f13.net

As F13's official Microsoft shill-mole, I got my greedy hands on the final release of Windows 7 yesterday, thanks to the magic of MSDN subscriptions.  I've been playing with the release candidate as a virtual machine for a few months, but since it has an expiration date, I wasn't inclined to install it for reals.

Well it's installed for reals now, so I'm coming to shill tell you all that Microsoft has finally gotten around to joining us in the 21st century.

Starting with the least-relevant but most-cool in my opinion is the fact that someone at Microsoft has been going crazy on acid.  Stodgy wallpapers are gone, replaced with things like this as default desktops:


That's almost tame compared to some of the bizarre, weird crap that you can put on your desktop.  And, unlike Google, (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/business/media/15illo.html) Microsoft actually paid the artists to do this, which is a nice gesture.

The new taskbar is the big deal for the user interface.  Anyone who's read anything about 7 will have seen this bit already, but it's worth mentioning.  They merged the quick-launch portion on the taskbar with the program buttons, making it into something like the dock on macintoshes, but better.  In the screenshot above, I only have Firefox and an explorer window running, which is why those two icons are lit.  The ones that aren't lit can be run by clicking on them, just like the old quick launch icons, and any program that is running will appear on the taskbar, just like the old program buttons.  So instead of using the start menu at all, I just plopped my commonly-used programs down on the taskbar and run them right from it. 

So far, that's identical to how a mac's dock works.  But where it gets aweomser is in the execution.  A mac's dock offers no particular feedback.  You'll see a blue dot under a program if it's running (or an arrow in pre-Leopard OS X), and the icon will bounce if the program needs attention, but that's the extent of it.  Actual useful stuff is in the new taskbar, like the controls for media player:


(The fact that one of the demo songs that comes with the OS is named 'Ninja Tuna' is pretty sweet, too.)  Both screenshots show that when you mouse over a running program, you get a popup showing the window.  Or windows, if you have multiple windows from the same program.  And when you click on the popup, that window is brought to the foreground.  But if you just mouse over the popup, something else happens:


The other windows all turn transparent to let you see the full-size window without bringing it to the foreground.  In a similar vein, if you grab a window's title bar and shake the mouse around, the rest of the windows all flee the screen to let you get at your desktop.  [PROTIP: Shake the window again to get the other windows back.]  It's more useful for people who stash all their crap on their desktops than people like me who file their crap away, but still neat.  You can also quickly resize windows by dragging them to the sides of your screen.  Dragging to the top will maximize a window.  Dragging to the left or right will make the window take that half of your screen.  Pull the window away from the edge and it resumes its former size.

Mechanicswise, there's not a whole lot to say about the OS.  It's Vista.  They changed the security settings to let users have a less-draconian security policy without turning it all the way off, but I never minded the UAC security, so not really a factor in my case.  The performance also seems improved over Vista, with things popping up faster than they used to and generally snappier behavior in the UI.  The newest nVidia drivers let 7 steal processor time on the graphics card to improve its own performance when the GPU isn't busy, which is a sweet enough idea that Apple's doing the same for Snow Leopard.  I imagine that ATI is working out similar drivers, but since I don't own one of their cards, I didn't care enough to check.

<rant>One weird note about 7 is that it doesn't come with a mail program, messenger program, photo-editor, video editor, and a few of the other things that came bundled with Vista.  Instead, you get a link to 'Go online to get Windows Live Essentials', which will let you download the programs.  They're free, but it's still vaguely annoying.  Fuck you, EU, right in your stupid asses.  Every OS in the planet is bundled with web browsers, e-mail readers, messengers, and everything else they can shoehorn in, and Windows is the only one that gets its shit jumped over it, so now I have to go through extra retarded steps just to get what should've come on the install disk.  Apple tries to sneak Safari onto computers like spyware (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/safari_on_windows_scam.php) and nobody calls them on it, but Microsoft has to cripple their OS without a web browser because of these idiots?  Microsoft was plenty douchey back in the days of the first browser war, but lately they've been less underhanded than even Google about things.</rant>

Anyhow, so far everything's pretty much gravy for the new OS.  No hitches, crashes, or weird behavior.  I'm reinstalling my games tonight on my home computer, and if anything's going to fuck up, it's gonna be them.  But since they were running fine on Vista, they shouldn't have any hassles on 7.  Here's hopin'.

I've been using the RTM build for a few days now. I dig it. It's not a whole lot different than RC1 was, but RC1 was already pretty damn good.

If you have never listened to Mr. Scruff you should probably check him out, I'd recommend Keep it Unreal as the best album to listen to. I'm yet to meet anyone who hates him.

On a related note, thanks for the write up, this is all looking very nice.

Thanks for the tips on shaking the window, etc - had no clue.

Where did you find the link for Windows Live Essentials? Been trying to find that for the RC1 build...

I just bought a new cheapo laptop, but I guess I'll be getting this for free... err.. what.. next month? Maybe because I'm already at the end of Vista's lifecycle, I don't know much, but I don't think it's all that bad either. I look forward to upgrading though.

I don't think MS as a whole is all that bad..they've got a lot of good software (I'm primarily a Mac user btw.. I already liked Office for Mac. Except Windows has One Note, and Mac doesn't for some reason. Which sucks).. It's nice to have solutions in almost every category... Even better when they know they have to compete, like they do now. [edit] Err yeah, that's bullshit about not being able to bundle even an email prog

October 22 is launch day.

Which one doesn't have an email prog?

Oh he was saying that 7 isn't bundled with email or msn messenger? You have to download the Live Essential pack.

7 isn't bundled with Outlook Express or some variant? How weird.

Not that anyone should use it anyway. Gmail/Wave or Thunderbird.

The consumer version hasn't been packaged yet. I.e. the "RTM" version people are talking about isn't necessarily the same as what you will get when you buy the box on October 22.

Yeah, I think Live Mail (or the older Windows mail bundled on Vista) is Outlook Express. They're not replaced by those apps though if you're using Live services and/or Hotmail.

Anyhow, the cockblocking is unnecessary. Every OS comes with this stuff. I don't particularly mind downloading, but it's bound to prevent some people adopting some of their apps (I think this is more the case with the Live video and photo gallery apps.. People who use MSN messenger will get it anyways because it's already popular).


edit: err i'm confused now. was this something sparked on by the EU? i'm reading articles that are saying it's a Microsoft move. They just want to keep the Live branding seperate from the core OS.

I don't know how Microsoft makes money off any of those apps anyway (except MSN which has ads).

I don't know either, but I dig the generosity. The best feature of Live is the 25gb of free storage (not counting the mailbox).

Just pop the start menu up and type 'mail' in the search box.  The link will appear.  The actual location is Control Panel > Getting Started > Go online to get Windows Live Essentials, but lots quicker to just use the search function.

I :heart: search function in Vista and 7.


It's an assumption on my part with no real sources inside the company to offer concrete proof, but the fact that the EU sues Microsoft every time they have anything included with the OS is making me feel fairly confident that this 'branding move' is mainly to preemptively prevent the EU's douchery.

And the new Live Mail is vastly better than the shit that was Outlook Express.  Spam filters with free updates, mail indexing integrated with the OS's search functions, contacts, calendar, RSS feeds, all sync to the OS, all sync online with Hotmail.  I think they can be made to sync with Google's stuff, but'm not 100% on that.  I have exchange on my office server and sync from there to my phone, so never needed to park my stuff on websites to access it on the net.

Microsoft has really gotten on the ball these last few years.  Someone must have installed phones in their offices or something, because now their departments actually seem to be talking to each other.  I remember back in the early XP years, you'd see some new project come flopping onto land, gasping and wheezing, with no support, dubious utility, and no connection to any other project.  Then they'd name it something like Microsoft ReadyStove(tm), and its entire purpose was to play WMA files on your oven, and then nobody would ever hear about it again.  Now they have things that mesh well and make sense, like your desktops backing up nightly to a home server, which also streams your audio and video files to your xbox on demand and sets up remote access to your files over the net.

Just check this shit out:

(http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1270/streamk.jpg)

Windows 7 will stream your media collection over the internet to you.  The Microsoft of XP days would have slit its own throat rather than let anyone stream anything; they wanted ten layers of DRM everywhere.  Someone finally got a clue, and I'm glad they did.

Yeah, I like the syncing. My only complaint (at least in Vista) is that the Calendar or Contacts aren't stand-alone apps, like they are with the Vista Calendar/Contacts. I have to open Live mail to interact with them.. Plus, I can't associate *.ics (iCalendar) file types with anything.

I can somewhat believe they may be wanting to seperate the Live branding though. There may come at a time when Windows (as it is now) is more irrelevant, but Live becomes an internet platform.

I think I must be missing something as I find the search function next to useless in Win 7. It's fine for home use, but on a larger network with thousands of files? Narrowing down something when one of my users has lost something on a server is hopeless. And it used to be quite simple. Probably my only gripe about the OS.

As to the lack of a mail program, I think the idea is you should be using hotmail or whatever they call it now so they can spam you with ads. Or some other web based service and honestly I think that's a far better solution.

Does the new Mail from Live Essentials support IMAP? Cuz that's the only reason I should get any of the stuff. Windows Search can be useful if you have a ton of files that need indexing, otherwise I suspect that it would just be a resource hog.

Yeah, there's IMAP support.

It seems to work when I know the file name, but I have only used it to open IE: "iexplore.exe" opens it.  Interestingly, the fact that I am not able to properly search for files on my laptop (XP SP2) is one reason I am reading up on PowerShell, so I can write my own.  For that reason plus the opaqueness of the W7 search, I am dubious of it.

I do not understand why people are complaining about not having software bundled into Windows.  Just a few years ago, people were moaning and rolling their eyes about all the shit packed into Windows that they had to deinstall.  Assholes.  Who uses Outlook anyway?  People who get what they deserve, that's who.

The crap I never like getting bundled is demos of Norton or some tacky looking media player (that also wants me to pay $30 bucks for a better version). I don't mind full featured software, especially if it's from the people who made the operating system. It all integrates well, and does what I want. Only WMP is a bit worthless, but it becomes useful once I install some codecs. After that, I don't even need an alternative player. As for the Live stuff, I'll happily use it. Maybe it's not as good as Apple's bundled apps, but it's about the same experience.. Except in one case, it's much better: It's free. iLife upgrades come at a cost, as does MobileMe. While all of the same functionality is free on Windows. I can't complain.

Even better, 7 includes DivX/Xvid codecs now (I cannot remember if mkv is in).

Any windows edition that came with 'media center', either XP Media Center or Vista Ultimate  came with DVD codecs. Same thing with Windows 7. Its just that right now we're all using RC which is the 'ultimate' version. The one  that'll be on sale will come in various flavors, and I bet only the 'ultimate' will have the DVD codecs.

Nope, Media Center 2005 had no support for MPEG-2 you still had to purchase an nvidia/powerdvd based product to get codec support. Vista editions came with MPEG-2 but you could load others for better encode/decode quality/features, 7 has seemed to add divx/xvid to base codecs added to the OS.

With that said yep the ultimate edition is the only thing tested on but I wouldn't doubt its across the board in WMP12 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player_12).

.mkv is not in RC1, don't know if they added it to RTM or not. I just spent 2 minutes and got VLC for playing the .mkv I was wanting to watch.

Not really apropos to anything, but does someone want to explain the appeal of docks to me? Not relating (non-transient) windows to taskbar buttons 1:1 just doesn't feel right.

(The release version doesn't have native .mkv support, so still need to grab that codec for your anime piracy needs.)

You can set 7's taskbar to 1:1 window relationships, if that's what you want.  The appeal of clustering up all of an application's windows to a single button is just one of clutter-reduction.  My father's a perfect example, being one of those people who opens a dozen different browser windows and never closes the damn things.  His desktop was always covered in icons, which in turn were covered up under all the windows, while the application buttons on his taskbar would all be scrunched up and tiny because he was running six to eight programs at the same time.

In XP, I started most programs off the desktop.  Wading into the start menu was obnoxious, and fuck that quick launch thing on the taskbar; it took up space I needed for the buttons of the programs I was running.

In Vista, I moved most of my programs to the start menu.  Being able to hit the windows key, type in a couple letters of the program name, and hit enter, was damn faster than wandering through the menus to find it.  I still mostly ignored the quick launch, for the same reason: If I filled up the quick launch area with all of my commonly-used programs, the space left over for running programs would be tight.

In 7, I just dumped all of my programs onto the taskbar.  Nothing's left on my desktop but the recycle bin (and Fallout 3, but that's just because the disembodied head of Vault-boy goes well with the weird wallpaper.)  I no longer need to be concerned with the quick launch icons taking up the space for running programs, because they ARE the space for the running programs.  Having the icon up on the bar at all times lets me fire up a program even faster than using my keyboard under Vista.  I can have an easy thirty programs on the taskbar now, and considering that I use less than ten for my most common daily tasks, it's more than ample.

My dad's still a god-awful cluttery packrat with 7.  I'm still working to convince him to stop dumping all his files and program icons on the desktop.  I'm hopeful that he'll start catching on in the near future to how much all of the file and program organization features can speed things up, but I only just started getting him regularly using Vista's search to find his files a couple months ago, so it may take a while.

I haven't used Windows 7 yet but the Mac OS X Dock is fucking piece of the shit and is one of the canonical examples of how Apple's UI design went into the crapper when Steve Jobs returned.

The Windows XP taskbar has major issues too. Not having a built in feature to rearrange the order of the windows is one of the stupidest design decisions in UI history. Fortunately there's a piece of freeware, TaskArrange, that fixes that problem. That plus Microsoft's freeware Tweak UI power toy that forces windows from the same app to always be grouped together makes the taskbar very functional.

The OS X Dock however, tries to do too many things at once and as such sucks at everything. I'm especially amused at the magnification feature of the Dock (which you can easily turn off) and watching even experienced Mac users who inexplicably still have it turned on or are demoing a Mac that's not theirs to somebody have to slow down their mouse movements to actually use the thing.

Top Ten Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks (http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html) (article is somewhat out-of-date as the Dock has evolved more since he lasted updated it)

Edit: and

I'm not unhappy with the dock on my mac laptop.  That said, my mac isn't my primary computer, so it gets by with lighter use and less demand than my desktops.  In my dock, I added the application, document, and download folders, which thankfully have unique icons, unlike the examples on that guy's webpage.  I agree with him that it's clunky on occasion, but not to the extent that I've ever felt compelled to replace it.

Now, what DO annoy me are the mac users that I do IT work for.  Half of them will add seemingly every icon on their computer to their dock, making it this huge bar of teeeeeeeensy icons across their screen that's a bitch to find anything on.  And not a one of them actually add their application folder to the dock, so finding a program not on the dock (such as, I dunno, the network tool in their utility folder that I need to fix their stupid computer) forces me to wade through the Finder.

Leopard has changed this so those icons are now "thumbnails" so it's no longer obvious which is the document folder and which is the download folder.

I'm eligible for a copy via the beta. I've a confirmation on a boxed copy, so I have to wait for it.  :oh_i_see:

is there any genuine reason why there is no full-screen maximize button on Macs?  The green button seems to only maximize to what it wants.  Annoyance!

Yeah, I don't like the dock much either. That said, I don't think the UI necessarily went down the crapper once Jobs returned. System 7 was good for it's time, but I wouldn't be particularly pleased with it now. Then again, the Dock is definitely a NeXT carryover feature. Hmm...

I use Quicksilver for launching (btw, what's the best equivalent on Windows?), but searching isn't exactly ideal for everyone (intuitive search or not).

No.

Yes that's fucked up.

Holy fuck, it never even occurred to me to think that that search box wasn't just some dumb file search or something. I'm pretty sure you just converted me away from the classic start menu.

Combining an application's windows into one taskbar button fills me with rage, though - for me, knowing the position of an icon on the bar is more important than being able to read its text. Same reason new Firefox tabs always have to be placed at the end of the bar, not next to the current tab. I guess this is less universal than I thought.

