Windows 7
So anyone tried it out yet?
My laptop is near death but I have been putting off getting a new one, as I didn’t want to have to get Vista. Good old XP has been doing the job.
If Windows 7 is pretty good, I’ll probably buy myself a new laptop for Xmas, even though that also means trading in Office 2003 for Office 2007 (I do not like its layout). If not, then maybe I’ll go for a Mac!
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Tags: Windows
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:30 am
yea i hate office 2007 too.
Vista is awesome. I know their we issues early on,but if you have a decent PC/lappie, it kicks ass.
I run vista on my main PC at home and also a Vista Media Centre – the coolest thing i have ever owned!!!
i will upgrade to windows 7, probably around xmas. bit of a pain upgrading the media centre software (thanks SKY! for not allowing microsoft to use your EPG! i love hacking the thing grrr)
my IT buddy has been running Windows 7 RC1 for a few months, loves it. said its very stable.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:35 am
Ha ha ha ha
A MAC!
Next you’ll be joining the Labore party and wearing lycra.
(Dime: Vista is really cool if you disable all the Vista hog components and run what is in effect XP – else it sucks, thats why 7 was released. Office 7 is OK if you spend a few days getting used to it)
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:46 am
Vista was fairly well humming by the time SP1 rolled around. To be fair to MS, a lot of the driver issues were due to device manufacturers just flat-out refusing to develop drivers for Vista, and only caving once they realised that there was going to be a huge shitstorm if they didn’t. Creative and Canon are two major culprits that spring to mind.
I can assure you DPF that 7 is more like Vista should have been. It’s snappier, more responsive and incredibly stable. I’m very pleased with it, but make sure you new laptop can support XP virtualisation, which will come down to the processor. Given how unfairly the mainstream media parroted Vista criticism well after it was valid, I’m not entirely sure that 7 will get the praise it deserves.
For the record, running 7 Pro x64 on a Asus X83VM, 4GB DDR2, 2.13 C2D, 7200 320Gb and 1GB 9600M.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:49 am
My boss has been running Win 7 for a few months and raves about it. He has built software companies from scratch and is usually a pretty good judge of these things.
Macs are for teenage girls, hippies, brainwashed cult members, and people who think TV advertising that patronises the competition is clever. Be warned that if you buy one, the rest of us will be laughing at you behind your back… it’s like if you went out in public with a man handbag.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
I just noticed a news report that Win 7 launched here overnight. Have I just successfully shut out the hoopla or is this launch more low key than they have been in the past?
My home PC (with XP) is getting old and tired so I expect I’ll get Vista with a new PC sometime (not particularly that I want or need it, it’s just convenient to upgrade that way) but I’d rather hold out for a while longer.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
Most manufacturers will now offer free upgrades to windows 7 if you purchased after about August I think, so no need to hold off getting a new lap top.
I recently bought a Dell studio 15, and this is an excellent machine for the price, very very good screen and excellent key pad, Dell has copied a few features off the mac and for about a thousand bucks less!!
There was one massive problem though, Dell call centres are absolute crap! It took a month for me to actually get the lap top due to a problem with the damned colour that they didn’t tell me about.
The call centre was useless as none of the staff can speak or understand english well enough.
It took a nasty email threatening to cancel the order before someone that I could actually understand gave me a call, but even then I had to start the whole order process from scratch!
Lucky Dell make good reliable computers otherwise they would be bottom of the heap.
The laptop was worth the wait though and you do save about 500 bucks on a comparable spec machine.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:54 am
Office 2007 is the best yet. excel and word are brilliant on it, and all the programs tie in very nicely together. any mac you buy these days will be using office 2007 as well though. but macs are just hype.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:55 am
I try to avoid upgrades, clean installs tend to be a lot less troublesome. I’m certainly waiting to go straight to Win7, and preferably after some major upgrades but that’s not so critical.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:57 am
Get a Mac. It just works!
