A new OS, a new tomorrow

[Albatross]

@darkestfright: When you said XP, you of course meant Vista. XP was a decent operating system, in fact I'd even call it good. It was fairly stable, I could run it at barely acceptable speeds on a 330 MHz Compaq laptop with some very small amount of memory, and it worked. It didn't crash every five minutes, like Vista did before I installed all the patches.

-Albatross

[1yR4jE8b]

I disagree with practically everything you've said.
1. The system as a whole is slower. It's not much, but it's noticeable if you've spent a lot of time on XP. This remains even if you crank the graphics all the way down.

I've spent plenty of time on XP, (and Linux, and OS X, and Vista), and in my experience Windows 7 is much more responsive. I have a Core2Duo w/ 4gB or ram machine at home with Windows 7, and at work I use a Core2Quad and 6gB with XP (both 64bit), and using XP is an absolute chore. XP chugs, is slower to open the same applications, boots like a sloth and overall is jut slow as hell for pretty much anything I do.

2. Out of the box, the interface is broken in several places. Generally speaking, it takes longer to do anything with its interface. I think my biggest complain is that I can't right-click-C a button on the taskbar to close a window anymore. I know, it something practically microscopic, but often it's the small things, that matter.

I guarentee you that if we had a race on how to close windows, I could close windows faster using simply the little x on the taskbar thumbnails rather than a right-click-c. I also find it much easier to navigate between multiple applications now that everything is grouped. I keep all my frequently used applications pinned, and moving my mouse to them became muscle memory. I barely even think of it anymore. In XP you constantly have to read labels if you have more than one application open, and as soon as you have more than 4 or 5 different applications open the taskbar becomes an absolute disaster. Not so in 7, if I've got 20 applications running it'll still only take me at most 3 seconds to find my program because everything is neat and grouped and I only have to manually filter through maybe 2 or 3 different thumbnails (that also conveniently have window previews to make it even easier).
Dont' even get me started on Aero snap and how beautiful it is (so beautiful in fact that KDE4 ripped it off in it's latest release). I could go on and on about how Windows 7 interface is OCEANS superior to XP but I really don't have the time ;-P

3. The only improvement on the file system I've noticed so far is that it allows symbolic links to files, not just directories.

It seems a bit faster overall too, but that could be a mainstay from Vista. It's definitely an improvement over ntfs in XP though.

4. Explorer is neither worse nor better than it was, but it's always been a piece of crap for anything but the most basic operations anyway.

While I don't think it's the end all be all to file managers, it's defintely better than XP. That stupid XP dog is even more useless than the Office Paper Clip...and the god awful blue sidebar taking up all that room is useless and unsightly.

5. It most definitely don't use less memory.

If you read what I wrote, I said

if you ignore it's aggressive memory caching

, it uses less memory. The truth is, Windows 7 makes way better use of System Resources then XP could ever dream and that's a fact. I could have my used Ram sitting at nearly 90% in 7 and I'm not worried (I can guarantee that it is mostly for application cache and prefetch)...but in XP when I start getting over the 50% mark, I get nervous because performance starts to CRAAAAAAAWLLLL. Combine the superior prefetch with a vastly improved scheduler, and you get a much more responsive system.

[helios]

Did you install and configure the work XP yourself? How well a computer performs depends heavily on who uses it. I have a Core 2 Duo with 2 GiB of RAM at home and I can guarantee you that XP runs runs about 5-10% faster than 7 for operations that depend on the OS and window environment (e.g. open file dialogs, or moving windows around). It also boots faster, even though it has to load more drivers (VMware).

I could close windows faster using simply the little x on the taskbar thumbnails rather than a right-click-c

Absolutely impossible. The preview alone takes about half a second to appear, and you still have to move your mouse a second time to the X.
I won't reply to the rest on interface because it'll come down to a matter of personal taste. I've always hated taskbar grouping with a passion and I can't imagine how anyone could manage to get any use out of it.
And I don't see what's so great about that snap thing.

the god awful blue sidebar taking up all that room is useless and unsightly

You know... you can turn it off if it bothers you that much.

