Windows 7 branding leaks out
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 22nd 2009 3:33PM
posted May 22nd 2009 3:33PM
[Thanks, Nicola]
Read - Microsoft China Windows 7 site
Read - Branding at PCBETA
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Microsoft qouta for the week low?
I'm loving Windows 7 RC1 and I really like this branding so far. They desperately need an image facelift, because it's a really solid OS (even for pre-release status) but people are still a little hostile to anything new from MS... so hopefully this helps.
Perhaps a starting point would be to start hiring people who can actually type their ad correctly first: one of the Chinese character is mis-used. Embarrassing.
I like the branding, except that lens flare is so 1990's...
Lens flares are coming back! ;P
No kidding, just blur your lens flares a bit and it do just fine for highlighting part of the image. And dont use a generic one. Make one yourself. Most of the time, if you have to choose with or without, the image with is the winner. The best lens flare is the one you dont notice.
That one is quite obvious but its not a fat generic one. They just used few minimal circles to do the job. I cant complain.
MS really need a new branding or even a marketing team
@C - It's a Chinese pun.
@C: Uhh...dude, are you serious? You can read the Chinese but you didn't get the pun? "抢鲜了解Windows 7新功能" sounds something like "rush/fight to be the first to know Windows 7's new features" but the pun changes the character that's suppose to be "first" to "fresh" since the two words are homonyms are Mandarin.
**"in Mandarin", not "are Mandarin"
Dammit we need an EDIT BUTTON!
I like it, nice and clean. goes well with the oriental theme I stuck in my RC1 computer. Everyone at the office comments on it favorably ;)
Damn, Windows 7 looks like it'll be in a position to turn everything around. I love the fact that it works perfectly on my netbook with all the aero effects, something I highly doubt vista could match. For the first time in a while I can honestly say that my Windows computer looks and feels significantly better and easier to use than a Mac.
Whoa.. put the crack pipe down. Windows 7 is a great OS leaps and bounds of improvement over Vista but it still has a way to go before its comparable to OS X.
Here's a simple test for you to perform to see if its yet at the same level. Take Windows 7 and install it on a 12 year old PC and sit it side by side with a G4 Apple Powermac 400Mhz running 10.5.7.
That's a stupid argument, Powermac G4's didn't even exist 12 years ago.
The question, Shotgun, is who cares how either OS operates on a 12-year-old machine? Windows 7 is gonna be real nice, and I think it definitely stands up to MacOSanything.
In fact, 12 years ago they had just released the G3, running between 233 and 333 MHz
@bakari
I don't think it will. I am not an Apple Fanboy, but OS X runs much smoother then any MS OS out there, and you know with MS's history, 7 will be buggy till SP1 comes out...it has been that way since 98'. So you can't say it won't happen. 7 does look very promising! I am rather excited about it. RC1 is great also.
Congratulations Mark, you can't read.
What is so hard to about comprehending "12 year old PC". Is a PC a mac? Are you confused? Anyway the reasoning being using an older PC vs a 2 years newer mac is that back then PC's had an incredible edge on macs performance wise.
Satisfied? Idiot.
But but but Bakari this means that OSX is the superior operating system for machines at the Goodwill. Guess who's getting that secondhand store market share.
Still a stupid argument, here's a list of intel processors(by far the most common) from that time(source: wikipedia):
233 MHz Introduced May 7, 1997
266 MHz Introduced May 7, 1997
300 MHz Introduced May 7, 1997
And comparing intel processors to motorola ppc processors from that time period tells you what?
That's 2 me : 0 you
Try again, this is fun lol
@shotgun:
Leopard system requirements:
General requirements
* Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
Pretty sure you won't be using 10.5.7 on a 400 mhz G4.
