Windows 7: Two strikes and you're out

Once again, the discussion

Once again, the discussion is all about whether it's a good product or not. The real issue, as it was for the VISTA launch, is whether anybody actually needs the product. If there's no demand, it doesn't matter how good the product is.

You have to be adult enough...

...to understand that Windows was never made as an operation system for internet world. It's just stand-alone computer OS and you don't have to wait nothing more. I won't recommend any Windows OS to any ordinary homeuser. More likely i would recommend them etc. Ubuntu, Mint or OpenSuse.

Believe me, i've used Windows OS since 1993 until 2008 - they don't work. That's why i moved to Linux.

10 Must Features For Windows 7.1

So here we are 1 day after the official GA launch of Windows 7; months of preparation, testing, and anticipation and all I am left with is a severe case of disappointment. I trusted the prognosticators and experts in the press. They have been touting Windows 7 for quite some time, telling anyone who will listen how great it is. But what I’ve discovered is that many of the analysts and press types have simply been regurgitating Redmond press releases. Not really understanding the words that they have been saying; I can only assume that they must have come from Babylon.

To be sure there are some interesting features in Windows 7. And true to Redmond’s press releases, Windows 7 boots awfully fast; and if fast booting is your criteria for an enterprise class operating system then you will be pleased.

If on the other hand you are a serious computer user and you view your PC as a professional tool, then perhaps Windows 7 out of the gate is not for you. Since Windows cleaned up its act in Windows/XP, I rarely boot. I have an extended battery in my laptop, a couple of docking stations strategically placed; so most of the time, I don’t even bother shutting down, hibernating, or sleeping, I just close the lid and move to my next meeting or customer. There’s nothing quicker that opening the lid and pounding on the keyboard. Tell me again why I need a fast boot?

Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of incremental improvements that you may consider worth the pain of converting. Microsoft has added wizards to help make a novice’s life less frustrating. There are new network setup wizards and problem determination wizards. And including Media Center in the distribution is a nice touch. Those improvements will play nice for the novice or household user, not the corporate one.

The guts in Windows 7 and APIs are so different in Windows 7, a lot of your old, but still usable software and hardware will no longer work. To be fair, Microsoft included what appears to be a stripped down Hyper-V environment to support XP-Mode programs. But it is slow and not all hardware or software works as the disk drives in XP-mode are not really there, they look more like network drives. Consequently anything that would use access to a ‘real’ drive such as Symantec’s Partition Magic no longer works.

Microsoft dictated obsolescence reminds me of Detroit’s 50’s and 60’s arrogance; you know the one, “I’ll make sexy cars that you’ll need to replace every three years. I have no respect for your investment. Come ‘on, look at all the new features I am introducing this year, get with the program you need to be seen in the seat of this shinny new car”.

I could go on with my rant, and it would go on and on for pages; because the reality is that Windows 7 is nothing more than a toy parading as a professional tool. Understand that I do like Windows and Microsoft; after all I am a stock-holder. If I had my way, I’d like to squish that MAC dude gnat and show him that PC’s reign in the enterprise. Microsoft can do better, so here is my recommended feature list for Windows 7.1 that will resonate in the corporate world and with professionals.

1. Understand who is in charge. When the user clicks on something, control should immediately move to the activated object; not when Windows feels like it.

2. Understand who owns the PC. The owner should be able to do perform any of the customizable tasks. Windows 7 RC still had a slew of messages telling the user to “contact their Systems Administrator…”. Huh??? I am the Systems Administrator.

3. Fix Windows help. Ironically Microsoft’s Bing commercials that depict people spouting off useless out of context facts is a pretty good analogy for Windows Help. When I found Windows Help to be no help, I tried to see if Bing could find me an answer. So I did a Bing search on Windows Explorer and got 47,000 plus hits mostly on Internet Explorer. Personally I think Microsoft should rename Bing and the Windows Help System to Bong because, oh well, you get the drift.

4. Get rid of the software install process. I should be able to copy a set of software files to a directory and use it immediately without endless hours of answering wizards and endless reboots. Think about it, when you go to a destination on the Internet, you can immediately execute the software on that site. Microsoft is sort-of getting there. On first use, Internet Explorer 8 asks you to set options for Explorer or take the defaults.

Having worked in the commercial software industry, I can understand the need for license keys. But you’d think by now someone would have figured out how to manufacture or distribute unique keys in a software distro. Wal-Mart gets manufacturers to put RFID chips into a box of toothpaste and auto manufacturers have been putting unique serial numbers on cars for ages; what’s the hold-up with the software industry getting caught up with technologies that the grocery and auto industry have been using for years?

Ideally I would like to store all of my software on a software distro disk, remove it from one computer and plug it into another, and use the software immediately. I hear they allow that in other OSes with these things called .ini files.

5. Fix the HAL layer. HAL was supposed to be a hardware abstraction layer to insulate software from the underlying hardware. But it doesn’t really do that does it? The folks at VMware came up with an interesting approach to HAL. VMware doesn’t care what’s on the physical hardware, if you want to give a virtual machine a fibre channel adapter; you have two choices EMULEX and QLogic. You pick one, and ESX does the emulation. There are rumors that HAL is “fixed” in Windows Server 2008, I’ll believe it when I see it. Here’s the requirement stated simply. A user or an organization should be able to take a boot drive out of one failing or obsolete system and simply plug it into a new system; boot-up and go.

