Windows 7 Can Learn From Vista

[Night Hawk]

Windows 7 Can Learn From Vista

Analysis: The early reviews for Vista were positive. Does that mean Windows 7 is doomed We make the rounds of some prominent reviewers to assess their insight (in hindsight).

Harry McCracken, Technologizer
Oct 13, 2009 3:01 am

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't so sure about how folks are going to respond to Windows 7.

As Mary-Jo Foley says in a ZDNet blog post, Ballmer told Bloomberg that "The test feedback (on Windows 7) has been good, but the test feedback on Vista was good. I am optimistic, but the proof will be in the pudding."

Mary-Jo goes on to muse:

...I'm left wondering about Vista, as many are/were about the current financial crisis: Why didn't anyone inform us sooner of the impending meltdown? Weren't there warning signs? Where was everybody?

Artwork: Chip Taylor

Most of Mary-Jo's post involves Windows Vista beta testers' reaction to the OS, but it got me wondering: How about the reviews that came out when Windows Vista was released? Negative reaction to Vista among consumers and businesses ended up preventing it from ever truly superseding Windows XP in the way it was supposed to do-but were the reviews among the first signs that something was amiss?

More at: Windows 7 Can Learn From Vista - PC World

 

[BCXtreme]

All I can says is that every complaint I ever read about Vista, has been addressed/fixed in Windows 7.

 

[Night Hawk]

I never found Vista to be anywhere near as problematic as XP was. For me when grabbing the Home Premium on the release date it ran far more stably then XP and saw far fewer problems in the time ran up until this summer when finally removing the Vista installation off of one drive here.

XP would tend to see more errors in under 6 months then Vista saw in roughly 2 1/2yrs. time when looking back. But Vista was tuff for those running older hardwares and less memory on their systems where MS made the mistake of setting the minimum ram too low there! A good 2gb with a good video card even helped XP over any 1gb of memory and an old AGP card!

With 7 MS had to do a fast retake and examine the impact Vista had when essentially rebuilding initially from the Vista kernel to come up with the MinWin now seen as well as tweaking the OS for performance and further improvements on security overall. Since MS wants to resume a new version on a 3yr. schedule let's hope MS learns even more from 7 when 8 is developed!

 

[Antman]

I am confused about this MinWin. From my reading, there is no MinWin in 7.

H2SO4, where are you?

FWIW - I built my current machine for Vista. Bought Vista Home Premium on day one. Took it off 30 days later. Not bashing Vista, just saying that I could not run it on my (at the time) high end machine. I could have given Vista another chance, but my install of XP was so thoroughly customized that I did not want to start from scratch after my initial disappointment.

 

[Night Hawk]

Read this thread then! http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/23091-games-windows-7-a-2.html

 

[Antman]

Read this thread then! http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/23091-games-windows-7-a-2.html

And?

The referenced article re: MinWin is dated 2007. I don't think MinWin made the cut. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

But the thread did remind me that I miss Sassa.

 

[Night Hawk]

This is even better from "Eric Traut talks Windows 7 and MinWin" [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNsS_0wSfoU"]YouTube - Eric Traut talks Windows 7 and MinWin[/ame]

Another newer but not the last regarding the MinWin is a blog at Modular Windows 7 in 2009? Well... (and Q&A) - Computerworld Blogs

 

[logicearth]

MinWin is a reorganization of the kernel. It is not actually a kernel...And that work is in Windows 7 and to a lesser extent Windows Vista.

Mark Russinovich Explains MinWin Once and For All - Robert McLaws: Windows Vista Edition

...It is not a complete rewrite of the kernel, but a reorganization of the APIs, so that components only call down the stack, and not up it.

 

[swarfega]

Analysis: The early reviews for Vista were positive.

eh? If I remember there was no end of complaints early on. During beta and into early release.

 

[Night Hawk]

Right before Vista first came out you could download Vista themes for XP. But once Vista did come along it took a hard hit from being the "Bloated OS" while being a much more stable version. For 7 MS had to refine things done at first starting where they had left off with Vista up until now where you have a new Windows with a much smaller core.

Essentially MS had to take a step back to look at how large Windows was becoming in order to learn a great deal from the initial reactions to Vista. When running the first RC it didn't last long here when I decided to simply wait for the finished version. Even without the SPs on it was a large improvement over XP in many areas but was a bit larger in several areas.

The original main selling feature seen for Vista was the new Aero styles while the UAC was something else that sadly lacked being a little bit too intrusive for many. You can see how MS addressed that one by now seeing a slider for settings rather then a check box on/off option for Vista.

 

[sideeffect]

Maybe some official reviews were exited about vista when it came out but I don't really remember it being that way.

I remember looking everywhere for 64 bit drivers, losing 20 fps in all my favourite games and losing EAX though.

I did try a couple of beta releases but I was not interested in buying it. Later on in the life cycle it was ok to use but I still prefered XP for gaming on.

Many of the problems with vista like driver support were fixed though so windows 7 is a great OS I have even pre ordered it.

 

[Night Hawk]

Think driver support was slow for the 64bit Vista try the 64bit XP Pro that bombed from a serious lack of 3rd party support there! With Vista everything was simply late but did come out eventually.

For 7 Vista drivers as well as new ones seen for 7 seem to be working out for most! That's one thing MS Learned for 7 from Vista right there. "We want drivers ready!"