Windows 7 it is...now for my wish list
Monday, October 13, 2008 by Frogboy | Discussion: Personal Computing
So it's official, the successor Windows Vista is Windows 7.
Windows 7 is designed to be all the things Windows Vista wasn't including:
- It's faster. MUCH faster.
- It's cleaner. The UI has been cleaned up a lot.
- It's easier to use. A lot of the functionality is more streamlined
- It's richer. The ribbon seen in Office becomes part of the OS allowing app developers to have a standardized way of taking their apps to the next generation UI (I love the ribbon).
- The UAC is...a little bit better. I still think Microsoft should have a setting to allow signed applications to be always okay'd by users if they want.
- It apparently has a new Start menu and taskbar.
- The included applets are modernized
- It may come with native VHD (virtual hard disks) support
- Better system tray handling
That's all well and good but I have a few other things I'd like to see added to the list:
- Make it 64-bit only. PLLEEASE!
- Give us better and cleaner access to manage the junk that loads on boot-up. (Stardock TweakWindows 7 will certainly do this otherwise)
- Make it a LOT easier to share drives over the Internet
Let me talk about 64-bit a little bit. A lot of people don't realize just how much effort developers have to go through to support 64-bit and 32-bit. It's a mess. Windows 7 is a great opportunity to cut the umbilical cord on legacy 32-bit. Most modern PCs are already 64-bit. They're just running a 32-bit OS which is a shame. Drivers, desktop enhancements, and all kinds of other things have to do special versions for 64-bit because most people run 32-bit OSes on their 64-bit hardware.
Memory is incredibly cheap and yet we're still stuck with a 2 gig limit on program memory use (a pain for game developers trying to have lots of rich textures). My next PC is going to have 16 gigs on it minimum.
Moreover, the handle issue of 32-bit NT OSes pretty much goes away at 64-bit. It's just a vastly more robust experience.
I'm typing this on a Thinkpad T400 which is running Vista 64 and the experience has been phenomenal (and it only has 4 gigs but I end up with an extra gig of disk caching).
Consider the performance ramifications of a system that has massive amounts of memory. You leave your PC on long enough and you could end up with massive amounts of it stored in a huge disk cache. Windows is using 2GB for caching my system right now and the performance difference is noticeable - very noticeable. If I could get 8GB for this machine, I would.
So hopefully, we'll see Windows 7 get a lot more 64-bit users.
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Reply #2 Monday, October 13, 2008 9:43 PM
Agreed on all counts, Brad. My main system is Vista Ultimate 64 and it is the best, most productive OS I have ever used...and I have used (and still do use) them ALL. 
Reply #3 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 1:30 AM
System OEMs are guilty of preloading 32 bit Windows on 64 bit hardware by default. I run XP Pro 32 and 64 on this computer. However, I rarely boot into 32 bit, which is only for those things that won't run in 64, like my LaserJet 1018 (backup printer).
We do need to get away from 32 bit.
Oh, I have 8 GB installed and my mobo can handle a max of 32 GB.
Reply #4 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 7:55 AM
True true. It might make sense for MS to support dual booting 32 and 64 on new OEM installs. I quad booted this machine to pick which OS would be a default mode and Vista/64 won out. I think if people ran the 64 bit version of the OS, they wouldn't even realize they had made the switch.
Reply #5 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 8:11 AM
So this would be the milestone marker where we start to pretend Vista never existed (just like ME)? 
Reply #6 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 2:35 PM
I understand MS would like W7 to be 64-bit to 256-bit. Any word on their progress to >64-bit?
Reply #7 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 3:05 PM
Also,
Windows 7 will not come with Windows Mail, Windows Calendar, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, etc by default. THis would give the user an option of what to download and install when they please. And, IMO, it'd make it a leaner/meaner machine too.
Reply #8 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 4:12 PM
One does not need to dual boot 32 and 64 in order to run 32 bit applications, provided the installers are not 16 bit. The problem is hardware that does not have 64 bit drivers.
Reply #9 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 4:17 PM
My wish, since I'm not going to change from a PC is that this version of the Windows OS is good enought to stay around for say 10 years. Yeah I know, technology advancements won't allow that to happen.
Reply #10 Tuesday, October 14, 2008 4:37 PM
I agree entirelly with ALL of Frogboy's points.
I am really really *really* looking forward to having only x64-bit os's from now on. This way devs can focus on that, and let me use all 4 of my cores, and all 8gigs of my ram. The future! 
Reply #12 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:39 AM
Reply #13 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:54 AM
Haha, I agree with all of Frogboy's points as well, and Windows 7 is already an improvement to Vista, and I'm just using the Milestone 1 (Build 6519) of Windows 7 now. It goes so much faster than Vista already. I loaded the same stuff on both partitions, and Windows 7 boots 2x as fast, if not more. And of course, 64-bit all the way.
Reply #14 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:22 AM
Windows Seven does look to be incredible. They also have the UI being overhauled a little more than has been shown though I believe. As they have the guy who did Adobe Lightroom working on it. Given that as of milestone 1 or 2 they already had it running and using less then 512MB of RAM.
Seven (interlaced with Windows Cloud), is going to bring Windows back, and ensure Microsoft dominance of the OS realm. Hopefully banishing Mac forever (course cancer might do that). Linux is fine though, as it typically requires a more adept user.
Reply #15 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:34 AM
I'm all for the 64b only option. Sadly I paid out over a grand for two copies of Vista Ultimate to get the 64b disks on release. So I hope to hell they give a fat discount for upgrades on W7 and allow the upgrade "version" to be installed CLEAN. I dont see why they dont include a duel serial number system for doing such things in the first place. It is a bitch to have to strip out the DRM to use the OS when one rebuilds a system.
Reply #16 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 10:34 AM
So Brad, going by your list of featurea and "MUCH faster" improvements in Windows 7, it sounds like you might have your hands on an early beta or something.... so do you, being a MS partner n' all? And if so, have you been given any indication when public betas might be available? I've not read a lot about Windows 7 to date, but I saw a couple of MS video clips and it looks really interesting, so I'd love to get my hands on a beta version when they become public.
Reply #17 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:22 PM
Reply #18 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:29 PM
Dvorak wrote some interesting stuff on his wishlist for Windows 7:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2332430,00.asp
Reply #19 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:47 PM
Looks like it won't be this time around. I had figured that they'd being doing this for sure. My guess is if it is going to have 32-bit then it may be the last, or close to it. Many people are using Vista 64-bit unlike XP 64-bit. It's popularity is rising so I'd imagine that it could very well be the standard in the few years to come.
Sort of, they are just modified imagines of Vista's start menu/taskbar. Nothing big.
Yeah, looks like they finally redid the System Tray. About damn time, I heard that even in Vista parts of the system tray code date back to Win 95.
Reply #20 Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:07 PM
I've tried hard, but my hatred of the ribbon has actually grown. It truly has made a modest, but apparently permanent, reduction of my efficiency in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook message windows. Office 12 hates power users, as far as I can tell. And anyone who actually understood and used named styles.
Is there any sign that it will at least become customizable in the simple sense that so many of us in the Office old guard grew to love? I could deal with the real-estate waste if I just had the chance to make *my own* decisions about what tools I needed to see where.
Or maybe, despite Brad's mysterious-to-me love of this little bit of UI authoritarianism, Stardock will come out with a TweakThing to help us old fogies out?
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Reply #1 Monday, October 13, 2008 9:20 PM
I look forward to 64-bit, I believe my system can handle it since it has a dual core centrino. But I am curious on your take of what some have said about Linux already using more than 2 or 3 Gigs without being 64-bit and how Mac already does this as well. Just wondering.