I do know that Windows 7 will be based on, and have the same codebase as, Windows Server 2008, FWIW.
Posted on 05/29/2008 2:59:05 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
Microsoft is in a bind.Windows Vista has sold 140 million copies, but it's such a resource hog with unreliable hardware drivers that users keep asking Redmond to extend the support for Windows XP. Many corporations refuse to upgrade their server farms and cubicle-bound desktops at all. It's not often that 140 million copies of a software package that costs hundreds of dollars can be called a disappointment, but this one seems to fit that bill.
Vowing to release a new operating system every three years, the company now has about 20 months until the supposed release date for Windows 7. The tight-lipped mastodon has just started to let a trickle of feature details slip out, and I have to say that the early glimpses have not been very impressive.
The big news!
You know how the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch have these cool screens where you drag stuff around with your fingertips? Yeah, Microsoft will do that, too. Great, huh?
OK, so this version will do a bit more. Drag five fingers across the screen in a painting program, and you could leave five colorful glowworms in their wake. Play 10-finger chords on an on-screen piano, and resize photos by dragging the corners apart with two fingers. Wow, that's neato!
Yeah, so I lied. That's not really an update over the iPhone at all, save for the larger screens you'd see on a Dell desktop screen or a Hewlett-Packard laptop. The iPhone screen can do all of these tricks already, and I'm not really sure what the big innovation is here. At least Microsoft seems to be imitating an established leader in user interface design this time.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at fool.com ...
Office 2007 blows. There, I said it.
I do know that Windows 7 will be based on, and have the same codebase as, Windows Server 2008, FWIW.
That’s no small accomplishment, and it probably is useful in some specialty applications, but I’d personally just rather they rewrote windows to make it smaller and faster. They could stay with a 3.1 looking interface for all I care, and I think that most people would agree. If this is just another bloated layer atop Vista, they’re killing themselves.
It is kind of surprising. Early in the year it looked like they would have a modern micro kernal architecture and support legacy apps in a compatibility box (VM). Seems so logical I just don’t understand why not.
You’re not the only one who’s disappointed in Office 07.
Just like Vista, I had to “upgrade” back to Office 2003.
It certainly looks like that is the way it has been.
Yup. Microsoft has to get with the “small is beautiful” thing. I want an operating system that will do a heck of a lot less, with a heck of a lot less resources, which can run off of a non-writable media, so it reloads fresh every time.
The only thing I wanted was consistency between their strange pseudo-MDI apps. Instead, I get a weird "ribbon" that makes it extra hard to find the feature I'm looking for, a stealth File-menu, and a bigger, backwards-incompatible spreadsheet.
They were going to put that in Windows 7, but it got canceled.
It's a cheap rip-off of and looks just like the default install of Firefox.
It's been all down hill since then.
Yeah I agree. IE7 more or less proved MS is out of ideas. They copied Firefox and didn’t even come close.
I’m still waiting for some Iowa farm kid who’ll design an OS that’ll bankrupt Microsoft in a months time.
They revolutionized the way one software company can rip off ideas from real innovators and not get sued. That’s innovative, isn’t it?
As long as MicroShaft continues to design their OS to benefit Hollywood and the RIAA, at the expense of their actual users, they deserve to be bankrupt and driven out of business.
Office 2007 blows. There, I said it.
A Vista question for someone out there.
I have a laptop with Vista Premium. I normally run administrator. Then I got the idea to create a standard user acount for safer surfing.
How to I transfer the administrator programs over to the standard user. I tried to change the standard account to administrator temporarily, but it changed back itself to standard.
You weren't supposed to tell! Nobody had noticed!
Yep. Drove me nuts and parts of it still do. What happened (I think) was that they (1) decided that the interface across all the Office products should be standardized, and (2) did a great deal of focus-grouping (I know they really do that because I did it for them once) to figure out what it ought to be from the viewpoint of a fresh user. So the new Office suite is easier to teach to a new user than each separate product within it used to be. Great intentions...for a new user.
For those of us who have been using those products for years it has been a nightmare, much worse than the occasional move-the-icon game played by every software manufacturer (yes, Macolytes, your boys too). And worse, I have to use both suites between work and home. Annoying.
At the moment I'm running Vista, XP, OS/X (one rev down as of yesterday, doggone it. There goes the evening.), and a fresh Mint (Linux) installation I'm liking more and more everyday. Open Office is looking better and better.
