windows 8 is almost here...

[El Heggunte]

Microsoft fixed the biggest issues in Vista with its Service Pack 2.
Sadly the initial bad fame of Windows Vista cannot be erased anymore.

As for Windows 7, I did replace it with Vista on my notebook, simply because W7 is totally-unusable to me. I don't need an OS that does the impossible to hide the exact location of the files and folders from the end-user. I've never used nor needed other symbolic/fake folders than "My Computer" and "Desktop". I don't need a Big Nanny to tell me where to store MY docs, MY pictures, MY music and MY videos.

[p_l]

Windows 7 is to Windows Vista as Windows XP was to Windows Me, i.e. an improved OS that washed away the bad taste of the previous, flawed effort.

..or so goes the conventional wisdom, but have you tried Vista SP2 on a machine of the same caliber as with a Win7 install? To each his own, and I'm not trying to proselytize, but Vista SP2 on a good machine doesn't deserve the bad rap it initially got, IMHO.

[deadrats]

..or so goes the conventional wisdom, but have you tried Vista SP2 on a machine of the same caliber as with a Win7 install? To each his own, and I'm not trying to proselytize, but Vista SP2 on a good machine doesn't deserve the bad rap it initially got, IMHO.

i tend to agree, at first i hated vista but after using it on pc's with lot's of ram and having tried xp 64 and win 7 (all OSes were 64 bit) i tend to think that vista is the superior OS with high end hardware, i've even seen win 7 bsod and i've had win 7's explorer.exe go into a non stop crash/restart cycle that wouldn't end and left the pc unusable.

give me vista 64 with at least 8 gigs of ram (which only costs about $80) and it runs smooth as silk.

[fritzi93]

I was seriously thinking of getting Win7 to dual-boot (with XP of course) on one of my machines. Now I have a dilemma. Should I go with Vista SP2 instead?

[jman98]

I was seriously thinking of getting Win7 to dual-boot (with XP of course) on one of my machines. Now I have a dilemma. Should I go with Vista SP2 instead?

Hell no! Geez, what's all the "Vista SP2 rules, Win 7 sucks" crap? I've been using Win 7 64 bit for over a month now. The only BSOD I had was caused by some SATA cables that I ended up having to replace. Once I got those replaced everything has worked flawlessly. And I have pretty high end, state of the art hardware too.

Are you sure you REALLY need to dual boot? If you buy the right Win 7 (I am using Ultimate) you can get a free VM from Microsoft that runs XP. I've got one old program I like that refuses to run in Win 7 but it works fine in the free XP VM.

My company, a Fortune 500 company, refused to approve Vista for corporate use but we did approve Win 7. XP is still approved for dekstops, but we are slowly migrating from it. I'm not ragging on deadrats but my experience with Win 7 has been really positive and note that I am using the 64 bit one which often gives people more problems than the 32 bit OS.

[usually_quiet]

Microsoft fixed the biggest issues in Vista with its Service Pack 2.
Sadly the initial bad fame of Windows Vista cannot be erased anymore.

As for Windows 7, I did replace it with Vista on my notebook, simply because W7 is totally-unusable to me. I don't need an OS that does the impossible to hide the exact location of the files and folders from the end-user. I've never used nor needed other symbolic/fake folders than "My Computer" and "Desktop". I don't need a Big Nanny to tell me where to store MY docs, MY pictures, MY music and MY videos.

After using it for over a year, I'm pretty sure that Windows 7 lets me store all these things wherever I want. However, it does keep track of them for me in what it calls "Libraries".

[fritzi93]

Thanks, jman. No, not positive at all. But I'd like to run *it* that way a while first, at least to get used to it. It may be hard to let go of XP Pro, since it's served so well over the years. My resistance is starting to wear down though. The question is, which will be *it*?

[El Heggunte]

After using it for over a year, I'm pretty sure that windows 7 lets me store all these things wherever I want.

Also depends on who designs this or that application. It would have helped a lot if Office 97 and Windows 98 hadn't invented the infamous "My Documents" folder, to begin with.

However, it does keeps track of them for me in what it calls "Libraries".

Yes, and it simply should not do that. "Libraries" — the solution to a problem that did not exist.

