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Name: Justin Weber
Hi all,
This week's poll question is about the recently announced fact that Netbooks running Windows XP have better battery life than Windows 7. Discuss here whether or not you think this will hurt 7's chances on the small devices, and, if you like, the poll results themselves.
Thanks!
Justin
How big of a hit are we talking about here?
From blog.laptopmag.com:
Netbook: Toshiba mini NB205
Win XP: 564 minutes
Win 7: 531 minutes
Difference: 6%Netbook: ASUS Eee PC 1008HA
Win XP: 340 minutes
Win 7: 283 minutes
Difference: 17%Netbook: HP Mini 311
Win XP: 343 minutes
Win 7: 292 minutes
Difference: 15%Slow news day?
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Of course I would run Windows 7 on a netbook. Vista is a fine OS, but it tends to choke slower CPUs such as the Atom. As for XP--well, it's an 8-year-old OS. Did anyone use DOS w/ Win3.1 as their primary OS in 2000? It's time to move on.
Win7 is great for netbooks. It combines XP's speed with Vista's good looks. It somehow manages to run fantastically on any PC with at least a GHz and a gig of memory. I haven't been this excited about Windows since Win2k!
And based on the battery life of my C2D-powered laptop--which previously ran XP and Vista--I'm gonna call this new "fact," fiction. Battery life under 7 is a little better than Vista and exactly the same as it was under XP. Don't know how it would be any different on a netbook.
Now fully Se7ened.
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"Did anyone use DOS w/ Win3.1 as their primary OS in 2000?"
Actually, yes, some of us did (until 2001 in fact)...
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Of course I would run Windows 7 on a netbook. Vista is a fine OS, but it tends to choke slower CPUs such as the Atom. As for XP--well, it's an 8-year-old OS. Did anyone use DOS w/ Win3.1 as their primary OS in 2000? It's time to move on.
I'm still using XP and will continue to do so until I run into a game or some other piece of software that won't run on it and I'm forced to buy Windows 7.
I've never touched Vista and never will. My opinion was, and still is, "Vista is the new ME" and the only reason MS put it out there was to make some $$$ off of it quickly before Windows 7 was due to release. You see, they'd invested enough time and $$$ on it to want to make some of it back. But believe-you-me, MS knew it was an Edsel and didn't compare to Windows 7, they just wanted to get some returns on it. If they hadn't forced it on people, very few would have wasted $$$ on it because XP worked better than Vista right from day one and it still does.
Windows 7 however looks like it will be a good platform. I just see no reason to jump on the Windows 7 bus just because it's available. My XP Pro PC's are working beautifully and I'm a firm believer in, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Since I'm a computer geek and custom build all my PC's myself, I'm not stuck buying some prebuilt package that ships with whatever the flavor of the month OS is, so I won't be forced to buy Windows 7 just because I'm getting a new computer.
The age of the OS doesn't matter to me, it's the stability and capabilities. DOS/Windows 3.x isn't the best example as those are very outdated for many and various reasons those of us who worked on those platforms know all too well. However, you won't see those same issues with XP and it should be a viable, usefull OS for many years to come.
I haven't been this excited about Windows since Win2k!
That's nice that you're excited. I don't really get "excited" about operating systems myself. I was very happy to hear about Active Directory (in Win2k, about time MS caught up to Novell in that area) after some years of working with NT 4 and was happy to see the improvements being made on the older NT and 98 OS's but 2000 was not a good OS from a gaming perspective so I was even happier when XP was stable and proved to be a good gaming platform.
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"Discuss here whether or not you think this will hurt 7's chances on the small devices, and...
Windows 7 chances isn't being hurt at all. Netbooks are lightweight machines with very low-to-moderate specs & while Windows 7 was designed for much more powerful machines, it was fine-tuned with scalability in mind -- unlike Vista -- in order to compete aggressively with Linux & perhaps XP on the low-cost/low processing machine platform.
Even though Linux isn't dominating the Netbook OS market, its strong popularity surge during the Vista period was enough for M$ to take aim at the OS with Windows 7. Although, Windows 7 Starter Edition shortchanges Netbook users everywhere but the emerging technology markets.
Running Windows 7 on a Netbook is a win-win for M$ IMHO.
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"Vista is the new ME"
Vista would be more appropriately labelled the new Win2000. It was a brand new version of NT (6.0) that paved the way and got hardware/software vendors ready for Win7 (6.1), just as Win2000 (5.0) did for XP (5.1).
WinMe was just another 9x release, and it didn't serve any purpose whatsoever. Microsoft should have released a Home Edition of Windows 2000, as Win2K proved that WinNT was more than capable of handling multimedia.
"XP worked better than Vista right from day one and it still does."
You might wanna take a look at anandtech's Win7 Performance Guide. Not only does Win7 outperform XP in nearly every test, but Vista does as well!
http://anandtech.com/systems/showdo...
To be fair, Vista was less stable (and far slower) than XP when it was first released, but this was mostly the fault of ill-prepared hardware vendors. Drivers from Nvidia, ATI, and Creative were buggy and slow, and HP didn't even have drivers ready for a few of their printers! I even went back to XP for a few months in early 2007, because Nvidia and Creative liked to take turns painting my screen blue.
