Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 [Archive]

kasakka

Mar 21, 2009, 06:35 PM

Snow Leopard is more about overhauling the stuff behind-the-scenes whereas Win7 is more about improving the user experience and based on the betas it succeeds in this really well.

The new taskbar is far better than the old one and also superior to the OSX's Dock. It packs tons of useful functionality into it. Likewise for the first time ever the Windows file browser is actually rather nice to use, as are other aspects of the OS. I've got both OSX (Leopard) and Win7 beta installed on my PC and primarily use Win7. From OSX I only miss better keyboard shortcuts and easier program install/uninstall when I'm using Win7.

Win7 also runs faster than OSX. It boots slightly faster and overall seems a bit quicker. Not that you really notice it in real use.

I really hope in Snow Leopard they also overhaul things like the poor mouse acceleration that makes OSX feel more sluggish than it should be, depending on what manufacturer's mouse you're using. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple throws in a bunch of small new user interface improvements too because it's hard to sell a new OS version to customers based on things that the typical user doesn't have to worry about at all.

Goona

Mar 21, 2009, 08:52 PM

Windows users will be happy with anything that improves over that wreck called Vista.

MAG.

Mar 21, 2009, 08:54 PM

Windows users will be happy with anything that improves over that wreck called Vista.

I actually like Vista. I believe it's a great OS and it's pretty stable. Never had any crash/BSOD.

Goona

Mar 21, 2009, 09:07 PM

I actually like Vista. I believe it's a great OS and it's pretty stable. Never had any crash/BSOD.Have Vista, it's slow, always crashing, so I use XP on my laptop.

Nuc

Mar 21, 2009, 09:11 PM

Will it? It's noticeably faster than Windows Vista and, in some tests, it has been even faster then Leopard to load...
Seriously?? Who restarts or turns off their computers anymore unless there is an update. Who cares about startup time...leave it on 24/7 or in sleep.

Nuc

jake.f

Mar 21, 2009, 09:22 PM

Have Vista, it's slow, always crashing, so I use XP on my laptop.

Thats strange. I have vista and it crashes far less then my experiences with leopard. But i cant be right can i. Must just be what im doing because leopard never has a single issue does it.

EDIT: Actually ive never had a problem with vista.

flopticalcube

Mar 21, 2009, 09:27 PM

Seriously?? Who restarts or turns off their computers anymore unless there is an update. Who cares about startup time...leave it on 24/7 or in sleep.

Nuc
Laptops.

Cassie

Mar 21, 2009, 09:27 PM

Thats strange. I have vista and it crashes far less then my experiences with leopard. But i cant be right can i. Must just be what im doing because leopard never has a single issue does it.

EDIT: Actually ive never had a problem with vista.

OS stability depends on two things: the hardware it's running on, and the user's actions. Some hardware doesn't like certain OS's, and will not play nice with it. But a lot more often, the programs and settings the user, well, uses, is the the culprit. Some programs are less stable then others. (Although settings also have a lot to do with the hardware's capabilities.)

Laptops.
Yep. My iBook goes off every night for a number of reasons.

MAG.

Mar 21, 2009, 09:32 PM

Have Vista, it's slow, always crashing, so I use XP on my laptop.

The only problem with Vista is it's resource intensive. It's slow because you don't have enough RAM. And it's crashing because you don't have the right drivers.

iMacmatician

Mar 21, 2009, 09:35 PM

Laptops.I put my laptop to sleep.

flopticalcube

Mar 21, 2009, 09:36 PM

I put my laptop to sleep.
So do I but when its traveling, like in a backpack, I like to turn it off.

jaw04005

Mar 21, 2009, 09:49 PM

Did I miss the memo? What are the huge advances in Snow Leopard? All we've heard from Apple is what's available on the page below, and that's not much.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/

The jury is still out on Snow Leopard.

McGiord

Mar 21, 2009, 09:52 PM

Any fair video reviews or links that you guys can share here? I have no clue about Windows 7. Will it run on the current Intel Macs?

MAG.

Mar 21, 2009, 09:55 PM

Any fair video reviews or links that you guys can share here? I have no clue about Windows 7. Will it run on the current Intel Macs?

It should run not only on current Macs but even older PCs with Pentium 4 CPUs. I have it installed on my old desktop and MSI Wind netbook. It's much smoother than XP.

skaertus

Mar 21, 2009, 10:05 PM

Any fair video reviews or links that you guys can share here? I have no clue about Windows 7. Will it run on the current Intel Macs?

Yes, Windows 7 will run on Intel Macs. I run Windows 7 on VMWare Fusion and it performs better than Vista (although it is much slower than XP). I liked the interface overhaul. One thing I miss, however, is Spaces+Exposé, which is something that makes MacOS interface so good.

Windows 7 is much faster to load than Vista. And Microsoft has reportedly made it much faster to load than the beta version. But Snow Leopard will also be faster than Leopard. Will Snow Leopard beat Windows 7 in boot times?

zap2

Mar 21, 2009, 10:07 PM

I have 7 installed on my Mini, it runs quite well(Mini is a CD 1.66Ghz with 1.25GB RAM, nothing great)...still I prefer OS X, but 7 looks a decent upgrade

MAG.

Mar 21, 2009, 10:20 PM

Will Snow Leopard beat Windows 7 in boot times? Well, if one of them beats the other by booting I doubt it going to be by far much. Remember the booting process doesn't make any of them a better OS. Yes, it's nice to have an OS that boots in 10 seconds, but lets not forget its security, stability and features. Also, lets not forget what the operating system needs to start up (services), what drivers it's using, and what hardware it's running on. I know you can run both on a Mac, but Macs don't necessary have the best hardware to work on Windows because Apple doesn't always provide you with the best drivers as it does for its own OS (that is if you want to test them on the same machine).

Infrared

Mar 22, 2009, 03:51 PM

Based on the beta versions, which one is superior in which area? How they will compare?

Windows 7 will be less buggy on release. Apple doesn't
beta test as thorougly as Microsoft.

michael.lauden

Mar 22, 2009, 04:00 PM

it's kinda hard to compare a complete OS overhaul + redesign (ala Windows 7)

to more of a OS upgrade like Snow Leopard will be.

M$ need's to beta test because it's hard to KNOW what's going to happen if they add all these 'new' features in.

i personally don't think there is any comparison to Leopard right now - especially from something as feeble as Vista, or 7. So i personally can't imagine how much Snow Leopard will slaughter!

EmperorDarius

Mar 22, 2009, 04:13 PM

skaertus

Mar 22, 2009, 04:52 PM

It's simple.

Windows 7 is no more than Vista, with a little different design, some removed programs, and which basically went back to Xp's speed, and improved it a bit. So it's just a little faster than Xp, (And I don't care about what tests say, I'm talking about my experience).

Well, Steve Ballmer himself said that Windows 7 was Vista, but "a lot better".

So, Snow Leopard will make Leopard even faster than it is. Which means, it'll certainly be faster than Windows 7.

That's what I want to see, but I've found no concrete data on it yet. There are videos on YouTube comparing the boot speed of Windows 7 beta and Leopard. Sometimes 7 gets the edge, and sometimes it's Leopard.

Microsoft has reportedly made Windows 7 even faster than the beta version shows. But Apple has also tweaked Snow Leopard so it's faster than Leopard. I'm curious about this thing now.

That's all about speed.

And about all the other things, well, it's just like the previous versions:

Speed/Performance: Snow Leopard.
Security: Snow Leopard.
Stability: Snow Leopard.
Design: ?, we still don't know how the Snow Leopard design will be. Windows 7's design is basically identical to Vista, so I'd give this to Snow Leopard.
Best 64-bit system: Snow Leopard.

Windows 7 has some great new things, such as a redesigned task bar. Eye candy is basically the same, but there are improvements on the usability area, which really makes a difference. It will probably be far more stable and secure than Windows Vista.

So for what is Windows better? For...em...nothing, except if you're looking for the cheapest computer you'll use only and only for games, nothing too serious.

Windows is definitely better to play games. And also on the enterprise market, in which Apple is just crawling. I have also to say that Microsoft Office for Windows is better than the Mac version... but then is Microsoft's fault!

Oh, and you can customize Windows, there are thousands of horrible, disgusting themes you can find online!

Have fun.

True. I don't buy the whole "customization" stuff. There are designers at both Apple and Microsoft whose job is to make great standard themes. Why do people want to exchange that great stuff for the amateurish, disgusting things they find on the Internet?!?

And because it's unstable. And slow. And easily infectable.

I'd rather say that Windows gets slow and unstable over time. It's registry's fault.

BS, it naturally gets slower the more you use it, the more you install program. Just like any other Windows version.

Registry, DLLs... that's what makes Windows inferior to MacOS.

BS again. It's because of the instability. The registry. Partial uninstallations. Malware. It's not just about drivers.

Registry, DLLs, all over again. Thousands of files, a maze of files spread over the hard disk, all awaiting to get corrupt...

michael.lauden

Mar 22, 2009, 04:55 PM

i don't think any argument can beat that last post

bravo +1! actually... +2. for real

gollum

Mar 22, 2009, 06:58 PM

Windows 7 will be less buggy on release. Apple doesn't
beta test as thorougly as Microsoft.

Right, they just charge for it (Vista).

Infrared

Mar 22, 2009, 07:03 PM

So, Snow Leopard will make Leopard even faster than it is. Which means, it'll certainly be faster than Windows 7.

Faster at what precisely?

Tallest Skil

Mar 22, 2009, 07:07 PM

That's what I want to see, but I've found no concrete data on it yet. There are videos on YouTube comparing the boot speed of Windows 7 beta and Leopard. Sometimes 7 gets the edge, and sometimes it's Leopard.

Thereby covering every aspect of usability of the OS and ending the argument once and for all.

Microsoft has reportedly made Windows 7 even faster than the beta version shows. But Apple has also tweaked Snow Leopard so it's faster than Leopard. I'm curious about this thing now.

Faster at what?

I'd rather say that Windows gets slow and unstable over time. It's registry's fault.

Truth. Screw the Registry.

i don't think any argument can beat that last post

bravo +1! actually... +2. for real

-2 to counteract this. No points were made.

Infrared

Mar 22, 2009, 07:12 PM

Right, they just charge for it (Vista).

Right, like Apple did for Leopard, which has had hundreds of
megabytes of bug fixes since release.

Beerfloat

Mar 22, 2009, 07:24 PM

Windows 7 has some great new things, such as a redesigned task bar. Eye candy is basically the same, but there are improvements on the usability area, which really makes a difference. It will probably be far more stable and secure than Windows Vista.

Stability and security aren't really problems with Vista. Top heaviness and an annoying UI however..

Registry, DLLs, all over again. Thousands of files, a maze of files spread over the hard disk, all awaiting to get corrupt...

In all fairness, Unix has plenty of shared library incompatibilities too, and the registry is actually meant to fix the problem of config files being all over the place.. not that it succeeds as an improvement.

In general though if someone really insists on making a troll thread here they should at least be required to put some effort into the opening post :rolleyes:

geoffsee

Mar 22, 2009, 09:49 PM

POINT in case is that Mac is better:)
Windows 7 is really glitchy sometimes and OSX SL is supposedly going to support up to (theoretically) like 2 TB of RAM. Could you imagine?

sharp65

Mar 22, 2009, 11:02 PM

POINT in case is that Mac is better:)
Windows 7 is really glitchy sometimes and OSX SL is supposedly going to support up to (theoretically) like 2 TB of RAM. Could you imagine?

Really? Huh, I didn't know the final code was released yet. I guess your living several months ahead of the rest of us.

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 04:08 AM

Faster at what precisely?

Generally, you know, browsing files, multi tasking etc.

Stability and security aren't really problems with Vista. Top heaviness and an annoying UI however..

Actually they ARE, they're the main problems. Vista is like a Beta. Or better, an early Alpha of what Windows 7 promises to be. And everyone who's using it is a beta tester, non-volunteer, but still beta tester.

Stridder44

Mar 23, 2009, 04:40 AM

L0s7man

Mar 23, 2009, 05:25 AM

Windows 7 is shaping to be decent OS. With sort of KDE-ish look and feel (which is good, I think) and maybe some improvements under the hood. There is some trouble brewing though - I've read on ArsTechnica that, for example, new design for UAC is rather stupid and makes the whole thing incredibly annoying and, ultimately, pointless.

But I've heard that W7 is faster than XP. So I might use it for games ;-)

As for SL, it'll be evolution of Leopard. I don't know why people are hoping for miracles (so it seems). Also, the addition of OpenCL for GPU computation that's a big thing, but only for *very few* that can benefit from that.

OpenCL is important, because it's the first OS-specific rather than hardware-specific (like CUDA) approach. This is important for Apple. If they encourage dev's to write software using OpenCL (like Photoshop, video editing, Mathematica, etc.) then they can come way ahead of Windows in benchmarks.

And it would be really hard for Microsoft do the same (much more hardware to support).

As for OS itself, there are no operating system specific tasks that can benefit from using GPU computation. To make OS feel sleek you have to reduce latency. And offloading tasks to GPU gives you lot of number-crunching power, but introduces latency because you have to pipe data to the GPU and back (i.e. transfer it twice).

So, ultimately (and I mean after it comes out + few months), Snow Leopard will be a winner for professional solutions.

skaertus

Mar 23, 2009, 05:50 AM

OpenCL is important, because it's the first OS-specific rather than hardware-specific (like CUDA) approach. This is important for Apple. If they encourage dev's to write software using OpenCL (like Photoshop, video editing, Mathematica, etc.) then they can come way ahead of Windows in benchmarks.

And it would be really hard for Microsoft do the same (much more hardware to support).

However, DirectX 11, which will be implemented in Windows 7, will also support GPGPU. I have no idea on which one will be more powerful than the other, though. Perhaps this will repeat the DirectX vs. OpenGL war...

Saladinos

Mar 23, 2009, 06:12 AM

Truth. Screw the Registry.

They've tried to ditch the registry lots of times. The problem is that if you try to remake the registry whilst retaining backwards compatibility, you end up with something almost exactly like the registry.

Apple and MS have taken opposite approaches.

Apple:
Front-End: Leopard
Back-End: Snow Leopard

Microsoft:
Back-End: Vista
Front-End: Windows 7

Apple revamped the UI and applications (with Leopard) before going to the lower levels, which is what SL will do. Microsoft made lots of changes to the lower levels with Vista, and is only now making use of it all with front-end stuff (W7). At the end of it, they're both going to have relatively fresh back and front ends.

Beerfloat

Mar 23, 2009, 06:16 AM

Actually they ARE, they're the main problems. Vista is like a Beta. Or better, an early Alpha of what Windows 7 promises to be. And everyone who's using it is a beta tester, non-volunteer, but still beta tester.

Don't be silly

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 07:41 AM

Don't be silly

I'm not being silly. If you look at it, even Xp is more stable than Vista. Even Windows 7 betas are better than Vista.

That's what Microsoft has done. Use you. All of you, you're all just beta testers, and still try to deny it.

steveza

Mar 23, 2009, 08:44 AM

That's what Microsoft has done. Use you. All of you, you're all just beta testers, and still try to deny it.I don't deny it but at the same time which IT/computer/software company doesn't use it's customers as beta testers. Products are released to meet marketing timescales in many cases and the technicalities are sorted out in release 2.0 (or 3.0 in the case of the iPhone :) ) or Service Pack 1 or update 10.6.1.

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 08:56 AM

I don't deny it but at the same time which IT/computer/software company doesn't use it's customers as beta testers. Products are released to meet marketing timescales in many cases and the technicalities are sorted out in release 2.0 (or 3.0 in the case of the iPhone :) ) or Service Pack 1 or update 10.6.1.

That's true, however it's not the same thing when the technicalities are actually sorted out in the next major version of the OS (IF the next major version is going to sort them out, it's still hard to say, until the final version comes out).

Beerfloat

Mar 23, 2009, 09:07 AM

I'm not being silly. If you look at it, even Xp is more stable than Vista. Even Windows 7 betas are better than Vista.

Proof plz

barkmonster

Mar 23, 2009, 09:14 AM

Don't be silly

I couldn't agree with you more!

OS X was basically a public beta for quite some time after 10.0 came out at first.

I remember reading all the tales of slow performance and lousy interface response till Quartz Extreme came out to improve things and how much did some mac owners end up paying for several full versions of OS X before it was in the state it was from TIGER onwards?

I didn't even want to risk moving from OS9 till Tiger was out and I'd seen how Pro tools LE was performing under OS X and we've only had 1 major OS update since then too.

jaw04005

Mar 23, 2009, 09:14 AM

That's what Microsoft has done. Use you. All of you, you're all just beta testers, and still try to deny it.

How soon we forget the myriad of problems with Leopard once it shipped including Back to My Mac not working, missing Time Machine backups, disappearing files when transferring over network drives, AirPort problems and major video card problems including scrambled video (particularly the August 07 iMac).

dwsolberg

Mar 23, 2009, 10:15 AM

I'm not fond of Microsoft, either, but Windows 7 is definitely a big step in the right direction. I expect that Windows 7 will probably hurt Apple's sales because Windows users will finally have a decent OS to use.

Snow Leopard is a different beast. A lot of people haven't thought about it, but processors of the future will have tens then hundreds of cores (according to Intel). Snow Leopard is about getting ready for this huge change that has already started (most computers now have two cores, and bigger computers sometimes have eight cores). It takes years for programmers (especially the likes of Adobe and other big names) to adapt their programs to take advantage of these OS hooks. In the next 10 years, as our computers get 4 then 8 then 16 then 32 cores and more, the current work with Snow Leopard will make Apple computers MUCH faster than any comparable Windows computer. I think we'll already start noticing this when Snow Leopard comes out, but the big thing is Apple's positioning for the future.

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 10:49 AM

Proof plz

Ehm...try by yourself, that's all the proof I can give. If you're intelligent enough, you'll realize that. Otherwise...:rolleyes:

I couldn't agree with you more!

OS X was basically a public beta for quite some time after 10.0 came out at first.

I remember reading all the tales of slow performance and lousy interface response till Quartz Extreme came out to improve things and how much did some mac owners end up paying for several full versions of OS X before it was in the state it was from TIGER onwards?

I didn't even want to risk moving from OS9 till Tiger was out and I'd seen how Pro tools LE was performing under OS X and we've only had 1 major OS update since then too.

Ehm, sure, but OS 10.0 was a completely new OS, that really was like a BETA. However, things have changed nowadays, don't you think?

How soon we forget the myriad of problems with Leopard once it shipped including Back to My Mac not working, missing Time Machine backups, disappearing files when transferring over network drives, AirPort problems and major video card problems including scrambled video (particularly the August 07 iMac).

Most of the issues I know have been fixed with the early updates.
Windows Service Packs, they do fix problems of course, by really they do not change things by much, they don't dramatically fix the stability of the OS. Actually, most of the times installing them itself is a problem (either by updating or using the standalone installer).

steveza

Mar 23, 2009, 11:15 AM

Windows Service Packs, they do fix problems of course, by really they do not change things by much, they don't dramatically fix the stability of the OS. Actually, most of the times installing them itself is a problem (either by updating or using the standalone installer).This is generally the case except for 2 that I can remember XP SP2 and Vista SP1. XP SP2 added a number of security features and improved others that were there already - this improved the general security and stability of XP. Vista SP1 was a major improvement on the original release but to gain full benefit you have to do a clean install with SP1. Vista SP2 will have many of the improvements that W7 includes so that too will be a major step up I think.

Beerfloat

Mar 23, 2009, 11:20 AM

Ehm...try by yourself, that's all the proof I can give. If you're intelligent enough, you'll realize that. Otherwise...:rolleyes:

You assert that Vista is less stable and secure than both XP and the Windows 7 beta, so surely you should be able to back that up. Or are you just blowing smoke?

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 11:52 AM

You assert that Vista is less stable and secure than both XP and the Windows 7 beta, so surely you should be able to back that up. Or are you just blowing smoke?

No, not less secure, but less stable.
How am I supposed to back it up? Should I make a video of the three systems doing stuff or what? Or maybe get some random quote by some random guy from the internet/magazine/blog?

You can't prove these kind of things that way, you have to try by yourself by using them for a considerable amount of time.

MAG.

