Microsoft's Quiet Success Story: Windows 7
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
It's great to see progression and what MS is capable of in the face of competition.
I'm exactly the same. I've found that logging into a Linux machine and tunneling X actually works fine for me; it's definitely an easier solution than dual booting.
For the kind of money if cost, it's really a tiny, somewhat disappointing, progression.
This - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 - would have been a real improvement.
Only think is I wish you could make the dock icons bigger.
I like the shell for anything nitty-gritty, and cygwin doesn't quite cut it. I figure if they would build a Windows UI on a *nix core- essentially the same feat as OS9 -> OSX- so long as it was at least decent, I'd probably willingly pay full retail and never stray, at least for desktops/laptops.
I run Win 7 at home, on all my boxes, and I'm running Win3K on EC2 as a server. I can remote in from my phone, as well as my netbook without any problems. My deployment is automated and scripted. I'm going to switch to Server 2008 soon, so I can get a remote shell if I need it.
On my home machine using linux / bash / cat | head+tail: about 4 seconds
On my (slower) work machine using cygwin: about 10 seconds
Using powershell: writes about 100-200k / sec (so about 25-30 minute if it ran to completion), but it chokes around 64MB. I know, you can write a bunch of .net code in powersheel and get non-terrible performance. That's not the point; idiomatic code should not be unusable.
7 is a very solid experience, Without fanfare it seems under the radar Microsoft is gaining ground, i have a suspicion they are actually using the lack of limelight to their advantage.
It may be that as the computer market has grown more mature, it has developed what consultants Al and Laura Riese call the "mushy middle." That's the huge dead zone that lies between sexy, expensive products at the high end and the low-end products that appeal to bargain hunters. In computers, Apple holds the high ground with its expensive laptops. The low end ... is also becoming Apple territory, thanks to the iPhone and the iPad, both of which are basically small, simple computers.
The author seems to be redefining his terms in the middle. Yes, Apple does hold a fancy, expensive high ground. However, I think it's a stretch to think of the iPhone and iPad as a simple inexpensive low ground. These products cost more than a typical "middle-ground" desktop (if you're only looking at price), and more than a cheap netbook like my eeePC (if you're considering capabilities and price).
As far as I can see, Apple only holds the expensive high ground, across several markets (notebook, phone, ultraportable tablet/netbook, media player). Each of these markets has a midlle and low ground beneath the Apple boutique range.
I've been a Linux user - from XP to Red Hat to Debian to Ubuntu - for a while now and every time I have to do something more complicated or unexpected on Windows, I waste an unpredictable amount of time.
It's not user-friendly, unless you choose your users with great care.
There are reasons to run Windows: Office (mostly specialized Excel plug-ins), Visual Studio (if you develop for Windows, it's not like you could get away running something else), games and specific hardware support, but, apart from that, I can't imagine why I would want to use it.
Just last night I was on my company-issued laptop, wondering why I could view pictures I took with my phone, but not drag them to a folder on the desktop. I had to e-mail a couple of them and spent a good 15 minutes trying to figure out a way not to copy them one by one, something that, oddly, I could do.
For me, the most effective setup is a Linux (or other Unix-ish OS) with Windows on a VM for the Windows-specific stuff.
And for games that won't run well on a VM, there is always the Playstation.
This is such a useful feature that they should have delivered years ago, and they should make this WAY more obvious in the UI, as I doubt most people realize this.
You can often find what you are looking for just by doing the same from the start menu now rather than going into control panel.
As for your photos issue, if they were still physically on your phone, I suspect this would be caused by your phone not properly supporting some standard interface, but that's just a guess.
Works flawlessly on Ubuntu... In fact, that's simple enough I would never suspect Windows would fail me on that.
flash-bang-whiz is a hallmark of the underdog, the has-been, the also-ran.
It could be said, for someone in their position, no news is the best news.
(Some flash can be useful; see the 80's and 90's, with hot sports cars working to bring average Joe's into the showroom to buy other things. Similar concept to loss-leaders, except it functions through image instead of discounts.)
"Windows 95 was an event. People lined up for blocks outside computer stores (like Egghead) at midnight to get their copy of Microsoft's newest operating system. Rolling Stones' song "Start Me Up" set the tone for the launch." (http://www.betanews.com/article/10-Years-On-Windows-95-Remem...)
At least, that's my first thought.
I got a mac mini for some iPhone development and I'm constantly perplexed at how their window managment works. It seems everything is always normalized. I like the mini well enough, it just feels weird to me.
I haven't used it as much as I have Vista and XP, but from the amount I have it feels like that's what the case is again.
On-topic: just went to Microsoft's site and read their Top 10 Reasons why Windows 7 is so cool, and, as I suspected previously, 90% of the gee-whiz features touted were already in Mac OS X. One could argue that Apple is historically treated by Microsoft as a sort of external, unwitting R&D arm. Except it's better than their internal R&D in one crucial area: Microsoft doesn't have to pay for it!
A hint: your comment that got dumped on here (1) has little/no useful content, (1a) is only barely related to the article, (2) is a tired cliché, (3) is snarky to the point of being mean spirited.
I hope that even if you get a “positive net trend” with similar comments, it doesn’t encourage you. If you’re going to angle for “funny”, the joke has to be some combination of surprising, new, or especially relevant. Because most throw-away joke lines fail these criteria, they tend to get voted down: they’re mostly an uninteresting distraction from whatever other conversation is going on.
Also, your second comment is just a repeat of the lame joke of the first comment.
OSX is an amazingly well-designed OS and has been a pleasure to use since the time it ran only on NeXT's black cubes, but it's not the source of all of Microsoft's ideas.
To be fair, they come up with some good ones from time to time too.
Bing is a good example. I cant stress enough how much I enjoy using that site, whether its the infinite scrolling image search, mouse over video preview, or even just the new picture everyday.