Hi Dark,
Smile. Well, that's true enough. We do come at this entire issue from
different perspectives,and makes sense when we look at the reasons why
or how we use our computers.
You tend to look at this situation strictly as a consumer, an end user,
who only cares about playing his movies, writing your thesis, playing
music, and some audio games. Which is perfectly valid since XP fulfills
all of those needs for you, and as you pointed out Windows 7 won't bring
anything really new to the table. So there isn't a pressing need to
upgrade at this point.
Believe it or not I do understand where you are coming from because even
though I have Windows 7 for business purposes my personal OS of choice
is Linux. The main reason is because I have Firefox for browsing the
web, Thunderbird for handling e-mail, Pigeon for chatting on AIM and
MSN, Totem for playing DVD movies, Rythmbox for playing my mp3s, Libre
Office for word/Excel documents, etc. In other words other than a lack
of audio games Linux provides all the necessities I need, and costs less
for me to own and use. As a result if I were to compare Linux to Windows
it offers me more benefits in the long run as an end user and software
consumer.
However, how I look at this issue of Windows 7 vs XP is from a software
developer and business point of view. If I am going to remain in the
technical support and software development field I absolutely must own
and use the latest OS so I can serve my clients. As a result I tend to
remain fairly up to date with software releases, do market research on
what's coming in the future, and prepare for it in advance. Which means
I'm always looking at technology from the long view rather than the
short view.
To give you an example since I know Windows 8 is supposed to be released
later this year it only makes sense as a developer to find out what has
changed, what I can do to make my software Windows 8 ready, so if
someone runs out and buys it the day after release I know that my
products are ready to run on the new OS.
Unfortunately, as a developer sometimes preparing for a new OS or new
technology breaks compatibility with older operating systems in
existence. If I write a piece of software in VB 2010 using .NET 4.0 it
will run on XP, Vista, Windows 7, and run on Windows 8 which comes with
.NET 5.0. However, it won't work with Windows 98, Millennium, or 2000.
As a developer it would require a major downgrade to .NET 1.1 in order
to target those platforms which is one reason why software developers
can't continue to support older software forever. Plus how much of a
market is there for Windows 98/2000 software anyway?
So in short while you are looking at this in terms of what can you do on
Windows 7 you can't do on XP I'm looking at how many people are likely
to buy new computers, upgrade to the latest technology, and tend to
think strictly in terms of a developer or tech support specialist.
That's why I tend to stay on top of technology.At least as far as
Windows goes. With Linux I'm more like you preferring to stick with a
long term support release simply because I don't want to grab the latest
version every six months and don't mind using a version for two or three
years unless there is something new such as KDE 4.8 which now has screen
reader support and is going to be available for Ubuntu 12.
Cheers!
On 3/14/2012 7:06 AM, dark wrote:
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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