Microsoft's reputation, future riding on Windows 7

I did the same yesterday, I ordered Win 7 HP OEM 64 and 32 bit from NewEgg and got them in today. I have just finished installing 64 on my desktop (installed the 32 on my laptop at work). I really didn't have a problem with Vista but I guess the "got to have the latest" voice in my head convinced me otherwise, lol. I always do clean installs since the disaster I had with a Win95 to Win98 upgrade (I still shudder when I think of it, lol).

A couple of weeks ago I was bored at work and tried something unusual. I had fixed an old Dell Latitude C610 and got a wild idea to try to put Win 7 RC on it (specs in pic below). I got it installed though I had a bunch of yellow question marks in device manager.

 

Articles like this show just how clueless the mainstream press is. And hungry for page views, and the best way to do that is to write an article critical of Microsoft. Vista was a decent OS, unfairly maligned by everyone. Windows 7 is great and has received positive reviews from everyone.

Who's going to challenge Microsoft - Apple?? Apple makes overpriced, crippled hardware and software that is based on limiting choice and locking in users. I would hate to live in a world where Apple was dominant, as it would mean the end of innovation. And I will gurantee you that if Apple was asked to write an OS which would support millions of OEM devices, and not just the ones Cupertino chooses, it would have the exact same problems Windows faces. ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ Apple doesn't even support its own hardware after 1-2 years, they constantly force you to buy new hardware. Yet the press loves them because they make good copy, and the public will lap up anything that's 'cool'.

So I'm sorry, I don't think Microsoft's reputation is going anywhere.

 

With all due respect, Microsoft already has a reputation problem. Do you read blogs? Newspapers? Magazines? Watch television? People have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft, and to deny the huge numbers of people who have no faith at all in Microsoft products (and no, I am not one of them) is to deny reality. Your strong feelings are to be respected, but your belief that Microsoft has some rock solid reputation that is "going nowhere," is pure fantasy.

 

What's the performance like, with/without Aero enabled?

 

I don't think Aero was ever activated because the video was one of the yellow "?" in device manager.

Win7 ran, albeit slowly. Maybe a little slower than XP on a PII with 48MB RAM. I was just surprised that it installed at all on that old machine. I tried to find Vista/7 drivers for some of the hardware but after failing to find a couple of drivers I just gave up and decided to put Ubuntu 9.04 on it. Interestingly Jaunty had all the drivers and only asked me about one, the Dell TrueMobile WiFi card, in which it said that since it was a proprietary driver I had to download and install it separately. All I had to do was to click on "OK" and it downloaded and installed it for me.

One thing Win7 has going for it that it had good public reviews. Unlike Vista, which because of the delayed launch, there wasn't enough time for negativity and FUD to get spread around before it's release.

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm itching to install Win7 on some older PCs as well - only trouble is that they don't belong to me, which means I'm going to cut the flak if things go awry.

 

I hope they are P4 or better. Vista ran ok on my old desktop (now my server) with P4 3GB RAM. I think 7 might do ok w/P4 1GB RAM though the main problem would be finding drivers.

Anyway, good luck on your endeavours

 

Hi Osaban,

I actually bought the Home Premium Full, which includes both the x32/x64 DVDs (I imagine the upgrade does also). I thought about it, and wasn't sure if I'd get what I wanted with the Upgrade DVD, so I just paid the extra $80 and bought full. It was $199. I know it sounds like a lot, but I think in the long run it'll be worth it.

I am pretty happy with it so far, very clean, and nice. No issues yet. I expect to be using this now for many years to come.

 

I never said Microsoft doesn't have an image problem - of course they do. Years of Apple ads, Vista being blasted by every mag, the DOJ+EU losses, its all bad press. However a lot of these are opinions shaped by the press. If you ask IT professionals, sysadmins, people who make the buying decisions, you'll see a different picture.

These people love MS for their easy manageability, flexibility and features that work for enterprises. Apple is not a player in this space, the only option is Linux which is cheaper for some, not so much for others. And that's really the market that drives Microsoft revenues. You can also bet that the huge majority of retail pc sales to consumers will have Windows, as Apple will only focus on the premium segment. There is a huge ecosystem of retailers and OEM's supported by Microsoft and among these, their reputation is very good.

 

midway40,

I have Win7 on a low end computer too. Just to see if it works. P4 1300 processor, 384 MB RAM. A bit slow but not much slower than WinXP.

 

Thanks for sharing. I don't think 199 $ is too much for an operating system (some people won't even flinch at paying 300 $ for a pair of jeans, maybe MS should start selling clothes with their logo). Windows 7 is an improvement over Vista, my problem is that I don't want to give up my Vista, and I have no suitable machine, yet, to install Windows 7.

