Windows 7 priced below Vista, to allow upgrades from XP - Page 5

Now, if you actually knew something about 10.6...

Windows users tend to know far less about Macs than Mac users know about Windows.

This is true. Most Mac users use Windows on a daily basis at work, and have been doing so for years, possibly decades, while most Windows users have never even SEEN a Mac outside of ads on Tv.

When I hear about Windows users like you telling us how to burn disks because some mythical friend couldn't figure it out, I laugh. It's usually the other way around.

I've been using PC's since PC DOS 1.0, both professionally and personally, and I can say that PC's have always had more problems, and their users as a group are clueless about their machines.

Most can't even tell you the model number and many don't even remember the name of the manufacturer!

yes, djsherly was using incorrect amounts for some OS X upgrades. more important he also forget the big family pack discount for multiple Mac owners - a lot of people - which MS does not offer at all.

of course if you are really poor/cheap and ethically flexible, you can just borrow someone else's new Mac OS install disc and upgrade for free. Apple has never tried to prevent this, despite knowing that some/many do it. MS on the other hand, well there's your Windows Genuine Advantage! you get to pay the full upgrade price for every computer you own!! or else!!!

[who makes up all those incredibly b.s. names for stuff at MS anyway?]

I could buy 476 gum balls at the candy store for the price of Windows 7. No thanks.

That's a lot of gum!!

Do you really expect serious answer after your introductory line..?

But I'm travelling to Dubai tomorrow and feeling so good about that, so... please do find benchmarks. I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find some related to applications common on both platform (like Adobe stuff).

I'm packing so no time for too much googling; first link I checked gave me following results:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...4-review.ars/5

For lazy people - Vista 64 and OSX both running on Mac Book Pro. OSX has advantage with smaller files, Vista on larger files. But differences are, well... a bit distant from 1000x factor.

But if it feels 1000x faster for you, well, good on you, mate.

As to your 2nd question - if you require quad core or not, depends on what you do with your computer. I occasionally convert my DVDs to DivX to have them on travels, and also will render home videos, batchprocess raw photos in Lightroom... and I'm finding it nice being able to do that in the background while - for example - playing demanding game without critical performance hit. Additionally, it is pretty much given future versions of mainstream apps will be better optimized for multitreading and give more performance boost even in single tasks.

Except, if I recall well, original Longhorn was supposed to be a mild update to XP, a link between XP and next major version of Windows (codenamed, uh, Blackcomb or Black-something)... but after some time (and new features being constantly added) MS decided to scrap original Longhorn design and start new one, based on 2003 technologies, which prolonged release of Vista, but also made it much closer to Black... than what original Longhorn project was supposed to be.

So... instead of having small step between XP and Longhorn, and then bigger step to next gen Windows, we have ended up with bigger step between XP and Vista, and likely smaller step between Vista and 7.

Imagine what can you get for the price of new Mac - a whole candy store!

That "bigger step" between XP and Vista, involved finally updating an OS that was already ridiculously dated (laughably so), only to be replaced by another mediocre OS that left people wondering what the hell MS was doing for 5+ years. But MS mismanaged Longhorn (which was actaully quite impressive during its early phases), and had to switch gears and end up taking far too long, resulting in a rushed Vista which was really only a pale shadow of what Longhorn promised.

So it was basically a comdey of errors at MS since 2001. And its only NOW, in 2009, that Windows sufferers might get to taste something resembling the quality and polish of OS X.

Longhorn was supposed to be a complete break from the past, with backwards compatibility, not a minor step. Vista is a minor step, as is Windows "7"..

This was something that Apple found impossible to do with Copeland in the mid '90's, and MS should have learned a lesson from that.

No, Vista is close to XP. Server 2003 isn't all that much different. Longhorn was abandoned, and so far, we don't know where MS is now going.

We do know that as a result of Vista's botched introduction and resultant legacy, though as you and others have pointed out, it's not actually bad now, they had to do what they didn't want to do, and re-do it as another minor re-make in the form of Windows 6.1, oops-"7".