I kinda like Vista, actually. HERETIC! BURN THE HERETIC!!
Yeah I love when an employee-corporation of mine bases their decisions on the desires of an uninvolved third party like the RIAA and ignores the people whose interests they get paid to serve. Kind of like when Ebay erroneously pulls auctions based on the unsubstantiated word of the software vendor (MS or AutoDork) without even stopping to consult their fooking CUSTOMER!
Apple didn't invent touch screen devices with the iPhone. Besides, Microsoft has been providing support for touch screen in its tablet PC OS's for years.
No, but Apple DID beat MS to market with one. See: Newton.
First touch screen PDA that worked. They’re still in use around the world.
And in it's general purpose OS, where it's referred to as a "mouse port".
Repeated for emphasis.
Touch screens. Yeah thats a great idea, especially at work after a guy picks his nose. Wanna talk pan-epidemics with a MS label? No thanks MS. You offically died with XP. OS will be replaced with web apps.
Speaking of Ebay.... now that buyers no longer get feedback... I am not going to sell any more... its just blackmail now.
I had a boss with the sign:
Faster, cheaper, better - pick any two.
Microsoft could build a system with any one of those improvements and still be better than today.
I’ve liked that phrase since the first time I saw a variant posted in an auto shop. “We can do it fast, cheap or right. Pick any two.”
Yeah, their new feedback system is definitely a piece of work. However, I won't allow myself to be blackmailed by buyers. If they give me unwarranted bad feedback (mine is 664, 100% positives now), then so be it. Business is business. All sellers are subject to the same sucky system, so it's a level playing field, so to speak -- all seller's are prolly going to get some unwarranted bad feedback. I figure all sellers' feedback will be dropping a bit on average.
Title: A-Minus-Minus
Caption/Subtitle: "You can do this one in every 30 times and still have 97% positive feedback."
You think this is bad, wait until you get so frustrated you try to format your hard drive and reinstall Windows XP.
That's virtually zero-basis for capital gains purposes.
I would bet almost 90% of that number came installed with new computers manufactured by companies which really had no choice. MS basically said sell them with Vista or look for another OS company. Having said that I LOVE Office 2007, especially Outlook. It's my favorite Office ever.
But they didn't standardize the interface. Excel workbooks still open in the same main window, while Word documents have one window each. The Mac version is actually consistent, which drives me up the wall.
I suspect that given how Microsoft is organized, the changes in the Vista interface and the changes in the Office 2007 interface were actually two different initiatives. Put together that's an awful lot of change for what seems like very little actual value. All IMHO, of course.
But don't you know that means that Vista has the marketshare over XP? And as we all know, marketshare equals superior product.
Create a new administrator account. Use that for updates, software installations, etc. Then change your old administrator account, the one with all your docs, email settings, internet access, and stuff, into a standard account.
Touch screen is not the technology being demonstrated by Microsoft or that is already being shipped by Apple. It is Multi-touch, the ability of the screen to sense and react to multiple contacts at the same time. Apple holds the patent on that.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
They should sue Microsoft then, and put Google on notice their new Android phone can't have those features either. At least that's my understanding of what patents are for, unless there's a cross-patent license or other agreement that's more important. Companies and groups that innovate should be protected and nurtured, while those that duplicate protected technologies should have to wait a lawful time or face penalty.
So far, there is not much to sue over on either potential product. Neither is shipping and Apple may be negotiating to license the patents.
They would have actually had to have innovated in the first place in order to cease.
Few ideas are completely in a vacuum, but Microsoft has added great value to some ideas. Right off the top of my head they produced the first decent mouse, and Photosynth takes VR photography to a whole new level (I've done VR photos, it was never this cool and easy).
Good points. Licensing is definitely the way to go, in this case Microsoft should license the patent if they have not already done so, and Apple should be allowed to charge whatever they want for it. Wonder what, if any, agreements currently exist between the two, any idea?
Often such information is very difficult to obtain, even when actual partnerships are publicly announced, but surely they have met and have some sort of agreement. The ultimate conspiracy theory is there's a full partnership, but that's not one I believe, and the exact state of the relationship is always something of great speculation. I'd say if Apple is doing most of the innovating, they should be reaping most of the profits, and if others such as Microsoft want to use the same patented features they should be paying a royalty. If they're not, why isn't Apple asking for it?
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