You can change all that.  Personally, I set mine to "combine when taskbar is full" instead of just having it always combine.

http://www.blazingtools.com/mac/RightZoom.zip

Spatiality is very important (something Mac OS X violates constantly) but you can still have that with grouped windows if you have a way of rearranging them. I.e. I have multiple browser windows open cause I have so many tabs open at once I can't fit them all without them scrolling (Firefox) or being too small (Opera). But I always have the "f13" browser window as the bottom window on my list of browser windows. Next up the list is my "news" window, and so on. So I can see all my browser window titles in the list and they are all arranged in the order I prefer them in.

Heh, I will have two full rows of favicon-width tabs rather than open up a new Firefox window (Tab Mix Plus lets excess tabs form a second row instead of scrolling). I guess I just have an aversion to things requiring more than one click to focus (even though at that point it often takes me a couple tries to find the right tab anyway), or maybe I just need to see individual icons for everything I have open, all the time.

Or it might be because that's how I've always done it, and change is discomforting.

edit: Attempting to rerail; have you looked much at the control panel, services manager, and other administrative tools stuff? Any significant changes?

I had  herad on Security Now that there's a Tree Style gadget for Vista. Do I have this mixed up with Firefox Tree Style tab?

I can't find anything for giving Vista a tree layout, so I'm guessing that's probably the firefox addon you're remembering.

7's control panel is essentially the same as Vista's.  They've streamlined a bit, but you're still better off summoning the control panel and typing what you're looking for (the cursor's already in the search box when the control panel comes up) than trying to wade through the nested links.  Apple definitely beats Microsoft in control panel elegance, no question.

Services, task manager, computer management, all pretty identical to Vista's.  Have yet to spot any differences.

I like to alias folders to the quicklaunch, drop shortcuts into the folder. Click the folder mouse up to the app's shortcut and bam. I use short folder names and it's pretty clean. OSX is decent with this, though they changed the functionality a bit it still works well. I really like a more dock-like setup, there's such a disconnect between work and home for me (osx and xp).

I disagree with most of that list of why the dock sucks. I love the dock, on a widescreen monitor I have it set to the perfect size and I use custom icons. The thing where 10.5 shows you the first icon in the folder? Right click: Display as Folder (instead of Stack), shows the folder icon instead. Kitsune, my supervisor loves to load up his dock, he also runs so much shareware and every app gadget in the world, I basically can't use his computer. Functionally, mine runs pretty stock as do the macs of everyone but that one guy, just some tweaks to tame the dock (and that's less work than setting up Windows to behave properly).

Full-screen maximize, I'll give you that one. That'd be nice. Green button does have a logic to it, though. It will fill out the screen, less the dock and menu bar, unless the document is smaller than the screen (say, a Word page), then it will size to the document.

I like OS X.  I just bought a Vostro A90 netbook a few minutes ago, and the first thing I'm doing after I double its RAM and quadruple its storage space is set the little fucker up to dual-boot Windows 7 and OS 10.  I think Apple as a company is sleazy, but I do like their products.  A lot of customers are surprised that I support macs, figuring that I'm obligated to be all 'Raargh, Hulk SMASH puny macintosh!' for being a Microsoft partner, but that would be retarded.  It's in my best interest as a consultant to be able to support as wide a range of software and hardware as possible, so I keep in practice on macs to be sure I won't look like an idiot if someone has a broken mac and wants me to fix it.

Sometimes they're sleazy, sometimes not. I don't know.. I like that Snow Leopard will only be $30, for example. While Microsoft, with all of their free bundled software, would probably try to pull some move and charge up the ass, and not only that, but come out with 5 different editions that confuse the hell out of everyone.

The irony is that if Apple just removed the hardware restriction on their OS, and let folks with 'ordinary' PCs install, they would probably wipe the floor with MS, at least with the younger crowd. But Apple has never been very far sighted.

Not going to happen anytime soon while Steve Jobs is still in control. He's the ultimate control freak. And yet, despite still selling only a minuscule number of PCs each year compared to the total PC market Apple's market cap is only ~25% less than Microsoft's (~$150 billion to ~$200 billion) so investors, at least, don't think Apple needs to massively grow its OS business.

The $29 upgrade price for Snow Leopard for Leopard users is an exception for Apple. Normally Apple doesn't even sell separate upgrade versions of its OS. Snow Leopard from the start, though, as its name implies was meant to be more of a "plumbing" upgrade to Leopard rather than having lots of new features as is normally the case for a major OS X release.

Ah fair enough.

Although it should be said that they're pretty decent about Mac OS prices in general. Under $100 for Leopard, and I believe they've never went higher than $130 for any OS X release. That's a still a far cry from what Microsoft has ever done.

But like I said, both have their good and sleazy points.

They're never voluntarily going to give up control of the hardware because the hardware is where all their profit comes from, which is why they sue the fuck out of people trying to market mac clones.  Apple can afford to be great guys who only charge $100 for the OS, because they've already gotten $500 in profit when you bought the computer.  Microsoft gets $0.00 in profit from the hardware sale, so they charge more for their software.

For a month or so, Microsoft had a deal where the upgrade to 7 Home was $50.  The deal's gone now, but there's a strong rumor that they'll be bringing it back on the eve of the release date to try to stir up some excitement and tip some of the less-enthused into sales.

Mac OS X has been priced at $129 since at least 10.2, maybe even since the beginning. Apple also sells a 5-user "family pack" SKU that significantly lowers the per-computer price for the OS if you have more than one Mac. And unlike Microsoft there's always only one consumer version (there's a separate Server product).

Snow Leopard is a little weird in that its non-upgrade price is $169 but that's cause it includes iLife 09 and iWork 09, neither of which will run on Tiger or earlier versions (so there are no Tiger users that have iLife 09 and/or iWork 09 and would be "eating" that extra cost if they upgraded).

Hey, that's a pretty damn good price too (the bundle, I mean).

You also forget the compatibility issues Apple would have to deal with once they let their OS roam free. A big part of it being stable is the fact that they don't have to make it run on every POS hardware.

This is where Apple lacks vision.  If ever there was a moment to shake things up in their computer division, now's the time.  Considering that they're not so much a computer company anymore as they are an ipod/iphone company they finally have the cushion to experiment with releasing the OS into the wild.  As was said before, though, you've got Steve Jobs cockblocking it.

That's kind of a damning statement about Apple's competence.  Microsoft has managed to keep their OS stable since Win2K.  Why couldn't Apple?

Maybe they could, but it would require work. Meaning more manpower. I suspect Apples resources are already spread quite thin. And they seem to have decided that would be more headache than its worth. Maybe their bean counters told them that the money invested and the perceived loss of stability isn't worth the earnings from the additionally sold copies of the OS.

If you ever worked in Customer support you know most critical errors in Windows are due to faulty drivers, most of the time by third party developers. And people will bitch at Microsoft if it happens, even if its not their fault. If they had the choice, they would love to only let the people use cerified drivers, leading to a much more stable OS.

On the other hand, MS makes low-cost versions available to non-profits. I pay $20 for Office and $10 for XP Pro and Vista. Each point upgrade of OSX is $100 or so. See pet peeve thread about not being able to afford upgrades for 10.3 now that Firefox and Flash don't support that browser.

I love OSX, but I don't get why people love Steve Jobs and hate Bill Gates.

I don't even want to think of how many times at a hearing I have had someone ask me why we don't get free or $10 software from microsoft or free internet from the cable company and have had to explain that while the school and library may be a charity in the world's eyes, government itself is considered a cash cow.

Jobs looks better in a turtleneck.

Before techsoup.org, we paid full price (or at least state contract pricing, same as you). Most vendors wouldn't recognize libraries as an educational institution, because our non-profit status is legally in the same category as animal rights groups  :oh_i_see: And I'm only talking about software for our public computers, the staff computers don't qualify for techsoup donations, which between that and the generous Gates Foundation (granted public computer $$) is the reason the public are using machines about five years newer than the staff.

Anyway. How 'bout that Windows 7?

Anyone having problems with Eve and aero themes? I close out eve and my entire screen was greyed out. Everything worked, it was just a graphic bug. Works fine with Champ Online and EQ2. And works fine with Win7 basic.

Just threw it on my work computer, so far so good!

I don't mind jobs, but Bill Gates is a lot more interesting to listen to. Jobs is a good spokesman and marketer/enthusiast for his company, but Gates always has some big picture scheme/trends in technology schtick in his language.. He's constantly talking about the "future". Makes him more fun to listen to. And while he's a cutthroat businessman just like jobs, and a helluva of lot more nerdy, I'd probably rather drink a beer with him.

Not to mention the whole spending his fortune on curing malaria thing.  What's Jobs spent his fortune on?  Best I can tell, it's a seat on the Disney board of directors and a black market liver.

Won't you look silly when the original Jobs dies and they reveal his new CLONE.

Bill Gates really seems to be a nice guy. Only problem in your comparasation is that Gates isn't the CEO of Microsoft anymore. Have fun letting Ballmer look like a nice guy.

With a trampoline room with 20ft ceilings in his $53m house.

Well a trampoline room wouldn't be much good with 10' ceilings now would it? I wouldn't pay 53 million for a house with a trampoline room like that - certainly not in this housing market.

:tinfoil:

Doesn't really strike me as tin-foil hatty. Apple hardware costs too fucking much. If they let people install the OS on any hardware and dropped all this "we need control" bullshit, they'd get a lot further with the desktop crowd. It's a pretty common thing to hear, really - even if not altogether true (i.e. - I still wouldn't switch solely over to Mac, but I may be willing to build a second machine better than anything Apple makes for a third the cost).

Repeat after me: Apple is not a software company. The are an integrated Hardware/Software company and they makle their mobney by selling hardware/software packages.

20 years ago nobody would have complained that AmigaOS wouldn't run on an Atari ST so why is this an issue at all?

Without the bundling of OS and hardware Apple would go belly up. They make all of their profits from the sales of hardware and it works. Apple has 95% of the high-end market share, they can sustain a 25% to 30% profit margin on their systems and are the only company with apparently growing profit and market share in a shitcanned economy.

Why should they unbundle their OS? They would need driver support from a huge number of hardware companies. They'd need to support everything from high end hardware to 3rd rate china whiteware. To avoid or alleviate the same problems microsoft has with all of that hardware crap they'd need a huge testing department and logo infrastructure (works with MacOS) they'd basically need to replicate everything microsoft does in order to minimize fallout from crappy drivers.

Then they'd compete with Linux and Windows for the mid to low-end market where profit margins are razor thin and they would sell less systems than before.

Again, why should they?

Windows 7 Wallpapers (http://creativebits.org/inspiration/windows_7_wallpapers) vs. Snow Leopard Wallpapers (http://creativebits.org/inspiration/snow_leopard_desktop_pictures) (download links for images included in articles)

Ready, set, fight! :awesome_for_real:

Because that was 20 years ago?

It's funny that we can't discuss windows without it becoming a thread about Apple. I'd say they're doing just fine.

Because the only difference between an ST and an Amiga wasn't an EFI chip?

About Apple being a hardware company, have you checked out where their profits are coming from nowadays?  It ain't the computer side of the house, it's the handheld gadget side of things.  Again, though, we come down to the control freakiness of that company.  Can't let third party vendors just create drivers for our stuff, that'd be anarchy!

You fuckers remind me of the softest, pussiest, most needy people looking for the government to solve all their problems.  You've got no problem getting soaked with 100% margins and having virtually no choice as long as you don't have to make any decisions for yourself, because after all, Steve is a nice enough guy that he'll make all your decisions for you.  Weak, weak, weak.

While I share your anger that I can't get a MacOS at reasonable prices for the hardware, its up to Apple to decide how they want to (or not want to) earn their money.

If they don't want to sell us their software without forcing us to buy their overprized hardware, we are out of luck. Thats the exact opposite of what you claim, thats Capitalism. They know they wouldn't sell their computers otherwise at those prices, and they milk it for what its worth.

I have no problem with capitalism, and Apple can make it's money how it sees fit.  That doesn't mean that they've got some form of criticism immunity, however.  Part of the whole "freedom" thing is that I can call them out for what they are; a litigious shitty company who limits their customers choices and soaks them hard for every dime they've got.  It also means that I have the freedom to call their cultists fucking idiots for putting up with this bullshit.

In a utopian capitalist environment (ie, where consumers are actually rational) these fuckers would have failed long ago.

You're turned on, aren't you?

 :drillf:

Thats one of the rare occasions I agree with you, Gulp.

Except I have more money than sense and will continue to buy Apple Computers once in a while because I like them, overprized as they are. I don't smoke or drink, everybody needs to burn money on something useless  :awesome_for_real:

Not to make this thread about me, but just a quick note that my belief that Apple would quickly gain market share if they opened up their software to 2nd party hardware by no means suggests that I actually think Apple is better software than Windows.

It used to be that there was the tacit assumption that Apples ran so well simply because they had proprietary CPUs like the G4. Now this is entirely not the case. The Macs out there seem to have identical hardware to every other computer on the market. Maybe with slightly better components than the average. The only difference is the software.

In other words, their selling point -is- their software. It appeals to people, probably in large part because they have a good art department and because of the aformentioned magical aura that surrounded them for decades, they somehow have a better reputation.

Dammit. Now I'm thinking about how cool it would be if Blizzard had put Dalaran on the back of a giant flying turtle.

If I could pick one set, I'd rather have the Snow Leopard at work. The W7 set is a little too flashy for my work desktop, IMO.

Nicely put, Big Gulp.

Unix underpinnings, no registry, no activation, application bundles, just off the top of my head. It's a fucking great OS.

I just wish both companies would release earlier in the year. I have two projects with a 2009 deadline that are sitting around waiting for the new OS to release so we can buy hardware that ships with it.

What's it like working at boring town where you can't have an attention-grabbing desktop?

Oh you scamp, you have so brightened my day with your wit!

There are times when I wish that I, too, had chosen to hop from one entry-level job to another! Ah, to have no one who cares what I do with my computer! Also, to have no mortgage, no medical coverage, and eat macaroni and cheese five times a week! That is true freedom, my friends!

Livin' the dream!

(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/1658/willferrellweddingcrash.jpg)

Not sure what you mean by activation? Do you mean the fact that their OS can't run on anything other than Mac hardware, thereby not really requiring you to prove you own the OS in the first place, since you have the hardware to run it?

Not sure what you mean by application bundles. Like, Microsoft Office? Sorry, don't mean to be obtuse here, but you're sounding very much like a died-in-the-wool Mac devotee, which is fine, but I'm getting lost in the verbiage.

Finally, Macs have a registry, called .plist files, stored in various places.

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences - Prefs unique to your login - like HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

/Library/Preferences - Global prefs - like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

For example. You can't nuke these without horking  your machine's applications pretty badly.

I'm with Schild.  Not to spoiler the movie for you, but at the end you die.

Why be a fucking slave at something you hate doing?  Spend less money, suck a dick or something.  Just don't waste your life at some boring, soulless, dreaded activity.

Don't worry, BG, I for one am sticking it to the man by installing Apple OS on my $300 netbook.  I polish my computer with your tears, Apple!

And for once, Microsoft is really kicking the crap out of Apple in desktop backgrounds.  The Snow Leopard wallpapers really look phoned in; the pictures are boring, the art is merely okay.  7 has magnificent wallpaper; every photograph is beautiful, and the art is wildly creative.  They also have extra country-specific wallpapers up for free downloading from the theme control panel.

It's true. The 7 wallpaper set is ASTOUNDING.

Really? I prefer the Leopard art myself. I like both, but there's something a bit more subtle and classy about the Leopard wallpaper.

Then again, its not worth starting nerd fights over, since really, just find a picture on the internets you want and set that as your wall paper.

I do like the rotating wallpapers in Windows 7, tho. The EMP one in particular. Does Leopard have rotating pictures?

Engles, what do you mean rotating? Changing the picture every x minutes? That's been in OSX for years. The W7 set was ok, too heavy on the cheesy illustrations for my taste, but I can see why some would like that. I like the 10.6 set much better, I would actually use that set for a while before loading my custom sets up.

