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Windows 7 was so good it made me switch.

aditghai

aditghai

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 25, 2007
188
0
I have used a mac in the past and kept going back to Windows becuase the only thing I liked about Windows was being able to look at all my open windows at a glance in the taskbar.

With Windows 7, Microsoft changed the behaviour of the taskbar and now it is very similar to the dock.

So, essentially Microsoft took away the only feature that kept making me go back to Windows.

Well done MS.

P.S-Picked up a prev-gen MBP(Unibody) in the refurb store for $1349. Amazing deal. Thanks :apple:
 
I think you can switch back to the "old style" taskbar view of windows in windows 7. Personally I think the taskbar is much more useful than the dock as well, much easier than dock + exposé even, it's what I miss most about windows.
 
the old taskbar view tends to group windows of the same apps together which is irritating. I plan to empty the dock, so it has only icons of running apps.
 
I really like how in Win7 you can use the Windows+ArrowKey to select the orientation of a window. Windows+Left will have the open window maximize to half the screen on the left. Very handy.
 
Windows 7 is better than Leopard, I think. Obviously, I haven't used Snow Leopard yet, but I like running both operating systems (Leopard/7) on my MacBook via Boot Camp. There's still a lot of things I need Windows for.
 
I'm really looking forward to windows 7. Hoping to run a nice dual boot machine in the future. Tossing up building a PC rig now to run the beta to tide me over.
 
I like Windows, but I like OS X better.

I find it ironic that I do all of my work and general mucking around in OS X, and fun and games in Windows, which is totally the opposite to what Apple's ads are telling everyone.
 
I have OSX Leopard, and I have Win 7 64-BIT installed on Boot Camp (I'm on a Mac Pro), and although Win 7 is "Cool", and I'd use it for gaming over Mac, due to Windows being a gaming platform, I'd never use it for work, and even just the feature of having "Expose", is reason enough for me to keep OSX, and Spaces just tops it off..

OSX > Win 7, and Win 7 isn't officially released until 2010 from what I hear (could be wrong), where OSX Snow Leopard is out this September... and is cheap to upgrade, AND is going to be awesome!

I also have XP and Vista, and I'll give Windows credz for making it better than Vista, and a little cooler, but they still screwed vista up :)

Kind Regards
 
aditghai said:
I plan to empty the dock, so it has only icons of running apps.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting idea. I wonder what an empty dock would look like. Could you post screenshots (empty dock, dock with a couple of running applications)? I might just end up doing the same thing.

I have my recent items set to show the last 50 applications, and I use it as an application launcher, so its not like I really need the dock to launch applications anyway.
 
aditghai said:
I have used a mac in the past and kept going back to Windows becuase the only thing I liked about Windows was being able to look at all my open windows at a glance in the taskbar.

With Windows 7, Microsoft changed the behaviour of the taskbar and now it is very similar to the dock.

So, essentially Microsoft took away the only feature that kept making me go back to Windows.

Well done MS.

P.S-Picked up a prev-gen MBP(Unibody) in the refurb store for $1349. Amazing deal. Thanks :apple:
Click to expand...


Hmm.... They should have kept an option in the Control Panel about the type of taskbar... However, there would be patches coming soon....
 
Windows 7 actually looks pretty good if you ask me. The new taskbar is a good move. That's not to say it isn't Windows. I've been playing around with the RC and two things really annoy me.

1. The heavy use of transparency (which begun in Vista of course) clutters the interface. The larger transparent taskbar makes it even worse.

2. Everything is a browser. Browser controls in Explorer and Internet Explorer makes sense. Apple does the same with the Finder and Safari, for example. What doesn't make sense is full browser controls, such as Refresh, in things like the Control Panel and Windows Media Player. Apple is only partially guilty of this (Back and Forward buttons in System Preferences - why?) but why would you ever need to refresh the Control Panel?

What it adds up to is extra noise in the UI, like the transparency in early Mac OS X versions and those horrible pinstripes. I hate it.
 
If you minimise a window in OSX it has a preview of the window in the dock so I don't quite get what the OP means? If anything OSX shows more than Windows does (I think).

Plus with Expose its even easier to see whats open/where.
 
Welcome! Yeah, I've always been a Windows zealot - Vista changed that, I hated it a lot then Windows 7, it's still based on the same framework as Vista.
So it's a turd and you can only polish a turd so much - smells less now but... yep, still a turd. :D
 
I think the UI changes in Windows 7 are good ones - but, like anything else, they'll take some getting used to. The old system, though it worked, was FAR from perfect. If you had 10 distinct programs open in your taskbar, the stuff would shrink so much that it became unreadable. With the new Windows 7 way, that problem is gone, and the jump menus alleviate the pain of switching windows within an application... however, diehard Win XP users probably will think MS changed it for no good reason anyway. :p

On the Mac OS side of things, the Dock isn't perfect either. It's well refined now, and is an improvement over the original Dock, even if the appearance doesn't suit everyone. One thing that could definitely use work is the Dock's identification of what's an application and what isn't - a perfect example of this is the executable JAR file. These can be run as if they were applications, yet the Dock disallows placing them with the other apps.
 
Windows 7 is a good OS, which is great for us, as it means Apple will need to step it up a notch to go way out ahead again!
 
revs said:
Windows 7 is a good OS, which is great for us, as it means Apple will need to step it up a notch to go way out ahead again!
Click to expand...

I've been BETA testing 7, and recently updated to the RC, and I'm still not impressed. It is better than Vista, but then again, what isn't? I do think it'll take hold in business much sooner/easier than Vista. However, there's still compatibility issues with 7 and some business apps like CRM, FMS, etc., but I think 7 will entice a number of SMB's to move from XP to 7. Especially if MS decides to push the "EOL Support" on XP.

I don't feel it'll be enough for current Leopard users to jump though. If current Mac/Intel users want a newer OS, they'll go to SL, especially at the price of $29/US. We'll see though...

For me, it's OS X all the way. The more I use it, and see what's coming up, it's a no brainer. OS X > 7 by far!
 
I just updated my netbook to Windows 7 RC, jesus its good

it runs smoothly on my netbook with 1G ram, with all the bells and whistles. it even play my 98 era old games! HoMM3, MM8, oh great.

I also got my firefox themed to looks pretty
 

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clevin said:
I just updated my netbook to Windows 7 RC, jesus its good

it runs smoothly on my netbook with 1G ram, with all the bells and whistles. it even play my 98 era old games! HoMM3, MM8, oh great.

I also got my firefox themed to looks pretty
Click to expand...

Yeah, Windows 7 is great. If I can throw a gig of RAM at it, it can do almost everything that other OSs can!

Wait... uh... doesn't that mean I'm getting excited that an OS is only slightly less capable than other OSs and still requires a good deal of hardware just to run?

Oh. Um... well I suppose I am. But Jesus it's average!
 
ppc750fx said:
Yeah, Windows 7 is great. If I can throw a gig of RAM at it, it can do almost everything that other OSs can!

Wait... uh... doesn't that mean I'm getting excited that an OS is only slightly less capable than other OSs and still requires a good deal of hardware just to run?

Oh. Um... well I suppose I am. But Jesus it's average!
Click to expand...

fanboysim.

if you have less than 1GB ram, go use linux and stop making nonsensical argument.

less capable? go run HoMM3 and MM8 on any mac, you just can't!
 
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