It seems a bit faster overall too, but that could be a mainstay from Vista. It's definitely an improvement over ntfs in XP though.

I'd have to benchmark it, but so far I haven't noticed any difference, other than both times I installed 7, the XP partition developed file system errors. I have noticed, however, that 7 likes to lie about exactly when things finish copying.

If you read what I wrote

I did. I never count caches as used memory because they can safely and quickly be reclaimed, which is not true for memory being used by applications.
Right now, 7 is using ~1 GiB for application memory, while XP tops out at ~750 MiB under normal usage, but I can't discern what portion, if any, of that are caches.
Free RAM shouldn't have that much bearing on performance unless you're really about to run out or you're running a program that really likes to do large allocations. With 3 GiB left, there's no way a system under normal conditions can run slow. I don't know what you do with that system (if you do entirely different things on the two, then that was kind of an unfair comparison), but I think it really needs a complete reinstall.

[chrisname]

I won't reply to the rest on interface because it'll come down to a matter of personal taste. I've always hated taskbar grouping with a passion and I can't imagine how anyone could manage to get any use out of it.
And I don't see what's so great about that snap thing.

While I agree, you do know that you can turn the grouping off? Also, they ripped that feature straight from KDE 4 (I disabled it on there, too).

[z05DSL3A]

I'm not going to compare and contrast OSs (it horses for course really).

But I will say that I use XP at work through choice, I much prefer to use me old trusty Dell Precision with 2GB of ram and a 3.2 GHz Pentium D with XP than the new one with Windows 7.

I'm not a fan of the Windows 7 or Vista UIs, they look childish, cute , cuddly and other word that shout not be used to describe a UI. A good UI shouldn't get in the way, it should not draw attention to itself (with 'Bling') and it should not make you jump through hoops to get your work done. As a programmer, User, and System Administrator; I find that Windows 7 and Vista fail in this respect.

[helios]

Well, to be fair, composition does have its uses, other than SPINNAN CUBEZ and blurring transparencies. No, I can't think of anything at the moment.

[Albatross]

they look childish, cute , cuddly and other word that shout not be used to describe a UI

Ditto.

-Albatross

[1yR4jE8b]

Absolutely impossible. The preview alone takes about half a second to appear, and you still have to move your mouse a second time to the X.
I won't reply to the rest on interface because it'll come down to a matter of personal taste. I've always hated taskbar grouping with a passion and I can't imagine how anyone could manage to get any use out of it.
And I don't see what's so great about that snap thing.

The preview may take about half a second and yes there is move time, but if I'm closing multiple windows of the same application, the thumbnails slide nicely into place so usually little or no mouse movement is required after that. If I need to close all instances of an application I can 'right-click->close all windows'. IMO (and really, that's all this discussion is), it's much more intuitive than having to read the label (.25 seconds per label until I find the one I want), right-click-c (.25) seconds, (1s total so far) repeated n-times for each window I want to close (n sec).
Really though, it's just a matter of preference. So there really isn't any more point in discussing it (but Snap is great, at work I have to do side-by-side windows manually which can take about 15 seconds to do it right, in 7 it's like 3 seconds to do it perfectly every time)

I know that taskbar grouping exists in KDE, but I'm pretty sure the grouping feature has existed in Windows since at least XP (if you have lots of windows open, Windows will start grouping windows). So I'm not sure who ripped off who...but it's not like it was a defining feature anyway (unlike Snap). All they did for 7 was have it group by default and remove the labels. I absolutely HATE reading text labels, especially when there are multiple windows of the same application.

You know... you can turn it off if it bothers you that much

.
Obviously. I much prefer the link sidebar in 7/Vista though, after putting my favorite directories in there I can get pretty much anywhere in my computer that I visit frequently in one click unlike XP where I typically find myself always changing to the top level and starting from scratch to find anything.

other than both times I installed 7, the XP partition developed file system errors

That happens anytime you resize an ntfs partition with Windows installed on it. It happened to me when I installed Mandriva on a new computer and had to resize the ntfs partition which took up the whole hdd. Windows 7 hardly "tainted" your XP partition. Preemptive protection is just how ntfs/windows works, it's not a bad thing at all.

