their extra-personal lives.
In the meantime, a lot us wish we could use an OS that's modern and efficient enough so that we don't even have to know its there -- the best OS, like those being developed for the proliferating host of PDAs and other personal technology devices, is one that you never see or know about. An M$ OS is the diametric opposite -- its an old slob dog that stinks up your space and drools all over your body, exposing you to looming threats, while you're trying to get some work done. Its an OS only a masochist or M$ monopolist could pretend to love.
Bruce
Macro Language
I gather you have tried both.
That macro generated a lot of vile text.
The spin doctor
To bring the discussion back to SR matters: Why wouldn't a M$ proponent like yourself give WSR a spin?
I thought this was the "nothing to do with SR forum" But since you brought it up, I am using WSR. It takes a little more training than DNS 10, but since it works on my 64bit laptop, it's worth the extra effort (while waiting DNS 10 for x64). DNS 10 x64 will probably be released in time for the production rollout of Windows 7. Double the pleasure, double the fun.
"Windows is the air we breathe" - Ballmer
Even M$ suggests a fresh install rather than installing over an older installation. Anyone with an iota of OS experience would understand this.
I prefer not to have to reinstall all my applications. If an upgrade install is available (which it is for current Vista users) then I will use that option. We here at Microso.....err..I mean beta testers I have talked to have installed with the upgrade option and had no problems.
Pen
I feel your pain
Windoze harks back three or four decades to the antiquated mindset of DEC's OS -- every hacked, patched, band-aid iteration simply drives the inherent contradictions and dead-ends further into its users' lives.
I see you remember Dave Cutler from DEC. Yes he was hired by Microsoft to help design NT.
Penrod wrote: I see you
I see you remember Dave Cutler from DEC. Yes he was hired by Microsoft to help design NT.
The ramifications are enormous. Cutler was DEC's OS guru, and he contructed NT in that image. But that OS was itself a 1970's mindset technology based largely on the precedents IBM set -- DEC used IBM as a model except they "miniaturized" and "revolutionized" mainframe design into the miniframe and moved power down to the departmental level down from the corporate level. But basically it was and remains an antique, mainframe hack that cannot cope with contemporary informational demands. The IBMPC and M$ further shrunk the mainframe design down to the desktop level.
The new handheld devices, which are the paradigm for kids who are supplanting old farts like you and me, have different needs and environments where shrunken mainframe design is an egregious contortion and embarrassment.
The impending non-OS environment will look different from the half-century old mainframe environment. But handheld is the new paradigm, and for the PC to remain relevant, it will to adapt to the new environment, not vice-versa.
The practical upshot is that the shrunken mainframe M$ OS consumes valuble PC-cycles and even more valuable user-cycles just to maintain itself because its so mal-adapted to our needs that its an absolute anachronism -- it slows and weighs us down. In the near future the PC will become largely an unattended automaton that doesn't require any attention -- its job will be to facilitate communication and coordination among a user's handheld devices and between those of one user and the network of other handheld device users.
Bruce
Visionary
The ramifications are enormous. Cutler was DEC's OS guru, and he contructed NT in that image. But that OS was itself a 1970's mindset technology based largely on the precedents IBM set -- DEC used IBM as a model except they "miniaturized" and "revolutionized" mainframe design into the miniframe and moved power down to the departmental level down from the corporate level. But basically it was and remains an antique, mainframe hack that cannot cope with contemporary informational demands. The IBMPC and M$ further shrunk the mainframe design down to the desktop level.
I think business was looking for something other than hippie, hobbyist paradigm for computing. IBM and Microsoft provided that "illusion", if you prefer. But a computer named after a piece of fruit? The suits weren't going for that.
I recall the Intel hype about the 486 burst mode. A miniturization of the IBM 360 channel burst from 24 years previous. etc. etc.etc.
I saw something about a cell phone/handheld device that could scan the bar code of a product in a store and subsequently go out to the internet and do a price compare of the same product in other stores in that area. That's handy.
Penrod wrote: I think
I think business was looking for something other than hippie, hobbyist paradigm for computing. IBM and Microsoft provided that "illusion", if you prefer. But a computer named after a piece of fruit? The suits weren't going for that.
Interesting hang-up re: hippies and 60's radicals -- no doubt some relevant personal history there, but I doubt we want to hear it anymore than you want to tell it.
More interesting to me is your resort to epithets and similar sleight of hand rhetorical tricks in order to avoid an adult discussion -- oh well, there's always the sex doll ploy, to which you do seem to respond!?