I needed a new laptop 2 years ago and just couldn’t stand the thougt of getting Vista, so I gave Apple a try
We now switched completely to Mac and never regretted it. Got a MacBook Pro and a 20″ iMac. Even deleted the XP patrition on the iMac.
Mac Office is great, but needs a bit getting used to. Has a very Mac look and feel.
Office 2007 is great though, once you get over the new layout. Took me a while, but once you do, it’s pretty damn good.
Would never go back to 2003
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 am
..come david…!
..wrap yourself in the warmth of mother-mac..!
..you’ll never go back..
(i’m proud to say i’m a windows-virgin..i learnt on an old mac..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 am
Been running the Windows 7 RC on my iMac for the past month, very impressed… I keep my man handbag well hidden
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 am
I have been running the RTM x64 version for just over a week on a higher end system (Quad-Core, 4GB Ram, 640GB HD, HD TV Tuner Card, Dual 19th Widescreen Monitors, 2GB Graphics).
It runs like a charm, much faster than vista. Primarily due the change to 64bit.
Freeview built into windows media centre is also pretty cool.
As is the docking taskbar similar to the mac.
Other than that not much different, just turn of UAC on first boot it drives you nuts otherwise.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 am
Get a Mac. If you need to know why then do a search along the lines of “PC users who have gone to Mac and are now going back to PC”. You’ll hardly find anything.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 am
windows..
common as muck..!
and sooo needlessly ‘complicated’..
i watch in amazement when windows users..to do the simplest things..
have a series of 4-5 clicks/type-in’s to go through..
w.t.f.’s with that..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
DPF, nothing wrong with Vista.
If you’re going to wait for anything when buying a new laptop, I would suggest it be an WLED screen and a decently priced solid-state harddrive. The WLED screens are very bright and do not suffer the dulling that tradition fluorescent tubes jobs do. And solid-state harddrives are supposed to make the machine respond like a rocket (as they have a much lower seek time).
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:09 am
philu,
In total agreement, the worst thing about moving to a Mac is trying to work out why everything is so simple to do.
“But there must be more to it that that?”
“Surely?”
“Oh – ok”
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Yes, you should Join the rebel alliance.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 am
Ubuntu 9.10 out in one week.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
Yes – get a Mac.
Such trendy liberal tendencies might get your finally thrown out of the VRWC, but it’d be worth it.
It is actually quite amazing how much political alignment there appears to be between computer technologies and partisan/ideological outlooks. Across the western world there is indeed a strong tendency for liberals to go for Apple Macs. There’s a new book out called ‘Stuff White People Like’ that amusingly deals with all the liberal white trendy stuff. The book’s based on a great blog. Here’s the entry about Apple Macs:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/30/39-apple-products/
And here’s a Guardian newspaper snippet of the book:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/15/white-stuff-book-extracts
But anyhow, I’d suggest that typically Labour and National voters are PC users. Those to the left and right of the narrow mainstream – Act, Green, etc – are probably much more inclined to be Apple Mac users. Of course NZ First supporters use pen and paper. And Libertarianz and the far-left are probably much more inclined to use Linux.
Bryce
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:27 am
I can’t justify Macs…I like to, you know, play games and be able to upgrade stuff myself
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:31 am
We had a testbed w/ W7 and worked well. Much better than we tought or expected. Vista was a joke (and not a good one) but the new W is worth a try.
Anyway, my advise is a mac, the new Mb is lovely and cheap also. For blogging, traveling, the best deal (I suppose) a unibody macbookpro 13/15 inch, well finished, with OS X you can avoid the everyday hassle – convinient. And the full metal enclosure is tough enough to carry to everywhere. Massive battery time, LED backlight display and the opsys is in the price. (and keep the value much longer than the pc-s)
So, go to the retailers and spend half or one hour with the W7 and the OS X and you can decide. (if both systems are unknown for you this is the best way – your own experience.)
