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.

irritating or secure?

part of the vista’s new security initiative is prompting the user of system changes that happen during the course of his/her usage of the operating system. problem is, i feel that it is one hell of a major irritant. linux (in gui windows to be exact) has had these system change prompts as long as i can remember, but it’s not made in a way that pushes a user to go “dammit, do you have to ask me to do what i want you to do everytime?”.

sure it’s one way to keep the system “secure” but won’t it be so irritating that a user will just click “allow” everytime it prompts without thinking because its so amazingly in-your-face-for-the-umpteenth-time? maybe they’ll motion to change it when someone actually kills himself because of it…..anythings possible on the www.

instead of prompting for action verification everytime the system does something, linux just asks the user for credentials to enter the administrative mode and make changes in that one verified admin session within a user one. windows on the other hand, almost never had so called “administrative modes” because, every new default user is an administrator unless specified.

perhaps, what is needed is really a shift in so called windows computing “traditions”. users will have to get used to the fact that the *nix model of “never root” is actually more secure thus desirable.

another point that i think is worth a mention is ms exchange 07s’ shift towards command prompt (commandlets?) and module based operation – is it me or is it ms decided that the “*nix” way might just work better?