Windows 7 needs to be the last version of windows ever. Or at least in terms of what it is currently. We need a 100% complete re-write of windows. Its so based around legacy support that people seem to be obcessed with. Supporting legacy means less performance for current technology. Ive just started using ubuntu on my laptop (although 64bit vista on my desktop isn't going anywhere in a hurry) so i understand how this prospect could be scary. But we do need to do this. I want a clean, simple OS. Please don't fill it with 15 billion applications. Take the linux approach. Write your OS and put other peoples software on it. Not bloat.
I'm not a dev, but I do agree with you. I'd like MS to build, from the ground up, a genuinely secure and pared down OS, that is easily expandable. Legacy programs can run in a sandboxed virtual machine.
Of course, corporations like McAfee and Symantec would be displeased, and I don't know how much influence they have on MS.
Ye, I only said dev's because few people who aren't dev's know what i mean (im not a dev myself btw).
Symmantec and so on don't have too much power over MS. They have some of the OEM's balls in a vice but most OEM's would take MS over Symmantec any day. Symantec have too much money. A family member of mines who is an interior designer was actually involved in the revamp of their offices in ireland. Total project cost: £25 million. Just to revamp a 2000 person office. Don't get me started on norton. I'd rather have a virus than norton. Its a virus in itself. The only criteria its not a virus on is there was no malicious intent.
That won't happen. The legacy support is necessary in Windows because it's the standard OS, and when it's the standard, you can't completely change it up every few years. That's why GM, Dodge, and Ford so rarely change their van designs, if they did, the van converter industry would shut down for two years while they updated their products.
Of course, I think it would be a good idea to start cutting off legacy support at XP, that might happen. If you're still using software from Windows 98, you have issues.
Jeff, I take your point but heres what I am saying. If you buy a new computer in 10 years running my hypotehtically, completely rewritten windows 8 and your 10 year old printer won't work, tough. Simple as. Buy a new printer. Say it costs... £40? It'll be a far better printer. Its peoples unwilling-ness to change. Also you could run older apps via an emulation tool like what WINE does on linux. Very easily, and if that still dosen't work, you can dual boot like mac users do with bootcamp and i don't see them complaining much?
Your kidding me on if people have apps from 95 era that they absolutely need and use on a daily basis but there isn't a new version. These sort of people just needed to be slapped with a baseball bat into the 21st century.
Legacy support isn't going anywhere, is overtime has been phased out. In Vista they stopped supporting dos applications and Windows 3.1 app's, it will take time to wipe out all legacy code because so many companies still rely on older code for applications they do not want to rewrite or are too costly to rewrite.
You are not a dev thats why you see things the way you do, many of us who are developers see that moving forward is not a problem but with large companies running older applications and are UNWILLING to pay to update that code then problems arise.
Maybe you didn't notice all the crying people were having running some applications on Vista? The common complaint was - X game or X application ran fine on Windows XP why does Vista not work with it?? So Vista was blamed, when in all honesty it was poor programming and sloppy coding that caused incompatibilites ( for the most part devs were writting for single user systems with the idea the user was an admin account and had write access to the registry and system files). So taking your idea of removing all old legacy code what you get is 10x the numbre of people crying about things not working because Windows 7 is breaking your older code.
I'm a developer and I don't agree with you. You probably have no idea the ammount of effort involved in creating something like a new operating system from scratch nowadays. Something new would have to do everything Windows does (or close to it) and do it much better for it to be worth abandoning everything that has bene built on top of it.
And be that as it may, Windows DOES NOT need a rewrite. Sure, it has problems. most of them however are in the user space. The shell could use a lot of reworking but the foundations are pretty good. Most of the crashes people have are due to bad drivers. Yet most people don't bust Nvidia's or AMD's balls, they just blame Microsoft because they don't know any better.
A lot of people bash Windows and say it should do this or that or it should have been developed like this or like that, but they're just ignorant. It's ok, i'm ignorant about a lot of things. Difference is i'm humble enough to admit I don't know crap about cars and I don't go around car forums saying my car should have been done with this or that engine/transmission/whatever. Gonna stop right there before I go off on a(n even bigger) rant.
Why is this comment so low-ranked? It's spot on in terms of explaining why Windows is so bloated AND so difficult to manage (ever try tweaking a specific DLL?) -- it's carrying legacy code dating back to 3.1, at least.
People knock Apple (you know who you are) for saying, "Ok, those of you whose machines are XX years old, you won't be able to run this software..." but that ignores 2 key facts:
1) Often, the new software WILL run on the older machines and 2) This allows Apple to purge old code in favor of lighter, cleaner, rewritten code.
Never underestimate the power of a clean slate, something M$ hasn't seen in 15 years. I understand that there are businesses out there that rely upon some ancient, hand-written bit of code that ONLY runs on DOS; those companies need to suck it up and join the 21st century. Compete or die, but don't drag the rest of us down with you just b/c you're too lazy/cheap to upgrade your internal software.
If you thought the whining about Vista compatibility issues was bad wait until you write a new OS from the ground up.
I'm not opposed to the idea. Having even a smaller release "new version" running parallel to Windows 7 might work. But, you will never be able to do a complete re-write on the core, mainstream, Windows OS. Businesses would never adopt due to the amount of testing required and all of the hardware they currently own.
