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Comment by tvon | Hacker News Reader

By all accounts Windows 7 is uncharacteristically polished and apparently already out-performs XP while being more stable than Vista.

I think Windows 7 will be a success, and Vista will be remembered much as Windows ME has been, as a short lived inferior product that nobody wanted.

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I'm not sure I agree with that parallel. ME was the end of a dead codeline, while a lot of what's good about 7 could not exist without Vista (example: the improved security model). Vista was just bitter medicine.

I think your opinion touches on a slightly deeper analysis than I intended. I'm only speaking about how it's use, acceptance and crappiness will be remembered, not the technological reasons behind it.

Once you change it to the old-style theme, remove the nag screens, and delete the junk that comes pre-installed on most comps, Vista is actually quite decent.

If MS had just shipped without the nag screens and with a lightweight desktop theme, I think the reception would have been very different. That's not to say that it's the best OS, but it could have been a business success.

The tiny effect of the UAC being enabled by default has, in my opinion, snowballed to destroy Microsoft's reputation and profits. A one bit difference in the OS will hurt their bottom line for years to come.

I think there's a bit more to it than that. For example they hurt themselves enormously by breaking the driver model. I have a bunch of useless devices sitting all around me right now for which there are no Vista drivers and never will be. For that reason alone I don't recommend Vista to any of my friends because I know they probably have printers, scanners, cameras, who-knows-what that is never going to work again if they install it.

snowballed to destroy Microsoft's reputation and profits. A one bit difference in the OS will hurt their bottom line for years to come.

Have you looked at MSFT's profits recently? http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar08/10k_fh_fin.html

If that's what happens to the company in one of the worst economies in decades, and they have an OS that has been repeatedly panned.... Wow. I wonder what the company is going to do when the economy does well.

> Once you change it to the old-style theme, remove the nag screens, and delete the junk that comes pre-installed on most comps, Vista is actually quite decent.

The background indexing was also a disaster. What an idea. Make my new computer useless for several days so that some searches that I'll never do will be faster.

>Once you change it to the old-style theme, remove the nag screens, and delete the junk that comes pre-installed on most comps, Vista is actually quite decent.

But decent compared to what? Windows 2000?

I have to agree... a friend of mine has been using the public beta and, after tinkering with it for a while, I found it to be a very functional, rather natural step for Windows.

By my account, Windows 7 hype is really annoying. They graft on a clone of Kicker and everyone swoons, wtf? There's no reason to believe it'll do any better than Vista that I've seen.

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