Windows 7 Hope - Page 3

[mvmalderen]

Actually I think Microsoft did have a large something to do with that. Hence the whole issue in the first place.

I don't think so, it's due to the antitrust rulings, as already mentioned a couple of times by jbennet.

[jbennet]

Well, microsoft did take it to extremes. The EU asked for modularity and choice, allowing users and OEMs to replace things like IE easialy, not nececerially the total removal of the bundled apps such as IE.

[mvmalderen]

Well, microsoft did take it to extremes. The EU asked for modularity and choice, allowing users and OEMs to replace things like IE easialy, not nececerially the total removal of the bundled apps such as IE.

And that proves the fact that their OS can run without IE.

[Ancient Dragon]

Well, microsoft did take it to extremes. The EU asked for modularity and choice, allowing users and OEMs to replace things like IE easialy, not nececerially the total removal of the bundled apps such as IE.

Be careful what you wish for -- you might (and did) just get it :)

[kaninelupus]

And as evidenced by the coming release of Windows 7, Vista is definitely not the future. Advising someone to upgrade to Vista now, only to be dissatisfied and upgrade again (or just ditch the platform altogether, understandably) is just plain irresponsible--not to mention it reeks fanboyism.

Vista was the start of a new path, and was as such in some ways a 1st Gen software piece. On the other hand, Big Business went all up in arms at the original build (remember that MS was set to start rolling out the Betas nearly 2 1/2 years before the public ever saw it), as it wasn't backwards compatible to their satisfaction. Thus all Microsoft's big ideas ended up on top of older architecture... and we saw how that initially turned out. We may never know how Vista would have turned out if MS had taken the approach they are using in Win7 - virtualising XP and moving forward!

Also remember that many of the drivers supplied to early Vista users were little more than patched-up XP drivers, rather than a driver set specifically optimised for Vista... they took a while to arrive. Very different story for Win7... even x64 driver support is actually very good.

Bear in mind, Vista has sold over 180 Million copies since released, so although could be considered a disappointment, a flop?? Hardly!!

as someone who once sat through a semester of philosophy, I might actually know that the argumentum ad verecundiam (the "appeal to authority") is a fallacious rhetorical trick usually employed to disguise a weak logical argument.

Ooooooooh; so you sat through a whole semester of philosophy :S Had two yrs of Behavioural and Moral philosophy (now re-named as "Foundation & Professional Studies") under this guy, and had a failure rate of over 50% (and that's not exaggerating, either)
3rd yr mark - 95.5%
4th yr mark - 92.5% (lost five percent for getting final paper in a day late... got the submission dates for two assignments back-to-front).
Point being that if I choose to get into a debate, am more than capable of doing so.

And it doesn't take a college grad to know that the ad hominem attack ("Mactard"? "Juvenile"?) is the sole refuge of poor debaters.

No... just one who is utterly sick of unqualified slogans the likes of "everyone knows they are the best"!!

When are the Fanbois going to get over the fact that there is no perfect OS for EVERYONE! We all have different user-specific requirements for our systems, and NO OS is ever going to fit EVERYONE'S needs.

At any rate, your current gig as a "digital arts" teacher puts you in the very small subset of people who require both AutoDesk's and Adobe's high-end software, those that the vast majority of college undergrads have no use for.

The school I'm teaching at now see about 30% percent of students making use of Photoshop and 3D Modelling software. (see below for more info).

Finally, if you really are a H.S. teacher, you ought to be more careful about referring to juveniles as 'tards. It's unprofessional to say the least, and in many school districts you could find yourself quickly dismissed with cause. Especially since you're just an art teacher, and not teaching something important like math or science.

Unprofessional... can agree. Satisfying... have to say "yes". Given the amount of times I go onto a Windows-based tech forum, new-site or blog, to be told what a moron I am for sticking with Windows; venting is sometimes rather pleasant :)

As to the "many school districts"; am in Australia, not the US or UK, so I have to say, not so likely here :) Is actually not that easy to fire a teacher here, especially for expressing one's opinions (which is actually both protected and encouraged far more here than in the "Land of Democracy".

As to importance... I think you need to reconsider just how many disciplines and professions are now making extensive use of both 2D (predominantly Photoshop "Extended", although both Illustrator and Xara coming more into play) and 3D modelling and rendering applications:

• Mathematics (3D modelling applications long been used to examine and explore complex mathematical theories)
• Engineering and Architecture (long-time users of CAD software, both fields rapidly expanding into both modelling software and 2D graphics editors (predominately Photoshop, but also Vector-based apps the likes of Illustrator and Xara)
• Medicine and Medical Sciences - used in compiling/editing full internal diagrams, teaching, research, and even moving into remote and robotic surgery.
• Science - especially areas such as Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Genetics
• Forensics (here again, both 2D and 3D)
• Journalism
• And then you have your traditional, art-based, disciplines.

This year nearly 30% of our students were working with either or both types of graphics-based software (most using on their own systems). Next year, with course changes/adjustments, as well as changes in enrolment patterns we're looking at over 40% even at this stage.

