Hands on preview of Windows 7: Hey, it looks surprisingly good | Hacker News Reader

Hands on preview of Windows 7: Hey, it looks surprisingly good

technologizer.com

30 pointstechnologizer27 comments

Remember when Longhorn had a whole new kernel, and WinFS, and was going to breathe new life into Windows?

In this case, nearly all of the changes are architecturally minor, and though this looks like a very nice Windows release, it largely looks that way precisely because it is not a radical reënvisioning of Windows à la Vista. What we have here is Vista 2.0, with the sucky parts removed, the good parts (yes, there were good parts) kept, and some new, surprisingly well-thought-out, but relatively small enhancements to replace some of the poor features. I am actually pretty confident Microsoft can deliver this one. If they're smart, they'll have a similar incremental improvement scheduled as Windows 8, and get on an OS X/Linux-style rapid release schedule.

Windows 7 is the new vista. :)

This does highlight a few more changes than the Ars Technica article, but it still looks very unimpressive. A slidebar setting for how often you to be notified about changes you made to your OS? Really? Is that a "can't live without" feature? Or even a mildly useful one?

Most of these are rip-offs of toolbar previews from Ubuntu, and Expose, smart folders, and file previews from OS X. These aren't original ideas.

Ooh, I like this part "Gadgets now sit directly on the desktop…which they could do even in Vista if you preferred." Wow, so they changed a setting's default value. I'm sold.

Bah, humbug. I read through the changes and thought they were a breath of fresh air for the dinosaur OS. Doesn't all good art borrow from a previous generation and add it's own spin?

We've learned that it isn't sweeping changes that make a gadget great, it's the subtle reconfiguration and simplification that does.

If Windows 7 can help give my parents a better experience on their computers, I'm all for it.

Subtle reconfiguration isn't always enough though. I'd love to see the Windows Control Panel cleaned up, for example. That would take a bigger overhaul to do properly.

On the flip side, where I agree with you, are subtle things that could be improved like removing all the nag screens they added to Vista. Unfortunately, many of the subtle changes in Vista were steps in the wrong direction, like moving the buttons around in IE7. What did that help? It just confuses users. At least some things, like adding extra protection against phishing, were a good thing.

You know it was redesigned in Vista. The default work image has it set to classic (I assume because some options are difficult/impossible? to find in the "new" view).

I actually prefer it. Some items are 2 clicks instead of 1, but it beats scanning/scrolling.

(Then again, I like the UAC, and it doesn't bother me that much. I keep it on, and I basically only see it when installing programs or configuration changes, which I have to sudo in ubuntu anyway...)

Hey, I just found another review on gizmodo:

http://gizmodo.com/5069661/windows-7-walkthrough-boot-video-...

More screenshots and more detailed explanations, including a notable change for connecting to wireless networks. Nice. From this, it actually looks like there are some pretty sweet and much needed improvements in here. Hopefully MS is finally "getting it" after all :)

You know what would be a better experience for my mother?

If she turned on her PC, and a browser appeared, instantly, and there were no other applications, OS updates, viruses, or anything like that to worry about. Just a browser, from which she can search, read, edit, print, and then turn off again.

I would have applauded OS notifications being an RSS feed. Well, not necessarily that exact feature, but some combination of "out of the box" thinking along with "embracing the way the world actually works instead of stuffing them into a windows box."

An RSS version would be cool. If you aggregated multiple machines, you could keep tabs on a whole office that way.

The way I interpreted their notifications was that they'd add it as some sort of daily or scheduled notification in the system, like a popup. I can't stand the existing popups they've added in Vista (warnings, etc) or many of the ones they had before (yes, I really do want to move that file to the recycle bin, thanks), so more notices just seems like a step in the wrong direction.

RSS though, great idea! :)

There are already protocols better designed for that sort of thing (think SNMP or Syslog).

RSS is really just an XML schema optimized content syndication - it just isn't the right tool for the job. Not too mention that you probably don't want your one central server polling 50,000 desktops for updated RSS feeds every hour.

Good point. A push-based tech would definitely be preferable there.

