Hi tom.
That makes sense, and if the choice was vista vs 7 i'd probably agree,
however for me it's the compatibility issue that is the thing.
For instance, While I've tried both windows live mail, microsoft outlook and
thunderbird, nothing I thought was as good as outlook express.
yes, they all came with more features, but seemed to take more navigation to
access, ---- for instance if I want a message to a contact in outlook
express I just hit tab once from my inbox and bam, there is my contacts list
as a dropdown. No mucking about with the address book or anything else.
Does it do conferencing? multi user messages, threaded messages or the fancy
stuff? ---- no it doesn't, however when I write mail I don't particularly
want any of that, I just want something that lets me read, reply, and write
mails quickly and easily, and outlook express does that.
Microsoft however have done their usual and in making the interface fancier
for people with working eyeballs and adding billions of other functions,
have overcomplicated the task of just writing, receiving and replying to
E-mails.
Of course, I'm fairly certain I could get used to using windows messenger or
thunderbird, --- -but why should I? the new bennifits aren't things I'd use,
and it'd just make what I do currently with outlook express more complex.
The same goes for many other changes. It doesn't matter to me if windows 7
comes with the hooja flip new process speed 3000 upgrade of doom that makes
it run 500 times faster and more securely if I can't actually play games,
write mail and do the stuff I do on it.
i think that's probably one of the key differences. For me, a windows is
just a tool to do other stuff, I don't really care how well or badly the
operating system works compared to other stuff around and on the markit, it
just depends upon what it does for me personally.
While from what you've described pinning to the taskbar sounds a good idea,
and much of rht eannoyences with the interface can be bypassed, ---- do I
actually get to do anything new and fun with it? would it let me play more
games, play music and audio brouse the net, watch films, do E-mail and write
my thesis any better than I do at the second.
The answer currently seems to be a distinct no, sinse most of the games that
I play run equally well on windows xp, and indeed some like older 16 bit
applications won't run on 7 at all without a virtual machine (though as I
said apparently this is changing with windows 8).
Word 2007 is actually easier to use than the upgraded versions, and winamp
still works fine. About the only thing that would! make a difference is full
5.1 speaker support, and while I freely admit this would be a good thing, I
don't know if it outways all the bad stuff as yet.
Of course, this situation may change in the future. When lots of games come
out that I can't run on xp, when a better mail client is available, ----
perhaps when windows 8 actually has the 16 bit compatibility that will let
me run fallthru, eamon etc, then is the point I'll considder upgrading.
As for Ios, well sinse I haven't got into game developement yet, that's not
as much a concern, and where as there aren't! many games that require
windows 7, there is a lot of interesting stuff available for Ios that I
haven't been able to play. I wouldn't want to go Ios totally, sinse there
would be too many other things I couldn't do, ---- my thesis for instance
has to be written in ms word format sinse that's what the philosophy
department use, but as long as I had a windows desktop, this wouldn't be an
issue.
I suppose this is ultimately a difference in thinking of computers. For me,
a computer just takes the place of a lot of other devices, such as a games
console (though I do still own my Snes and gamecube, I don't get new games
on either), music system, typewriter and dvd player, and I'd only considder
a computer to be good or bad relative to those functions, rather than having
any intrinsic value in itself.
Btw, a very amusing take on this are the new cybermen in Doctor who. Rather
than the old cybermen being people who replaced first their bodies, then
their brains with cybernetics for survival, now they are billed as human
brains in steel boddies, created as "the next upgrade, human 2.0, with bugs
removed and far greater useability" (to quote the actual episode rise of the
cybermen). Indeed it was one of the producers stated aimes that the cybermen
were almost a play off many people's desire to have the latest and best
upgrade, as much as the function they filled in the old series of survival
instinct gone mad.
This is again why i like Dr. who, when it's done well it manages to make us
take a look at ourselves in a really strange and twisted way.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
---
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