January 6th, 2009

Posted by Jason Perlow

Okay, never mind that I’m a dinosaur with an affinity for 1990’s era User Interfaces –  I think even my best critics will very likely agree with me that Windows 7, for all of its performance improvements and bling, is essentially one big service deluxe pack for Windows Vista. It’s the Windows Vista that customers were promised when they bought “Vista Capable” PC’s 3 years ago, and despite the rest of us dinosaurs that are set in our ways about the way we like to work, it’s the Windows Vista that even Micosoft’s most ardent supporters hoped that would finally replace Windows XP. Windows 7 is the Vista that we were guaranteed would work properly, the first time around.

Taking a page from the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, Windows 7  and it’s accompanying sales propaganda is the Microsoft corporate mantra equivalent of “Wait ’till next year” that everyone is hoping may actually cialis soft tabs online result in that all-elusive pennant win — the end-user and corporate acceptance that Windows Vista was never able to achieve.

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Let’s face it, Windows 7 is Windows Vista Service Release 2, more than a service pack but less than a major release, with only a few added extra features, or as I am now in the custom of calling it, Windows Fixta. And since Windows 7 is essentially a performance and usability fix for a defective product, I’m of the increasing opinion that a Windows 7 upgrade should be free to anyone who was conned into buying Windows Vista.

Yes, you heard me. If you own a copy of Windows Vista — Microsoft should be giving you a download entitlement to whatever corresponding version you have. So if you have Home, you should get Windows 7 Home. If you have Ultimate, you should get Windows 7 Ultimate. For Microsoft to do anything less would be a disservice to their loyal customers, especially to the enterprises that actually bought into Enterprise Agreements for Vista desktops.  It isn’t just good business for Microsoft to redeem itself in this way, it’s simply the right thing to do. Anything less than a complete “Mea culpa, we’ll do anything to make this up to you” move by Microsoft is likely to open them up to further litigation, especially by angry EU lawmakers who are just looking for another excuse to hit the company with billions more in fines as well as an expansion of existing class action in the United States.

As reported by Mary Jo Foley today, selected PC OEMs will begin offering free upgrades from Vista this summer, but these upgrades will not be retroactive. Microsoft needs to address their loyal customers and early adopters with free certificates NOW.

January 2nd, 2009

Posted by Jason Perlow

In round two of Perlow gets a Bott Beating, I am educated by our esteemed Windows expert that you don’t need a “Run” function in the Windows Vista or Windows 7 Start Menu because “The Windows Key” combined with “R” is the same function. Wow, I didn’t know that. Really.

I have to admit here, this is probably not something that is unique to actual computer experts who have been using PC’s prior to 1981.  I’m sure plenty of people have no idea what the Windows Key does.

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

The Windows key was introduced by Microsoft in Windows 95. At the time, most PC’s used the IBM AT 101 key layout. It was only a few years later that many keyboard manufacturers and PC makers started to license its use and that it became standard. Still,  many of us never got into the use of the Windows Key. I informally polled a number of real veterans this cialis soft tablets morning — most of which have been using PCs 20 years or more — and most of them don’t use the Windows key. Some of them, like former PC Magazine Editor In Chief Bill Machrone, use CTRL-ESC instead.

I personally own a number of keyboards manufactured by UNICOMP, which is the company that bought the rights to produce the original IBM buckling-spring AT keyboards. They aren’t cheap, their basic model, which is a 101-key model which has no “Windows” key, is  $69. They do also make a model with the Windows Key, but I don’t own any. They are incedibly durable keyboards, and if you are someone who writes a great deal or who lusts after a good-ol style IBM keyboard, I highly reccomend them.

December 3rd, 2008

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Blogger Paul Thurrott has written a couple of interesting posts about the difference between “simple” and “easy” in the context of Windows 7.

Sure, Windows 7 is still in the pre-beta phase, meaning the user-interface elements still will be tweaked considerably before the product is released to manufacturing. But Thurrott raises a number of points that left me nodding my head in agreement.

I am a Windows user by choice, not simply because I blog about Microsoft. When I saw the recent demos of Windows 7 — with its JumpLists, AeroPeek, AeroSnaps and lots of other eye candy — I was torn. I want some of what’s coming in Windows 7, such as fewer UAC prompts, simpler backup and restore, better peripheral handling. But I really do not care if I get more fancy bells and whistles that just clutter my desktop.

