Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mika on January 20, 2010, 05:02:47 pm
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Got a new computer at work yesterday, and my first taste of new Microsoft operating system since XP and harnessing the processing power of an octacore.
The following expresses my feelings quite accurately:
:confused:
:wtf:
:hopping:
:mad:
Despite the improvements in the OS itself, it is all lost with the new GUI. I can't find the simplest thing in the mess. Luckily, some people have provided the Classic Shell, and potentially prevented me from rolling it back to Windows XP 32bit (thank god for user support, I don't need to do that myself!) and losing almost half of the installed RAM. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be major differences with multiprocessor support so the only advantage of 7 is more RAM, which I can grudgingly forego.
For those interested, the Classic menu can be found at: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
I wish they had provided the menu also in 95/98 style, I find it cleanest with minimum amount of clutter. Oh well, I can use the XP Classic, but find the extra colors distracting.
Curiously, I never heard in any reviews that the old start menu has been radically overhauled.
At one point I couldn't even find a program that I minimized. Thought never occured I should look at the bottom right corner to find that ~ 16x16 pixel image of the program. And the task bar, oh the task bar. It just HAD to be changed yes no? And I don't understand why. New one doesn't offer any benefits for me, the first things I did in XP was removing any and all quick launch icons to start with and use larger desktop icons instead.
Some old engineering wisdom:
- When something isn't broken, don't try to fix it. I never had any problems with start menu to begin with.
- Keep It Simple, Stupid. This principle should apparently be emphasized more in computer sciences.
I'll be posting more impressions as I go. Be advised that this may end in sorrow and re-installing the XP nevertheless (and thus my sorrow is transferred to user support, rightfully there where it belongs).
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Actually the new Taskbar is much, much simpler than the XP one :p
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I actually found the new interface to be more intuitive.
Curiously, I never heard in any reviews that the old start menu has been radically overhauled.
Not to sound aggressive or anything, but have actually read any reviews? The new taskbar is probably the most talked about thing in Windows 7.
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Not to disapparage you Mika but I find the new Windows 7 taskbar to be infinitely more usable and I am becoming more and more frustrated with the Vista and XP machines at work. I MUCH prefer the Windows 7 interface and it took all of 10 minutes to completely master. The jump lists, simplified start menu, integrated search, and taskbar changes are superior from many usability and UI design standpoints (in my opinion anyways) as well.
I can sense your frustration but I wonder if you just wanted exactly the same thing as before or were willing to try something new. I do a lot of user training and I find many people to be closed off to a new way of doing something purely because it isn't exactly like it was before. Like the innumerable secretaries that prefer old office over Office 2007 only because it doesn't look identical to what they have used for years and not if one is more efficient. Just because something always was one way doesn't mean it is a good idea to continue doing exactly the same thing :)
I'm not trying to egg you on... I'm quite legitimately interested in what the actual problems were for you. You started... but I had trouble following.
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So it still eats up about half you RAM then, eh? I was hoping 7 would have stepped away from the ludicrous overly-system intensive crap and left your machine with most of its processing power at-the-ready. Proof that my sig is not inaccurate...
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I think what Mika meant was that he would have lost half of his RAM if he had gone back to XP, not that 7 used up half of his RAM.
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So it still eats up about half you RAM then, eh? I was hoping 7 would have stepped away from the ludicrous overly-system intensive crap and left your machine with most of its processing power at-the-ready. Proof that my sig is not inaccurate...
No it hasn't and the last benchmarks I saw placed it behind Windows Vista and Windows XP in most categories (though it did occasionally win a speed war). If youre running 64-bit (the only version anyone should run of NT6) you should be fine. I'm actually running Win 7 Pro 64 on my desktop, with a 4GHz Wolfdale and 6GB DDR2 800.
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From what I've read about the new taskbar, I will probably revert it to the old style. I like some things such as the ability to rearrange the items in it, but I believe it lumps programs under one button, which means it would take two clicks (or a click and a mouseover) to switch between programs instead of just one.
I wish they had provided the menu also in 95/98 style, I find it cleanest with minimum amount of clutter.
You can apparently do this with some tweaking. I rarely use the start menu anyway (or the desktop for that matter), so I might not bother.
I do a lot of user training and I find many people to be closed off to a new way of doing something purely because it isn't exactly like it was before. Like the innumerable secretaries that prefer old office over Office 2007 only because it doesn't look identical to what they have used for years and not if one is more efficient. Just because something always was one way doesn't mean it is a good idea to continue doing exactly the same thing
I can see where they are coming from. Why spend time learning a new UI when the existing one works fine and you're used to it? You could spend that time actually doing something fun or productive. :p
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Jump into it. I found NT6's GUI a lot better than XP's. By leagues, in fact. If you can't find something, start typing and you'll likely find it. Control panel's basically useless now, though.
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From what I've read about the new taskbar, I will probably revert it to the old style. I like some things such as the ability to rearrange the items in it, but I believe it lumps programs under one button, which means it would take two clicks (or a click and a mouseover) to switch between programs instead of just one.
that's the default but you can change it.
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From what I've read about the new taskbar, I will probably revert it to the old style. I like some things such as the ability to rearrange the items in it, but I believe it lumps programs under one button, which means it would take two clicks (or a click and a mouseover) to switch between programs instead of just one.
that's the default but you can change it.
do explain, please?
i used 7 x64 for about a month or so, and the taskbar was really going on my nerves.
also, driver problems, to boot, my machine needed on average at least two reboots until it booted into something useable, and random lockups during working with it (might be related to a creative labs audigy2 soundcard which was crap by any measure, the card got punted out, but that didnt stop 7 from crashing constantly.)
i also have a big beef with the control panel. mostly due to the way the icons are listed, if it wasnt green text, i find it'd be much more useable to me.
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Seek and thou shall find. I didn't need to install Classic Gui to get most of the Classic Gui... You can switch on in Windows itself.
Oh, and the 'new' start menu? It has been there since XP... You just can't revert to the old one anymore, but I like the new one better anyway.
I like the fact that I don't need to worry about my video drivers anymore, and I like some of the features that apperently where in Vista (Readyboost, wallpaper rotation)... In other words, I like the new OS.
also, driver problems, to boot, my machine needed on average at least two reboots until it booted into something useable, and random lockups during working with it (might be related to a creative labs audigy2 soundcard which was crap by any measure, the card got punted out, but that didnt stop 7 from crashing constantly.)
You sure it's related to drivers? Windows 7 had all those public and free Beta, RC, and RTM releases up front to make sure that all the drivers worked in the first place.
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i used 7 x64 for about a month or so, and the taskbar was really going on my nerves.
The only part of the taskbar that gets on my nerves is how you right-click and get a (relatively) long transition and a window with a useless frame! Other than that I mostly like the new dock and taskbar.
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Seek and thou shall find. I didn't need to install Classic Gui to get most of the Classic Gui... You can switch on in Windows itself.
Oh, and the 'new' start menu? It has been there since XP... You just can't revert to the old one anymore, but I like the new one better anyway.
I like the fact that I don't need to worry about my video drivers anymore, and I like some of the features that apperently where in Vista (Readyboost, wallpaper rotation)... In other words, I like the new OS.
also, driver problems, to boot, my machine needed on average at least two reboots until it booted into something useable, and random lockups during working with it (might be related to a creative labs audigy2 soundcard which was crap by any measure, the card got punted out, but that didnt stop 7 from crashing constantly.)
You sure it's related to drivers? Windows 7 had all those public and free Beta, RC, and RTM releases up front to make sure that all the drivers worked in the first place.
yes, creatives x64 drivers sucked donkey balls. i'll wait for the sp1 to stabilise a bit and then switch to 7
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Windows 7 is still a system hog and is loaded with DRM. I'll pass.
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The non-classic start menu is inferior to the classic one simply because you can't do this with it (or at least I haven't found a way to do it yet):
(http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/1903/startmenuexample.png)
The main disadvantage in the new start menu is that it hides all programs into a scrollable list instead of expanding the size of that list to fit the amoung of programs installed. Me no likey. I prefer seeing the whole list at once. A definite bonus, though, is the ability to just type program name and it'll either run it or at least find it for you, but on the other hand I have it done on XP via PATH environmental variable, which means I can basically start my most common programs via either the Run dialogue or command line if I so desire.
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The main disadvantage in the new start menu is that it hides all programs into a scrollable list instead of expanding the size of that list to fit the amoung of programs installed. Me no likey. I prefer seeing the whole list at once.
