- Saturday, 21 November 2009
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Windows 7 is a hit with Inquirer readers
NEARLY FOUR IN TEN of our readers are going to be using Windows 7 from today if they aren't already doing so, according to the Inquirer's recent totally unscientific poll.
In anticipation of today's official launch of the Vole's shiny new OS we've been running a poll to gauge your reaction to it. In true INQ style, the response has been tremendous and at the time of writing over 8,200 readers had entered their votes.
The response was overwhelmingly in favour of Windows 7 with 37 per cent of you saying you'll be using it from today and, according to comments posted, many having already pre-ordered it.
The next biggest reaction was from non-Microsoft OS users, with 21 per cent saying they are avoiding Windows altogether.
This was followed closely by 19 per cent of respondents wanting to stick with XP - or Vista, judging by the comments - as long as possible, while eight per cent said they are going to wait for a while before upgrading.
One commenter going by the name of 'Jason' wrote: "I will eventually. Maybe wait until SP1 or SP2 comes within the next year or so. I'm going to use my Vista Ultimate for as long as I can to get my moneys worth. I don't want to spend the extra cash for a new operating system. I liked XP alot but it looked outdated graphically. I like Vista but I made a mistake of buying the Ultimate version. Totally not worth the extra money. I should have bought Vista Home Premium instead. I will buy Windows 7 Home Premium (Retail)."
Zaxx added: "I'm not going to buy asap, BUT I'm not gonna wait forever for SP1. I plan 'to let the dust settle' a bit...but waiting for SP1 is a stretch. I'll probably upgrade after the first of the year."
Quite a few readers commented that they had been using the Release Candidate (RC) but have taken advantage of some of the good pre-order deals to ensure they aren't stung paying full price when the RC expires.
"It took over as my primary operating system some months ago, and I'll be installing it as soon as possible! Really happy with the pre-order, Home for £45 was a bargain," wrote Chris.
Another Chris said that he was upgrading, but reluctantly, saying that: "I preordered for three reasons:
1) MS will be dumping support for XP
2) It's going on a games machine, and XP doesn't support DirectX 10 or 11
3) Home and Pro are only $30 for students
I'm not happy at having to replace XP, but us Windows users don't have much of a choice," he concluded.
Several commenter's said they reckon that Windows 7 doesn't offer enough benefits to be worth upgrading from XP or Vista, while others argued that it should be offered as a free upgrade to Vista users.
While the reader reaction has generally been positive, some other industry figures are not particularly impressed with the Vole's latest offering.
"The best thing Windows 7 has going for it is that it is not Vista," said Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com.
"The truth is that the operating system is irrelevant now. It's all about the cloud - cloud applications for consumers and businesses, and cloud platforms like Force.com, Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine."
Thanks to the threat of a postal strike here in Blighty, a few people have been getting their pre-ordered copies of Windows 7 a few days early, as Amazon and a few other online retailers shipped them ahead of schedule to make sure they were delivered on time. µ
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Start a command prompt and type in ver
What did you get?
Yes, that's right, you got ripped off.
Windows 7 isn't a new operating system, it's Windows Vista repaired. All those poor unsuspecting people that bought Vista are now going to get screwed over and forced to upgrade.
Only Microsoft could think up a way to make everyone else pay for their mistakes.
As soon as my PC has been built afresh Win 7(student) will go on it.
As for the "irrelevancy" of desktop OS due to an infant tech called Cloud computing is laughable if not slightly odd-ball.
How many have their heads in the clouds so far? and God forbid should you lose your ISP connection or even worse be forced to wait 2 weeks when switching ISPs.. then what?
Clouded judgement
XP is version 5.1, which means, like, it's totally a Windows 2000 ripoff..
Muppets. So what if the version number hasn't changed much?
Vista actually isn't that bad (after SP1). By that time the driver support had arrived, the bugs had been removed and some of the more shittily written applications had been patched.
...your average reader has an IQ comparable to my shoe size, that really is not surprising at all.
@Paul
"..IQ comparable to my shoe size.."
Let me guess. You are an ant?
