“After months of speculation, Windows 7 was finally unveiled last month at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC),” Randall C. Kennedy reports for Reseller News.
“Microsoft’s pitch was quite compelling, and the PDC crowd was practically salivating at the chance to play with Microsoft’s latest and greatest,” Kennedy reports. “But after the stage props came down, and after the projectors finally went cold, attendees were left with a pre-beta copy of something that looked less like a new OS than the repackaging of an old one.”
“The more I dug into Windows 7, the more I saw an OS that looked and felt like a slightly tweaked version of Windows Vista,” Kennedy reports.
“Windows 7 appeared to suck memory like Vista, to consume CPU like Vista, and to have the same consumer focus. How would this product be received by enterprise customers, the vast majority of whom had soundly rejected its predecessor? After all, if Vista wasn’t good enough for big business, then surely a Vista-derived encore would meet with a similarly chilly reception,” Kennedy reports.
“We can now say with some certainty that Windows 7 is in fact just a repackaging of Windows Vista — an “R2″ release, to use Microsoft’s nomenclature on the Windows Server side of the house. Key processes look and work much like they do under Vista, and preliminary benchmark testing shows that Windows 7 performs right on a par with its predecessor. Frankly, Windows 7 is Vista, at least under the hood; if nothing else, this should translate into excellent backward compatibility with Vista-certified applications and drivers,” Kennedy reports.
“Except that it might not. The M3 build of Windows 7 breaks all sorts of things that, frankly, it shouldn’t be breaking. Worse still, the suspected source of a major compatibility bump — the neutered UAC prompts — is in fact architectural in nature, one of the few truly new features of Windows 7’s secure computing stack,” Kennedy reports.
“Windows 7 looks and behaves almost exactly like Windows Vista. It performs almost exactly like Vista. And it breaks all sorts of things that used to work just fine under Vista. In other words, Microsoft’s follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues,” Kennedy reports.
The full article, which is subtitled “The larger question is what all those Vista refuseniks will do when their hopes for Windows 7 are crushed,” and which we highly recommend, is here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
Microsoft seems to be so enamored with its “Mojave” ruse that it’s about to try it for real on its remaining sheep.
And it will be pushed back another 3 years.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/18924/
Rob Enderle demonstrates how shit multi-touch is in Vista 2.
“Very Apple like..” No, Enderle you tool. Apple’s multi-touch works!!!
What a clod.
@Switched
Hahaha, thanks for that.
Microsoft needs to forget the consumer and focus on the enterprise and small business alone. Leave the consumer to Apple, Linux and those who recycle only work PCs. Sure, still sell to the consumer, but focus on business. They have lost the web wars (WebKit has won), the home productivity wars (iLife won) and the home Office wars (Office.org has won). They lost the SmartPhone wars (iPhone won). They hardly make any money on Windows Home for the new wave of NetBooks, so just forget it with the consumer. All these areas are probably more expensive to exist in than they make at the tills.
The only problem with this strategy is that it was MS who took over when IBM forgot the consumer and was only looking at the business tills.
I’ve had the chance to test Windows Vista 2…erhm Windows 7.
Same old, same old…
After reading the original article in full, if the author’s perceptions of Vista/Windows 7 are shared among many other IT professionals as he asserts, then Microsoft is indeed in trouble.
Microshaft: with no real innovation, they are domed to failure.
They’ve been bleeding for the past few years, and it will continue as companies that bleed the public, only end up bleeding themselves (to extinction).
It’s only a matter of time.
@ HolyMackerel
Small businesses are going Mac. When the owner is the bookkeeper/marketer/customer service rep/everything else, they don’t have time to fart around keeping Windows working.
Another market segment (and a big one at that) that Microsoft is at risk of losing.
As I have said many times before, Microsoft has waned due to the leadership of the company. It has been years since Bill was really in charge of day-to-day operations, replaced by a salesman — Ballmer.
Once the technologists are replaced by the salespeople, a company is cemented to loose innovation. Case in point, Apple during the 90’s pre-Jobs 2.0.
Microsoft has definitely lost its way, and If I were a shareholder, I would demand that Ballmer be fired.
Keep Ballmer!!!!!
Best thing for Apple.
What a total disaster. Should make for a interesting Made for TV movie.
I don’t know what I’m looking forward to most — Windows 7 or the iPhone 3 (for different reasons of course!).
PC: Advertising, advertising… fix Vista…
Mac: …Um, do you really think that amount of money is gonna fix Vista?
PC: You’re right… *sweeps all the ‘fix Vista’ money into the ‘advertising’ pile*.
It took Microsoft 10 years to release the ‘chrome-plated turd’ known publicly as Vista. There’s no way in hell they’re gonna be able to release another *major* Windows version so quickly.
Windows 7 is nothing more than a re-packaged, rebranded, warmed-over version of the same old steaming pile of sh!t that is Vista. Windows 7 is nothing more than a service-pack for Vista, designed to re-brand and re-image the debacle of Vista. In fact, Microsoft will desperately try to tell the world that it isn’t even windows Vista, ‘It’s *like* Vista, only better.’ What a farqing joke.
No one wanted that shite before. No one will want it when the ‘new & improved version’ is released either.
– If, for some reason, we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years.
On the early rivalry between Macintosh and “IBM-compatible” computers based on Microsoft’s DOS, as quoted in Steve Jobs : The Journey is the Reward (1987) by Jeffrey S. Young, p. 235
– Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D;dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D;. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.
As quoted in Fortune (1998-11-09); also quoted in “TIME digital 50” in TIME digital archive (1999)
-The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.
Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
– I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success — I have no problem with their success. They’ve earned their success, for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products.
Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
MS is beginning to remind me of the commercial with the old folks saying: I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.
Well grandpa, it is time to turn you into Soylent Green.
Well, by that same logic, Windows Vista is just XP with a whole lot of extra turd on board weighing it down. XP was just 2000 with a Fisher Price exterior. Windows 2000 was just a glorified Windows NT, dumbed down for the masses, merging in the “best of” Windows 98SE.
Microsoft has only written two operating systems, DOS (which they stole) and Windows NT – everything else has been a glorified shell (Windows up to ME) or just a long standing derivative of Windows NT.
The description of Vista/Windows 7 as being a “chrome-plated turd” never gets old.
What did people expect? It took Microsoft years and years to come up with Vista. Does anyone really believe that they’ve managed to whip up another brand new operating system since the launch of Vista? Windows 7 is THE classic example of putting lipstick on a pig. And yes, the new packaging for Windows 7 will feature a picture of Sarah Palin.
i can’t wait for “Pirates of Silicon Valley 2: Revenge of Jobs”
IF this is true (we MDN readers will believe it) then I it signals a really major, inconceivably monstrous, unthinkable, problem for Microsoft.
It will confirm finally and fatally that Microsoft is UNABLE to progress the development of Windows.
And if that IS the case, surely it will be only a matter of time before the curtains are drawn….
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig
@ Peruchito
Damn, that flick would be an awesome nerdgasm.
Isn’t it obvious that the only way to get a beta for Win7 out the door that fast was to just slap more lipstick on the Vista pig?
@Ludor
i always felt that movie deserves a sequel
They made a sequel on SNL. “Soylent White” with Phil Hartman as Charleton Heston screaming, “It’s People! Soylent White is People!” The sequel tanked, as I recall.
When you absolutely, positively dont give a $hit if it works…Microsoft!
So what? Vista is better OS than Mac OS X. You never used Vista so you don’t know. Mac OS X sucks.