[El Heggunte]

Hell no! Geez, what's all the "Vista SP2 rules, Win 7 sucks" crap?

Probably, it's just a semi-automagic reaction to the much worse and older "Windows 7 rocks, Vista sucks, and XP sucks even more" troll posts.

[usually_quiet]

After using it for over a year, I'm pretty sure that windows 7 lets me store all these things wherever I want.

Also depends on who designs this or that application. It would have helped a lot if Office 97 and Windows 98 hadn't invented the infamous "My Documents" folder, to begin with.

However, it does keeps track of them for me in what it calls "Libraries".

Yes, and it simply should not do that. "Libraries" — the solution to a problem that did not exist.

Most programs have default settings for saving files, but they can almost always be overridden.

Although I happen to like the Libraries, and use them, one does not have to use the Libraries to access files. If you don't like the feature it can be ignored, since direct navigation is still possible in Windows Explorer. It is even possible to remove folders from Library listings if desired.

The libraries will tell you what folders are included in the library under "Includes" at the top of the right pane. You can also go right to the location for a file in the library by right clicking on the file/folder and selecting "Open File/Folder Location". Nothing is actually hidden.

I don't expect the "Libraries" feature is going away.

[deadrats]

I was seriously thinking of getting Win7 to dual-boot (with XP of course) on one of my machines. Now I have a dilemma. Should I go with Vista SP2 instead?

the best answer i can come up with is go with whichever one you can get cheaper, if you can pick up a copy of the student version of win 7 for $30, grab it, if you can find a similar deal on vista, grab that instead.

if you're going to buy retail, your choices will be limited to win 7 as no retailer is likely to be selling vista, same applies to oem.

if you were to get either or both copies for free (i don't know how that could possibly be accomplished) then give both a try and see which one you prefer.

my experience with win 7 was limited and soured by the complete departure from previous windows versions with regards to how one goes about administering it, the idiotic tendency for a window that i move to "snap" to either side in an assumption that i wish to run two windows side by side, the aforementioned bsod i experienced and the ridiculous malfunction i encountered where explorer would just shut down and restart.

some people swear by win 7, hey, some people swear by linux, some by bsd, some by OS X, but i think one thing most can all agree on, when trying to choose an OS, it's silly to spend more on the OS than the motherboard+cpu, best price you can find for the OS should be your ultimate deciding factor.

[dvstorm]

I really like W7. I have the 64 bit on this laptop and 32 bit W7 on the other PCs. I only have one PC still running XP. If I have any complaints about W7 they are that networking got a bit harder. A separate issue, but I don't much like Internet Explorer 8, but have managed to tweak it so it's not too irritating.

The other was how they screwed up MS Paint. Eliminating the undo button for one and making it a lot harder to use with the confusing menu selection. But I found out it's an .exe and I just replaced the W7 version with one from Vista or XP, I don't recall.

I also run DeskScapes on my laptop and the PC in my Computer Details. I like the motion background. I don't use the Sidebar or most that other W7/Vista stuff.

I find W7 is much more stable than XP or Vista, IMO. I wouldn't go back to either one.

But I see no reason to go to W8 at present either. Though I'll wait and see if a trial version is released and see how it looks and performs.

Good day sir....You're absolutely and definitely right!

[El Heggunte]

Most programs have default settings for saving files, but they can almost always be overridden.

And... ?

Although I happen to like the Libraries, and use them, one does not have to use the Libraries to access files. If you don't like the feature it can be ignored, since direct navigation is still possible in Windows Explorer. It is even possible to remove folders from Library listings if desired.

I am not aware of any button or checkbox that simply says:

"Never ever show these annoying Libraries again".

[usually_quiet]

Most programs have default settings for saving files, but they can almost always be overridden.

And... ?

Although I happen to like the Libraries, and use them, one does not have to use the Libraries to access files. If you don't like the feature it can be ignored, since direct navigation is still possible in Windows Explorer. It is even possible to remove folders from Library listings if desired.

I am not aware of any button or checkbox that simply says:

"Never ever show these annoying Libraries again".