But Vista still retaines the botched "security layer. Win 7 also retains that same layer.

In fact, because of the hate for that, and the resultant lack of use by so many Vista users (MS decided to allow users to substantially turn it off if they didn't like the incessant haranguing). Interestingly, MS seemed to assume that many people wouldn't like it even before the release.

But they scaled it back considerably in Win 7. So much so, that testers said it was almost worthless. So they revived it.

I understand MS's problems here, but that doesn't absolve them from their mistakes, which are considerable.

Unlike Apple, which lost much of its business customers during the 1996 timeframe, for reasons I won't go into here unless people want me to, MS's business depends on its business and government customers.

Any major OS upgrade that doesn't work properly with the proprietary software that these business and government customers wrote, and added to over the past 25 years, will fail for those customers.

As the last survey of business customers in large corporations showed that 52% of the heads of the IT departments would like to switch from Windows, and that the majority of them would like to switch to OS X, MS has a delicate road to walk.

I'm looking for that latest survey, but this is one from a year ago.

http://www.kace.com/pdf/AR-King-Vista-Survey-2.pdf

They've been criticized by those very same customers they require as their sales and profit base, for not innovating the OS to bring it into the modern world, but as the debacle with Longhorn showed, it's going to be very difficult for them to do so while maintaining their backwards compatibility they so desperately need.

Apple was able to accomplish this by buying NEXT, which gave them major advantages, and with their ability to use "Classic" maintain almost full compatibility with older programs.

But Apple's customer base didn't rely on huge, outdated code from their largest customers that they couldn't part with because of the expense. MS MUST contend with that.

Many managers have stated over the past few years that if it weren't for that, they would leave MS.

What does a boy do?

Well, using a Mac is like working in a candy store, while using a PC is like working in a junkyard, with that pesky dog chewing at your ankles.

Interesting point.

The bulk of the IT industry exists in order to keep Windows from falling over. A whole industry has grown up around fixing Windows. The IT industry depends on windows being in a perpetually "broken" state in order to thrive.

It seems the effort required to keep things running smoothly (and the assocaited workload), however, is more than a lot of IT managers would like to put up with.

Problem, is MS keeps patching and patching and patching. It's like a bad road. It needs to be repaved. Scrap the Windows codebase altogether OS 9 - OS X style. Start from scratch. Inititate a worlwide "transition" program. Start early. Break compatibility and run an emulator like Rosetta. Ignore the bellyaching and promise "new" and "fresh" instead, because this time you can deliver on it. Usher in a new era of Windows computing. Profit.

But MS won't do this. They are not risk takers. They don't want to deal with the short-term fallout. Their current licensing scheme is just too lucrative to warrant any major changes.

And so, nothing really changes.

MS is a corporate/enterprise software vendor masquerading as a home/consumer vendor. Corporate users will happily keep using old versions of Windows, running old software, while consumers get the shaft.

Well, honestly, it's very difficult for MS to do. Apple was able to get a way with it, but for MS, it won't be so easy.

Emulators have their uses, but are deficient in many areas. One is the lack of ability to access hardware properly, or at all. Two is the problem getting analysis tools to work. Three is the major hit in speed.

Companies are finally looking at their old code and are thinking about what to about it. But really, we're talking about billions of $ of this old stuff. Companies are afraid to do much with it because even they don't always understand all the code. When a business is dependent on some old, very large program that's been patched many times over the years, but works, it can be very hard to convince them to start from scratch.

Most business software projects, esp. the large ones fail. Thats a fact. So convincing the companies, and governments to do this is very difficult.

I agree that it's difficult. Maybe I'm too wedded to the idea of radical change when it comes to really imprving things for users. I'm too accustomed to Apple's leaps and bounds.

It's possible, but difficult to do. Would you say that it is MS' enterprise business that is holding the OS back? It appears that the product that consumers get is dictated by the whims of the corporate sphere.