This kind of feature really annoys me because it really is treating the user like a complete idiot. If I felt I have too many programs in my start menu, the simple solution is a special manuever I call "right click, delete" to get rid of the ones I don't want.
EDIT: It's also times like this that makes me yearn for the days when your start interface was just a black screen with white text that read "c:\>" with a blinking cursor next to it, back then people had to actually "learn".
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Yes, I meant that XP is limited to 3 Gb, while Windows 7 can go beyond.
I did read that the taskbar was overhauled. I never read that the classic start bar would have been completely annihilated. I expected it to be down there somewhere, as a selectable option. I really don't get what was the problem with the taskbar and why it was overhauled, I never had more than 5 open applications and it was easy to navigate with it already. At home or work. Now I need to decipher to which program the icon belongs; how does that really make things easier?
What it comes to start menu, I find it almost unusable. Since the advent of GUIs I haven't needed to "search" for anything. I know already where it is. So the additional search function actually makes things worse for me. The bad thing for me at the new start menu is the damn scroll bar and that it doesn't show the whole program listing at the time. And that stuff keeps repositioning itself, while the old one was static, i.e. I knew where to find something unless I did something. The Windows 7 Start Menu Classic theme is not at all the same as the good old 95/98 start menu.
Also, if you try the scroll bar and miniature program listing with a computer intended for CAD/Optics applications and you'll find that you most likely need a magnification glass to see the program names! If I use a design program for several weeks (night and day, night times automatized), I'm pretty sure I can bare the extra second GUI needs to open the extra folder view, if it takes at all. After all, I only need to keep it in alphabetical order to quickly find the uncommon program I need. Common programs and documents that I frequently need have already been quicklinked on the desktop.
Regarding the decision of taking Windows 7, I only needed it to see the extra RAM I got, and the new security architecture to keep the computer safe and user support happy. The bottom line is, I didn't need anything else than XP 64bit, but with support and security available to keep that new hardware working. I didn't get what I wanted.
My colleague has been using Office 2007 for a year now. He can't still do the simplest thing with it and now I'm supposed to learn it. Fat chance, here comes Office 2003 (or Open Office) and Microsoft progress be damned. Don't get me started with "you don't accept the change". I absolutely don't want it to change. I already can use the XP UI quickly enough. And since I work in the research world, I need to learn new things constantly and continuously, related to Physics, Optics, Electronics and Mechanics. Operating systems, however, is not one of them and I really shouldn't be bothered with them. Operating system is supposed to make my work easier, and it got already pretty easy. So don't mess with my daily work by changing the GUI.
I'm on the same lines with Herra and Kosh with the typing the program name on the GUI and let computer search for it. I, for starters, have never needed this utility after I got a computer with a graphical user interface. To back Herra, I used the same trick in DOS times, setting a path variable to include the commonly used program directories. Or more recently putting some macros behind the right click, one of the most frequent being BMP to PNG conversion. It is quite nice to do it with a mouse click, rather than writing stuff to console.
Install several programs whose name starts with, for example, such uncommon combination of letters as "WIN" and see how easy it is to select the right one. Remember, it was supposed to do stuff quicker and easier right? Also, anyone wanna bet that command line switches are going to be used a lot more often visibly now that command line is supported in GUI? That would mean saying hello to typos and lacking documentation, I also sincerely people would be interested in hexadesimals. On the other hand, it could feel retro, like going back to home as in good old C:\> times.
I think if I'm gonna have to do some relearning, might as well then learn completely new computer architecture. The next computer at home is going to be a Mac. Most of the scientific figures seem to use it already, and maybe there is some wisdom behind it. I don't intend to learn operating systems at work (this costs several hundreds of euros per working DAY), I reserve that stuff for home, if I do it at all. Microsoft seems to have yet again ignored the people who do scientific or engineering work with their newest operating system.
I probably should tone down the harshest criticism, but cannot be bothered at this time of day. I need to catch a flight anyways in about six hours and need to sleep. If somebody got offended, I didn't mean that. I'm simply annoyed to the extreme by this new operating system.
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Oh I hope nobody was offended by comments about an OS Mika :)
I did study GUI design in a course and so I REALLY like to talk about it. Often harder to do it in words than to sit next to someone and show it off or do a presentation. I often find it frustrating to see really nice changes to a GUI and see it rejected out of hand (in my opinion)... I think that MS has finally hired some folks who do professional GUI work and that the payoffs are a much better system than before. The old system is entrenched but the old system also frustrated the hell out of me so many times...
One thing I think most people can agree with on is that if it isn't a big deal to provide a "classic" mode then why not keep it in there. XP had Win 98 classic start menu and so maybe 7 could have an XP classic start menu but I know I'd never use it. Instead of using the All Programs menu for accessing applications I pin them to my taskbar. It does take a workflow change but instead of click, click, scan for item and click.... I have one click.
I am pretty surprised that a co-worker of yours can't handle the switch to Office 2007. It did take me a week... maybe that would be a week in lost productivity to some but the time I've saved in the intervening time and the reduced frustration of looking through countless layers (sometimes) of drop down menus is huge. I've been using that system since I was 5 years old so it's not like I'm not new to it... but the grouping of like related items into tabs and then making those materials available from there with a single click is more efficient. In the next office I hope they integrate search for tools there... so if you can't find print you type it in and all printing functions become part of a search tab. That'd be great too.
I get wanting to stick with the classic way of doing things but I honestly think that a little workflow change and a bit of time spent means a much more efficient virtual workspace. I for one do not want to go backwards to Office 2003 or Windows XP... I really don't.
EDIT: One final thing about Office 2007... there is a addon from either MS or someone else that adds a tab along the top that has all of the tools grouped in drop down menus like the old office. So you can make use of the newer technologies and increased limits of 2007 without using the UI... if that helps...
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I'm not that reliant on the Windows interface in the first place, so I don't expect to change any habits when moving to Windows 7 (which I only want for the 64-bit support). I have used third party programs in place of many parts of the OS interface since the Windows 95 days. The one exception to that is the taskbar, apart from standard menus, buttons, etc. within programs.
The only part of the taskbar that gets on my nerves is how you right-click and get a (relatively) long transition and a window with a useless frame! Other than that I mostly like the new dock and taskbar.
Any kinds of transitions, fades and other interface animations are the first things I would disable. They make computers feel incredibly slow and unresponsive.
What it comes to start menu, I find it almost unusable. Since the advent of GUIs I haven't needed to "search" for anything. I know already where it is. So the additional search function actually makes things worse for me.
I have also wondered why people make a big deal of the various search features of Vista and 7. Do people really search that often? I do it maybe once a year. :p
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I have also wondered why people make a big deal of the various search features of Vista and 7. Do people really search that often? I do it maybe once a year. :p
I search every day...at work and at home. Sometimes quicker than clicking to where the document I was working on is located from My Documents and through my layers of organization.
Seriously... you search once a year? :)
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The only times I can recall having to search is if a file got saved/moved to the wrong place due to an accidental click in a save dialog, but I didn't see exactly what I clicked, or if I'm trying to install drivers directly from an inf file and am checking if Windows comes with a particular driver file. Obviously, these things don't happen very often. :p
My files and programs are organized pretty well and I can access them quickly from a third party file manager program I use, much faster than I could from the Windows Explorer interface.
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You can apparently do this with some tweaking. I rarely use the start menu anyway (or the desktop for that matter), so I might not bother.
Color me confused, but if you don't use either the Start menu or the desktop, just what is it you're using? :p
EDIT: It's also times like this that makes me yearn for the days when your start interface was just a black screen with white text that read "c:\>" with a blinking cursor next to it, back then people had to actually "learn".
Those days were terrible and should be left buried in the past. All of my programming classes in college were done via Unix command-line, and even after a few semesters, I still found even the most simple of tasks to be incredibly and needlessly frustrating due to the lack of a GUI. Why should I be forced to mentally visualize an entire folder tree when the capability to do so graphically for me has existed for something like 15 years? Maybe it's just me, but I find any sort of graphical file interface to be infinitely more intuitive than its text-based counterpart. Why muck around with mv and cp and far-too-long directory names when you can actually manually place your files right where you want them to go?
I do agree that there is a great deal of value in basic computer literacy, but not to the point when archaic UI intentionally obfuscates a particular function. The goal should be to make tasks easier for the user, not force them to jump through five flaming hoops in order to perform a simple file manipulation.
