Why Microsoft Should Give Windows 7 Away

Windows 7 is shaping up to be an awesome OS. It’s everything people wanted Vista to be and more. Which is exactly why Microsoft should give it away—or offer it dirt cheap—to Vista users.

Windows 7 is the solution to Microsoft’s Vista problem, which is really a nasty hydra of a problem. Let’s not pretend that this isn’t the case. There are three major heads to the beast: Consumer perception of Vista as an abysmal failure and a crappy OS (hence, Mojave); the use of XP instead of Vista in increasingly popular netbooks; and the critical lack of Vista interest from the business community.

Windows 7 neatly resolves them: Word-of-mouth sentiment for Windows 7 has been overwhelmingly positive, even from Mossberg, a dude who spent half of his Sprint Instinct review pre-reviewing the iPhone 3G. Windows 7 is slimmed down when it needs to be, running fantastically on netbooks. And the IT buyers and consumers who skipped Vista have been waiting, cash in hand, for whatever came after, so Windows 7 will have a much more enthusiastic customer base.

The stars are aligned for Windows 7. It could wash the bad aftertaste from Vista out of everybody’s mouth. But that’s only if Microsoft sells it right.

For starters, Microsoft needs to get rid of all the separate license types (OEM vs. upgrade vs. full) and trim the number of boxed configurations. Give buyers three versions, Home, Business and Ultimate, all at a reasonable price. $129 would be ideal for the first two, with $149 for Ultimate.

Second, every Vista user should get it for $49, or even less.

Apple gave away OS X 10.1 for free, and Microsoft should take a lesson there. It doesn’t matter that Vista isn’t really broken—like OS 10.0 really really was. Or that it was mostly the hardware guys’ fault for not delivering their drivers on time. Or that Mojave proves, at least to the nimwits who appear on camera, that Vista is a warm and fuzzy OS. Or that, conversely, most people who hate Vista have never really used it. All of that could be true, but regardless, people’s perception is that Vista was, is and always will be broken. And perception is reality.

Microsoft screwed up the Vista launch, and well, first impressions are the ones that matter the most. True, it’s already paying for that mistake. But taking that small hit per user wouldn’t just be the final cost of the Vista screwup, it would be “earnest money,” as they say in business. Microsoft would be buying something it hasn’t had the opportunity to get in the last few years: People’s faith.

Windows SuperSite Reviews Vista 5365

This article was written on April 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows SuperSite Reviews Vista 5365

Paul Thurrott has completed a micro-review of the Microsoft Windows Vista 5365. He goes through some of the new features that he has found in the build as well as well as the shell changes. Overall, this build has a bunch of minor updates. Nothing to jump up and down with, but it is still a nice release. I have definitely found this build to be faster and more stable than any previous builds.

Paul also explains his reasoning behind writing his article Why Vista Fails. It seems as though some people were not pleased to hear what he had to say on the matter, however, he proved all of his points very well. For everything he listed he had a reason for listing it. He gave thorough explanations and left nothing in the open. In my opinion it is one of Paul’s most thorough articles.

Windows SuperSite Review Of Vista 5365

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Microsoft extends Windows 7 beta downloads to February 10

Good news for those of you who haven’t yet snagged a copy of the Windows 7 beta — Microsoft’s decided to extend the beta download period to February 10th. That’s the second extension we’ve gotten from Redmond — the company says that interest is so high in 7 that it doesn’t want anyone to miss out. So what are you waiting for? Hit the read link for the download and then snuggle up with our detailed install round-up and hands-on impressions while your bits tumble in.

[Via Computerworld]

Read – Post on Windows Team Blog
Read – Windows 7 download page

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Microsoft extends Windows 7 beta downloads to February 10 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows Vista Beta 2 Released To MSDN And TechNet Subscribers

This article was written on May 23, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows Vista Beta 2 Released To MSDN And TechNet Subscribers

Windows Vista Beta 2 is currently available to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers. Unfortunately they did not make it publicly available like they did for Office 2007 Beta 2. However, Microsoft does say that in the next few weeks Vista will be released to people who are not subscribers:

Windows Vista Beta 2 is now available for IT professionals and developers with MSDN and TechNet subscriptions. In the coming weeks, Microsoft will start the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP) for developers and IT professionals who are not members of the subscription services.

I guess we will have to wait a little longer, but in the mean time you can play with Office 2007 Beta 2.