And forget the solid state drives, expensive and NOT faster than the disk spinner HDD-s. (yet)
keynote yesterday, windows 7 today, what tomorrow brings?
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:32 am
Mac is good for a home machine, or if you heavily into media editing. And they are pretty cool. But if you’re trying to do business work on it, and you don’t have time to faff around, then you need a windows machine.
There’s nothing wrong with Vista – that was all hype. I’ve been using it for a while, and really it is just XP with some eye candy. Turn the eye candy off it you don’t have the horsepower to run it. Office 2007 is good once you get used to it. When I got my new machine the first thing I had to do was recreate my templates – work lost them in the upgrade. Which means I had to find every obscure menu item to fix paragraph spacing, styles, etc etc etc. What a nightmare. But once you learn them all, the new layout is much better than the old – faster to move around. And all the old shortcut keys still work, so if you aren’t a mouse user, no drawbacks.
Dell – maybe. We have an XPS1330. Damn thing keeps breaking. To be fair, they keep fixing it, and they let us extend the warranty even though the machine was broken – was cheaper to extend the warranty for a year and have them come and fix the machine than they quoted to just fix the machine. And they are very hard to deal with.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:34 am
Office 2007 once you get used to it is vastly superior to Office 2003, seriously. This comes from a previous hater. One good thing they have is the help thing which if you go through the old 03 menues it will show you where it is in 07.
Annoying to have to get used to new layout but when you do you see why they did it, much better.
As for Windows 7, great operating system. Its like Vista with the annoying and slowing crap removed. Its effectively the XP of the new generation of operating systems.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:46 am
Yeah, I’ve got a 15 inch MacBook Pro and before that only had windows machines and I love it. Vista is great and i run it on my desktop, but osx for a laptop is just better. Oh and DPF, they just slashed the macbook pro prices yesterday too.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
DPF, try Ubuntu on your old laptop before buying a new one. You’ll probably find that you don’t need to buy a new one any more, and you get all the shiny that windows 7 has…
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:06 am
Do it DPF – go on, do it. Get a Mac and get a life.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:07 am
PaulL ,
what kind of business work do you think of? media editing is irrelevant ‘couse rather depends the RAM and the CPU, not the operating system.
business work: blogging (for DPF), writing articles, browsing, handling assets (probably via browser and phone) giving interviews (computer not necessary, mouth does
As far as I experienced no one switch BACK to win from mac. (but i’ve heard about mac-linux switch) And the reason is not the HW, but the philosophy of USE.
I am handling win servers and workstations on our global network, but at home? No way, Jose! I don’t take the work home
And I am suffering everyday from the lack of functionality in win, may I mention the mac’s exposé, task switching, drag/drop features, the spotlight… and the best trackpad EVER.
Finally, David has to spend significant time w/ those systems BEFORE buy, and he able to test them in the shops. W7 is NOT the piece fo sh*t that the vista was, indeed.
Reduced price is another good point for the mac.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
I don’t like to upgrade my system unless I’m getting a new PC in case some program doesn’t work anymore.
As far as Office 2007, there is a FREE (for personal use) addon called UBitMenu that adds back the Office 2003 menu bar, so those familiar with the older program can use the menu or the ribbon. They reckon there is no performance loss, it’s very small, and it also brings back the older menus on Excel, Word, and Powerpoint.
As far as Macs – I had to use one for graphic design in class for a year. I still don’t really like them. I don’t like the ‘see-through’ windows, the continual menu at top of the screen that changes depending on what program you’re using (I prefer each ‘window’ to have it’s own menu), I don’t like Finder as much as Explorer.
Also, you can’t run ‘portable’ programs from a USB stick on them like you can with Windows. For more on this check out portable apps.com. A portable app is a program that you have on your USB stick, like an email program, word processor, graphics program, messenger, etc than you run straight from the USB stick – it doesn’t have to be installed on the PC to work. You can go to any net cafe, plug in your USB and use your own programs that you have on there. You’ll find dodgy sites with downloads for portable versions of just about any program, including Photoshop, Office, etc etc). Macs can’t run programs from a USB stick.
