Windows 7 looking good?
Love it or hate it, most of us are using Windows in one way or the other. So we are very curious about what Windows 7 will bring. Because Vista has been disappointing, human psychology has us hoping that the good things we expected but didn’t get in Vista might be delivered with Windows 7. For a while many were even hoping for a whole new operating system but that was never in the cards. Too many businesses need the familiarity and backward compatibility of the basic Windows kernel. So we hope for an easier to use, faster version of Vista. And we may be getting it. Reports this week show optimistic signs.
PC Magazine Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff was once one of those calling for a completely new Windows but he has recanted. And he sees good things in Windows 7. In his latest post, he writes:
Steve Ballmer is right. Windows 7 is Windows Vista, just better. And this is a good thing.
Yeah, I know. It’s heresy. Everyone hates Vista, and who would ever want the next version to be little more than a sequel—and, potentially, a bad one at that. When I railed against Microsoft for not doing a complete overhaul, I brewed up a complete analogy about how Windows is like the Star Trek movies.
He goes on to say:
Sounds wonderful, but it’s also ridiculous. Microsoft can no more reboot Windows than you can change the engine on a moving car. Windows is, in all its various flavors, in billions of PCs around the world. Even the “failed” Vista is on 180 million desktops. A reboot, a full scrapping of the code (dare I say kernel), and complete overhaul of the interface could result in chaos.
About Windows 7 he concludes:
If I had to describe most of the changes Microsoft made to Windows in version 7, I’d say they were thoughtful. They’re smart, intuitive, sometimes obvious, and most are certainly welcome. Microsoft no longer needs to reinvent the wheel. Maybe Windows Vista is the operating system, in its still somewhat rough form, we need it to be. If that’s the case, Microsoft goes from being the miner, blasting out rock to bring forth each successive new operating system, to the sculptor chiseling, polishing, and even sometimes mortaring to make Windows just work.
Let’s hope we won’t be disappointed again.
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Well considering that the people who didn’t like Vista were in actual fact just a very vocal minority, it’s a shame to see the myth perpetuated by magazines – still!