Thurrott blogged:

“Windows 7 basically takes Windows one step closer to the design aesthetic of the Mac, where form is valued over function. I’m not sure this is the right strategy. Simplicity, taken in isolation, may seem like a good idea. But I’m afraid that in Windows 7, Microsoft is sacrificing too much in its bid to be more like Apple. And it’s the users of Windows who will pay the price.”

If you are a PC user like me, you definitely will pay the price. I value ease of use far more than fancy graphics. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive — and given the direction Microsoft ends up taking once it provides testers with the Superbar — maybe they won’t.

(Given Beta 1 of Windows 7, which many are now expecting around January 13, is supposed to be feature-complete, I’m expecting we’ll get to see what the Superbar will look like real soon now. Me? I still think we might see Win 7 Beta 1 on or around December 17, but in either case, it’s not too long until we see the latest Windows 7 look and feel.)

If I wanted a Mac-like environment, I’d buy a Mac. I want an computing environment that helps me get my work done and doesn’t require a how-to manual to figure out which icon does what. Maybe Microsoft could introduce “Windows 7 Luddite Edition” cialis professional vs cialis for those of us who value function over form?

What’s your take? Do you think Microsoft is too focused on making Windows 7 in Mac OS X’s image?

On a related note, for more Windows 7 analysis — in podcast form with yours truly and The Register’s Software Editor Gavin Clarke — check out the latest edition of “MicroBite.”

October 29th, 2008

Posted by Ed Bott

It’s impossible to offer a comprehensive evaluation of a product as big and sprawling as Windows 7 with just screenshots and specs. That’s doubly true when looking at a preliminary release that’s still missing some key features. My first look at the pre-beta PDC release of Windows 7 inspired plenty of great feedback and questions, along with an understandable amount of confusion and apprehension. I’ll address some of the most prevalent questions and comments in this post.

Isn’t the new Windows 7 user interface just a coat of paint slapped over the Vista UI?

Short answer: no. The build I have to work with is very Vista-like, missing the new Start menu, desktop, and taskbar enhancements. The demos I’ve seen here at PDC use more recent builds where those features are available. Those features will reach users in the form of a beta “early next year.”

In the past 48 hours, I’ve had a chance to get a closer look at those new UI features. One thing becomes obvious after only a few minutes of playing with the new interface: The Windows 7 design team has paid an enormous amount of attention to small details and have focused on workflows and end-to-end experiences, not just on dialog boxes and feature sets. The result feels comfortingly familiar cialis 20 mg cost to any Windows user, although the overall experience is often significantly different when you break down its small details.

One example that illustrates the point is the difference between Backup programs in Windows Vista and Windows 7. The Windows 7 version, shown below, includes a key feature missing from its Vista predecessor – the ability to include or exclude a folder from a backup set. But that’s not all: the entire workflow of the backup process has been streamlined dramatically. It takes 10-15 clicks to perform an image backup in Windows Vista; on a Windows 7 notebook I tested, the operating system offered to perform a backup when I plugged in an external hard drive. The entire process took three clicks and less than 10 minutes. The customization screen shown here added only two clicks to the entire process.

Is it faster? Really?

Measuring performance is tough enough with released code. For something billed as a “pre-beta” release and offered primarily for developers, it’s inappropriate and frankly foolish to even attempt granular measurements of speeds and startup times. My subjective impression is that this OS feels quick and impressively responsive, but I’m not prepared to break out the stopwatch until I have a more polished build.

In fact, when I sat down with Windows boss Steven Sinofsky for a one-on-one chat on Monday, he noted that much of the work Microsoft has done with Windows 7 involves interaction with hardware OEMs, helping them see how decisions they make – tuning the BIOS, choosing drivers, and pre-installing software – impact overall performance.

Sinofsky noted that the system I’m currently traveling with – a Sony Vaio TZ2000 with Windows Vista Business – will start up the PDC build of Windows 7 in 15 seconds. I’ll be installing the Windows 7 bits on this machine to see that level of performance for myself.

Isn’t this just a blatant ripoff of OS X/KDE/etc.?

