there is very likely another thread on this subject, however el software informs me that both windows and 7 are "common words" and therefore it won't search them. tsk. I'll sort that later.
More t the point, has anyone else get tried the new beta of Windows 7? (it's getting released in the next few weeks but it was leaked onto the torrents) and if so, what do you think?
I had a quick shot in a VM and found it odd to say the least. The taskbar/dock thing is jarring and very confusing, I can see that being turned off quite quickly, other than that it appeared mostly vista underneath, I didn't try it for long as the VM was so slow and useless however the strange taskbar has annoyed me enough by that point.
Anyone else tried it yet?
The Windows 7 Thread
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Charlie Wells
- Posts: 383
- Joined: Tue 02 Nov, 2004 16.23
- Location: Cambridgeshire
Is it similar to the screen capture posted on wikipedia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windo ... d_7000.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windo ... d_7000.png
"If ass holes could fly then this place would be an airport."
it's exactly like that, ugly fish included.
there's a picture of it in action about three screenshots down on this page too to try and give you an idea.
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_beta.asp
there's a picture of it in action about three screenshots down on this page too to try and give you an idea.
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_beta.asp
"He has to be larger than bacon"
I haven't tried it but I have been following it a lot - and I will be very curious about a number of things.
1) Between B1 and RC1 (or some other arbitrary milestone) MS need to completely rethink that horrid taskbar. Apparently there's a decent middleground setting which defaults to the usual icon+text, only reducing to just an icon if the taskbar is full. If they do nothing else, make that the default.
It's another solution in search of a problem. The Quick Launch bar was not an inherently confusing device. If they think the solution to what I concede could be potential confusion about having shortcuts to programs and running programs within the same UI element, the solution was not to make the two look exactly the fucking same, bar some vague glassy shimmer to differentiate. Bizarrely, it seems to be trying to move the taskbar in the functional direction of the dreadful Mac OS Dock, but without even the eye-candy element to justify it to the thick, the way they could with the truly pointless Flip 3D.
2) How will MS market this? They've been burned by the populist negative response to Vista, and it's unfortunate they have to climb back from a pit they didn't really deserve to be shoved into. I can't see them going down the "Vista done right" route - MS is not known to make that kind of concession, and again, I actually rather like Vista - I really don't think they need to apologise for its existence the way they eventually did with ME. Unless they unveil a dramatically different UX in the next few months, it's going to look like Vista, and that might not go unnoticed by the average moron. I don't think it'll be a hard sell to the techies, where 'Vista done right' seems to be washing quite well.
There's a lot of damage done by "I'm a Mac" here. For months their ads have been just pushing the message that "Vista is broken". These references are usually just made in passing, without being qualified. They've successfully planted the idea that the consensus is that Vista has inherent flaws - that Windows has inherent flaws - and that the people who are using it are consistently having a shitload of issues, and that just is not my experience. But the message has gone through, and I expect that unchallenged opinion will be held by a lot of people through W7's release cycle.
3) And its release date. There's a lot of suggestion it could go gold by the end of the year, supplant Vista over a tight few months and move on. I expect it will be a tightly coordinated period, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were hefty upgrade discounts, even for the consumer SKUs.
From what I've seen though, it's not too dramatic a difference in end-user experience, but it does all of its subtleties the way maybe Vista should've been. Everyone's been looking for a way to describe it in terms of 'like going from Win95 to 98', from '2000 to XP' etc. but the difference was in no case was the latter meant to act as a swift apology for the former. Maybe Vista was more like ME than I'd care to admit...
1) Between B1 and RC1 (or some other arbitrary milestone) MS need to completely rethink that horrid taskbar. Apparently there's a decent middleground setting which defaults to the usual icon+text, only reducing to just an icon if the taskbar is full. If they do nothing else, make that the default.
It's another solution in search of a problem. The Quick Launch bar was not an inherently confusing device. If they think the solution to what I concede could be potential confusion about having shortcuts to programs and running programs within the same UI element, the solution was not to make the two look exactly the fucking same, bar some vague glassy shimmer to differentiate. Bizarrely, it seems to be trying to move the taskbar in the functional direction of the dreadful Mac OS Dock, but without even the eye-candy element to justify it to the thick, the way they could with the truly pointless Flip 3D.
2) How will MS market this? They've been burned by the populist negative response to Vista, and it's unfortunate they have to climb back from a pit they didn't really deserve to be shoved into. I can't see them going down the "Vista done right" route - MS is not known to make that kind of concession, and again, I actually rather like Vista - I really don't think they need to apologise for its existence the way they eventually did with ME. Unless they unveil a dramatically different UX in the next few months, it's going to look like Vista, and that might not go unnoticed by the average moron. I don't think it'll be a hard sell to the techies, where 'Vista done right' seems to be washing quite well.
There's a lot of damage done by "I'm a Mac" here. For months their ads have been just pushing the message that "Vista is broken". These references are usually just made in passing, without being qualified. They've successfully planted the idea that the consensus is that Vista has inherent flaws - that Windows has inherent flaws - and that the people who are using it are consistently having a shitload of issues, and that just is not my experience. But the message has gone through, and I expect that unchallenged opinion will be held by a lot of people through W7's release cycle.
3) And its release date. There's a lot of suggestion it could go gold by the end of the year, supplant Vista over a tight few months and move on. I expect it will be a tightly coordinated period, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were hefty upgrade discounts, even for the consumer SKUs.