Bruce
BruceCyr wrote: Interesting
Interesting hang-up re: hippies and 60's radicals -- no doubt some relevant personal history there, but I doubt we want to hear it anymore than you want to tell it.
More interesting to me is your resort to epithets and similar sleight of hand rhetorical tricks in order to avoid an adult discussion -- oh well, there's always the sex doll ploy, to which you do seem to respond!?
Bruce
There's the imperial we again. Did you mean yourself? There's the sex doll thing again. Were you referring to avoiding an adult bookstore discussion?
Cliff Hanger
A hands on review + tune in next week for more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10147933-17.html
QNX was and is a specialized
QNX was and is a specialized business and instrument OS that is genuinely kernel-designed from the ground up. Unlike M$ OS, which became a monopoly via the PC Big Bang under IBM's aegis, its become successful in a competitive environment -- other businesses buy and use it because it solves business and technical problems with a minimum of fuss and cost, unlike M$ OS, which has so much overhead and built-in bureaucratic crapola that it can't cut the competitive mustard. M$ has never been able to successfully extend its OS to non-desktop environments -- its not just the bloated OS, its the anaconda-like grip of M$, its insatiable hunger to gobble up all forms of technical endeavor.
There was never a competitive market for PC OSes. All we see on the desktop is M$ OS for the same reason that all we see in the universe is matter, not its equal and opposite form, anti-matter -- it could have gone either way in the beginning, but in the Big Bang some small, local quirk started a slight bias in favor of matter, and that local, chaotic quirk, has ramified into the reign of matter over anti-matter.
IBM was the godfather to M$ OS. Theoretically there were at least two other OSes in the beginning, but neither had IBM's unofficial imprimatur and thus lost out. M$ was basically molded in IBM's image -- they selected M$ because the founders were smart and seemingly malleable to IBM's lead, unlike the other odd-ball OS contenders from academic or intellectually rogue progenitors -- IBM knew a company with business sense.
They just miscalculated a bit -- the adoptee turned out to be smarter and meaner than they were.
Bruce
Third Alternative
IBM was the godfather to M$ OS. Theoretically there were at least two other OSes in the beginning, but neither had IBM's unofficial imprimatur and thus lost out.
Bruce
The Columbia MPC (an early IBM clone) came with both MS-DOS and CPM-86. They were both rather primitive and similar, but I was too busy, putting a music catalog onto a PC using dBASE II, to really spend time doing an evaluation of the OS's of the time. What was the third alternative?
Penrod wrote: BruceCyr
IBM was the godfather to M$ OS. Theoretically there were at least two other OSes in the beginning, but neither had IBM's unofficial imprimatur and thus lost out.
Bruce
The Columbia MPC (an early IBM clone) came with both MS-DOS and CPM-86. They were both rather primitive and similar, but I was too busy, putting a music catalog onto a PC using dBASE II, to really spend time doing an evaluation of the OS's of the time. What was the third alternative?
UCSD Pascal was one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal
Bruce
Oh the times...they are a changin'
IBM was the godfather to M$ OS. Theoretically there were at least two other OSes in the beginning, but neither had IBM's unofficial imprimatur and thus lost out. M$ was basically molded in IBM's image -- they selected M$ because the founders were smart and seemingly malleable to IBM's lead, unlike the other odd-ball OS contenders from academic or intellectually rogue progenitors -- IBM knew a company with business sense.
They just miscalculated a bit -- the adoptee turned out to be smarter and meaner than they were.
Bruce
A:) "Microsoft Corp.'s first-ever layoffs point to a need for the company to rethink its Windows client business, which is largely responsible for the disappointing financial results that led to the thousands of Microsoft job cuts announced Thursday."
B:) "Profit improvement is the result of the transformation that IBM has undergone over the last 6 years." The Armonks moved out of low-margin businesses like PC systems (here, Lenovo, take this) and hard drives (hey Hitachi (NYSE: HIT), are you any good at this stuff?) and into "higher value services markets." Nowadays, mainframes and pSeries servers just sing backup behind real stars like online services platform WebSphere and collaborative productivity suite Lotus."
Enough of this. I recently bought the new Saitek X52 joystick and throttle combo to play MS Flight Simulator with. Roger, Roger. Over, Over. Don't call me Shirley.
client-server
QNX was and is a specialized business and instrument OS that is genuinely kernel-designed from the ground up.
Bruce
Memory protected user space outside the kernel. Sounds familiar. Dave Cutler's NT started out that way. Then they allowed graphics drivers to communicate directly with the kernel. Bill and his coat of many colored screens of death.
Have you tried QNX?
Penrod wrote: BruceCyr
QNX was and is a specialized business and instrument OS that is genuinely kernel-designed from the ground up.