No, it isn't as simple as one click but there are registry hacks that serious Library haters can use to remove or hide "Libraries" http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/09/02/how-to-remove-and-hide-libraries-group-from-n...ws-7-explorer/

It is also possible to reduce what is displayed in the Navigation pane to just "Libraries" without doing anything to the registry. Open "Libraries", right click on each section, and select "Don't show in navigation pane." For good measure you can click on "locations" in the individual libraries and remove them all so the various sections in the library are empty. You can delete each individual library from "Libraries" without deleting the actual files and folders they contain. If you never open the "Libraries" section in the navigation pane, you never need to see what is inside ever again.

[intracube]

if linux could get a file system that didn't use that idiotic "slash" hierarchy where you have /, /root, /etc, /var

How would you do it differently, given the choice?

[El Heggunte]

if linux could get a file system that didn't use that idiotic "slash" hierarchy where you have /, /root, /etc, /var

How would you do it differently, given the choice?

If I were deadrats

"/" == localhost (symbolic root directory, similar to Win32's "My Computer")


and, under "/" :

storage_device_0
...
...
...
storage_device_N

JMNSHO:

Linux should not try to look like UNIX,
and UNIX does look outdated in many respects.

( K.I.S.S. )

[deadrats]

if linux could get a file system that didn't use that idiotic "slash" hierarchy where you have /, /root, /etc, /var

How would you do it differently, given the choice?

a few things come to mind, for starters how about not being able to have /, /root, /etc, /var be both directories and partitions, i've used the auto partitioning feature included with most distros and they will actually make each one of them a separate partition, what the hell is that?

how about directories that are actually descriptive instead of leaving you wondering what the hell they are for? /etc? /var? and what's the deal with having a / directory that's the root directory and then having a /root, i mean wtf?

compounding the idiocy is the fact that this circle jerk of a directory hierarchy is repeated for every user account on the system.

and let's not forget the moronic ability to mount any directory any place you want; i remember mounting /cdrom to the /dev0 (or whatever the hard disk directory was called, this is going back some years) and the /dev0 to /cdrom and the best part being that despite having mounted the /cdrom directory it didn't mean you could access the cdrom, because /cdrom wasn't actually tied to the optical drive.

how about primary partition (akin to the 'c' drive) and within that you have /system files, /applications, /config files, /admin tools and simply make the /system files, /config files and /admin tools directory hidden and inaccessible unless logged in as root, and every other partition simply called second partition, third partition and so on.

it's absurd to stick to 40 year old conventions, if you went to buy a car and discovered that it used an iron block, iron heads, iron flywheel, 2 valves per cylinder, ohv, 2 barrel carburetor, distributor cap and bias ply tires with a leaf spring rear suspension would you be happy or would you flip out?

[95teetee]

The other was how they screwed up MS Paint. Eliminating the undo button for one and making it a lot harder to use with the confusing menu selection. But I found out it's an .exe and I just replaced the W7 version with one from Vista or XP, I don't recall.

'undo' is up on the top (title?) bar.

But, yeah, it's pretty clunky compared to the older version. I can barely use it.

[intracube]

Sorry for the delay in replying. Also, please note I'm not particularly experienced with Linux - I've just been tinkering with it for the last 10 years.

a few things come to mind, for starters how about not being able to have /, /root, /etc, /var be both directories and partitions, i've used the auto partitioning feature included with most distros and they will actually make each one of them a separate partition, what the hell is that?

Different Linux distros can use different partitioning schemes. I think I used auto partitioning when I installed OpenSuSE 11.3, and /home, /tmp and '/' all ended up on the same partition for simplicity.
As for benefits of having multiple partitions:
- if there's corruption with a non system partition (/home for example), or a physical disk failure, a sys admin can unmount the problematic partition, and the system will continue to run while repairs take place.
- The need to shut down the system and boot from a diskette/CDROM/etc to repair the filesysem can be avoided.
- for systems without disk quotas, having /home and /tmp on separate file systems from '/' protects against a single user eating up all the free disk space and stuffing up the whole system.

how about directories that are actually descriptive instead of leaving you wondering what the hell they are for? /etc? /var? and what's the deal with having a / directory that's the root directory and then having a /root, i mean wtf?

I agree completely. The Unix directory structure and naming seems to have grown organically over the years, and IMO it's overdue for a re-organisation/rationalisation.