From what I've seen though, it's not too dramatic a difference in end-user experience, but it does all of its subtleties the way maybe Vista should've been. Everyone's been looking for a way to describe it in terms of 'like going from Win95 to 98', from '2000 to XP' etc. but the difference was in no case was the latter meant to act as a swift apology for the former. Maybe Vista was more like ME than I'd care to admit...
have the I'm a mac ads ever been broadcast on british TV? I'd be surprised if they got past the ASA, especially with ones such as the UAC parody which was a bit iffy as OSX demands your password a lot too and the type of UAC it was parodying was a one that existed only in the betas.
"He has to be larger than bacon"
I can't remember if the Mitchell & Webb ones were ever actually shown on TV, or just online (and maybe cinemas). But the earlier ones which were more general jokes about 'stuffy' PC culture (and weren't entirely unfunny) were fine, until it went on the assault against Vista, and its claims have been getting increasingly spurious.Hymagumba wrote:have the I'm a mac ads ever been broadcast on british TV? I'd be surprised if they got past the ASA, especially with ones such as the UAC parody which was a bit iffy as OSX demands your password a lot too and the type of UAC it was parodying was a one that existed only in the betas.
They've never been on british TV. There was that mitchell and webb campaign that aired in cinemas and billboards two or three YEARS ago and it was pretty short-lived. That's why I'm baffled about the microsoft "I'm a PC" adverts (especially since I find it's genuinely slightly annoying people featured), it's obviously a reposte to "I'm a Mac" to anyone who knows, but I'm willing to bet that most "normals" over here have never seen it. What you have, then, is a collection of smug/ugly people telling us something we don't care about it, for no apparent reason, with a bit of pretentious slogan at the end.
I think the worst thing about them is they don't actually SAY anything about why windows is good, whereas the Mac adverts do at least point out specific good things about the Mac platform.
I think the worst thing about them is they don't actually SAY anything about why windows is good, whereas the Mac adverts do at least point out specific good things about the Mac platform.
Knight knight
Yuss, Microsoft's response was a bit of a *FACEPALM* moment.Sput wrote:They've never been on british TV. There was that mitchell and webb campaign that aired in cinemas and billboards two or three YEARS ago and it was pretty short-lived. That's why I'm baffled about the microsoft "I'm a PC" adverts (especially since I find it's genuinely slightly annoying people featured), it's obviously a reposte to "I'm a Mac" to anyone who knows, but I'm willing to bet that most "normals" over here have never seen it. What you have, then, is a collection of smug/ugly people telling us something we don't care about it, for no apparent reason, with a bit of pretentious slogan at the end.
I think the worst thing about them is they don't actually SAY anything about why windows is good, whereas the Mac adverts do at least point out specific good things about the Mac platform.
MS can *not* compete with Apple on the Cult of Mac angle. No-one is PROUD of being a PC user. I'm not DELIGHTED by Windows - it just works for me, lets me do the mundane shite I need to do, and that's actually good enough for everyone. The aspirational thing just doesn't cut it for your average Windows user in the way it does for your average Steve-Jobs-Keynote-Fangirl-SQUEEEEEEEEE, and you're right - what MS should do is tap into the one thing Windows does have - an ecosystem of unrivalled scale. I don't know if they ran Mojave as a TV campaign in the States, but I think THAT was a much better way of trying to sell the 'idea' of Windows.
I seem to think they did. I'm not sure that advertising your product as "see? It's not THAT bad!" is the best way though. Depends how willing Microsoft are to admit defeat in the PR war about Vista, I guess.
Also, TSK at you calling the Mac OS dock dreadful. Please elaborate. It's pretty obvious what's running and what's shut down in Mac OS with the little blue lights underneath. Also, the bouncing up and down thing is a LOVELY way of getting user attention. Also, I used vista pre-SP1, is UAC less about dimming the entire screen, making a beep and not allowing you to do anything else until the password is entered now?
Also, TSK at you calling the Mac OS dock dreadful. Please elaborate. It's pretty obvious what's running and what's shut down in Mac OS with the little blue lights underneath. Also, the bouncing up and down thing is a LOVELY way of getting user attention. Also, I used vista pre-SP1, is UAC less about dimming the entire screen, making a beep and not allowing you to do anything else until the password is entered now?
Knight knight
It's interesting that so many of the bells and whistles are there already. Usually in betas gone by, you'd get the Windows 2000 style classic interface until the very last release candidate where suddenly the proper interface would appear. Although that hasn't been the case since Windows XP. I guess it's down to the fact that Windows Vista / 7 is more of a showcase when it comes to its UI than previous versions so it's important to have it there from day one for the beta testers to rip apart.
On another note, I was an official tester for Windows Me which was an experience and forced me to quickly step up to Windows 2000 and take the plunge after hearing all the horror stories of how none of my hardware will work with this strange NT kernel blah blah blah. It seems so long ago now. Anyway, so in playing my part as an Me beta tester, I'd like to think you could all blame me for being responsible, in some way for it's crapness. I did get a free copy at the end courtesy of Microsoft. I certainly wouldn't have paid for it!
On another note, I was an official tester for Windows Me which was an experience and forced me to quickly step up to Windows 2000 and take the plunge after hearing all the horror stories of how none of my hardware will work with this strange NT kernel blah blah blah. It seems so long ago now. Anyway, so in playing my part as an Me beta tester, I'd like to think you could all blame me for being responsible, in some way for it's crapness. I did get a free copy at the end courtesy of Microsoft. I certainly wouldn't have paid for it!
Good Lord!