6. Put the arm on hardware manufacturers to finally stomp out ATA. Or should I say, friends don’t let friends do SATA. The ATA or the more recent SATA interface is robbing computers of cycles and the source of temporary lock-ups. SCSI or SAS interfaces if implemented correctly avoids lockups and can allow for increased throughput. What are we talking about; a few pennies? Okay if SAS is that much more expensive, keep ATA on netbooks, and put, no make that mandate SAS for professional grade systems.

7. All IO activity needs to be reported. My observation of Windows 7 RC was that the new Windows Search feature appears to run in stealth mode. I say this because my drive light was on solid yet Task Manager showed only trivial IO. I turned off Windows Search and my drive light went to normal and my response time on the desktop improved. I’ve since gone back to X1’s search engine. And while Microsoft is at it, Task Manager needs an overhaul with more accurate information, along with the ability to reset counters. If it’s been a while since your last boot, you have no way of tracking down IO hogs.

8. Microsoft needs absolute identification of resource holders. It is very annoying to try and detach an external drive and get a silly message saying that the device is in use. Tell me who is using the device, and give me the ability to detach the device from the process.

9. The lazy writer needs to be placed on a spaceship rocketing to the middle of the sun. SSDs and other fast drives are here. Next to the Blue Screen of Happiness, my next favorite message is a delayed write failure. Oh boy, that Visio I’ve been tweaking has just bit the dust; my how grand! The pin-head who invented the lazy writer needs to go help the auto, rubber, or steel industry; just get the heck out of software because dude, you are clueless to the value of my data. When I say save, I mean it, now. I need to count on it.

10. Windows needs to grow-up and leave its adolescent roots. Features like background disk media scrubbing to clean-up intermittent CRC errors and block or zone check sums to enhance data reliability should be requirements in the enterprise. But most of all, API and interfaces need to be stable, new features are needed, but this insane early death of hardware and software simply because an interface changed is not acceptable behavior in the grown-up software world. And it’s not just Microsoft, its Symantec, Roxio, Hauppauge and host of others that are all guilty of premature hardware and software obsolescence. Make fun of the mainframe commercial software guys all you want, but they had a value that resonated with corporations; new releases would not obsolete a customers’ investment; it was called backward capability.

And as I observe many corporate users, I have come to the conclusion that Microsoft Windows is tolerated because there is nothing better out there. My predication is that if Microsoft keeps its head in the sand, the Chinese will take over the commercial software industry like the Japanese and more recently the Koreans have taken over the auto industry.

Microsoft wake-up please!!!

Microsoft in big trouble

Microsoft in big trouble when Windows 7 flops? As long as every dork blows ten thousands of Dollars on useless SharePoint implementations Microsoft can just keep on going the way they do. Microsoft has plenty of crapware that for some weird reason makes people spend a lot of money for.

Windows 7

I ask myself the question. What if I don't like Windows 7? Do I have any alternatives in a corporate environment. This is worth pondering, but not for long.
No viable desktop environment to replace the MS Windows range I'm afraid. You only have to think about what it would take for a large company to convert and it fast becomes a moot point.
Ignoring all the deployment, software availability and compatibility issues, how am I going to convert those millions of documents I have sitting on those drives?
The problem fast becomes a very long exercise in futility.

Linux *or* Chrome?!?

"...rather than Linux, or in the future, Chrome".

Linux is a technology that is used to create many successful products, and is also used to create Chrome OS. They aren't in competition, as this sentence implies - Chrome OS *is* a Linux-based product - one of a very long list of mostly successful Linux-based products, actually.

This statement is fairly similar to saying "...rather than Darwin, or in the future, OS/X".

I have used Windows 7 Beta for a few months and I would have to

I have used Windows 7 Beta for a few months and I would have to say that I like it. It is much faster and programs don't lag even when you running multiple programs at once. There are some neat features introduced into Windows 7 and the overall use is much easier and simpler. Microsoft took Windows 7 seriously and they needed to do that. I have written a detailed experience about my use of Windows 7 and I hope you can find it useful. Please comment and let me know

http://ketiva.com/Computers_and_Internet/my_experience_with_windows_7_using_the_beta_version1.html

It is still too early to determine what kind of problems might rise from Windows 7, but overall I think it will be a great operating system.

Microsoft Vista works

i don't find Vista a problem to run. in fact it works as well as XP.

if you look at the way things run the are the same, no? granted the extra pop-ups asking for your approval to run a program is different but if it really helps with security what is the big deal. what is that 3 seconds extra time?

using cloud computing really a good idea? why would want to be tied to some huge server in the cloud to have more monitoring capability then they have now? i don't loss document, i don't have to worry that you can see my documents now. so moving to the cloud will give hackers more controls.

hell we might even have to pay ransoms insurance to the cloud farmers to give us anti-virus like protection.

isn't putting our eggs in one basket a good idea?