This has inspired me...

Eric, what do you think of a joint business partnership?

E&S Life Coaching!

Oh, eat me, hippie.

The Win7 nature shots were far better in my opinion.  Even the stuff I would never use was better quality.  Apple is losing its touch.

The lolz, you deliver.

Man, I love it when people that don't understand the big picture talk about shit. Gives me the warm fuzzies.

It's actually not that difficult anymore to run OS X on your PC if you actually want to. I do it. It literally was as easy as putting in an install disc and hitting next a few times. I just had to select my hardware in the customize list of the install. It's not supported of course, but I don't need their support.  :grin:

??? Individual property list files are not a registry. Their very names are kind of the whole point on why they're not the same. "Registry". "Preference files". The registry is one big single point of __fill in the blank__ . Also, preference files aren't all processed at once on boot like they are with the registry either. It also makes it a bit more difficult to move around apps and user preferences from one machine to the next.

I don't know anything about OSX but plist files don't sound like a registry.  As if the registry is evil incarnate.  I do prefer text files, though.

Wallpapers?

I'm reading this whole thread and wondering why I would pick OSX over Ubuntu.

Third party apps that are worth a damn?

Plus, you can run just about anything worth a damn on Ubuntu on OS X. Not as well in some cases though. :\


That's all plist files are. No different than unix txt or xml or what have you. I think the direct windows correlation is .ini ... but umm, those weren't suited for multiuser machines, I think.

On the subject of text files and Linux, the best distro I've used as far as centralized configuration with text files is Arch Linux. It uses a BSD-like init system. It's easily my favorite distro.

OSX over Ubuntu? 3rd party apps, plus there's a level of polish on OSX that Ubuntu can't really touch at this point. They are definitely getting closer however.

Not to derail too much, but the various linux distros (including Ubuntu Netbook) for netbooks are much cooler compared to their desktop distro counterparts. I'd probably get one if I cared about netbooks.. But the whole "Linux Desktop thing is coming soon now" is perpetually always going to be "coming soon". I've been hearing that for years. It almost doesn't even matter how well designed it's technological elements are or could be. Hell, someone could build the perfect Distro, and yet, it'll ultimately fail.. Simply because that distro is just a snapshot, and Linux as a whole is not a "platform" in the true sense of the word. It'll always be too decentralized for a lot of commercial developers to invest their time in because of this.. And the diehard Linux community prefers it this way themselves.. They prefer everything to be in flux, and to have a million forks of the same thing. And even if some distro gained a lot of marketshare (like Ubuntu now, and possibly Google later), they fucking fork that too. So basically, this is no place to port your shit too. At best, it'll be a suitable OS for typical workstation use or media playing. But the average consumer expects more.

Ubuntu won't do it, but Google possibly has a shot.  And frankly, if the neckbeards want to hang out in their own little l33t subculture they can go for it, but if a corporation with some muscle and cachet (like Google) tried to jump into Linux in a serious way they could make it the de facto standard.

I see Google easily taking over the netbook space at least (and other appliances), but beyond that, I don't think so. No one really wants anything other than a basic office/media playback experience on those type of devices, and Linux, especially in Google's hands, can deliver it in a headache free way. But apps that go beyond it are a different story. Secondly, they just might be a bit too myopic to concern themselves in all of the areas that Microsoft or Apple does. Just a guess. They're first and foremost an internet oriented company, and I bet that even if they do provide a coherent environment for people to develop on, it'll mostly be web based like the Google platform already is. I don't see them concerning themselves with robust gaming API's or trying to cater to pro audio or vid developers or asking Mattel to port the latest Barbie game.

They don't really have to.  Apple doesn't concern themselves with robust gaming API's either, but WoW is on there, along with a bunch of other games.  So is Photoshop, MS Office, etc, etc, etc.  If your platform is popular enough people will develop for it, and I could easily see a Google branded Linux distribution at least equalling Apple's marketshare in the desktop/laptop arena.

The problem with Linux is that it's a moving target.  You have no idea what version of the kernel someone's running, what version of Glibc, etc.  That makes it a wee bit difficult to provide a simple installer for much of anything.  A somewhat stable platform though would remove that hurdle.  Developers would just have to abandon all the rinky dink non-consumer oriented Linux flavors and concentrate on the standard (GoogleOS).  Like I said before, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the neckbeards would be tremendous, but they don't really matter anyway.

Apple has more than enough in place to develop/target a game with.. the main complaint I think is that it isn't easy to port DirectX games to it.

Linux otoh has multiple choices of various subsystems that do the same thing, it isn't even funny. No one is going to come to it, even in a limited way, like with Apple. All of those neckbeards as you call them really fuck shit up, I think. It's because of them that Linux hasn't really evolved in a.. umm.. "vertical" way, I guess? It just spreads out instead. It's more or less the same system I had when I first installed linux in 96 or something - except with more pieces to play with (if I want to). Very few of those pieces have actually been so integral as to be stacked on top so as to have some standard behavior everyone can work with. You criticize the kernel, but I think that's the least of it's worries. At least you can depend on and predict how the kernel is going to work. OTOH, you can't even predict what GUI a person is using, or what audio system, or even a directory structure for fuck's sakes. Maybe you're right though. Maybe a big company like Google could help it. I'm just not sure that big company is Google.

Hmm, maybe a company could take a variant of *nix, develop a stable and uniform GUI for it, provide a uniform file system and user directory structure and market that...I wonder who will do that...hmm...

hah! apparently that's harder than it looks, because only a couple of companies have done it (done it well at least). those couple of companies are now the same company. and the fact that they were a "company" to begin with helped (as opposed to a loose conglomerate of "neckbeards"). having branding and an overall vision and identity is half of the story. but also, it helps if said company cares about the overall user experience enough to cater and develop that OS to any market (this is where i doubt google. and they know it too. hence why they're only playing to their strengths with the netbook market for now).

in the end, i think only apple has the talent and resources - and even the ability to give a damn - to transform a nix variant into a worthy desktop OS. so what's the point of linux. Apple/Next already did it.

microsoft could do it too if they wanted :why_so_serious:

A lot more companies than that have done that. You just don't hear about them cause they weren't meant for the consumer market.

Edit: well maybe not "a lot" a lot.

Linux mostly makes me sad.  The nerd in me very much wants to see an open-source OS succeed.  The pragmatist in me loads up an Ubuntu boot disk, sees a 1998-era UI and programs that all require some extensive tinkering to work right, says, "Fuck this." and reboots.  If an OS is too much hassle for a professional IT consultant to work with, it's never going to make the mainstream.  Back in college when I had seemingly thirty hours of free time in every day, I got Slackware up and running on my 386, off of a stack of 3.5" floppies, after lots of tweaking and compiling of the kernel to make it work with my hardware.  Now that I work for a living, I just don't have the time.

Linux is fine, if:

1. You have no money, and I mean NO money to buy an OS, and lots of free time.  Or
2. You only need to do basic web surfing and e-mailing and can get by on the applications that came on the install CD and never need to add or configure anything.  Or
3. You're a programmer and it's your hobby.

I do some volunteer computer work for a charity in my city that gives basic job training to ex-cons and welfare families to try to get them a foothold in the job market.  This one guy there was schlocking together donated hardware into working systems, installing Ubuntu on them, and selling them to the students.  Selling as in charging actual money for computers he was given for free, which was classy.  But the upshot was that all these completely computer-illiterate people were handed Linux systems, and predictably couldn't do a damn thing with them.  One woman came to me and said, "This modem isn't working in my computer."  Unsurprisingly, she hadn't compiled the drivers.  Or downloaded all of the modules the compiler needed to compile the drivers.  Or known the first thing about compiling anything.  So that was great.

Consumer market is a great part of what I mean when I discuss "desktop OS". Sure, you could place some things together purely from open source that presents a decent desktop experience at first, but a desktop OS equivalent to OS X or Windows offers more than just a basic desktop experience. People can install good commercial software on them, for one. Part of that is because there's standardization so developers of these apps can target it, part of it is other things like having a relationship with these developers. Etcetera. All of the little intangibles that make companies like Apple and Microsoft good at what they do, and enable people to work with them. I think these things help make a desktop OS good just as much as the technological end. It all trickles down to the people who really matter.. the users. And if users don't find the kind of products they want on said OS (however polished it appears to be), then it's a worthless "desktop OS".

Otoh, linux's entire infrastructure.. or whatever you want to call it.. it's the anthesis of this. It'll never succeed on the standardization front, nor will there ever be a company developing a distribution that has the reach of MS or Apple to make their shit even worthwhile to developers (and in turn, consumers). Google has the relationships and power make a competitive *nix variant, but like I've suggested, I don't think they even care to have that kind of reach. As big as they are, they limit themselves. They are an internet/communications company. I can't imagine them caring to branch to the gaming world or creative markets, for example. At best, I could see Adobe guarantee AIR runs well on it (but not a full blown CS suite). Or maybe getting blizzard to make a browser game.  :grin:

This. I have Arch Linux installed on both my desktop and laptop, set up as the default option on the boot menu. I want to be a Linux geek. But I can't remember the last time I've actually been able to justify booting into Linux. I enjoyed tinkering with it when I was into that, and I learned a lot about computers in the process, but anymore there's no point in it unless I'm doing serious development work. Which doesn't happen very often because I'm not a developer.

Honestly, if I could just play all my games without rebooting, that would probably be enough to sway me away from Windows semi-permanently. Also, obligatory

Geeze, god yes. What is -wrong- with Linux that its incapable of using video hardware to render full screen flash? I've tried and tried, never got it to work.

My video card blew up a little while ago and I took the opportunity to buy/build a new PC. I put the thing together after work while I was making dinner. I finished dinner around 6:30? I put the DVD in the drive and let it do it's thing. Twenty minutes later I had a functioning system, I downloaded the latest video drivers and vent and copied my EQ2 folder from backup and did some tweaks and downloaded a few other programs and I was up and zoning in to Veeshan's Peak 90 minutes after I put the installer disk in my PC.

Call me when I can do this with Linux.

The hard disk of my Mac Mini died a few months ago. Lazy bastard that I am I installed MacOS on an external Firewire HDD, the system automatically restored all my programs and settings from the Time Machine partition, and every Program worked just as it did before on my internal HDD.

Reinstallations are NOT the thing you should brag about with Windows. You can't even move Programs from one Partition to another without headaches, let alone the OS itself.

*Ring* *Ring* you can do everything but EQ2, who knows if they have support for that in Cedega.

EQ2, WoW, Photoshop, Flash (decently, at any rate), etc, etc, etc.  The OSS alternatives to these pieces of software are usually amateurish at best and not as full featured.  True, you can play WoW or HL2 through Wine, but why would I want to fuck around in emulation and get worse results than just running Windows?  What compelling piece of software does Linux really boast?  I don't use an OS to just fiddle with settings and play the OS, I use an OS to run games, tools, etc.  Linux falls down just on that score through a complete lack of support.  That's not even getting into the hardware nightmares (for instance, sound is still a royal bitch in Linux).

It's just not a very good consumer-level OS.  Sorry.  For that you need coherence.

Sound is apparently tough. My Creative X-Fi is the barrier to me dual-booting into OSX on my pc.

Bah, more derailing, this should be about Windows 7!  If anyone finds out how to bypass the invitation and password for Remote Assistance that would be great, they we could use it on our Enterprise network.

If you want to run Windows applications you shouldn't use Linux.  That's about all there is to it.

Something On-Topic:

I love D-Fend reloaded. It basically is just a wrapper for Dosbox, but it did away with my Windows 7 issue that made Adom in Full Screen display the wrong colors.

Now I can play old Dos games without a hassle. Yay!

I'm the Unix/Linux administrator for my company. I run Ubuntu as my desktop which I installed myself. I vastly prefer both Solaris and Linux over Windows in an enterprise environment. Yet there isn't a Linux box anywhere in my home. I do that shit all day and sometimes over entire nights and weekends because unless I'm on vacation, I'm on call. When I get home I want to be able turn the PC  on, log in to whatever game I'm playing, and just not have to think too much about it outside of the occasional defrag. Linux just doesn't allow that. While in a server/enterprise environment, it usually just runs and will typically run for as long as you want without reboot (although if you're running Oracle, I wouldn't recommend it), it just can't compete on the desktop when it comes time to play.

Oh, and while I refused to run Windows Vista, I preordered Windows 7. Just to throw out a semi topic related sentence.   :grin:

No that's not what I'm talking about. SunOS with NeWS, Sun Solaris with OpenWindows and then Open Look, IRIX with IRIX Desktop, and others were all Unix OSes that had well-defined UIs that met Engels qualifications. Apple and Next are not the only two companies to have done this.

Edit: SunOS

Windows 7 (and Vista) run a scheduled defrag in the background automatically.  Enjoy your new worry-free life.

I don't trust Vista's scheduled defrag.  After noticing declining performance on my PC a few months after buying it, I defragged manually and found everything was much improved.  Maybe there are some settings that I need to play with?

I'd just like to further state I'm in love with how fucking smoothly Windows 7 runs.  I've had zero problems with it, and it just seems to run so smoothly.  I could feel the bloat when using vista (slow down, bad load times in some cases, etc), but 7 is just smooth.  Also thank you thread, for making me realize that I can set rotating desktops in Windows 7.   :awesome_for_real:

I guess you've never heard about OpenGL before?

But it still sucks compared to something like http://www.mydefrag.com/

Is that a reskinned jkdefrag? Or a wholesale copy? Because that's exactly what it looks like to me.

Edit; HURRRRR


"The long-awaited version 4 is finally out. The program is now called "MyDefrag", because it has a scripting language and you can customize just about every aspect of it. It is no longer the "JK" (Jeroen Kessels) defragger, but "my" (your) defragger!"

Such as?  I'm not being obtuse, I'd like to know.

Man, this thread is Going Places.  Now that I'm caught up (sort of, I kinda zoned out partly into Page Four), I'm curious how needing to determine the version of glibc is any worse than needing to determine a DirectX version?  Or a .NET Framework version?  Or hell, if you're using 64-bit Windows?  Maybe OSX is more monolithic; this would be good and bad, I suppose, depending on what you want.

Brogarn, I'm with you on the "just play" point, which is why I only just recently installed Ubuntu; specifically it is because Ubuntu will "just install" and "just patch"... I swear that Synaptics Package Manager is one of the big reasons I pissed on linux for a while.  I view it as a utility, and the partition I have installed is just there to do funky things to my machine that I cannot do with Windows.  Also it's a lot cheaper when it comes to having non-primary computers, meaning the ones I don't play games on.


I agree with One but I'm not sure about Two.  I think it's only important that a normal user know where is his shit is, and if that is consistent then Success.  Now, if the OS is so cobbled together that the user spends all his time trying to figure out shit, you're into Neckbeard Territory and that won't fly when it's time to watch some porn.

MSRA /offerRA not work in Windows 7? I'm not able to check myself, I'm assuming there would be a GPO that needs to be set also.

Photoshop, TurboTax, MS Office, AutoCAD, Soundforge, Premiere, etc, etc, etc.

And whomever brought up OpenGL, I'd hardly call it a "robust" API when compared to DirectX.  That's not even mentioning that Apple has little to nothing to do with OpenGL, they use it because it's (wait for it...) "open".

Hate to jump in, but OS X is pretty much toe to toe with Windows with most major apps. Anything worth a damn in any creative area is on the Mac (all Adobe stuff, tons of pro audio/video hardware and software, RAW editors from camera manufacturers, color managers, Quark, cad software, even niche shit like Final Draft or Manga Studio ). Reliable MS Office interoperability; EndNote; speech dictators; random home design, cooking, and educational apps like Rosetta Stone; LoJack; blu-ray disc ware; tax software; and the occassional mainstream game .. Blizzard, CoD4, the Lego games, Sid Meier to name a few (and most of the major stuff from EA gets a simultaneous release.. i.e. Sims, Madden, Tiger Woods, C&C, etc.. ).