Mar 23, 2009, 12:24 PM

No, not less secure, but less stable.
How am I supposed to back it up? Should I make a video of the three systems doing stuff or what? Or maybe get some random quote by some random guy from the internet/magazine/blog?

You can't prove these kind of things that way, you have to try by yourself by using them for a considerable amount of time.

Weird... I've never had a single crash on Vista. I have it on my M1730 and M17 with no problems at all. Same thing goes to Leopard on my Macs. They both work well for me.

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 02:12 PM

Weird... I've never had a single crash on Vista. I have it on my M1730 and M17 with no problems at all. Same thing goes to Leopard on my Macs. They both work well for me.

Try installing/uninstalling a lot of programs, doing a lot of work with a lot of programs, perhaps some basic multitasking and you'll see how 'stable' it is.

Infrared

Mar 23, 2009, 04:54 PM

Snow Leopard is a different beast. A lot of people haven't thought about it, but processors of the future will have tens then hundreds of cores (according to Intel). Snow Leopard is about getting ready for this huge change that has already started (most computers now have two cores, and bigger computers sometimes have eight cores). It takes years for programmers (especially the likes of Adobe and other big names) to adapt their programs to take advantage of these OS hooks.

But will Adobe will use them at all? There's lot of frameworks and so
on they could have used in the past. They didn't.

As far as possible they will want to maintain a common OS-neutral
codebase. Anything that means substantial rewriting for their OS X
versions alone simply isn't going to happen.

Infrared

Mar 23, 2009, 04:57 PM

Ehm, sure, but OS 10.0 was a completely new OS, that really was like a BETA.

Ever heard of this? --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

That's what Apple had to buy in because they were incapable
of writing their own OS. OS 10.0 wasn't a completely new OS.
It was derived from that (with substantial changes, of course).

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 05:02 PM

Ever heard of this? --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

That's what Apple had to buy in because they were incapable
of writing their own OS. OS 10.0 wasn't a completely new OS.
It was derived from that (with substantial changes, of course).

It was still Steve Jobs' creation, wasn't it? :D
Anyway, it was still they're first try at a new version of their OS, and doesn't change the fact that nowadays OS X is much more stable.

FX120

Mar 23, 2009, 05:15 PM

Try installing/uninstalling a lot of programs, doing a lot of work with a lot of programs, perhaps some basic multitasking and you'll see how 'stable' it is.

Please. My main workstation has a current uptime of 49 days and 23 hours, running Vista Buisiness.

http://anodizedblue.net/images/uptime.jpg
Sorry for the sucky widget, it doesn't do the greatest job, but you get the point.

Last reboot was from updates, I've never had a complete system crash in the two years I've been using it.

Infrared

Mar 23, 2009, 05:17 PM

It was still Steve Jobs' creation, wasn't it? :D

If you mean he wrote it, no.

If you mean he brought in people to hack together existing and new code, yes.

Anyway, it was still they're first try at a new version of their OS [...]

No, it wasn't their first try.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)

EmperorDarius

Mar 23, 2009, 05:22 PM

Please. My main workstation has a current uptime of 49 days and 23 hours, running Vista Buisiness.

http://anodizedblue.net/images/uptime.jpg
Sorry for the sucky widget, it doesn't do the greatest job, but you get the point.

Last reboot was from updates, I've never had a complete system crash in the two years I've been using it.

So what? I would do the things i mentioned before on the first day of use, time doesn't really prove anything.

No, it wasn't their first try.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)

Oh, does it really matter? It was the first Mac OS 10 version, so of course it'd be buggy. And we're talking about a 2001 OS versus a 2007 OS. So it'd be better to compare Tiger/Leopard to Vista, which are much more stable.

Infrared

Mar 23, 2009, 05:26 PM

Last reboot was from updates, I've never had a complete system crash in the two years I've been using it.

Vista is pretty stable. It can even gracefully recover from a graphics driver
crash, something which neither XP nor OS X can do.

MAG.

Mar 23, 2009, 05:26 PM

Try installing/uninstalling a lot of programs, doing a lot of work with a lot of programs, perhaps some basic multitasking and you'll see how 'stable' it is.

I do all the heavy tasking on these systems. I am currently using around 3GB of RAM on my Dell XPS m1730 (total 8). You should see how my desktop looks now :D I currently have around 30 Firefox tabs open, 10 in Chrome, iTunes, Hammer (Source SDK), Steam and Left 4 Dead (minimized, but I keep it running), and there is no sign of lag/slow down/crash. It's simply very stable. BTW, I only reinstalled Vista when I got my laptop from Dell (to remove all the bloatware), it's been a year and 3 months, and I haven't had to reinstall it again so far.

FX120

Mar 23, 2009, 05:43 PM

So what? I would do the things i mentioned before on the first day of use, time doesn't really prove anything.
Except that I do all of those things on a daily basis, and have done so for the last two years, and my system is still stable. Seems contrary to your statements that it would be unstable, crash prone, and slow, which it is none of.

Stridder44

Mar 23, 2009, 06:35 PM

Try installing/uninstalling a lot of programs, doing a lot of work with a lot of programs, perhaps some basic multitasking and you'll see how 'stable' it is.

That's such BS it's not even funny. And programs not uninstalling properly is not Vista's fault, that would be the result of a crappy developer/bad coding.

And basic or advanced multitasking also works perfectly fine, and is very stable. Any enthusiast would agree with this. Please take your 2006 anti-Vista bias back to the trash where it belongs.

Here's some early Win7 benchmarks (http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3857&page=3). And here's the full article (http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3857).

Anuba

Mar 23, 2009, 08:32 PM

Try installing/uninstalling a lot of programs, doing a lot of work with a lot of programs, perhaps some basic multitasking and you'll see how 'stable' it is.
Your claims are getting more and more ridiculous by the minute, and I'm starting to suspect you haven't been near a Windows PC since the Win98 days. Just stereotypical, sweeping PC-hater clichées about instability, malware and the Windows registry, without any concrete examples to back it up. Malware? You don't get malware unless you're a clueless 13-year old who installs everything that moves, clicks "Yes" in every popup dialog on Eastern European porn sites and downloads tons of apps and games with embedded malware from Pirate Bay. I've never used AntiVirus software regularly in my 17 years with Windows. Once every 6 months or so I install an AntiVirus app and do a thorough scan, but I barely see the point anymore as they always come up empty handed.

Do you actually believe there's any PC user who doesn't do basic multitasking? I use Vista for at least 8 hours a day and I usually have 6-7 apps running a typical snapshot of my screen on any given day would have Photoshop, Flash, Excel, Outlook, iTunes or Windows Media Player, IE or Safari, and sometimes audio applications like Cubase, Wavelab and Reason. I did the same in XP, Win2K and Win98, at a time when basic multitasking was virtually a no-go on Macs because they didn't even have dynamic RAM allocation before OS X, you had to pre-allocate RAM for each application.

As for uninstalling/installing programs, you're on thin ice if you're going to defend the Mac in that respect. It used to be that you'd simply drag Mac apps to the Trash and they'd be "uninstalled", but nowadays app installations spew crap all over a Mac and if they weren't nice enough to provide you with an uninstallation script, or you weren't careful enough to save it, you have to go hunting for residual files in weird corners of the system. Once I installed a driver and software for a Yamaha firewire audio device on my iMac, and when I decided I was better off moving the Yamaha 01X back to the PC and uninstalled the driver using the provided script, I got the Leopard BSOD. I looked for hours until I finally found some miniscule MIDI settings file that Yamaha had missed in their script. And good luck trying to get rid of Logitech Control Center, should you ever have the guts to install that on a Mac. OS X is in sore need of a unified installation process and some sort of install/uninstall applet.

OS X is fine. Vista is fine. They're both stable, with the occasional odd crash once a week or so. They both have their pros and cons. Vista is ugly to look at with all its dazzling colors in the wrong places, OS X has networking capabilities from the 1950's. Vista bothers the hard disk too much with all its incessant background processes like SuperFetch, Defender and Defrag, OS X has a bloody annoying and primitive Software Update applet that always wants to reboot the system for every miniscule little "Camera Raw" update I don't want or need. None of this will stop me from getting my work done. Just give me the right apps installed on either platform and I'll get to work.

tubbymac

Mar 23, 2009, 08:35 PM

About the only thing I agree with the Apple fanboys on is that the Windows registry is complete and utter garbage.

Believe it or not there are some of us that have both a rock solid OSX setup and a rock solid Vista setup. My file server is running on a cheapo Dell Vista box and hasn't been rebooted in YEARS. The only time it reboots is when it does an autoupdate that requires a reboot, and most updates don't require this - just like the Apple software updates.

I plan to use Snow Leopard on my Apple machines and Windows 7 on my PC machines when both are released. Both have areas where one beats the other. If you think one completely dominates the other in all areas you're ignorant, or clueless, or both.

Anuba

Mar 23, 2009, 09:01 PM

So far I'm really liking what I see in Win7. A long standing wish of mine has been that they go back and update some ancient things that have been with the system since, I dunno, Win95; the Calculator, WordPad and the abysmal Font management. I didn't think they'd actually ever get around to it, but both those apps have been refreshed and the font management is almost as good as on Mac, and 10 times better than in Vista.

I also like the fact that Win7 reads AAC and DivX files natively. The new Windows Media Player is much better than the disaster that shipped with Vista (WMP11). The taskbar and window management improvements are great for the most part, though I'm not digging the default layout with the bigass icons all aligned to the left, or how they jump around all over the taskbar if you enable text labels. Libraries is great too, but it's ridiculous that you can't include network shares in them (because those can't be indexed, as if I would care about that).

What I'd like to see in Snow Leopard, umm... other than the promised performance improvements there are some aspects of OS X that feel really dated. One is QuickTime, but it looks like they're taking care of that and implementing an interface similar to WMP12 with controls that overlap the video area and fade away when you release the mouse. Another thing in OS X that feels miserably dated is the Software Updates applet. Everything, from the stupid and overly enthusiastic globe (WOHOO! I FOUND AN UPDATE!!! I FOUND AN UPDATE!!! STOP EVERYTHING YOU'RE DOING AND DOWNLOAD THIS USELESS CAMERA RAW UPDATE NOW!!!) to the fact that it wants to reboot the system for nearly everything. I'd prefer it to be more like Windows Update in Vista/Win7, which installs everything silently except once every two months or so when it wants to reboot. And, more importantly, shows you a complete back log of everything you've installed. And finally, I'd like to be able to map a network drive permanently with extreme ease. Something is very wrong when a thing is ten times easier and more intuitive to do in Windows than in OS X.

Oh, and I'd like BootCamp to actually work. As long as it doesn't do fan control in Windows, and cripples firewire performance so much it's unusable for audio devices in Windows due to a bug in Apple's keyboard driver (sounds unrelated, but it's true), I'm holding off my purchase of one Mac Pro and one MacBook Pro 17"... if it doesn't handle Win7 like the best of PCs, I'm getting actual PCs...

tubbymac

Mar 23, 2009, 09:32 PM

I also like the fact that Win7 reads AAC and DivX files natively.

Oh, and I'd like BootCamp to actually work. As long as it doesn't do fan control in Windows, and cripples firewire performance so much it's unusable for audio devices in Windows due to a bug in Apple's keyboard driver (sounds unrelated, but it's true), I'm holding off my purchase of one Mac Pro and one MacBook Pro 17"... if it doesn't handle Win7 like the best of PCs, I'm getting actual PCs...

I like how Win7 reads AAC/DivX/Xvid without additional codecs but am irritated by how QuickTunes AAC Plus audio files don't get automatically listed under the network. By default .m4a files aren't "media shared" until you go mucking about the registry to change the settings.

I've given up hope on bootcamp myself. I actually got it to run pretty well with all the great advice and tips I found on this forum - even worked around the keyboard driver problem you mentioned. But I couldn't find a way to get around the absolute garbage that Apple has written for a trackpad driver and couldn't get around the 2 hours of battery life.

So I bought another PC machine to run Windows on (high end Dell) and am now much happier. My Apple machines run OSX and my PC machines run Windows or Linux. Instead of 2 hours of battery life on my Macbook bootcamp I'm pushing 6.5 to 9 hours on my PC notebook with Windows 7 and actually have a working trackpad with good drivers. Until Apple can give me the same experience Windows won't be touching my Macbook again (which is probably what they wanted, lol).

Anuba

Mar 23, 2009, 09:53 PM

So I bought another PC machine to run Windows on (high end Dell) and am now much happier. My Apple machines run OSX and my PC machines run Windows or Linux. Instead of 2 hours of battery life on my Macbook bootcamp I'm pushing 6.5 to 9 hours on my PC notebook with Windows 7 and actually have a working trackpad with good drivers. Until Apple can give me the same experience Windows won't be touching my Macbook again (which is probably what they wanted, lol).
Argh... the more I think about it, the more torn I am.

I have a Dell Precision M65 notebook and an XPS700 desktop, both up for replacement. I thought hey, why not go with a MBP 17" and a Mac Pro and use BootCamp. Then I noticed how pricey they are, and decided I'd go with Dell again. Then I started looking at Dell's notebooks and realized that A) the MBP 17" isn't so pricey after all next to a maxed-out Dell, B) the Precision 17" is heee-uge, like 2½ MBPs stacked, and in typical Dell fashion they have a lot of worthless ancient ports like VGA (is it 1992 already?). So it was back to Macs again. Then I found out all this crap about BootCamp not being up to scratch. Back to Dells. Then I read that the Dell desktop I had picked out has an obscene amount of fan noise (a killer for audio work). Back to Macs. Then I found out how much AppleCare sucks, that they won't stop by my house to do repairs like Dell does (for less money, too). Back to Dells. No wait, dammit, I want a Mac. But what about all my glorious Logitech peripherals, some of which are PC-only? OK, back to Dell. Or no, I want a Mac. No wait... the MBP has that godawful shrunken keyboard I have on my wireless Apple keyboard for my iMac. They've made the cursor keys so incredibly small I always keep missing them (hey, they're only the most important keys of all so let's make them microscopic just to fit all keys into a tidy rectangle). OK, this is it, I'm going Dell. No wait... I just remembered all the crap I went through with getting firewire audio to work on my desktop PC, then I tried it on my iMac and the performance was wicked (gotta love CoreAudio)... OK, Macs. No. Dell. Mac. Dac. Mell. Bah.

Jpoon

Mar 23, 2009, 09:59 PM

It's simple.

Windows 7 is no more than Vista, with a little different design, some removed programs, and which basically went back to Xp's speed, and improved it a bit. So it's just a little faster than Xp, (And I don't care about what tests say, I'm talking about my experience).

So, Snow Leopard will make Leopard even faster than it is. Which means, it'll certainly be faster than Windows 7.

That's all about speed.

And about all the other things, well, it's just like the previous versions:

Speed/Performance: Snow Leopard.
Security: Snow Leopard.
Stability: Snow Leopard.
Design: ?, we still don't know how the Snow Leopard design will be. Windows 7's design is basically identical to Vista, so I'd give this to Snow Leopard.
Best 64-bit system: Snow Leopard.

So for what is Windows better? For...em...nothing, except if you're looking for the cheapest computer you'll use only and only for games, nothing too serious.

Oh, and you can customize Windows, there are thousands of horrible, disgusting themes you can find online!

Have fun.

And because it's unstable. And slow. And easily infectable.

BS, it naturally gets slower the more you use it, the more you install program. Just like any other Windows version.

BS again. It's because of the instability. The registry. Partial uninstallations. Malware. It's not just about drivers.

You're making these assumptions based on opinions. Granted, I believe Snow Leapord is going to probably have a better overall experience *or they'd lose a bit of business since Apple smeared Vista the past two years as their advertisement campaign.*

Just because we're on Macrumors doesn't mean we need to resort to opinionated arguments to prove that OS X on a Mac is a better overall experience that Windows 7. As I recall, Safari got hacked on a Macbook just as fast as IE as well as FireFox. That also has a lot to do with how the OS works. The fact that OS X is a small percentage of the overall personal computing pie, can be attributed to the lack of malware and viruses that affect Macintosh computers.

Please, just discuss the benefits, rather than making arguments about a beta build of a competing OS (which really controls most of the market and blah blah blah).

Jpoon

Mar 23, 2009, 10:01 PM

tubbymac

Mar 23, 2009, 10:10 PM

Stridder44

Mar 23, 2009, 10:25 PM

Anuba

Mar 23, 2009, 10:40 PM

Hah sounds similar to the back and forth I do between machines. I really tried to make bootcamp work. I absolutely love the design of my Macbook and no other machine by any other company comes close to how good this thing looks. But after months struggling to get around roadblocks in bootcamp that Apple threw up, I finally threw in the towel. It's just not worth the frustration, even for something as beautiful as this machine. Just to give you an idea of the difference. On my Macbook under bootcamp with my SSD I got about 2 hours of battery life and it took about a minute to boot. Switching over to my PC I get typically 6.5 hours and it takes 25 seconds to boot. Under bootcamp I had to download some wacky utilities and do an elevated command prompt to patch the Apple keyboard driver so that it was affinity locked to one CPU instead of two. Otherwise you get those latency issues you mentioned. On my PC I don't have to do any such nonsense.
That bad huh... that would actually settle it for me, if it weren't for the hope that maybe they've improved BootCamp for Snow Leopard... :D

I've been looking at a Precision machine that's pretty much identical to your Latitude E6500 there. But I'm typing on its predecessor M65 right now, and the thing is... I really want a 17". Or actually, what I want is 1920x1200.
I have 1680x1050 on this 15" which I've used for 3 years, and in that time I've gone from 20/20 vision to glasses. The eye strain is horrible, and to think that I could actually get a 15" from Dell with 1920x1200... I'd be blind after a year. But like I said, the 17" Precision M6400 is a monster. Granted, you get a full keyboard with numpad, up to 16 GB DDR3 RAM, a 1 GB NVidia Quadro card and two RAID configured hard disks, but it's so big I might as well snap the desk stand off the iMac and call it a laptop. And fully outfitted it's actually more expensive than the MBP 17". Didn't think that was possible, but it is.

I'm also using Dell's docking solution (D/View and D/Port on mine, they're up to E/View and E/Port now) and I love it. There's not a single cable visible on my desk. Since Apple refuse to do docking stations I'd have to put up with a lot of cable spaghetti. So that's another nail in the coffin for my MBP plans.

Meh, what the heck... it's still a few months away. I'll probably buy machines when Snow Leopard and Win7 are out. Plenty of time to make a decision.

As for prices... when I bought the machines I have now, I was about to order them online but the site was temporarily down so I called them instead. That's when I discovered that their sales reps can give you insane deals if you order by phone... this guy gave me 10% off plus threw in 3-year business support and CompleteCare (the equivalent of AppleCare except that Dell repairs laptops in your home) and a 3-year insurance that he described as follows: "You can basically smash the machine up with a sledgehammer and they'll give you a new one, no questions asked".

pdxflint

Mar 23, 2009, 11:00 PM

Argh... the more I think about it, the more torn I am.

I have a Dell Precision M65 notebook and an XPS700 desktop, both up for replacement. I thought hey, why not go with a MBP 17" and a Mac Pro and use BootCamp. Then I noticed how pricey they are, and decided I'd go with Dell again. Then I started looking at Dell's notebooks and realized that A) the MBP 17" isn't so pricey after all next to a maxed-out Dell, B) the Precision 17" is heee-uge, like 2½ MBPs stacked, and in typical Dell fashion they have a lot of worthless ancient ports like VGA (is it 1992 already?). So it was back to Macs again. Then I found out all this crap about BootCamp not being up to scratch. Back to Dells. Then I read that the Dell desktop I had picked out has an obscene amount of fan noise (a killer for audio work). Back to Macs. Then I found out how much AppleCare sucks, that they won't stop by my house to do repairs like Dell does (for less money, too). Back to Dells. No wait, dammit, I want a Mac. But what about all my glorious Logitech peripherals, some of which are PC-only? OK, back to Dell. Or no, I want a Mac. No wait... the MBP has that godawful shrunken keyboard I have on my wireless Apple keyboard for my iMac. They've made the cursor keys so incredibly small I always keep missing them (hey, they're only the most important keys of all so let's make them microscopic just to fit all keys into a tidy rectangle). OK, this is it, I'm going Dell. No wait... I just remembered all the crap I went through with getting firewire audio to work on my desktop PC, then I tried it on my iMac and the performance was wicked (gotta love CoreAudio)... OK, Macs. No. Dell. Mac. Dac. Mell. Bah.