OK, as you've said you essentially can't compare the two in any kind of fair way, making your whole point moot. Oh and I can go ahead and say that trying to install the original version of OSX on my old G3(which I got 11 years ago) made that machine completely unusable until I went back to OS 9. All this is aside from the fact that I don't think anyone is using "How the operating system will run on a 12 year old computer" as the basis for how good a modern operating system is. Notice that not once in my comment did I ever mention how it runs on incredibly antiquated hardware, I was talking about usability.
@ shotgun
By your ass backwards logic, Win CE is the ultimate OS, hell you can practically run that on a toaster.
I've got some crayons you can play with if you want.
OK Shotgun, now try running Snow Leopard on that Mac and let me know how you get on.
Oh and to take your little test I went ahead and looked up benchmarks for pentium 2 vs. G3:
a PowerMac G3/300 scores 10.2 on the BYTEmark test, more than twice as fast as the 4.3 rating the Pentium II got, and 45 percent higher than a 400-MHz Pentium II
So I believe that would make Me 2: you 0
@thewood - It is not listed as supported but it does indeed work and is even used as a gaming machine for small children.
@Mark
As I've said 12 year old PC vs 400mhz G4 is a pretty equal match in raw performance. So no, my point is not moot. And adding in the G3 processor for comparison isn't exactly being fair as that particular series (save for the late models) could never handle OS X well.
The purpose of the comparison encompasses general OS performance Win vs Mac and gives a starting point for analysis... seeing as modern PC vs MAC are generally comparable which wasn't the case 10 years ago (apple being inferior). The ability of an OS to scale backward to antiquated hardware and still perform at a usable level is not generally important for the masses but can be used a as a level. OS X vs Win7 on an even (and low) battleground for comparison would in theory scale forward to modern hardware in terms of performance. And as we have come to learn performance is a key factor in usability.
And as I've pointed out, and actually cited, that's not the case. Even the G3 processor from 12 years ago out performed the intel II's that existed at that time. So that's still not a valid comparison. Even comparing it to a G3 would be biased in apple's favor.
Alright then move forward to a Pentium III 800mhz machine to the G4 400Mhz. Should be a better match, though the architecture is vastly different and tests between the two may be uneven general OS performance would remain solid.
At that point, it's relatively hard to find a comparison between the two processors. The only benchmarks I could find showed that a 500MHz G4 was 1.72 times as fast as a 800MHz P3. After taking into account a 20% hit in speed to make it a 400MHz G4, that still makes it 1.376 times as fast as the 800MHz P3. How bout comparing how they do on somewhat more modern machines that can actually run both? That's the only fair way to make a comparison.
And I don't have any of that hardware lying around to make the test(I'm assuming you haven't tested a fair comparison between the two either, considering your comments) so all of this is just a biased assumption that 7 would fare worse.
@ shotgun
You do realize that PC stands for personal computer which a Mac is.
Moron.
uh... ever heard the term 'low hanging fruit'? Looking at visuals says nothing.
Vista came out in 2006? Now its 2009, and this thing is basically Vista with 3 years of polish.. Oh wait, its not out yet. Keep waiting.
The fact that it LOOKS NICE visually is easy. The suckage of Windows runneth deep my friend. Much like WinMo, you have to dig deep to find the ugly Redmond, WA, property, and when you do, you will be sorry.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be fleshed out next month, and might even come out before this. So far Windows 7 looks great, but not something they should be charging for. Remember this was an APOLOGY for Vista from day one. You're not supposed to charge an arm and a leg for an apology.
http://i39.tinypic.com/zsvkn5.jpg
Shotgun: "though the architecture is vastly different and tests between the two may be uneven"
Stop right there. You're already admitting it isn't a fair comparison. So drop it. It doesn't work that way. And you've provided no evidence that OS X will even work or work well on a G3/G4.
It's like saying Windows NT 4.0 is better than 7 cuz it runs faster on my 15 year old computer. How about comparing modern OS's on modern hardware thank you very much.
Mark wins hands down. You are my hero sure. Google has done you well.
@Shotgun I dont understand the argument but I just low ranked all your posts for the hell of it.