So basically, you're not completely shit out of luck, say, if you have a Line 6 POD, want to edit the sound library, patch it, fire up your multitrack suite of choice, create a guitar track, drag out your midi keyboard, create 63 other tracks, finalize a whole goddamn movie score, open up the screenplay your buddy was working on, animate it all in CS, burn it to a blu-ray disc, get on a plane and fly to Cannes, work on your taxes and learn French while you're at it, get your notebook stolen at the airport, bust the motherfucker with lojack, gallivant around Europe with a DSLR and process your RAWS on the spot, lose Cannes, dictate a hearty "Fuck you all" speech, fly back home, fire up the Sims and create some lonely bearded motherfucker trapped in one room with a Linux PC, laugh as he goes insane. Or something like that. :P

Hmm, yeah, very few of those Mac ones make good wallpapers imo (either too noisy too sparse). That's the best version of Hokusai's wave I've seen though (been looking for one!)

OpenGL is a very robust graphics API. It's why Carmack and some others choose to use OpenGL back in the early days instead of Direct3D which was a piece of crap. It wasn't until DirectX 7 that Direct3D was just "okay" (first version with hardware support for T&L). With DirectX 9 Microsoft finally achieved parity with OpenGL if not actually surpassing it slightly. Carmack is still using OpenGL in his latest engine (id tech 5) and it's the graphics API on the PlayStation 3 so it's not just "weird" platforms like OS X that use it. The "mobile" version, OpenGL EX, is also what's used on the iPhone and Android devices.

Oh, it's more portable, but from everything I've read it pales in comparison ease of use-wise to DirectX.  I have no experience in this area, but I've got to imagine that so many developers use DirectX for a reason.

ETA:  Oh, and using Carmack as a star developer???  10 years ago, maybe.  Now, not so much.

Microsoft made great improvements in the usability of Direct3D starting around DirectX 8.1. Carmack himself has said that DirectX 9 is easier to use now than OpenGL. But that doesn't mean OpenGL is hard to use.

People use Direct3D because that's the vendor supported 3D graphics API on Windows and they don't care about cross-platform stuff. Or if they do care about cross-platform portability they'll license an engine that is already cross-platform.

As for Carmack not being relevant anymore take a look at the id tech 5 engine examples (Rage, DOOM 4) and read about their work on id tech 6 (e.g. spare octree voxels).

And Doom 3 was going to be the mother of all engines, and yet somehow only Prey wound up using it.  I'll wait until they actually put a product out there.  To be honest, I just don't like Id games.  The last game of theirs that I actually enjoyed was Doom 2, so yeah, we're going back a ways.  They definitely aren't on my radar as anything special.

Yes that's true there weren't many games that licensed the Doom 3 engine (it's more than just Prey, though). At the time, though, Doom 3's pure dynamic-lighting system was far beyond what competing graphics engines could do. So Carmack has and continues to push the frontiers of real-time 3D graphics rendering. Also the Doom 3 engine was never meant to be the mother of all engines as it was specifically designed *not* to support wide open spaces like the Unreal Engine 2 could. It wasn't till later with the addition of MegaTexture (another Carmack innovation) that you could make open environments with the Doom 3 engine.

Edit: lc doom

I gotta pick on this because finally today Entourage Web Services Edition (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/itpros/entourage-ews.mspx) came out that snaps in with OWA.  :drill:

Given that this is a gaming forum, I don't think that claiming that Apple OS has the same app robustness as Windows is going to go far.  A lot of the major titles are available for OS 10, yeah.  But a lot aren't.  And a lot of the ones that are come out months after the Windows version, and aren't supported for shit.  I'm thinking ahead to the games that I'm expecting to buy in the next year, Bioshock 2, Borderlands, FFXIV, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, and I don't expect any of them to see an Apple release.

For, y'know, real work, you should be able to find ample applications to run on OS 10.  But it unquestionably lags behind in entertainment.  Both in shoddy support for necessary video hardware and limited availability of games.  It's gotten better, much better in the last decade, but it's not there yet.

Which is sort of sadly ironic, given that the Mac had fucking sweet games way back in the day.  Through the Looking Glass, (http://www.mobygames.com/game/macintosh/through-the-looking-glass) The Dungeon of Doom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dungeon_Revealed), Dark Castle, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Castle) back when the early mac graphics were considered cutting edge and the use of a mouse a novel and exotic interface.

Yeah, but I would say the days of gaming are really slim on the PC in general. It's not like it's the hallmark of entertainment anymore either. I mean it's cool and all, but it's not like it used to be. The consoles are closing in, and even getting the earlier releases of games now. For awhile now, the only genre that's been untapped is MMO's.. PC's do have that going for them.. Luckily, I personally think MMO's are shit, and do just fine with a console and a Mac.

edit: umm btw, I did just a buy a PC too. It's underpowered for games, so I didn't get it for that. I just felt like working with something mostly everyone else is using.

You should book a room with some of the other crazies in these parts at the I'm Saying Bullshit That I Don't Understand Hotel.

I understand enough. You gave me this silly ass iMac title, but I've had PC's on and off between 1992 and 2006-ish.  :grin: There were some nice peaks around 97 and 2001.. somewhere around there. And it's nothing close to that now. I'm just not tempted in the slightest to be some PC gamer like I used to be. Before, looking at titles was like being in a candy store or something. Now, it's like.. "Hey, this looks cool. Oh it's on the Xbox or PS3? Nice." And if it's not that, it's "Meh." I'm not going to bother with searching sales numbers or anything, but I can't imagine that the sales of PC games are anywhere they used to be.

Stray is circling the drain!

Which drain would that be?

edit: goddamn, shows how much i read the rest of this site. what the hell is with all of these threads about circling the drain?

PC titles must be doing fairly well for EA to put the effort into porting a number of their console titles to the platform. Also pretty much every MMO worth playing is on the PC, not to mention the crazy money casual games market. There are a lot of money hats to be found in the PC games industry.

As time goes on middleware will improve and make it easier to develop for multiple platforms, not harder. I'm not sure why the console vs PC debate always comes down to "There can be only one!" They serve different markets and different needs.

I've tried getting into consoles, and I do enjoy my 360, it just comes down to how I like to play, and usually the consoles don't cut it.  I like sitting at my desk playing while the TV is going on at the side rather than sitting on the couch just absorbed in one thing.  Maybe it's ADD, but I don't like just devoting my attention to just a game.

The last thing I want is a pc - console debate. Seriously. Not my thing. 8-) I'm merely saying that things have changed. The PC gaming market is smaller. Or rather, games are less exclusive.

This started as a comment about Macs anyways. The console thing was a side issue. Someone brought up the lack of Mac games. And it's true, the Mac doesn't have a lot of games. My only point in mentioning consoles was that I don't feel so deprived - that the PC doesn't quite have a hold on my interest in games these days. I can fire up plenty of the same games on a console, and still use a Mac for computing. Maybe that's unthinkable to others, but I'm happy.

Now wind back time.. circa 1998. I had a Power Mac around then. I kept that for about 3 or years, and gaming wise, I wasn't always happy. There was some cool shit on the PS1 (it was towards the end of it's lifecycle then), but the PC had plenty of things I wanted. Secondly, the PS2 didn't come out until 2000.. and wasn't all that great right away either. I was pretty with green with envy when I'd check out PC games. During that whole period, I was mooching off of a friend for PC gaming. I missed out a lot of shit though.. I didn't get to play UO, didn't play the Thief or Deus Ex titles until later, etc.. This is getting longer than I meant, but needless to say, it's a different story now.

No argument from me; things are much less exclusive these days. Thankfully the Mac should end up benefiting from increased platform support. I wouldn't mind rebooting less.

All this silliness aside, I can only play games on Windows.  I can replace PhotoShop with GIMP, and MS Office with several things, and TurboTax runs in your browser yo... but I can't play GalCivII on anything else.

That play-a-game-while-watching-TV thing, you might want to have that looked at. :why_so_serious:

http://www.microsoft.com/business/thenewefficiency/default.aspx

Free copies for an event if you register and an IT developer/professional.

(Now to find the Canadian tour)

I'd like to take a minute to rant, here.

To my customers who think you sound computer savvy when you say, 'Oh, well tests showed that XP is faster on the same hardware.':  SHUT THE FUCK UP.  SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.  OF COURSE THE OS WITH MORE FEATURES IS SLOWER, YOU RETARD.  IF THAT MATTERS SO MUCH, GO LOAD MS-DOS, YOU'LL BOOT IN UNDER FIFTEEN SECONDS.

Jesus.

Between the automated spyware scanning, automated defragmenting, search indexing, 3D desktop rendering, desktop gadgets, added security layers, and shadow file backups, it's no wonder that Vista was slower than XP.  In fact, it's almost a miracle that 7 is nearly as fast as XP when you consider how much more 7 is doing in the background.  It makes me want to smack people who are all 'Blur bluh blur, Vista was slow on my Pentium 4 with 512 megs of RAM, it's crap.'  Baby Jesus invented the multi-core processor, cheap 4-gig RAM packs, and SATA drives for a reason, and that reason is to run better crap on one's computer.

(Sidebar: If you're engaging in corporate espionage and downloading porn videos on your work laptop that's running Vista, don't think that deleting the files is going to do the trick.  Surprise!  Vista helpfully backed up the files for you.  And it takes less than a minute to restore them.  True story.  All the customer wanted was the evidence of stolen company files; I restored the porn too for free, in case they needed more ammo at the unemployment hearing.)

I'm starting to resent XP in the same way I used to resent 98/ME.  Every day people bring in computers that are infected to the gills, and XP is just this shambling wreck that I have to duct tape back into working order.  I know it's not really XP's fault, that I used it for years without any infection because gasp I didn't click on every link that was e-mailed to me like a moron, but the sheer vulnerability of the OS is starting to grate on me.  Which, given that I'm making money by fixing it, is a sort of stupid opinion for me to hold, but I'm still annoyed that the shiny Star Trek future isn't here yet.

Hopefully the future is Star Trek shiny. I'm looking forward to W7, but I'm not hopeful it will be that much more idiot proof than XP. The key problem, the user, is still the same.

Isn't XP going to stick around for awhile though.. since it seems to be the preferred OS for netbooks..?


Still haven't used 7, but my overall impression of Vista is that it isn't even that different from XP. And I wonder why they don't just put Vista Basic (sans Aero or some shit?) on netbooks.

edit: oh wait, I'm reading there will be a Win7 starter edition designed for netbooks. nvm

[strike]Do you think I actually have to SHOW UP to get my copy?[/strike]


Guess so. Thanks for skipping Austin and going to Dallas, fuckos.

I got free copies of XP before from their launch tour, totally missed the Vista one, but I cannot find nothing about a 7 tour.

Oh well guess the tour wasn't recession proof  :why_so_serious:

What? He should be eating 2minute noodles and Kraft Mac & Cheese in his 2 bedroom house in Redfern to stay "legit"?

Not sure if he does it anymore, but technology wise, he does downplay himself. I remember reading that his main computing device at any given time was always on the mediocre end of power (like when Pentiums came out, he'd still use a 486.. and so forth. His reasoning was to experience what the average user experiences). Also, he drove a Honda Accord or some shit.

Sure, but like WTF who cares if Gates lives in a big fucking house and buys himself some toys? Good for him. We all do the same thing within whatever our own means are, so it's just a green-eyed bullshit tall-poppy strawman comment.

I don't hold it against him, but his behavior definitely gives him points in my book (especially the charity things). Same could be said for Warren Buffett. I don't resent the wealthy, but they're definitely cooler the more generous or down to earth they are. Hell, most of the time, any self-made wealthy person is like this. It's only inheritors/kids that are assholes.

I'm pretty much agreeing with you all the way here. It wasn't your post I took issue with anyway. It was the trampoline room + expensive house = bad person insinuation Tale made.

It's been a tradition for a long, long time to be an evil money grubbing asshole for most of your life, then once you have more money than you can possibly spend, give lots away for charity. Who remembers Carnegie as the evil fucker behind the Johnstown Flood, or the Homestead Strike. No, giving away money washes your slate clean.

Doesn't make them less evil to me. Just means they want a good legacy / to go to heaven.

Windows7 is pretty sweet though. I'm quite happy with it.

Err, but when has Bill Gates ever really been like that though?  He's a nerd who made Billions, and never really changed from that.  He's always been giving out large amounts of his money from the beginning, and, at least to MY knowledge, never had the national guard shoot his employees.

They were mean to Netscape!  Don't you get it, man???

Does anyone remember DR-DOS?  No? :oh_i_see:

I remember it, but I don't know what you're referring to exactly. It was just another DOS that Microsoft (fairly) competed with, I thought. Or are you referring to QDOS.. the original DOS Gates bought for $50k? That was a fair deal too, even though the creator later threw a fit later and claimed he only sold it cheaply because he didn't know Gates was working with IBM and their new PC's (why that's Bill Gates' fault, I don't know).

I've never been impressed with Microsoft's lack of originality and acquisitive practices, but there's nothing actually wrong with it. They didn't steal DOS.. and even more silly, they didn't "steal" the Mac OS either. There was a second there where I was trying to see things from the other side once -- during the antitrust shit, with Internet Explorer. It was until I saw the whole panel of their opponents, like McNeally or that old far from Netscape. Sandy vaginas all around.

I think he was referring to Microsoft's aborted attempt to keep DR-DOS from working with one vesrion of Windows.

Oh, I didn't know about that.


In other news, this recently acquired laptop I got was given to my old man. Meh. I don't know.. I'm getting all picky and shit now in what I want in a laptop. Plus, maybe I should wait until after Win 7 is out for a bit. Can't really guarantee it, but maybe a bunch of cooler machines will be out come Christmas.

On a sidenote (not that I'm particularly interested), but I read that any netbook atm won't be able to upgrade to Win 7 (the stripped netbook version). It will only be available/preinstalled to newer netbooks. Sounds like a raw deal to be stuck with the same software.

Ah yes. The AARD code. At least it was only in the beta version I guess.  :oh_i_see:

I'm sure everyone can think of an example where MicroSoft made things somewhat difficult to do things in a fashion that they did not own.  I'm not saying that other people have not done so, such as with Netscape-specific HTML tags, but there's a track record of squeezing out competitors in a field in which law was relatively new.  Still is to a degree, I guess; that whole thing about not warranting a software program to do any particular thing always gets me.  Someone makes a iron that burns your shirt when used as intended and it's the manufacturer's fault, but if you use a program "as directed" and it deletes your data OOPS.

I know I'm derailing.  I'm in one of those moods.

Blog posting from Microsoft has produced this image of your upgrade path

Pretty much all the customs are a clean reinstall of windows which they recommend using Easy Transfer (http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsexperience/archive/2009/05/05/a-look-at-improvements-to-windows-easy-transfer-for-windows-7.aspx) to migrate/backup your windows settings.

Summary, format/reinstall is the upgrade path.

I'm guessing that if I'm using w7 rc, I can't just replace my serial and be done with it?

Nope. I wish.

Yeah, word on the grapevine for months was that the open beta copies wouldn't get an easy upgrade to the final release.  I saw occasional blog posts from people who hacked the hell out of the files on the install CD to force it to do an in-place upgrade install, but that's enough of a pain in the ass that it's almost worse than simply doing a clean install.

What you can do is use the Windows Easy Transfer program to save your user info and documents on an external drive, do a clean install, then use the transfer program to pull your crap back off the external drive.  It's a mild pain in the ass, but straightforward.

If you are talking about upgrading from Beta to RC, it was very easy.  Maybe you are talking about RC to RTM, which I have not investigated.

Suuuuuuweeet!

Yes, my dream of running Windows 7 Ultimate on a netbook will have to remain nothing by a sweet fancy, borne on the wind.  Oh wait...

(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7844/006hic.jpg)

WHAT NOW, MOTHERFUCKER?

 :grin:

Don't mind me, I'm just nerdgasming over the arrival of my new toy.  And the subsequent hacking the hell out of its hardware and software to make it a mean little Win7 machine.  Like a midget with a knife.  It'll cut you, man.  Three ways.

