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John DodgeThe Dodge Retort: Hopeful on Windows 7, But…
By John Dodge
Day after tomorrow, Windows 7 goes public. I’m not getting too excited because previous versions have been frustrating and disappointing. And I, for one, am neither attending nor hosting a Windows 7 party.
But my lack of enthusiasm should not be mistaken for apathy. I truly hope Windows 7 is a better Windows.
As a journalist, I have a long association with Windows. I covered it for years and after a short hiatus ramped up my coverage of Windows 7 earlier this spring. For most of the coverage, I was editor or news editor at PC Week (now eWeek) which celebrates its 25 birthday this year. Windows and PC Week grew up together and are the same age more or less.
In the past, a new version of Windows meant an infusion of advertising dollars from Microsoft and its vast software community. Those good times are no longer rolling in the much challenged publishing world.
I either covered Windows or edited its coverage in PC Week from Windows 1.0 in 1985 to XP which has to be well over 20 versions. Interestingly, one Microsoft “Windows Desktop Timeline” starts in 1990 and gives but scant mention to Windows 1.0-3x and Windows 9x (as in WIndows 95). Alas, Microsoft has a complete “Windows History” web page. Did you know Microsoft actually introduced Windows in 1983 with no version number? I sorta remember that.
Those were days. Really buggy versions of Windows well into the 90s kept tech scribes like me very busy.
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8 Responses to “The Dodge Retort: Hopeful on Windows 7, But…”
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October 28th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Continue reading and you'll come to this:-
How shall I describe the essence of XP and previous versions of Windows: Necessary evil? Mediocre? A kludge? Maddening? Minimally reliable? It works the it works most of the time? Inferior to the Mac?
That's complete cobblers, especially about XP, which works all the time, has never crashed (and I've had it since the beginning – retail beginning, that is). I've used 3.1, 95, 98, and now XP – I just don't recognise those descriptions, not since 3.1 anyway – and for my money, and I'm at my PC 8-10 hours a day, XP is pretty much perfect.
OK, 7 may do things faster, but that's not the same as better, and life doesn't depend on shaving a few milliseconds – or even whole seconds – here and there.
And if MS want to encourage experienced users to switch to 7, they need to stop running TV ads, here in the UK, aimed at retards.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I read your article. I have some experience here. I have beta tested every OS Microsoft had to offer since DOS 5.0 I have been in the ditches slugging it out with the stupids and those far smarter than me about these things. I can write code but I hate it, nuff said.
I recently bought a midgrade laptop Compaq CQ50-139WM Yes the WM stands for WalMart, the intended retailer of this model. I got mine from Tigerdirect. It is a single core with 2 GB of ram, nothing fancy just a plain old laptop, it came preloaded with Vista Home Basic, I did all the updates, loaded all my 3rd party drivers did my tweaking and made a set of disks for reloading just incase the drive failed and I could not access the recovery partition thereon. It ran well enough. I sort of jammed the drive up with too many WMA Lossless files ans was beginning to experience the inevitable slowdown you get once a drive gets over 60% occupied. I backed it all up to an external. While my timeline for the windows 7 free upgrade was correct my version Vista Home Basic is not able to be upgraded to Win 7. So I went and got Win 7 ultimate and loaded that saving my vista install as windows.old….the machine runs like a champ, my torrent downloads are 45% faster with no tweaking the network, the colors are vibrant and the repaonse is very snappy and quick, IE 8 runs far better without the annoying crashes and everyone seems to be working great now I have Compaqs win 7 drivers loaded for this exact model. I have run the dickens out of this machine and multitasked to embarassing levels for putting a single core through all this mess, yet win 7 is rock steady and kicking butt and taking names. The early versions I ran 4 different ones in beta, were buggy and one was crash prone, the second beta, but I made it run fair on an older desktop with sub par video that was integrated. Vista requires all the memory to run well, it hates to share ram with the video, win 7 does not exhibit this behaviour at all in the final ultimate release. So far it is blowing the doors off of XP SP3 on this machine, which was made before win 7 was off the drawing boards…proof positive the MS clan can learn by trial and error, and also that they take heed to what their beta testors say far more than they did before!
October 28th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Have read other articles from Mr. Dodge and the pattern is the same. If he had been using the O.S. or is using Windows 7 then he would know that it is an excellent O.S. Fast, runs various applications with ease. Just an excellent O.S. I have been using it since Beta and if you can show me a better O.S. MACs included. But you cant.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I've read just about everything I could regarding Windows 7 and what it was all about. Sunday morning I bought a brand new laptop with Windows 7 already installed. I love it! This is the best product MS has ever put out. No looking back for this gal.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Considering that Windows 7 has been out for nearly a year (completely free to the public I might add), you would think as a PC journalist that you would have already been using Windows 7 and could form a valid opinion on it. Instead you write as if this is the first time your seeing it, and have never gotten hands on testing with it.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:49 am
A 1999, computer science graduate, I have worked with all since windows 95 (XP was the best, WinME the worst)). Over the past few years, I've finally got Vista to behave. Last week I performed a clean install of Windows 7 on a year old PC. Sure it has less of a memory load and starts a little faster, but I find myself having to deal with quite a few program hangs. IE8, Outlook2007, Firefox, Canon DP. Nice and better than Vista but not the ultimate perfect. Soon I will get the calls. My computer isn't working right. The problems should be easier to fix now.
October 30th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I fell for a cheap new laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium…under $400. It is very fast and so far quite stable. Loaded Quickbooks 2009 without a problem. It is 64 bit 3gb and works like a charm. Booting up and shutting down is just amazing and I've had all the OS put out by ms going back before 95. Still have an old windows ME somewhere as a paperweight. I admit I loved XP and was not that happy with Vista. But 7 seems superior although using it only 5 days so far. You can upgrade to Pro for another $90 and wondering if I should do that but so far I'm pleasantly surprised. Could be a winner.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Windows 7 is Microsoft best operating system yet. Windows Vista wasn't too bad, a lot of things non-Microsoft connected such as sketchy driver support bogged it down, but those issues have apparently been fixed in Windows 7 or customers are told FLAT-OUT by the Upgrade advisor that a certain piece of hardware won't work with Windows 7 and they will have to either badger their device manufacturer or get a new device.