Apple was never entrenched in the enterpris as MS is, and granted, doesn't have the large userbase. But I recall there was plenty of bellyaching when OS X was announced and Apple got their fair share of criticism (which stung all the more given the industry's lack of confidence in Apple in the wake of their weak performance in the mid 90s.)

Absolutely!

While the enterprise business is the backbone of MS's business, and is why they also dominate in consumer and school usage, it's also the weight around their necks.

You can be sure that this is a major concern for them, and its not that they are lazy, or stupid.

If Apple had retained all of the major business customers they had had earlier, it would have been just as difficult for them to move to NEXT.

Understand that the Copeland project failed for two reasons.

One was the fact that Apple had all of these separate teams working on individual parts of the OS, and the second was the legacy aspect of it.

The first caused each team to compete, and not to worry about how their project fitted within the whole.

The second put serious restraints on the new code.

This is exactly MS's problem.

I don't think that anyone, no matter who they are, really knows how to get around this.

For years, once MS announced the NT (New Technology) project, it was apparent that they wanted one OS for business and government, and the other for consumers. They understood very well at the time that these two groups were in opposition, and that their needs were very different.

But over time there was an outcry against the concept. MS should have one OS they opined.

And so MS combined the two, and what resulted was an OS that can't be changed in any major aspects internally.

how does a company have an OS that for business requires one thing, while an OS for consumers requires something else?

Its very difficult to do, and results in bloated code, because everything must be included in that one OS.

Right now, Apple is attempting to re-write their OS, because it too has become more bloated over the years. But, Apple has the advantage that even though UNIX is much older than even Windows, it started out differently. Apple was also able to optimize it, as NEXT had already done much work to modernize it before Apple got their hands on it.

You can be sure that MS has got a lot of programmers trying to work out ways to modernize Windows, or come up with something completely different. They've announced several major projects to do that, but who knows where they will be able go with them?

True that. I'd argue that early Longhorn was impressive in early stages, considering it was supposed to be mild update based on XP core - how much better/different could it be? - but it is simple fact of life that, after building Longhorn on XP core (and that started a few months before XP was released in 2001) and scrapping it in 2003 - solid two years wasted - Vista was destined to be late, half cooked or both.

Thus SP1 and, to lesser extend, SP2 were required to finish the job.

But 7, I believe, is what Blackwhatever was planned to be - only difference that migration to new core was done with Vista, instead of 7.

Sooo... with a bit of luck, MS has finally caught up with themselves. We'll see.

Nice article here, Wikipedia, but heavily referenced... fits with what we have heard from MS people in NZ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista



Ah, I see. So 83% of IT Professionals are concerned with Vista's compatibility with legacy software, yet some of them would switch to non-Windows OS without any compatibility with their legacy software.

Now that makes perfect sense.

29% of people who would switch from Windows would go OSX (Linux being close second)... so, 29% out of 52% is... around 15% of total number.

Not bad. But we know they will not switch because hardware replacement price would be enormous, and after that they would have to face with - guess what? - same thing they fear about Vista, namely legacy software compatibility, and to much bigger extend (as none of their legacy software would work).

In short, surveys like that are kind of worthless.

And just a little note: one of our biggest clients was NZ department of one of the world biggest camera/printer/photocopier/... manufacturers. As we pushed Server 2008 and Hyper-V on their new servers, replacing aged hardware, question of Vista was raised with their in-house IT department. It was our opinion that it should be introduced in departments where hardware is capable of handling it (or is planed for replacement) and there are no problematic legacy applications and additional hardware without Vista support. We got adamant "NO" in their answer, followed by explanation that will likely not find place in surveys: "How are we going to support our staff with Vista? We know nothing about it".

Surprisingly honest answer. It will be XP for them till the Judgement Day come (which, I've heard, will be some time in 2012 )...

Aww, that is plain nasty.