And once Snow Leopard is out, I'm putting that in for a dual-boot.  Left ten gigs unpartitioned for it.  Gonna be sweeeet.

(Sidenote for OS nerds: Dell's Mini 9 (and the above pictured Vostro A90, which is identical except for cosmetics) is the only netbook that has yet been made to run OS X natively without any missing drivers or features.  If you're gonna stick it to the man and play with Apple's OS without the hardware tax, that's a good computer to do it with.  The only downside being that Dell ships them with only 1 gig of RAM and a crappy slow solid state hard drive.  You'll need to replace both at around $130 from Newegg, total, before it's ready to rock with 2 gigs RAM and 32 gigs HD.)

And just to really put the cherry on top of my corporate rebellion sundae, I just tethered my phone to the netbook over bluetooth to use as an access point.  Guess what, Verizon?  I'm a fucking Alltel customer, and my phone isn't crippled like the crap you sell.  Enjoy my using your bandwidth without paying you to un-cripple my phone!

I've been looking at Netbooks. I will not get one until someone makes one with a less than crappy graphics processor. I don't mean great, just passable would be fine. Integrated Intel shit is right the hell out though.

There's only one right now that fits that criteria: the Lenovo Ideapad S12.

Yep, and I fully intend on ordering one the day they're available as both of my laptops are totally dead.

Better graphics chips are nasty little battery-gobblers; I doubt you'll find anything above 'barely passable' for a long while.  The Intel chip in my Vostro is sufficient for Aero's 3D tricks and video playback, and that's good enough for my needs.  It's not like I was planning on gaming on a 1024x600 screen and teensy keyboard in the near future.

This isn't about games. It's about video playback. I mean, some games would be nice. Maybe recording from some emulators at a lower res.

The 9400M is decent enough for some games as well. It's a "real" GPU unlike the POS Intel ones. However the shared RAM architecture limits its performance compared to dedicated memory mobile GPUs.

I'll just wait for the S12 with Ion. It's supposed to come out in a couple weeks anyway, afaik.

Hmm, a netbook with hdmi, and that could at least output 720p or even 1080 would be nice. I thought there might have been something like that already. But then, I'd want faster storage, optical drive, etc, etc.. Yeah, fuck it. I doubt that's happening. Best to go with a slim notebook.

Yeah, it sounds like a laptop.  The entire point of a netbook is you just browse the internet and maybe type up some papers on it.  Thats it.  If you want to do anything else with it, buy a notebook.

Kitsune, let me know how it goes setting that up with 10.6. My fiancee is ready to pull the trigger on a laptop, but we want something that boots OSX and doesn't cost $$$.

The Ion has the 9400M.

Netbooks are definitely not great performers.  But then, neither are most laptops.  My mother got one of those bazillion-dollar Sony 10" laptops about two years ago, and my netbook is roughly equivalent in power, while costing less than a fifth the price of her laptop.

The Vostro takes 24 seconds to boot to the logon prompt from the time I hit the power button.  I played a 640x480 anime episode off a USB drive without any hitches in video or audio playback, even in full screen mode.  Where I DO encounter hitching is in trying to play HD Youtube, as those videos are handled solely by the CPU with no GPU acceleration to take any of the load.  Non-HD Youtube videos are fine.  I don't know whether the Ion platform would handle HD Youtube any better than my crappy Intel GPU, though.


Will do.  People are already banging on the test versions of 10.6 to get it running.  Success is limited at present, but rumor's that 10.6 only takes around 2.5 gigs of storage space, which will be nice.

The 9400M supports hardware decoding of H.264 (YouTube's HD format) and also VC-1 and MPEG-2. That's why the ION platform supports 1080P playback even with an Atom CPU.

Better video playback < OS X compatibility for my needs.  My whole purpose in buying a netbook (when I already own a perfectly good Macbook) was to have an ultra-portable computer that would fit in my toolbox and let me have a reliable platform for running diagnostics on customers' networks.  Something where, even if they're totally boned, I can still be getting online to access patches, anti-virus programs, etc.  Enough of my customers own at least one mac for it to be valuable for me to be able to run OS X on the toolbox computer, as troubleshooting a misbehaving mac on a network can be a pain when all the Windows computers are reporting no problems; is it a compatibility issue, or is the mac just busted?

On a side note, that's a big part of why I desperately want to punch the "tee hee, macs just work!" crowd square in the face.  I've spent nightmarish afternoons struggling to get a mac to work on a network, only to find buried in a corner of Apple's tech support forums: '10.5.2 breaks network file sharing with PCs.  No fix is available, hopefully 10.5.3 fixes it next month'.  Well that's fucking great.  Every now and again Apple will break the crap out of something vaguely important, and without another mac handy to test the function, it can be a bitch and a half to track down the cause.  At least when Microsoft breaks the crap out of something, there are usually other Windows machines handy nearby to try to replicate the issue.

While I don't know if Mac OS X would work on an ION machine it does support the 9400M on which ION is based (the Mac Mini and a number of Mac notebooks all use the 9400M). Even though I've been talking about the 9400M as if it's just a mobile GPU it's actually a combination of GPU and chipset (memory controller, system I/O, etc.) so OS X provides driver support for all that stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody hacks something together that let's a hacked version of OS X run on an ION machine.

http://windows7sins.org/

FSF is so silly at times, cannot wait for the footage from boston  :grin:

Goddaaaaaaaaaamn, that is some terrible propaganda.


For $100, you can upgrade to Windows 7. :roll:

Holy shit, it's the Linux version of timecube.

Damn, won't load for me now. Now that's a sin  :oh_i_see:

Yes, open source sucks. :awesome_for_real:

I find it ironic that the site doesn't work with javascript disabled.  I'm crying lockin!

A lot of open source's suck comes from being made by teams consisting entirely of nerds with no artists.  The UI of things like Gimp, Open Office, and most Linux distros makes me feel like a midget is vomiting in my eyes.  Yay free and all, but if I can't figure out how to wade through the UI to do what I want with it, it's worthless to me.  If some of the development teams would just grab a decent graphic designer, it would be so much better.  Hell, grab a kid making nice Winamp skins.  Sure, your version of Linux will look like the inside of a riced-out Kia, but at least it'll be usable.

I finally got my main box upgraded to Win7. So far so good; it seems stable and the few apps I've put on so far seem happy. My only complaint is they couldn't be bothered to add one new screensaver after 10 years.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/Screensavers/ToasterClone.shtml

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article142017.ece

Comedy GOLD!  :awesome_for_real:

Ehh, the FSF could be worse.  The fucktards who think Apple is any better than Microsoft piss me off more.

HAY FUCKERS USE THAT EFFORT TO SOLVE REAL PROBLEMS

Open Source people are the new hippie stoners.

Pretty hippy-ish least when it comes to the smaller apps. Most of the large projects may as well be considered to have commercial sensibilities though, since they're basically run by committee (with a lot of corporate contributors).

The FSF however.. is not that type of commitee. They're weird. I'm thinking more of all of the Sun folks working on OpenOffice.

Speaking of the 9400M, I'm fairly certain I've been playing League of Legends w/ it for the last week or so.

Also, looking briefly at that S12, after adding what you need to it to get it to work like you want, its likely to be like $700.  For another hundred or so, you could get my macbook and throw win 7 on it.

I have been seriously tempted to get the 13 inch mac book air and putting windows 7 on it (since I don't really use OSX and can't see the appeal), simply because it has many qualities that look great. Dedicated graphics, SSD drive, ultra light, very slick looking, etc. Then I rean into this article:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/08/06/0420237/Windows-Drains-MacBooks-Battery-Whos-To-Blame

That put a stop to that fantasy.

What exactly do you want to do with it? Shit, if you like the hardware, get it. It's not like OS X would cockblock you out of doing work. Or would it?

We're heading off on a weird angle but the first gen air's SSD's were crap performance. Speaking of which is there any TRIM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM_(SSD_command)) support on the drives controller/firmware?

XP works like a charm on it!  :awesome_for_real:

I'm looking at how I'm going to has Windows 7 and as far as I can tell, I'll be perfectly happy with the Home Premium... unless someone knows about some reason for me to get Professional.

There's not many reasons besides businesses, ie join a domain, file syncing, the only thing that might interest you is XP emulation thats in pro(requires hardware VT flag).

I was one of the idiots that didn't jump over the cheap pro upgrades and regret it (for work). Moving some netbooks from xp home would of been sweet.

I'll be buying at least one non-upgrade key since I have two computers and one (valid) XP key.  Of course, I might have to buy two non-upgrade ones if I have to have XP installed already in order to install that version of 7... I don't suppose you know about any of that?

You require the physical media(ie the same as vista upgrade). It preforms a media check to see if you have a valid XP CD then it will continue on installation.

Oh well that's OK then because my key came with a disc. :awesome_for_real:  As long as I don't have to have it actually installed, I'm golden.  Thanks.

EDIT: I'm assuming I can't use the same disc to activate more than one upgrade version?  Because that would be swell.

Not up on the key upgrades, but does an OEM key get you a cheap upgrade?

In theory you could because no key information is tied to a retail cd, your crossing into a gray area tho.

Okay, here's the deal on MS licensing.  Bear with me, 'cause it's a little convoluted.

1. All computers should have an OEM or retail license on them.  Only OEM and retail are 'authorized' to clean install on hardware without an existing OS.  OEM is considerably cheaper than retail because OEM is only meant to be put on brand-new hardware, and isn't transferable.

2. Upgrade and volume license are authorized to install on top of an existing OS.  In theory (or Microsoft's happy dreams), you can't install an upgrade copy on a bare-metal computer.  Because in those happy dreams, every computer that rolls out from every factory already has an OEM license copy installed.  The happy dreams obviously don't include home-built computers.  You can jigger upgrade copies to do an install without a previous OS, but it's violating the terms of use agreement.  Whether you care or not is up to you.

3. An OS license key is good for install on one and only one computer.  The license key is a separate beast from the disk.  You can have a hundred Windows DVDs, but if you only have one license number, it's only going on one computer.  Getting around the license key restriction is much trickier than convincing Windows to clean install off an upgrade disk, because the computer calls home to Microsoft to check the key when it activates for the first time.
3a. Windows 7 has a 'family pack' box with three license keys for $150.  The family pack is obviously exempt from the 'only one computer' part.

4. If you replace your current computer, and want to put your current OS on your new computer, it's a different matter.  OEM licenses may not be transferred.  They're locked to the hardware that they're installed on.  You can transfer upgrade and volume license versions to new hardware, but the new hardware has to have an OEM copy present for them to be installed on top of.  Retail licenses can be transferred at will, so long as it doesn't result in them being on more than one computer at the same time.  Why bother transferring the upgrade if you have to have OEM on the new computer?  Well, if the computer came with a home edition and your upgrade version was business or ultimate.  That's about the only conceivable reason.

So to answer your question, Yego: Yes, one disk will work for lots of upgrades.  But no, without more than one license key it's still not gonna work.  If you had a volume license key for multiple installs, you could do it with just the one disk, but if you're using consumer licenses, you need one for each computer.

Also, there is a barrier between VLK keys and non-VLK media and vice-versa. I have two non-VLK XP machines here and keep forgetting, because everything else is VLK.

http://www.microsoft.com/springboard

90day Evaluation download went live today. Great if you don't have a technet subscription.

Very informative.  Both of my computers are built by me and you say there's no key transfer/check for upgrade, just media check.  The three-key pack is tempting but I think the boy will make it with WinXP for a while.

Correct, upgrading does not inspect the license key of the original OS.  The only cockblock of Vista's upgrade keys is that if you entered the license key during the install process, it would disable the option for a clean install, thereby forcing the user to run the upgrade install from within the previous OS.  People wanting clean installs found ways around that.  I don't know whether 7 has the same loophole or not; never looked around to find out.

Have friends? Want to host a party on any day from Oct the 22-29? Want a free copy of 7 Ultimate for hosting it?

http://www.houseparty.com/windows7

Gotta application in but god knows the criteria.  :uhrr:

Yeah, saw that on Gizmodo the other day and signed up.  I have essentially unlimited licenses of Microsoft stuff for my company use, so if they send me the party kit I'll give away the Ultimate to one of the guests.  I just have to come up with a suitably evil contest to inflict on them.

What? You're going to have guests? I should just have everyone on f13 to apply to increase my chances.

I just got the house party acceptance in my inbox, which was along the lines of 'You're a finalist, now be fast in going to this site to finish before we hit our quota and stop accepting more.'  So anyone who signed up for the house party thing will want to be checking their mail box quickly.

Oh wow.  The party management website has instructional videos. (http://www.youtube.com/user/LaunchParties)   :why_so_serious:

I always wonder whether marketing people are cognizant of how unintentionally hilarious they are when they're trying to come off as being natural.

yep!  I too am now a shill.

Oh my god.  I just watched a video.   Oh man, marketing people.  
Seriously, I think my friends would cockstab me if I did any of these recommended activities.  HAI GUYS HERES HOW U SEARCH!

For porn.

Booh never got in the party, guess they didn't like my honesty  :why_so_serious:

But to offset it Technet+ subscription came in a few days ago and every version of 7 is on it now.

The sad thing is that a lot of the features touted by the horrible videos are pretty sweet.  I never used search functions in XP or earlier; they were utterly useless.  Vista's search (and by extension, 7's search) is so useful that it's almost a crime to not use it.  But putting a room full of creepily enthusiastic 30-year-olds at a 'party' for the demonstration saps all of the goodness and makes it cringeworthy.

MS really needs to fire their ad agency and do a complete PR transition.  For one thing, I think it'd help to start making fun of Apple a lot more than they're currently doing.  The "I'm a PC" stuff is a beginning, but it's pretty toothless.  They need to attack 'em on cost and their whole walled garden mentality.  Maybe slapping some hipster in a straight jacket would work for that one.  Mostly, they need to try to put out some funny, cool stuff.  Because right now they just seem like the vanilla default OS to be using.  This is unfortunate, because I tend to think that OSX has finally been whooped.  Win7 is just damned, damned good.

They sorta have a balancing act to play that Apple doesn't. MS is the defacto 'business' OS, and a lot rides on their reputation as the 'serious' OS. If they start putting out ads mocking Apple or otherwise trying to compete with Apple on its own 'hipster' turf, they are simultaneously giving a bunch of grey haired CTOs the willies.

They can put a stuffy suit, a gamer, and a hipster next to one another.  All say at the same time, "Hi, I'm a PC."  Look quizzically at one another, then do some handshakes, back pats, or awkward high-fives as appropriate to which PC they are.

Then have one poor guy, "Hi, I'm a Mac."  Maybe have a twin come out and say, "Hi, I'm a Mac, too."  And a triplet....

You should be in advertising cause i would laugh my ass off at that commercial.

I just don't know what to make of this marketing strategy. It just screams 'We are trying to alienate our original userbase' in a variety of ways. I mean, ok, hopelessly cynical view is that they're trying to make the average PC user seem like less of a closetted social pariah, rather has a wonderful lifestyle and rich, diverse (all boxes ticked!) friends, when the reality is even if the majority of us are not basement dwelling troglogeeks, we'd still be terrified of a stilted, Stepford social engagement EVEN WITH COMPUTERS. People only bring computers together in order to work, or shout at each other and not wash for a weekend while their hands go cold playing Quake.

The other current-userbase alienation that strikes me is the whole creepy 'Windows is no longer for you' vibe that drips off these videos like a sped up version of Nintendo skillfully removing itself from the hearts of every gamer worldwide with the Wii in order to court the Lowest Common Denomidollar.

It seems the marketing departments have decided once and for all that Geek is chic. But only if it is not geeks being chic.

I will give Microsoft's ad agency this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU)

That ad is full of awesome :drill:.

No.

A) I don't like children.

B) I especially don't like precocious children.

But Europe!  And Unicorns!

Good to know as I have myself a free upgrade with my new laptop (hooray for buying things that I can't afford through work)...

Kinda sad I didn't get picked for the party pack. I get to flush money down the toilet early next year I guess.