Best post in a long time... thoroughly entertaining...:D

Mackan

Mar 24, 2009, 12:53 AM

Wow, so much ******** in these threads. I wanted to contribute a bit myself.

nplima

Mar 24, 2009, 07:55 AM

[...] OK, Macs. No. Dell. Mac. Dac. Mell. Bah.

hahahah decisions, decisions....

there are more PC brands than Dell, you know? it looks like you want OS X on something other than a Mac. it's tough...

A friend of mine asked for my help in getting her a new laptop. £500 max. I'll do the setting up, so it will feel like a new toy for me :)

Goona

Mar 24, 2009, 09:07 AM

Windows 7 will be less buggy on release. Apple doesn't
beta test as thorougly as Microsoft.

How well did Microsoft do with testing Vista?

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 10:02 AM

hahahah decisions, decisions....

there are more PC brands than Dell, you know? it looks like you want OS X on something other than a Mac. it's tough...

A friend of mine asked for my help in getting her a new laptop. £500 max. I'll do the setting up, so it will feel like a new toy for me :)
Well I'm hesitant to throw a third brand into the mix. I had a bunch of different crappy PCs in the 90's and then I bought my first Dell, and it was my first PC that was of quality build (this was in 2000 mind you, so no comparisons between plastic and cable spaghetti vs. the interior of the current Mac Pro, please... the plastic turqoise G3 machines weren't so pretty on the inside either). I never had a single problem with it. I've stuck with Dell ever since. Their service is pretty hard to beat, and that's important IMO. I've looked at HP but their product line and web site are so confusing it gives me a headache, and those are the only two brands with the kind of service I'm looking for (NBD on-site repairs).

Yesterday I looked at Dell's ultimate behemoth, the Precision M6400 17".

http://www.pclaunches.com/entry_images/0908/25/dell_precision-m6400-3-thumb-450x348.jpg

It's an 8-pound beast with aluminium enclosure, quad processor, dual hard disks with RAID, up to 1 TB, 1 GB NVidia Quadro graphics, up to 16 GB of RAM, full backlit keyboard with numpad, 17" edge-to-edge LED screen with 100% Adobe color gamut. It beats the living hell out of the MBP 17" in all benchmarks, and has a weird trackpad which, when you press a button, lights up to become a jog/shuttle wheel for video editing and such:

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/09/illuminated-jog-shuttle.jpg

I saw a demo where they used it on the timeline in Flash, and it was wicked. This one could be an actual desktop replacement, I could go back to using a single computer... but then it all fell apart when I saw the fine print: First, the battery life is 2 hours. This is bad even for Dell (who will give you up to 9 hours on some other machines), but I suppose powering all these desktop-grade components comes at a price. But what's worse, It has some proprietary Dell firewire chipset. As some of you may know, the TI chipset is the only way to go for firewire audio. Everything else will just snap, crackle and pop your audio to smithereens. The corner-cutters at Apple tried to sneak an Agere chipset into the previous gen MBP and there was mayhem in the audio community; they quickly switched back to TI.

Getting hold of a laptop with a TI firewire chipset is very hard, unless you buy an MBP. But thanks to the suckiness of BootCamp, Windows users can't enjoy the TI chipset goodness through an MBP due to Apple's keyboard driver causing huge DPC spikes (deferred procedure calls = they cause dropouts in the firewire stream).

Aaaaaand it's back to square one. :rolleyes:

jaw04005

Mar 24, 2009, 10:36 AM

How well did Microsoft do with testing Vista?

Contrary to popular belief, the Windows Vista beta test was the largest operating system beta in Microsoft's history up until 7. Anyone and everyone could join the beta. The general public could join by signing up via Microsoft Connect, the Windows' Web site or even posting your e-mail address in the comments section on some of the Microsoft's employees' personal blogs.

Microsoft just failed to listen to feedback in hopes the Vista backlash was similar to the uproar when Windows XP debuted and would eventually go away. It didn't work out that way.

steveza

Mar 24, 2009, 10:55 AM

Microsoft just failed to listen to feedback in hopes the Vista backlash was similar to the uproar when Windows XP debuted and would eventually go away. It didn't work out that way.This was the key failure of Vista. Due to the management structure that was in place at the time Vista was developed much of the feedback from the beta phase was ignored in order to speed the product to market. That coupled with quite senior staff micromanaging every detail of the development process (down to icon colour choices) created a monster.

MS has gone to great lengths to show that W7 will not suffer from these problems. Reading some of the staff blogs (like this one (http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/)) shows that things have changed for the better.

Stridder44

Mar 24, 2009, 12:59 PM

I saw a demo where they used it on the timeline in Flash, and it was wicked. This one could be an actual desktop replacement, I could go back to using a single computer... but then it all fell apart when I saw the fine print: First, the battery life is 2 hours. This is bad even for Dell (who will give you up to 9 hours on some other machines), but I suppose powering all these desktop-grade components comes at a price.

You say that as if you were surprised or something. Laptops this big (i.e., notebooks with desktop-grade components) are not very mobile to begin with, and cost more than a desktop you could build yourself with equal or better parts. They all are 10 pounds, 4 inches thick, and have a 2 hour battery life. But they have RAID and 16GB of RAM, oh boy! :rolleyes:

tubbymac

Mar 24, 2009, 01:40 PM

That thing is seriously pushing the definition of a laptop. 10 lbs and 2 hour battery life is too much of a compromise. At that size you might as well just get a Mac Pro or another high end desktop since you don't have much portability with that config anyway and at least with a desktop you'd have an easier time upgrading the thing. Besides cramming all those desktop level components into a laptop frame is going to make it serve as a radiator as it's gonna get pretty hot.

Finding the TI firewire chipset on a PC machine is tough. Most PC vendors stick some junk JMicron or Agere firewire controllers in the machines and hope people don't notice. You really have to do your research in the PC minefield filled with cheapo cost-cutting companies (Dell and every other manufacturer included) if you're looking to get lag free real time firewire I/O.

iNikon

Mar 24, 2009, 01:44 PM

The more you post, the more you look like the moron that you are. Pass the Kool Aid, please. :rolleyes:

It's simple.

Windows 7 is no more than Vista, with a little different design, some removed programs, and which basically went back to Xp's speed, and improved it a bit. So it's just a little faster than Xp, (And I don't care about what tests say, I'm talking about my experience).

So, Snow Leopard will make Leopard even faster than it is. Which means, it'll certainly be faster than Windows 7.

That's all about speed.

And about all the other things, well, it's just like the previous versions:

Speed/Performance: Snow Leopard.
Security: Snow Leopard.
Stability: Snow Leopard.
Design: ?, we still don't know how the Snow Leopard design will be. Windows 7's design is basically identical to Vista, so I'd give this to Snow Leopard.
Best 64-bit system: Snow Leopard.

So for what is Windows better? For...em...nothing, except if you're looking for the cheapest computer you'll use only and only for games, nothing too serious.

Oh, and you can customize Windows, there are thousands of horrible, disgusting themes you can find online!

Have fun.

And because it's unstable. And slow. And easily infectable.

BS, it naturally gets slower the more you use it, the more you install program. Just like any other Windows version.

BS again. It's because of the instability. The registry. Partial uninstallations. Malware. It's not just about drivers.

fleeglegeep

Mar 24, 2009, 01:52 PM

Well I'm hesitant to throw a third brand into the mix. I had a bunch of different crappy PCs in the 90's and then I bought my first Dell, and it was my first PC that was of quality build (this was in 2000 mind you, so no comparisons between plastic and cable spaghetti vs. the interior of the current Mac Pro, please... the plastic turqoise G3 machines weren't so pretty on the inside either). I never had a single problem with it. I've stuck with Dell ever since. Their service is pretty hard to beat, and that's important IMO. I've looked at HP but their product line and web site are so confusing it gives me a headache, and those are the only two brands with the kind of service I'm looking for (NBD on-site repairs).

My brother works for a cell phone company and he has customers that come in with their laptops regularly so he can set them up with that new fangled wi-fi anywhere that you can get on your laptops through your cell phone account. All of the really old used and abused laptops that come through the door say Dell on them.
Some of them looked like they served as boat anchors or were drug behind cars. But the customers bring them in, open them up and low and behold start up they do.

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 02:00 PM

You say that as if you were surprised or something. Laptops this big (i.e., notebooks with desktop-grade components) are not very mobile to begin with, and cost more than a desktop you could build yourself with equal or better parts. They all are 10 pounds, 4 inches thick, and have a 2 hour battery life. But they have RAID and 16GB of RAM, oh boy! :rolleyes:
I am surprised they didn't stick a bigger battery in the machine, given its ample size. HP's equivalent, the Elitebook 8730 (with nearly identical specs and form factor) gives you 4-10 hours depending on battery configuration. And Apple shoved an 8-hour battery into the MBP 17". 2 hours (and that's what Dell says in the specs, so make it 1-1½ hours) is bottom of the barrel in this class.

And please, not the DIY desktop PC speech... I've already stuck with desktop machines waaaaaay longer than anyone else I know, but building them from spare parts is where I draw the line. Too Linux-geeky and parents' basement-ish for me.

nxent

Mar 24, 2009, 02:13 PM

i dunno, will windows 7 actually be consistent in waking up from sleep? or is that something they fixed in vista?

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 02:20 PM

Finding the TI firewire chipset on a PC machine is tough. Most PC vendors stick some junk JMicron or Agere firewire controllers in the machines and hope people don't notice. You really have to do your research in the PC minefield filled with cheapo cost-cutting companies (Dell and every other manufacturer included) if you're looking to get lag free real time firewire I/O.
My Dell XPS700 actually does have a TI chipset, so there's a good chance they're putting that chip in other machines as well, at least the desktops. And you can always buy a PCI or PCI Express 1394 adapter with the TI chipset on it if all else fails. Unfortunately there's something weird with the XPS700 that makes it useless for Firewire audio no matter if I use the onboard firewire or a PCI card w/ TI chipset. It's fine in XP, but when I run Vista or Win7, no sample buffer/latency setting can stop the audio from crackling, and I've found that it's the graphics in certain audio apps that are doing it. If I minimize the app windows, audio performance is fine. I has a modest NVidia 8600GT so I don't see how it can strangle firewire, but there you go... I've had to resort to using the iMac for audio. Which is lame, as it has the cheapo AGERE chipset, but it's still better than the XPS700. This is the main reason why I wanted to replace the XPS700 with a Mac Pro, I know I'll be getting the TI chipset, but then with the fan control and DPC spike issues in BootCamp it would be just as bad as the XPS700. Unless of course I just run everything in OS X, but I want to use Win7 primarily. Gaaaaaah. All I need, really, is BootCamp 3.0 with fully functional fan control and no weird bottlenecks and buggy drivers, all ambivalence and frustration would disappear and I'd place an order for a MP quad 2.66 and an MBP 17" right this minute.

i dunno, will windows 7 actually be consistent in waking up from sleep? or is that something they fixed in vista?
You're having trouble getting Vista to wake from sleep mode? About half a dozen times over the last couple of years, my Vista laptop has returned from sleep showing only a black screen and a mouse cursor, and I've had to hard reboot. I eventually realized that it only happens when the machine is already asleep and I dock it with the port replicator, when I then open the lid to wake the machine up it apparently doesn't know what planet it's on so it freezes up. Other than that, waking up works as expected every time.

Goona

Mar 24, 2009, 03:27 PM

Contrary to popular belief, the Windows Vista beta test was the largest operating system beta in Microsoft's history up until 7. Anyone and everyone could join the beta. The general public could join by signing up via Microsoft Connect, the Windows' Web site or even posting your e-mail address in the comments section on some of the Microsoft's employees' personal blogs.

Microsoft just failed to listen to feedback in hopes the Vista backlash was similar to the uproar when Windows XP debuted and would eventually go away. It didn't work out that way.

Well I guess that's why my Vista machine is so crap, and the programs keep freezing and crashing.

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 03:53 PM

Well I guess that's why my Vista machine is so crap, and the programs keep freezing and crashing.
Then why don't you fix it?

There are two Vista apps that are known to crash and freeze often on some configurations - IE7 and WMP.

The problem with IE, in 9 out of 10 cases, is Adobe add-ons -- conflicting versions of the Flash plug-in and/or PDF plug-ins, or a bad egg version of either plug-in. Track down the culprits by disabling the IE add-ons, one by one.

The problem with WMP, in 10 out of 10 cases, is one or more rotten third-party DivX/Xvid/FFDShow codecs.

Nothing other than those two is known to crash frequently, and the issue is with third-party add-ons and not the OS itself -- just like when Leopard hangs, freezes and throws BSOD's due to Kaleidoscope, LCC, DivX and other 3rd party enhancements that try to make themselves part of the system with limited success.

Stridder44

Mar 24, 2009, 04:07 PM

The more you post, the more you look like the moron that you are. Pass the Kool Aid, please. :rolleyes:

Like I said from the beginning, he was a total troll. Notice how he hasn't come back "enlighten" us with any more BS. Don't get me wrong though, I wish he would. His posts are funny.

I am surprised they didn't stick a bigger battery in the machine, given its ample size. HP's equivalent, the Elitebook 8730 (with nearly identical specs and form factor) gives you 4-10 hours depending on battery configuration. And Apple shoved an 8-hour battery into the MBP 17". 2 hours (and that's what Dell says in the specs, so make it 1-1½ hours) is bottom of the barrel in this class.

And please, not the DIY desktop PC speech... I've already stuck with desktop machines waaaaaay longer than anyone else I know, but building them from spare parts is where I draw the line. Too Linux-geeky and parents' basement-ish for me.

No no I wasn't suggesting you build your own machine (although it is way cheaper, pretty damn easy, and hardly parents' basement-ish...that's like saying fixing cars is too repairman I-didn't-go-to-college-ish). It was just an example. But yeah, I really hope Boot Camp 3.0 is released with Snow Leopard and would finally fix the driver issues and terrible battery life problems.

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 04:35 PM

No no I wasn't suggesting you build your own machine (although it is way cheaper, pretty damn easy, and hardly parents' basement-ish...that's like saying fixing cars is too repairman I-didn't-go-to-college-ish).
Fair enough. :D

It was just an example. But yeah, I really hope Boot Camp 3.0 is released with Snow Leopard and would finally fix the driver issues and terrible battery life problems.
Yep. I'm not much of an electronics techie but isn't heat the worst battery killer (in terms of total life span, not per-charge life)? I read somewhere that a high temperature in the environment where you charge a Li-Ion battery can seriously cut the number of recharge cycles a battery will handle. And I can think of no hotter place for a battery than the cramped furnace that is an MBP running Vista x64. I would imagine that these bizarre issues with overheating that people are having with BootCamp+Vista on UMBP's, to the point where they start getting random graphics artifacts, are also shortening the lifespan of the battery. The occasionally non-removable-and-ludicrously-expensive-to-replace battery, that is.

MikhailT

Mar 24, 2009, 04:40 PM

Goona

Mar 24, 2009, 04:40 PM

Then why don't you fix it?

There are two Vista apps that are known to crash and freeze often on some configurations - IE7 and WMP.

The problem with IE, in 9 out of 10 cases, is Adobe add-ons -- conflicting versions of the Flash plug-in and/or PDF plug-ins, or a bad egg version of either plug-in. Track down the culprits by disabling the IE add-ons, one by one.

The problem with WMP, in 10 out of 10 cases, is one or more rotten third-party DivX/Xvid/FFDShow codecs.

Nothing other than those two is known to crash frequently, and the issue is with third-party add-ons and not the OS itself -- just like when Leopard hangs, freezes and throws BSOD's due to Kaleidoscope, LCC, DivX and other 3rd party enhancements that try to make themselves part of the system with limited success.

The computer crashes when using freaking google search, I guess google search is laden with flash add ons, not to talk of how slow it is to use and this computer ain't even that old.

MattZani

Mar 24, 2009, 04:54 PM

Here is my opinion:

Windows 7 will turn it around for Microsoft, it will be the true succeeder to XP, will add more features, and be generally better.

Snow Leopard will improve on core performance, Multi Core usage, and stability. It wont add very many features, but it will add the building blocks for things to come, maybe in 10.6.X, maybe in 10.7, who knows, but its good to see Apple truly making the OS as good as it can be at the core.

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 05:18 PM

The most important fact is that both OS is on the right track because everybody is gaining something on both ends. Snow Leopard and Windows 7 will bring a very close battle in a war between Apple and MS and that only benefits the customers because for the first time in recent history, both OS may turn out to be very good and desirable for both sides. It only encourages innovations from both ends for the next OS. W7 has something SL don’t? Apple will come up with something better for 10.7, SL has something W7 don't? MS will copy it. :P

MS lost the battle between Leopard and Vista in the never-ending OS war (until one company goes out of business of course) because Vista did suck in the beginning with horrible drivers support and so on. This resulted into a bigger market share and better “company image” for Apple. While they are still gaining more people, the question now is can they continue the momentum into the new battle between SL and W7?

Windows 7 is coming back strong and so is Snow leopard. This battle is going to be VERY CLOSE and I honestly think Apple won't win this round easily as it did with Leopard. The economy may push the win over to MS this time, with the W7 running better than XP on netbooks, people are going to want it even though netbooks are still a small market. Combine that with HPTC, slim PCs and low ends PCs that could run W7 better than Vista and XP, definitely enough of an impact on sales that W7 could sell better than Vista ever did at faster pace.

Snow Leopard is going to be an awesome upgrade too. Small changes all over; Exchange built in support, OpenCL/Grand Central, pure 64 bit optimized and leaner OS, data detectors, system-wide text manipulation support, and so on.
M$ has one major disadvantage though, in the fact that the barrage of anti-trust crap from all over the world (Europe in particular) has scared them into removing a lot of software that Windows normally ships with. I know they used ugly tactics against Netscape back in the 90's, but come on, this is getting ridiculous, the OS will be bare naked soon...

Meanwhile, Apple has been going increasingly monopoly- and proprietary bonkers and they're starting to look like some sort of capitalist Cuba. They sell the hardware AND the OS AND more and more of the software AND the iPods AND the iPhones AND the music AND the movies, everything is tied together so that all roads lead to Apple and no roads lead back out, but for some weird reason the antitrust dogs almost leave them alone (perhaps for the same reason the malware wizkids leave Apple alone, they're not big enough - yet). So Apple can keep cramming OS X with iLife, iTunes, Safari, Mail and other features that M$ no longer dare include. They're moving all that stuff to the Windows Live platform, but I reckon it's only a matter of time before the Frenchies rip that service apart too, and demand that M$ must ship every single byte in a separate download.

elppa

Mar 24, 2009, 05:41 PM

MikhailT

Mar 24, 2009, 06:02 PM

M$ has one major disadvantage though, in the fact that the barrage of anti-trust crap from all over the world (Europe in particular) has scared them into removing a lot of software that Windows normally ships with. I know they used ugly tactics against Netscape back in the 90's, but come on, this is getting ridiculous, the OS will be bare naked soon...

Meanwhile, Apple has been going increasingly monopoly- and proprietary bonkers and they're starting to look like some sort of capitalist Cuba. They sell the hardware AND the OS AND more and more of the software AND the iPods AND the iPhones AND the music AND the movies, everything is tied together so that all roads lead to Apple and no roads lead back out, but for some weird reason the antitrust dogs almost leave them alone (perhaps for the same reason the malware wizkids leave Apple alone, they're not big enough - yet). So Apple can keep cramming OS X with iLife, iTunes, Safari, Mail and other features that M$ no longer dare include. They're moving all that stuff to the Windows Live platform, but I reckon it's only a matter of time before the Frenchies rip that service apart too, and demand that M$ must ship every single byte in a separate download.

W7 takes care of that problem. Custom builders can customize Windows 7 not to include IE8 and every other things that could be removed. It is easy to do so, even for end users. Therefore MS does not have any problem in that field as long as they continue to modularize their Windows OS. Other companies can include Live apps if they want to. MS has a link to the live apps that allows you to download them, MS did this because it allows for two things to be done at once, they do not restrict the live development team to the OS release cycle and the compliance with their anti-trust settlements and US/EU rules.