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Those days were terrible and should be left buried in the past. All of my programming classes in college were done via Unix command-line, and even after a few semesters, I still found even the most simple of tasks to be incredibly and needlessly frustrating due to the lack of a GUI. Why should I be forced to mentally visualize an entire folder tree when the capability to do so graphically for me has existed for something like 15 years? Maybe it's just me, but I find any sort of graphical file interface to be infinitely more intuitive than its text-based counterpart. Why muck around with mv and cp and far-too-long directory names when you can actually manually place your files right where you want them to go?
It was a statement out of annoyance more than anything else. I don't actually miss it that much, but I really don't appreciate new OS's like Windows 7 treating us like morons and dumbing down its userbase even more. They had the GUI done right with Windows 2000 (except for its lack of msconfig :p)
Oh, and the command for displaying the directory in dos was "dir /w". :p Dos was the first OS I used, but I didn't learn it really well because I was young and also DOS was on the way out anyway (good riddence).
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Just a quick question here, has there been any significant speed increase or otherwise over Vista x32? I'm considering getting 7 and wondering if I should bother with the extra RAM upgrade as well (I only have 2 GB).
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I have also wondered why people make a big deal of the various search features of Vista and 7. Do people really search that often? I do it maybe once a year. :p
its a handy way to open any program, hit start, type 1st couple letters and it shows up.
easy way to get to more things than looking through the lists.
...not to say they are terrible hard to look through, its just easier
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Color me confused, but if you don't use either the Start menu or the desktop, just what is it you're using?
Basically what I said in my last post. It's a file manager utility called Turbo Navigator, but I use it like my desktop and have it open at all times. I have 10 or so common shortcuts I use in the start menu, but anything else (including all games) is opened by going to its exe directly through that program. My program locations are organized well enough that this is quick and easy to do. If needed, I could stop using the start menu altogether by just moving those shortcuts to another, easily accessible folder.
I used to use the start menu and desktop more several years ago, but got tired of maintaining them the way I wanted them to be, and now find this program a lot more powerful and convenient. I still clean out the shortcuts that installers put in those places though.
its a handy way to open any program, hit start, type 1st couple letters and it shows up.
easy way to get to more things than looking through the lists.
...not to say they are terrible hard to look through, its just easier
I haven't done this, but I would expect it to be a little slow and unresponsive due to hard drive activity. (even if the indexing features are on, you would get extra HD activity at other times)
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The reason I used to like C:> is because it was incredibly simple yet powerful. Not to mention that M$ actually has a good bit of official documentation, so it's not like Linux in command-line, where every command depends on packages installed and appending "--h" still tells you absolutely nothing. Perhaps great for those experienced in Linux, but to need an internet connection to do just about anything?
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so it's not like Linux in command-line, where every command depends on packages installed and appending "--h" still tells you absolutely nothing. Perhaps great for those experienced in Linux, but to need an internet connection to do just about anything?
bull****? the base linux commandline is powerfull enough, also, dont make me drag out my dads book about unix commands, its got about 500 pages, and weighs about 2 kilos :D
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So it still eats up about half you RAM then, eh? I was hoping 7 would have stepped away from the ludicrous overly-system intensive crap and left your machine with most of its processing power at-the-ready. Proof that my sig is not inaccurate...
People still believe this? Prefetching makes your processing power far more "at-the-ready" than leaving it unused does.
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So it still eats up about half you RAM then, eh? I was hoping 7 would have stepped away from the ludicrous overly-system intensive crap and left your machine with most of its processing power at-the-ready. Proof that my sig is not inaccurate...
People still believe this? Prefetching makes your processing power far more "at-the-ready" than leaving it unused does.
except in the cases when it utterly fails to release the "cached" crap for some memory intensive apps. which almost always ends up with tearing into the page file and slowing the system down to... a crawl to say the least.
if you run something that can on occasion tear into more than 3 gigs of ram, and you have only 4 gigs... well, lets just say, YOU WANT YOUR RAM CLEAN OF CRAP THAT VISTA OR 7 THINK MIGHT BE USEFULL.
sorry. just a bit pissed off since it managed to lock up the pc once again.
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Thought this was an interesting take on 7 / XP ... Mods feel free to split this, I don't want to hijack.
If you love Windows XP, you'll hate Windows 7
Posted by Ed Bott @ 12:21 pm
My colleague Jason Perlow has been playing with Windows 7, and he hates it. The sad thing is, all the things he hates are improvements, in my opinion, which just goes to show that you really can’t please everyone. But what’s sad to see is that every setting Jason describes as broken is in fact easily customizable so it works the way he wants it.
The crux of Jason’s complaint is simple: “I learned how to use Windows in 1998. Don’t change a thing.” Here’s his main argument in a nutshell:
I find it difficult to believe that Windows 7 was created to be easier to use than Vista — if anything, they’ve introduced a number of UI changes that make the system much harder to navigate, particularly if you’ve never used Vista and are going direct to Windows 7 from Windows XP, which is the path that many users will experience.
Yes, there’s a learning curve. And if you insist on using those techniques you learned back in the last millennium with software that was designed differently, you will be frustrated. But I believe that an open-minded XP user who actually takes a few minutes to learn how the new UI works will be more productive very quickly. The secret is breaking old habits and developing new ones. Let’s take all three of Jason’s examples and work through them.
Jason: “The ‘Run’ option is no longer directly accessible from the Start Menu, you have to get to it via a Search.”
Where do I begin? First of all, the Search box at the bottom of the Start menu does nearly everything the Run box did, and much more. If you begin typing a command, it appears in the Start menu, where you can click or press Enter to run it. With the Run box, I have to type a command in full and possibly even include its path. If I mistype the name, I get an error message. Want to play Solitaire? With the Search box, you can begin typing sol and the first choice on the list will be Solitaire, ready to run when you press Enter:
(http://i49.tinypic.com/2mgpcar.png)
But the worst part of the Run box is that it requires you to learn the names of executable files. In XP, if you open the Run box, type solitaire, and press Enter you’ll get a cryptic error message. You need to know that the name of the executable is sol.exe. Want to play Minesweeper? You’re SOL with the Run box until you learn that the executable is named Winmine.exe. The Vista/Win7 Search box, by contrast, works with program names and executable files.
Still not convinced? You want the old- school Run box? So just press Windows key+R. That shortcut has been around since the mid-1990s and still works in Windows Vista and Win7.
Not good enough? Fine. Customize the Vista/Win7 Start menu to add the Run command and you can party like it’s 1998. Right-click Start, choose Properties, click Customize, and select this check box.
(http://i46.tinypic.com/w8wb60.png)
Jason: “Another thing that greatly frustrated me was the fact that a fresh install of Windows 7 gives the end-user a blank slate on the Desktop, removing the familiar ‘Computer’, ‘Network’, ‘Control Panel’ and ‘My Documents’ icons, requiring users to get to those functions and folders via the Start Menu.”
Jason thinks this is “change for the sake of change.” I disagree. I’ve been talking to Windows UI designers and usability testers for years, and I can tell you that moving this stuff off the desktop is a huge usability win for novices and experts alike. If you rely on desktop icons, you have to minimize all open windows first before you can even see the icons on the desktop, then you have to click them. That adds unnecessary steps to every navigation option, and adds still more steps to get back to the windows you were working with previously. Once you wean yourself from desktop icons, all you have to do is tap the Windows key or click the Start button and you are one click away from any common file storage location. You can also press Windows key+E to open Explorer, where common locations are neatly arranged in the navigation pane.
Jason thinks the option to restore those desktop icons is “not intuitive.” Well, if you open the Start menu and type “desktop icons” in the Search box, the very first result is “Show or hide common icons on the desktop.” There’s another shortcut that’s even easier to discover. Every Windows user quickly learns how to right-click the desktop and choose Personalize, so they can adjust the desktop background (you old-timers remember it as wallpaper). When you do, you’ll see a very prominent “Change desktop icons” option at the top left. It leads here:
(http://i46.tinypic.com/30jsncn.png)
Jason: “I also find the Windows 7 Control Panel to be less intuitive than XP’s […] you now need one additional mouse click to see all the Control Panel options — of which there are now approximately double than which existed in XP. Clearly, they could have done a better job at consolidating functions, or at the very least, provided a better UI for navigating such a long list of stuff.”
