Windows XP was lean, mean, and healthy when first installed, but Like a man in an eating contest, XP’s initial vigor and speed would be slowed to a painful crawl. The OS would rapidly become bloated and slow as software gobbled up memory like so many delicious apple pies. Service packs 1, 2, and 3 fought to get XP going again, but the improvements came at the cost of higher system requirements. The 400 Mhz PII with 128MB of memory was fine in 2001 when XP was released. In 2009, XP really needs 512MB of RAM just to be bearable, and 3GB to run software like Office 2007 smoothly.
Windows Vista always struck me as a promising, but sickly child. Using it felt like the early onset of a cold. You knew Vista wasn’t quite as bad as the plague of Windows ME, but you could also tell that it would only take a small nudge to send it down that path. It could still function, but every once in a while, Vista would sneeze a program crash, or cough up a few network dropouts , and it would fill me with dread. It has even higher needs than XP, but the old strategies to shore up the limping OS just didn’t work. The Service Packs seemed less like actual fixes and more like band-aids, serving only to cover problems. Vista’s UAC popups seemed to many like bad flatulence: While not harmful, it was certainly annoying. Few users understood the important reason it existed, but they knew that it stunk up their computer. As a result, many users ripped out their intestines, turning off UAC entirely, and disabling all the protection that it gave. Tons of software would downright refuse to run on Vista, even in compatibility mode. Hardware was often ill-supported, with drivers hacked together with XP code. The software and hardware that did work often took a performance hit.
Windows 7 was an early favorite. Microsoft threw open the doors to show off the fact that it WASN’T making another Vista. Users and manufacturers alike had a chance to feel the new OS and enjoy all the features. Extensive testing had been done while it was still in the womb to make sure it was the best OS it could be. Modifications were made along the way to make it clean, fast, and powerful. Careful planning and a revamp of UAC means that it has the added security found in Vista without nearly as much stink and noise. Windows 7 is as clean as XP was from a fresh install, and far better at keeping in shape. Driver support is exceptional, with a lot of hardware devices “Just Working” on the day of release. The user interface is no longer just different, as it was in Vista, but actually easier. I can almost imagine the developers looking at Vista and XP and thinking of ways to combine the two.
Miraculously, they managed to take the simple, solid foundation of XP and put all the beautiful, intelligent parts of Vista inside. Next, they added even more capability. Perhaps taking a cue from Apple’s Classic OS running in OS X, they added XP Mode with VirtualPC, and integrated it into the start menu. They made the task bar far more compact and sensible. The system tray is no longer a bar of tiny icons that is finicky, illegible and useless. In it’s place is and easily customized pop-out that displays information clearly, and doesn’t automatically retract back into itself at the worst moments.
7 is not perfect: It still has the occasional driver problem. Some old software still won’t run in 7 (which is why XP Mode VM exists). Controls have been moved around again, which may frustrate XP users just as much as Vista’s changes did. I have seen a few crashes with poorly written third party software, but Windows 7 handled them without crashing and burning. I am cautiously optimistic for Windows 7. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than any of its younger siblings. Microsoft may finally have produced a winner again.
Well we have to remember, and this is probably the most frustrating part of M$ in general, that both Crapple and M$ always release OS’s with problems. Windows 7 has fewer problems so we all feel good about it because we were so frustrated with previous releases. Probably the most frustrating thing about M$ is that they make operating systems. We shouldn’t kid ourselves, they can make a perfect OS if they really wanted to, but this is the classic problem with proprietary companies. The coders want to make something awesome, and the other side of the company wants to make money. That being said, I can’t feel too bad about the whole Vista thing. It was about as unstable as XP after the average user ran it for a few weeks and got it infected with tons of garbage. I still think that Vista did a lot of things right, especially from a security standpoint, and it wasn’t like OSX Leopard was a treat. It was the buggiest release of OSX since OSX hit the market. Apple rushed it to market to try and prove that they could release a new product (the phone), new iPods and an OS at the same time. The phone became very popular, and 10.5 took a good year to even get close to right. 10.6 is basically what 10.5 should have been kind of like Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. In general the last 2 to 3 years were just bad times to be with either M$ or Crapple, but at least Windows 7 seems to finally be another winner. The aforementioned features are excellent, and I am very pleased with its performance as well. I will say this though, the reason Crapple spent so much time making OSX feel like 9 is because people always complain about look and feel even if they don’t realize that that’s what they are actually reacting too. For example, some people hated electric cars because they didn’t make noise, sure only idiots hated them for that reason, but the familiarity of the engine noise made them feel safe even though it was the difference between something that killed the environment and not. In the Windows world, some people simply hated Vista because it had a different look and feel. Few knew about it’s “classic” mode which increased performance, and it failed, not because it couldn’t have been fixed, but because M$ simply abandoned it like ME. You have to say this for Crapple, at least when they release a garbage OS, they eventually fix it. Either scenario is unacceptable since both OSX and Windows cost a lot of money, especially when you consider the obscene price of Crapple products, but since most people won’t switch to Ubuntu, which does what 90% of people need to do with a computer right now for free, M$ and Crapple can keep releasing broken shit and fixing it later. So yes, I am pleased with Windows 7, but it should be perfect, M$ has the resources to make it perfect, and it’s not…. Still it’s the best Windows yet, and I intend to upgrade.
I’m glad I ran across this post. I don’t know much about computers, but I do have a household that runs Windows, Apple, and Linux. I have to say that for almost everything, I use Linux (Ubuntu) and am perfectly happy with it. Why don’t more people use it? It’s free and I can get all my work done.
I’ve been running Vista on a relatively new machine…quad core and pretty fast. I have not had any problems and like the OS just fine. I skipped XP altogether upgrading from W2K. I may get Windows 7 someday, but why fix it if it ain’t broke???
Well, Vista is a little broken. If it wasn’t, I doubt 7 would’ve showed up so quickly. It’s hard to see the improvements in 7 just by running into a shop and testing it on some random computer for a few minutes. You really have to get into using it before you notice the really cool stuff they’ve added or improved. The little usability tweaks have made it feel like a whole different class of OS. Of course, it may not be worth the money to upgrade if you’re happy where you are.