Apple can do whatever they want as long as there are competitors in their market area and as long as Apple doesn't try to control the other competitors and force them out of the market.

MS didn't have any big competitors and they tried to force a lot of places and companies to only accept MS products which is when they abused their powers and can be subject to the antitrust laws. Apple doesn't do that therefore they are not subject to any antitrust laws at the moment nor would they ever be considered as a monopoly.

You can run iTunes on Windows, which allows you to manage your ipod and iphones. If you want to buy music that can go on any devices, you do not have to use iTunes for that, you can go buy them at Amazon or any other music stores. Apple does not force you to buy music at iTunes, you can put music from other sources. While they do forces you to use iTunes to manage your ipod and iphones, it isn't enough to be considered a monopolistic practice.

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 06:28 PM

Wow, you really know your stuff about European law and previous legal action taken against Microsoft. I learnt a lot from that, thanks.
Ooh, sarcasm. That's right, I know nothing about law. But I live in Europe, if that counts. ;)

W7 takes care of that problem. Custom builders can customize Windows 7 not to include IE8 and every other things that could be removed.
Yes, it takes care of the problem as far as Microsoft's legal battles are concerned, but my point was that from an end user perspective Win7 will have much less goodies out of the box than Snow Leopard will, and people who are daft enough to believe that you can't fill the feature gaps easily and at no cost might go for a Mac just for that.

MikhailT

Mar 24, 2009, 06:47 PM

Ooh, sarcasm. That's right, I know nothing about law. But I live in Europe, if that counts. ;)

Yes, it takes care of the problem as far as Microsoft's legal battles are concerned, but my point was that from an end user perspective Win7 will have much less goodies out of the box than Snow Leopard will, and people who are daft enough to believe that you can't fill the feature gaps easily and at no cost might go for a Mac just for that.

That's why Microsoft will include the links and market it like as if it isn't missing from the OS. The PC builders will include their own apps if they want to. They can preinstall apps for the clients or by default just like you can preinstall Apple's products on Macs. Buying the Leopard retail disc yourself, it does not come with iLife, iWork or any of the bundle apps that normally shows up when you buy a hardware. Just like buying a Windows disc, it won't come with any app bundled but buying a PC with Windows will have some of the apps bundled. So the decision is on the PC builders themselves. They know what Macs come with, if they want to sell, they need to fill the gap.

Infrared

Mar 24, 2009, 07:17 PM

Getting hold of a laptop with a TI firewire chipset is very hard, unless you buy an MBP. But thanks to the suckiness of BootCamp, Windows users can't enjoy the TI chipset goodness through an MBP due to Apple's keyboard driver causing huge DPC spikes (deferred procedure calls = they cause dropouts in the firewire stream).

I've steered clear of Apple's keyboard driver when using Windows on a
Mac Pro. I wonder, is it possible to not use the Apple driver on a MBP?
Or does that mean one would lose trackpad functionality (not a problem
on a Mac Pro, obviously)?

iJawn108

Mar 24, 2009, 07:17 PM

I've used windows 7 beta is very cool in respect too it being windows. I hate vistas interface but 7 is pretty decent!

Now as far as snow Leopard... it could be very cool especially if they get the kinks worked out for zfs.

isn't windows 7 still working with uhh ntfs? where's windows new file system?

iJawn108

Mar 24, 2009, 07:18 PM

my next computer will likely be a pc with opensolaris so... or a mac mini that will duel boot ;P

Anuba

Mar 24, 2009, 09:49 PM

I've steered clear of Apple's keyboard driver when using Windows on a
Mac Pro. I wonder, is it possible to not use the Apple driver on a MBP?
Or does that mean one would lose trackpad functionality (not a problem
on a Mac Pro, obviously)?
Allegedly the trackpad support sucks in BootCamp anyway, so I don't think you'd be missing anything if the drivers were disabled, but I wouldn't know... as for the keyboard, I'd assume you get basic keyboard functionality, just not the remapping of some of the keys.

I've used windows 7 beta is very cool in respect too it being windows. I hate vistas interface but 7 is pretty decent!
It's definitely better, but it's still a lot of Vista in there... they've replaced the greenish "cyber-snot" drapes that were on the Vista logon screen (and other places) with some sort of stylized underwater scenery, which is a minor improvement but still quite tacky. The default desktop theme with the fish is ugly beyound belief. The window title still has the ugly white glow/cloud/blob that has to sit behind the text because otherwise the background might make the text unreadable (just one reason why transparent window frames were a stupid idea to begin with. There's still a few unpleasant combinations of green and blue in places, such as the Control Panel. It seems that the same blithering, colorblind idiots who made the XP Fisher-Price interface, also designed Vista and Win7, I don't understand why they haven't fired these morons already. Ever since XP, the first thing you have to do in order to stay sane is to dive head first into all the Personalize settings (or Display Settings on XP) and change single parameter, color and image. IMO they should have distanced themselves much, much more from Vista, given its reputation, and delivered a more classy interface with less "look ma, I can do transparency" effects and less Teletubbies-inspired shapes and color schemes. They can move the Vista interface to some special version for children aged 3-8 and make a new interface for adults.

Also, in Win7, like in Vista, there's a lot of inconsistency going on with the use of system fonts. They're using Segoe UI for the most part, but as soon as you go one level beneath the surface you'll find dialogs with MS Sans, the kind which were designed for Win95 and haven't changed since. Apparently you can also find Tahoma and Verdana in places. If they release one more version after Win7 without consolidating all that stuff and cleaning out the last remnants of Win95-style graphics... gaaaah.

And yet I prefer it over Leopard. :D

MAG.

Mar 25, 2009, 01:55 AM

I hate vistas interface but 7 is pretty decent!

But they're pretty much the same! :D Well, only a different taskbar with a jump list ;) I have to say Windows Aero is nice!

Anuba

Mar 25, 2009, 10:13 AM

But they're pretty much the same! :D Well, only a different taskbar with a jump list ;) I have to say Windows Aero is nice!
The new taskbar in Win7 is really cool, but a lot of the ugliness of Vista lives on, unfortunately. Like the window borders, which are incredibly fat, about twice the width of window borders in XP. The only conceivable reason why they're so fat is to show off the transparency. It wastes a lot of screen space and looks ridiculous on very small popup windows, like the Power settings in the system tray, where the window border itself makes up 15% of the window area. It looks even more ridiculous in Win7 when you click to open the window where your hidden tray icons are, there the window border is probably 40-50% of the window size. I have to award the point to OS X in that round (it has no window borders, since they are pointless).

kevin j

Mar 25, 2009, 10:21 AM

There's still a few unpleasant combinations of green and blue in places, such as the Control Panel.

I think this was changed in the lastest build of 7

nplima

Mar 25, 2009, 11:04 AM

The new taskbar in Win7 is really cool, but a lot of the ugliness of Vista lives on, unfortunately. Like the window borders, which are incredibly fat, about twice the width of window borders in XP. [...].

Hi,

good news: Ultimate Vista Tweaker allows you to choose the size of these windows components, like it used to be possible with windows "classic" look.

http://www.winvistaclub.com/Ultimate_Windows_Tweaker.html

tubbymac

Mar 25, 2009, 12:06 PM

I've steered clear of Apple's keyboard driver when using Windows on a
Mac Pro. I wonder, is it possible to not use the Apple driver on a MBP?
Or does that mean one would lose trackpad functionality (not a problem
on a Mac Pro, obviously)?

Yes it is possible. I've done it a few times. All you lose are the convenience keys at the top. So you can't change brightness, can't change volume, have no media shortcut keys, and no eject button.

Fn+keys still work. So you can still hit Fn+delete to get a forward delete instead of a backspace.

The only thing is, there's no way through bootcamp to turn it off. You have to manually either delete the keyboard driver file itself or rename it so that it doesn't get loaded on startup. Or you kill the task in task manager after it starts.

tubbymac

Mar 25, 2009, 12:36 PM

It seems that the same blithering, colorblind idiots who made the XP Fisher-Price interface, also designed Vista and Win7, I don't understand why they haven't fired these morons already.

Words of truth. I go back and forth between OSX Leopard and Windows 7 quite often (Dell is my desktop replacement while my Apple machines are my portables). Each time it's like switching to a Toy's R Us store after having been in an upscale fashion store. OSX is beautiful, consistent, and the icons are well done. Windows 7 is ugly in comparison, inconsistent all over the place, and the icons look 10 years old.

But going more than skin deep, both operating systems have their share of annoyances.

Windows 7:
- No expose and no spaces by default (I miss these a LOT from OSX)
- Control panel is a complete mess compared to OSX System Preferences
- Scrolling at the side of the trackpad is ghetto compared to OSX multitouch

OSX:
- Close and quit distinction is retarded. Windows close system is more elegant.
- Menu always on top is retarded. Ever use OSX on two 30 inch monitors? You have to move your mouse all the way across one monitor to the other just to use the menu if you can't remember the shortcut key or there isn't one for the option you want. The idea doesn't scale well to big multimonitors.
- Resizing only from the bottom right corner is dumb.

I also can't stand that Apple notebook keyboards (and the wireless one I have) put the Fn key in the lower left corner. That's borderline retarded and designed for chimps. I much prefer the PC mentality here of putting the CTRL key in the lower left and the Fn key to the right of it. But it seems only Dell really sticks to this. Some of the other PC vendors have taken the braindead Apple approach. The Apple keyboards also have the smallest arrow keys on the planet. I prefer the larger, offset arrow keys from the PC world. I also prefer having actual page up, down, home, end keys. On the Apple it requires two fingers (Fn+arrow) and that just slows me down when editing text at hyperspeeds.

On the other side of the fence I can't stand the redundant hardware on the PC side. Looking at my PC notebook keyboard I see 5 mouse buttons. That just takes up space and half of the buttons do the same thing as the other half. There's also a VGA port on this thing in the off chance I get teleported a decade into the past and need to hook it up to a legacy display.

So really, both Windows and OSX have their share of annoyances. If you took the best features from both and eliminated the annoyances from both, you'd end up with a killer OS. But that won't ever happen because both companies are too stubborn in their ways. And THAT people, is why some of us are forced or compelled to use both.

Anuba

Mar 25, 2009, 02:17 PM

Windows 7:
- No expose and no spaces by default (I miss these a LOT from OSX)
- Control panel is a complete mess compared to OSX System Preferences
- Scrolling at the side of the trackpad is ghetto compared to OSX multitouch
Yup. Then again, Exposé and Spaces are symptoms as much as they are features. They are products of the inevitable desktop clutter on OS X. I prefer using apps full screen on PC and hide the desktop completely, whereas on Mac there is no multi-document interface in apps, all the parts are just floating around on the desktop -- I can't tell you how many times I've had Photoshop on top of Flash and accidentally tried to select tools from the wrong app... Exposé and Spaces were created to keep people from going insane, rather than addressing the root of the problem, i.e. that the Mac desktop paradigm is a clutter magnet.

OSX:
- Close and quit distinction is retarded. Windows close system is more elegant.
- Menu always on top is retarded. Ever use OSX on two 30 inch monitors? You have to move your mouse all the way across one monitor to the other just to use the menu if you can't remember the shortcut key or there isn't one for the option you want. The idea doesn't scale well to big multimonitors.
- Resizing only from the bottom right corner is dumb.
Word. These are some of my biggest reservations about OS X. I heard, many years ago, that Apple originally planned to ditch the menu-on-top concept for OS X and move the menus to where they're supposed to be, but then the OS 9 luddites went ballistic and threatened to kill themselves if someone took their precious menu bar away. It does perhaps save a little workspace, but on the other hand the menu bar takes up as much space as the Windows taskbar, with most of the menu bar empty (everything between the Help menu and the AirPort icons + clock), and then you have the Dock in addition to that.

I also can't stand that Apple notebook keyboards (and the wireless one I have) put the Fn key in the lower left corner. That's borderline retarded and designed for chimps.

I much prefer the PC mentality here of putting the CTRL key in the lower left and the Fn key to the right of it. But it seems only Dell really sticks to this. Some of the other PC vendors have taken the braindead Apple approach. The Apple keyboards also have the smallest arrow keys on the planet. I prefer the larger, offset arrow keys from the PC world. I also prefer having actual page up, down, home, end keys. On the Apple it requires two fingers (Fn+arrow) and that just slows me down when editing text at hyperspeeds.

Totally. On the wireless alu keyboard I press the Fn key by accident all the time. I'm left handed and I never, ever use the CTRL+Shift+Alt keys on the right side, but I do use the cursor keys a lot, so it really bugs me that Apple made the cursor keys microscopic, and right above them is a gargantuan Shift key that's as big as all 4 cursor keys put together. Also, they shrunk the Return key which might be OK for a U.S. keyboard, but here in Scandinavia we have a vertically oriented return key (to make room for Å, Ä and Ö) and it ended up being crazy narrow on the new Mac layout. Not just on the mini-keyboards, but the full-sized one has the same anorexic Return key. Here's a comparison between the Return and cursor keys on a regular Scandinavian compact keyboard (Dell M65 15") and the munchkin keys on a wireless Apple keyboard or a MB/MBP/MBA:

On the other side of the fence I can't stand the redundant hardware on the PC side. Looking at my PC notebook keyboard I see 5 mouse buttons. That just takes up space and half of the buttons do the same thing as the other half. There's also a VGA port on this thing in the off chance I get teleported a decade into the past and need to hook it up to a legacy display.
Yeah, there's a lot of that going around on Dell and HP machines. I once asked why they're still putting all these 1990's crap on brand new machines, and apparently there's still a huge demand for it among PC professionals (only the pro machines like Precision and Latitude have it, the Inspiron and XPS machines aren't bogged down with legacy ports). For example, there are people who use these machines to interface with industrial robots that are programmed via 9-pin serial. And a new robot costs $3 million and they have 50 of them, so the old ones will serve for another 15 years or so, by which time the rest of us will be on USB 6.0 or whatever.

I wish Dell/HP would split their professional lines in two, one stone age line for users in the industrial sector and others who need legacy connectivity, and another for print/media/video/audio professionals who want sleek-looking machines with cutting edge connectivity, where they replace the VGA-, PS/2, 9-pin Serial and 25-pin Parallel with USB, DisplayPort, DVI and Firewire.

MAG.

Mar 25, 2009, 02:43 PM

The new taskbar in Win7 is really cool, but a lot of the ugliness of Vista lives on, unfortunately. Like the window borders, which are incredibly fat, about twice the width of window borders in XP. The only conceivable reason why they're so fat is to show off the transparency. It wastes a lot of screen space and looks ridiculous on very small popup windows, like the Power settings in the system tray, where the window border itself makes up 15% of the window area. It looks even more ridiculous in Win7 when you click to open the window where your hidden tray icons are, there the window border is probably 40-50% of the window size. I have to award the point to OS X in that round (it has no window borders, since they are pointless).

I never noticed that probably because I am using a 1920x1200 screen :D but when I turned the resolution down I kinda noticed what you're talking about :D it's not that bad through. (Maybe, I just got used to it.)

Anuba

Mar 25, 2009, 03:09 PM

I never noticed that probably because I am using a 1920x1200 screen :D but when I turned the resolution down I kinda noticed what you're talking about :D it's not that bad through. (Maybe, I just got used to it.)
I'm using it on a 1200x1600 + 2560x1600 + 1200x1600 = 4960x1600 setup, and it bugs me to no end. :D It's not that the window borders are taking up space, it's more that it's ugly. It has that oversized Flintstones-feel like some toys for toddlers have, or like the keys on this phone:

http://images.ocregister.com/newsimages/healthfitness/2007/09/25_ourhealth1_large.jpg

or the legs on this Ikea chair:

http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/60939_PE166990_S3.jpg

Now why on earth, you may ask, would anyone have a 4960x1600 setup? Well it's simple really. I had two 1600x1200 20" screens in 4:3 format, and I bought a 30" screen to replace them. Then I realized that if you pivot the smaller screens to portrait format, they match the height of the 30" screen perfectly. It looks like this (not my picture, just someone who apparently stumbled across the same solution):

http://members.gamedev.net/saruman/newsetup.jpg

steveza

Mar 25, 2009, 03:38 PM

For example, there are people who use these machines to interface with industrial robots that are programmed via 9-pin serial. And a new robot costs $3 million and they have 50 of them, so the old ones will serve for another 15 years or so, by which time the rest of us will be on USB 6.0 or whatever.I used to work for a large vehicle manufacturing company who had robots and engine building machines running on Windows 3.11 and NT4. We were trying to get everything upgraded to XP at those factories and seeing as I knew nothing about manufacturing before visiting there I couldn't believe it when they said they could only upgrade those in 5 to 10 years time.

tubbymac

Mar 25, 2009, 06:10 PM

Here's a comparison between the Return and cursor keys on a regular Scandinavian compact keyboard (Dell M65 15") and the munchkin keys on a wireless Apple keyboard or a MB/MBP/MBA:

Wow both of those tiny return keys would drive me bonkers. The french keyboards over here are like that too, although not quite as cramped. You know after all these years you'd think somebody out there would make a decent keyboard. But the industry is half comatose and still wastes a tremendous amount of space on stuff like the CAPS LOCK key - one of the most unused keys takes up almost the most space on all the keyboards even after all this time. If they made CAPS LOCK into a Fn key combo and used that space to reorganize everything else, think of how much better both Apple and PC keyboards could be.

I used to work for a large vehicle manufacturing company who had robots and engine building machines running on Windows 3.11 and NT4. We were trying to get everything upgraded to XP at those factories and seeing as I knew nothing about manufacturing before visiting there I couldn't believe it when they said they could only upgrade those in 5 to 10 years time.

That's why we need companies like Apple around. If it were up to the PC industry we'd still have floppy drives and would be switching over to 64 bit computing in 20 years. Microsoft quite frankly doesn't have the balls to cut the cord on legacy software and hardware.

The thing I love about Snow Leopard is it will drag Apple users (that upgrade) kicking and screaming into the 64 bit multicore age of computing whether they want to or not. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Sometimes to move forward you have to cut free from the past. Apple is the one that can do it first. Eventually it will force the other companies to catch up or perish.

FX120

Mar 25, 2009, 06:48 PM

I used to work for a large vehicle manufacturing company who had robots and engine building machines running on Windows 3.11 and NT4. We were trying to get everything upgraded to XP at those factories and seeing as I knew nothing about manufacturing before visiting there I couldn't believe it when they said they could only upgrade those in 5 to 10 years time.

It's pretty logicial if you think about it. Just because it is old, doesn't mean that it is bad and needs to be upgraded.

In industry aplications the computer systems are only part of the overall machine and it's function. The function requirements of the machine as a whole dictate the computer requirements, and honestly a NT4 and 3.11 on 486-66's is more than enough computing power.

Hell the computers you saw were probably only for communication with the machines internal PLC's, for updating, changing, and monitoring programs. Even the most state-of-the-art PLC's of today can still be programmed and debugged on a Pentium 3 from the late 90's, and use RS-232 for PC communication.

The only reason to upgrade would be if the rest of the machine was being limited by the computer and it's abilities, which isn't the case of older equipment. It's only logital to upgrade the computer systems if the rest of the machine is upgraded as well, to a more capable system.

tubbymac

Mar 25, 2009, 07:05 PM

It's pretty logicial if you think about it. Just because it is old, doesn't mean that it is bad and needs to be upgraded.

True. I remember reading about how NASA still uses relatively ancient chips in their space shuttles. The reasoning was that the older chips have been tried and tested for years. Reliability and the ability to debug the simpler designs was more important than using the latest and greatest stuff.

SnowLeopard2008

Mar 25, 2009, 07:23 PM

This entire thread is pointless. My biology teacher taught us something, no two species have the same niche. Simply put, Windows serves a certain niche market and Macs serve a certain niche. But generally, Windows machines are cheaper but are made from cheaper/less powerful hardware. You don't see Apple cutting their costs as much as Dell is. Why can't be accept the fact that there is a yin-yang in this world? Like male/female?

tubbymac

Mar 25, 2009, 07:32 PM

Why can't be accept the fact that there is a yin-yang in this world? Like male/female?