Yeah yeah we know. OSX is a smooth ride until you actually try to use a software. The OS is fine, but Adobe integration is clumsy and 3D crash like hell. I cant even surf the web on my job Mac Pro without crashing once per day.
Seriously, XP still the best for creative apps. My old G5 was the same, I could not even use my wacom tablet efficiently because of the crap graphic engine.
I'll definitively get a mac for my parents... but for a power user, mac world is not deep enough.
@mark
Amen.
Opps, meant mike...
I suck at this. :P
Hey Shotgun. Here's a test. Install an update on a Mac. Have it go bad on you for some reason. Now try uninstalling an update instead of needing to reinstall the OS.
Who's ahead of who again? OS X has a few nifty tricks. But for the most part it has some very primitive aspects to it as well. Aspects that Apple being Apple refuses to deal with. While I love the concept of drag to install and remove, you still have 3-4 different locations where shit can still remain after dumping the core app. While this may not overly effect the OS its a symptom of a greater problem: Apple is a lazy company who would rather focus on the iPhone then bring their OS up to a level that it should have reached in '04.
Cool. Thats one thing i'm noticing about Windows 7. It seems to be less about the OS, and more about just getting things done really quickly and efficiently. I think the branding really fits this.
I agree with you. I think what Windows 7 really is just how Vista should've worked 3 years ago. And even more interestingly I observe that most Windows users rejoice only because "yes! the damn thing's finally gonna work", not that it's introduced several hundred new features or anything like that kind.
After all Microsoft has spent way to long fiddling with its UI and it's time for some basic stuff to be fixed than constantly changing. Although I still have my reservation in terms of the technology that Microsoft has put into Windows 7. As far as I'm aware, it's still ships with 32/64-bit versions whereas most modern Core 2 Duo CPUs are all 64-bit already. It certainly has a catch up to play with Apple in terms of GPU processing. But overall I'm glad to see Microsoft kinda back on track, but just find the hype of this latest iteration based on hope that things will finally work this time a little bit sarcastic.
And last but not least I always thought that Microsoft really ought to ship this release FREE to vista users, either as a big SP, or at least in showing an apologetic gesture for ruining their lives over the last 3 years. Apple did it with its 10.1 major release, and I think Microsoft ought to do so as well this time round.
I disagree with you, b. I'm no MS apologist, but I installed Vista 64 on the desktop that I built last year, as well as Vista 32-bit on my now 3 year old laptop (1.8GHz core duo), and Vista has been smooth sailing for me (read: rock solid), while xp feels archaic in comparison. I now dual boot vista/7 on both those computers, and have 7/xp on a eee pc, and I feel that 7 is a significant enough step above vista that I wouldn't regard it as merely a service pack.
If you're going to say that 7 is what vista should have been, you may as well say that 7 is what 3.1 for workgroups should have been. When you get down to it, Vista suffers from a poor reputation, not from being a poor OS (in my experience, at least). That hardly deems it necessary for a company to give away a significant new product that they've been pouring work into for a couple years.
Is anyone else getting the feeling that the 7 pointing towards the sky is a reference to the integration of cloud storage in Windows 7?
Or is that just me... It could be jsut me.
just you, the top part of the 7 looks like a smile to me. I don't think they're thinking that deep with the logo.
Probably trying to make things even with the previous lame post...
I think you're watching too much Lost or you had a sip of Cupertino Kool-Aid, then again you may be right.
Now the notorious piracy of Windows in China can get a head start. They'll just 'shop the branding onto disc labels and DVD covers and sell the RC as RTM.
You say it like its wrong to do that... :P
That's Microsoft's policy. First, they let people sell pirated versions of Windows to gain market share (given that most consumers don't even know the difference between pirated and genuine copies, this isn't particularly hard to do). Then when Microsoft suddenly stops these pirated versions from functioning or releases a new version of Windows that's not easily pirated, most of the consumers won't have a choice but to buy the genuine editions of Windows, even if it costs them a few months wage.