As far as games go, PC is king. At the design school I was at, people working with Photoshop etc, used Macs, whereas game designers use PCs.
“Get a Mac” = “Get a Perm”
I’ll always be a Windows man
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Is anyone else here puzzled how Philu can afford any Apple products at all?
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:18 am
pappito: as I said, for home, a Mac is fine. If you want to do work on it, then Windows is safer unless you want to spend a lot of time worrying about file formats and whether xyz app is compatible.
It’s been a few years since I used Macs myself, I’ve gone fully Linux at home. But all my work machines are still Windows, as is my partner’s laptop – to have anything else would be painful.
I know that DPF uses firefox, so if we’re only talking about browser apps here, then Linux is a much better idea than even Mac. And, as rimu says, you probably wouldn’t need any new hardware. And it gives you all the gadget fun and coolness at parties when you talk about your new machine. Geek parties obviously.
Really, it comes down to whether you’re looking for an appliance or a fashion statement. If you want to be a fashion victim (i.e. it looks cool, so it doesn’t really matter that using it is a pain – kind of like an iPhone), then get a Mac. If you just want to have a computer that you can do some work on, and occasional web browsing…..Windows. I think I recall DPF saying he played games occasionally too……again, Windows.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
dog_eat_dog: he did say an old Mac. My friends with Macs compulsively upgrade them, and since nobody wants an old Mac, they can be had pretty cheap. One friend was throwing a PowerPC Mac down the tip as nobody wanted it (an old G4). I tried to convince him to put Linux on it so he could do “stuff”, but in the end it just went out.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:21 am
“A portable app is a program that you have on your USB stick, like an email program, word processor, graphics program, messenger, etc than you run straight from the USB stick – it doesn’t have to be installed on the PC to work. You can go to any net cafe, plug in your USB and use your own programs that you have on there.”
??? You mean you rather keep those apps on the USB stick e.g. your mail app, than using safe web based mail??? Kidding? Portable word processor? Have you heard about the google apps? I bet you are using BAT for mails
And who let you connect your USB stick to his system without knowing what is on, what kind of backdoors and risks in your “portable apps”??
Please don’t be offended, and don’t look this as a pc-mac flame comment! You surprised me!
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Fletch: Ahem [googlegooglegoogle...] 100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (for Mac and Win)
FWIW I may have lost patience with apple from a brand point of view when I released they’d never released an offical daylight savings update for 10.3.9 (all that’ll run on my eMac).
Not that I do myself, but I like to encourage other people to use Ubuntu. I could perfectly well use it for work. And I’ve heard good things about WINE. I’m increasingly likely to go there myself.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:32 am
In my experience the complaints against Vista are overhyped – if you have a well-spec’d machine. I will probably shift to Windows 7 sometime, but feel no great urge to do so. The less-intrusive UAC (User Account Control) looks like being the main benefit for me.
If getting a new PC, get as much RAM as you can afford and also look into the +/- of going to the 64 bit version of Windows 7.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:33 am
PaulL
“I know that DPF uses firefox, so if we’re only talking about browser apps here, then Linux is a much better idea than even Mac. And, as rimu says, you probably wouldn’t need any new hardware. And it gives you all the gadget fun and coolness at parties when you talk about your new machine. Geek parties obviously.”
You’re right, linux is a possible solution, now Ubuntu (the one I tried) is shiny-whiny as well and maybe helps to avoid to buy new hw.
“Really, it comes down to whether you’re looking for an appliance or a fashion statement. If you want to be a fashion victim (i.e. it looks cool, so it doesn’t really matter that using it is a pain – kind of like an iPhone), then get a Mac.”
You’re wrong. To have a mac is not fashion statement (iphone IS!
I am not a fashion victim, not my wife, most of my friends (programmers for example) are using mac. I am using win at work and mac for personal use. As DPF has no strict company standards, he can focus on usability, that is why I advised to take a look on both systems.