Bruce
Memory protected user space outside the kernel. Sounds familiar. Dave Cutler's NT started out that way. Then they allowed graphics drivers to communicate directly with the kernel. Bill and his coat of many colored screens of death.
Have you tried QNX?
I did, and was impressed by its sheer competence vs. MS DOS, and saddened by the lack of applications.
However, I was responding to your gratuitous and smart-ass put down of a successful business and engineering OS.
Your most impressive skill is avoidance of issues and your resort to red-herring tactics. I don't associate cowardice and evasion with the Marine corps.
Bruce
BruceCyr wrote: I did, and
I did, and was impressed by its sheer competence vs. MS DOS, and saddened by the lack of applications.
Bruce
The guys with the white hats don't always win.
Penrod wrote: The guys with
The guys with the white hats don't always win.
So what? And what does a "white hat" have to do with the price of tea?
So far as I can tell, you come here to tout Windoze 7, and when I call you out on the merits of this enterprise, the best thing you can say for it and its predecessors is that they are inevitable and unavoidable -- you could say that about the common cold and traffic jams, but that doesn't make them any more palatable or useful!
Basically, you avoid discussing issues, and I don't see how anyone benefits from trading epithets. Sad. It seems like there should be someone who is smart enough and has enough gumption to argue the merits of Windoze.
Bruce
Not interested
Basically, you avoid discussing issues, and I don't see how anyone benefits from trading epithets. Sad. It seems like there should be someone who is smart enough and has enough gumption to argue the merits of Windoze.Bruce
Have you considered teaching Comparative Operating Systems at a university or college? Or starting a new forum or blog to argue the merits or demerits of various OS's? I have enjoyed trying to hang in with you, but I know when I am beaten, when to throw in the towel. It's been kicks.
Penrod wrote: I have
I have enjoyed trying to hang in with you. It's been kicks.
Hey, Guy! You're actually pretty funny. It has been kicks kicking around M$. Sorry for getting so intense. Hope you hang around -- we need different points of view.
I think people are probably interested in HOW M$' new OSes work, even if I hate someone trying to say we should love the damn thing -- where there is no choice there can't be any love.
Bruce
What's this nonsense about
What's this nonsense about the Registry -- its the most god-awful feature of any OS. There was a slight pretense in the early days that having a central repository for critical OS and application information would save scarce resources, but now that pretense has evaporated -- memory and CPU cycles are so plentiful that the Registry has become the bottleneck and Achilles heel of M$ OS.
The Registry is foremost a tool for M$ to batter other application developers into submission and share vital business secrets. Secondly, the Registry has become a make-work project for clever but clueless M$ programmers who wouldn't know an innovation until it smacks them in their derrieres.
M$ OS is constantly subject to mysterious blow-ups, and the single likeliest route for these is through the Registry. Nobody setting down today to design an OS would include a central repository like the Registry except as a localized store of information for the OS -- all other applications would create and maintain their own repositories. Simply maintaining the sanctity of the centralized, omnipotent Registry consumes considerable cycles that could better be given to the user for his/her work.
The OS would include protocols for applications to communicate with the OS and other applications, but these would be protocols, that is, specifications for how to do things, and not centralized physical storage areas under the ownership of the OS itself. Basically, the Registry is the apotheosis of shrunken mainframe design where OS is the main actor and the applications are subordinate supplicants. The focus of M$ OS and its Registry is to maintain centralized control, not to facilitate communication and cooperation of available resources and devices for the user's benefit. But centralized control is an anachronism is a networked age where decentalized communication and mutual coordination work better than unilateral fiat and direction.
Handheld devices will pioneer the new coordinative paradigm and deliver a deathblow to the centralized paradigm -- except it will occur more as a rapid deflation, like a sex-doll loosening its gas into the public space. Expect things to smell funny for a while as the stench evaporates into global pollution
Bruce
What's this nonsense about the Registry
Sounds like you're bucking for an editorial job with one of the PC rags. Death to the centralized paradigm. Now there's a motto to rally around. Savio has reincarnated. Power to the coordinative paradigm. Tee shirts for the next CES in Las Vegas.
BruceCyr wrote: like a
like a sex-doll loosening its gas into the public space. Expect things to smell funny for a while as the stench evaporates into global pollution
Bruce, you know TOO MUCH about sex dolls IMNSHO.
And
its job will be to facilitate communication and coordination among a user's handheld devices and between those of one user and the network of other handheld device users.
Bruce, you know TOO MUCH about sex dolls IMNSHO.
And handheld devices.