Microsoft All But Abandons Vista: Upgrades To 7 To Be Offered In July

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/microsoft-all-but-abandons-vista-upgrades-to-7-to-be-offered-in-july-msft

by escapade • 18 years ago

6 11 18 years ago

ilamont• 18 years ago

I was encouraged by the demos of 7 running on netbooks. If the OS stays lean, that will be a good thing for Microsoft and consumers.

What do developers think?

redrobot50502• 18 years ago

I think Win 7 is still "too Vista-y".

Honestly, its not just the bloat in Vista that makes it suck so much. Bloat you can at least throw hardware at, and solve. Its Vista's poor design.

They took away the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel. The Add/Remove control panel has been in Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, 98SE, Win ME, Win 2000, and Win XP. In Vista, for some reason, it was renamed to something like "Program Changes and Features" or something to that extent.

Even if its a truly bad convention (e.g. the Add/Remove Programs control panel does more than Add or Remove) its better than nothing. At the very least, if you're going to rename it -- have names that are clear and obvious like "Uninstall Software" for its name.

So yeah, basically Windows 7 is going to still suffer consumer rejection from having sub-par UI design. Power users, if they haven't forever already abandoned Windows for Mac/Linux, will skip this upgrade or cross-grade for Mac/Linux.

iofthestorm2• 18 years ago

What? I think you complain about stupid things and miss real features. It's called "Programs and Features" now for one thing, and it features a lot more detail and information than the Add/Remove programs dialog of old. Also, being able to search for a program specifically saves so much time it's ridiculous.

You seem to be one of those people that complains that Microsoft didn't add enough features in Vista in one thread and then complain in another that they changed everything around. You're complaining about superficial changes and willfully ignoring real functionality - the search-focused UI is a dramatic improvement, and you can claim it was taken from OS X or what have you but that doesn't make Vista's implementation any less useful.

Real power users will learn the new methods and features and probably learn to love them, and probably upgrade and/or dualboot/virtualize Linux. That's what I've been doing, and I'll continue to do that. On the other hand, whiny noobs on the internet will continue to whine about everything Microsoft does because they can't adjust to change.

redrobot50502• 18 years ago

>Even if its a truly bad convention (e.g. the Add/Remove Programs control panel does more than Add or Remove) its better than nothing. At the very least, if you're going to rename it -- have names that are clear and obvious like "Uninstall Software" for its name.

I decided to re-quote that. Its just one of the tenants of Human-Computer-Interaction. Microsoft apologists can ignore that all they want, but an existing convention, even a wrong one, beats a change that is equally poor.

Does "Programs and Features" do anything more/less than "Add/Remove Programs" in Vista SP3? No.

Its like if MS had done a UI study and concluded that left-click and right-click's functionality should be reversed. Sure, maybe it is "more usable". But to those of us who have been "right clicking" for a contextual menu for 15-20 years, it will feel alien.

>You seem to be one of those people that complains that Microsoft didn't add enough features in Vista in one thread and then complain in another that they changed everything around. You're complaining about superficial changes and willfully ignoring real functionality - the search-focused UI is a dramatic improvement, and you can claim it was taken from OS X or what have you but that doesn't make Vista's implementation any less useful.

Sir, I've made no such claims, and you're putting words in my mouth. With regards to search, I've found their implementation inferior not only to OS X's spotlight, but also Google Desktop Search. Especially pre-SP1 Vista search. But assuming you don't have Google Desktop Search installed (like the average user) it is still a usability win. But again, not worth a $400 upgrade, considering Google Desktop Search is free and runs great on XP SP3.

>Real power users will learn the new methods and features and probably learn to love them, and probably upgrade and/or dualboot/virtualize Linux. That's what I've been doing, and I'll continue to do that. On the other hand, whiny noobs on the internet will continue to whine about everything Microsoft does because they can't adjust to change.

Most of us Real Power Users whine about Microsoft is because they only time we're exposed to Vista is when something has broken. Like most Real Power Users I've adapted to the big change (internet apps) and haven't seen MS as technically relevant since I stopped working as a .NET developer in 2005. (Disclaimer: In the past six months I've started doing .NET development again.)

So yeah, most of us have adjusted to change. By bypassing crap when there are better alternatives.

dotcoma• 18 years ago

>Microsoft All But Abandons Vista

assuming Windows 7 is not just another version of Vista, you mean ;-)

biohacker42• 18 years ago

Even if 7 is very Vista-y I'm still very surprised.

I did not think MS would dump Vista that fast. And I wonder what exactly 7 is all about, I have not paid much attention to it... until now!

jcl• 18 years ago

Regardless of any technical improvements, MS is eager to dump the Vista name and associated stigma. This was their point with the "Mojave Experiment" ads: When given a product demo, people claimed to like a new version of Windows better than Vista, even if the new version was a just renamed version of Vista.

While the "experiment's" methodology is questionable, MS's quick release of Windows 7 indicates that they have faith in the results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mojave_Experiment

makecheck• 18 years ago

I'm reminded of Mac OS X 10.0 being so sub-par that Apple decided to make 10.1 free, to compensate. This turned out to be an advantage for developers as well, as they could simply forget 10.0 existed and require 10.1, fixing some problems.

Vista certainly qualifies as a sub-par OS worthy of a free upgrade. With Microsoft having lots of money, and a need for really good P.R. right now, they would be smart to mail off a Windows 7 box to all of their Vista buyers. Developers and OEMs could then forget that Vista ever existed, and apps could move forward to require Windows 7 (or XP) as a baseline.

quantumhobbit• 18 years ago

Didn't they also ship all Macs with OS 9 and an optional OS 10 disc until 10.2 or something like that? What annoyed most people was that they couldn't get XP as easily anymore.

Edit: OS 9 was the default until the release of OS 10.1.2. Thank you Wikipedia.

lallysingh• 18 years ago

AFAIK they didn't push 10.0 as being truly production ready, but they shipped it on macs so that developers would take it seriously.

Hence why it was shipped with the macs, but not the default booting OS for some time.

Microsoft All But Abandons Vista: Upgrades To 7 To Be Offered In July

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