Maybe your mac experience is a bit obsolete, if you tried the mac v9 – I deeply understand you
But in the last 1-2 years the mac os X IS the operating system. no hassle, no pain.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
I’ve been running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 for about a month and a half on a two year old Lenovo Thinkpad T61 – it runs very nicely.
Windows 7 is essentially a performance improved version of Vista with a few updates to the user interface.
If you want a decent machine for traveling, then I would recommend a Lenovo Thinkpad X200 (12.1″ screen) or X300 (13″ screen):
* Best keyboard
* Reasonably light but still can take a few knocks (Hard disk shock protection)
* Built in mobile data options
* Trackpoint (far better than the horrible touchpads although it still has one of these)
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
Windows 7 is great, stable and responsive. When you load up the desktop it feels much snappier than vista, less waiting around for stuff to load up and settle down. The greatest thing is that this is just a release candidate versino I have been running – there is liekly room or further improvement as the platform matures. Just look at the improvements on vista post release – if even a small fraction of that improvement can be replicated w7 can be a great OS.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
@lyndon. Wine is fine for apps like Photoshop, but not so good in the range of PC games it can handle. Strangely enough, old school DOS games work better in this shell than under Windows.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
If DPF thinks that Office 2007 is a pain (learning new ways to do things, even if they’re better), then a Mac is going to be worse.
I’ve had little bits of exposure to OSX. It annoys me that everything is in different places, and works differently. I know it is probably better, but it’s not that much better that I need to learn a new way of doing things. Now, Linux, that is that much better
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
“I’ve had little bits of exposure to OSX. It annoys me that everything is in different places, and works differently.”
differently = simple w/o hassle, right
now i am curious wich system will be the winner for him! xmas is not too far
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
I’ve been running 7 On my laptop since the first Beta (did a clean install with the RC) And frankly, It shits all over Vista and XP.
Vista on the same laptop did the standard MS thing of degrading quickly and hogging all my precious resources.
7 On the other hand is smarter, faster and prettier. It still runs just as well as it did the day I installed it and I am yet to experience any system hangs or freezes with it. Quite simply, Its MS’s best OS to date.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:59 am
Yes they can
I got a 13″ Macbook 2 years ago after my fist went through the keyboard of the HP-Compaq laptop running Vista that I was using (it deserved it). I haven’t looked back. I don’t have to spend time pissing round to get networks running (it is a constant problem for Windows) or reinstalling stuff – it just works. I still use XP at work though.
It is also great for the geeky because OSX is a fully blown UNIX operating system, and is great for running scientific software and anything written for Linux (though of course when you start compiling your own software, it can become fiddly like Linux). Wine is pretty good for running windows software but can be fiddly.
One downside is that OSX can only read from (not write to) hard disks formatted with NTFS – so if you need your external disks to be PC-compatible it is back to FAT-32 and no files bigger than 2GB.
Also I suggest using Openoffice if you want to save yourself a grand. It is equivalent in features to MS Office 2003, is only about 120mb for the download and comes with an MS compatible word processor, spreadsheet (which is great, but you have to manually set up ctrl-d to be fill down), database and presentation software. It can also save directly to PDF. Also use GIMP instead of photoshop.
As for games, there are OSX versions of many games out there, they usually come out 6-12 months after the PC version, and if I was that worried I would by a playstation.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
xp was fixed 200
7 is fixed vista
vista is the biggest rip of ever, when i pay for something i expect it to function which vista did does not.
ive been running ubuntu dual boot system lately and have been very happy with how usable linux actually is these days.
MS office why pay for that when there is openoffice and thunderbird for free.
mac certainly is better than windows.
The thing about windows that i hate is that it is inferior to mac
and when you look at how much you pay linux is even better.
when you pay for something is has to function.
everybody using windows is using it due to corporate deals.
linux for programming
mac for design
windows for solitaire
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
gazzmaniac
most portable harddrives these day are in fat 32 anyhow
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Well I never….