I don't know what the situation is like in the US - where education budgets are often rather limited, or in Western Europe (which often leads the world in keeping up with technological advancements); but here in Australia the education system is scrambling to keep up with the changes coming directly from Professional developments.

So to say that the "average" student doesn't require the ability to run such applications on their own notebooks (as nearly 95% percentage of the students here using such software actually are), is actually completely inaccurate, and becoming ever more so at an alarming rate.

Just one quick question, if Windows 7 comes without IE, how do you download it or FF, Opera, Chrome etc. without an installed browser?

BTW:
Just read all that bad kharma classroom banter. As a teacher myself, I think that guy who professes to be a teacher himself, should take a look at himself. But there again, arty-farties get away with murder; their immaturity and 'whacky outbursts' are tolerated as part of their creative genius. Unfortunately that teacher can't pretend to be a creative genius if he decided to give it all up to teach.

[jephthah]

I had two yrs of Behavioural and Moral philosophy under this guy ... blah blah blah [snip]

thanks for proving my point

:icon_rolleyes:

[MosaicFuneral]

What's with all the primate poo getting flung around in here? Someone's going to get a Hundred Hand Slap.

[kaninelupus]

Just one quick question, if Windows 7 comes without IE, how do you download it or FF, Opera, Chrome etc. without an installed browser?

Apparently is being taken care of by two methods:

The OEM has the option of providing a browser of their own choice on a separate disk, or actually providing the Windows Pre-install with a browser pre-installed (yes, the OEM can legally bundle IE back into Win7)

MS themselves are said to be provide an FTP DL link, so no browser required

The reason they steered away from the whole "menu" choice screen, was due to an issue of expected end support. If a non-MS browser is installed by a built-in options menu, many an end-user will expect that MS will provided any updates via Win Update... which would require a level of cooperation from the other browser developers which is both highly unlikely and would also raise concerns that the integrity of the whole "alternate browser" would be thrown to the wind.

Personally I think the whole argument is null and void. All of us using an alternate browser to the one installed (and not just on Windows), have located said browser and DL'ed it from installed browser in the first place.

As to the debate issue, teachers are human beings too, all with our own little bug-bears

[Ancient Dragon]

As to the debate issue, teachers are human beings too, all with our own little bug-bears

:icon_eek: Now you have just destroyed my faith in our educational system.

[lllllIllIlllI]

I thought this might interest people, i got my hands on a pre-release of windows 7 through the DET NSW giving all the students laptops, the students dont have the laptops yet, but the teachers do, so i got to fiddle around on one.

Personally i really dont like the laptop they supplied, its a Lenovo Se10, i hate the touchpad. And as for windows 7, i stuggled to see a difference from vista, really, i didnt go in and start going "wow" like i did when i switched from 98 to XP. The networking is better, the battery life is great. I just dont see the reason to change personally, its not like its changing the way you use a computer.

And it takes something like 16GB to install, that sucks, cause my harddrive on my netbook IS 16gb :(

[kaninelupus]

I s'pose it's going to depend on what you are after. Having had a fair did into both Vista and Win7, performance, stability and usability all vastly improved in Win7.

As to required disk space, the RC is the full-blown Ultimate version, whereas on a netbook you'd be running one of the more basic versions which require far less disk space.

As an aside, does the netbook have an SD port... a good number of netbooks add SD support, allowing the user to expand memory that way (SD cards are now available up to 64GB).

[mvmalderen]

And it takes something like 16GB to install, that sucks, cause my harddrive on my netbook IS 16gb :(

16GB ?? What edition are you installing then?
BTW, Vista is not intended for use on netbooks, it's just too heavy for that, try Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
I guess Windows 7 will be more suitable for netbooks (let's hope that) :)

[MosaicFuneral]

16GB ?? What edition are you installing then?
BTW, Vista is not intended for use on netbooks, it's just too heavy for that, try Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
I guess Windows 7 will be more suitable for netbooks (let's hope that) :)

Ubuntu is bloated as well, try Slackware.

[kaninelupus]

16GB ?? What edition are you installing then?
BTW, Vista is not intended for use on netbooks, it's just too heavy for that, try Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
I guess Windows 7 will be more suitable for netbooks (let's hope that) :)

Ummm.... read the post. He Didn't have Vista on there, he had the pre-release of Win7. Stick to giving advice on topics you actually know what the hell you are talking about!!

@MosaicFuneral... not a bad Linux build, but is Slackware all that suitable for someone obviously not all that IT literate no offence intended to original poster BTW).

[Menster]

I think everyone should just revert to DOS 6.1.
I mean, can you honestly recall the last time your pc crashed/froze/failed while running DOS 6.1? :) Exactly

[lllllIllIlllI]

Ummm.... read the post. He Didn't have Vista on there, he had the pre-release of Win7. Stick to giving advice on topics you actually know what the hell you are talking about!!

@MosaicFuneral... not a bad Linux build, but is Slackware all that suitable for someone obviously not all that IT literate no offence intended to original poster BTW).

Thats me, and i have been using slackware and ubuntu on previous computers for about 3 years now. I can do that fine.