It's because human nature in general, and I don't mean all of us, but most of us, have to find something to hate in order to like something else. It's retarded, yes, but true.

Apple users hating windows.
Windows users hating Apple.
Xbox users hating PS3.
PS3 users hating Xbox.
BMW drivers hating Lexus.
Import cars versus domestic cars.
Alternative music fans hating pop music fans.

The list goes on and on. People in general need to wake up and realize you can like more than one type of thing without hating everything else. You can also like something and be critical of it's faults too. The world doesn't have to be full of dumb fanboys and fangirls. There is room for balance.

Stridder44

Mar 25, 2009, 08:17 PM

Why can't be accept the fact that there is a yin-yang in this world? Like male/female?

I try to. I use both OS's. They're both fantastic for different reasons.

Anuba

Mar 25, 2009, 08:46 PM

Wow both of those tiny return keys would drive me bonkers. The french keyboards over here are like that too, although not quite as cramped. You know after all these years you'd think somebody out there would make a decent keyboard. But the industry is half comatose and still wastes a tremendous amount of space on stuff like the CAPS LOCK key - one of the most unused keys takes up almost the most space on all the keyboards even after all this time. If they made CAPS LOCK into a Fn key combo and used that space to reorganize everything else, think of how much better both Apple and PC keyboards could be.
It's Ye Olde Typewriter Standard that dates back to 1873, nobody dares touch this sacred layout. And then there's the damn SysRq, Scroll Lock and Break keys from the DOS age... everybody wants to remove them but nobody wants to go first.

Logitech likes putting the Fn key between the right Alt and Ctrl keys on PC keyboards, which makes sense. Unfortunately that's a no-go on PC notebook keyboards because they have no space between right Ctrl and right Alt - instead it's between left Ctrl and the Win key, which must be a good spot because I've never hit it by accident. My brain is hardwired to having Ctrl on the far left and Alt immediately to the left of the Space key. Macbook keyboards now have Fn and Cmd there, and two wrongs don't make a right.

That's why we need companies like Apple around. If it were up to the PC industry we'd still have floppy drives and would be switching over to 64 bit computing in 20 years. Microsoft quite frankly doesn't have the balls to cut the cord on legacy software and hardware.
I don't understand why they can't just make the legacy crap a subset rather than the foundation of the system. They have a "business" edition anyway, toss all the legacy crap there for the RS-232 and DOS huggers and spare the rest of us.

Apple users hating windows.
Windows users hating Apple.
Well, the climate of bitter rivalry is happily perpetuated by Apple themselves, they've been mocking Windows ever since the "Pentium Toaster" campaign back in 1999... so of course the users are going to echo that. Jobs is about as mature as a teacher who's watching a schoolyard fight, and instead of breaking it up he starts chanting "Blood! Blood!".

The climate has changed a little since Apple's Intel switch and the introduction of BootCamp, though. First, there were the Intel haters... they obviously turned very quiet after Apple's big switch. People who insisted that a PowerBook G4 ran circles around any Wintel machine had some trouble explaining why Apple's own charts showed that the 1st gen MacBooks were 4x faster than their G4 predecessors.

But then there were also a certain type of Apple evangelists who based all their Windows FUD babble on hearsay, myths, rumors and conjecture, they all repeated the same mantras and you could just smell the BS from miles away -- they had no XP experience, but were talking about some fictional version of Windows that was like Windows ME on crack. Windows users supposedly never got any work done because they spent 8 hours a day fighting off viruses that were buzzing around their heads like biplanes around King Kong. If the machine didn't bluescreen on them before the viruses hit it, that is.

Those "malware mantra" types are very rare these days. The atmosphere is much more pleasant now, the Scientology-type cult vibe is almost gone. It doesn't mean that all Mac users suddenly like Windows of course, they may hate it even more than before after using it, but I'd much rather have honest Windows haters than the old school brainwashed fanboy windbags.

The Flashing Fi

Mar 25, 2009, 09:35 PM

That's why we need companies like Apple around. If it were up to the PC industry we'd still have floppy drives and would be switching over to 64 bit computing in 20 years. Microsoft quite frankly doesn't have the balls to cut the cord on legacy software and hardware.

You know, Microsoft had a full 64-bit kernel before Apple did. Apple is just now moving their OS to be fully 64-bit. Apple hasn't pushed anyone to 64-bit, nor has Microsoft to be honest. It's a gradual transition to move to 64-bit. Not out of want, but out of necessity. We've reached the limit of 32-bit.

tubbymac

Mar 25, 2009, 10:01 PM

I don't understand why they can't just make the legacy crap a subset rather than the foundation of the system. They have a "business" edition anyway, toss all the legacy crap there for the RS-232 and DOS huggers and spare the rest of us.

Because that would make too much sense. A similar great idea I came across along those lines was to put all the 32 bit and legacy junk into a virtual machine. The OS could then be purely 64 bit and free to evolve without carrying around all the baggage. Something similar to what OSX did with the Rosetta PowerPC emulation layer.

You know, Microsoft had a full 64-bit kernel before Apple did. Apple is just now moving their OS to be fully 64-bit. Apple hasn't pushed anyone to 64-bit, nor has Microsoft to be honest. It's a gradual transition to move to 64-bit. Not out of want, but out of necessity. We've reached the limit of 32-bit.

Yeah but that's the point. Microsoft had it a long time ago and still to this day we're still running more 32 bit Windows systems than 64 bit ones. The speed with which Microsoft moves on a technology can sometimes be measured in glacial ages because they are constantly carrying around the baggage. It's both their strongest asset and their weakest Achilles's heel. With Microsoft you're pretty guaranteed that most of your stuff will still work decades into the future. But you're also guaranteed that other companies will be able to react faster to technology - companies with less baggage to carry around.

The difference with the way Microsoft and Apple introduce a new technology is Microsoft makes it an optional part of their OS. It's like, hey, we have this new cool 64 bit stuff but it'll be an option. So the hardware manufacturers take the path of least resistance and don't use the option. Developers see more 32 bit Windows installations than 64 bit ones and continue writing 32 bit stuff. So the adoption of the new technology keeps getting delayed.

Apple on the other hand draws a clear line in the sand. With Snow Leopard, it'll be 64 bit. There's no 32 bit option. Developers are safe in the knowledge that they can write purely 64 bit stuff from that point on. The adoption is quicker.

Anuba

Mar 25, 2009, 10:31 PM

You know, Microsoft had a full 64-bit kernel before Apple did. Apple is just now moving their OS to be fully 64-bit. Apple hasn't pushed anyone to 64-bit, nor has Microsoft to be honest. It's a gradual transition to move to 64-bit. Not out of want, but out of necessity. We've reached the limit of 32-bit.
It's taking forever though. The transition from 16 to 32 bit happened at lightspeed compared to 32>64. I always assumed that the evolution of technology would just keep going faster and faster, but if anything it seems to be slowing down.

10 years ago we wouldn't have touched a 9 year old OS with a 40-foot pole, but today a lot of people are clinging to Win XP which is the equivalent of using Windows 3.0 in 1999. The predominant audio format, the 44.1 k/16-bit CD, still rules even though we could've had DVD-A with 96k/24-bit long ago, and the alternative to audio CDs (mp3/AAC etc) is a downtrade in quality, and rendered from the crappy 44.1/16 CD-audio masters. On cellphones, people are texting like crazy even though it's an ancient, awful format that wasn't even intended for two-way communication. And whatever happened to "Internet II" and IPv6?

KevinN206

Mar 25, 2009, 10:46 PM

Yeah but that's the point. Microsoft had it a long time ago and still to this day we're still running more 32 bit Windows systems than 64 bit ones. The speed with which Microsoft moves on a technology can sometimes be measured in glacial ages because they are constantly carrying around the baggage. It's both their strongest asset and their weakest Achilles's heel. With Microsoft you're pretty guaranteed that most of your stuff will still work decades into the future. But you're also guaranteed that other companies will be able to react faster to technology - companies with less baggage to carry around.
With the market share that Microsoft has, they simply don't have the luxury of dropping 32-bit OS on the dot. It has everything to do with maximizing profit from systems that capable or even semi-capable. It's also one Windows 7 is still available in 32-bit. However, most laptops and PC from OEM such as Dell and HP today come with Vista 64-bit, if it makes any difference.

mmulin

Mar 25, 2009, 10:55 PM

Will Snow Leopard beat Windows 7 in boot times?

This is all acceptable differences we are talking. Anyone missing BeOS's <10 seconds boot times? As long we are not there, I don't believe there was an evolution of OSes <sigh>

tubbymac

Mar 25, 2009, 11:14 PM

With the market share that Microsoft has, they simply don't have the luxury of dropping 32-bit OS on the dot.

However, most laptops and PC from OEM such as Dell and HP today come with Vista 64-bit, if it makes any difference.

They don't have to just drop it though. Remember Microsoft already has their own virtual machine technology called Virtual PC. They could simply include that in Windows 7 and throw in the 32 bit edition of Windows 7 or Vista or XP or whatnot as a virtual machine image. Then they could sell only 64 bit versions of Windows 7 and almost everybody would be happy. Legacy and corporate users would still have everything working. Tech savvy users could have the latest tech in a clean OS without the weight of 32 bit baggage. It's been done before in OSX.

Eventually the switch will occur. As you've stated most vendors ship any system with 4 gigs of ram or more with 64 bit editions of Windows. It's just that the switch could have been made a lot sooner if virtual machine technology had been used years ago.

This is all acceptable differences we are talking. Anyone missing BeOS's <10 seconds boot times? As long we are not there, I don't believe there was an evolution of OSes <sigh>

Hell yeah! BeOS was an incredible OS way ahead of it's time. So was the Amiga OS now that we've gotten sidetracked.

Some Linux guys have squeezed a 5 second bootup time from a modified Linux install - and that was on a hard drive and not even a solid state drive. The technology is already here. It's just OSX and Windows have become so incredibly bloated that they spend ridiculous amounts of time in their bootups.

mmulin

Mar 25, 2009, 11:21 PM

With the market share that Microsoft has, they simply don't have the luxury of dropping 32-bit OS on the dot. It has everything to do with maximizing profit from systems that capable or even semi-capable. It's also one Windows 7 is still available in 32-bit. However, most laptops and PC from OEM such as Dell and HP today come with Vista 64-bit, if it makes any difference.

Well ok, but be elegant. Virtualize it, sandbox it. If you have a multi-core 64bit with gigs of RAM, you just don't want to live in the other world. M$'s problem is that they hide/ integrate their legacy support at the expense of any progress. You need to guide people and not make them comfy in their dim little world. Otherwise, one day they wake up and get that new OS all their friends have which can listen to your commands and count twice as fast on the same hardware.

KevinN206

Mar 26, 2009, 12:57 AM

They don't have to just drop it though. Remember Microsoft already has their own virtual machine technology called Virtual PC. They could simply include that in Windows 7 and throw in the 32 bit edition of Windows 7 or Vista or XP or whatnot as a virtual machine image. Then they could sell only 64 bit versions of Windows 7 and almost everybody would be happy. Legacy and corporate users would still have everything working. Tech savvy users could have the latest tech in a clean OS without the weight of 32 bit baggage. It's been done before in OSX.

Well ok, but be elegant. Virtualize it, sandbox it. If you have a multi-core 64bit with gigs of RAM, you just don't want to live in the other world.
This solves to certain extents the software aspects. My point is that Microsoft wants to have Windows installed on as many PC as possible, which is why Windows 7 32-bit will still be released. The situation is that 32-bit CPU cannot run 64-bit Windows - Microsoft essentially went fully 64-bit since XP 64-bit. As a results, the kernel, drivers, and subsystems are all 64-bits.

I know Microsoft has many different virtualization technologies including Virtual PC, App-V, MED-V, and the server hypervisor, but these are software solutions. So releasing 64-bit only Windows NOW means many 32-bit PC that are still capable of running Windows 7 (for example), cannot be upgraded. Remember that Windows 7 is supposed to be as fast or faster than XP.

tubbymac

Mar 26, 2009, 01:06 AM

So releasing 64-bit only Windows NOW means many 32-bit PC that are still capable of running Windows 7 (for example), cannot be upgraded.

Ah, now I understand your point. Good point.

Came across a funny screenshot relating to the Fisher Price design style Anuba was talking about before. It made me laugh because it really fit into the toy motif. During the design process the Windows 7 team actually considered and tested a "bat signal" feature to the UI. Thank goodness this never made it to beta. Not sure how long I could have tolerated a batman style show light on a taskbar hover before I'd want to throw my machine out the window.

http://mos.techradar.com//classifications/computing/software/operating-systems/images/Windows%207%20Beta%201/batsignal-728-75.jpg

FX120

Mar 26, 2009, 01:40 AM

I don't understand why they can't just make the legacy crap a subset rather than the foundation of the system. They have a "business" edition anyway, toss all the legacy crap there for the RS-232 and DOS huggers and spare the rest of us.

DOS has been gone from Windows for almost 10 years now.

And it's not like legacy support is a *bad* thing, hell OS X still has RS-232 support, because even modern USB devices actually have USB->Serial adapters inside of them, that still require the use of a serial port mapped by the OS.

Keep in mind that floppy drives, serial and parallel ports, SCSI, and various other "legacy" hardware devices and protocols are still supported in OS X.

There is really no good reason to drop the support, at least I haven't heard any good reasons suggesting that it would in any way improve the OS. So why bother going through the effort of removing features that are of use to many people, just for the sake of doing it?

Oh, and what about all of those people that bought first generation Core Duo Macbooks, Macbook Pro's, iMacs, and Mac Mini's that don't support a 64-bit instruction set? Are they going to be able to upgrade to 10.6? I guess they're going to be SOL with upgrading their computers to the latest OS, even though in many cases their computer would otherwise be fully capable of doing so.

They don't have to just drop it though. Remember Microsoft already has their own virtual machine technology called Virtual PC. They could simply include that in Windows 7 and throw in the 32 bit edition of Windows 7 or Vista or XP or whatnot as a virtual machine image. Then they could sell only 64 bit versions of Windows 7 and almost everybody would be happy. Legacy and corporate users would still have everything working. Tech savvy users could have the latest tech in a clean OS without the weight of 32 bit baggage. It's been done before in OSX.
They already do this, and have since XP x64, which was from the get go capable of running 32-bit applications, that isn't the problem. As has already been explained, the problem is all those people out there with 32-bit computers that would be unable to upgrade their computer to the latest OS, even if it the processor and other components meet the requirements.

chewietobbacca

Mar 26, 2009, 01:55 AM

Thank god this thread went from trolling to a smart and civilized conversation!

DOS has been gone from Windows for almost 10 years now.

And it's not like legacy support is a *bad* thing, hell OS X still has RS-232 support, because even modern USB devices actually have USB->Serial adapters inside of them, that still require the use of a serial port mapped by the OS.

Keep in mind that floppy drives, serial and parallel ports, SCSI, and various other "legacy" hardware devices and protocols are still supported in OS X.

There is really no good reason to drop the support, at least I haven't heard any good reasons suggesting that it would in any way improve the OS. So why bother going through the effort of removing features that are of use to many people, just for the sake of doing it?

Oh, and what about all of those people that bought first generation Core Duo Macbooks, Macbook Pro's, iMacs, and Mac Mini's that don't support a 64-bit instruction set? Are they going to be able to upgrade to 10.6? I guess they're going to be SOL with upgrading their computers to the latest OS, even though in many cases their computer would otherwise be fully capable of doing so.

Yep, it's not like Windows is the only one with legacy support - Mac's still have it built in, often as a "just in case" situation.

Anywho, believe it or not, but hardware drives the development of software in a lot more ways than we'd like to admit. It's easy to blame Windows for not advancing software, but the truth is, Apple (especially since their move to Intel) and MS are software companies first, hardware companies second.

There's no way they go out and adopt 64-bit in 1992 when the hardware limitations of 32-bit were far off in the future. Remember when 8MB of RAM were the norm?

Keep in mind that the 16->32 bit transition occured so quick compared to the 32->64 bit transition for two major reasons: The 16->32 bit transition was still during the infant stages of widespread PC's, and because of the fact that 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit aren't linear: they're exponential.

It was far easier to reach the 2^16 (65536) limit in computing, but 2^32 (4,294,967,296) was way far off at the time. Now that we're reaching the 4GB limit of 32-bit since the hardware for it has become the norm, we've seen the rapid introduction of 64-bit (2^64 = 1.84467441 × 10^19), or something like 16 exabytes of RAM.

It might be decades before we even get close to that limit.

(Add in the fact that it wasn't until the 90's that AMD came out with the 64-bit instruction set for x86 processors, which is another hardware limitation). So honestly, you can't blame them for not advancing hardware - it's simply not worth the resources to prepare for something that at the time was a decade off. And in our case, 128-bit isn't worth worrying about for many decades.

Anywho, I really look forward to Win7 as it's proven to be far more stable and snappier than even XP in its beta form. Plus, the fact that they've seemingly heeded a lot of the criticisms as shown in this blog about windows touch features (http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/) is very encouraging to say the least.

mmulin

Mar 26, 2009, 04:16 AM

This solves to certain extents the software aspects. My point is that Microsoft wants to have Windows installed on as many PC as possible, which is why Windows 7 32-bit will still be released. The situation is that 32-bit CPU cannot run 64-bit Windows - Microsoft essentially went fully 64-bit since XP 64-bit. As a results, the kernel, drivers, and subsystems are all 64-bits.

I know Microsoft has many different virtualization technologies including Virtual PC, App-V, MED-V, and the server hypervisor, but these are software solutions. So releasing 64-bit only Windows NOW means many 32-bit PC that are still capable of running Windows 7 (for example), cannot be upgraded. Remember that Windows 7 is supposed to be as fast or faster than XP.

I get your point but M$ is still releasing 32 bit OS and charges 64 bit tax. But 64 bit HW is predominant by now. For progress sakes just sell 64 bit and have a 32 bit options as well. Better even do it like it was done in OSX 10.5. It still runs on 32 bit CPUs and end users don't need to be knowledgeable about. Of course, the M$ marketing machine will start sighing hearing this. Right now they make money selling an inferior version and charging extra for actually trying to use the performance of your hardware.

kevin j

Mar 26, 2009, 08:34 AM

People are forgetting the best selling PCs now are 32-bit (netbooks).

Always drivers is the main thing holding everything back. All legacy drivers have to be rewritten and that takes time.

Both MS and apple delivered a 64 bit capable OS around the same time.While this is so most macs are 64-bit capable yet most software is still 32-bit only and it would be difficult to say that they are ahead in the race to be fully 64-bit. These things take time.

Infrared

Mar 26, 2009, 11:39 AM

The new taskbar in Win7 is really cool, but a lot of the ugliness of Vista lives on, unfortunately. Like the window borders, which are incredibly fat, about twice the width of window borders in XP.

One of the first things I do is reduce border padding. I wouldn't mind
knowing if there's some permanent fix so it will be like that by default
for every new account.

Infrared

Mar 26, 2009, 11:49 AM

Yes it is possible. I've done it a few times. All you lose are the convenience keys at the top. So you can't change brightness, can't change volume, have no media shortcut keys, and no eject button.

Fn+keys still work. So you can still hit Fn+delete to get a forward delete instead of a backspace.

The only thing is, there's no way through bootcamp to turn it off. You have to manually either delete the keyboard driver file itself or rename it so that it doesn't get loaded on startup. Or you kill the task in task manager after it starts.

I don't know about the MBP setup. On a Mac Pro you can select a different
keyboard driver in Device Manager. The function keys then become normal
function keys, IIRC. msconfig can be used to stop the filter driver loading at
startup. A registry tweak will map some function keys of your choice to
volume up/down/mute. I imagine there are various workarounds for the
other stuff. E.g., as I wrote elsewhere, I have a small program to open and
close the DVD tray. That leaves monitor brightness, but on a Mac Pro it's not
much of an issue as you can set it at the monitor itself.

Anuba

Mar 26, 2009, 11:58 AM

One of the first things I do is reduce border padding. I wouldn't mind
knowing if there's some permanent fix so it will be like that by default
for every new account.
I reduced it from 4 to 2 with Ultimate Vista Tweaks and it was a major improvement. Probably has to be done manually for each account though.