I know exactly what to make of it, it sucks.  They are trying to show the OS as being so easy a kid can use it and avoiding other issues that w7 may solve.  They need to strongly address all of the negative PR vista accumulated at release when every IT professional on the planet was screaming "don't get this".  Having an 8 year old copy and paste some text from maximum pc doesn't quite get the point across.

Looks like MS has outsourced so much that they have completely lost touch with their own corporate culture, not to mention user base.

What worries me is that MS is going to hork things up so badly that folks run to Apple. And then all the problems that MS has been dealing with in terms of viruses, malware, compatibility issues, etc, will start to afflict Apple to the same degree, if not moreso due to a lack of security 'culture' in Apple. Its gonna make my life hell. I have had two professors in my department switch from XP to Apple 'because its cool', even though they have to run bootcamp to run 2/3rds of their programs anyway.

Until Apple cracks the corporate market nut I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Same shit, different desktop.

Your kidding right? Apple jettisons compatibility all the time. Windows 7 is a pretty good base (which OS X has had for a long while with granular security) and simply installing Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/), and stop using IE I think is strong enough for most people. I really think the security essentials is going to be such a major focus(launching it earlier this month) with 7, the general complaints will be mitigated.

No OS or protection will stop a user from destroying a computer, they are the point of failure in most security. Or as Righ eloquently said

Everyone's saying the Security Essentials is going to be the bomb and maybe even put Norton et. al. out of business. I'll believe it when I see it. I know, so far it has pretty good results, but a good AV stands the test of time. I also am amused that somehow Microsoft Security Essentials saves the day...as long as you don't use Microsoft's browser...

I'm always astounded to see anyone using anything other than Firefox.  What's the point of using a browser without an Adblock plugin?

The main complaint with Vista was speed.  Windows 7 is fast.  The brother I mentioned earlier apparently works for a Microsoft Partner^tm, so he figured he can get me a free copy of professional.  For work use only, of course. :awesome_for_real:

Or two, amirite?

The main complaint with Vista for the 1st 6 months was app compatability.  The snowball effect of all the corporate IT pro's shouting if you install this don't expect to use it for work attached a permanent stigma to the OS.  It destroyed any chance the Vista brand name ever had of becoming a success.

The issue is comparing it to its rivals and target which is AVG or Avira, it really is good. It misses the target of most of the bigger scanners due to their IPS/HIPS engines that are now becoming standard in most of the protection suites. The overhead for running it is low and the UI is clean and very intuitive for end users. The underlying engine is forefront which is supported via subscription, updates are linked into windows update via critical so it gets replicated to end users via windows update.

It doesn't save the day, but it offers another level of protection that was never technically available to users before "in the box" (Using that loosely due to it not bundled into the OS or they would see another court case). I just wonder how they are going to push it/market it to end users, I cannot remember if its now in action centers resolution for no anti virus yet. Note: AVG/Avira's "free" editions state in the EULA its not for commercial usage at all where MSE is allowed for home & business.

Anyone done an install yet?  I'll do some tests when I get the box but my dream is that I can somehow manage a clean install of W7 while having it not erase everything on the C: drive.  No, I'm not really sure I want to do this (I'm thinking I could have file ownership problems, at least), I am just enumerating my options before I get the release OS... which I am hoping solves my wife's various problems with W7.

Nothing yet - still waiting for my party pack to arrive.   

Since Norton hasn't put itself out of business yet, MS's new scanner won't either.

7 is better this way as well, quite possibly because Vista isn't that much of a different creature.

While I like Win7, I still don't know what version I should be pre-ordering.

Honestly, after issues with Fallen Earth and even CoH alt-tabbing in Win7, I have switched back to Vista. Yes, its a bit less responsive in regular desktop operations, but game stability is pretty much priority #1 for me.

What issues with FE? I haven't had any..

FE just performed more robustly on Vista 32 than on Win7 64. It could be a specific vid driver issue for my 8800GT card. Or it could be the AV I use. Or a donkey fart in the mekong delta. Who the hell knows. Its hard to determine what it may have been. So, well, Vista 32 was more stable for me and I didn't feel like troubleshooting Win 7.

So would Win7 32bit, I presume. Your problem is more a 64bit one than an OS one.

So will xp mode on on wn7 64bit be like running 64bit XP  :ye_gods:

I've had a difficult time finding problems with Win7 over the last few months.

Did people actually make 64 bit apps before Vista?

For scientific purposes, sure. Ansys, MSC Marc/Mentat and Matlab, off the top of my head, have Windows-based 64 bit editions. Not specifically for Vista, but they work on it.

Yeah... but the question was whether anyone actually developed for XP64.  Because Salamok appears to be having one of these moments:

Not sure what moment you are thrusting on me:

- Fact xp 64bit edition exists and it sucks balls.

- Fact windows 7 pro has an xp mode.


Legitimate question: If I am running w7 pro 64 bit what can I expect out of xp mode?

It seems pretty plug and play. I am toying with running a Linux distro off of Windows 7 Virtual PC, but I'm too lazy today to download the Linux ISO I would have to mount. I will wait for a different lazy Sunday to do it. One thing I did notice is that my 64 bit ubuntu did not want to install on the Virtual Machine, complaining that the machine was x86. I don't know enough about it, but that may just be the limitation of the MS virtual machine only doing 32 bit.  I imagine that XP 32 runs just fine.

32-bit XP, at least that's what Google and my RC version of XP Mode say (running 7 RC 64-bit).

awesome thanks my mind is now at ease.

The quote was from WUA's radicalthon.  I'm implying that XP64 touched you in a bad way.

But yeah, it would be senseless for Microsoft to pack a 64 bit OS VM in their 64 bit OS.

I ran the Win7 Upgrade Advisor -- what does it mean you think when they say "this device isn't compatible with Windows 7"?

a) needs new drivers? or
b) firmware and thus hardware incompatible?

it's for an oldish soundcard BTW (creative SB Live!)

Throw it in the trash and just use your onboard sound?

http://nerdfortress.com/2009/06/06/no-sound-get-sound-blaster-live-and-windows-7-to-play-nice/

Or get a new card.  SB Live! isn't simply old, it's ancient.

One longstanding issue that still isn't fully resolved - There's a nice little SATA bug in which a random disk gets set to readonly when the machine reboots.   The fix is apparently updated SATA drivers.  Which means I may be screwed here since ULI got bought and immediately shelved by NVidia.

Yay my party box came today. Ultimate 64/32bit the box which is sweet. Also got an email about Norton Internet Security for hosts www.norton.com/nis4hosts where you can get a free edition of 2010. I don't know if the correlate the email addresses yet so who knows, might be a free copy.

I'm curious about the performance of Security Essentials.  Currently, I use Avira, and while being nice, it's really expensive.  I am hoping that using Security Essentials along with some common sense will be enough to shield my machine. Anyone have experience or input?

Arstechnica has written some articles, both describing how MSE works with little memory footprint and CPU usage (they could use their computer perfectly fine while performing a full system scan without much (if any) slowdowns) as well as the good results from scanning (Apparently MSE even looks inside VBScript code to identify virus-like behavior).

Oh really?

Only suckage I've ever had with XP64, has been while I had an ATI card, which would randomly bluescreen whenever I alt-tabbed in and out of games 3+ times. Everything else has Just Worked, and has been stable. So in which manner does it "suck balls"?


Having said all that though, I am very on the fence whether or not to upgrade to Win7. The only "major" reason I'm not upgrading yet is I'm not a fan of the DRM they've put in the core, but it's looking more and more like it's a very very thin reason not to. I may have to cave in.

It's not like I ever use the media player anyways. Yay alternatives.

I've glanced at the features and think I'm ok.  But just to be sure:  If I get professional edition instead of Ultimate edition, will I be missing anything actually useful?  Friend of mine has access to a workplace discount and can get me a copy of Pro for $29.

Here's a good round-up of the different versions. (http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_skus.asp)

Short answer, skip Ultimate.  Medium-length answer, if you don't need/want BitLocker (encryption tool, described here (http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_preview_05.asp)) or the ability to boot from a VHD (which you probably know what it is if you're ever going to use it) you're fine with Professional.

Honestly, if you don't need to domains or Remote Desktop, Home Premium probably has everything you need too.

Also to clarify, Remote Desktop=the ablity to host a remote desktop session.  The home version can still use remote desktop to control another machine, it just can't be remotely controlled.

Well, I might actually remote desktop into my home machine more in the future (use to do it in the past more), so I would like that yes.  But yeah, looks like I'm fine.  I just really didn't understand what all the Bitlocker shit was (so thanks for the link that explained it).

I have two i7's with 6gigs of ram and Vista 64 tends to be a bit snappier than the windows 7 machine. The 7 machine isn't a huge pain but it tends to crash the gt220 drivers (and recuperates on its own after a few seconds), all to be expected from a young os without adequate driver support I suppose.

I fully expect my two year younger self to appear out of the void and forcefully knee me in the nuts for even considering this but I'd advice people to stick to vista64 on i7 systems for now.

Vista 64 is not bad at all.  I built my wife's machine with it last year and I've no plans on upgrading her to Win 7.

I'm using the Windows 7 release candidate on an i7 system with 6 gigs of ram as we speak.  I have not had a single application crash once since I first turned on this PC.  Operating system runs extremely snappy.  My wonderful experience so far has been the thing to convince me to actually buy a copy of Windows 7 this time around.

So I guess ymmv it seems.

Sidenote, action center's recommendation for antivirus points you to: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/antivirus-partners/windows-7.aspx
The recommended icons are random on page load and the security essentials link is no bigger/bolded/<blink> then any others. I guess they trying to prevent any antitrust cases  :grin:

Also, even where security essentials requires proper validation to install, it will install on an unactivated copy of windows.

Anti-trust issues are definitely why things are either separate downloads like Security Essentials or are being folded into Windows Live.

I hate to say it, but I decided to spend the weekend testing out windows 7. And no matter how sceptical I was, or how much I might want to try to hate it ... I just can't. Installed more nicely than previous windows, it's annoyingly snappy and I just can't help think most of the things they've added in the UI department is just right.

I keep trying to find something I hate about it, besides the DRM, and I just can't. So chances are I'll be buying this.

(Well, actually, there's one thing that's annoyed me so far, besides just the fact that things are unfamiliar. Turning off the "fancy effects" was not what I would call in a logical position, but once I figured that out, dayom did things get snappy.)

Except for the ability to support ungodly amounts of RAM, is there any reason I should consider 64bit? I'm only gaming. And, err, emails. Quad core, GTX 260 1gb, 4gb RAM.

If you're a student, or have a .edu email address, you can get a copy of home premium or professional upgrade for $29 from the windows 714 thing, with an extra $13 for disks.  Total was around $43 shipped, not too shabby.

Hell, at $200 a copy, you'd save money signing up for a 1 credit hour class at a community college and never showing up.

If by ungodly amounts of ram you mean more than 3gb then not really.  64bit apps running on a 64bit os should be faster than 32bit apps running on a 32bit os but that theory hasn't proven to be 100% true in practice.  Also, w/o beefing up the system i doubt it is hugely noticable.

The practical reason for 64-bit is addressing.  More memory, more devices, etc.  It could be faster if you are using a CPU-intensive application and the programmers did a great job, but really you are looking at more addressable RAM.

Could be that this is only in the RC version I've got installed, but I've found that I often cannot right-click directly on files without selecting them first. Also, when copying files from one location to another, you need to right-click on empty space between other files to paste - you don't get the paste-option in the menu when you right-click on another file. -_-

This is different from how it has worked in previous Windows-verisons all the way back to (at least) Windows 95, and while I love the rest of Windows 7 I absolutely hate this part of it.

Simple solution: get hooked on http://www.ghisler.com/ instead. :P

Actually I've been getting annoyed at something similar.  It seems like explorer context menu plugins do not get activated when no file is selected.  So when I'm trying to do something such as clone a git repository into the current directory, I then have to go to the parent folder, right click on the desired folder and then perform my right click action. 

That's my only complaint though.  Everything else I have been loving.

Got my Email, I shall be a Windows 7 user in 10-15 days.  :awesome_for_real:

I'm vaguely annoyed that Amazon didn't ship the boxes so that they would be received today, but it gives me time to prep my system.

I thought XP SP3 could support up to 4gb now (though it shows up at about 3.6gb)? If someday down the road I wanted to have 8gb of RAM, that'd be 64bit required?

You can have a lot of RAM installed on the system but a 32-bit process can still only use 2GB of that, if I remember my maths.

A standard 32 bit XP will see about 3.5 gb of ram when you put 4 gb in it.

There is a good article up on Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/10/win-7-engineers-how-user-feedback-shaped-the-final-release.ars) about how user feedback shaped windows 7.

Newegg did  :grin:

Does anybody know how to enable the search option in the right click menu? I could enable it in Vista with a registry tweak but it doesn't seem to work with Windows 7.

Ha, how quaint! :)

32 bit versus 64 bit in applications refers more the word size that the application can deal with.  In terms of how much memory a process can use, the reality with current OS is that it simply asks the OS for storage, and the OS is responsible for granting that.  So, if 32 bit process needs 5 Gb of storage, the OS will take care of that. 

Details: http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2009/06/08/out-of-memory-does-not-refer-to-physical-memory.aspx

Double post.

Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party  (http://www.funnyordie.co.uk/videos/ef83afc272/hosting-your-windows-7-torrenting-party)

MS really needs to get a better advertising dept.

I'm getting mine today.

I'm vaguely annoyed that Amazon didn't ship the boxes so that they would be received today, but it gives me time to prep my system. I am too cheap to pay for that shipping.

Heh. Yeah I pay for Amazon Prime (worth it if you + 2 family members order a lot), so I get free 2 day - woooo.

Newegg shipped free. Use the egg! Box is sitting on the counter at home, got it before lunch. Don't know when I'll have time to install it, bought a fresh WD black to install it on.

I suspect I'll do that from now on.  In terms of installation, my wife's computer is a netbook, so I just reformat, reinstall, and then put Firefox back on it and I'm done.  With my computer, I need to do the hack that lets you install it over the RC and then reinstall Visual Studio 2008 (with SP1) and WoW.  Neither application is small....

Theres a hack to install it over the RC? Does this work with the upgrade version or only brand new?

http://icrontic.com/articles/upgrade-the-windows-7-rc-to-retail

You seem to know more about this than I do, I am mostly remembering things I read on Ars Tech.  I don't recall the article name but it would have been associated with Supreme Commander and memory limits.  I might be mixing up the "2GB per process" thing from somewhere else.  My excuse is that I don't work on Windows. :awesome_for_real:

Memory management has always been interesting to me, but my knowledge from my OS/architecture courses is vastly outdated and I am too lazy to refresh it.  My excuse is that I am lazy! (and tired at night)

Start -> Run box type in: Resource Monitor

Click on Network and look at the new options.. TCP Connections/Listening Ports   :awesome_for_real:

This makes me all warm and fuzzy inside as the TCP connections stats even track packet loss and latency between you and remote connections

This must be in the final version.  That would be nice but doesn't work in RC.

did you order for release day delivery?

If anyone is having issues with permissions for changing the .ini folder to do the rc->retail crack, save the edited file to your desktop, and then move it to the /source directory.  I couldn't get rid of that fucking read-only permission but it let me replace the file, and everything worked great.

I had release day shipping, and they didnt get me mine ether. But I just got an email saying they are refunding my shipping and gave me a $10 gift card.

Here's the bigger question:

Did you have a launch party? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ

slashdot comment (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1414209&cid=29835259)

 :awesome_for_real:

Fantastic.

 :thumbs_up:

Well done.  If you read the rest of that post, there's also entries for OS X and Ubuntu.

Eh, she was cheap and plays the games I like  :grin:

Great install experience. Fast install, love the snappiness of a fresh install of anything. Taskbar isn't quite as pretty as the dock, but eh, I was fine with XP for the most part. Just need it to run mah games.

My boss is going to hate it when I ask to put Windows 7 on my machine at work.   However, since I am the "bleeding edge" guy around here, I will enjoy it.

I would've if he'd made any attempt what so ever to spell Kabbalah correctly.