News Source: Windows Vista Homepage

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Windows 7 put up against Vista and XP in hardcore multicore benchmarks, XP wins

Now that the Windows 7 beta is out, the benchmarks are coming fast and furious, and while 7’s been previously found to best XP and Vista during “real-world” tasks, it looks like XP is still the outright speed champ on current hardware. That’s at least the word according to InfoWorld, which pitted all three systems against each other in a suite of tests designed to suss out how each performed on modern multicore systems, and while we won’t pretend to grok all the data, there’s nothing complicated about the final results, which showed that “any illusions about Windows 7 somehow being leaner or more efficient than Vista can now be thrown out the window.” Sure, there was some speedup — 7 was 60 percent faster than Vista during the dual-core workflow tests — but overall, 7’s just slower on dual- and quad-core hardware than XP. However, there’s a silver lining here: InfoWorld says the slowdown is in large part due to the extra code Vista and 7 use to manage multicore processors, and as the number of cores increase, the corresponding performance gains are much bigger than with XP since they can be used more efficiently. Of course, by the time we’re all sitting pretty with 48-core Larrabee machines this all might be just a distant memory, so for right now we’re just going to get back to installing the Windows 7 beta on anything we can find and reveling in the glory of perceived speedups.

Read – Analysis I (against Vista alone)
Read – Analysis II (against Vista and XP)

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Windows 7 put up against Vista and XP in hardcore multicore benchmarks, XP wins originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Giz Explains: Why the Windows 7 Taskbar Beats Mac OS X’s Dock

Yeah, I said it. The Windows 7 taskbar is the most important Windows UI change since Windows 95, and it will dramatically change the way you use Windows. And it’s better than the Mac’s Dock.

That’s because the “superbar”—as the taskbar is known by developers—jerks taskbar functionality in a new direction. It’s no longer merely a window manager—just a place to manage open windows and by proxy, open applications. It’s now a bona fide application launcher. More than that, it blends the two in ways that will remind many of the OS X Dock—apps that are running and those that aren’t can live together. True, you’ve been able to launch apps from the Windows taskbar’s Quick Launch ghetto for ages, but that’s been demolished so that Microsoft could completely and seamlessly integrate the launching of new apps and the managing of running ones.

Managing Apps and Open Windows

The OS X Dock operates from a similar standpoint, but Windows 7 takes this (not to mention the translucency gambit) a step further: The visual signification of a running application (versus one that’s not and merely “pinned” to the taskbar) is exceptionally subtle—a kind of “glare” appears on the top left corner of the icon and it’s faintly outlined. It borders on actively encouraging you to forget the distinction, which as computers become more powerful and applications launch more quickly, matters less and less anyhow.

The flashing colored glass effect when an app is trying to get your attention, however, is nice, and though way less ostentatious than the old blinking button, definitely obvious. Unless you have the taskbar set to auto-hide, then the notification is barely visible as a flashing line of color on the bottom of your screen. The Mac Dock’s bouncing icons definitely works better there.

These aesthetic similarities aside, what actually makes the superbar superior to the Dock is window management—including, by extension, application management. I can easily find, access or close any window I want from the taskbar nearly instantly, thanks to the combination of live thumbnails and Aero Peek. Rolling over an icon in the taskbar pops up live thumbnails of every open window of that app. If that’s not enough to tell which one you want, rolling over a thumbnail brings that window to the front, full-sized, and makes every other window translucent. And it’s easy to move from app to app in one motion to bring up the window you want, or close it. This is not just a neat visual trick, like Flip 3D. It’s genuinely useful.

The benefit breaks down if you have more open windows of an application than the number of previews that will fit across your screen horizontally: In that case, you get a much less useful list of open windows, like old school Windows or control-clicking a Dock icon on the Mac.

The Power of the Pop-Up Menu

Right-clicking—or clicking the icon then quickly swiping upwards—brings up a pop-up menu (aka a jump list). Control-clicking on the OS X Dock does something similar, giving you a list of open windows. Some apps (like Adium) are coded for additional Dock functions, but it’s not the same as the powerful visual metaphor that the superbar and Aero Peek give you. Applications still need to be coded specially to take advantage of the superbar’s pop-up menu, but it’s more powerful. If an app is coded to use Windows 7 jump lists—when you right-click on an icon or click and swipe upward, you have instant access to frequently used or other functions—it will erase the slight advantage the Dock currently has.

The superbar does share one of the Dock’s major shortcomings as an application launcher—it’s not immediately apparent how to launch a new window of an app from the taskbar. The secret as Windows evangelist Paul Thurrot points out is that you right-click the app icon, then click the app name itself appearing in the pop-up menu. Granted, from the Mac Dock, unless opening a new window is coded into the app as a Dock function, like Safari, you can’t do it at all.

