Windows 7: Vista-like hell or an OS heaven?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Monday, 18 August 2008

Page 2 of 4 The blog is being dedicated to the “audience of enthusiasts, bloggers, and those that are the most passionate about Windows”, with the promise that the blog will be opened up to a “two-way discussion about how we are making Windows 7.” The blog also explains that the Windows team continues to be “humbled” by the responsibility of creating Microsoft’s next major operating system, and explain that creating Windows has “all the challenges of every large scale software project—picking features, designing them, developing them, and delivering them with high quality.” Also acknowledged is the “added challenge of doing so for an extraordinarily diverse set of customers” – and while not explicitly mentioned, clearly the most extraordinarily diverse set of hardware available, too. However, given that Windows 7 is meant to be using the exact same hardware driver layer currently employed by Windows Vista, previous Microsoft disclosures on Windows 7 have assured users that the recurring driver nightmare experienced with all previous versions of Windows will not occur this time around in Windows 7, although the E7 blog posting makes no specific mention of this in its initial outing. Of course, there will be new features too – the “multi-touch” capabilities that have already been demonstrated will be an integral part of Windows 7 for those with multi-touch displays on the desktop monitors, notebook computers and other multi-touch Windows 7-powered devices to come. In addition, Steven Sinofsky’s previous work in bringing the Office 2007 “ribbon” to life is also meant to be an integral part of Windows 7, too, meaning the multi-touch and the ribbon will continue evolving the Windows graphical user interface ever further into a direction that is hopefully loved by users, instead of hated, as initially happened with some of Vista’s changes. We can also only hope that Microsoft finally decides to ensure that every single dialog box in Windows 7 is updated to be completely 100% consistent. Vista users (including myself) were aghast to discover that the “Add New Fonts” dialog box was still unchanged from its Windows 3.1 (or perhaps even Windows 3.0!) version. It was certainly one of the very first things I checked for which resulted in stunned amazement, even though it’s only a “little thing” - as they say, it’s the little things that count! Microsoft is also promising that it will listen to its customers and partners on the Windows 7 release. First up is the previously mentioned “open and honest, two way discussion”. Second comes “systematic learning from customers of all types”. Third is the planning with a “wide variety of customers and partners (PC makers, hardware developers, enterprise customers, developers, and more) since the start of the project.” Fourth is Microsoft’s “Customer Experience Improvement Program”, which you may have seen in Windows Vista, which Microsoft calls “telemetry”, along with usability studies and “more”. Microsoft promise the E7 blog will disclose “all the different ways we learn from customers and the marketplace that inform the release.” So, what about Microsoft's ginormous snafus in promising incredible new features only to have to drastically dump them? What's Microsoft's plan to ensure this never happens again? Please read on! << First page <   1 2 3 4 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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