For example (according to Wikipedia) /usr was originally the place for users personal files (/home now serves that purpose)
/usr is now used for system libraries (amongst other things), which aren't really related to 'users'. IMO, much of /usr could be in a /system directory.
I also agree on using more descriptive diretory names. The abbrieviated directory names might be a legacy of trying to fit file paths on to low resoultion displays/terminals. Now that large, high res screens are common place, and with command-line completion, having longer more descriptive diretory/file names seems sensible.

I haven't given it any real thought, but maybe the system directories could be re-organised to something like this:
/system/
/system/binaries
/system/config
/system/devices
/system/graphics
/system/lib
/system/lib64

But an experienced Unix/Linux user might give reasons why that layout isn't a good idea...

and let's not forget the moronic ability to mount any directory any place you want;

Steady on. I assume you mean 'mount a partition' to any directory. It might be confusing to people not used to it, but it's a powerful feature.

You say 'it's absurd to stick to 40 year old conventions', yet Windows has stuck to a basic 'drive letter' system for how many years??

Also, only being able to mount partitions to the top level directory would be limiting.

[16mmJunkie]

OSX Lion is almost here too

[MOVIEGEEK]

Never saw an article that said 64 bit is good for anything but additional RAM over 3.x GB.

Yep and now 64 bit is all you can buy on a prebuilt PC, if you have older peripherals(printer, scanner, etc) they won't work.

I'm still running XP Pro 32 bit on my rigs and I'm going to wait until 2014 to upgrade.

[deadrats]

i just ran across this interesting development:

http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/windows-8-could-be-booted-usb-flash-drive/2011-04-19

apparently you will be able to install windows on on a usb thumb drive. note this is not installing windows 8 from a usb hard drive, something that i'm fairly certain can be done with vista and win 7 but rather microsoft is taking a page from the linux play book and you will be able to install the OS on a usb thumb drive and run it from there.

i have used some linux distros, namely mandriva and a few others, that were running on a thumb drive and the performance was limited by the usb interface, presumably with usb3 and fast thumb drives you should see speed faster than a traditional hard drive but slower than an ssd.

but let's not kid ourselves here, while the open source community included this functionality with various distros to aid in system recovery by having a portable OS that you could just plug into any computer and to make it easier to migrate your operating environment as you upgrade your computer; i have no doubt that in microsoft's case it's designed as a means of enforcing a 1 license per pc business model; if you install windows 8 on a thumb drive and then activate the OS the moment you try to transfer that thumb drive to another pc the OS will ask to be activated again and will invariably fail activation.

i think eventually microsoft will move to selling all future windows versions pre-installed on a thumb drive, hopefully if they do that and the OS can't be pirated because it's locked to that particular thumb drive (<--pure speculation) then they will lower the prices per copy since now there will be no pirated copies and their revenue in theory should skyrocket.

...who am i kidding? even if microsoft managed to completely stamp out piracy of windows they would still charge through the nose, 1) because they could and 2) because they would make an even bigger shitload of money than they currently do.

[NJRoadfan]

Windows 7 was noticeably faster then Vista on my machine (I have 4GB of RAM FWIW). I have noticed this on other machines as well. It seems 7 has less "cruft" then Vista as Microsoft spent some time optimizing the OS. Thankfully all my hardware works with a 64-bit OS. For older stuff that don't work right, I use XP mode and for the really old stuff, DOSBox running Windows 3.11. My biggest issue in the past was always video capture drivers, my old machine dual booted 2000 and 98SE because of my old Matrox Marvel G400TV's buggy 2k support. Interestingly enough, I never used XP as a primary OS at home, went from 2000 to Vista.

For those who miss the classic start menu and XP style Explorer features, check this out: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net

[jagabo]

i think eventually microsoft will move to selling all future windows versions pre-installed on a thumb drive, hopefully if they do that and the OS can't be pirated because it's locked to that particular thumb drive (<--pure speculation)

That wouldn't surprise me.

then they will lower the prices per copy since now there will be no pirated copies and their revenue in theory should skyrocket.

...who am i kidding? even if microsoft managed to completely stamp out piracy of windows they would still charge through the nose, 1) because they could and 2) because they would make an even bigger shitload of money than they currently do.