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Windows 7 needs to be the last version of windows ever. Or at least in terms of what it is currently. We need a 100% complete re-write of windows. Its so based around legacy support that people seem to be obcessed with. Supporting legacy means less performance for current technology. Ive just started using ubuntu on my laptop (although 64bit vista on my desktop isn't going anywhere in a hurry) so i understand how this prospect could be scary. But we do need to do this. I want a clean, simple OS. Please don't fill it with 15 billion applications. Take the linux approach. Write your OS and put other peoples software on it. Not bloat.
Im sure alot of dev's will agree with me on this.
I'm not a dev, but I do agree with you. I'd like MS to build, from the ground up, a genuinely secure and pared down OS, that is easily expandable. Legacy programs can run in a sandboxed virtual machine.
Of course, corporations like McAfee and Symantec would be displeased, and I don't know how much influence they have on MS.
Ye, I only said dev's because few people who aren't dev's know what i mean (im not a dev myself btw).
Symmantec and so on don't have too much power over MS. They have some of the OEM's balls in a vice but most OEM's would take MS over Symmantec any day. Symantec have too much money. A family member of mines who is an interior designer was actually involved in the revamp of their offices in ireland. Total project cost: £25 million. Just to revamp a 2000 person office. Don't get me started on norton. I'd rather have a virus than norton. Its a virus in itself. The only criteria its not a virus on is there was no malicious intent.
That won't happen. The legacy support is necessary in Windows because it's the standard OS, and when it's the standard, you can't completely change it up every few years. That's why GM, Dodge, and Ford so rarely change their van designs, if they did, the van converter industry would shut down for two years while they updated their products.
Of course, I think it would be a good idea to start cutting off legacy support at XP, that might happen. If you're still using software from Windows 98, you have issues.
Jeff, I take your point but heres what I am saying. If you buy a new computer in 10 years running my hypotehtically, completely rewritten windows 8 and your 10 year old printer won't work, tough. Simple as. Buy a new printer. Say it costs... £40? It'll be a far better printer. Its peoples unwilling-ness to change. Also you could run older apps via an emulation tool like what WINE does on linux. Very easily, and if that still dosen't work, you can dual boot like mac users do with bootcamp and i don't see them complaining much?
Your kidding me on if people have apps from 95 era that they absolutely need and use on a daily basis but there isn't a new version. These sort of people just needed to be slapped with a baseball bat into the 21st century.
Legacy support isn't going anywhere, is overtime has been phased out. In Vista they stopped supporting dos applications and Windows 3.1 app's, it will take time to wipe out all legacy code because so many companies still rely on older code for applications they do not want to rewrite or are too costly to rewrite.
You are not a dev thats why you see things the way you do, many of us who are developers see that moving forward is not a problem but with large companies running older applications and are UNWILLING to pay to update that code then problems arise.
Maybe you didn't notice all the crying people were having running some applications on Vista? The common complaint was - X game or X application ran fine on Windows XP why does Vista not work with it?? So Vista was blamed, when in all honesty it was poor programming and sloppy coding that caused incompatibilites ( for the most part devs were writting for single user systems with the idea the user was an admin account and had write access to the registry and system files). So taking your idea of removing all old legacy code what you get is 10x the numbre of people crying about things not working because Windows 7 is breaking your older code.
I'm a developer and I don't agree with you.
You probably have no idea the ammount of effort involved in creating something like a new operating system from scratch nowadays. Something new would have to do everything Windows does (or close to it) and do it much better for it to be worth abandoning everything that has bene built on top of it.
And be that as it may, Windows DOES NOT need a rewrite.
Sure, it has problems. most of them however are in the user space. The shell could use a lot of reworking but the foundations are pretty good.
Most of the crashes people have are due to bad drivers. Yet most people don't bust Nvidia's or AMD's balls, they just blame Microsoft because they don't know any better.
A lot of people bash Windows and say it should do this or that or it should have been developed like this or like that, but they're just ignorant.
It's ok, i'm ignorant about a lot of things.
Difference is i'm humble enough to admit I don't know crap about cars and I don't go around car forums saying my car should have been done with this or that engine/transmission/whatever.
Gonna stop right there before I go off on a(n even bigger) rant.
Why is this comment so low-ranked? It's spot on in terms of explaining why Windows is so bloated AND so difficult to manage (ever try tweaking a specific DLL?) -- it's carrying legacy code dating back to 3.1, at least.
People knock Apple (you know who you are) for saying, "Ok, those of you whose machines are XX years old, you won't be able to run this software..." but that ignores 2 key facts:
1) Often, the new software WILL run on the older machines and
2) This allows Apple to purge old code in favor of lighter, cleaner, rewritten code.
Never underestimate the power of a clean slate, something M$ hasn't seen in 15 years. I understand that there are businesses out there that rely upon some ancient, hand-written bit of code that ONLY runs on DOS; those companies need to suck it up and join the 21st century. Compete or die, but don't drag the rest of us down with you just b/c you're too lazy/cheap to upgrade your internal software.
If you thought the whining about Vista compatibility issues was bad wait until you write a new OS from the ground up.
I'm not opposed to the idea. Having even a smaller release "new version" running parallel to Windows 7 might work. But, you will never be able to do a complete re-write on the core, mainstream, Windows OS. Businesses would never adopt due to the amount of testing required and all of the hardware they currently own.