So that's what "Cabala" is, I just ignored.

Look, we already know that you and Madonna are BFF's, Schild.  Don't push it in our faces.

We go way back.

http://www.judiciaryreport.com/images/madonna-muscles-getty.jpg

RAWR

I was thinking of that hunting game or perhaps a cult... this makes more sense.

I decided to postpone my Win7 Get until next week, after seeing what the weather is like.

I think it is Cabala now that they made it into it's own religion.  Why they thought anyone would ever buy into a religion built on a tiny subset of Judaism is beyond me, though.

What if we spell it with a Q?

So is the full install version still better to do than picking up the upgrade?

If you have your Vista/XP discs laying around I see no real reason to spend the extra $100.  Either way, do a clean install instead of an in-place one if you can help it.

That's what I plan on doing.  I thought I remembered that if you had the upgrade version, if it detected a previous Windows OS it would allow you to do a true install -or- just upgrade.

Thanks.

It involves a chart, but you can just read it here. 

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1246

I just plopped WIN7 on my box. The gf's Alienware is next on the block (she bought it because it was pretty and blue and the specs were decent and she's a german redhead so stop with the comments). She and I both got the upgrade version. I was running XP pro 32bit since god knows when. You can do a full clean install on a machine without the full version and it actually loads pretty fast for an OS. XP pro 32bit was wiped, but I knew that and WIN7 64bit went on after some bad noise.

Bad noise meaning popping the disc in while XP was running started bitching about the versions being non-compatible. Then there was my own issue of flashing my BIOS a few months ago and not realizing it reset my mouse and keyboard to USB disabled. Once I was drunk enough to figure that was the problem, the WIN7 64bit booted right up from the dvdrom and away we went. I also read some stuff that you can do a clean install on a fresh drive with the upgrade version as well, though I didn't have one to try. No clue why you'd get a full version and toss another $80 or so at Microsoft - unless they have a trick up their sleeves.

Costco has 3 copies of Home Premium in a pack for $134.99.

Non-profits get Home Premium for $9 or something like that.


Still going to run the RC1 for free until it shuts down on me though.

So. The special offers for the houseparty people that didn't get a FREE copy of 7, is a bunch of shit that is not Windows 7. How can anyone possibly fuck that up?

I held my Windows 7 party tonight, and apart from a minor bump in the road, I think it was a big success.  I got some pictures and tossed them up on my Live site. (http://cid-2ece485ade05b70b.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Windows%207%20Party/Party01.jpg?ref=2)

Looks like a productive party! Combining leisure and vigilantism! :awesome_for_real:

Edit:
Durrr. Engrish.

Just did a clean install and it was super easy.  XP Mode is pretty sweet with how it just attaches to an app and runs as needed (I was expecting more of a VM container), unfortunately it doesn't work with the citrix client I use for work (installing virtual box+xp pro to handle that now).

So far I like it, adobe products seem to be a bit snappier (ie they load in under a minute).

Heh, I'd say something, but it wouldn't be professional...

So now that the upgrade DVD has been released people have found it's easier to now do a clean install with 7 then it is with Vista. Paul Thurrott's blog has the full details Howto do a clean install from just upgrade media (http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp).

(A condensed version)
Install with upgrade media media and do a fresh install, also preform any windows updates before.
-Click on start and run regedit and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
-Change the DWORD value on MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0
-Close regedit and then click on Start -> All Programs -> Accessories
-Hold shift, right mouse click on Command Prompt and select "Run as administrator"
-Type in slmgr /rearm and click on Ok on the popup then close the command prompt
-Reboot 7 and then at the new activation window use your upgrade key.
(To start an activation click on Start -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> System )

That is retarded.  I just put my upgrade disk in, selected custom install told it to format my OS drive (Win XP was installed there) and off it went.  30 minutes later I was up and running.  Took me longer to Install XP on virtual box once I was set up on w7 than it did to set up and configure w7.

The article isn't clear, but I think the idea is that without a preexisting XP installation, your upgrade Win7 won't activate properly. The steps describe how to activate it using your old XP CD key on a blank HD.

That could be handy. I installed on a new hdd, set up to dual boot next to my old xp drive, so no hassles with activation.

spent too much time yesterday trying to do a clean install (new HD) from a USB then a DVD after the paid windows download.  Nothing worked.  Lots of hand wringing in both Setup and Boot Manager.  Gave up to wait for the physical Upgrade DVD to arrive.  Even tried an old XP startup disk which didn't work.  I put Ubuntu on half of it and partitioned the other half as NTFS and still nothing.  So yeah seems impossible without a startup disk. 

I had some troubles installing 2008 on a box without DVD drive, in the end I managed to execute the setup from usb following this guide (http://www.jesscoburn.com/archives/2007/10/15/installing-windows-2008-via-usb-thumbdrive). Maybe it can be of some help.

So, is my RC client I downloaded a while back from Microsoft going to implode soon?

Sometime in March, if memory serves, which it often doesn't.

From: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/05/05/the-windows-7-release-candidate-rc-is-here.aspx (http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/05/05/the-windows-7-release-candidate-rc-is-here.aspx)

I've found out as a student I can get a copy of Window 7 Pro for ~$50 (£30). I'm thinking I might do a clean install over my OS partition to replace the RC sometime soon.

thanks tried that and some others, but no love.  Still unsure what's the problem -- partitioned as NTFS then FAT32, burnt an ISO, setup to boot from DVD then USB... Basta.

Pretty thorough review (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2009/10/windows-7-the-review.ars) up on ars right now.

First I have heard of this little tidbit:

So it does have a user interface. :oh_i_see:

The Thurrott article is great but it doesn't say anything about using Upgrade media on a W7RC image.  I'd love to pop in the DVD and let it just do an upgrade and have things magically work, but my confidence is that is low.  Right now, my plan for my first upgrade is:
1) Windows Easy Transfer to a file on a USB hard disk.
2) Format C:
3) Install from Upgrade disc, respond to prompts, apply key after setup.

What could go wrong?

Full moon is not for a few days yet.... I'd wait if I were you.

More than a few, it is November 2.  I am going to wait anyway.

I just figured out that you can hide updates in Windows Update. Awesome, now I have all those language packs hidden and I have a nice clean "0 updates"!

Let me just add: 

If you are a Linux user and share a partition or even if you have a separate drive, install Win7 first.  Or yank the drive with Linux on it and boot cleanly. GRUB (linux boot manager, at least with Debian/Ubuntu) will give you more pain than it's worth.  Trust me.  I'll wager all my F13 credits it will be easier for you.  PSA off/

Is that really a Windows 7 thing, or just a Windows thing in general? I always thought that as  a rule of thumb, one should install all Windows OS first, then anything that requires grub later, since Windows boot manager doesn't 'get' Linux partitions, whereas Grub does.

As far as I know Windows has always nuked whatever's in the master boot record and replaced it with its own stuff, but for me reinstalling GRUB has always been trivial - the settings are stored on your Linux partition, so just point it towards that and you're back to good. Can't imagine what wonky shit Win7 would have to pull to make it any different. I guess if you don't have a Linux liveCD handy to reinstall GRUB from then yanking the primary drive would be easier.

I am using grub right now and I'll just use whoever survives the fight.  Last time, grub won.

Not sure when Valve added this in, but the jump list for Steam is pretty useful:

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/40252/steam-jumplist.jpg)

Holy crap, I didn't even notice that.  Thanks!

I now have Windows 7 Professional Installed. I got the $30 student copy, which required me to run the extractor (which fails at the end since after successfully extracting the files, it tries to run the installer, which is a 64-bit program. I was running WindowsXP) and then use a microsoft commandline utility to turn the files into a bootable ISO.

Not the most convenient install I've ever done but it's up and running and seems good so far. Now to re-download and reinstall most of my games, blargh.

edit: looks like there's video quality issues with Windows 7, and they're more common with the 64-bit version. It's all graphic drivers. Video looks blocky/pixelated when full-screened. I use VLC and fixed it by setting the renderer to OpenGL.

Any student want to score me a copy of Windows 7 Professional?

Anyone have any experience using W7 on 512mb of memory?  My brother wants to use it on his macbook but it only has 512mb of memory, and he has no money to get more.

I'd personally stick to XP if I were him.  It'll run, but not well, and the hard drive will be constantly thrashing.

I don't think it will continue the setup if detects less than 1024mb.

How clean would a pure upgrade from Vista to Win7 work? I don't want to mess with my setup right now, it rocks :)

It wouldn't.  Never upgrade, do a clean install.

I really wish the Home version had the option to downgrade to the starter edition instead of only being licensed to OEM's for netbooks. If it will even let you install it will be piss poor, on 1GB desktops we have tested on but it still hits swap a lot for dodgy performance.

The only reason to install a new OS is to nuke an old OS from orbit after you've lost the disk.

Ok, I've been using 32 bit XPPro for years.  I have an opportunity to buy a $30 upgrade to Win7 through school.  I'm fairly certain I'm going to take advantage of it, but do I go with the 32 or 64 bit version?  I'm only playing games and doing internet stuff. 

Do you have a 64 bit processor? Do you like lots of RAM? The retail upgrade box has both versions included.

Yeah on both.  I've got a Q6600 and 4 gigs of ram (full sockets now though). 

The student upgrade is not a retail box - it's a download and/or they'll ship backup DVDs.  I'll likely buy the backup DVDs since I'm going from XPPro.  The difference is that I have to choose 32 or 64.  I don't get both. 

You want 64 then. 32 won't use the full 4 gig of memory.

Yeah, I don't know of any reason to get 32 bit unless you have an old 32 bit cpu.

Keep in mind you can't do an in-place upgrade from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit Win 7, you will have to do a real install. Which of course you probably would want to do anyway.

I'm going from XPPro, so I've got to do a clean install regardless.  Thanks again for the advice all. 

Is there any real evidence that an in-place upgrade is significantly inferior to doing a full reformat and reinstall?  I know it's common knowledge that you should always do the full reinstall but I haven't seen any real evidence that this is still the case.

I've had some bad luck with disk drives in the last year and I'd really rather not do yet another full reinstall if I can possibly avoid it.

I am just going by historical evidence, not actual Win7 evidence.  Unless you count doing an upgrade of Win7 beta to Win7 RC, in which case I submit that it kinda sucked.  I haven't assed myself to get Win7 retail yet, and when I do I might try an upgrade just for academic purposes... trouble with that is if it seems to work right off I won't know if later problems were caused by upgrading instead of clean installing.

Ars Technica said the upgrade seemed to work remarkably well.

Another dumb question.  Seems as if I can upgrade into Win7 Home Premium for $30, but after clicking around it looks like I can get Win7 Professional for the same price.  Any reason not to go with Pro?

Both an upgrade from XP Pro and an upgrade from Windows Vista have gone well for me. Very pleased.

No.

One of the things one review mentioned is all the "higher" level additions are additive. Unlike Vista where the business took out some of the media features of home.

That's good to hear. Thanks guys.

Anyone done a upgrade from Win7 RC to Win7 retail, or is that unpossible?

When I googled around about that, I found a hack to go from RC to full retail, but it involved editing the files on the install disk to fool it into working.  Basically a pain in the ass.  I just wiped and clean installed.

Sounds like the beta-to-RC upgrade hack, which wasn't really a pain.  I suppose my main question is if the upgrade would actually overwrite system files and settings since I'm fairly sure my RC install is a tad crappy and I'd want an upgrade instead of an "upgrade" but without the hassle of reinstalling everything I have ever installed since 1993.  Tired of doing that.

Very remotely tangental, from a Mac vs PC commercial: what is it that the people moving from PC to Mac have in those boxes?

The RC to retail hack was incredibly easy, changed 2 words on a registry entry and one word in one file of the installer and done. Took an extra 5-10 minutes tops.

Technet subscription FTW :drill:

I want to make sweet sweet love to the Windows 7 GUI.

Are you anal about clean installs to the point where you considered running TinyBSD?

I really like the custom menus off of the task bar icons. Steam's is particularly nice.

I bought the Win7 Pro student deal last night.  It downloaded a .exe and two .box files, then I had to finagle a way to flip them into an .iso.  I got that figured out, burned the DVD, backed up what little I needed to and took the plunge.  Started at 11pm, finished the main install and software/driver reload about 2am. 

Install went pretty smooth overall.  What little problems I had were things I did wrong or didn't understand properly.  I'm hoping by having a legit XPPro disk/key and a legit .iso DVD I burned with the Win7 key that I won't run into problems later if I need to reinstall. 

My first concern, though, is that under XPPro I tweaked it to look like 98 and ended up having a smallish 350mb page file running while idle.  Damn Win7 is running over 1 gig idle!!  That seems way too high.  Anyone know of any tweak sites to bring that down a bit by shutting down unnecessary processes?

http://www.crucial.com

 :awesome_for_real:

I think there is some discussion about this here or in the tech thread or some such. Basically, Windows is going to use (allocate) everything it thinks it needs, and only use it when necessary. It'll free it up too, if needed by other processes.

Personally, I wouldn't be worried about it in Win7 - Yeah XP and certainly 98 needed tweaking, but Win7's management of that stuff is very good.

I've got 4 gig of memory and Vista 64 and my pc idles with about 1.5 meg of memory used too.  When I've got a bunch of stuff running it goes up to 2.2 or so. I've never seen it get much higher than that.

It was the other Windows 7 thread:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15813.msg675779#msg675779

Just leave the damn paging file alone! :awesome_for_real:
 
(Well it's better to make it a fixed size than to let Windows size it dynamically but other than that...)

http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm

I got mine down to 800mb or so at startup.  After the computer has been running for awhile, it creeps up to 2gb of memory usage and stabilizes there.

Had a chance to see directaccess in production. Pretty slick feature for 7 but you need enterprise/ultimate edition and at least one server 2008 R2 to act as the gateway.

Basically its always on IPsec VPN running over pure ipv6 that fails down to 6to4, teredo, and if all else fails SSL tunnel  :drill:. The IPsec tunnel then permits traffic on to the internal network if you pass NAP tests. It sets up DNS namespace routing on the client so you can point widgets.net to your internal resolver to result in a pretty seamless experience. Pretty neat enterprise stuff as now your clients on hotspots,etc should have no way to escape your GPO clutches  :grin:

Okay, is there a tangible reason to upgrade to this from Vista 64 that is running pretty well?

Honestly?  It's Vista improved by a thousand percent.  I liked Vista, and didn't have any issues with it.  That said, 7 is just better in every way.  It's faster, more responsive, and easier on the eyes.

I just got 7 at work.

Yea, I'm reformatting soon. This shit is off the hook.

So the answer would be "yes" then.  Okay.  Crap.

Went to get some W7 from newegg (F13 LINK PIMP) and the 3-pack is "OEM".  Historically I would not hesitate but I have to ask if there is some gotcha to getting the OEM variety.  I also interpret "gotcha" to include "mild annoyance".

OEM, as I understood it, can only be installed on one computer period.  Otherwise you can put your copy of windows on as many computers as you would like, one at a time. 

Mileage may vary. I have tried both and I'm back to Vista. I'm going to wait a while to use Win7.

Seriously need to find a student. >_>

There's plenty of hot students in Austin, bro.  Surely you can drum one up somehow.

:effort:

I used the Vista 64 OEM and never had an issue, even after rebuilding/reinstalling the 'same' rig twice with completely new hardware.  I bought the OEM full version of W7 as well.  No issues.  I was concerned on initial purchase that I could only use that OEM with one mobo or harddrive or something.  But I logged into help chat with MS, asked if I would ever have any issues and the answer was no, the OS is mine to put it on as many builds as I wanted to, but only one computer could be registered to it at any given time.

That may be how they're treating it, but it's not how the license reads. OEM can only be installed on one machine, and is not transferrable. With Vista, I think the way it worked out was 3 hardware changes/reinstalls every 6 months before you had to call for a manual activation #. I had to call once, not very painful, but annoying to have to do.

just find 2 other people and split the costco 3 pack.

For a company bent on hegemonic domination of the world they don't really seem to care how far you stretch or break their license.

