A Week With Windows 7

Windows 7 Beta has been a pretty good experience overall. What seems to detract from it is Internet Explorer 8. Since so much of what we do is browser based, that makes its being so half-baked, so particularly disappointing. As a matter of fact, I'm making this post from Google Chrome, because of the numerous problems with IE8.

Windows 7 Beta as an OS itself is surprisingly good. Installing SQL servers, CF, Flex, etc... has been flawless and very manageable. The actual OS overhead is far better than Vista, where the systems can be "punishing," to use a word. That's the good.

Now for what might be bad. There are two area's to look at. First off, going from Windows XP to either Vista or Windows 7 is a dramatic change. Things are moved around, the work flow is very different. In and of itself, change is not a bad thing. The problem is introducing change without being intuitive. The end result is frustration for so-called "regular," computer users. They want to work on their task. They don't want to spend 45 minutes trying to figure out how to change their profile picture. It's relative to the system shock of going from Office 2003 and office 2007. I've had to help a lot of frustrated people because the paradigm shift was so extreme.

The second thing which is idiotic is the number of versions of Windows Vista and planned versions of Windows 7. Currently there are four (4) versions of Vista. That's ridiculous. Most people could deal with 2 versions of XP, home or pro. That made sense to people. Four versions is just opening a can of worms and introducing an elephant to a pool party. You don't want the complications. Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm a Apple fanboy, but there's a reason for that. Do you know how many versions of OS X Leopard there are? One. You can use it for the home network or corporate network environment. It doesn't matter. You pay only one price (99.00 USD). What could be better. Microsofties for being so smart are impressively dumb, when it comes to stuff like this. If they continue with the same pricing structure and confusion, it will be proof that Microsoft is not learning from their mistakes.

Jaye Morris