Unfortunately, Vista took the blame for all of this and was never given a second chance by most computer users--not even after it bloomed into the stable, responsive operating system that it is today.
"I don't really get "excited" about operating systems myself."
Well, I find it hard not to get excited when a new operating system promises to make my computer less of a pain in the ass to work with. Windows 2000 did exactly this. Before 2K, I had to run two versions of Windows on my home PC--Win98SE and NT4. I truly hated Win98, but because NT4 had no multimedia support, I had no choice but to dual-boot. Win2K finally let run a single OS for everything. I found it to be a superb gaming/multimedia platform, and unlike Win98, it didn't give me the proverbial finger every other day. As an added bonus, it was a great deal faster than Win98 on my Athlon 600/384MB machine. It was hard not to get just a little excited about this great new software.
Same story with Win7. Was previously dual-booting Vista with XP, thanks to Premiere CS3's x64-phobia. Then, Win 7 came along and fixed the problem with Premiere, allowing me to go back to having a single OS and giving my Opteron/4GB machine a speed boost in the process.
Now fully Se7ened.
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Vista would be more appropriately labelled the new Win2000.
Actually, the comparison between ME and Vista is valid. Both suffered from the same image problems (slow and buggy) for the same reasons (bad drivers, 98/XP was good enough, more features no one took advantage of, etc).Microsoft should have released a Home Edition of Windows 2000
As a PC gamer at the time, I can tell you it wasn't the right time for WinNT to replace Win9X. It would take Win2K on the business side to get the developers ready.
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What Razor2.3 said is what I was getting at when I said Vista was the new ME....it was a complete failure in that it was buggy, lacked drivers and well, ran like crap and the majority of people who used it, had nothing but trouble.
Believe me, I know all MS did with ME was file the serial numbers off of 98 and try to throw 2000's interface on it. I looked at it and deleted it quickly and put 98 on and waited patiently for XP.
You might wanna take a look at anandtech's Win7 Performance Guide. Not only does Win7 outperform XP in nearly every test, but Vista does as well!
Again, I was talking about how the end user perceived it. Vista was a POS. You know it, I know it and MS knew it too........but they had invested a lot of time in it and wanted some returns so they released it even though they had 7 coming out in a few short months.
Just for the record Jackbomb, I wasn't trying to attack you....I hope you know that. I was merely expressing my feelings about Vista and MS and replying to your comment about running older OS's.
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it was buggy, lacked drivers and well, ran like crap and the majority of people who used it, had nothing but trouble.
I said it had the image of being buggy. I have used both ME and Vista, and once the driver quality increased, I didn't have a major issue with either OS.
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"Vista was a POS. You know it"
I do?
"I wasn't trying to attack you"
Never thought you were. :-)
Now fully Se7ened.
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Razor:
I said it had the image of being buggy.
I got that. And I said it was buggy.
My own personal experience with ME was it didn't compare to either 2000 or 98 and I could never get it to be stable. That's why I say it was buggy.
Even once they had the drivers straightened out, it still had major issues....or at least, I, and many many other people, had issues with it. If you didn't, you were one of the luckier ones.
I know I tried for several weeks to get it to work properly but it was always crashing and locking up and I finally had to give up in disgust.
jackbomb:"Vista was a POS. You know it"
I do?
LOL, well maybe you don't think so. I shouldn't try to put words in people's mouths since we all form, and have, our own opinions.
Everything I've read and heard about Vista was negative on the whole.
I know it was thoroughly tested in my workplace and discarded because it just didn't play well with too much hardware and too many of the different software packages we use in the workplace.
Maybe Vista was ok for home use, but I wager there were a lot more companies like mine out there who couldn't use it than there were companies who were able to. Notice I used "couldn't" and not 'wouldn't' or 'didn't' - we had no choice, we literally could not deploy it.
In my opinion, it has to work correctly in the work place as well as at home to be considered "good".
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Would I? - I do run Windows 7 on a netbook. Works well. It seems quite intuitive - I have not read any how-to on Win 7 yet. I bought a 12" MSi wind L2100 which came with Win 7 and find it to be quite the machine. It uses a AMD MV-40 processor with a seperate ATi graphics, 2G RAM, 250G HD, has a very good display, the 6-cell battery gives almost 5 hours of operation. I have had no problems to-date with the machine or the OS. It boots in about 1 minute, has no trouble running video (haven't tried HD video yet), runs multiple applications at the same time. (the cost was $400)
I tried loading Office 2000 and so far have found that Excell works, but Word goes none responsive - from what I have read elsewhere this is probably something todo with a Windows Live add-in - still have to sort that out. Much to my delight, it runs a very old marine chart program called NavTrek97 - that means I can use it as a chart plotter on my boat when hooked up to my MS Streets and Trips GPS unit.
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Wow, NavTrek97 is a decade old. Remember to keep that netbook outta the weather; it ain't no Itronix XC6250.
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