This is one of the more ridiculous looking ones I've found in Win7... there may be even smaller ones hidden somewhere.

Infrared

Mar 26, 2009, 12:30 PM

I reduced it from 4 to 2 with Ultimate Vista Tweaks and it was a major improvement. Probably has to be done manually for each account though.

Thanks!

Actually, I quite like the Windows Classic theme. I know it's not
refined or elegant, and can rightly be criticized as being dated.
However, it is clear and consistent and somewhat minimalist,
and those are qualities I appreciate.

And I do think the jump lists in Windows 7 look rather odd from
a design perspective. Like the Vista sidebar, they don't feel as
though they belong where they are.

Stridder44

Mar 26, 2009, 05:48 PM

I reduced it from 4 to 2 with Ultimate Vista Tweaks and it was a major improvement. Probably has to be done manually for each account though.

This is one of the more ridiculous looking ones I've found in Win7... there may be even smaller ones hidden somewhere.

I hope all of you with any issues (even cosmetic ones) about Windows 7 are sending feedback.

ChrisA

Mar 26, 2009, 06:09 PM

Based on the beta versions, which one is superior in which area? How they will compare?

Windows 7 is a total failure when it comes to running Aperture and Logic Express. I don't care what feature the OS has if it can't run the software I use.

FX120

Mar 26, 2009, 06:53 PM

Windows 7 is a total failure when it comes to running Aperture and Logic Express. I don't care what feature the OS has if it can't run the software I use.

Is that a failure of the OS, or the software?

tubbymac

Mar 26, 2009, 07:54 PM

Oh, and what about all of those people that bought first generation Core Duo Macbooks, Macbook Pro's, iMacs, and Mac Mini's that don't support a 64-bit instruction set? Are they going to be able to upgrade to 10.6? I guess they're going to be SOL with upgrading their computers to the latest OS, even though in many cases their computer would otherwise be fully capable of doing so.

Most likely yes. I don't think Snow Leopard will support 32 bit machines at all.

Keep in mind that the 16->32 bit transition occured so quick compared to the 32->64 bit transition for two major reasons: The 16->32 bit transition was still during the infant stages of widespread PC's, and because of the fact that 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit aren't linear: they're exponential.

blog about windows touch features (http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/)

Good point about the exponential difference. I still don't think Microsoft "gets it" when it comes to touch gestures. The single finger swipe they use for scrolling is awkward compared to the two finger scroll OSX uses. You can't easily horizontal scroll with the microsoft gesture.

TSE

Mar 26, 2009, 08:00 PM

Anuba

Mar 26, 2009, 08:54 PM

I hope all of you with any issues (even cosmetic ones) about Windows 7 are sending feedback.
I sent tons of it, before I read on Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows that M$ doesn't bother reading it. They have a different beta program than they had for Vista, where feedback from early testers was incorporated in the system... this time they have a single beta and a single release candidate going out, and everything was already set in stone long before the public beta was released. But I still send feedback sometimes anyway, it's a good way to vent frustration even if it's going straight into a black hole.

Anuba

Mar 26, 2009, 09:07 PM

Personally I am not a fan of the new Windows 7 UI, and I seem to be the only one. Looks like I am going to stick with Windows XP until 2014 when support fades, or do you think a Windows XP identical UI is going to be available for download?
Which one of the XP interfaces? You cannot possibly mean the blue one, an uglier UI never existed. The silver one I put up with for a few years, but eventually replaced it with a custom UI out of pure boredom.

My biggest gripe with Vista's (and Win7's) UI is that if you use a dark theme, the weird white goo behind the title bar text becomes more visible, and if you use a bright theme to drown out the white goo, the taskbar becomes so bright that the white text is barely visible. This leaves the user with 3 alternatives...

1) Bright theme: No visible white goo on the title bar, but invisible text on the taskbar

2) Dark theme: Clear, legible text on the taskbar, but title bars that look like someone puked a bucket of milk over them

3) Medium bright theme: worst of both worlds.

cathyy

Mar 27, 2009, 01:18 AM

Which one of the XP interfaces? You cannot possibly mean the blue one, an uglier UI never existed. The silver one I put up with for a few years, but eventually replaced it with a custom UI out of pure boredom.

My biggest gripe with Vista's (and Win7's) UI is that if you use a dark theme, the weird white goo behind the title bar text becomes more visible, and if you use a bright theme to drown out the white goo, the taskbar becomes so bright that the white text is barely visible. This leaves the user with 3 alternatives...

1) Bright theme: No visible white goo on the title bar, but invisible text on the taskbar

2) Dark theme: Clear, legible text on the taskbar, but title bars that look like someone puked a bucket of milk over them

3) Medium bright theme: worst of both worlds.

I stuck with the Classic theme. It was the only one that didn't look hideous.

tubbymac

Mar 27, 2009, 02:30 AM

Ug, the bevels in the classic theme aren't that pretty either. It's all kinda ugly on Windows.

The new Marble theme in Snow Leopard from the front page is a bit disconcerting. Some of the shots so far have that ugly black-Vista look to it that I've seen on some HP machines. I'm hoping those were just bad shots.

tubbymac

Mar 27, 2009, 02:56 PM

Just saw a new Microsoft commercial on engadget and for the first time I think Microsoft's advertising is on to something. You can see the article and the video here:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/27/microsofts-new-ad-shows-how-people-shop-for-computers-in-the-re/

This was the first one I didn't cringe watching. The previous attempts at fighting back against Apple were incredibly stupid. Stuff with Gates/Seinfeld, and other "I'm a PC" attempts were laughable.

This one sticks a snarky anti Apple comment in it without going over the top. If Microsoft runs with this line of advertising and doesn't completely botch up Windows 7, they have a good chance of actually competing.

The laptop the chick ends up buying is a piece of junk I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole but the commercial otherwise is decent :)

elppa

Mar 27, 2009, 03:23 PM

Some Linux guys have squeezed a 5 second bootup time from a modified Linux install - and that was on a hard drive and not even a solid state drive. The technology is already here. It's just OSX and Windows have become so incredibly bloated that they spend ridiculous amounts of time in their bootups.

That's probably because they are loading useful stuff, rather than being stripped down to bare bones like the Linux install probably was.

Typical new Macs boot in around 30 seconds (even notebooks with 5400rpm drives). That's more than acceptable. For notebooks you can sleep/resume very easily to, something which other operating systems seem to, ahem, struggle with.

EmperorDarius

Mar 27, 2009, 04:03 PM

Stridder44

Mar 27, 2009, 04:09 PM

petvas

Mar 27, 2009, 04:13 PM

Is that a failure of the OS, or the software?

Of course no one should judge an OS by its ability to run an application but I think a point was made here: One should choose the OS that runs the applications he/she needs/wants to use.

KevinN206

Mar 27, 2009, 09:49 PM

The default desktop theme with the fish is ugly beyound belief.
You missed the joke. The fish is a "betta fish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_fighting_fish)," which implies that Windows 7 released so far has been betas. The final RTM version will have a different default wallpaper.

FX120

Mar 27, 2009, 11:31 PM

Of course no one should judge an OS by its ability to run an application but I think a point was made here: One should choose the OS that runs the applications he/she needs/wants to use.

That's what I was going for. Saying that 7 is a failure because it doesn't run Apple's OS X exclusive applications hardly seems fair.

steveza

Mar 28, 2009, 05:00 AM

I sent tons of it, before I read on Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows that M$ doesn't bother reading it. They have a different beta program than they had for Vista, where feedback from early testers was incorporated in the system... this time they have a single beta and a single release candidate going out, and everything was already set in stone long before the public beta was released. But I still send feedback sometimes anyway, it's a good way to vent frustration even if it's going straight into a black hole.I think if you are talking about feature changes then you are correct. For cosmetic changes feedback and telemetry are being used to improve the user experience. There have been a few blogs from the engineering team where they have highlighted improvements that have been made based on feedback. They are putting emphasis on this aspect to show that lessons have been learnt from the Vista fiasco.

steveza

Mar 28, 2009, 05:19 AM

Link to that?I think this was Paul's follow up on that post: http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/02/25/microsoft-seriously-we-re-listening-to-your-windows-7-feedback.aspx.

I don't really agree with him but that's just my opinion. If you compare the amount of visibility that we have of SL vs W7 I think Microsoft's approach is better if not perfect.

Pika

Mar 28, 2009, 07:47 AM

Is that a failure of the OS, or the software?

While OS X has seen continual growth, from 4.21% in Jan 2006 to 7.31% in December 2007 at the same time, Linux's percentage has risen from only 0.29% to 0.63%. The reasons? 'Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,'. 'Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Linux was it. Nowadays, an Apple Mac is undoubtedly the alternative and, with its resurgence and its Intel base, a very viable one.

MacRumorUser

Mar 28, 2009, 07:53 AM

Seriously?? Who restarts or turns off their computers anymore unless there is an update.

Plenty of people do... :rolleyes:

A lot of people make sweeping assumptions based on their own actions too....

TSE

Mar 28, 2009, 09:23 AM

Beerfloat

Mar 28, 2009, 09:27 AM

I am talking about the blue one. I love it, and it brings back memories.

We found one! I saw him first.

cdcastillo

Mar 28, 2009, 10:40 AM

Laptops.

Well, not all of us, my Macbook only goes to sleep in the night. I rarely restart it; now that I thhink about it, this has been the case with all my Macs (3 iBooks, 2 Powerbooks and this macbook).

Why shut it down? if it barely spends energy while sleeping...

Anuba

Mar 28, 2009, 03:20 PM

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/20589/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/20602/

If you consider that piece of junk faster (and better) than the cheapest MacBook, you're a fool.

Ha! MacDailyNews! I almost forgot about those clowns. They're just scary. The Baghdad Bobs of the Mac Community. They way they tweak their messages to fill every single word full of utter contempt for everything non-Mac is straight out of Russian hate propaganda from the Stalin era. "See the enemy flee like the dogs they are, on what was to be another day of glorious victory for our brethren in the Communist Party..."

Yes, Karen is an actress (duhh). But this chick (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7872246776955336366) who is lying through her teeth about a PC "devouring half her paper" was, of course, a "real user". Not of Macs though, but definitely something you smoke or inject.

EmperorDarius

Mar 28, 2009, 03:30 PM

Ha! MacDailyNews! I almost forgot about those clowns. They're just scary. The Baghdad Bobs of the Mac Community. They way they tweak their messages to fill every single word full of utter contempt for everything non-Mac is straight out of Russian hate propaganda from the Stalin era. "See the enemy flee like the dogs they are, on what was to be another day of glorious victory for our brethren in the Communist Party..."

MacDailyNews is a very nice website. It's saying the truth and always brings the latest Apple news.

Yes, Karen is an actress (duhh). But this chick (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7872246776955336366) who is lying through her teeth about a PC "devouring half her paper" was, of course, a "real user". Not of Macs though, but definitely something you smoke or inject.

Except that Microsoft's ad supposedly was about a "normal person" who wants to buy a computer. They couldn't just go there and find someone in the streets, they had to find an actor.:rolleyes:
Apple's ads are there to show that celebrities use Macs (which is true).

Beerfloat

Mar 28, 2009, 03:35 PM

Yes, Karen is an actress (duhh). But this chick (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7872246776955336366) who is lying through her teeth about a PC "devouring half her paper" was, of course, a "real user". Not of Macs though, but definitely something you smoke or inject.

Yeah but c'mon at least that ad was sexually arousing.

Anuba

Mar 28, 2009, 04:13 PM

MacDailyNews is a very nice website. It's saying the truth and always brings the latest Apple news.
Priceless. I joked about how they sound like Baghdad Bob, or Russian communist propaganda through newspapers like Pravda (which means "the truth") and you respond by stating that MacDailyNews is "saying the truth".

If that bizarre site is your daily news source, I understand now why you appear brainwashed. I always suspected that the site was started by someone who wanted to create a parody on rabid Mac fanboys, because their PC hatred is just so over the top it's surreal.
Yeah but c'mon at least that ad was sexually arousing.
Maybe if the sound had been off, but her ridiculous story is a turnoff on par with Bruce Vilanch in a bikini. "The PC went beep-beep-beep-beep and half my paper was gone"... yeah, right before the pink elephant humped the purple sheep...

EmperorDarius

Mar 28, 2009, 04:33 PM

Priceless. I joked about how they sound like Baghdad Bob, or Russian communist propaganda through newspapers like Pravda (which means "the truth") and you respond by stating that MacDailyNews is "saying the truth".

If that bizarre site is your daily news source, I understand now why you appear brainwashed. I always suspected that the site was started by someone who wanted to create a parody on rabid Mac fanboys, because their PC hatred is just so over the top it's surreal.
.

Bizarre site? Why, because it criticizes Windows?
I also find surreal the impossibility of PC fanboys to accept the reality, it's really...depressing.

steveza

Mar 28, 2009, 04:46 PM

Bizarre site? Why, because it criticizes Windows?I think some might find that site bizarre because the editorial comments are so biased against MS that it does not really deliver on the facts.

EmperorDarius

Mar 28, 2009, 04:56 PM

I think some might find that site bizarre because the editorial comments are so biased against MS that it does not really deliver on the facts.

Microsoft has been doing nothing but stupid things. It's normal for MacDailyNews to criticize them.

Beerfloat

Mar 28, 2009, 05:13 PM

Microsoft has been doing nothing but stupid things. It's normal for MacDailyNews to criticize them.

On a separate but related note, I would like to call for restrictions on Internet access in kindergartens.

EmperorDarius

Mar 28, 2009, 05:17 PM

On a separate but related note, I would like to call for restrictions on Internet access in kindergartens.

Wow, the psychiatric hospitals are really suffering from the World Economical Crisis, they are forced to let a lot of patients out.

Cassie

Mar 28, 2009, 06:06 PM

Bizarre site? Why, because it criticizes Windows?
I also find surreal the impossibility of PC fanboys to accept the reality, it's really...depressing.

Likewise, I find it hard to believe that you can't accept the fact that PC's are the right choice for some people. Macs are clearly not for everyone.

EmperorDarius

Mar 28, 2009, 06:11 PM

Likewise, I find it hard to believe that you can't accept the fact that PC's are the right choice for some people. Macs are clearly not for everyone.

I find PCs acceptable only for people who cannot afford Macs at all.

Cassie

Mar 28, 2009, 06:15 PM

I find Macs acceptable only for people who cannot afford them at all.

...What? Are you saying the only people who should have Macs are those who can't afford them?:confused:

EmperorDarius

Mar 28, 2009, 06:23 PM

...What? Are you saying the only people who should have Macs are those who can't afford them?:confused:

Crap. Fixed post.:D

dukebound85

Mar 28, 2009, 06:24 PM

I find PCs acceptable only for people who cannot afford Macs at all.

really?

how may i run my design modeling software and the like....you know, the software that has no mac equivalent?

:rolleyes:

EmperorDarius

Mar 28, 2009, 06:34 PM

really?

how may i run my design modeling software and the like....you know, the software that has no mac equivalent?

:rolleyes:

Most of the software IS available or has a valid alternative.
Otherwise, just run it with Crossover or in some Windows Virtual Machine.
But the better way would be to switch to another software. Runs better than Windows software.

FX120

Mar 28, 2009, 08:07 PM

Anuba

Mar 28, 2009, 08:16 PM

Link to that?

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/02/25/microsoft-seriously-we-re-listening-to-your-windows-7-feedback.aspx

Riemann Zeta

Mar 28, 2009, 08:30 PM

Based upon the latest build of Windows 7 (Build 7057), it is shaping up extremely well and will certainly be Microsoft's best to date. Based upon the latest build of Mac OS 10.6, we know that Apple will be releasing a new OS version at some point in the future...but not much else. Either way, both are probably going to end up being worthwhile updates--which one is better depends more upon which you prefer working with. Computers and software are finally nearing the point where most modern operating systems 'work,' making the 'best' point moot.

Anuba

Mar 28, 2009, 08:30 PM

Bizarre site? Why, because it criticizes Windows?
I also find surreal the impossibility of PC fanboys to accept the reality, it's really...depressing.
In reality, a place I suspect you rarely visit, the simple fact of the matter is that MacDailyNews are insane zealots who live in a distorted reality field, and they have no "truth" to offer. Criticizing Windows is all fine and well, but these guys would never stop there because they're driven by uncontrollable hate and spew so much bile when rabidly spitting out the words with clenched teeth, they need advanced therapy.

Furthermore I don't really know what a "PC fanboy" is. There are hundreds of different PC manufacturers as well as homebuilt machines, and there are lots of different operating systems other than Windows, ranging from various Linux flavors to Hackintosh OS X. It's like calling someone a "music fanboy"... which genre? Which artists?

A Mac fanboy however is dead easy to pin down: One Computer, One OS, One Führer...

dukebound85

Mar 28, 2009, 08:35 PM

Most of the software IS available or has a valid alternative.
Otherwise, just run it with Crossover or in some Windows Virtual Machine.
But the better way would be to switch to another software. Runs better than Windows software.

you just. dont. get. it.:rolleyes:

really, show me an alternative thats commercially acceptable as ProE or solidworks

or fluent

pretty please lol

osx isnt the best in every situation

Cassie

Mar 28, 2009, 09:23 PM

I find PCs acceptable only for people who cannot afford Macs at all.

Most of the software IS available or has a valid alternative.
Otherwise, just run it with Crossover or in some Windows Virtual Machine.
But the better way would be to switch to another software. Runs better than Windows software.

If you weren't so rude in nearly every one of your posts, I'd probably feel sorry for you, since you've clearly been brain washed somehow. I didn't believe there was a Mac fanboy alive as rabid as you, but dang...

Listen. Some people prefer PC's. I know a friend of my mother who used Mac's at work for nearly 10 years. Guess what? She likes Vista more. That's her choice, Windows works better for her. Is it really possible you can't grasp your head around this concept? I like Windows, it's a very decent OS. It isn't just for poor people as you seem to have implied.

EmperorDarius

Mar 29, 2009, 03:24 AM

you just. dont. get. it.:rolleyes:

really, show me an alternative thats commercially acceptable as ProE or solidworks

or fluent

pretty please lol

osx isnt the best in every situation

How about:
http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/ac11/
http://www.lemkesoft.com/xd/public/content/index._cGlkPTE3MA_.html
http://www.interstudio.net/DigicadE.html

as CAD programs, just to name a few

or Houdini Apprentice HD as a substitute to Fluent

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1002

cathyy

Mar 29, 2009, 06:52 AM

MatLane

Mar 29, 2009, 06:58 AM

Snow Leopard

all the way.

Windows 7 will be an improvement to Vista.

It will be no OSX

dukebound85

Mar 29, 2009, 10:19 AM

How about:
http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/ac11/
http://www.lemkesoft.com/xd/public/content/index._cGlkPTE3MA_.html
http://www.interstudio.net/DigicadE.html

as CAD programs, just to name a few

or Houdini Apprentice HD as a substitute to Fluent

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1002

oook, none of those programs are substitutes:rolleyes:

ProE (http://www.ptc.com/products/proengineer/) and Solidworks (http://www.solidworks.com/) are 3d engineering modeling software that are able to analyze loads and all sorts of fun stuff as well.......and you gave me links for a mapping (2d) cad programs. may as well given me google sketchup lol. Not to mention in the industry, those two programs are pretty much the industry standard which is important

as for fluent (http://www.fluent.com/), you apparently have no idea what it is do you? it is a (CFD) fluid dynamics flow analysis program that deals with stuff like drag, lift and all sorts of goodies that are dependent on your model and mesh. why you gave me a CG link is beyond me

once again, osx is not ideal in many cases PERIOD

the fact that osx does not have a viable option for mathcad (http://www.ptc.com/appserver/mkt/products/home.jsp?k=3901) is a downer as well

P-Worm

Mar 29, 2009, 10:35 AM

oook, none of those programs are substitutes:rolleyes:

ProE (http://www.ptc.com/products/proengineer/) and Solidworks (http://www.solidworks.com/) are 3d engineering modeling software that are able to analyze loads and all sorts of fun stuff as well.......and you gave me links for a mapping (2d) cad programs. may as well given me google sketchup lol. Not to mention in the industry, those two programs are pretty much the industry standard which is important

as for fluent (http://www.fluent.com/), you apparently have NO idea what it is do you? it is a (CFD) fluid dynamics flow analysis program that deals with stuff like drag, lift and all sorts of goodies that are dependent on your model and mesh. why you gave me a CG link is beyond me

once again, osx is not ideal in many cases PERIOD

the fact that osx does not have a viable option for mathcad is a downer as well

I agree 100% these are not substitutes and it's a real shame. I have used Pro-E, SolidWorks, and Fluent for mechanical engineering projects and I wish I could get some of these programs for Macintosh. I can see why there are no alternatives, though. It's a chicken and egg problem. No one is willing to invest the copious amounts of time needed to port these programs or make a viable alternative (making a viable alternative would be extremely difficult by the way) and no engineers are going to live in OS X because the software they need isn't available.