If Mas is candy store, Windows should - at least - be a gym; you have to put an effort to stay fit. But it's worth the effort, and you don't get rotten teeth.

But I don't mind scrapyard analogy as long as I can get my quad cores, graphic cards and all other goodies there. And I like dogs. I really do.

A pleasure discussing with you, guys - unfortunatelly I'm on my way to Dubai and will not have much time to discuss in the next week or so. I hate on skipping to repply, but hey - priorities, priorities.

Stay fit. Or enjoy your candies. Whatever makes you happy.

Later!

Wow, enjoy Dubai! It's really a sight to behold. Take as many pics as you can.

That article is only partly accurate.

Vista was not a renamed Longhorn. Longhorn was totally dropped after they failed to get it to function. It was an almost totally rewritten OS, with several major features, none of which made it into the later Vista. Vista as we've already discussed, was a modded Server 2003, which wasn't too different from the client XP.


It doesn't make sense to you, because you aren't interested in understanding it. You're looking at the article in a simplistic way because you're adament about it. Its more than that. Companies are concerned about the future direction of the OS. It's not just the problems with the current versions. They're concerned that future versions will have even more problems, with no major benefits. They don't want to go further down that road.

Many professionals are so concerned about Vista's problems, and that Win 7 will be pretty much the same, that they would finally want to do what they've wanted to do for many years, but didn't think they could do, which is to switch to another OS.

They don't think that MS has any real, workable plan to fix Windows long running problems, which they just see as getting worse.

It's called cutting your losses.

You're ignoring, in your response, why they would like to get out, or at least, making it seem as though it's not important.


Not bad is correct. but when you look back to previous surveys, you will see that the 15% number was much less. It's been increasing over the years. The newest poll shows a much greater number than 15%.


But that's not necessarily true. Most medium and larger companies change their stock over a three year period. The average business PC, without monitor, costs about $1,000.

In addition, they can always use XP on their Macs for those programs they really need until they can replace them. That's an advantage the Mac has that Windows machines don't.

In addition. Three years ago in medium and large business, Macs were at an approximate level of 1.5%. Now they're at a level of 4.5%. That's in three years. Obviously, these corporations see the value. In survey after survey over the years by IDG and others, Macs in a corporate environment have clearly been shown to have significantly better ROI. Companies can see this.

While in the past OS X wasn't considered to be mature enough, it is now. As it becomes easier to incorporate Macs into a PC environment, this usage will increase.



That's only because they throw your contentions out into the garbage. If they agreed with your statements, you would find them to be correct.

It's interesting that overall Mac usage in these situations is increasing rapidly, which shows that the surveys ARE correct.


That really supports what I've been saying.

2012 is a long way off. If MS hasn't figured a way out if their dilemma, YOU might find Macs moving in yourself.

It's no worse than saying that it costs as much to buy a Mac as it does to buy a candy store.

Besides, you know what PC actually stands for, don't you?

Agreed. About 10% of Windows users I know actually know what they're doing on their platforms. About 80-90% of Mac users I know, know exactly how to use their computers. The majority of Windows users are afraid of new software and new hardware, and are complete idiots. They buy their computers simply because they're "cheap" and don't even know how to defrag. I mean, wow.

I just installed Windows7 RC1 on my MacBook Alu 2.0GHZ. Typing this from it running in VMWare Fusion 2.0.5 ... Quite smooth and stable, I prefer VMWare now to Parallels, I'm not looking back. VMWare seems more stable, intuitive and Unity is somehow a little smoother than Coherence. Unity can really sell PC to Mac switchers, because you've got a real Windows "window" right there next to Macs. I know Unity is not new, but the latest version here...

Like Melgross says, the corporate integration is close. What Apple is doing is unfortunately not directly going after business users as much as using Mac switchers bringing their Macs to work as Apple's "business strategy".

And for Defragging on a PC, Auslogic's Defrag is the only way to fly. I had no idea WTF Vista was doing taking hours and hours to defrag (it was trying to place files at a certain part of the drive or who-knows-what...)

