windows seven

right….for the record, i’d like to make known that i am no fanboy of windows neither am i an evangelist of microsoft’s products & solutions. as far as the current state of OS market share goes, it’s near impossible to find a business that has absolutely no microsoft (“ms”) products what-so-ever (perhaps linux & unix solution providers, apple doesn’t count, they have office 2008 :p). as a person cursed with the interest of technology, its hard not to run one’s hands down the body work when its offered free. as a consumer – as long as it allows me to be productive and work with anything i throw at it, i don’t care who its made by or whats its called (but i’ll scream bloody murder if someone took away my somethings called os x and linux).

as first impressions goes, the 7th incarnation of windows has a lot to like. contrary to the reported issues ms faced with its download service not being able to handle the sheer volume of requests, the 2.8gb download was somewhat speedy for its size. i fired up vmware fusion and trodded along with setting up a new vm to attach the iso to. a few clicks later, while the screen shows “installing”, i headed over the kitchen to fix up a mugfull of caffiene. i was pleasantly suprised that when i got back to a welcome screen awaiting password entry. ok, installation is fast, mighty fast (anyone remember the “39mins” text on the left side of the windows xp installation? – heh).

as expected by way of all the os level competition that ms gets, visuals on windows seven are stunning (perhaps because it is running on a mac while i am writing this). flowing graphics and translucence are concepts of choice for providing users with the visual stimuli to make them proud to have one. one thing to note, the “windows sidebar” (its called “windows gadgets” in the 7) from vista is gone and gadgets will now float freely on the desktop when activated from the control panel. they were a hog to resources in the vista but its cool to see that them code monkeys at ms were smart enough not to make them load default at startup.

one thing vista was notorious for was resource utilization – it was an absolute pig. so much so that a machine with 2gb can somewhat make one think that the cpu & ram burglar has struck again . memory utilization for the 7 , i am glad to say, is very much similar to what you see on the xp. i haven’t taken taken it out for a real spin just yet to be able to comment on its performance at full tilt (outlook + word + 3 excel 2007, 5 rdp sessions, itunes, internet explorer and firefox with >5 tabs are common day to day where i work) but so far its looks positive.

its only been a few hours that the 7 was installed on vmware fusion, so far its been living up to its hype. then again, it bsod-ed on me while i was typing out the first paragraph – perhaps it needs to cement the fact that this is still microsoft (i think blue is the ms colour of the 90s). or, it could be due to other reasons :p

nonetheless, professionally at least, i’d recommend the 7 over vista or xp. no release date announced yet but do look out for it.

no really…just why?

why is it that microsoft sharepoint makes creating cms driven content so darn complicated and difficult?

i fail to see why anyone would want to go through manuals, how-to guides and extensive training just to create a publishing outlet in the cloud. ok, so they might say its targeted to the enterprise crowd, but even that is a huge chore for any users to adopt. its tough enough to keep up with the amount of work just to be productive, let alone taking the time to learn the complications of sharepoint just because a driven i.t. department convinced company heads to adopt the latest and the greatest. i’ve had users having problems understanding the operations of an ipod, i bet they’ll probably go mad when someone shoves sharepoint into their faces.

its funny that the biggest (maybe) software company in the world is unable to provide a solution to web content publishing and web collaboration when there already so many other solutions that are a lot more simpler, manageable, user friendly and tons more beautiful out of the box. compared to WordPress, Drupal and even the mere CMS Made Simple, sharepoint looks like an expensive swiss army tool that can’t cut properly with its knife, can’t grip with its mini pliers and it looks like a cheap copy that’s usually sold in street markets beside pirated DVDs. granted that the rest of the mostly open source solutions is not as complete as sharepoint is, but while it only serves a part of what sharepoint can offer, it serves its solution millions of tons better in all aspects of that small part.

more comical is the fact that microsoft knows extremely very well the value of making things easier to understand, easier to manage and the power of visual attraction are instrumental to getting more acceptance of its solution which translates directly into more business and more money. running down the history of its OSes, every new release is always better in many aspects compared to the previous one and chief amongst them all are the visuals. just take a look at the marketing material of the windows desktop over the years. 3.11 was blah, 95 & 98 were a little better, XP was wow, and Vista was “ok-i-have-to-get-it-NOW” with its visually attracting wallpaper, start button, aqua and even the addition of the desktop pane. ok, its unfair to compare the older ones as display and graphic technologies are not up to the task yet, but what about sharepoint now? others have hit the ball of out the park with it and they don’t even have such experience , integration or wealth as microsoft has.

so…..just, why?