Windows 7 Pre-Beta, Unveiled

[Guest]

Wish list for Windows 7:
1. Have WINDOWS track installs..if a program changes anything not in the PROGRAM'S REGISTRY KEY or the PROGRAM's Folder then I need an easy way to change it back (in addition to an easy way to delete the Program's registry keys and folder). This should be as simple as going to Add/Remove Programs and removing it and KNOWING it is all gone (Yes, even you, SecureROM!)
Microsoft, are you tired of people complaining about security? Do your people just not think of these things?!?!?!?!
2. If a program is writing to IT's program group or IT's registry keys, I don't need a pop up to warn me about it...I don't need to know. I'm no so much worried about a program upgrading ITSELF as I am about it changing Windows...Windows needs to know what changed Windows settings and how to change the settings back.

 

[Guest]

Seriously this seems more like windows me too.
I think they will go nowhere with it as they did with vista.
they will certainly force OEM supplier to ship pc with it but it wont be a success. it's a tweaked vista. they should have made all the functionality and give it for free to their loyal users who bought vista. people already payed $500 for vista are they supposed to pay another $500 for a tweaked version of what they already own ?
I work for a huge company (450 000 employees )and my job is supporting PCs/printers... for the buildings in my region.
I cant imagine vista/7 being deployed in my company or any huge company as it is a pain in the ass to deploy and it is also ressouce hog plus you need to have all pcs with over 2 gb to run smooth, companys also may need to recompile their applications to work with vista/7 ...

it will be interresting to see how this will turn out.

 

[cuziyq]

Wow . . . the new taskbar reminds me of this cute little thing called the Dock from some other fruity OS whose name I can't remember.

And Microsoft Gestures? Is that kinda like 'Touch'?

What about the whole streaming music and pictures over your home network? Sounds like iTunes.

Wireless connections in the sys tray? Next thing you know, it'll be on the top of the screen on a convenient menu bar.

When you care enough to imitate the very best, I suppose. 🙂

 

[zipmaster07]

[citation][nom]eldude[/nom]Seriously this seems more like windows me too.I think they will go nowhere with it as they did with vista.they will certainly force OEM supplier to ship pc with it but it wont be a success. it's a tweaked vista. they should have made all the functionality and give it for free to their loyal users who bought vista. people already payed $500 for vista are they supposed to pay another $500 for a tweaked version of what they already own ?I work for a huge company (450 000 employees )and my job is supporting PCs/printers... for the buildings in my region.I cant imagine vista/7 being deployed in my company or any huge company as it is a pain in the ass to deploy and it is also ressouce hog plus you need to have all pcs with over 2 gb to run smooth, companys also may need to recompile their applications to work with vista/7 ...it will be interresting to see how this will turn out.[/citation]


Okay seriouly, who do you work for. IBM, the LARGEST IT company in the world doesn't even break 400k.

 

[JonnyGB]

Security really starts with the user education. There is only so much Microsoft can do without completely locking up the OS. There is always a trade off between security and ease of use. In this case I would also include the openness of the OS.

Sure it is possible to make a very secure OS, but at what cost? Locking out all 3rd party applications? Have a look at what apple is doing to the iPhone.

Jonny jonny@cryptoheaven.com

 

[Guest]

I just hope W7 doesn't contain all the bloated layers to obtain backward compatability. It is time to start fresh!

 

[captaincharisma]

Its an alpha version of the OS why would they talk about security with experimental software?

 

[Guest]

Hey cuziyq,

You might want to do a little historical research. Apple also has many examples of imitation - just as many as any other company.

Multitouch was orginally published in 1982 at UoT. Several proprietary implementations then Microsoft start developing multitouch in 2001 (public publications and code to prove it). All long before Apple. Also I have been using single touch gestures on Windows mobile since 2005.

Streaming music, videos, and pics around the home? I have been doing that with Media Server for over 5 years and with other techs before that.

A fancy task bar - so many products have used that metaphore before either Apple or MS.

Point here is, there are very few true original ideas. The act of building and improving on other's work should not be scorned but understood that that is the foundation of good engineering - iteratively build on previous (self and others) successes and learning from failures.

 

[Guest]

seriously what do you naysayers want? Vista came out with a lot of good things changed under the hood but not many interface changes and it got flak for being just like XP...Windows 7 has a radically different interface and keeps all the good changes from Vista and now they are getting flak for what, changing too much? I can't even tell anymore....let's just all go back to freaking Windows 3.11 days and we can all be happy.

 

[palladin9479]

Well the one set of gripes I had about Vista was how it wasted system resources. You do -NOT- need 2GB of memory to run an OS and a few apps, Vista was just grabbing half of your member and filling it with blank space (supposed to be cache, but it was never fully utilized). Vista was also throttling your CPU back by inserting dozens of NOP instructions between everything. It wasn't he interface, it was the damn kernel slowing everything down.

Now maybe it was just bad OS kernel design. But my personal belief is that MS did that on purpose so it would make people go out and buy new PC's (thus forcing out the old obsolete hardware we got around). OEM's made more money, and it removed the Win2K era PCs from the market.