The Windows XP Control Panel intuitive? A folder filled with icons, many with cryptic/technical names, doesn’t seem intuitive to me. I think familiar might be a more accurate word to describe the reaction of someone who learned where everything is the hard way. Meanwhile, if you want “a better UI for navigating such a long list of stuff” it’s right there already. See that search box in the upper right corner? It’s a huge improvement on the old folder full of Control Panel icons. If you don’t believe me, try changing your screen saver from the Windows XP Control Panel. Does it make sense that you have to click the Display icon and then choose the Screen Saver tab to get there? You know those steps because you’ve been doing it that way for 14 years, but it’s hardly intuitive.
By contrast, in Windows Vista and Windows 7, you type the word screen into the search box, and the list automatically filters as you type. I think this result list is pretty helpful:
(http://i45.tinypic.com/10hke20.png)
For an even better example, try finding the option to show hidden files in Windows Explorer. With XP, you have to open Control Panel, double-click Folder Options, and then click the View tab. Now, would the average person know that file settings are under Folder Options? That hardly seems intuitive.
By contrast, type hidden in the Control Panel search box and here’s what you see:
(http://i47.tinypic.com/243m4aa.png)
The very first option on the list takes you to the correct tab on the correct dialog box, with exactly one click. That’s a huge improvement over the XP solution; in fact, when I open Control Panel in Windows XP I am enormously frustrated over the inability to do anything except drill down into icons to find the right one.
The real problem most XP users will have when migrating to the Windows 7 interface is that they need to unlearn those old navigation models. The longer you’ve been using PCs, the more likely you are to reflexively assume that the solution is to pull down a menu or double-click an icon. Those techniques worked fine back in the 1990s, but today, with instant search available just about everywhere in the Windows UI, those old techniques are as dated as a pair of Dockers.
If you’re an XP veteran, take some time to learn why the new interface was designed the way it was. Believe me, those designers and usability professionals didn’t just make this stuff up. If you’re willing to learn a few new techniques, I guarantee your productivity will increase over time.
Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. See his full profile (http://blogs.zdnet.com/bio.php#bott) and disclosure (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?page_id=264) of his industry affiliations.
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Really, if you're an old bat who can't be arsed to learn new things in the name of efficiency, what the bloody hell are you doing near a computer? Technology is all about moving forward, being efficient, etc. Imagine where a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude" would've gotten OS development. We'd all still be using Windows 98, and perhaps it wouldn't go kaput as often.
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and i fail to see why that is a bad thing. we'd have a rock-solid platform from which to work with.
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But then your grandmother wouldn't be able to use the computer, or your girlfriend. Say hello to getting phone calls nonstop from your family asking how to send e-mails again.
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and i fail to see why that is a bad thing. we'd have a rock-solid platform from which to work with.
A rock solid platform with a broken security model, for one.
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But then your grandmother wouldn't be able to use the computer, or your girlfriend. Say hello to getting phone calls nonstop from your family asking how to send e-mails again.
my grandmother doesnt use a computer... and my girlfriend does just fine. got her fixing up her pc when something craps out.
also, never got calls from family regarding that.
also your point is moot :p
and i fail to see why that is a bad thing. we'd have a rock-solid platform from which to work with.
A rock solid platform with a broken security model, for one.
this wasnt directed at win 98. if micro$oft for once stopped trying to push new crap onto us, and took a year pause off of developing new ones and focus on fixing every piece of crap they broke with new "stuff", we'd have a better user experience overall.
also, please start reading between the lines a bit, instead of taking everything at face value :p
in other news i'll be installing win 7 soonish.
first thing that goes away is the quicklaunch=tab in taskbar. i want my quicklaunch as ordinary friggin icons, not bloody tabs where the program gets hidden. for some apps i find it usefull (msn, multiple windows under same tab, pidgin, around 6 rooms in and such), but i find it lacks the needed customiseability to UNLINK some apps from the bloody fugger.
if i'm wrong and there is a facility for that, please point me in the right direction.
also, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a very valid thing when used in right places. for instance, i'm perfectly happy with Vista's UI. What was so wrong with it, that it demanded a redesign? (taskbar especially)
tl;dr version, screw you both :p
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Really, if you're an old bat who can't be arsed to learn new things in the name of efficiency, what the bloody hell are you doing near a computer? Technology is all about moving forward, being efficient, etc. Imagine where a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude" would've gotten OS development. We'd all still be using Windows 98, and perhaps it wouldn't go kaput as often.
You know, Windows XP is only about three years newer than '98, and only 2 years than '98 SE... :eek:
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Oh pfft, you know the point I was making. :)
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Really, if you're an old bat who can't be arsed to learn new things in the name of efficiency, what the bloody hell are you doing near a computer? Technology is all about moving forward, being efficient, etc.
That's how MS would want you to think :P
"Technology" is a good enough reason for nerds to upgrade, but for the rest of the (sensible) people it goes like this:
+ new delights - new annoyances - trouble of it all < 0? Screw it!
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For those interested, the Classic menu can be found at: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
I wish they had provided the menu also in 95/98 style, I find it cleanest with minimum amount of clutter. Oh well, I can use the XP Classic, but find the extra colors distracting.
Idk y people are complaining about vista/7 so much. The taskbar is actually for once something different in windows 7. As far as that classic menu goes? Is it impossible to right click on your task bar>properties> and turn on the classic menu? It's been this way since xp and vista (i haven't used 7 before so maybe they got rid of this basic ability) for turning on the classic menu in the same genre as win95/98.
After that, if you really want to free up more ram, go to your display settings. You know the area where you can change the screensaver, resolution, desktop effects, and even gui themes. You can switch the gui theme back to windows classic as you could in xp and vista (i don't know about 7 before so maybe they got rid of this basic ability).
Windows 7 is just a re-release of vista, so if you have a **** load of ram, i wouldn't bother spending extra that's the same thing with some differences (well i'd only do it if i sold that copy of vista to someone and then buy 7, buuuuut look at how many people aren't doing that, wasted money is wasted money, at least put the old copy of vista to some use).
People moving on from xp and having trouble with vista/7 are ultimately unhappy because it's not xp. Aside from eating up your memory, vista is just a much nicer rehash of xp. The taskbar in vista doesn't operate any differently, the start menu has the same layout as the default xp start menu, control panel features the same bs albeit superior versions of everything with only windows defender being new. Why do people go crazy about vista? Probably because it eats their memory and the pretty black start menu and taskbar have different graphics so as to make things unfamiliar. BUT OMG!!! CHANGE EVERYTHING BACK TO GREY (windows classic gui, it's not a separate download (idk for 7)) AND TURN ON THE CLASSIC MENU (also not a separate download(idk for 7), AND PEOPLE KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS AND HOW TO USE IT!!!
If you play a lot of computer/console games, you learn a different system of configuration, controls and gui for each one. Why is it that these people have such a hard time with the sequel to xp (vista) and the sequel to vista (7)? But a new video game is no problem? That boggles my mind, ultimately it's people thinking that windows the sequel is going to be completely different when it's not going to be. The start menu is always in the lower left hand corner of your screen, the clock is always in the lower right hand corner of your screen, the taskbar is always at the bottom of the screen as part which has the clock and the start menu, and you can point and click with the mouse as always (GO AHEAD AND TRY SOMETHING COMMON).
This **** really really really does hurt my brain. I'm surprised it doesn't hurt other's brain. Or why the main population of windows users aren't realizing that learning how use this stuff would be great instead of the few who realize that vista and 7 treat the user like an idiot.
As far as that goes. Winxp 64bit and vista 64bit can handle more than 3gb's of ram. It's not a windows 7 64bit exclusive (it's just a 64bit exclusive).
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Really, if you're an old bat who can't be arsed to learn new things in the name of efficiency, what the bloody hell are you doing near a computer? Technology is all about moving forward, being efficient, etc. Imagine where a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude" would've gotten OS development. We'd all still be using Windows 98, and perhaps it wouldn't go kaput as often.
Windows 98 did have the interface right but everything else was fundementally flawed.
I'm all well and good with learning new things if they are genuinely better (95 >> 3.1), but if the improvement is negligable or is cancelled out by the added problems, then it just isn't worth the trouble.
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After that, if you really want to free up more ram, go to
www.blackviper.com
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I'll also add that the next time I get a real computer (not some 6 year old second hand POS system like what I have now) I plan to switch to linux of some variety, which of course would require a lot of extra learning, but I'm cool with that because its better than the newer versions of M$.