[mvmalderen]

I think everyone should just revert to DOS 6.1.
I mean, can you honestly recall the last time your pc crashed/froze/failed while running DOS 6.1? :) Exactly

Well, if you find DOS so good, why didn't you post your reply from DOS then?
I can give you a small app which will bring down the whole OS in less than a sec, try this under one of the NT-based OSes of MS, and the OS will just terminate the app.

DOS doesn't offer any memory protection, is very vulnerable to viruses which just wipe out your whole HDD.

Also it doesn't offer multitasking.
(well maybe you don't need it)

etc.

Enough reasons to not run it.
(Even for the old DOS games it is not very suitable anymore, unless you have a DOS machine, you could just run DOSBox (a dos-emulator) on your computer)

Can you imagine what would happened when they had sent Apollo 11 to the moon running everything on DOS?
(I can: The rocket would probably never came back :P)

[kaninelupus]

Really, at the end of what the day, it is going to come down to the individual user, and what suits them the most. Personally am very happy with Win7 in most respects (security still has loop-holes), but still room for improvement.

I'm sure Win7 is going to prove too showy for some people, and I'm sure some will complain about MS not making it easier for people to dial these new features back - although I do have to say that most of these "glammy" feature really don't consume much in the way of resources, which was my main issue with Vista. I s'pose in that regards to Win7, it is stuck somewhere in the middle - most Linux distros (with the exception of Ubuntu perhaps) have prided themselves on giving the user maximum customisation without the security compromise, where at the other hand we have OS X where Apple has this "take it as it is... it's already perfect" attitude. But, given how MS fought every customisation app in XP, is definitely an improvement. Not fully satisfied with the current position however.

I know many are still lamenting the seemingly forgotten WinFS - to be honest I think we can forget that. Given that MS is playing with two alternate OS builds (Singularity and Midori), we may well be waiting till "Windows" hits the trash-can before a new filing system hits the ground... maybe 2020??

[jbennet]

a Lenovo Se10, i hate the touchpad. And as for windows 7, i stuggled to see a difference from vista, really, i didnt go in and start going "wow" like i did when i switched from 98 to XP

Thats because its a point release. Windows 7 isnt supposed to introduce any major changes. Its like Windows 2000 -> Windows XP. Tweaks, security, user friendliness, driver support.

Can you imagine what would happened when they had sent Apollo 11 to the moon running everything on DOS?

Ironically, i heard somewhere that some systems on the Space Shuttle ran OS/2.

Also, the one piece of computer equipment that survived the the Columbia explosion was a science system with DOS. DOS liked to write data from the strart of the disk to the end, rather than randomly, and because the huge hard drive that was storing research experiment information was damaged on it outer edges, but only half full - 99% of the data was recoverable. DOS saves the day :)

I think everyone should just revert to DOS 6.1.

Why 6.1?

6.22 was the latest stand-alone release (well, you can cut 7.x and 8.0 out of windows 9x and ME) and includes better compresssion, scandisk, HIMEM, SMART support.

[jbennet]

And as for windows 7, i stuggled to see a difference from vista, really, i didnt go in and start going "wow" like i did when i switched from 98 to XP

Thats because its a point release. Windows 7 isnt supposed to introduce any major changes. Its like Windows 2000 -> Windows XP. Tweaks, security, user friendliness, driver support.

[lllllIllIlllI]

Thats because its a point release. Windows 7 isnt supposed to introduce any major changes. Its like Windows 2000 -> Windows XP. Tweaks, security, user friendliness, driver support.

Yeah, i guess so, i never got to try out windows 2000. Unfortunately my laptop at the time was fitted with windows ME.. I was about 8 at the time as well, so my memory of then is not so good.

I did notice that networking was a little easier for the average user, that was good to know (sortove) , my job at the moment is going around securing wireless networks for people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing, so if windows 7 makes it too easy to network ill be out of a well paying job! :P Oh well, they still have to overcome the configuring the router. hahaha :)

[jbennet]

Well vista had vastly improved wireless compared to XP. With regards to windows 7, i dont think the network stack has changed at all since vista.

[kaninelupus]

Well vista had vastly improved wireless compared to XP. With regards to windows 7, i dont think the network stack has changed at all since vista.

I'm not sure as to your exact meaning on "network stack", but have noticed a few improvements from Vista

• Homegroup makes the authentication process much simpler, at least btwn Win7 machines (now how gimped this gets in Home releases remains to be seen)
  
• Sharing of files/folders/libraries also been simplified (which is great for wife, who isn't all that technified)
  
• Improvements to media streaming (although opinions out on some of the other so-called "improvements" to WMP12)
  
• Wireless out of the box, trouble-shooter even better than Vista (come in handy dealing with wife's Acer notebook!)

To concur with jbennet, yeah is not the break-through build that Vista was, but in all honesty, does anyone want that?? There were enough complaints over the change of hardware requirements with Vista. And given the MS has made clear their intention to go x64 only with Win8, I'd say we'll be waiting till v9 for next break-the-mould type OS build from MS