Opinions - Is Microsoft's Windows 7 just a matter of months away?

[HEXUS]

Microsoft has suggested that Windows 7 will reach the market in early 2010, but is there reason to believe it'll be here much sooner?

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[neonplanet40]

I won't be buying it. I'll still be sticking to my XP Pro thank you very much mr gates. Vista pretty much died in my mind when they canned alot of its features such as the new file sytem WinFS.

If Windows 7 includes all of these (which it wont) then i may be tempted. Until then i can wait. XP works perfectly well and stable for me!

[Steve]

I won't be buying it. I'll still be sticking to my XP Pro thank you very much mr gates. Vista pretty much died in my mind when they canned alot of its features such as the new file sytem WinFS.

If Windows 7 includes all of these (which it wont) then i may be tempted. Until then i can wait. XP works perfectly well and stable for me!

WinFS wasn't a filesystem; it was just a clever database sat on top of NTFS that presented your files to you in a different way.

If we really wanted it, somebody else would have made it by now. Apparently we don't then, which is a shame because I would quite liked to have seen it.

As for Windows 7, the price difference between itself and Ubuntus make it hard for me to get excited about.

[TheAnimus]

WinFS wasn't a filesystem; it was just a clever database sat on top of NTFS that presented your files to you in a different way.

If we really wanted it, somebody else would have made it by now. Apparently we don't then, which is a shame because I would quite liked to have seen it.

That is a good point about how much people really seam to *want* it, but that fails to take into account making a platform is bloody hard, you get stuck in a chicken and egg situation, where no one devs on ur platform, because no one has it installed, and no one has it installed, because there are no apps for it!

[neonplanet40]

Well what do we want then? I know it wasn't Vista or it would be more popular and wouldn't be getting replaced so quick

Maybe Microsoft isn't listening to us.

My bad about WinFS. I actually thought it was a whole new file system (which would be nice)

[Steve]

As TheAnimus pointed out, it's a bit more complicated than I alluded to. Sure, it's not a filesystem, but it's a way of looking at files that only really works if everything you use hooks into it.

So you can browse your hard drive with this lovely new piece of software? Great, but useless if you can't do the same from within Photoshop, I guess.

[colincliff]

I'll be buying this, but only for the expected improvements in the media centre application which i use in my htpc. It looks to be a big improvment on the current application.

[kalniel]

It'll go nicely with my core i5 desktop and dx11 graphics card

[format]

Core i5... I suppose that would be in line with Intel's nomenclature

[chocoa]

..A matter of months away" does it really matter?

As per the XP lives, again, thread, MS are realising that self justifiaction and a new year therefore a new OP system is the groove they are stuck in. Marketing fluff gets in the way of true functionality. I recall trying to get them to provide a debugged OP .dll for some realtime modelling software.. Would they do it - of course not! - The 'new' OP system was due out. So why solve the old one 'king is dead long live the King'.
"I mean why did we want to carry on using that for heavensake?!!" was their question

- The new OP was Xp replacing '95/98 by the way. Not much has changed from my perspective.

@kalniel

Will the new W7 really give better functionality for your new hardare? Or will it be more bloatware needing heavier hardware to do fundamentally the same thing, but prettier?

[directhex]

I hope not. Past experience says they simply don't have the ability to do anything meaningful on the timescales we're talking about, and if Windows 7 ends up being a 98SE or ME to 98, it scarcely seems worth doing - unless it's purely to capitalize on the Mojave effect

[Stoo]

To my mind the operating system should just be there to do that - operate the system with maximum efficiency, something which many people seem to have forgotten in a blaze of transparent widgets, and oooh, doesn't it look pretty?!?

It should be efficient, functional, and intuitive, something which Microsoft badly forgot about in every OS release since Server 2003 - you shouldn't have to fight with the OS just to get basic tasks done.

It's not everyone's cup of tea, but IMHO Apple have gotten it pretty spot on, and Linux is very nearly there too, the front ends are nice and responsive, and if you want to get a bit technical it's no more complicated than opening up a terminal window and getting to it.

Microsoft try to paint a pretty picture, but Vista has been a dismal failure, and if Windows 7 is more of the same, then they can pretty much wave goodbye to the home market, and hope business doesn't follow suite..

[this_is_gav]

Microsoft try to paint a pretty picture, but Vista has been a dismal failure, and if Windows 7 is more of the same, then they can pretty much wave goodbye to the home market, and hope business doesn't follow suite..

They've been in the game long enough. They're not suddenly going to lose the home market to anyone. To Joe Public Linux is attractive until you realise that you can't get anything you know to work and Mac's still hold a huge premium in a world where premiums just can't be afforded currently.

Frankly, Windows 7 could be a return to Windows ME and MS would still be in an utterly dominant position.

It's all perception, but Vista is still a massively popular OS with very few actual problems. The only real problem Vista has is that it doesn't offer all much extra over XP, so the majority of sales are coming from people buying new systems.

Business is a different matter. If you've got systems to take advantage of the Server 2008 base, you'd be mad not to go down that path, as both Vista and presumably Windows 7 offer far more than XP to you. If you've got standard systems and are looking to make cut-backs like many businesses currently are, then both are less attractive. That's not a Microsoft problem, it's a market problem. One which Windows 7 supposedly sidesteps with consummate ease, but I'll wait to find out how that works out for myself rather than trusting the Thurrot's of this world.

[pumpman]

to quote Jack Docherty
fa fa fa faf fa fa faf fa fa fa faf fa

Risc OS ftw!

[WoLFe]

I won't be buying it. I'll still be sticking to my XP Pro thank you very much mr gates. Vista pretty much died in my mind when they canned alot of its features such as the new file sytem WinFS.

If Windows 7 includes all of these (which it wont) then i may be tempted. Until then i can wait. XP works perfectly well and stable for me!

Wise words, but for those of us with Vista, Windows 7 is tempting. Anything could be though!

[Gunbuster]

I hope so. I have to say I am heartly impressed by Vista, I am no gamer, but it just does more stuff right than wrong. I use XP at work and I still have to pinch myself when I go into Vista mode.

The main problems I have found when tuning friends Vista setups are:
* Badly written or overly intensive security apps fight vista for control
* Anything above energy saving for file indexing is far to aggresive and destroys performance

I switched off some of the extreme rewriting my sister's firewall software was doing and switched to ES indexing and *boom* things just loaded fast and smooth.

I do miss some XP features:

* Extensive selection of themes available from UXtheme hacks
* More apps look made native

Both of these are a matter of time and race tuned version of Vista in 7 makes me happy.
For the record Windows 3.1 runs way faster than XP on modern hardware (if it can run), doesn't mean I would want to step back to it.