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Windows 7 is just a re-release of vista, so if you have a **** load of ram, i wouldn't bother spending extra that's the same thing with some differences (well i'd only do it if i sold that copy of vista to someone and then buy 7, buuuuut look at how many people aren't doing that, wasted money is wasted money, at least put the old copy of vista to some use).
No. 7 is what Vista SHOULD have been. Stable, excellent driver support and compatibility, intuitive new user interface, and friendly to both experienced users and new owners.
I've been using Windows in all its iterations since 3.1, and Windows 7 is, BY FAR, the best operating system Microsoft has released. The only reason anyone should be running a Windows OS other than 7 is if their system is too old to handle it (and given how well it scales, it would have to be really old) - and then you should be running XP. If anyone on Vista hasn't upgraded... well, it's your headache.
As for the interface changes - I was a Classic diehard, but the new interface is so intuitive and easy to navigate (the new taskbar is seriously the cat's meow) that I don't miss it. My work laptop is still running XP and every time I have to use it I curse the fact that I can't put 7 on it.
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I'm being serious, I have not needed the search function since the advent of GUIs. Not even once. Adding this functionality to the start menu is unnecessary BLOAT in my eyes. I especially do not want to ask questions and then slowly process the results. Had my share of that circa 1995. And I have not needed the console that much either. Only when I want to test some program that I wrote I need to use the console if I didn't bother to write other output function yet. Some cute consolesque macros can be programmed under the right mouse button accessible menu for even lot more efficient functionality.
Using the older menu structure efficiently simply meant organisation. In my work, I'm already forced to have a certain folder structure, so the search function will not help much there either. Also, newer Windows UI requires more use of keyboard (typos!) while I prefer to use the mouse, I need to do that nevertheless in 3D windows while doing CAD/Optics.
Really, if you're an old bat who can't be arsed to learn new things in the name of efficiency, what the bloody hell are you doing near a computer? Technology is all about moving forward, being efficient, etc. Imagine where a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude" would've gotten OS development. We'd all still be using Windows 98, and perhaps it wouldn't go kaput as often.
Thanks for encouragement, perhaps I can ask you for an advice in the future to calculate and verify the Modulation Transfer Functions for superachromatic 12+ lens systems since my time is seemingly better spent in learning the operating system / Microsoft Office at work? By the way, did I mention I need the results tomorrow? With tolerances, please. And the day after tomorrow I need assitance with something completely different, that probably means you need to learn something new Physics to deal with it.
Bottom line is I didn't say stop developing the new UI. I said do not abandon the old one, and I expect the full consequences of that Microsoft decision have not even hit the shore yet. Don't try to tell me how to do my job if you don't know what I'm talking about in the above snippet - and I don't want Microsoft doing that either. For me there simply was not a single convincing reason to change anything from the GUI that Microsoft did. I only needed the new security model and a working and supported 64 bit OS. I know there is 64 bit XP. But it has poor support, no drivers or that well working software for it. So XP is a 32 bit operating system in practise.
That's how MS would want you to think
"Technology" is a good enough reason for nerds to upgrade, but for the rest of the (sensible) people it goes like this:
+ new delights - new annoyances - trouble of it all < 0? Screw it!
This is exactly what I'm talking about. If every single person in a 5000 strong company spends a week learning to use something as simple as Windows, Excel, Powerpoint or Word, assuming a week/person costs averagely 2000 $, the net loss due to the changing of software is 10 million $. Who do you think will need to carry the costs - keep in mind indirect losses like that don't disappear from the budget? Besides, license costs are not included there, and it is questionable if that 2000 $ is a typical price - I expect it to be higher. Now I have already used two days to tackle with Windows 7, and it doesn't seem to open. I wonder how many days I need for Office? Or, should I be smart and simply use the one that I already am familiar with? By the way, in that jr2s article author says one can restore My Computer and related icons on desktop. I didn't find that either.
The softwares that I use at work do have different UIs and I needed to learn them. But, those software companies don't **** things up by then randomly changing the location of some analysis feature, or if they do, they sure make it bloody obvious to user where to find it. By the way, those softwares still use the 95/98 style menu system to work. I usually subject the demonstration software to an extraordinarily difficult testing pattern: I don't read the manual before trying it out. If I can complete a simple preselected task without looking at the manual, it's a PASS for the user interface. Surprisingly, Windows 7 failed that test. Good Optics/CAD software passes it. In case you wondered, when using the software for real cases, I do read the manual and help files.
About clicking icons at the desktop with old Windows, well, it has its good and bad sides. Some software check for updates/licences at start up, and should there be a user prompt for anything, experience has shown that it's better to have the plain desktop behind the announcement/prompt/exclamation rather than any other program.
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And S-99, I suggest you try Windows 7 before commenting on the use of it. In case it wasn't already clear "classic start menu has been annihilated" = "it does not exist"
And there are reasons to use the classic gray start menu style. I find that the contrast between searchable programs and whatever is on the desktop is highest that way. Start menus that have white areas & pretty pictures and colorful text mix up with something that is on the desktop. At least for me.
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The Start menu is prefect as it is in 7/Vista, Search typing and pinning is all i need :nod:
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No. 7 is what Vista SHOULD have been. Stable, excellent driver support and compatibility, intuitive new user interface, and friendly to both experienced users and new owners.
That's one way of interpretting it. Here's another, 7 is just a re-release of vista.
And S-99, I suggest you try Windows 7 before commenting on the use of it. In case it wasn't already clear "classic start menu has been annihilated" = "it does not exist"
And there are reasons to use the classic gray start menu style. I find that the contrast between searchable programs and whatever is on the desktop is highest that way. Start menus that have white areas & pretty pictures and colorful text mix up with something that is on the desktop. At least for me.
Before you tear me apart, you need to realize that upon mentioning i hadn't used 7 before, that i was also generalizing about xp, vista, and what ever short time i've spent with someone using a beta of 7 in front of me (i think i slipped in some generalization of win95/98 too). And yes, i do mention that going back to the gray classic gui is what makes users no longer **** their pants. And of course i mentioned the classic start menu being turned on that also makes users no longer **** their pants. Tell me something i haven't said.
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I wish we had an IRC-style ignore list for the forum so I could put S-99 on it.
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@Mika: I hear what you are saying. But tell me... how long did it take to drag you from Windows 3.x? You know, Windows '95 had the option to support 3.x - style interfaces, right? And Windows '98 didn't. Some of what you are saying seems to parallel here. The 7 interface learning costs you mentioned - over the course of the next year or two, how many man-hours are saved?
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The Win95 vs 3.1 analogy doesn't really work. Win3.1 gui was tolerated only because there was nothing better available. When 95 arrived it was pure win, not a tradeoff of any sorts (as far as the gui is considered).
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The Win95 vs 3.1 analogy doesn't really work. Win3.1 gui was tolerated only because there was nothing better available. When 95 arrived it was pure win, not a tradeoff of any sorts (as far as the gui is considered).
I'm sure there is a diehard out there who would argue otherwise (there always seems to be). The Win 7 interface is a real improvement in my mind... not quite 3.1 to 95 good but a huge step forward. Obviously not everyone thinks so. I tend to regard that as curmudgeonly but I mean that in the nicest way possible :)
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I wish we had an IRC-style ignore list for the forum so I could put S-99 on it.
No, what we need is the padded cell forum going on again. A proper place to profess dismay and personal concerns to others in a forum meant for it. Maybe even proper threads for such?
Just because i got on a soap box doesn't make the points, reasonings, and ideals i spoke about as wrong because some people took it personally because they couldn't try reading something from a point of view aside from their own which can at times make people miss details in said paragraphs they read. Reading something that someone else has written from possibly the writer's point of view, or just a neutral point of view, helps people understand both sides of the argument.
In this case, people reading my mega post in the sincerest way of trying to be in my shoes understand my perspective, or just a neutral perspective would lead to more understanding as opposed to people just reacting.
People just reacting to arguments is counter productive which can often lead to refuting of what was written even when it's right. Here's an example:
No. 7 is what Vista SHOULD have been. Stable, excellent driver support and compatibility, intuitive new user interface, and friendly to both experienced users and new owners.
That's one way of interpretting it. Here's another, 7 is just a re-release of vista.
When i wrote this i almost couldn't help but be an ass, but the thing here is that i'm right. I stood my ground as such. That's not to say that i didn't double check myself through the internet in the area of 7 just being a re-release of vista. Double checking through the internet, sure enough i found out again that 7 is just a re-release of vista. This lead to me standing my ground.