The superbar’s biggest shortcoming—at least when you first use it—relates to the way it handles folders and document shortcuts, which is exceptionally confusing. You can only pin one folder to the bar. After that, every subsequent folder you want to pin to the taskbar is pinned to Windows Explorer. Say you have the Libraries folder pinned for quick access to Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc. But I also want another folder (in this example, Games and Computer) pinned to the taskbar, so I drag it to the bar. There, it shares the same icon as my first pinned folder. When I click the icon, up pops Libraries. Where’s the Games folder? I have to right-click on the folder icon (or click and swipe up). This gives me a jump list of pinned folders and other frequent programs. You pin documents the same way, only they’re hidden in the jump menu of the application that opens them. It takes some learning before you can use it fluidly.

The View From Above

The challenge of learning a totally new Windows behavior is the cost of getting this huge step forward in UI. The superbar makes Windows way more conducive to running tons of applications, since it’s actually possible to find apps and precisely the window you want in a second, no matter how bad the shitstorm on your desktop is. In this sense, it’s a better application manager than the Dock, from which, generally speaking, you can’t do much more than jump to open applications or close them.

It’s true that it’s actually less necessary for the Dock to be a superpowered wunderkind—Spaces gives you multiple desktops to work on, and Expose is pretty fantastic. It’s faster, though if you’ve got too many windows, the thumbnails are too small to be useful. Aero Peek solves this issue nicely by letting you quickly cycle through full-screen windows. The superbar has a button in the bottom right corner that works sort of like an OS X Expose hot corner, instantly making every window transparent so you can see the desktop—clicking will actually clear everything away.

There are definitely arguments to be made against the density of the superbar, packing so many function into a single UI element—many criticisms of the Dock apply to the superbar, like the total lack of text labels, and though it sidesteps some of the Dock’s issues, like the poof, it presents new flubs. It could definitely improve in some ways (especially the notification area, which I didn’t even go into).

But it shows the most thought of any Windows UI element in a long time, and manages to handle the complexity and multiplicity of functions about as well as one could expect. It does more than the Dock, and for the most part, works beautifully to enable—encourage, even—serious multitasking that the default Windows UI never has before.

131 Redesigned BSODs We’d Like to See When Windows 7 Crashes

This week’s Photoshop Contest called for redesigned Windows 7 BSODs, and we got a nice mix of legit redesigns and ludicrous inanity. I prefer the latter, but a classy redesign would also be appreciated.

First Place — Cobra Commander

Second Place — Flambino

Third Place — OMG! Ponies!

Why You Should Go 64-Bit With Windows 7

You might’ve skipped the Vista train, thinking it was like Under Siege 2, minus Steve Seagal. Or not. Either way, you’re probably gonna jump onboard Windows 7. When you do, it’s time to go 64-bit.

Who Should Go 64-bit?

Basically, anyone geeky enough to read this. If you have an Intel Core 2 Duo or newer processor, you’ve got a 64-bit CPU, and you should install the 64-bit version of Windows 7 to play with. (Here’s how. You’ve got like 5 days left, BTW.) Microsoft itself is pimping 64-bit over 32-bit now and notebook makers have already started pushing 64-bit Windows Vista over 32-bit. Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard will be 64-bit down to its kernel, so you won’t be alone by any means. 64-bit is going mainstream.

Why Should I?
We explained what’s so awesome about 64-bit in detail a couple months ago, but to recap in a single word: Memory. With 32-bit Windows, you’re stuck at 4GB of RAM, and even then, you’re only using about 3.3GB of it, give or take. With 64-bit, 4GB of RAM is the new minimum standard, and with 4GB, you can run tons of applications with zero slowdown. Windows 7 (and Vista for that matter) runs so beautifully with 4GB of RAM you’ll wonder how you ever did with less. It makes your system more futureproof too, so you can take your system to 8GB, 32GB or even a terabyte, before too long.

Who Shouldn’t Go 64-Bit?
If you’re not planning on going to 4GB of RAM anytime soon, you might wanna hold back, since you need 4GB of RAM to take full advantage of 64-bit’s memory management. That said, RAM is so disgustingly cheap right now, and has such an intense bang-to-buck ratio, you should definitely upgrade to 4GB if you haven’t already. Anyone who runs specialized or older gear (see below) should probably not jump into 64-bit.

64-bit Sniggles
It’s true that 64-bit Windows used to be dicey on the driver and compatibility front, but from Vista onward, it’s typically nothing you have to worry about. Most new hardware has 64-bit drivers, and even though most applications aren’t 64-bit native yet, 32-bit ones usually run just fine.