AND TURN OFF SUPERFETCH in Vista. That was killing me. That is one big resource hog.

Anyways, I think Windows7 has potential. Microsoft is going to come out all guns blazing when it launches, and Apple is preparing even more to take it on.

Check out the latest build of SL.

Wow. Seriously.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...733684&page=10

I'll take your word for it. I am relatively late on the Apple scene - I bought a Mac with 10.4 on it.


Actually, my artificial time line started roughly with the introduction of 10.0/XP. The were released with a few months of each other. In that respect, they are real totals. I didn't make the numbers up. At least I don't think I did.


As a moderator, I would expect something a little less personal and insulting than "the one you've set up is what you wish it would be". You are the person who can actually decide whether or not my post appears here and that's clearly something that could wind one up.

All I quoted (and I got 10.1 wrong - I accept that) is the price of remaining current with both operating systems. I didn't make any qualitative assessment at all, which is clearly where you want to head. The reality is that as Operating Systems, both do the job and both do it (at least) well enough, despite whatever feelings you have about the 'real world'. The 'real world' numbers I gave are accurate and verifiable (excepting of course 10.1). And to stay at current levels of the respective operating systems, the cost is clearly comparable. I was even gracious and quoted the most expensive version of the Windows offerings. If we chose the Home Premium or whatever it is they like to call it, then the differences are a couple of hundred bucks in favour of Windows.


Point taken.


Moot point. Apple will never give something away for free when there's 10% of the PC market prepared to stump up for anything that issues from Cupertino. In fact, no company in general, would.


Look, I couldn't care a whit about whether something was late, or it was crap, or it didn't fit in superman's undies. All I wanted to point out that was keeping current with either operating system had a comparable cost. It's not open to debate. The numbers are out there and even if I did get a dot release wrong it doesn't significantly alter the sums either way. Those are my terms of reference. That's all I wanted to say. And having said that, I leave it at that.

guess you missed my post below. to repeat:

- Apple in fact does give away its software for free - in the real world you say you want to discuss. unlike Microsoft, it makes no effort whatsoever to prevent unlimited installations of OS X, iLife, or iWorks from a single purchased disc. yeah, it ain't legal, but an awful lot of Mac users do it, and Apple knows darn well they do it, and lets it happen. because as everyone notes, Apple really makes its money selling you hardware and the software is the inducement for that. (btw, iTunes - the heart of the Apple cross-platform "ecosystem" - has always been free, along with Safari. and there is no MS equivalent at all.). Interestingly, the only Apple consumer software you really must pay to use with a registration is MobileMe.

- you still are ignoring the steep discounts of the Apple family pack prices for OS X (and iLife/iWork too). $199 for 5 computers vs. $129 for one. i'd guess the majority of Mac owners have at least two Macs in their household, so that would be $99 per Mac. and many have more than 2. likewise, friends can share a family pack, and i bet many students do, those that keep it legal. i don't recall the history of family pack pricing before Tiger, so can't offer a running total. but the undeniable big difference you omit is that MS offers NO multi-computer discount for consumer Windows OS and other MS consumer software.

bottom line is that MS has to milk PC owners repeatedly with excessive prices for Windows, Office, and the rest of its software products and services because, of course, that is all it really has to sell. whereas Apple includes the true price of its software and services (like the Apple retail stores "free" help which of course cannot be actually free) within the up front price of its hardware - hence one good reason Apple computers cost somewhat more than mid/low end PC's.

it's two different business models, so comparisons of isolated parts of each are inherently skewed. what really bugs me about the MS approach is not really the total true costs of the PC/Windows hardware/software package with updating over the years. instead it's the intentionally misleading manipulation of the consumer. that good old Ballmer snake oil where NT 6.1 is branded "Windows 7" and the goal is to "monetize" every aspect of your daily digital life if you have no escape route from Windows. i hate being played for a sucker, that's just me.