Which raises my next point of 7 in regards to MP-Ryan. Since 7 is a re-release of vista, then where's the expectation of stability, excellent driver support, and compatibility that is purportedly better than vista? The subsystem of 7 has been slightly revamped since vista for lower hardware requirements, and there's an intuitive user interface.
If it's going to be more stable than vista sp1, i'm leaning towards not really thinking so. I did use vista 64bit home basic for two semesters on my old core 2 duo laptop, and i found that vista sp1 is largely pretty darn stable. Whether ms actually did something to increase stability you can put doubt forth in the area because what MP-Ryan said sounded awfully like sales hype.
As far as excellent driver support, i doubt that has changed for 7 since vista. The reason why is because that drivers for vista since it's release have improved a lot. A bad driver can easily mean an unstable system. So if manufacturers are putting out higher quality drivers as opposed to when vista was first released, and that 7 is just a re-release of vista. That means 7's drivers work the same for vista and vice versa because internally their both the same operating system. So it means your in the same boat with vista and 7 in the area concerning more stable drivers.
As far as compatibility goes; this area of 7 that MP-Ryan brought up made me even think more of what he mentioned was ms sales hype. Compatibility with what? Hardware or software? In the area of hardware, this is one reason why a lot of people hated vista and will make them equally hate 7. Planned obsolescence, ms has a huge part in this when support for one of it's older operating systems is no longer supported, and even which older hardware will not be supported (manufacturers of said hardware also have a part in this) in the new operating system that ms cooks up every now and again. There's plenty of hardware out there that have win9x and xp drivers, but will never have a new driver for vista (some old hardware is lucky enough to get a vista driver, other hardware that existed before vista got released and got a vista driver simply wasn't very old hardware). Planned obsolescence is meant to make people buy new hardware when they upgrade their operating system because the new operating system just doesn't support their older, but perfectly working hardware.
For software compability, that all depends on ms and planned obsolescence as well. Yet again a similar story to that of the hardware. Ms can go ahead and make their own old software like office 2000 and office 98, etc no longer work under vista/7 to try to spur people to buy the new office 2003 or office 2007. And software makers need to keep up with new windows releases as well since they since they support they're own software.
What 7 does have that vista doesn't is a new user interface that is friendly to new users. This is why i consider 7 to be not mind blowing at all and tell people if they have plenty of ram to just stick with vista. It's all the same drm'ed goodness with not much support for older hardware and software that has caused many to stick with xp, switch to macosx or linux.
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what we need is the padded cell forum going on again.
Second.
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The Win95 vs 3.1 analogy doesn't really work. Win3.1 gui was tolerated only because there was nothing better available. When 95 arrived it was pure win, not a tradeoff of any sorts (as far as the gui is considered).
Win 95 was a win not necessarily because it had a better interface but because it fixed so many shortcomings that were holding back the win3.1/DOS platform, even though win95 was terribly buggy and unstable it was still the better choice.
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No. 7 is what Vista SHOULD have been. Stable, excellent driver support and compatibility, intuitive new user interface, and friendly to both experienced users and new owners.
That's one way of interpretting it. Here's another, 7 is just a re-release of vista.
When i wrote this i almost couldn't help but be an ass, but the thing here is that i'm right. I stood my ground as such. That's not to say that i didn't double check myself through the internet in the area of 7 just being a re-release of vista. Double checking through the internet, sure enough i found out again that 7 is just a re-release of vista. This lead to me standing my ground.
It depends on what you consider a re-release. Is Vista a re-release of XP? Is XP a re-release of 2000? In the end, is 7 a re-release of NT 3.1? Each added features and content while removing something.
If it's going to be more stable than vista sp1, i'm leaning towards not really thinking so. I did use vista 64bit home basic for two semesters on my old core 2 duo laptop, and i found that vista sp1 is largely pretty darn stable. Whether ms actually did something to increase stability you can put doubt forth in the area because what MP-Ryan said sounded awfully like sales hype.
Do you consider a better 2D accelerated windowing system (WDDM 1.0 vs WDDM 1.1) to be better stability for starters?
As far as excellent driver support, i doubt that has changed for 7 since vista. The reason why is because that drivers for vista since it's release have improved a lot. A bad driver can easily mean an unstable system. So if manufacturers are putting out higher quality drivers as opposed to when vista was first released, and that 7 is just a re-release of vista. That means 7's drivers work the same for vista and vice versa because internally their both the same operating system. So it means your in the same boat with vista and 7 in the area concerning more stable drivers.
Actually drivers for 7 can be different than drivers for Vista. What happens is that Microsoft started making developers make drivers for Vista that were also compatible with 7, under the "threat" of the driver not being designated a Vista driver. The opposite however is not true. This creates a situation where Vista's drivers are a subset of 7's drivers. In this situation it would be very strange for driver support to be worse in 7 than in Vista. Try installing a 7 driver in Vista and see how it goes. I'm not suggesting they are fundamentally diferent, but there is still some difference between them.
As far as compatibility goes; this area of 7 that MP-Ryan brought up made me even think more of what he mentioned was ms sales hype. Compatibility with what? Hardware or software? In the area of hardware, this is one reason why a lot of people hated vista and will make them equally hate 7. Planned obsolescence, ms has a huge part in this when support for one of it's older operating systems is no longer supported, and even which older hardware will not be supported (manufacturers of said hardware also have a part in this) in the new operating system that ms cooks up every now and again. There's plenty of hardware out there that have win9x and xp drivers, but will never have a new driver for vista (some old hardware is lucky enough to get a vista driver, other hardware that existed before vista got released and got a vista driver simply wasn't very old hardware). Planned obsolescence is meant to make people buy new hardware when they upgrade their operating system because the new operating system just doesn't support their older, but perfectly working hardware.
For software compability, that all depends on ms and planned obsolescence as well. Yet again a similar story to that of the hardware. Ms can go ahead and make their own old software like office 2000 and office 98, etc no longer work under vista/7 to try to spur people to buy the new office 2003 or office 2007. And software makers need to keep up with new windows releases as well since they since they support they're own software.
XP Mode, which is a fancy name for a native XP virtual machine with a bit more user friendliness thrown at it, makes it compatible with old software, so it's not like Microsoft is forcing people to buy new software, when they include tools to stop this from happening.
What 7 does have that vista doesn't is a new user interface that is friendly to new users. This is why i consider 7 to be not mind blowing at all and tell people if they have plenty of ram to just stick with vista. It's all the same drm'ed goodness with not much support for older hardware and software that has caused many to stick with xp, switch to macosx or linux.
Sure, and Linux has advanced nothing more in this past few years other than gnome and KDE getting prettier and more user friendly</sarcasm>.
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(http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/1903/startmenuexample.png)
Nice icons. I'm using a similar layout (minus Graphics and Office and plus Shared Documents), but all my icons are taken from shell32.dll. ;)
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I also just realized in my previous post I forgot to mention that when it was released Win95 was considered to be bloatware and it really would tax most desktop systems of the day. Win 3.1 actually was significantly faster on a 486 (the standard at the time) and even the early Pentiums, but again the improvements in win95 made it worth the upgrades needed to run it well. Windows 7/Vista has massively upped the system requirements, while giving little in return (Aero is nice though).
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Yes, Aero is nice, but keep in mind that translucent windows were already being used in Messenger Plus! before Vista was released.
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Aero is more than just "Shiny windows". It represents the most visible part of a UI rewrite that uses the GPU to render UI elements, instead of using the CPU for this (Which is what XP does).
In other words, it was needed in order to speed up window drawing, and to free up CPU time for more useful things.
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I see. Is the need for a GPU the reason why basic versions of Windows don't have it?
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No. The basic versions of 7 don't have it because Microsoft's marketing department (and don't for a moment think that there is anyone else behind the decision to cripple the OS that hard) needed to have a feature that they could cut out.
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The Win95 vs 3.1 analogy doesn't really work. Win3.1 gui was tolerated only because there was nothing better available. When 95 arrived it was pure win, not a tradeoff of any sorts (as far as the gui is considered).
I'm sure there is a diehard out there who would argue otherwise (there always seems to be).
Correct! I've never met one personally, but I recall talking to one such person, on some forum long long time ago (can't be sure that he/she wasn't just pulling my leg though) :)
Win 95 was a win not necessarily because it had a better interface but because it fixed so many shortcomings that were holding back the win3.1/DOS platform, even though win95 was terribly buggy and unstable it was still the better choice.