(lol)
i needed another windows license for the media centre i'm building. my vista laptop will have its license migrated to the media PC, and my laptop will have win7 installed.
vista64, win7 x64. either or. win7 is cheaper. so there you go, choice made.
need games,
need media centre,
need windows.
It doesn't matter what version Windows XP was because it wasn't called Windows 6 was it? Windows 7 is actually 6.1. WTF FAIL
I rest my case!
Bring it on. I've been running on it since I was able to fight the MSDN download server for a copy of the public beta.
Now operating on the Enterprise trial of the 64bit. I built this system to run Vista well. The hardware pretty much flies when XP is on it. My short observations of Windows 7? As fast as XP on this hardware. Heck of a lot more stable than either XP or vista, ALL my software 32 & 64 bit runs correctly and all my hardware has driver support.
A kill for Vista, and finally a legitimate upgrade for those still running XP Quite a few added features in 7. Very nice.
I still say it's priced a bit high, but there are some outstanding deals going on at various retailers ATM.
Don't get me wrong, I'm the last person to love M$, but there is a simple explanation about version.
According to M$
W2K and Vista are major releases when XP and 7 are minor versions.
Minor version means:
NO architectural changes
Small face lifts
Small features added
Bug fixes
So basically you right, 7 is Vista with face lift :)
And it's correct to call it 6.1 wich indicates that it's minor version release.
Windows Vista = 6.0
Windows 7 = 6.1
I am stunned.
I have to agree with the last portion of your article about the os no longer being relevent even in gaming. ati and nvidia are both beginning to push cloud graphics which should allow any os to play whatever game that utulizes this. I use linux because of the plethora of network tools within easy reach and it's quick response. I don't think I can ever go back to windows.
The features of the OS do seem useful and it seems mature enough. I might take it for a spin, although I don't expect much of it now that I'm converted to ubuntu ;)
my guess is that Nick Farrell set up a script and voted since it started.
I purchased vista when I built a new gaming machine. Never had a problem with it. It did what a opperating system should, some of the security stuff can be annoying but for day to day personal use it was fine.
Needless to say I'll still get 7 next time!
New Ubuntu is amazing. Fast boot, responsive, stable and attractive. I still got 7 for £40 on pre-order so I could play games and run a couple of work apps. Both OSs are seriously good. You can still get 7 cheap if you're a student (or know a student ;)). 30 quid for home premium.
Hello all,
I see a few people have noticed the version number has not changed much, yes windows 7 is version 6.1.
The main reason this has been done is for you the consumer, if MS had changed the version to 7.0 (which I believe would be the kernel version) then all your lovely hardware that you have purchased would not work. Until the companies provided you with a new driver for the hardware.
It was the same when XP was released the version number changed from Win 98, no drivers for XP but it got there.
When Vista came what happened version number changed to 6.0, the same happens again all the extra devices need new drivers.
By having the version only changed to 6.1 should enable most devices that you have should work with windows 7 straight away.
I am not saying that ALL devices will work straight away and some may need a driver update.
This is what was explained to me by a few developers, and to me it makes sense.
Hope that helps you understanding some of the reasons why it’s been called 6.1 and not 7.0, if not never mind.
Best Regards
Windows 7 as a version of 6.1 because it is based in the same kernel as Windows Vista. If Windows 7 had a version number of 7.0 applications develop for Windows Vista would failed to install or run properly simply because of version checking.
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=2161
I'm a linux user. The only reason I use windows is for gaming and I can say that Vista was simply the worst OS made by microsoft. I've been using windows 7 for some weeks now and compared with Vista is heaven. Sure sometimes application crash with no reason, but that is just the way of microsoft.
The graphical interface is great. Very minimalistic, where everything is at hand. The new notification system is greatly improved. It requires less resources than Vista, it is much faster. Anyway I haven't found a single thing I don't like about Windows 7 when compared to Vista.
Sure windows is not open source, and is not the best operating system out there but I have also have a macbook at home and I can say that I prefer Windows 7 graphical interface to the Snow Leopard. Working on Snow Leopard easily starts producing to much visual information that is tiring. I prefer the new minimalist design of Windows 7
I guess there are many who missed the pre-release offer of W7,in which case they are venting their spleen at those who got up in the morning early enough to order a copy.
