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piratePenguin:

--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez on 14 September 2010, 11:15 ---We may be able to push MS into creating better software but there's no way we'll be able to do anything about their business practices - only the government can do that.

--- End quote ---
These governments are not elected?

Besides it isn't about getting the government to put pressure on MS was my point, it's about getting the government to change it's values, or working towards a government with different values. Otherwise you will see these attitudes crop up for as long as companies are motivated by maximizing profit. In fact MS practices are hardly to worry about compared to practices that occur in food industries, and other.

hm_murdock:
IMO, the changes made in Windows 7 are simply there so that they can call it a new release. I'm not a fan of the new Taskbar at all. Something about it just feels amateurish I think the Dock still does a better job of keeping up with applications, with <i>one icon</i> and <i>on icon only<i> for each thing.

Also, while I use the Dock to store shortcuts, I believe it would take some time before I do the same thing with the Windows 7 taskbar for some reason. Something about the way it ends up working. The Dock is an obvious device: Icons float there. The Taskbar is a row of buttons for open windows. It'll just take me some time to get used to the paradigm shift in the Taskbar. It's for applications, not windows anymore. But if I could get used to the change from OS 9's switcher menu and Apple menu to the Dock, I think I can deal with that caarraaaaazy new Taskbar!

Its guts, though, I really hate to break it  to you, are nearly identical to Windows Vista. There are a few tweaks, but not really that many. It's more like Windows Vista SP3. Reason being:

<i>THERE WAS NEVER ACTUALLY ANYTHING WRONG WITH WINDOWS VISTA</i>.

Bloggers and the tech press blew up a shitstorm about it, when there actually wasn't anything wrong. It was known that it would break compatibility with many apps. That, ya know... Happens when an OS undergoes a major architectural change. We got used to it in the Apple world years ago.

System 7 broke some apps that relied on parts of Systems 4 through 6. Mac OS 8 made it hard for some programs with hard-coded UI to run because of the new Appearance Manager. OS 9 broke apps that didn't properly handle memory management. 9.2 broke even more. OS X? Well... Strangely enough OS 9 running in Classic is more compatible than 9.0 running straight out was because Mac OS 9's memory manager isn't active.

Is 7 a good release? Yep. I think it's the Windows 98 to Vista's 95. One provided a firm base upon which to build the future of the platform, and the point-one release nailed the features to a T.

Will I give up my Mac for it? Nope. I might run it on my second-hand HP lappy, though!! :D It's just that so far I'm still enjoying giving Ubuntu Lucid a whirl on there.

Aloone_Jonez:
The one thing I don't like about Vista and onwards is not being able to use unsigned drivers. Whilst this might not sound like a bad idea security wise, I'm critical because I don't think it'll do as much good as people think and it will just increase costs to the developers.

Firstly how well do Microsoft actually certify the drivers don't contain any malware before signing them?
I doubt they analyse the source code in great detail (assuming they actually ask for it). I imagine it's more of a rubber stamping process.

Secondly, it isn't free for someone to get their driver signed, it's another example of a Microsoft tax which increases costs to developers.

Thirdly, there's a back door: there are several vulnerabilities which enable unsigned drivers to be installed and no it doesn't require safe mode, Google it.

And finally, it further breaks comparability with old hardware. It's still possible to use some drivers designed for earlier versions of NT-based Windows with XP but this is no longer possible with Vista onwards, it won't work with my old printer which only has a Windows 2000 driver.

What about all the alleged performance and stability issues with Vista? Is that a load of bollocks too? But I've never used it so I can't possibly comment.

hm_murdock:
The performance and stability issues were in the minds of small people.

I ran Windows Vista on a rather marginal machine (3.0GHz Pentium-D with Radeon X200 graphics,) starting with the GM release up to SP2. I also ran the 7 Beta and RC. Both were rock solid and never gave me a BSOD save for when I had a DIMM go south on me. I used both x86 and x64 builds. I also run it on an HP lappy with an Athlon 64 as well as sometimes on an Asus Netbook which is balls slow even running DOS (no fucking joke.)

As far as performance, 7 and Vista SP2 were so close as to be indistinguishable. That may have changed in 7's GM if there were debugging code still running in the RC. I dunno. I think the big issue is that Windows people and the tech press in general go complacent. They were used to Windows XP, which in 2007 was a decade-old codebase (The first hauntings of Windows NT 5 were mid 1997, and the first beta arrived in late 1998.) So of course it flew like coursers on a dual-core Pentium 4. But Windows Vista brought things like a credible security subsystem, a modern graphics framework and a desktop shell that didn't suck ass.

See, on the Apple side of things, we did that in 2001 when Mac OS X showed up and we said, "Oh man it's slow compared to OS 9, but Jesus it never crashes and doesn't suck like 9." Now in 2010 I still use Mac OS X 10.4 on a G4 from 1999. So maybe I'm not the best person to ask about speed issues, because this is perfectly acceptable to me.

Suffice to say, after hearing the "Vista sux XP rox" drum being beat for a while and my own experiences being the exact opposite - Windows XP was like trying to hurd turtles uphill on a glacier covered with Death Monsters - I started to simply respond with that, "I don't give two shits what you think, it's obviously a lie" whenever someone would bring up liking XPee more.

Why?

XP SUX. I'd rather use fuckin'... Like... RISC OS.

piratePenguin:
OSX SUX


!

and steve jobs sucks DICK

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