With that said, I think every engineer should seriously look at owning a Mac with a Windows partition. One thing they always say is that it doesn't matter how good your solution to a problem is if you can't communicate that to others. Programs such as the iWork suite are excellent tools for making presentations and information booklets to 'sell' your idea. Sure Numbers is a joke when it comes data crunching, but it sure can present information in a professional matter. Keynote is lightyears better than PowerPoint and every time I have given a presentation with it at school, I have many faculty and students comment that it was one of the best presentations they have seen.

When it comes to engineering, use Windows for your data crunching and OS X to show off. :D

P-Worm

P-Worm

Mar 29, 2009, 10:39 AM

the fact that osx does not have a viable option for mathcad (http://www.ptc.com/appserver/mkt/products/home.jsp?k=3901) is a downer as well

I guess that just depends on what you're doing. I have found Matlab to be my favorite math tool, but I am specializing in robotics where we live in matrix algebra. There's also Maple if you like the symbolic approach. Out of curiosity, did you use Matlab when you were studying at Colorado St. (I assume you've graduated now?)

P-Worm

skaertus

Mar 29, 2009, 10:42 AM

This thread has essentially become a Win vs. Mac thread, instead of a comparison of the new announced features in Windows 7 and Snow Leopard.

Snow Leopard will have OpenCL, which will allow the OS to use the power of GPUs to general-purpose computing. I've heard that DirectX 11 will bring a similar feature in Windows 7. So far, I didn't hear of Windows 7 also adopting OpenCL. Does anybody know how these two technologies compare? Will it be OpenGL vs. DirectX all over again?

SimD

Mar 29, 2009, 10:43 AM

OP, bad place to ask the question.

If Win 7 has anything mildly good or interesting, leave it to this place to bash it and claim "who needs it anyway?"

I think we can only really tell once both come out.

QuickTime X looks promising and if Final Cut Studio 3 is optimized for Snow Leopard, I'll be happy.

On the other hand, Windows 7 looks very promising! I will definitely have to install it on my Mac and give it a go.

dukebound85

Mar 29, 2009, 10:45 AM

I guess that just depends on what you're doing. I have found Matlab to be my favorite math tool, but I am specializing in robotics where we live in matrix algebra. There's also Maple if you like the symbolic approach. Out of curiosity, did you use Matlab when you were studying at Colorado St. (I assume you've graduated now?)

P-Worm

I used matlab very little while in college. Most of the time, mathcad was used

paul.opensource

Mar 29, 2009, 02:23 PM

Based on the beta versions, which one is superior in which area? How they will compare?

Well, not to sound biased, but generally speaking anything out of Redmond is badly designed rubbish designed with the sole purpose to make $$ not to make customers happy, so I would tend to lean towards Snow Leopard :) Seriously, if Microsoft were a car company, they would have been sued into oblivion with "lemon law" litigation. People are so used to the way their Windows computer works, or doesn't, they assume that's the way it is supposed to be.

I have been a Linux and Opensource user for more than 10 years and recently switched my primary system to an aging G4. Nothing Microsoft has ever come up with can even hold a candle to this system in terms of stability and useability IMHO, and I am running Tiger on an 8 year old DA.

I know this probably wasn't supposed to be a bashing thread but I get so steamed when Microsoft products are compared to "real" software like OSX, Linux or BSD.

I'll get off my soapbox now, sorry if I offended anyone.

dukebound85

Mar 29, 2009, 02:27 PM

i love the software side of apple, not the hardware side in terms of computers

skaertus

Mar 29, 2009, 02:45 PM

Well, not to sound biased, but generally speaking anything out of Redmond is badly designed rubbish designed with the sole purpose to make $$ not to make customers happy, so I would tend to lean towards Snow Leopard :) Seriously, if Microsoft were a car company, they would have been sued into oblivion with "lemon law" litigation. People are so used to the way their Windows computer works, or doesn't, they assume that's the way it is supposed to be.

I have been a Linux and Opensource user for more than 10 years and recently switched my primary system to an aging G4. Nothing Microsoft has ever come up with can even hold a candle to this system in terms of stability and useability IMHO, and I am running Tiger on an 8 year old DA.

I know this probably wasn't supposed to be a bashing thread but I get so steamed when Microsoft products are compared to "real" software like OSX, Linux or BSD.

I'll get off my soapbox now, sorry if I offended anyone.

Really? Well, I use both Windows and MacOS. I've tried several distros of Linux, but I've found it to be way inferior to Windows and MacOS to the point I can't even think of using it.

MAG.

Mar 29, 2009, 09:49 PM

I find PCs acceptable only for people who cannot afford Macs at all.

With the price of my m1730 and m17 I can afford 3 Macbook Pros 17-inch model. Oh yes, and they're both PCs.

MAG.

Mar 29, 2009, 10:01 PM

If OS X is truly the best operating system in the world, then there's no need for Apple to provide Boot Camp with every computer.

I think one of the main reasons why "people who go Mac never go back", is because there's no need to. They can just run Windows with Boot Camp.

That's very very good point. I think this is a way Apple saying that if you don't like our OS, you can still install Windows via Boot Camp and keep the notebook/desktop you just bought from us. ;)

As I always said before, the OS is a tool, you use the best one depending on your needs. Don't let Microsoft or Apple decide that for you (they only want your wallet) And don't let them tell which is the "perfect OS". It's perfect only from them, for their uses and work, but may NOT be for you.

johnnj

Mar 30, 2009, 04:52 AM

That's very very good point. I think this is a way Apple saying that if you don't like our OS, you can still install Windows via Boot Camp and keep the notebook/desktop you just bought from us. ;)

I think the percentage of people who buy a Mac but don't like OSX so they run Windows is much smaller than those who need to use Windows either for work or gaming.

I'm the stereotypical PC guy, but I use a Mac laptop because I think the hardware design is superior and I enjoy using OSX. Because I can run Windows on it when I need to do work (VMware) and play a game (Bootcamp), it becomes a viable option.

Price-wise, I didn't think they were all that out of whack compared to other similar (but design-inferior) products I looked at. Certainly the customer service has been better than anything I'd get from Dell/Sony/HP.

Back to the topic of the thread:

I've used both 10.6 and the latest build of Win7. It's hard to say one's better than the other one. Win7 has more visible changes over Vista, where 10.6 at this point is all under the hood changes. The latest build of W7 was pretty solid (running it as my bootcamp now), where in 10.6 I had problems with SMB mounting.

John

John

jav6454

Mar 30, 2009, 11:17 AM

I agree 100% these are not substitutes and it's a real shame. I have used Pro-E, SolidWorks, and Fluent for mechanical engineering projects and I wish I could get some of these programs for Macintosh. I can see why there are no alternatives, though. It's a chicken and egg problem. No one is willing to invest the copious amounts of time needed to port these programs or make a viable alternative (making a viable alternative would be extremely difficult by the way) and no engineers are going to live in OS X because the software they need isn't available.

With that said, I think every engineer should seriously look at owning a Mac with a Windows partition. One thing they always say is that it doesn't matter how good your solution to a problem is if you can't communicate that to others. Programs such as the iWork suite are excellent tools for making presentations and information booklets to 'sell' your idea. Sure Numbers is a joke when it comes data crunching, but it sure can present information in a professional matter. Keynote is lightyears better than PowerPoint and every time I have given a presentation with it at school, I have many faculty and students comment that it was one of the best presentations they have seen.

When it comes to engineering, use Windows for your data crunching and OS X to show off. :D

P-Worm

Ain't this a God given truth.

awpitchy

Mar 30, 2009, 01:14 PM

Mac all the way!! :D

Stridder44

Mar 30, 2009, 03:20 PM

Most of the software IS available or has a valid alternative.
Otherwise, just run it with Crossover or in some Windows Virtual Machine.
But the better way would be to switch to another software. Runs better than Windows software.

Well you're a very successful troll, that's for sure. You've managed to get everyone here riled up. I mean I hope you're just trolling and don't actually believe the crap you're posting.

whitefang

Mar 30, 2009, 03:36 PM

Microsoft has a massive amount of technology to stabilize (for an example, .NET platform, Server tech etc) for the Business world (primary focus). Even though they have Server OS, for development environments, everyone uses Consumer OS. So, it takes time and is a slow process. Their secondary focus is the consumer aspect of it (the UI, making transitions easy).

At this point, Microsoft has made much more innovations and technology advances than Apple in the Business World. They cater to a larger amount of people so it's takes more time for Microsoft to stabilize. It's the same argument as why Japan has 100Mbps internet connections while the US has something like 25Mbps. It's because US has more infrastructure to handle.

steveza

Mar 30, 2009, 04:12 PM

At this point, Microsoft has made much more innovations and technology advances than Apple in the Business World. They cater to a larger amount of people so it's takes more time for Microsoft to stabilize. It's the same argument as why Japan has 100Mbps internet connections while the US has something like 25Mbps. It's because US has more infrastructure to handle.That is a good analogy I think.

Anyone who says that OS X is better than Windows isn't looking at the big picture that is the corporate market. I have about 1000+ servers in one of the datacenters I use: around 900 of those are Windows and the rest are Unix/Linux/HPUX. Except for 1 Xserve running OS X. Windows has the corporate market locked up and currently there is nothing that does the job better.

Back to the SLvW7 debate I think SL will make some good inroads in the consumer side of the market but the corporate world has been holding out for the improvements that Vista should have delivered is going to take up W7 by the truckload.

tubbymac

Mar 30, 2009, 04:58 PM

whitefang

Mar 30, 2009, 05:03 PM

Good point on the corporate world / Japan analogy.

Looking back at history though, remember that before Microsoft came into corporate dominance the company it dethroned was IBM. IBM used to be the big behemoth in the world of business and because they had so much infrastructure to support they became incredible slow to adapt and change.

Microsoft came along as this little upstart company that was able to quickly adapt. They had a much better consumer desktop than IBM could offer (remember IBM's failed desktop, what was it called, OS2 or something).

And look where we are today. Seems now Microsoft has become the new IBM behemoth and Apple has become the upstart Microsoft.

If Microsoft doesn't seriously rethink things and become more agile they could see even more reduction in market share versus not just Apple, but Google, and Linux.

Microsoft doesn't need to rethink it's strategy. Technology/Innovation wise, it's ahead. All these software that's being used in the medical, accounting, government are not written in php, c++, or objective-c. Their written in .NET. In fact, they are converting legacy apps written in classic asp, C++, php into .NET apps. With the web-eccentric apps, .NET is more important.

ryannazaretian

Mar 30, 2009, 05:21 PM

I'm personally looking forward to both. Both operating systems fix some of my main gripes with both OS's

tubbymac

Mar 30, 2009, 06:36 PM

Microsoft doesn't need to rethink it's strategy. Technology/Innovation wise, it's ahead.

That's the same thing that IBM thought, and look what happened.

If you look at what's actually happened to Microsoft in the last few years, it has pretty much lost market share in every single industry. The only one I can think of where it won a battle, competitive wise, was in the netbook industry where XP seems to have won out over Linux (at least for now).

Not rethinking it's strategy and constantly losing market share? Go ahead Microsoft, be my guest. I won't weep any tears if they go down that path and become increasingly less relevant.

whitefang

Mar 30, 2009, 06:59 PM

That's the same thing that IBM thought, and look what happened.

If you look at what's actually happened to Microsoft in the last few years, it has pretty much lost market share in every single industry. The only one I can think of where it won a battle, competitive wise, was in the netbook industry where XP seems to have won out over Linux (at least for now).

Not rethinking it's strategy and constantly losing market share? Go ahead Microsoft, be my guest. I won't weep any tears if they go down that path and become increasingly less relevant.

Lost market share in every single industry? Sources? If anything, it should have gained especially where server technology is concerned. Most of the "Microsoft will end up like IBM" is based on pure hype and myths.

In the corporate world, it's Windows or NOTHING and with reason too. Office 07 works better, for professionals that want to get stuff done. I tried using Pages, NeoOffice, and OpenOffice for technical documentation? Guess what? I went back to Office 07 immediately.

jav6454

Mar 30, 2009, 07:45 PM

Lost market share in every single industry? Sources? If anything, it should have gained especially where server technology is concerned. Most of the "Microsoft will end up like IBM" is based on pure hype and myths.

In the corporate world, it's Windows or NOTHING and with reason too. Office 07 works better, for professionals that want to get stuff done. I tried using Pages, NeoOffice, and OpenOffice for technical documentation? Guess what? I went back to Office 07 immediately.

You are in every mac vs pc thread. Seem to be every time bashing others while praising MS. Not to insult you or anything, but keeping that attitude up will label you here as an MS fanboy.

Yes, the poster you quoted has no sources, but it is very true MS has lost market share in everything.

Look at browsers, IE has been bleeding out market share to either FireFox, Opera or Safari.

Look at the mobile software industry. They can't match up, even Ballmer admitted in Barcelona that the rest of the mobile industry is trying to copy Apple. Windows Mobile is getting a revamp, not because MS wants too, but because mobile OS like, iPhone OS X and Web OS based Palm Pre and Android Open Source are seriously taking a beating at feature and development lacking Windows Mobile. (also these at the same time beat down Symbian OS)

Look at the Server market in the commercial Internet. Its either Linux based or Mac OS based. A company can't have the luxury of using Windows and risking its virus attracting nature to something as important as a web site or for that matter a web site that carries out check-outs (eBay, Visa, MasterCard for example).

Look in the consumer notebook and computer world. MacBooks are the top sellers every time, and in PCs, OS X is rapidly gaining market share despite the hefty price tag of Macs.

The Internet search business? Live.com can't gain any market share at all. It wins a bit one quarter just to lose it next quarter. This is despite MS having rolled out the cashback program.

People don't want to frustrate themselves over, they don't want last years advancements in a buggy or unstable environment when another company (either Apple or Google or some one else) can offer them long ago and better developed.

I will not argue with you in terms of Office, because basically that is MS flagship application suite. Sure, its great, but it is starting to become outdated by many standards. Word is losing its ground when it comes to pages. Excel is very good, and I will admit, Numbers is a joke. However, Keynote is seriously improving at such a fast rate in very little time, it will oust PowerPoint, if it hasn't already.

Sure people will complain to adapt to something new, but once they see how much better it is, its just a matter of time before Office (if the case is MS falls behind) gets replaced or starts bleeding market share also.

skaertus

Mar 30, 2009, 08:37 PM

You are in every mac vs pc thread. Seem to be every time bashing others while praising MS. Not to insult you or anything, but keeping that attitude up will label you here as an MS fanboy.

Yes, the poster you quoted has no sources, but it is very true MS has lost market share in everything.

Look at browsers, IE has been bleeding out market share to either FireFox, Opera or Safari.

Look at the mobile software industry. They can't match up, even Ballmer admitted in Barcelona that the rest of the mobile industry is trying to copy Apple. Windows Mobile is getting a revamp, not because MS wants too, but because mobile OS like, iPhone OS X and Web OS based Palm Pre and Android Open Source are seriously taking a beating at feature and development lacking Windows Mobile. (also these at the same time beat down Symbian OS)

Look at the Server market in the commercial Internet. Its either Linux based or Mac OS based. A company can't have the luxury of using Windows and risking its virus attracting nature to something as important as a web site or for that matter a web site that carries out check-outs (eBay, Visa, MasterCard for example).

Look in the consumer notebook and computer world. MacBooks are the top sellers every time, and in PCs, OS X is rapidly gaining market share despite the hefty price tag of Macs.

The Internet search business? Live.com can't gain any market share at all. It wins a bit one quarter just to lose it next quarter. This is despite MS having rolled out the cashback program.

People don't want to frustrate themselves over, they don't want last years advancements in a buggy or unstable environment when another company (either Apple or Google or some one else) can offer them long ago and better developed.

I will not argue with you in terms of Office, because basically that is MS flagship application suite. Sure, its great, but it is starting to become outdated by many standards. Word is losing its ground when it comes to pages. Excel is very good, and I will admit, Numbers is a joke. However, Keynote is seriously improving at such a fast rate in very little time, it will oust PowerPoint, if it hasn't already.

Sure people will complain to adapt to something new, but once they see how much better it is, its just a matter of time before Office (if the case is MS falls behind) gets replaced or starts bleeding market share also.

Perhaps Microsoft hasn't lost market share in everything. It has lost market share in operating systems and web browsers, that's true. In fact, it lost 5% of OS market share in the last 2 years. That's not huge, because it had 93% of market share, and it now has 88%. But IE had 78% in 2007, and it has 67% now - that's much worse. And it cannot penetrate web search, but it's trying to.

But Microsoft keeps being the dominant force in office suites - Office 2007 was a great improvement over 2003 (even with the 4-year gap) and it is still unmatched by rivals. Keynote is perhaps better than PowerPoint, but Word and Excel are still unbeatable - Pages is equal to Word, or even better, when it comes to page layout and DTP functions, but Word is still the best overall word processor. Microsoft's DirectX is winning the war over OpenGL; and XBOX 360, Microsoft's console, is stronger than the previous generation XBOX.

Microsoft will still dominate the market for operating systems - Windows Vista has a bad reputation, but it made Microsoft lose only 5% of market share. Most people can't just afford MacOS, and Linux is not an alternative these days. Windows 7 shows signs of being much better, and it won't drive people away like Vista does. And Microsoft is learning how to advertise its products...

skaertus

Mar 30, 2009, 08:38 PM

Look at browsers, IE has been bleeding out market share to either FireFox, Opera or Safari.

Not to Opera. Perhaps to Google Chrome, but not Opera...

NT1440

Mar 30, 2009, 08:40 PM

<snip?

You seem to be downplaying the significance of a 5% marketshare loss in a market this huge in such a short time.

tubbymac

Mar 30, 2009, 10:05 PM

In the corporate world, it's Windows or NOTHING and with reason too. Office 07 works better, for professionals that want to get stuff done. I tried using Pages, NeoOffice, and OpenOffice for technical documentation? Guess what? I went back to Office 07 immediately.

Yeah I'll concede Microsoft Office. Most of the corporate world still is locked into Office and that is in large part due to Excel being way ahead of it's competition. Word is feature packed but I'm starting to see good competition in word processors, so who knows how much longer Word will be able to be relevant. Powerpoint is nice but there are a lot of capable alternatives these days. Getting slides onto a projector really isn't rocket science, so I don't see Powerpoint being that important for much longer.

I remember a few years ago though a lot of corporate types were heavily reliant on Microsoft Outlook for their email/contacts. These days I think Google gmail and other mail programs / web apps have really cut into the Outlook market. Yeah I don't have any sources, and am too lazy to find them on a topic about Microsoft losing market share. I think unless you want to be anal about it most people will admit that Microsoft has had more than a few failures in a lot of key markets recently.

Windows 7 is a good attempt to stop the bleeding. Vista is bleeding users to Apple, to Linux, to even Windows XP. When users are picking an age old operating system over a new one, and not just a few users at that, you know Vista was a marketing failure.

FX120

Mar 31, 2009, 12:33 AM

You seem to be downplaying the significance of a 5% marketshare loss in a market this huge in such a short time.

Microsoft has lost about 4% of it's market share in the US in the last two years, globally it's been just over 1%, and most of this is due to low-cost netbooks running Linux, not Apple.

jav6454

Mar 31, 2009, 01:07 AM

Microsoft has lost about 4% of it's market share in the US in the last two years, globally it's been just over 1%, and most of this is due to low-cost netbooks running Linux, not Apple.

No one said that market share was picked up by Apple. 1% loss worldwide is still a very large number considering the number of computers out there. Much more important is the 5% MS lost here in the US.