Putting that aside,I would rather trust my own hardware to store MY data on, than trust 'Cloud', where reliance is on a 'third party' system that's liable
to lose it from one means or another.
I like Linux,but developers of it,can never argue that will be more popular than Windows,simply because,users prefer a GUI than a CLI.
It doesn't mean that they are noobs,they just want a hassle free(relatively)experience & Windows satifies that in large measure.
When Linux developers get off their high hobby horse & give more thought as to why people stick to Windows & decide to do something about it,then we will begin to see perhaps a marriage of the interfaces.
I'm looking forward to some decent gaming next year with W7,I still play a lot of BF2 though & hope that useless software(Pb)does something about it's inability to run on 64 bit W7.
I have been making this point for some time. Even MS admits it, although not publicly. Win 7 is just a Service Pack for Vista.
I have Vista Business and now MS wants me to pay $199 to "upgrade" to Win 7 Pro. Eh, no - I don't think so.
That's a bit rich for SP2, methinks
Firstly, get a life. Now read on.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-7-Needs-to-Be-Windows-6-1-95973.shtml
...So, Windows 7 carries version number 6.1 just for compability purposes?
AND ALL THE COMMENTERS ABOVE WAS NOT ABLE TO FIND IT IN GOOGLE... bashing "Windows 7" for being version 6.1? ...
ZOMG!!!
... I tought we, INQ commenters, where just a bunch of retardeds... NOW I KNOW FOR SURE.
note: If "Windows Seven" as called "Jobs Love", would you like it better? ... Or even better... lets call it "Windows II"...
Now, please, get a life.
Ignore my first post it is a fraudulent website please don't purchase from them.
Yeah I pre-ordered it a couple of days ago along with a new case for a new build. i7 920
From what I hear it is much better than vista when handling requests from multiple cores (and since i7 it's hyperthreaded so windows sees it as 8 cores).
I did order windows 7 home premium, and then I remembered about it's xp emulator xpm in pro and ultimate.
But I remembered I can download and upgrade home premium to pro or ultimate. Then I looked at the price for upgrading from home to pro. Even though it only costs you 20-40 more initially when compared to home premium, if you buy home and then want to upgrade it'll cost you 90. Or basically about 9 bucks less than an entire new windows 7 home premium oem will run you on sale.
Shame on microsoft for taking a 20-40 dollar difference in the base price, and jacking it up to 90 for it's recent customers who just dropped a bunch of dole on xp7.
I have a feeling that's going to be a major source of bad news in the months ahead.
A lot of people are like, oh I can upgrade to the other versions, so I'll just get home premium now and upgrade if I need it.
Yeah, true, you can, if you like basically buying home premium again. Let's overcharge some of our recent customers 450 percent (109 to 129) oem , versus 109+89)
So You can pay 129 or pay 109+89
Or again 20 dollars worth of software for 90 =450 percent overcharge.
Other than that, I'm excited about windows 7. XP served me well, and maybe I'll even keep it as a dual boot.
Besides xpm mode is basically useless. Why? Let's see
1. I want to play my old video games
Ok, you want to play your old videogames. Like GTA III? 'yeah'
Well sorry, xpm will only emulate a 12 or 16 mb video card.
2. I love my old version of X whatever and now will run it on windows 7.
Well anything your run on windows 7 through xpm will play like crap. Why? Ever wondered why some 1993 videogames play like crap on new computers? Because emulators are sloppy and are running on top of other programs.
What that means is, that all your xp software you run through xpm in windows 7 pro or ultimate, will take tons more resources than in good old xp. Some stuff like say winzip might run quite well. But it's small, and it doesn't matter since you can download the new version.
In other words the same software that run great on your xp system, might run like crap on your computer when you upgrade to win 7. Hell it may even run worse on a NEW computer in win 7, than it did on your OLD computer in xp.