I take it back then (running programs from a USB stick on a Mac).
All the googling I did about the subject while I was studying usually turned up answers to the effect that it couldn’t be done on a Mac.
pappito – it is handy though. I can do over to a friend’s place, plug in my USB and fire up Photoshop or Illustrator, go into a net cafe and fire up my own messenger (Pidgin – a replacement for MSN messenger), or another chat program I use. I can use my own email client, and my own browser with it’s own bookmarks – and not leave anything on the host computer.
I find it quite handy.
It’s also good to have an antivirus program on the stick so you can scan a PC without having to install software, or to have a recovery program such as Recuva on there to bring back files you’ve lost.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
All my computers are running commercial UNIX. They’re Macs.
I do have Windows XP running in a VM for testing stuff, and I have Windows 7 running in a VM just to play around with. Win7 seems to be a Vista that doesn’t suck quite as much, which in my world is not a good enough reason to use it.
FWIW on this Mac right now I’m running OS X Snow Leopard, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 8.10. All at once.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
gazzmaniac, I overcame that while studying by buying MacDrive for my PC. You format the external hard drive for Mac, and when you go to your PC with MacDrive running in the background, you can just access it normally.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Running Windows 7 64-bit since Xmas on Dell Inspiron 1720. Solid as a rock.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
So far as I can make out the only PC/windows users left are those stuck with legacy systems (mostly in the corporate world) those who like to fiddle with the details and soup up their hot rod computers in weird and unreliable ways, mostly for gaming, and those who listen to the advice of the above two groups. Admittedly there are quite a few in these 3 camps, but as the Apple results for the last quarter show, those who are becoming enlightened are growing steadily in number. Come join us DPF!
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Fletch
Where did you get your version of portable PS, thats the one program in my portable folder that crashs.
I have ever single program i use working portable.
This mean i can go onto any windows box and have all(every single) the program i would have on my PC running from my portable harddrive.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Fletch – nobody is going to install MacDrive on their PC just so they can share files with me. It is easier just to use FAT-32. It’s only really a problem when other people have formatted their disks themselves using XP or Vista, and had no idea that they might need it to be mac compatible (or even knew that there was more than one file system!) It would be better in my view if we could just write to NTFS from the mac to start with.
As an aside, I tried Ubuntu 8.10 earlier in the year and while it is much easier than the previous linux machines I had used (eg red hat in 2003 and 2000) it still has a long way to come to be comparable to OSX. It’s just too fiddly, and I won’t bother because there is an easier way. Good idea if you’re a student and want to save money though.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I’ve got to join the chorus recommending a Mac here. *Especially* if you’re getting a laptop. The greater ease and reliability and speed of the sleep/wake cycle and ability to find, connect to, and remember WIFI and ethernet networks alone is worth it.
And if you end up really really hating it (which you won’t), the PC magazines generally find that Mac hardware runs Windows as well as or better than the best PC systems anyway.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Paulie … all the old gang have swung pretty much totally to Macs now. J and I, F-boy, BJC, the two RS’s etc etc. No problems at all with using them for work, I’m constantly swapping Office files with Windows users and haven’t found anything yet that hasn’t translated properly.
Windows 7 seems to be pretty much on a par with OS X. But the Mac hardware is way way better than the PC options. Better components, better screwed together, and a joy to use.
Not surprised to hear you’re rolling your own with Linux though.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Picking up on one of DPF’s comments though … one area where Windows (XP/Vista/7) absolutely hoses OS X is the Media Center features. Windows Media Center is great – probably one of the best products Microsoft have put together in the last 10 years.
Meanwhile Front Row on OS X is a toy. As is Apple TV.
That said, the new Mac Mini looks the perfect hardware for running Windows 7 Media Center on.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Mac’s are only used by Green voters. Steer clear of them. If you use a Mac you are just being a pretentious tosser.