Well, at least my personal memories on Win95 release circulate almost completely around gui aspects (on the contrary, I can't now remember even one single new non-gui related feature that was made possible starting from that release). Also, I recall many diehard shell (dos) users finally giving up on the keyboard and switching to gui at that point. So I'd still argue that the gui alone in Win95 was a groundbreaking improvement for virtually every end user.
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OK, I got the first real test runs done with the new computer. I'll try to be brief this time. First result is, computing power is no substitute for brain.
Second result is, Windows 7 as an operating system is indeed quite an improvement over XP. I got confirmations to run programs when I expected them. It seems to be more stabile, and some early comments from beta version users is that it doesn't degrade over time even if programs are installed and uninstalled.
What I said earlier about the GUI still holds though. I really want those program names to be visible on the task bar, not only those overlaying icons. The quicklaunch capability, though, seems to work better now that the icons are larger. The next thing I'll probably do is to install the Classic Start Menu.
Another annoyance popped up when trying to use that what was before "My Computer". I liked the old one better, I wont list reasons here for time being. And still another thing to find is the button to disable that automatic drive indexing and searching. I really don't care if company network drives are indexed or not, I'm not going to go there anyway. Incredibly irritating to wait a couple of minutes when I just wanted to paste a single 40 kb file. And some of those smooth dialog box appears animations still happen, even when I thought I had disabled them all.
I didn't have that much problems with changing from Win 3.1 to 95. It was pretty intuitive, I recall there was something in the control panel that caused problems. I think we got some kind of special OEM 95 version, as it actually was quite stabile, the same installation actually lasted for 8 years until it was replaced by Windows 98 (don't ask)...
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It depends on what you consider a re-release. Is Vista a re-release of XP? Is XP a re-release of 2000? In the end, is 7 a re-release of NT 3.1? Each added features and content while removing something.
Yes xp is a re-release of win2k. Win98se was a re-release of win98. Vista is a re-release of 7. I consider a re-release a re-release when something simply is. It's obvious that xp was a re-release of win2k, and it's obvious that win2k is not a re-release of win98se. But, why isn't vista a re-release of xp? Because it's a completely different operating the system from the ground up (ms spent years of over time writing up new code that would eventually be the behind schedule suckfest we know as vista). 7 is just a re-release of vista because it follows the same ms operating system re-release schedule. Also 7 is a re-release of vista because from the ground up, it is not a completely different operating system than vista. In reality it's just a vista subsystem that's been upgraded a little with a better gui.
Do you consider a better 2D accelerated windowing system (WDDM 1.0 vs WDDM 1.1) to be better stability for starters?
I wouldn't really say so, it's just an updated windows driver model meant to work more efficiently, offer more speed, and above all, new features. If it's more stable, then that's awesome, but like i said earlier i've never had vista crash on me.
Actually drivers for 7 can be different than drivers for Vista. What happens is that Microsoft started making developers make drivers for Vista that were also compatible with 7, under the "threat" of the driver not being designated a Vista driver. The opposite however is not true. This creates a situation where Vista's drivers are a subset of 7's drivers. In this situation it would be very strange for driver support to be worse in 7 than in Vista. Try installing a 7 driver in Vista and see how it goes. I'm not suggesting they are fundamentally diferent, but there is still some difference between them.
Ms make my brain hurt. Considering the area of wddm1.1 support for video i understand. But for other stuff hardware i don't understand why the change. Oh well, i guess it made hardware play nicer with the rest of the kids in 7.
XP Mode, which is a fancy name for a native XP virtual machine with a bit more user friendliness thrown at it, makes it compatible with old software, so it's not like Microsoft is forcing people to buy new software, when they include tools to stop this from happening.
Yes i know about xp mode. It's only released for 7 professional edition and higher. Sooooooooooo.....
MICROSOFT IS FORCING PEOPLE TO BUY NEW SOFTWARE
Microsoft is forcing people to buy new expensiver software to use their old software, and those that don't have so much money are stuck with upgrading their software finally (i'm looking at you office 98 users).
Why microsoft decided to go down the route of a virtual machine sounds like they want more money. After all, they're selling you a fully licensed copy of xp that runs in a windows virtual pc package. Virtual pc is free from microsoft, xp however is not; ms found a cheesy way to get people to purchase xp again. If you really call this enhanced compatibility, then i'll just call ms lazy bastards. There's nothing stopping you in the mean time to download virtual pc and running your own copy of xp via virtual machine inside vista or any version of 7 (not just 7 professional). It will be the same thing as xp mode.
Xp mode is a slap in the face and tells me that ms is not really caring about built in compatibility with software for xp anymore, specifically during a time when people are still using lots of xp software.
Sure, and Linux has advanced nothing more in this past few years other than gnome and KDE getting prettier and more user friendly</sarcasm>.
Rofl, i know you're being sarcastic, but there is usb 3.0 (kernel devs added it even before usb 3.0 is out) support already, 30 second boot time, pretty graphics, and great software like vlc, firefox, openoffice, audacity, gimp, pidgin. Not to mention that linux doesn't haved planned obsolescence for software and hardware. Linux has great compatibility with older devices that windows no longer supports. There is planned obsolescence, but only for linux closed source stuff that follows planned obsolescence. Lastly, WINE offers great windows compatibility for all versions of windows from win 2.0 all the way up to server 2008. We don't need people dogging wine, it is great for the most part (stuff like office 2003/2007, orange box, unreal tournament 2007, scp), but where it's not great currently, it is improving with each new release (no longer beta too).
Then you have macosx, just ****ing pc hardware running unix and quite literally only the handfull of hardware that apple will support and nothing more (but this offers great stability).
Either way, 2 great alternatives to those who hated vista so much they opted for a switch.
As far as the theory for vista goes with the aero 3d accelerated gui; it really isn't that much of something to praise, it's sort of moot really. Sure aero does remove the need for the cpu to be drawing the gui instead. But with aero off, you still freed up more memory and processor cycles.
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Aero is more than just "Shiny windows". It represents the most visible part of a UI rewrite that uses the GPU to render UI elements, instead of using the CPU for this (Which is what XP does).
In other words, it was needed in order to speed up window drawing, and to free up CPU time for more useful things.
The GPU has already done most of the 2D rendering work since the mid 90s, long before Aero. This is why the Windows interface feels so sluggish if you don't have a video card driver installed. I think the main advantage of Aero is actually the vsync support.
Xp mode is a slap in the face and tells me that ms is not really caring about built in compatibility with software for xp anymore, specifically during a time when people are still using lots of xp software.
The only things XP mode is useful for are 16-bit programs and XP drivers that don't have Vista/7 versions. Everything else that worked in XP should work natively in 7 anyway.
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Well, at least my personal memories on Win95 release circulate almost completely around gui aspects (on the contrary, I can't now remember even one single new non-gui related feature that was made possible starting from that release). Also, I recall many diehard shell (dos) users finally giving up on the keyboard and switching to gui at that point. So I'd still argue that the gui alone in Win95 was a groundbreaking improvement for virtually every end user.
I used to have two computers, one with 95 and the other with 3.1. Dos had a lot of stuff wrong with it, and it had too many limitations, 16 bit, bizzare memory handling, no plug and play, lack of multi-tasking capability, probably a few others that I missed. Even though you could multi-task in windows 3.1, it was built ontop of dos and so it shared many of those problems, but win95 fixed them.
EDIT: Found a list of DOS limitations from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#Limitations)
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The GPU has already done most of the 2D rendering work since the mid 90s, long before Aero. This is why the Windows interface feels so sluggish if you don't have a video card driver installed.
Yucky, you just mentioned framebuffer :ick:
The only things XP mode is useful for are 16-bit programs and XP drivers that don't have Vista/7 versions. Everything else that worked in XP should work natively in 7 anyway.
It's still barely much more than xp in a vm. If people need xp in a vm, they ought to just put xp in a vm themselves. But now we have ms doing it for us charging a lot of money for it and only one way to get it. This is why xp mode is a slap in the face.
What would be a lot better is if somebody ported WINE to vista and 7. It'd be a free solution that wouldn't require a vm or a copy of xp. The other best thing is to just put you're own copy of xp in a vm yourself; no extra money and it's the same thing (and you wouldn't need specifically 7 professional edition).