Now I just hope the new Windows 7 won't do any of that crap, if it does then I'm sticking with WinXP Pro x64 (same kernel as Server 2003).

 

[Guest]

They are taking Vista and making it look better, it's still not enough to make me abandon good old and stable XP.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]timaahhh[/nom]Vista is quite a bit more secure then Xp but people didn't tend to care about that much. Microsoft prolly feels talking up security is a waste of breath.[/citation]
I get the feeling that the general public has seen to many Mac commercials.

It's somehow popular to hate Vista, even though the majority of the criticisms come from pre-SP1 Vista.

Although Microsoft should really adopt a more nix like security.

 

[Guest]

The problem is Vista and Windows 7 are to Windows XP what Windows ME was to Windows 98. Nothing fundamental just a better UI. This is fine as eye candy for joe user. But what about the real advancements what ever happed to the SQL file system rather than NTFS? I've used Vista and have had a quick look at 7. But to be honest until there is a advancement as there was between Windows 98 and XP - I'm sticking with XP it runs on all my hardware and is stable. If you know what you are doing you can even make it secure!

www.DalSoft.co.uk

 

[dechy]

Indeed Vista is a lot more secure, if you leave UAC enabled. UAC being the annoyance it is, gets disabled on almost every tweaker/hardcore gamer PC out there, and those same people will disable it for family members/friends/etc... and then the system is almost on par with XP in terms of security.

I'm looking forward to a more granular way of configuring UAC, I like compromises, but going from fully secured to naked isn't very smart.

And Vista works perfectly fine with P4+, as long as their is ample RAM (bare minimum of 2GB) & a good video card for Aero... my E8400, T7700 & P4-940 run Vista64 extremely well for their specific purposes (and yes, I dual box games using the P4-940, obviously not Crysis, but still pretty power hungry games)

 

[Guest]

The worst part is the office2007-like menus. Yuck!

 

[Guest]

The real question is have they fixed any of the core issues / problems that vista has or are they using the same core system and just adding more bells and whistles to it? From what I seen it is just more trinkets being added on. Try fixing the stability issues and security holes that is what I want to see.

 

[dechy]

[citation][nom]George Hayes[/nom]The real question is have they fixed any of the core issues / problems that vista has or are they using the same core system and just adding more bells and whistles to it? From what I seen it is just more trinkets being added on. Try fixing the stability issues and security holes that is what I want to see.[/citation]

Actually, the core of Vista is quite solid now, pre-SP1 it was iffy, but it was REALLY the drivers the real culprit in the whole stink (Creative Labs & nVidia to name a couple). As I've said, I have Vista64 running on 3 extremely different hardware platforms (custom build E8400 gamer, nothing out of the ordinary / XPS 1730 with the massive amount of "weird" gadgets & an older P4-940 AGP system). They are all rock solid, crashing is a thing of the past (yeah, you hear that a lot, but it's the god given truth).

Security? Well, it doesn't matter which OS, there's holes everywhere... obviously the company with 80%+ of the worldwide OS market will have a magnifying glass on it and a CRAPLOAD more experts looking for holes. You can be 100% sure if Linux was as mainstream as M$, it would have as much or more.

 

[drjacka]

I personally don't bias towards any OS but currently I prefer Leopard to Vista and find Linux great but useless for what I need. This new Windows 7 however looks great especially considering it's only pre-beta. I hope that it can do great things for Microsoft. For all the people out there who are loyal MS or Apple fans just remember if MS consistently does bad work it drops the level of competition Apple wont have the incentive to improve at the rate they are and vice versa. I love to see all these great products come out because at the end of the day it's all of us who get to benefit. Yey for great software.

 

[midnightgun]

I bought Vista for my new home machine, used it for 2 months until it got so slow I just couldn't stand it no more (and this was on a 4 hard drive raid 0 array). Whatever it does with the hard drive is annoying is hell. When WoW starts stuttering cause the OS is doing some kinda indexing / caching / whatever, there is problems. I finally had to go back to xp to get a machine worth using.

Yes I am aware you can go in and turn crap off, but the point is you shouldn't have to to make a machine usable.

I do like the route they are goign with windows 7. Toned down, less crap, more straight forward interface.

Hopefully the OS footprint in memory and cpu power will be toned down too when the final comes out.

 

[miltoxbeyond]

Security in Vista was usually only bypassed by users who allow anything to install just to get rid of the security confirmation.

Spyware only installed because users weren't careful with their search and download habits. Gotta love those kids who download the little icons, cursors, wallpapers, etc that tell them explicitly that they're installing spyware but they don't listen. Internet Explorer is the main weakpoint of Windows, so what do you do? Download Firefox and you'll be safer...

I've had vista business since launch and haven't had a single case of spyware. A good virus scanner to block viruses and you have yourself a pretty secure computer...

If the User Account Control is indeed improved, I can see Windows 7 being easier to manage while still being pretty secure.