You know... smart folders have an equivalent in Vista as well. I'm pretty sure the new "libraries" thing is just a redesign and not an actual new feature.

While I'm at it, hasn't file previews been around since Win95?

The thing that torqued me off about Vista was my buying a 64 bit laptop and getting a 32 bit OS with it. Enter Fedora, and I've been flying since. I really don't give a crap about most of the "cool" stuff they have there...Hey, I have semi-transparent term windows if I want! (Now, that is cool...)

I don't understand this guy's rage against the tray. Almost every desktop system, be it OS X, KDE, Gnome, or XP has something similar. What would he prefer? A taskbar entry for wireless networks? No information at all?

He also comments that we are "finally" given options to control tray icons... he must not be too observant then, because starting in XP you could choose to always hide or always show icons, or leave them alone. (e.g. to tell your Antivirus to always hide until you expand, but make sure that your instant messaging app stays in view.)

Maybe its just me, but these new OS reviews and previews are always the most ignorant, half baked and opinionated pieces of tech journalism...

The tray is nowhere near configurable enough, and in many cases it relies on the app being polite enough to stay the hell out when you tell it to (many apps are not, in my experience). Notifications from the tray are the real bitch. When watching movies on the HTPC I built with Vista, it frequently interrupts the movie to tell me vitally important information like, "I'm going to check for new Logitech upgrades now!" "No upgrades available." Java does it, too. Infuriating.

Maybe there is a way to disable this crap, but I've been unable to figure it out. (But I can't work iTunes, either, so I could just be stupid.)

Unlike KDE, Gnome, OS X, etc, Windows' taskbar never shuts up. It always pops up annoying bubbles, makes clicking sounds, randomly shows and hides icons, and doesn't standardize the way you can add/remove icons.

OS X fails a bit in this area, too, as it's not intuitive to remove items from the menubar.

Hmm, maybe more people agree with this guy than I thought. I have used all of the windowing systems I mentioned, and I vastly prefer being able to see open windows, with the few things that need to run in the background being tucked away in the tray. The OS X dock just seems wierd to me, in terms of being able to quickly access open windows and to get a good idea what is running on your system.

oh the tray. I hate the friggin tray on windows. All the annoying crapware is there like anti-virus and what have you. At least on os x and linux you put good programs there like dropbox, and things. I imagine that is what they are changing it to.

the system tray on windows is the annoyance that it is for one huge reason: There is no other (decent) way to have a windowless app that can be interacted with. Because, there is no application list (aside from ctrl+alt+delete). I really think that Windows needs to move beyond windows as the highest level of organisation and allow the user to work with apps directly. I cannot see myself willingly using Windows until this is the case.

OSX for example: The dock is said list, and it performs the bulk of what the system tray ends up doing. the menu bar utilities on OS X perform what the system tray was intended to do.

So, how many people run windows today? I would've thought that most of the hacker community would be on OSX, Linux, or another *nix.

Meh. It's an operating system... How exciting can an o/s get these days.

You fail at hacker, friend. OS wars are just getting warmed up.

In what way? What innovation is going on in the O/S world? What has changed radically over the last 5 years?

I used to care about the O/S, when you had little choice, when redhat was this small little sapling with a ton of things to do to get to windows. When macs were this weird other world that wasn't so unixy. When windows 95 came out and suddenly this whole new world opened up.

In those days, the O/S was the platform. Now, it's probably more important what browser you use than what O/S you use for most people.

But we're past all that now, an O/S is an O/S - there are a ton to choose from, they all do pretty much the same thing, and work the same(ish).

Now, the main aim for an O/S is to stay the heck out of the way IMHO.

There is A LOT of innovation going on in the O/S. Depressingly, not a lot of that truly revolutionary work is going on in the commercial/productized OS world.

Sun is doing great stuff with ZFS. Microsoft Research's Singularity is absolutely brilliant. Apple and Google are pushing mobile operating systems further than ever. I'm sure others could cite many more examples.

Let me know when they actually make some usability breakthroughs instead of slapping more translucency on the widgets and throwing more things to read on dialogs.

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