Posts Tagged ‘windows 7’

Upgrade to Windows 7 Because.. It Sucks Less?

Well, after a busy couple of months I’m finally back. I did miss the release of Windows 7 on my blog, but I definitely enjoyed watching the fireworks between Apple and Microsoft through their commercials on tv. Microsoft has definitely come out with a product that the public seems to like (which ultimately is all that matters). One of the commercials, however, caught me a bit off guard.

In the commercial, ‘Angela’ says: “I don’t want to worry about my computer freezing or crashing … and suddenly, Windows 7″. Uh, what? Did we just hear an admission from Microsoft that Vista had problems? I hate to add to my anti-Microsoft list of blog posts, but seriously, what are they thinking with this ad? They should’ve just said: “Upgrade to Windows 7, it sucks less than previous versions”. Definitely not the positive spin on Windows that I was expecting.. With a product out the door that the company can definitely be proud of, I expected them to tout some cool new features, but that’s not the stance we’ve seen from previous versions.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (3) : Nov 4th, 2009

Why Would Microsoft Not Offer Windows 7 Ultimate?

I just got done reading a post by Don Reisinger who makes a very good point that Windows 7 Ultimate (and really, Windows Vista Ultimate) offers very little in the way of features over Windows 7 Professional. Personally, I hate the idea of having several versions of the operating system, but Ultimate does add some probably useful features for consumers. The problem here is one of categorization. One really can’t compare the Professional and Ultimate editions as they are designed with different audiences in mind. True, one does have to buy Ultimate if they don’t have enough licensing to justify the volume licensing offered for Windows Enterprise and need features not available in Professional, but Ultimate really isn’t aimed to be an upgrade from Professional. It’s aimed to be an upgrade to Home Premium.

This change of perspectives gives some decent value adds to the Ultimate edition if one decides that they have to use Windows. Of course, along with these features comes a heftier price jump. Home Premium retails at $200 while Ultimate retails at $320. That’s a pretty good jump. It does, however, offer some additional features that Home Premium doesn’t, like network backups via their new “Backup and Restore Center” as well as the encryption on the filesystem, location-aware printing, and Windows XP mode. Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to be buying Windows 7 Ultimate this summer/fall, but if Microsoft can get users to pay more to add those few features, why not?

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jul 7th, 2009

Windows 7 RC1 Released to MSDN and TechNet

Release Candidate 1 of Windows 7 was released yesterday to MSDN and TechNet subscribers with a generally available release date of May 5. The biggest new feature: an “XP compatibility mode” that’s really a Windows XP virtual machine. The compatibility mode is supposed to grease the skids for people upgrading from XP to allow applications that are only available for Windows XP to be able to be run on Windows 7. One of the biggest things that consumers and businesses have complained about and cited as reasons for not upgrading to Vista was that hardware and software needed to be changed (which was true in some cases). Microsoft is working hard to minimize the number of excuses for consumers not to upgrade so it can stop supporting an antiquated Windows XP.

For those of you who are worried, don’t. Windows 7 is now the “highest quality Release Candidate in the history of Windows”, straight from Bill Veghte of Microsoft himself. Seriously this time. It is. Other Windows releases have claimed to be best, but this one really is the best. Okay, joking aside, Microsoft seems to have learned from lessons from Vista. They are including users and hardware manufacturers much more with the release of 7 than with the release of Vista.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : May 1st, 2009

Internet Explorer Will Finally Be Able To Be Uninstalled

Evidently a recently leaked build of Windows 7 allows Internet Explorer 8 to be uninstalled. It still is installed by default, of course, but it’s allowed to be removed fully (with the exception of the rendering engine, MSHTML.DLL). Microsoft has been challenged in courts in Europe over creating a monopoly in the browser market by not allowing the browser to be uninstalled in the past and this very well could be a step to mitigate the risk of the same thing happening in other courts. You can remove IE8 from the system through the “Turn Windows Features On or Off” dialog. Unchecking the box just removes the iexplore.exe binary.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Mar 4th, 2009

Microsoft: Most Users are ‘Starters’

Microsoft has announced that it will be selling Windows 7 Starter Edition as a lower-cost option for low-end netbooks. The edition limits users to only 3 concurrent applications to be run. Microsoft has cited performance on the low-end netbooks and a survey that showed that on average, a consumer uses just over 2 applications at a time as a reason for the offering. They deny trying to force users to spend more money on the premium version of Windows 7, but the restriction also includes applications that are running in the background which seems extremely limiting. For instance, if I wanted to run an IM client and leave my mail application running in the background to check for new messages while browsing the web I cannot play music via another application since that would push me over the limit.

I’m not quite sure what Microsoft is trying to do here.. I know that just buying the Premium edition is only $50 more, but this is getting out of control. The version really brings no value to the marketplace other than costing consumers more money when their needs change. If their true reasoning behind the restriction was to make sure that the lower-end machines performed the way they should for users, wouldn’t it make more sense to allow the users to just leave extra applications open rather than re-launching? The upgrade path to Home Premium is simply the purchase of a license key. I haven’t found any documentation on how much this license would cost. This is almost worse than Cisco shipping firewalls that have gigabit ethernet ports on them only to restrict them to 10/100 via software..

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Feb 10th, 2009

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