Yes, they would raise the price because thumb drives cost more to produce than DVDs. And, of course, wall street doesn't reward a company for having a consistent income year after year, it rewards growth.

[deadrats]

Windows 7 was noticeably faster then Vista on my machine (I have 4GB of RAM FWIW). I have noticed this on other machines as well.

there's something that most people don't know about vista and it's this: prior to vista all windows OSes used a thread management model where a particular thread wasn't locked to a particular core, windows would juggle threads across cores in order to maintain system responsiveness, likewise while xp 64 loaded large portions of programs into system ram in order to speed things up, it always made sure to leave some ram free.

vista changed both these models: vista took the view that free ram was wasted ram and so it would actively cache all the free ram and release it when it was needed. more importantly it changed the thread management model so that a thread once spawn was locked onto a given core until it was destroyed. the reason microsoft did this was because intel introduced that turbo feature with the core i7 and in order to get the maximum benefit when only 1 or 2 cores where loaded up it had to be ensured that threads wouldn't be bounced between cores, thus alternating which cores where under load and not allowing turbo to reach it's full potential.

the end result was that pc's without a core i7 and loads of ram suffered from decreased performance some of the time (that and all the background services that sucked up system resources, such as the intrusive uac, defrag that is set to defrag automatically in the background, that silly search indexing feature), it all conspired to sour people on vista.

for win 7, microsoft went back to the old thread management model and once again allows threads to bounce between cores, but not as freely as with pre-vista windows and they used an improved malloc library as well as dialing back the priority with which most of the services ran.

be that as it may, i really believe that with all the updates, the right hardware, enough ram and all that background crap turned off, vista is the better OS, but who knows in a few years i may change my mind.

what i would really like to see from microsoft is to offer just 2 versions of windows 8, both 64 bit but each one compiled with optimizations for either amd cpu's or intel cpu's. i've run 64 bit linux distros with the default vanilla compiled kernel and then custom compiled versions specifically for either amd or intel cpu's (the distro will kernel panic if you try to install/run it on a non-supported cpu) and the speed up is significant).

such a move would build perceived value (and actual value) in an upgrade to windows 8 and would certainly limit some piracy (though the impact would probably be only a handful percent).

[deadrats]

Yes, they would raise the price because thumb drives cost more to produce than DVDs. And, of course, wall street doesn't reward a company for having a consistent income year after year, it rewards growth.

while the thumb drives would cost more microsoft would also be selling way more licenses so even if prices stayed the same revenue would increase.

as for wall street, that's one of the big problems with financial markets and why every so number of years we have an entire segment/industry that tanks, goes under and takes billions of dollars, thousands of jobs and dozens of companies with it: "wall street" for some reason has this idiotic belief that things can continue to grow to infinity, nothing is further from the; continuous inflation in any form (growth is another word for inflation) can not be maintained, eventually whatever is growing either dies or reverses course and starts to shrink.

remember, the candle that burns twice as bright lasts only half as long.

[p_l]

remember, the candle that burns twice as bright lasts only half as long.

Where have I heard something like that before...

[redwudz]

The other was how they screwed up MS Paint. Eliminating the undo button for one and making it a lot harder to use with the confusing menu selection. But I found out it's an .exe and I just replaced the W7 version with one from Vista or XP, I don't recall.

'undo' is up on the top (title?) bar.

But, yeah, it's pretty clunky compared to the older version. I can barely use it.

I missed that location of 'undo'. I use Aero and it was pretty much invisible in the transparent Paint title bar. Thanks for pointing it out. I have no idea why they messed up the locations of the different controls as it seems to make it a lot harder to use. Of course MS 'knows' what we want and will put it in a OS whether we really want it or not. But I am much happier using the older version of Paint with W7.

That also make me wonder what sort of questionable 'improvements' they might make with W8.

[yoda313]

make me wonder what sort of questionable 'improvements' they might make with W8.

Maybe they'll add KINECT support!!

We could control it like Minority Report or the construct in Matrix Revolutions with them touching all the floating screens in the jacked reality.

[deadrats]

@super

wtf?!? why are you spamming the forum with that motherf'ing link? mods, how about not only banning the id but also the ip and while your at it the entire state he/she is posting from?