The OS Formerly Known as Vista

      by Wyatt Walter

I’ve always enjoyed the “I’m a Mac” commercials that Apple has been playing over the last few years. When Microsoft finally came out with an advertising campaign to counter it, Apple got much more aggressive, however. I thought with the last few that they had gone a bit too far, but then I realized that with the “V Word” ad that Apple may have hit the nail on the head. Then the last couple of ads released have been hammering Microsoft over spending tons of money on advertising rather than actually fixing Vista’s problems. They have pretty much nailed it again.

It’s hard to find news coming out about Windows Vista any more. All the (Microsoft) technology news is about Windows 7 these days, it seems. Since I’m not one of the few who have actually gotten to play with the pre-beta versions, I’m going to have to go off promised features and reviews from others. However, what advantages do we get with running Windows 7 over Windows Vista? Well, what’s been promised so far is better performance, better reliability, a new OS X-like task bar (dock?), and multi-touch.

Okay, so they’re offering better performance and better reliability. I should hope it would do better than previous versions. I haven’t noticed any other operating system ad that didn’t say that it was the fastest or more reliable than the last. The biggest performance boost that I’ve read about is that Windows 7 won’t render application windows while the window is not actually being displayed. That’s something that should have been done with the first release of Vista, now it’s a pay-for upgrade.

Windows 7 is supposed to have a new taskbar that acts like the dock in OS X, even with a feature much like Apple’s “Stacks”. This isn’t much different from the Quick Launch menu in older versions of Windows, but it has a few additional features. I’ve always hated the idea of the start menu so this is definitely a welcome feature.

The big new killer feature that Microsoft has been talking about is its new multi-touch technology. Multi-touch technology has been around for a while in several products, both Microsoft (Surface) and others (specifically the iPhone and MacBooks). Microsoft has had its Windows Tablet Edition for several years and been a leader in built-in natural input on notebooks. The multi-touch technology is expected and a rather boring development, though necessary.

So what does Windows 7 give us over Vista? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a pay-for feature that should have been a service pack. However, Microsoft’s marketing department has made it sound like a killer new OS, just like the Apple ads are saying. During this time of recession in the economy, Microsoft has found a great way of keeping profits high: sell features that should have already been delivered in previous sales. Microsoft didn’t even deliver on features promised to paying customers of Vista Ultimate. Why should we pay for a release that should be a service pack with a new theme? I think Apple had it right. The reason Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 rather than another service pack to Vista is to get rid of the Vista name. They have to add a few features to at least give the appearance of a new OS and then over-hype it to make us believe we’re getting something better.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Oct 30th, 2008