Office 2007 was a bit traumatic but when you start using it and finally nail down where everything is it becomes so much better. And Office 2010 is nearly here and the ribbon is taken to new heights.
I stuck with XP as I had a couple of site licences so I could install it all over the place. So I missed Vista but am looking forward to getting Windows 7. Next year though as I am using the release candidate and it doesn’t expire until next year. That will give time for the bugs to be squashed.
[DPF: Heh Whale Oil has a Mac. I used to be a Mac user and in fact was the last person in Parliament who had a Mac at work until the borg overran me in 1997]
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
You obviously haven’t used win7 in such an environment then. It is that much better than its predecessors.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I would wait for Office 2010. Excel 2007 performs poorly if you’re using it for many heavy duty tasks, especially if you’re updating charts. I have macros that complete in 10 secs in 2003 that take 10 minutes in 2007 even on the most overpowered machines (I have timed them several times). Supposedly Excel 2010 fixes these problems.
Vista is fine.
If you get a Mac, don’t use it in public or I might mistake you for a wanker.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Don’t worry Sonny, if we see you in public using your PC we’ll just mistake you for a drongo with no imagination or taste
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hey DPF , If you get a mac then you will have to get a Toyota prius, then you will need a road bike and some lycra pants and a little dog.
Its not worth it bro, its not worth it.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Windows 7 is superb
I’ve been running the release candidate for some months
very stable, very easy to use
some nice improvements over XP & Vista
none of the Vista annoyances
I run it on my netbook with no issues
looking forward to also running it on a fully spec’d PC
Office 2003 will run under Windows 7
so you don’t have to switch to Office 2007
unless your 2003 license is tied to your XP PC?
that said, Office 2007 is better but takes awhile to get used to
especially for us old farts used to the classic menus etc
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Yes, you people that paid extra for your identical cookie cutter macs are all sooo interesting.
Don’t worry, like DPF, I’m fat, bald and my mother dresses me funny. The PC I use is the least of my worries.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
windows 7 is a must if you want to view freeview on your pc.
Freeview is built in, doesn’t work easily on vista (it might after major screwing around though).
I got me a hvr-2200 dual tuner card, works beautifully with win 7 out of the box.
On vista, I had no ends of trouble getting this to work.
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Glad to see positive comments about W7. I worked in IT before shifting into my current line, and I have to say that Vista was/is the WORST OS I have ever used. I really don’t get all those people above who say how how good Vista was. They obviously have not experienced a good OS.
As for Office 2007 – some good, mostly “why the F*** did they change _that_?” where they seemed to change something that was working well. Sure some things were simply a matter of finding where some function had been shifted but in a couple of cases the functionality appeared to disappear completely.
So roll on W7 – I will be giving it a go. Can’t be worse, can it?
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Interesting – mate of mine recently replaced his 3yo PC laptop because of a total failure in the flux capacitor or something on top of general wear and tear in everything else.
Meanwhile his girlfriend is currently driving a Mac laptop that is over 8 years old, still works perfectly despite no maintenance and is more than adequate for her word processing etc and her very frequent Facebooking. Perhaps Macs are just built for a different type of customer?
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Microsoft’s grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? | Charlie Brooker
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
“Meanwhile Front Row on OS X is a toy. As is Apple TV.
That said, the new Mac Mini looks the perfect hardware for running Windows 7 Media Center on.”
tru
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Yeah, I know Mark, but I can’t do it. I’m not much of a fan of media centre – but then I run Mythtv, which is way more powerful and free. It is a proper client-server, you can run your recorded programmes (or downloaded content) to every TV in the house from the same server. Windows Media has a way to go to catch up with Myth, but conversely Myth is fiddly to keep running.
A bunch of folks at work now have Macs – well against policy. They run the work image in a virtual machine, which seems to run faster than the standard work image does running natively. But, and it is a big but, they spend half their lives fiddling with the damn thing. I don’t mind doing that on my home computers (hence the Linux), but I really don’t have the patience to fiddle with my work machines.