Tracing the ancestry of UI innovations is tricky. There are, after all, only so many ways to interact with pixels on a screen to make things happen. And it’s foolish not to pay attention to what competitors past and present have done. As I pointed out in my first look, the new taskbar clearly borrows some concepts from the OS X dock, but it retains the Windows DNA and adds some smart behaviors that one-up Apple, most notably Jump Lists and live, clickable previews.

Ironically, the company with the most right to complain about UI ripoffs is Microsoft itself. In a presentation at PDC yesterday, Microsoft Senior Program Manager Chaitanya Sareen traced the lineage of those big taskbar buttons back to Windows 1.01, which was released in 1985. Desktop gadgets? Those were a key part of IE4’s Active Desktop in 1997.

What’s in it for corporate customers?

If you’re an IT pro who’s chosen to stick with XP and eschew Vista, many of the enterprise-focused benefits of Windows 7 are features you could have gotten with a Vista deployment, most notably improvements in group policy and image-based deployment. But there’s plenty of good stuff in Windows 7 as well, as my ZDNet colleague Mary Jo Foley outlined earlier today.

Microsoft hasn’t spent a lot of its Windows 7 demo time on corporate features. But the most noteworthy addition I’ve seen so far is native support for virtual hard drive (VHD) images. Using Windows 7, you’ll be able to mount a VHD as a local drive and, more importantly, boot from that virtual image. The most obvious application is rolling out a standard corporate image to remote workers, such as those in a call center, who don’t require local data storage and are capable of working in a strictly managed, locked-down configuration.

Is the Shut Down button fixed?

Yes. It’s not in the PDC builds, but the new Start menu that will be available in the beta release next year has replaced the confusing Vista power-button icon with an easy-to-customize alternative, shown here.

I know that you, dear readers, have questions of your own. Hit the Talkback button and ask away. I’ll answer the most interesting questions in my next installment.

October 27th, 2008

Posted by Jason Hiner

We’re going to be hearing a lot about Windows 7 over the next two weeks as Microsoft convenes its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) — both in Los Angeles.

I recently discussed the five reasons why Windows Vista failed, and although Microsoft may continue to defend Vista as Steve Ballmer did at the Gartner Symposium on October 16, make no mistake that the company has already moved past Vista — psychologically and strategically.

Ballmer and company know that Vista has been rejected by businesses and that it has dreadful reputation among the general public. They know they screwed up. And Microsoft is nothing if not responsive to customers and public opinion. In fact, I’ve argued before that the company is actually hyper-responsive and that’s why they’ve crammed way too many features and way too much code into both Windows and Microsoft Office.

So how can Microsoft recover from the Vista debacle and breath life back into Windows? If nothing else, cialis 100 mg here are five things the company needs to do to start.

5. Speed it up significantly

One of the worst qualities of Windows Vista is that it is almost always slower than its predecessor Windows XP when running on the same hardware. And most of that performance drag is not simply due to the fancy graphics. Even if you turn off the Aero interface, Vista is still usually slower.

The problem is that the underlying Windows code is way too bloated — over 50 million lines of code in Vista — and even today’s ultra-fast multi-core processors can’t overcome that. The Windows development team has to find a way to streamline Windows 7 so that it’s faster and more stable than both XP and Vista, whether it’s running on netbooks and nettops with the Atom processor and only 1 GB of RAM or tomorrow’s 8-core machines with 10 GB of RAM.

That’s an extremely difficult task, but no one said this was going to be simple or easy. One way to start is by turning Windows into just the core OS and further modulizing it by making a lot of the other software such as the Media Center, Tablet PC, and Admin Tools available as downloadable add-ons.

4. Avoid compatibility problems

In the process of streamlining Windows 7, the developers can’t sacrifice software compatibility. One of the things that has killed Vista is that Microsoft spent so much effort trying making it more secure with User Access Control (UAC) that it broke a lot of software in the process.

You can argue that a lot of the stuff that broke in Windows Vista was poorly programmed to begin with and deserved to break so that it could be rewritten more securely. The problem is that not much of the software has been rewritten and the UAC approach has not worked because users get so many dialog boxes that they just blindly click OK until all of them go away. A better approach is needed — one that balances security and compatibility.

The other compatibility issue that Windows 7 has to juggle is the 32-bit vs. 64-bit split. While most modern processors are 64-bit, most of the software and device drivers are still written in 32-bit code. I’ve seen a number of PCs with 64-bit CPUs that have 32-bit Windows installed simply because it has better compatibility. I’ve also seen and heard about a number of business systems that have 64-bit Windows Vista installed, but are running into significant software and/or driver incompatibility problems.

