Rixstep
 About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Home » Industry Watch

Windoze Se7en: The Pros

Take it on the light side.


Get It

Try It

Preston Gralla of Computerworld thinks he might just have se7en 'good' reasons to 'upgrade' to Windoze Se7en (presumably from Windoze 6icks or earlier).

'Here are the seven top reason [sic] you should switch to Windows Se7en, whether from XP or Vista', he writes. Note well he doesn't say 'from Linux or Mac OS X'. He knows he's be a fool to say so. Nobody who finally escapes from Microsoft ever comes back.

1. The new taskbar.

The taskbar is now like Apple's Dock. Oh that's funny. 'Microsoft show good taste in stealing from the best', writes Gralla. There you have it - a grabbag of goodies all in the same sentence. Scary implications such as Microsoft ever having good taste, it's good taste to steal - and of course the humiliating admission someone else's stuff is actually better.

But why choose a pale copy? If you really want dazzling technology then why not take it from the people who invented it and make it best? Why take it from the nutballs at Microsoft for twice or three times what the original costs? What price stupidity?

2. Jump lists.

For those who feel uneasy at the prospect of even having to share the same room with a Windows box: jump lists are Dock menus. Yet there's no admission this is also stolen. The hope is not too many people really believe they're contemplating the first ever authentic Microsoft de novo innovation. Because they're not.

As with all things Microsoft: inadequacy is obfuscated with unnecessary frills. Simplicity - the kind that says 'elegant' - is simply not there. Given a short time of use, jump lists are destined to become as annoying as anything else in Windows.

3. 'Aero Peek'.

A half-arsed attempt to steal Apple's Exposé without getting caught. Now you get faded windows instead of having them scoot offscreen. Whoopee. About as useful - and ultimately annoying - as jump lists. But expect the lusers to claim it's a watershed in science akin to the paperclip. And not to forget: 'Aero' itself steals both its name type and its technology from you-know-who.

4. 'It's just plain faster'.

Leave the last word off that sentence and you get no argument from anyone. Of course that's not a good reason to buy the $300 of junk anymore. But whatever. Faster than what is the question. Speed doesn't matter. As Microsofties have been known to say: 'when things get too slow we just throw more hardware at it'. Speed isn't a software issue with Microsoft. They're always running machines you won't get for a few more years. They can do this because they get obscene sums of money from idiots buying their products.

5. 'UAC is now usable'.

No it is not. It is definitely not. It bitches less but it's not more usable. 'Usability' implies safe use and Windows will never be safe. Period. All Microsoft have done here is revert to where they were before the abortive V*STA. Of course the media tried to point this out but they were ignored. Punters forgot how things used to be; and Windows punters are used to getting clobbered by script kiddie code - so what's the objection?

6. 'Better document organisation'.

Oh yeah that's just what people need. The poor Internet is teetering under the combined onslaught of SMTP mail traffic that today is 97% spam produced by Windows computers, over 200,000 (some people at Microsoft say close to 1,000,000) strains of malware in the wild - and who's this idiot saying a good reason to take an upgrade to this criminally unsafe system is it has better document organisation? Whoever he is: he'd better not let on to his own relatives he feels this way. They'll try to get him put away (permanently).

7. Better search.

Better search? BETTER SEARCH? And then that's it? These are se7en good reasons to dump good money after bad - to dump three hundred motherfucking United States bananas onto a jalopy that won't hold under the pressure?

Faster? Better documentation? Good taste in stealing from the competition who are better at almost everything? These are good reasons to spend over $300 on this piece of crap?

Apple's coming Snow Leopard - due out before Windows Se7en begins breathing fire on the world - costs only $29 in upgrading from current systems. Which means just about everybody. Ubuntu upgrades (or full systems for that matter) cost nothing - not even for shipping and handling.

See Also
Computerworld: Seven reasons for upgrading to Windows Se7en

About | ACP | Buy | Industry Watch | Learning Curve | News | Products | Search | Substack
Copyright © Rixstep. All rights reserved.