3. Not to mention ONLY if you have and intel chip unless you have i5/i7 or a FEW core 2 series chips you'll be able to use this. AMD has had it for longer. But if you don't own AMD and don't own one of those few intel chips, you won't be able to use it, which is probably 60-70 percent of people who will buy it, thinking you can use it.
The funny thing will be when people pay for home premium, then get gouged for 90 bucks more to upgrade to get xpm, only to find out xpm is utterly useless for 99 percent of people. It has uses, but it's basically limited to reading old proprietary software that you can't upgrade. Which is a very, very, very small proportion of the computing populace.
Don't take these as fanboi-ism or anything. I bought home premium, will be arriving tomorrow, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it. I am excited about it. But I also know if I want to run xp software I should just use my current xp key to have a dual boot on my system. One had have xp, the other win 7. No performance degradation, no incompatibiloity problems.
All you have to do, is switch your boot hd in your bios. Simple. Only drawback, have to close windows to do it. But that's nothing really.
People (me included) neet an OS to run DirectX 10 games (now DX11 too).
I tried to run on Vista, even after SP1, it was totally crappy.
W7 is now a viable option, it has DX11 and none of Vista instability and clutter.
M$ showed that with a little consumer pressure, it can come up with a half decent product (security is still of great concern on windows).
If you want to upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate just to get XP mode: Don't!
There are other XP-emulators that are better and cheaper.
Better still is to have XP installed as an optional boot OS. Then you won't have Win7 use lots of the system resources when you run XP.
My old system (windows performance index 2.0) runs Vista without SP1 (tried two times to install it), it's OK (a BSOD every six month). Even Windows 7 is probably OK, but I have no reason or intention to try it out on this system. And yes, my car is now seven years old.
And a big fat change that will make.
I don't see that MS "support" has done anything for me.
Of course, I run my PC network behind a hardware firewall, don't use IE nor Outlook or MSN, and I don't click on bloody attachments without checking them out first.
Because it just works. Been using the RTM for over a month now.
All my apps, VS, CS, Reason, Cubase, FLStudio, Live and every game I've installed, sans BF2, has worked flawlessly. BF2 takes some work, but you can get it running.
The thread scheduling is smooth, desktop composition less cluttered than on Vista thanks to improved WDDM, the new taskbar and switching is a joy to work with, networking is a breeze, disk access is swift... it just works!
37% doesn't sound that overwhelming to me...
Hey J, don't worry about xpm to play games.
Go to Sun's home page, download Virtual Box and the driver package (which allow you to use your hardware resources in the virtual machine), install XP on it and be happy. :)
"I did order windows 7 home premium, and then I remembered about it's xp emulator xpm in pro and ultimate."
First, do you always buy stuff you know nothing about prior?
Second, if you knew how to read, you'd know you can download XPM. sighs. Not like you're gonna need it... w/e you're running on an XP machine, will run on W7. XPM is marketed/designed for worried companies, not home users. You'd know ALL OF THIS if you read sites other than this one. And why is it the linux guy first to bash the other guys? What are you afraid of that you have to repeat yourselves every time an OS is in an article? Get a clue and notice these wars aren't started by Windows users. WHY? Cuz we don't give a flyin frack what other ppl are using. WHY? If you asked yourself that just now... pull the trigger.
Now for the version number gimps... 5 versions of ONE FRACKIN DISTRO before Windows 7 is even out? But MS fracked up cuz they happen to name the OS Windows 7, but put 6.1 as the version? I guess that makes Ubuntu smart (shrugs), for the oddball naming schemes it comes up with?! Are you kidding me?! Food for thought: Ubuntu has had two releases per full version way back with Ubuntu 5. Linux distros arent even supported for long before the next version is out. Then the fact you got like 20 different distros, not including all the modded ones like android, moblin, bla bla. Linux' worst enemy is... wait for it... LINUX!!!! Don't even start me on the 4 Linux Flavors being released in the same MONTH, such as what we are about to see starting with Ubuntu 9.10. You Linux guys are pathetic, and the biggest hypocrites on the planet. You don't like Aero, so you come up with Compwiz which is a seizure waiting to happen. You release multiple versions too close together (a la Mac), you talk about open source forgetting it runs on Windows too. Windows apps in Wine running better than native Linux apps do, etc etc. PS, if Linux is so great, wtf are you using WINE to run Windows apps?! Seems Linux just takes a bit from everyone then talks trash about what they are using. Man you guys are hurting for points. I guess when you are on 1% of a BILLION HOME computers (I put home in caps for you gimps that like to bring Linux on servers in a debate about DESKTOP OS's... which always gets a laugh from me), you need whatever you can get. No matter how lame, pathetic and desperate. Hey while you wanna stay on old hardware and use FREE software(cheapskate much?), then maybe you should rally to bring back the Pinto or the Fiero, then build a car you think is better and drive that instead.