As for DPF – well, depends what he’s looking for. If he wants something that just works, and is guaranteed to run his current apps, then really a Windows machine is the go, and Windows 7 sounds good (but I wouldn’t rule out Vista). If he wants a fashion statement (and, to be fair, one that makes you happy every time you use it, rather than being an appliance), then a Mac is the way to go. But be prepared for a bit of stuffing around if you have specific applications that you have to use in your job.
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Personally I do not like Vista
Democracydad – highly recommends Windows 7
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
The hardest thing about switching to a Mac?
Telling your parents you’re gay.
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:06 pm
GNU/Linux is the future, people.
Remember, you heard it here first!…………err……um well, probably not.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
What’s wrong with GNU/Darwin, with a dose of FreeBSD thrown in, and some Apple shiny on the top?
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Some of you Mac users should check out the sleep cycle on Windows, XP had it good, Vista had it better and it’s flawless in 7.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Windows 7 is… meh, unimpressive. I’ve been a full Mac convert for about a year now, mainly because I understand how to utilise its extremely solid UNIX base to its full potential.
Windows 7 is just like all other versions of windows – trying desperately to rescue flawed design concepts.
An example is the Windows reliance on the registry, which was a shitty, shitty design concept in the 80s and is even shittier now. It’s completely unnecessary, makes things overly complicated, and as a programmer it just makes you lazy.
On my PC box I am booting windows 7, vista, xp and ubuntu, but I don’t think I’ve even switched the thing on in the last 6 months. There’s nothing it can do that my Macbook can’t do better.
October 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I like shiny
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:19 pm
BUY A MAC
I did the sums two years ago and found that with a Mac I actually got a cheaper better machine than I would with a fully spec’ed PC laptop (which i suspect is what you also need.
Now I get to run any OS I want, so usually i work with Mac stuff – much easier or Office 2004 under Apple, or XP under the Parallel virtual machine or Ubuntu (but don’t use it. I have also installed Windows 7 (pre-release version) but could not see anything better in it than XP or Vista.
The problem with running XP is I still have t run all the virus protection and get all the updates loaded – Microsoft has just sent be 18 updates – that makes over 30 for the month …. and counting.
Apple also has issues and sends updates but usually only every 2-3 months.
I just upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard – cost me $100 (approx) – but that is for all the macs in my household – yes we are all slowly converting.
David, once you go to mac – you don’t go back. And converts like me are like reformed smokers
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Interesting review of Windows 7 here:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1169871
Guy reckons he put it on an old and slow laptop, and it goes really well. Microsoft made lots of optimisations for netbooks (which are new and slow laptops), and that also pays off for other low spec hardware.
October 23rd, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Howdy all, I haven’t been around here much this year, real life has taken me in other directions that are well away from political matters.
This topic is right up my alley though now that my professional life now is in IT.
First Office 2007, it’s a good suite once you get used to the ribbon. A lot more intuitive than Office 2003 especially the right click options that allow for on-the-fly formatting.
Now Windows 7, I’ve been using RTM (yes a legit version!) since the day MS released it on Technet way back in early August. I think it’s the best desktop (client) OS Microsoft have made since the days of Windows 2000 and NT4. There actually never was much wrong with Vista (not for me anyway). The IT media decided to bash the hell out of it. People need to remember that 7 wouldn’t be as good as it is without the hard yards MS did in developing Vista especially the much maligned security changes over XP. I also use 7 extensively in a network environment (aka in a client-server setup with Windows Server 2008) as well as at home and it handles these tasks just fine.
As for XP to me it’s now a dinosaur and users should plan to get rid of it. It’s an 8 year old OS that compared to 7 is past it’s use by. For those who still love it can be run as a virtual machine from inside 7 if you have any old applications that require XP to run.
The other important reason to dump XP is that 7 is a lot more futureproof which plenty of built in support for the latest devices and gadgets.