I heard rumors M$ were going to be copying several features from Apple's OSX. Looking at some snapshots of Windows 7 it seems that is true. The new Taskbar is almost a direct copy from OSX's 10+ year old Dock feature. Semi transparency .. another take from OSX. Widgets, another take. Soon Windows will be running OSX. nah .. windows is still based on that ancient DOS system whilst OSX is on the much more secure & directory efficient Unix system. But I wonder if win 7's task bar can be 'animated' like OSX's Dock can. Next they'll be copying the dashboard .. or have they already lol. (Mac's features do not look so 'plastic' as window 7's dupes.)

wow .. don't M$ have 'any' designers with 'original' ideas? Or is it their original ideas that create so many bugs & security holes in their softwares. lol

Well LOTR

Windows 7 is not so much about features, but there will be enough to keep the techies happy, as it is about selling computers and computer related peripherals.

First of all, when Win7 goes live consumers will need more powerful, i.e. new, computers, just to get the O/S to move. So throw out the old stuff, it won't work anymore, and get your shiny new computers. This is "good" for Intel, AMD and all the makers of various peripherals and software.

Second, it keeps a lot of IT technical people, i.e. consultants, network experts, software writers, etc. in jobs. In order to keep their skills up to date they have to learn about the new O/S.

Third, It keeps the qualification/examination cycle going and IT training centres open.

So, ladies and gents, Win7 may have old or new features but it's primary concern is to keep the IT industry (or a big part of it) going.

Therefore, we will always get a new Win O/S every few years, after the old one stops making money for MS, and we will always fall for it thinking that we are getting something new and exciting.

I would say to those looking to buy new computers with Win7 pre installed, just be careful that you don't buy old stock PCs, which were designed for XP or Vista, with Win7 installed. PC manufacturers have a habit of selling off their old stock as "New O/S Ready" when the CPU and installed memory are not powerful enough to run the new O/S.



UK Bob

Anybody ready for a third serving of NTFS?

Yumm Yumm

Same ridiculously hungry waste of RAM and CPU cycles garbage with old-style buttons 'the people' demanded.

While I agree with a lot of that, there is one thing I've heard quite different. Every single person I've talked to about W7 says it's much better and much less cpu cycle and RAM wasting than VISTA. It has far less driver problems than VISTA ever did. As a whole I got very positive feedback.

I haven't tried it myself, so I can't speak from own experience.

I'm going to stick with XP until I have to change...

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
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Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

I will be buying a new Laptop with two drives and lots of room now, so I'll probably at least try to dual boot XP and W7 at first to see how it runs.

remember to install XP first, then W7....the rule being install oldest first to avoid conflicts..

__________________


So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

Yeah been there done that , But is that still the case on the separate drives?

yep....because windoze products detect each other...

just in case you don't know...windoze will automatically create a boot loader menu, i.e. there is no need for any special software...the last OS installed will be the first on the created list...

I suggest for ease of defragmentation you create partitions on each of the drive for the OS...I use 30GB partitions...you only need to defragment the OS and its associated softwares...so what I do is to either download to another partition, or move information out of the OS partition after downloading...it takes a hell of a lot less time to defragment 30GB as opposed to lets say 160 GB...

also, if you acquire a lot of archived materials its way faster to extract to another physical HDD....

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
_____________________________________________

Beware of the big 3 insurance companies in Texas! Read your policies carefully (maybe you'll need a lawyer) Allstate, Farmers & State Farm are overextended and their 'coverage' is worthless...a true waste of your money Read This

For many years now (10+) I've been in habit of keeping all personal & sharing files off the OS drive. And where possible installing the apps to a partition of their own. Thus having static & dynamic drives & partitions. So if a drive fails .. I don't necessarily lose important info. The harder working drives likely to fail before the others. And on OSX there are other advantages with VM & scratch disk options. Some apps behave better on a drive/partition of their own (on mac at least). But then, some OSX apps demand to be installed on the system drive & might refuse to run/update (properly) unless situated there.

Edit: I guess I should mention I have 4 internal HDD's. Two of these are partitioned. Due to the way OSX works, I leave the OSX system drive to itself so it can make use of VM without the drive needing to spend energy on anything other than the system where possible. I divide the disks & partitions up according to purpose (7). Video work, p2p & audio & video work, system, iTunes, applications, static documents, & an alternate system drive. As suggested above, I've used a similar work approach for many years on my previous mac computers. A handful of firewire 400/800 external drives for backup. Apple's Time Machine seems extremely good for backup.