 

Well, if you're happy with Vista and have no issues, then I'd say maybe don't bother with 7 for a while. I had Vista and liked it, but there were little glitches here and there, and one finally got to me in Win Updates and ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ enough to finally turn to 7. I am kinda glad that happened. If you install 7, you will notice that it's very clean, no glitches or issues, and considerably faster at most things, especially stuff like installing software and drivers and so on. I think it's a big step in the right direction. But as you say, if Vista is doing well, then there's no great need to upgrade.

 

IMO M$ is rife with bugs, which are fixed as they gain knowledge of them. No different though than any program. The larger the program, the more bugs. Games are no different. If one waited for all bugs to be worked out, it could be a good time. Is SP1 or SP2 the right time to buy if you want many bugs worked out? Probably. There are issues with M$ releasing versions that are quite evident that they should have waited to get some more of the bugs out. But then, there have been many patches/updates that caused issues on certain hardware/software configs that were themselves bug fixes of some kind. I can't say there will ever be an end to this if you look at the size of the OS and how long it would take to find all the bugs.

Myself I have come to apprciate the existence of M$ only because it generally works without too much effort (generically) and most of what I want to do is working with it. The limitation (and the reason I don't adopt it) to *nix is that while you can get about any software you need, it does not have the platform of developers for entertainment (mainly games) that M$ has. For business, it is different. So I use M$ and no longer despise them, as really overall it does what I need it to. Besides, creating tools or methods to do things is great on M$ because 99% of those I know to share it with are also using it. If I were making things for *nix, my personal audience would be limited. Not to mention making $$ on the side fixing them.

Now, regarding Windows 7, has anyone else read that 7 is not new code, but version 6.1, meaning just another version of Vista, leaned out a lot and with some new features? If this is the case, would it not be just as well to get Vista with SP2 (which is said to be stable and much better now), paying minimum $$ for Vista Ultimate rather than the premium for 7 ultimate? From what I read, if it is the same kernel with some foo-foo fluffy changes, it would seem the better deal. Any comments on this?

Sul.

 

That sounds reasonable on the surface, but my experience with Vista has been that there are a lot of little glitches and bugs that 7 just doesn't seem to have. I think they did a huge cleanup job with 7. Another thing you'll find is that Vista is just slow as molasses when it comes to doing anything, even installing apps and so on. When you use both, you will see there is no comparison. I know some have good luck with Vista, and I do like it, but I see a huge difference between the 2, even if 7 is based on Vista, which I think it is. I guess the question is, is the cleanup job they did enough to make you switch? Vista SP2 didn't clean up anything, it's not the answer.

 

Quoting Brandon Live, reportedly an MS employee who's part of the Win7 dev team:

 

Regarding Windows 7;

I've used 7-Beta, 7 RC-1, and now have at my disposal a 90 day trial of Windows 7 Enterprise, which is supposed to be the finished product.

I don't know what MS changed from RC-1 to W-7 Enterprise build 7600.16385.090713-1255_x86, but on my PC, 7 Enterprise is noticeably slower on a cold boot to a fully loaded desktop than was RC-1 and actually loads as slow as Vista Ultimate.

As opposed to either "7" or Vista, XP SP-2 is faster to load and render web pages.
On system shut-down, both W-7 and Vista are faster than XP on my machine.

I don't think there's any doubt that a lot is riding on the level of acceptance Windows 7 is able to achieve, but Microsofts' reputation is likewise riding on Office and Server where they stand to gain or lose major corporate clients.

It would also help if they expedited improvements in MSE, particularly in the area of updating as well as improving scan speed and getting malware detection results in the 98 to 99 percent range.
If Avast and Avira can consistently do it with their free antivirus application, so can Microsoft. (If they want to.)

 

Yes, I have found Vista to be slow on my hardware. I suppose there are many articles of mis-information floating around, thanks for the clear-up.

I know a guy who just build a box, i7, latest and greatest, 6gb ram, latest nv video, veloci-raptor, etc etc. His corp does not officially support 7 but they have copies for thier programmers to use to get familiar for the future, so he has 7 64bit ultimate. He was showing me how everything in the rig scores really high, except his hdd marks. It is funny, I have been complaining to anyone who will listen about how slow both vista and 7 are in that area for me, and I told this guy many times what my findings were. Nice to see it is not necessarily my hardware that is singled out to be so slow.

I like 7 I suppose, but I am most definately not ready to suffer significant hdd speed reduction just for the eye-candy. So looks like XP will stick with me until 7 can cure thier miserable hdd rates.

Sul.