Still, the biggest issue is hardware. If a gadget doesn’t have 64-bit drivers, it won’t work with your 64-bit OS, since 32-bit drivers aren’t supported. Most non-crusty gadgets should be okay. (Seriously, I’ve run 64-bit Vista for a year, and now Windows 7, and everything I’ve tested for Giz plugs in just fine.) But if you run legacy goods, it might be kinda sticky, and you should still double check your gear just to be safe.

There are a few software issues to look out for, too. Google’s Chrome, for instance, doesn’t play nice with Windows 7 64-bit for some people (like me). Adobe Flash doesn’t run in 64-bit browsers, but that’s not really a problem—you can just run the regular 32-bit browser instead. iTunes had problems with 64-bit versions of Windows in the past, too (granted, Apple’s not the most fastidious Windows app developer out there). Most of these issues have been or will be resolved, but if you use specialized mission-critical software, definitely read up on its 64-bit compatibility.

Really, Go 64-Bit
The caveat section looks longer than the “DO IT” section, but really, you’ll probably be just fine running 64-bit. A ton of other people will be 64-bit with this generation of OSes/hardware too, so you won’t be alone. The benefits of oodles of RAM, given all the crap you’re running simultaneously, are just too good to pass up, especially once more apps are 64-bit native. Besides, the more people that jump on the 64-bit Express, the faster developers will transition their apps to 64-bit, and any bumps in the road will be smoothed out. So don’t just do it for yourself, do it for everyone.

Win 7 Tip: The Taskbar Is the Most Useful New UI Change

Once you get past the slightly differently-colored Aero theme in Windows 7, you’ll realize that it looks, UI-wise, almost the same as Vista. That is, until you look down at the Taskbar. Now that’s new.

First, you’ll notice that the Quick Launch Bar (the little tray on the left in XP and Vista where you can click to launch apps) has been combined with the Taskbar (the place where open apps used to sit so you can access them). Now, it’s just one bar of icons that opens up “in place”, much like OS X’s dock. You then can right click on these and pin them to to the Taskbar (again, like the Dock) so you can launch these apps when not in use.

If you have apps grouped, you can CTRL + click to cycle between windows, or SHIFT + click to launch a completely new “instance” of the program. Having two instances of Firefox open means that if one window crashes, it won’t affect the pages open in another window. (Chrome already has this built in to its tab scheme, in case you were curious.)

Then there’s Jumplists, which are like shortcuts for each app. By default (if you have the option of having Windows “store and display recently opened items in the Star menu and the task bar”) a right click will display a list of recently opened files and websites for each app. For IE, it’ll be your history, for Word, it’ll be the last few docs. You can also pin your own stuff into the Jumplist. For example, if you access the same folders in Windows Explorer over and over, you can right-click drag a folder onto the Win Explorer icon and it’ll be “pinned” there for easy right-click access.

Microsoft also added a fantastic timesaver by allowing you to launch the first five apps in your Taskbar by hitting the Windows Button + 1~5, corresponding to each respective program. Once they’re launched, you can switch between them with the same Win + # keystroke, making jumping between your favorite apps super easy.

Even features that were present in Vista—mousing over an app to see a thumbnail preview—have been improved. Now, when you have three Firefox windows open grouped under the same icon, Aero Peek will pop them all up and you can cycle through all three, previewing each quickly. For “supported” apps like IE, it’ll even break out the different tabs for you to preview. See it in action below.


The one last visual improvement is a huge deal to people who use widescreen monitors, or otherwise like docking their Taskbar on the sides. Microsoft has finally smoothed out all the gradient and graphical weirdness, so that things actually look decent when you do side docking. It works great when combined with the “icon” view, so those of you with wide monitors should give it a shot.

View our other Windows 7 tips and our continuing coverage here.

Win 7 Tip: Problem Steps Recorder is Amazing, Needs to Be In Every OS

We mentioned the Problem Steps Recorder blackbox error reporting app back in our Win 7 Giz Explains, but it wasn’t until I tried it for myself that I saw just how amazing it is.

The quick summary of PSR is that it’s a recording app you activate to record any inputs you make to your Windows 7 machine (mouse clicks, keyboard presses) along with screenshots of every step. When done, PSR generates one big HTML slideshow of all your actions complete with an English language description of what you did.

This is great for developers and tech support so they can see what an end-user is doing without actually standing over their shoulder or VNCing into their machine, but it’s also useful whenever you have to tech support your parents over the phone (like John Mayer). You can just have them record the steps and you’ll view it at home, seeing EXACTLY what went wrong!

Seriously, this is awesome, Microsoft. Now let’s have it in every OS please.