*Claps for the Linpoo section.
"37% doesn't sound that overwhelming to me... "
It is when the ppl being asked are in the tech industry in some form, and say they will take it NOW! aka ppl that actually read and don't just mimic what others say to look smart. Cuz that would be a dumb idea.
that was the best damn sleeper mobile on the planet. Stuff a jacked up 302 in that little sucker and you could smoke any camero or mustang around.
I did that to a baby blue stationwagon
It was hilarious to watch those boys beat the hell out of their steering wheel.
and im a windows 7 user SO :P
I am so upset with MS, I bought and upgraded to vista ultimate when i got back in to computers, it was 2 weeks before they said they were going to have a windows 7. I was so upset I called Microsoft shaking(I was already lied to about receiving free support for awhile with vista, they wanted like 60 bucks) the guy said ohh it's beta right now. I said so it is still coming out weirdo, what am i suppose to do "sir, sir it's beta) I hung up. That was last Jan and its already out. I will never by another thing from Microsoft. I have office 2007, had XP, anyway I will use vista till it is 50 years old or breaks. Microsoft is done taking my money. If they don't do something fair for us who paid 299 for ultimate with promises of support and extras(yeah Texas hold-em is worth it in itself right? I never even looked at it. Anyway I will pirate everything I need from Microsoft that I usually would have paid for, till they tossed me under the bus.
Win 5.0 = Win 2000
Win 5.1 = Win XP
Win 6.0 = Win Vista
Win 6.1 = Win 7
Win 7.0 = ? ?? !!!
The poll needs another option for us to choose. Many of us got Windows 7 for free back in August, because our schools have an MSDNAA subscription for students. It is the full, final release, but I was more willing to migrate over because it was free. A good poll option would be "I already use Windows 7 because it was free."
"The truth is that the operating system is irrelevant now. It's all about the cloud - cloud applications for consumers and businesses, and cloud platforms like Force.com, Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine."
This is the biggest load of tosh this year. Cloud Computing might just have some application in countries such as HK, SK, Sweeden and the likes with proper internet infrastructure, but the rest of the world simply doesn't have the bandwidth for this to be feasible for at LEAST 10-15 years.
We wont even bother getting started on the price of migrating infrastructure away from the home PC to remote cloud setups. Woohoo, subscription model to use your own PC! F- off...
Statements like this from a comment above:
"I don't see that MS "support" has done anything for me."
Right. All those security updates, driver updates, you know.. everything you have gotten from Windows Update. That did nothing for you except fix stuff, patch security holes... is this hard to comprehend?
And if you say there shouldn't be any security holes, look at Linux and all other OS security patches. Software isn't perfect now, nor will it ever be.
Linux/Opensource worshipers .... VLC 1.0.0 can do MP4 Transcode 1.0.1 can NOT. such a little ver diff but what giant leap backwards. Dont teach me how or why its so, just admit reality.
For who? Some of us like our apps and data at home where we don't need to be reliant on a cloud. I'm only connected when I check the news or email, but then I had an Apple IIe in junior high so all this is really just a bunch of crap anyway. If you don't have kids, learned software development, and watched through the years, you might understand that all those devices turned out to be junk (yeah you have the high end right now - again) but no matter what - you're not going to give control of your apps, data, and scheduling (internet ever go out?) to some cable in the wall. Just give me a good os, a screaming system, visual studio, and LEAVE ME ALONE to develop in peace.