Apple on the other hand just arrogantly tells me 'this is what it costs if you want our stuff, take it or leave it.' ok, i can deal with that. a lot of life is like that. but it's still my decision, my value calculation. there's always Linux ...

Alright, but I don't see what's "arrogant" about it. HP and Dell and the rest all do that. It's just that Apple products cost more. But it's all relative.

Ok, I was looking at your statement in a different light, so I'll back off that one.


Don't be so thin skinned. When you accused ME of having an "imaginary world", your words:


did you think you were insulting me, or not? So my response simply pointed out that it's your imagination here that's the problem.

If that's too insulting for you, then you've got a problem.

Don't worry about my removing posts. I've never yet removed one pertaining to me, and I've only removed a few to others that REALLY were insulting.

If you're not happy, then post me privately.


I wasn't making any qualitative assessments at all. Except that being gracious and thinking that anything other than Ultimate is comparable to OS X, is gratuitous. Apple doesn't sell a stripped down OS with limiting features as MS does. Therefor, only Ultimate is equivalent to OS X.


So we agree.


$29 is pretty cheap. So is the $49 family pack that gives three installs. That comes out to $16.33 an install. Cheaper from amazon and others. MS has nothing equal to that. $50 for a pre-purchase is the closest they come. I believe that $119 for Home Basic is the cheapest actual price you'll be able to buy it for retail afterwards before store discounts. Though, to be fair, some computer manufacturers are sucking up the $50 price for computers bought between about now, and the hopefully October release. But you have to buy a new computer to take advantage of that.


You're a rare person, because almost everyone else does care.

But what you're ignoring is intent. Your whole post is predicated upon OS release dates and the cost. You're talking as though MS's serious failure to deliver product on time is a virtue! It's not. It's a serious failure on their part, and if they were able to do what they were trying to do, we would have seen at least one, and possibly two more upgrades during this time. And people would have had to pay to get them.

But, even so. Apple's OS releases and pricing is still below MS's. And that's a fact.

Now I'm done as well.

I like Diskeeper's defragmenter. You should check it out. Basically, it always works in the background, but does it so that you don't see a performance hit across the system. It moves your most used files to the front of the hdd.

I like HFS+ because it doesn't need a defragmenter. It takes care of defragmenting on the fly. Out of topic, but couldn't resist it.

Because then you would be complaining that MS used their OS dominance to edge out an advantage in game distribution?

I don't understand why everyone thinks everything needs an app store. Apparently if you don't have one I guess your dropping the ball.

Easiest and most seamless way to get content out there.

iTunes Store, App Store, etc.

Totally on topic. Why the heck does Windows still just simply dump bits/ bytes/whatever anywhere it pleases?


Not everything. But the move from physical media to digital distribution to centralised digital distribution has big, big advantages. Not everything needs an App Store. But iTunes and Valve's Steam is good proof it is "a good thing".

Interesting...

BTW for those running Vista besides turning off Superfetch turn off System Restore points or something like that. Before I turned of that System Restore stuff, I was wondering what happened to like 10GB to 20GB of space. I don't think I'm exaggerating here, it was taking up huge amounts of space, and I think the success of System Restore points in Windows is marginal.

Dell's Adamo is beyond arrogant, the price point to me just says, "**** YOU we don't even give a *"

The problem with you is you believe that Microsoft created the so-called 'PC Revolution', you have no understanding of history and because of that you have a distorted understanding of computers. I suggest you get some experience in the world of computers before passing judgements on other people on mass.

As for the rest, congratulations for stereotyping millions of users based on a couple of experiences - I guess my 10+ years of administrating Windows, UNIX and Mac servers is just all a haze because apparently I am a clueless Mac user.

Btw, assembling computers isn't a skill - computers are like meccano assembly kits; unless you're absolutely clueless, there is very little that can go wrong; follow the instructions, use some grey matter and voila - you've got a 'high end gaming machine'.