Not to Opera. Perhaps to Google Chrome, but not Opera...

Used Opera to set an example, but I do realize Chrome is clearly a greater browser than Opera.

AlexisV

Mar 31, 2009, 04:50 AM

Saladinos

Mar 31, 2009, 05:08 AM

I wonder how MS will market v7?

Seems stupid to shout about it because I think people are a little more cynical now. They've heard it all before - "our most secure OS since, well, the last one" won't wash again.

To be fair, Vista is a much harder OS to crack than XP. The benefits are real.

I know how they'll market it - "Mojave 2 - We swear it's not Windows 7!"

The Flashing Fi

Mar 31, 2009, 05:59 AM

Microsoft came along as this little upstart company that was able to quickly adapt. They had a much better consumer desktop than IBM could offer (remember IBM's failed desktop, what was it called, OS2 or something).

OS/2 was actually created by IBM and Micrsoft. However, the two split. OS/2 2.0 was sold and developed by IBM and OS/2 3.0 was developed by MS and renamed Windows NT 3.1 (to match Windows 3.1).

IBM continued with OS/2 and OS/2 3.0 was branded as OS/2 Warp and I believe the next version was branded as OS/2 Warp 4.

So, the basis of Windows NT 3.1-NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 dates back to the OS/2 years. So while the versions of OS/2 soley developed by IBM failed, OS/2 in itself hardly failed.

steveza

Mar 31, 2009, 06:34 AM

So while the versions of OS/2 soley developed by IBM failed, OS/2 in itself hardly failed.But it was rubbish though :) I can remember the first time I used NT4 and how happy I was that it was better than 3.1/3.5/3.5.1.

Edit: For those who haven't had the pleasure of NT3.51 just look at the screenshots in this how-to guide http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/isdn/impact/iq/win-nt/win-nt.htm

whitefang

Mar 31, 2009, 06:45 AM

Yeah I'll concede Microsoft Office. Most of the corporate world still is locked into Office and that is in large part due to Excel being way ahead of it's competition. Word is feature packed but I'm starting to see good competition in word processors, so who knows how much longer Word will be able to be relevant. Powerpoint is nice but there are a lot of capable alternatives these days. Getting slides onto a projector really isn't rocket science, so I don't see Powerpoint being that important for much longer.

I remember a few years ago though a lot of corporate types were heavily reliant on Microsoft Outlook for their email/contacts. These days I think Google gmail and other mail programs / web apps have really cut into the Outlook market. Yeah I don't have any sources, and am too lazy to find them on a topic about Microsoft losing market share. I think unless you want to be anal about it most people will admit that Microsoft has had more than a few failures in a lot of key markets recently.

Windows 7 is a good attempt to stop the bleeding. Vista is bleeding users to Apple, to Linux, to even Windows XP. When users are picking an age old operating system over a new one, and not just a few users at that, you know Vista was a marketing failure.

No sane corporation will use web-based third-party mail apps or "other" mail programs. Microsoft Exchange is the industry standard.

jav6454

Mar 31, 2009, 10:32 AM

No sane corporation will use web-based third-party mail apps or "other" mail programs. Microsoft Exchange is the industry standard.

Juts its because its the standard doesn't mean its good.

whitefang

Mar 31, 2009, 10:54 AM

Juts its because its the standard doesn't mean its good.

There is a reason it's a industry standard, it's proven especially where ROI analysis goes compared to other platforms. Just like .NET is the new industry standard.

NT1440

Mar 31, 2009, 10:57 AM

There is a reason it's a industry standard, it's proven especially where ROI analysis goes compared to other platforms. Just like .NET is the new industry standard.

Industry standard is NOT what is best. Many of MS products remain the standard simply because it is so engrained into the market that people just go with it. Yes it works, but its not the BEST.

whitefang

Mar 31, 2009, 11:15 AM

Industry standard is NOT what is best. Many of MS products remain the standard simply because it is so engrained into the market that people just go with it. Yes it works, but its not the BEST.

You're biased plus you have no corporate experience to even give an opinion about this topic. Industry standard is a gold-standard, only the best can be a industry standard. Microsoft Exchange server time-after-time beats the competition, there is just no competition. Yeah there are some major gripes about Exchange, but overall, it beats the competition.

jav6454

Mar 31, 2009, 12:28 PM

You're biased plus you have no corporate experience to even give an opinion about this topic. Industry standard is a gold-standard, only the best can be a industry standard. Microsoft Exchange server time-after-time beats the competition, there is just no competition. Yeah there are some major gripes about Exchange, but overall, it beats the competition.

Actually industry standard can be biased. What one company may think is standard, another one may disagree. So you see, Exchange may be standardized all over the place, but its doesn't make it the "Gold" standard. Far from it, it just makes it the most common thing. Some companies just use it because its been here for the longest time implementing a new system is too complicated for some (adapting to new ways) or cost prohibitive in some cases.

[snip baleeted because of confusion]

So you see, even though Exchange is everywhere, it doesn't make it better. Saying Exchange is gold standard because its everywhere is like saying IE is best browser because everyone uses it, and we all know how untrue is that.

whitefang

Mar 31, 2009, 12:35 PM

Actually industry standard can be biased. What one company may think is standard, another one may disagree.

No, there is no ONE SINGLE company in an "industry". It's a collective analysis and the analysis is the industry standard.

New start-ups are not using Exchange because they cannot afford it or their not a Microsoft solutions provider/partner (like a university). Microsoft-based solution providers/partner are ALL using Exchange. And in the industry, where Microsoft solutions are becoming more and more, many companies are becoming Microsoft certified providers. You must be insane if you think Senior-Level IT executives are letting graduates make the decisions in a corporate world where accountability matters. Again, you're talking about the small start-up companies, they don't matter.

NT1440

Mar 31, 2009, 12:38 PM

So you see, even though Exchange is everywhere, it doesn't make it better. Saying Exchange is gold standard because its everywhere is like saying IE is best browser because everyone uses it, and we all know how untrue is that.

I think this sums up my point perfectly. Just because something is the most widespread does not mean its the best. Thats a flawed thought process at best.

Internet Explorer for example has a massive marketshare yet it seems people everywhere hate it.

Melrose

Mar 31, 2009, 12:39 PM

I'm personally looking forward to both. Both operating systems fix some of my main gripes with both OS's

I'm looking forward to seeing both also - in spite of the fact I hate Windows, it will be interesting to see how the quality holds up in relation to the amount of advertising they for it; and, also, how Snow Leopard will turn out.

Especially being since Windows has taken a self-inflicted hit from Vista and Apple has been gaining market share, it'll be interesting to see how both companies handle these futures.

...and, of course, what ads Apple will produce as a comeback to Win7.

whitefang

Mar 31, 2009, 12:46 PM

I think this sums up my point perfectly. Just because something is the most widespread does not mean its the best. Thats a flawed thought process at best.

Internet Explorer for example has a massive marketshare yet it seems people everywhere hate it.

Yes but that doesn't mean Exchange IS NOT the industry standard because it sucks. It's because it's beats the competition.

steveza

Mar 31, 2009, 04:07 PM

Some companies have started ditching Exchange. (Don't ask me which, you can find that one on your own, be a big boy) BTW, great example, my University, had Exchange all over, ditched it in favor of another client, don't know the name though.I would be interested to find out who these theoretical companies are that are moving away from Exchange - I did a quick Google but nothing turned up.

I've been supporting and designing Exchange installations for more than 10 years and I've never heard of a company moving to an alternative platform after their Exchange was successfully installed. I have used most of the mail systems available over the years and Exchange is better than all of them and I could write a few pages on why but I'm sure you can search for this information if you desire.

aznguyen316

Mar 31, 2009, 05:22 PM

I have a couple exchange outlook emails I check. I dunno how to set them up in either mail or entourage. I suck haha

bigmack209

Mar 31, 2009, 09:17 PM

you can customize macs more than you think. i don't know why someone at apple did it, but there are leaked copies of beta tested snow leopard on the pirate bay. once again i'm not implying that you should pirate mac OS.

NT1440

Mar 31, 2009, 09:20 PM

Yes but that doesn't mean Exchange IS NOT the industry standard because it sucks. It's because it's beats the competition.

No one ever said it sucks. Simply stating that its not the best doesn't automatically make it suck. I'm not sure that it beats the competition because it beats out the rest, i think it may have more to do with it being so engrained.

FX120

Apr 1, 2009, 12:51 AM

So if Exchange isn't the best, do you mind sharing with us what you think is the best?

whitefang

Apr 1, 2009, 09:29 AM

No one ever said it sucks. Simply stating that its not the best doesn't automatically make it suck. I'm not sure that it beats the competition because it beats out the rest, i think it may have more to do with it being so engrained.

Again, you never worked in a corporate environment nor do you know the industry standards or able to give an opinion to the related area. Therefore, your claims are invalid. Exchange has no competition at the moment.

tubbymac

Apr 1, 2009, 12:27 PM

No sane corporation will use web-based third-party mail apps or "other" mail programs. Microsoft Exchange is the industry standard.

Ever heard of Google? That ain't a sane enough corporation for you?

aristobrat

Apr 1, 2009, 12:47 PM

BTW, great example, my University, had Exchange all over, ditched it in favor of another client, don't know the name though.
Exchange is a server. Outlook is a client.

It's a shame that you don't know what they ditched for. What's the name of your University? Maybe there's some public information about it.

I'd love to know if the product they ditched for handles calendaring natively.

Ever heard of Google? That ain't a sane enough corporation for you?
Google uses gmail for its internal employee email accounts? Are you sure about that?

jav6454

Apr 1, 2009, 06:40 PM

Exchange is a server. Outlook is a client.

It's a shame that you don't know what they ditched for. What's the name of your University? Maybe there's some public information about it.

I'd love to know if the product they ditched for handles calendaring natively.

I would be interested to find out who these theoretical companies are that are moving away from Exchange - I did a quick Google but nothing turned up.

I've been supporting and designing Exchange installations for more than 10 years and I've never heard of a company moving to an alternative platform after their Exchange was successfully installed. I have used most of the mail systems available over the years and Exchange is better than all of them and I could write a few pages on why but I'm sure you can search for this information if you desire.

Ok, sorry about the confusion I created. For reference, I am in the University of New Orleans. I am going to have to take back my University comment. It happens to be that my University didn't ditch Exchange, they just changed the service type they offer. It is now called Outlook Web Access with Exchange support. Basically, email through Internet access. Also, this new service seems to create a deal of complains in the student body because of the following:

1. This new service lacks the old features and eliminates the already existing ones for new features that do not work.
2. If you use anything other than Internet Explorer, you are forced into "Light" mode which basically means an even more crippled version of this service.
3. It doesn't let you use your own Mail application (Mail or Outlook class software). The University's IT department has sent emails with the correct sever addresses and also addressing headaches of the university community regarding access to email, but no matter what the IT guys do, Exchange refuses to play nice.

Ok, so now that I have clarified this. Can whitefang please explain to me why does a "gold" standard service have to cripple you just because you refuse to use MS products? Shouldn't the "gold" standard be compatible with whatever the company's employees or in this case student's own Mail or browser applications?

acurafan

Apr 1, 2009, 06:52 PM

i also support Exchange since 5.5, companies i know have left Sendmail, MS Mail, ISP hosted POP3/imap, and Notes. not one client my company supports has left Exchange since they have implemented it - it is the de facto standard in corporate businesses i seen.

now as to why MS crippled it for non-IE browsers, it's b/c of bundling, the same monopolistic practice that bought down netscape. they want you to use their own browser....granted apple would do the same thing if they could, but then again they don't have any enterprise mail products businesses want to use, ha.

wait until the next version of Exchange, M$ has promised to play nice in the sandbox, and have cross platform support for browsers, along with bringing back IM. it will be better then Exchange 2007 (which is already good OWA).

tubbymac

Apr 1, 2009, 11:41 PM

Google uses gmail for its internal employee email accounts? Are you sure about that?

Not sure if they have any rules about forcing employees to use gmail. I do know that before gmail went "beta" it was tested internally by the employees (not just the gmail team). Whether that testing was thorough or just "hey, here's a gmail account you can test if you want" I don't know either.

steveza

Apr 2, 2009, 03:44 AM

Ok, sorry about the confusion I created. For reference, I am in the University of New Orleans. I am going to have to take back my University comment. It happens to be that my University didn't ditch Exchange, they just changed the service type they offer. It is now called Outlook Web Access with Exchange support. Basically, email through Internet access. Also, this new service seems to create a deal of complains in the student body because of the following:

1. This new service lacks the old features and eliminates the already existing ones for new features that do not work.
2. If you use anything other than Internet Explorer, you are forced into "Light" mode which basically means an even more crippled version of this service.
3. It doesn't let you use your own Mail application (Mail or Outlook class software). The University's IT department has sent emails with the correct sever addresses and also addressing headaches of the university community regarding access to email, but no matter what the IT guys do, Exchange refuses to play nice.This seems to have been a bad choice but your Uni - I assume they are using Exchange 2007 which means there are a number of connection options available but they have limited you to only using one of them. I support a Uni in the UK who have 50K+ users all of which can use the full Outlook or Entourage clients or OWA if they choose.

The upcoming release of Exchange (version 14) will offer full OWA to all 3rd party browsers.

whitefang

Apr 2, 2009, 06:54 AM

Not sure if they have any rules about forcing employees to use gmail. I do know that before gmail went "beta" it was tested internally by the employees (not just the gmail team). Whether that testing was thorough or just "hey, here's a gmail account you can test if you want" I don't know either.

But in your previous post you said WITHOUT DOUBT that they were using gmail for their email-service AND NOW you're not sure?? Typical Apple troll.

whitefang

Apr 2, 2009, 07:00 AM

1. This new service lacks the old features and eliminates the already existing ones for new features that do not work.
2. If you use anything other than Internet Explorer, you are forced into "Light" mode which basically means an even more crippled version of this service.
3. It doesn't let you use your own Mail application (Mail or Outlook class software). The University's IT department has sent emails with the correct sever addresses and also addressing headaches of the university community regarding access to email, but no matter what the IT guys do, Exchange refuses to play nice.

First of all, Exchange includes a web-enabled interface (which is the "Outlook web access" feature you're talking about and it's standard. You can access your mail using a client or through the web, it's convenient.

1) What features does this new service lack? Do tell us.

2) I'm using Firefox to access Outlook Web and I didn't find any crippled features. Infact, I can't tell the difference between IE and Firefox. Do tell us what features are crippled in Firefox?

3) If your university IT staff don't know how to configure Exchange so it allows third-party mail clients to connect, then maybe your university should hire some real professionals.

whitefang

Apr 2, 2009, 07:02 AM

Ok, sorry about the confusion I created.

Apology accepted.

tubbymac

Apr 2, 2009, 07:37 AM

But in your previous post you said WITHOUT DOUBT that they were using gmail for their email-service AND NOW you're not sure?? Typical Apple troll.

1. I said things like gmail are starting to cut into the Microsoft Outlook market.
2. Then I asked if you didn't think google was a sane corporation.

Somehow from those two statements you and the other fella misread it as implying that google uses gmail internally. That's either failed reading comprehension or failed logical skills, take your pick.

whitefang

Apr 2, 2009, 07:51 AM

Ever heard of Google? That ain't a sane enough corporation for you?

That was your quote when I made a statement saying no sane corporation uses gmail.
You implied in your reply that Google uses gmail internally.

Secondly, Microsoft Outlook (not the express version) is targeted towards corporate use, not for general consumer use and nothing is taking away Outlook's share in the corporate world.

polaris20

Apr 2, 2009, 08:45 AM

Having used OWA in Firefox on all 3 platforms, Safari on 2, and IE6, 7, and 8, I wouldn't say OWA is crippled on other platforms. I don't really care for OWA on any of them, if you compare it strictly on usability to GMail.

However I don't see too many companies switching to GMail for their e-mail solution, given that Exchange really isn't that expensive, and is in your control, as opposed to the recent GMail outages. Exchange is like what, $750 or $800 plus CALs? IMO a small price to pay for a reliable e-mail system under your control.

On the other hand there are open source mail solutions that work very well too, however a company may incur more consulting fees than the saved on the licensing itself. It just depends.

I think the only way Google will have a chance at eroding Exchange's market share would be to make a turnkey appliance enterprise GMail system, similar to their enterprise search appliances. A web-based client attaching to a rackmount box that is still under the control of the IT dept, not dependent on Google for uptime.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I think competition is good, and the consumer benefits. However it's tough in the enterprise market, because there just isn't the backlash against MS's mail server and other products as there is on the desktop. Windows 2008 is a solid OS, and their other products are great too, with the exception of IIS, which just isn't as secure as Apache. Luckily Apache runs on Windows anyway, so no big deal.

EDIT

It looks like even the IIS thing has changed, in terms of security.

http://www.itworld.com/070907websecurity

We're still on Apache though, however it'd be nice to move to IIS given the tie-in with AD.

jav6454

Apr 2, 2009, 10:41 AM

First of all, Exchange includes a web-enabled interface (which is the "Outlook web access" feature you're talking about and it's standard. You can access your mail using a client or through the web, it's convenient.

1) What features does this new service lack? Do tell us.

2) I'm using Firefox to access Outlook Web and I didn't find any crippled features. Infact, I can't tell the difference between IE and Firefox. Do tell us what features are crippled in Firefox?

3) If your university IT staff don't know how to configure Exchange so it allows third-party mail clients to connect, then maybe your university should hire some real professionals.

I don't think insults cut it. Like I said, I am no Apple fanboy, but I do see things as blunt as they are. My university's IT staff is very capable, and there is no need to doubt them, after all they are graduated IT guys, thing you are not, or have proven not to be.

I won't go into a whole list, but the features are missing enough to cause uproar in the student body.

Fake, OWA sees FireFox as firefox, and still forces you to Light mode. Just try it. I won't lie on that, the site is up for anyone to check it. Go on, just go to the log in screen and anything else than IE slaps you with a forced Light Mode check box being checked.

Edit - Luckily, many of us found a solution, forward our stuff from our UNO emails to Gmail or in my case MobileMe.

edesignuk

Apr 2, 2009, 10:45 AM

Fake, OWA sees FireFox as firefox, and still forces you to Light mode. Just try it. I won't lie on that, the site is up for anyone to check it. Go on, just go to the log in screen and anything else than IE slaps you with a forced Light Mode check box being checked.Correct.

OWA is heavily optimised for IE. Using anything else you get dumped in to Light mode, which is pants. It's very, very different.

Exchange 2007 OWA login Window under Firefox. Notice the forced check box on Light mode.

165367

jav6454

Apr 2, 2009, 10:48 AM

Correct.

OWA is heavily optimised for IE. Using anything else you get dumped in to Light mode, which is pants. It's very, very different.

Exchange 2007 OWA login Window under Firefox. Notice the forced check box on Light mode.

[snip]

So much for "Gold" standard...:rolleyes:

edesignuk

Apr 2, 2009, 10:49 AM

I should say I still really like Exchange, a crippled OWA in browsers other than IE is really a minor niggle. It's pretty solid, very configurable, and generally coupled with an Outlook client causes few support issues.

whitefang

Apr 2, 2009, 10:50 AM

I don't think insults cut it. Like I said, I am no Apple fanboy, but I do see things as blunt as they are. My university's IT staff is very capable, and there is no need to doubt them, after all they are graduated IT guys, thing you are not, or have proven not to be.

I won't go into a whole list, but the features are missing enough to cause uproar in the student body.

Fake, OWA sees FireFox as firefox, and still forces you to Light mode. Just try it. I won't lie on that, the site is up for anyone to check it. Go on, just go to the log in screen and anything else than IE slaps you with a forced Light Mode check box being checked.

Edit - Luckily, many of us found a solution, forward our stuff from our UNO emails to Gmail or in my case MobileMe.

Doesn't the university have a confidential policy where you cannot forward intranet email to external sources? And your staff is inept if they can't configure Exchange to allow external clients. But then again, this is no Harvard.

Again I ask, what are the features that are missing from Outlook that is causing an uproar? The only thing missing from Firefox is the WYSIWYG editor and everything else is included. And from a corporate standpoint, a WYSIWYG is hardly useful when you're in a mobile/field environment.