[1yR4jE8b]

Did you install and configure the work XP yourself? How well a computer performs depends heavily on who uses it. I have a Core 2 Duo with 2 GiB of RAM at home and I can guarantee you that XP runs runs about 5-10% faster than 7 for operations that depend on the OS and window environment (e.g. open file dialogs, or moving windows around). It also boots faster, even though it has to load more drivers (VMware).

I've configured both computers myself, and both have very similar setups. Mostly just whatever drivers they need for there hardware plus the same set of applications because I work from home alot too. Plus I hate having useless bloating crap on my machines so I'm very careful about what get's put on either machine. I've got a 24sec from bootloader to login screen in Windows 7 and about 35s for the XP machine at work. One noticeable difference though is that once I'm at the desktop, the Windows 7 machine is pretty usable from the get go (albeit a little sluggish because it's loading all the Windows services), whereas I find the XP machine pretty much unusable for at least another minute or so. Chalk one up to the improved scheduler again. I also find that Windows 7 is much better at multitasking (although not quite as good as Linux) whereas in XP, I pretty much need to do things one at a time or it chugs.

I never count caches as used memory because they can safely and quickly be reclaimed, which is not true for memory being used by applications.
Right now, 7 is using ~1 GiB for application memory, while XP tops out at ~750 MiB under normal usage, but I can't discern what portion, if any, of that are caches.
Free RAM shouldn't have that much bearing on performance unless you're really about to run out or you're running a program that really likes to do large allocations. With 3 GiB left, there's no way a system under normal conditions can run slow. I don't know what you do with that system (if you do entirely different things on the two, then that was kind of an unfair comparison), but I think it really needs a complete reinstall.

That's my point, there's no way a system with 3gB of ram free SHOULD be running slowly but when I'm running my applications at work it DOES. Unlike at home where there are no worries
at all and I don't even need to think about how much ram I'm using.

And yes, I actually DO run multiple resource heavy apps at once. Spread across 2 1080p monitors, I have Photoshop, 3DS Max and Netbeans that are pretty much open from boot to shutdown, and Firefox is a resource hog and I usually have about 8-10 tabs open at once.

I just started this job 3 months ago, if I need a complete reinstall after 3 months just to keep it running smoothly then well...that's another point I have against XP. Obviously, the OS is not up to the task of being used by a massive power user, unlike 7 which has been running like a champ since I bought it at launch.

After googling Windows 7 vs XP benchmarks, first link was this ZDNet article which backs up everything I've said about system performance:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/benchmarks-windows-7-rtm-versus-vista-xp/22006?tag=mantle_skin;content

I'm not a fan of the Windows 7 or Vista UIs, they look childish, cute , cuddly and other word that shout not be used to describe a UI. A good UI shouldn't get in the way, it should not draw attention to itself (with 'Bling') and it should not make you jump through hoops to get your work done. As a programmer, User, and System Administrator; I find that Windows 7 and Vista fail in this respect.

Wait are you talking about OS X or Windows? Because that's exactly how I feel about the OS X UI ;-P. Anyway, I feel the XP UI gets in the way much more than 7. The start menu is XP is cluttered, and confusing whereas in 7 I don't need to go menu digging; I can just click on the jewel and just type the first few letters of what I want and it pops up. I can also instantly access any of my Documents/Music/Pictures etc... folders in 2 clicks through the start menu instead of 3 in XP (1 to open "Documents and Settings" or whatever the equivalent of /home in XP is, switching to the explorer window, and then double clicking the folder I want) And being able to have as many "pinned" applications is nice too, instead of that horrible quick launch which turns into a cluttered list after adding more than like 3 applications. Sure, you can extend the quick launch list...but then you lose valuable task bar space which IMO is already too small for having lots of applications open at once.

