Windows 7...

[Eclipsed]

Takes big BOW.

Thanks all. Yeah. I did all that.

If any of you guys are running the official Windows 7 Beta build, and would like to roll-up your top couple of bugs that you would like to see get fixed; please post them up with repro steps and I will get them filed. Now is the time.

I'm running official build 7000. Few things i've noticed

1.) Put some color back into the tray icons, things like wireless signal icon, 5 white bars make me think i dont have a signal, i'm used to seeing the varying levels of green bars to show how strong the signal is. White icons remind me far to much of iphone/mac osx. Its just bland.

2.) Iexplorer has some a tendacy to hang if you swap tabs to fast while pages are loading (loading flash video in one tab and swap to another tab whlie its loading) mostly see this with more then 2 tabs open at a time.

3.) Please do something about teh 6 different sku's. People really dont want/need that many options. Make it simple, home, pro, enterprise editions.

4.) Have some sort of welcome screen thats available to turn on or off (like server 2003/2008) that shows you different options that you can turn on or off. Things that most people wouldnt normally know where to look for.)

Just a few suggestions from me.

Also a few questions, which you may or probably may not be able to answer.

1.) How well is the multi-touch going to be implimented? I have an old 19" touchscreen monitor i use for my jukebox that runs off a serial input (usb option is available) will that work with the MT tech?

2.) Are they going to impliment other wireless options such as wireless HDMI syncing like the new Asus EEE keyboard (would love to be able to sycn my laptop to my plasma screen without running 30 feet of dvi cable).

 

[flaminio]

If any of you guys are running the official Windows 7 Beta build, and would like to roll-up your top couple of bugs that you would like to see get fixed; please post them up with repro steps and I will get them filed. Now is the time.

These aren't really Windows 7 specific, but here are a couple things I wish would be improved in W7:

1) Stealing Focus. I absolutely hate when applications do this. I routinely type while not looking at the screen -- in fact I'm doing it right now. It really chaps my hide when my latest manuscript has disappeared into the ether because some app decided to assert itself during my typing. All OSs that I've used do this. None should.

2) Make copying, moving, and deleting files better. For example, I want to delete a large number of files. I select them all (Ctrl-A) and then delete. First, why does this take any time at all? I get that it takes time, but this should all be in the background. I don't need to see the flying files of delete window. Second, if there happens to be a read-only file or some other item that requires user intervention, the entire delete stops. I get that I should approve some deletions, but Windows should continue to delete valid files while waiting for my input. The same beefs can be applied to copying and moving files as well.

 

[NsXMas]

#1 - there needs to be an XP windows explorer look & feel theme, I hate the Windows 7 windows explorer. This should be like the "classic theme" option in XP, only there needs to be the "XP Pro theme" option.
#2 - the explorer process or something locks open USB and removable drives. I have to close Explorer windows to be able to dismount removable drives. This is unacceptable.
#3 - the network schemes don't work well. They are not compatible with my Samba based NAS. In Xp they worked perfectly. This is a big problem that should be fixed in Windows 7 without endangering NAS data.
#4 - the taskbar needs to have an option to separate shortcuts from open windows sessions. The mix/matching of the windows sessions are not user friendly.
#5 - IE8 is buggy, and the crash recovery is very unreliable when it freezes. This needs to be super reliable.

 

[jond]

I really don't understand why anyone would use Windows machines. I have been an Apple fan and user for years and only use Windows when completely necessary. I have a new MacBook Pro 15" and love it. If I need any Windows only applications, I just run them on my MacBook using VMWare Fusion.

It really comes down to what you do. If all you do is surf the web and check email, a mac is perfect. But with a windows PC, you can do ANYTHING. There are millions and millions and millions of apps to do any and everything.
I would hate to have to fire up a VM everytime I wanted to do actual work.

Back on topic, I just got a new Lenovo, loaded Windows 7 64bit, and just joined it to the corporate network yesterday. Thing is smooth as silk. Fast as hell. No issues at all.

 

[lunchman]

Over the weekend I resurrected an aging Presario laptop (AMD 900Mhz, only 256MB memory) that hadn't booted in years. When I finally got it up and running, it was at WinXP SP1. It literally took around 8 hours to get SP2 and the 125+ hotfixes downloaded and installed, then it still needed SP3. The machine with XP on it was pretty much useless, it was so slow. Well over 5 minutes to get to the desktop after booting. XP just isn't going to run well with only 256 meg, and max in this laptop is 384.

Up for a challenge, I downloaded Ubuntu 8.10. Downloading, burning the iso CD and installing it on this laptop took less than an hour! (The download and cd burn were done on my XP desktop). Amazing, after my all day hassle with MS Update. Once up and running, it took about another 45 minutes to install Ubuntu updates.

It was on my home network in minutes, took nothing to get an old wireless card up and running and has become quite a usable little system to play with. The price was obviously right: free. And it's brought an old laptop that was destined for the recycle bin back to life. I'm definitely liking this o/s and getting familiar once again with Unix. Firefox is easy to get used to, it comes with OpenOffice, has an iTunes equivalent, etc.

I'll still continue using XP on my desktop, but at some point in the future...