That's not true. The problem is their activation system screws over legit users more than it hinders the pirates. Hence when people go through the hassle of calling in they Microsoft just assumes it's their fault you can't activate.

As an example of how they do care how people abuse the license(s) here's what they wrote recently about people using the upgrade versions to do clean installs:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2009/10/27/regardless-of-what-any-hack-says-a-windows-7-upgrade-is-an-upgrade-what-you-need-to-know.aspx

Edit: ambiguous they

Why the heck didn't everyone get that $50 retail promo that was running late spring/early summer? Newbs.

Even if 7 wasn't great until SP1 (but it is), you'd want a copy eventually.

Hrm.  Since I use my home pc's to check in on work stuff during after hours, I need IE6.  After bouncing around to several of our customers websites, I'm having problems using them with IE8 (and Firefox).

IE7 does work with the sites, so that's an option.  But IE6, unfortunately, works better.

Is there any way have IE6 and IE8 on a W7 machine?

If your processor supports visualization you can do Windows XP visualization.

No idea what that means.  For whatever it's worth, it's a Q6600, AMD 5200+ dual core, and a couple Intel dual core laptops.  I haven't gone full W7 across the board yet, so I may as well just keep the XP rig as is.

You can't have IE6, it has been determined to be the work of the devil.
Not much unites the internets these days yet the eradication of IE6 has united almost all.
Still, if you're inclined to entertain a horror like that I'd advice a virtual machine containing a virgin xp install and a tendency to get hurt.
Sure, it will be smooth at first but it will get messy fast and nobody know's where it will take you in the end.
Godspeed.

If your just viewing the content for proofing give SuperPreview (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e6ac106-525d-45d0-84db-dccff3fae677&displaylang=en) a whirl.

Windows 7 Professional's XP Mode (http://lifehacker.com/5245396/set-up-and-use-xp-mode-in-windows-7) is probably what your looking for. Your q6600 (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=29765) has the VT flag so your good to go. If you you don't have Pro your could always get a copy of VMware player and install (licensed) XP on it.

Once you have w7 all set up, Install Virtual Box (http://www.virtualbox.org/).  Once Virtual Box is installed you can install windows XP inside of it then just don't install any updates that take you beyond ie6.  Also be sure and install the guest addons for virtual box it makes it much nicer to use (mouse transitions better and supports more resolutions).  You don't need intel virtualization/VT flag for this to work, you should also be able to use the same XP license you used to upgrade to w7 for the virtual box XP install.

VMWare is great but pretty sure VMWare player doesn't let you create virtual machines just lets you load them.  To create VMWare virtual machines I think you need VMWare workstation and that costs $$.  Not 100% sure on this because a while back you were able to create VMs for like a 30 day period but I don't think they do that anymore.  Anyhoo, Virtual Box runs fine and doesn't cost non-commercial users anything.

w7 XP mode isn't going to help you run ie6.

Your going against the upgrade license by doing that.


You can get around using workstation trial using EasyVMX (http://www.easyvmx.com/easyvmx.shtml) to create a dummy disk to run.


Yes it will.

Here's how, make sure you have 7 Professional or higher that has XP Mode enabled, then download the two part install for Virtual PC and XP Mode (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx). Install Virtual PC then XP Mode, during the install turn off automatic updates if you wish to prevent ie6 from getting upgraded and allow the virtual XP to start up. Then open the start menu with file explorer and copy the Internet Explorer shortcut from C:\Documents and Settings\XPMUser\Start Menu\Programs to c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu. Creating a shortcut under "All Users" will allow for the seamless application integration link right into your host PC. Close your virtual machine and under your Windows 7 Start -> All Programs -> Windows Virtual PC -> Windows XP Mode Applications will be an Internet Explorer link.

End result is this.. spoiler for the largish desktop

Sorry, I was mistakenly under the impression that when it says XP Mode gives you a Win XP SP 3 license that the VM would already be upgraded to SP3 with ie7.  Using my XP license with Virtual Box has had no detrimental effect that I can see but then again I do have 2 copies of Win XP Pro and I am not entirely certain that they key I used for my VM is the same as the one used for my Win XP install that w7 overwrote. 

Any idea if it possible to have a Linux VM using using Microsoft's Virtual PC? 

More trouble than it's worth.  I'll just keep the oldest laptop with XP and be done with it.  Thanks for the advice though.

Post deleted to remove trolly bullshit.

IE6 is godawful bullshit.  I hate it so much.  I remade my company website last week using CSS to exorcise the demons of table formatting from it for good.  It worked like a charm in Firefox, Opera, IE7, IE8, IE8 in compatibility mode, Chrome, and Safari.  Which is the winner that fucked up the alignment all to hell and made the page look like ass?  Our boy IE6.  I had to take extra time and effort tracking down one error in one browser and insert additional code into the stylesheet just so IE6 would stop being retarded.  Too many people are still using it for me to be able to ignore it.

I hate using it.  I hate it that we haven't and aren't going to be upgrading our machines at work from XP Pro to W7 for a while, cost aside (we never made the Vista move).  But unfortunately, for now, 9 out of 10 sites we have to use says 'optimized for IE6'.  While most work ok with IE7 or above, the rest flake out with IE6 on data entry.  I blame Indians, Norwegians, and Greeks.  UPDATE YOUR SITES, ASSHOLES.

Yeah, several of my customers use websites for their business that will shit the bed if they don't use IE6.  I can't conceive of someone being so fucking sloppy as to not update their crap when the new stuff has been around for three years.  Same for assholes who put out XP-only programs.  Usually these programs cost shittons of money, too, because they're 'custom'.

:oh_i_see:

:oh_i_see:

 :roll:

From MSoft's piracy webpage:

Myths of Product Activation

Activation is difficult to complete.
Product Activation is actually very simple to complete. It requires just a few mouse clicks for those with Internet connectivity. For those who must activate over the telephone, the process with a customer service representative can be completed in just a couple of minutes. Most users' response is "that's it?"

Funnily enough I can't get it to work. New computer, clean installation, got an XP cd key (disused computer) and a windows 7 upgraded (student, whoo). Not working. Tech support is useless too.

It's easy unless it's not.

or

It's easy if it works the way we said it will.  :why_so_serious:

Alumni Email addresses worked for Windows 7 & the Office Ultimate deal.

Huzzah.

Edit: Link to sites that already got ISO addresses from Digital River. Full Retail for $30 indeed (http://windows7center.com/forums/windows-7-general-discussion/4590-ms-digital-river-student-iso-links.html).

Hah, my alumni email address works too and it even says "alumni" right in it. Damn that's a good deal. Maybe I can even stop using Office 2000 now.

My only single complaint right now is that I'm getting an error I'm not finding concrete information on.  , I'll get a 'Windows Explorer has encountered a problem" message and it will reset the desktop to where it was at bootup, but the only time it's occurring is when I right click on icons after the PC has either been powered on for awhile or many applications have been opened and closed. 

Any guesses?

Windows 7 is fuckawesome.

Hum, maybe do a scan of your hard drive for errors?

You should drop a full stack trace and DxDiag in this thread, for the lulz.

Where you been?

I'm teetering on the brink of doing the install or upgrade or whatever happens when I put the disc in.  If you don't hear from me for a while, call the cops.

Might I recommend picking up a Caviar Black 1TB (or 2TB) drive if you haven't replaced your HDD in a while. I picked up two of the 1TB and it's insanely fast.

I have a RAID 0 SATA2 (3/Gbs) main drive, but it doesn't seem very fast. I would expect it to be a *little* faster than a plain ol' single SATA drive, but maybe my perspective is off.

My install was onto a fresh caviar black, they are nice drives. I got a deal on a 500GB a while back, because I don't have schild money.

RAID 0 is great on synthetic benchmarks. In real world applications RAID 0 does very little:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2969&p=8

I'm thinking going for SSD disks for my win7 install at some point, 80 or 120GB should suffice and give a nice speed boost which is actually noticeable in the real world.

If you are running w7 with over 4gb of ram it doesn't seem to use the swap file much.  RAID 0 is mainly used to increase your write speed, doesn't do much for your read speed (maybe some seek time improvement depending on your controller).  

Careful what you choose there is still some real crap out there, saga of the crap: part 1 (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403), part 2 (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1), part 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631).

edit: Nice quotes from part 3:
and

edit2: and to rerail back to w7, windows 7 is the only OS that currently supports the TRIM command that will keep your next generation of SSD's performing in tip top shape over time.

I installed a new and fast 150GB WD a few months ago when I started this Win7 nonsense.  If I put things on C:, I'd maybe get the 1TB but it would be wasted space, or just another thing that annoyed me if I did use it.

So here I am after the update to retail W7.  Meet the new OS, same as the old OS.  Turns out grub won the fight and continues to control my boot images.  The Easy Transfer tool lived up to its name, although it is odd what things survived the transfer.  For example, my Steam shortcut is nowhere to be seen but the Impulse one is acting as if nothing happened.  Fallen Earth is missing the icon but otherwise seems to work (Icarus is very proud of the 8.5 they got from IGN, God bless 'em).  Firefox started up but all of my add-ons were gone.  Well, I can't complain since it saved me a bit of work.  My wife isn't likely to be terribly happy about reinstalling but I think she will get over it.

It has not asked me for my previous key, interestingly.  I do have three XP keys handy (and two CDROMs), in case it does.

Yeah, a friend of mine's heavily into the whole SSD stuff, he says a few of the intel drives are sweet so I'll probably be getting one of those.

I've been postponing SSD for a while due to the reports of monstrously bad write performance and lack of longevity, but I'm assuming they're starting to become speedy and just good quality in general by now.

RAID makes Baby Jesus cry, don't RAID.  If your RAID controller burns out at some point in the future, you'd better be able to find that exact same model controller, or your drives will be paperweights.  You can't just shove an array of drives into any controller and expect it to be able to read them; most controllers have their own unique addressing method and are very much not compatible with drives that were set up with another controller.

Unless a client has some sort of external backup storage set up for disaster recovery, I will always strongly discourage them from having a RAID configured.  Of course, I always want them to have external backups just on general principle, but if the server shits itself and dies one morning, at least a non-RAID drive can be plugged into another computer to pull the data off.

Most people setting up raid these days are using on-board controllers like the ICHR Intel series. If their controller dies, their entire system is pretty much horked anyways. They'd have to replace the motherboard, ostensibly with the same one, with the same ICHR chipset. It makes sense for some situations, such as a workplace where everyone has the same model Dell and has a 3 year service contract.

The other situation where it makes sense is if you're setting up a pure gaming rig and you want Raid 0. As long as you understand that a failed controller or a failed drive means everything is gone bye-bye. Then again, as Trippy pointed out, 'real world' benchmarks show only marginal gains with motherboard raid 0 configurations.

I've been running Solaris for three years now after getting an anti-Microsoft shitfit during the Vista beta. Now I've installed this free copy of Win7 I've gotten, and it's tempting me to switch back. I'd be giving up the luxuries of an Unix command line, MPD and ZFS, but at least I can run Photoshop and Office again. But having to deal with the virus and malware shit again...

How many luxuries could you be missing out on by ditching Solaris? :why_so_serious:

Hey, I like nerdy shit.  :oh_i_see:

Yea, me too, but I have standards. :grin:

I haven't had to deal with malware or viruses for over a decade. If you have to on any windows box, you're doing it wrong.

Viruses - Security Essentials: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
UNIX Command Line - Windows Powershell:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973757%28VS.85%29.aspx

But you've had to deal with preventing them.

But he's a winner, the 1,000,000th visitor. Why shouldn't he click for his FREE Xbox 360?

I do hate humanity for the most part. Even with the little bit of internet usage I observe in the general public here, it's quite easy to understand why malware removal is such a lucrative business for local pc repair shops.

No, preventing computer viruses is based around a lifestyle. :oh_i_see:  I don't get them either, because I am relatively smart about where I get my porn.  The most aggressive thing I run since ejecting AVG is NoScript.

Also, PowerShell comes with Win7.  Someone got their POSIX in my DOS!

I second that. I have only run AV once in a while just to verify, and it has yet to find anything. And it's been like that since I got my first PC (as in it was mine), 13-14 years ago.

I roll my eyes so hard they're close to popping out whenever someone gets the latest email virus. Hell, I even had to setup my mailserver to reject mails with passworded zipfiles in them, because so many idiots were getting hit by that virus, and I believe it had 6 manual steps the recipients had to perform. SIX.

I mean, god damn.
I'm desperately trying to refrain from pulling an "I herd you like..." here.

Edit: Spleling

The Powershell was developed by some UNIX developers, or so I heard.   The difference is that the  UNIX command line is desiged to handle text files quickly (design goal of UNIX: everything can be configured via a text file) whereas the Powershell is designed around objects..

I just about had heart failure when typing ls in the shell worked.   Thank christ they don't actually support the various flags or my brain would really melt.

PS C:\Users\Josh> ls
Directory: C:\Users\Josh
Mode         LastWriteTime     Length Name
----           -------------     ------ ----
d-r--        10/29/2009   6:47 PM            Contacts

7 also has the Powershell ISE installed which is terrific for scripting. Anyone who's doing some scripting take a look at Windows Powershell in Action (http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Powershell-Action-Bruce-Payette/dp/1932394907/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259158364&sr=8-1) by Bruce Payette (second edition is coming out soon to cover 2.0).

:drill:  I find myself doing that all the time in cmd on XP now. Thanks, OSX!

Though it looks like the verbose output, anyway, so ls -al is implied, yeah?

PowerShell is not Cygwin, so it is not really ls, it just looks like it.  Do `get-alias ls` to see it or `get-alias` to see all of them; you will see that ls is just an alias for get-childitem.  So, it is still .NET all the way through.  In fact, dir is also an alias for get-childitem.  This means that `ls` works to show you child items of anything, such as registry objects.

Furthermore, you can cd into weird things... like registry objects and the env: "drive".  So, hooray for everything looking like a filesystem.  Note: cd is an alias for set-location.

:oh_i_see:

EDIT: as fuser alluded to, PowerShell can do anything VBScript can do, maybe more, and can do it with cleaner syntax.  Also: .NET native.

The purpose of Powershell is to enable machine administrators to manage a machine using a command line as opposed to the windowing system, so enabling them to use the registry as if it were a directory makes sense.   Also, as I said, it's organized around objects and not text files likes the *NIX command shell is, so from that perspective all these weird things make sense. 

Just because I am a dork, I'll again mention that AIX has a "registry" but it does not have a gui.  This is either from or due to the joint work they did from which sprang OS/2 and WinNT.  So, more points for MS for finally passing IBM here.  The ODM uses a query mechanism and I find that I have to know what I am looking for before I go in there.

It can do amazing things as it has access to .NET libraries vs COM with JScript/VBScript. For example now I have a small app that's parsing an XML and using .NET to get access to a SQL database via ODBC to pull in further information to construct file output. If I really wanted to get fancy I'd try to build its output to a RESTful backend :drill:. It's really really really really nice coming from a Perl/Bash scripting background to finally have this framework on XP and better desktops.

I'm not sure anything having a registry deserves points.

I suppose I meant "fewer demerits due to having a navigable interface".  I suppose there is some sort of technical merit to a registry hive, presumably robustness, but I don't know what it is specifically.

From a home user standpoint having ini files and all your crap in 1 folder for each app has it's points but when trying to administer a network and maintain roaming profiles and policies I think I'll take the registry+active directory.

Edit: that said, my single biggest wish list item for windows since XP is a "Please get the fuck off my machine and take all your crap with you, do not try and reinstall, don't ask me to take a fucking survey and for fucks sake whatever you do don't ask for the original install files from the original install location as a criteria to uninstall!" add/remove program feature.

Theoretically I can see uses for the registry.  Especially with many computers as you say.

In practice I'd rather it never existed and anyone who thinks of implementing one is horse whipped and dragged away to never be seen again.

hkey_local_machine loves you too.

setup.exe error.  wrong volume.

please insert GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD

I hate you all.

A common solution to an uncommon problem.