Microsoft, Intel, and AMD need to lead the charge to get software vendors on-board with 64-bit before Windows 7 is officially released.

3. Undercut OS X on price

Mac sales have been growing much faster than the overall PC market and Mac OS X has continued to nibble away at Windows’ massive market share over the past two years. However, Apple showed the same chink in its armor that has long plagued it when it recently announced its new line of laptops and the cheapest one was priced at $999. The message being sent is that Apple wants to be a premium computer brand with high margins and has very little interest in selling low-margin, high-volume machines.

Over the next two to three years the lion’s share of the growth in computer sales is very likely going to be in the sub-$500 netbook and nettop market. These machines are essentially just glorified Web browsers in a diminuitive hardware package. The OS doesn’t matter much. As a result, Linux is a major threat to become the OS powering a lot of these machines, because of its minimal price.

However, with Apple relegating itself to the high end of the market and most users still not very comfortable with Linux, Microsoft has the opportunity to swoop in and deliver a Windows 7 that is fast and cheap and can run very well on these little machines, while also scaling all the way up to the fastest workstations. A lot of users and businesses would probably gravitate toward the idea of a common OS experience (and one that most users already know) in Windows, especially if the price is comparable between Linux and Windows machines.

The key here is making Windows very inexpensive and very scalable while preparing to sell it in larger volumes than ever before on the cheap machines that are going to flood the market over the next couple years.

2. Sell only one version

There were primarily two editions of Windows XP: Home and Professional. With Windows Vista, that doubled to four primary editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. It’s time to simplify and go back to just one version of Windows with one price.

This is a case of Microsoft just getting out of the way and letting Windows be Windows. Having just one edition of the client OS will make Windows 7 easier to understand, easier to purchase, and easier to support (for both Microsoft and IT departments).

Of course, the one version of Windows 7 needs to be cheaper than Mac OS X ($99), easier to use than Linux, and easier to set up and get started than any of the recent versions of Windows.

1.  Make it the last shrink-wrapped OS

The old way of building and packaging operating systems in shrink-wrapped boxes that are released every few years is just not fast enough or nimble enough to meet the demands to today’s Internet-driven computing environment. It’s also counterproductive for an OS maker because you end up competing against yourself the way XP and Vista are now competing against each other.

There’s only one Windows, and it has merely evolved over time. That’s the message Microsoft needs to drive home by making Windows 7 the last shrink-wrapped version of the OS. From here on out, Microsoft should simply make Windows a constantly evolving platform with new features and functionality enhancements added several times a year through Windows Update.

The business model would be to turn this into a subscription product, albeit a very inexpensive one. As long as you have a current Windows subscription then you can continue to download new features, patches, and updates. If your subscription lapses then Windows still works but you can no longer download the new stuff, or any add-ons, and you can only download highly critical security patches.

For enterprises that are currently using Software Assurance, they are already buying Windows as part of a subscription so there would be no change in the business model for them.  For consumers and small businesses who aren’t part of Software Assurance and typically buy Windows from OEMs such as Dell, Toshiba,  and Hewlett-Packard, the Windows license that comes with their PC could last for three years and then it’s up to the buyer to pay something like $30-$40/year to renew. For those who want to build their own system, a full version of the OS could cost something like $50-$75 for the first year.

Bottom line

Windows 7 needs to be fast, inexpensive, and widely compatible. Microsoft also needs to change the development and business models to make Windows one continually evolving OS.

Let’s face it, the OS is not as flashy as it once was. It’s also not nearly as relevant as it was a decade ago. The Web browser is gradually usurping its position as the most important application platform, as has long been predicted.

Because of that, Windows is at a crossroads where it could begin losing large chunks of market share to competitors that are better prepared to operate in this new reality, or it can greatly simplify its OS while turning into more of a background utility that makes good money off of a low-margin, high-volume business.

If it can pull that off and clearly communicate to businesses and consumers that Windows 7 is the start of a new approach to Windows then Windows 7 could be a watershed release. If Microsoft simply releases a mild revision to Vista and maintains the same development and business models, then Windows could become more vulnerable to its competitors than it’s been in almost two decades.