As far as compositing goes...I find Windows to be the LEAST offensive of ALL of the operating systems out there. I would hardly consider transparent window decorations "bling". I actually like it, not because it "looks" pretty but because it's a more "immersive" look to the OS. When you have lots of un-maximized windows open, and the windows and applications seem to blur together you get the feeling you are working in a more cohesive environment instead of just a jumble of disjointed windows. I also find the glass easier on the eyes then a solid window border. I also like how the Windows "zoom" in and out from the taskbar nice and smoothly instead of the gauddy wireframes that XP uses. And really, other than that...what other "bling" does Windows have? None that I've noticed (which seems to imply that it's not getting in the way). If you want to talk about childish UI's, then you really only need to use OS X for about a minute. I hate the OS X UI with a passion. And not just the looks either, from an Human/Computer Interaction point of view I can (and have) write an essay about how poorly designed it is. In Linux's defense, I find desktop cube actually quite usefull in managing multiple virtual desktops. Being able to zoom out and see all of the windows open at once can be quite intuitive.



Don't even get me started on setting up a network in XP vs 7, there's just no comparison. Windows 7 just blows it out of the water, especially for Home users...Homegroup is a gift from the gods. The OS-integrated parental controls are really nice and easy to set up too, as a Father with a 4 year old daughter that's growing up in the "Facebook Generation", this is very important for me. Parental Controls are to my knowledge..pretty much non-existant in XP except for the limited options in IE. Having parental controls built right into the OS is an amazing feature.

I find that alot of the XP purists who rag on Vista/7 only do so because some things are now done differently than XP (not better or worse: just different). If they didn't try to do new things, the OS would never evolve. To be honest, I absolutely HATED Windows 7 when I first started to use it. Now, I could never go back, it's just a chore to use anything else now.

Finally, I would just like to say that I'm not trying to start an OS Fanboy flame war but I do enjoy a good argument/discussion and this one has been especially mature and fun.

[z05DSL3A]

I was going to write a reply to some of the points made but ultimately it would be pointless. From a UI point of view (that is Human/Computer Interaction) Mac OS X would come top of may list Windows 7 would be way down it, to my mind the windows UI has been going down hill since 2000. I'm not saying that XP (or Mac OS) is perfect, far from it, as no UI is perfect because they have a heavy ecstatic element that prohibits this.

[Albatross]

@Grey Wolf
Well... to be fair, it can be hard to make a switch from Windows to Mac OS X or in the other direction. However, I personally think Mac OS X has one of the best UIs out there.

EDIT: I'd have liked it more if it was as customizable as GNOME's UI, though...

-Albatross

[chrisname]

Is there a grid for windows that they will snap to in the OSX UI? That's one of my favourite features of GNOME -- a window can intersect the edges of the screen but you have to 'push' them with more force, and the same goes for the edges of other windows (it's almost like they built a physics engine into Metacity).

[Albatross]

Sadly, no, and I was going to write to Apple requesting an implementation of that feature and the ability to create new files from the right-click/control-click menu in the exact same way that you could in GNOME.

-Albatross

[chrisname]

Ahh, well then KDE, GNOME and Xfce will always be the only desktop environments for me...

[helios]

Since we're talking about missing features, <r>will MS ever implement virtual desktops?</r> I've been waiting for years.

[chrisname]

Probably; they've copied implemented enough features that Linux and BSD users have been enjoying for years.

[z05DSL3A]

...not to mention their resent raiding of the Mac OS toy box... :0)

[helios]

Can we really talk about ripping off GUI elements, at this point? The entire industry is based around ripping off your competitors. The only company to have ever produced a completely original GUI is Xerox, and that was about 30 years ago. That's a good thing, if you ask me. It means you don't need to learn a unique interface for every platform you use.

[z05DSL3A]

But Apple didn't rip off PARCs work, they were given a tour with the understanding that they would make a commercial GUI based on PARCs work in exchange for shares in Apple.

[helios]

Minutia.