Better yet to save people trouble with xp compatibility, just run 7 inside a vm on xp :lol:
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The GPU has already done most of the 2D rendering work since the mid 90s, long before Aero. This is why the Windows interface feels so sluggish if you don't have a video card driver installed.
Yucky, you just mentioned framebuffer :ick:
The only things XP mode is useful for are 16-bit programs and XP drivers that don't have Vista/7 versions. Everything else that worked in XP should work natively in 7 anyway.
It's still barely much more than xp in a vm. If people need xp in a vm, they ought to just put xp in a vm themselves. But now we have ms doing it for us charging a lot of money for it and only one way to get it. This is why xp mode is a slap in the face.
What would be a lot better is if somebody ported WINE to vista and 7. It'd be a free solution that wouldn't require a vm or a copy of xp. The other best thing is to just put you're own copy of xp in a vm yourself; no extra money and it's the same thing (and you wouldn't need specifically 7 professional edition).
Better yet to save people trouble with xp compatibility, just run 7 inside a vm on xp :lol:
I've honestly not had a problem with compatibility in XP. I've seen quite a few non-Vista/7 sound cards and TV tuner cards. Printer problems are the domain of the manufacturers (who want to sell new printers with new computers). Other than that, if software was popular and used a 16-bit installer, there are actually decent chances of a community rewritten installer; I saw some for some Need For Speed titles.
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What I said earlier about the GUI still holds though. I really want those program names to be visible on the task bar, not only those overlaying icons. The quicklaunch capability, though, seems to work better now that the icons are larger. The next thing I'll probably do is to install the Classic Start Menu.
Goto Taskbar and Start Menu Properties (right click on Orb), goto the Taskbar tab, change Taskbar Buttons field to: Combine when taskbar is full. Icons are nameless when closed and open up to full size boxes with text when open and compress when the bar gets full. Its the perfect compromise between the new and old.
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I'll share a little anecdote - Happened a few hours ago. This might be more related to the crapfest that is HP computers, but still.
One of my parents computers(they recently bought a pair of dv6t computers. Or rather, me and my brother bought them due to our tech-savyness. We went for Windows 7-based machines, because Vista is crap. We wipe as much of HP's bloatware as we can find, but apparently, we missed some. Some "HP assistant" window popped up on one of them, asking to update firmware. Apparently, my mother had said yes to this. Now the speakers do not work. The drivers are recognized, but no kind of sound system is recognized. So I'm gonna have a look at it tomorrow, but I have no experience with Windows 7, other than the fact that its menus seem like a plain old cluster**** compared to XP. How the heck could something like this happen? I hate bloatware so much, especially when it's linked/changes vital parts of the operating system. System restore, for example, is disabled, in favor of HP's separate "recovery" partition, which I assume you access somehow during boot on these HP crap-buckets?
Gah.
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The recovery partition will bring the computer back to how it was out of the box. In other words, you get to re-do the bloatware purging all over again!
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Be sure it's not muted. Even if it's not, mute it then un-mute it to be sure (yes I've seen that fix the problem before).
Be sure options such as "digital audio output only" are un-checked unless you are using SP-DIF for your audio output.
Check in your BIOS setup to see that the audio is not disabled
uninstall then re-install the audio drivers
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Goto Taskbar and Start Menu Properties (right click on Orb), goto the Taskbar tab, change Taskbar Buttons field to: Combine when taskbar is full. Icons are nameless when closed and open up to full size boxes with text when open and compress when the bar gets full. Its the perfect compromise between the new and old.
Yeah, I noticed that.
Still need to overhaul the new start menu, though. All that it inspires is disorganisation.
Today the New, tomorrow the Classic taskbar, here we come!
Now next question, does anyone know if there is a way to rip off ANY and ALL useless time wasting animations 7 uses?
By the way, tried out Apple a couple of days ago. Made me wonder if it really were worthwile to do so called "learning" on the operating system side and learn a completely new operating system as Microsoft cannot be trusted to keep working things as they were. OSX at least doesn't seem to be infected with a bunch of malware and viruses. If only they made optical design software available for Macs and I wouldn't hesitate one bit any more.
Besides, have you taken a look at the new Paint with improved UI? It is atrocious! What used to be really simple and nice drawing program, has turned into a horrendous mess! You wouldn't believe how many scientific papers have been improved by the simple Paint in this particular case. Not so any more.
Overall, I guess Windows 7 is technically better than XP, using better architecture and all. Too bad they also made the decision of overthrowing the old user interface. For this reason, I cannot recommend 7 for anyone who does technical jobs which rely on delivering something on time. The same applies to new Office.
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One thing I don't get about Windows 7 - Its claim to fame was its supposed better performance than Vista, but all benchmarks as far as games go, describe it as a "mixed bag". If I could get DX11 on XP, there would be no way in hell I'd ever change to it. I avoided Vista like the plague, and I'd be happy to ignore Windows 7, too, if it wasn't for the dirty tactics Microsoft uses to push it. It's like Nvidia vs. Ati as far as technology -- Nvidia withholds technology from ATI, the sharing of which would result in Nvidia losing their oh-so-expensive crown to a competitor that can do it just as well, and offer their solutions much, much cheaper. But that's business as usual I guess. :blah:
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Nvidia withholds technology from ATI, the sharing of which would result in Nvidia losing their oh-so-expensive crown to a competitor that can do it just as well, and offer their solutions much, much cheaper. But that's business as usual I guess. :blah:
What?
This doesn't even make sense. Why would they want to share their technologies with a competitor without any gain from it? Releasing specs of their cards would be welcome (AMD does it, which enables OpenSource driver developement, NVidia doesn't) so if you mean that, then you have a point but you brought it up in a really weird way. Of course companies, all of them, have their industrial secrets that they keep a tight lid on as longas they are profitable to them; accusing NVidia alone for this is unconvincing.
Also, AMD is actually ahead of NVidia in their GPU developement. NVidia doesn't even have Fermi based graphics cards in mass production yet while AMD has Radeon 5 series out in the stores and going strong.
Besides, Intel has the majority market in graphics processing unit industry. Motherboard IGP's are after all the most common ones. Of dedicated GPU's, NVidia is still ahead of AMD but these things tend to fluctuate somewhat. The main deciding factor in market share is OEM manufacturers and which hardware they pick for their boxes, and that's defined by company politics and deals much moreso than the actual performance or quality of the parts. If OEM manufacturers can make more profitable ready-installed PC with crappier parts than the competitors and still sell it and get away with it, of course they do so.
It's a complicated thing that defines which companies have the market majority. Intel vs AMD in processors, NVidia vs AMD in GPU's, Intel, NVidia and AMD in motherboard chipsets (including IGP's). Intel is the dominant company in computer hardware industry at the moment, with NVidia chipsets for Intel processors being inferior to Intel chipsets, and AMD processors and chipsets being slightly inferior in general for the same price range. In aftermarket GPU's, AMD is ahead NVidia at the moment, but because Intel motherboard solutions are so popular, Intel integrated graphics processors still have the majority in sold graphics processors... and non-gamers tend to go with that because it is, frankly, sufficient for other than gaming purposes.
I agree with you regarding the annoying tendency of not making new stuff available for old operating systems just because they want to push people on new operating system. DirectX10/11 is not one of them though. Getting it to work on XP is not just a matter of some libraries since the whole system of getting stuff into display is overhauled for Vista and 7 compared to XP, and as a result things just don't work the same and can't be made work that simply. Not only that but DX10/11 doesn't have much appeal to me compared to DX9.0c or OpenGL...
What would fall into this category is stuff like Halo 2 for PC; it's a DirectX 9 game, but it doesn't work on XP without some trickery because it requires some vista libraries. If you make those libraries available, it runs just fine, but it's performance is absolutely rubbish on even fairly powerful computers so the point may be moot.
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Okay, I got the Windows 7 I wished, thanks to Classic Start Menu and Classic Explorer. Both can be found from Classic Shell I linked in the first post. I also managed to rip out the animations, although I still don't know where I found the switches to do that.
Otherwise, 7 has been quite nice, requiring user input when I expect it. The update seems to have gained some sense, and there is better reporting when a program has crashed. Though, Windows 7 requires 14 Gigabytes of HDD space?! 14 Gb for an operating system? Really?
I feel I wont be upgrading to next Windows version they spew out. It is like Microsoft is missing the ball, and that the next miss will hurt. Better to avoid that one.
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was forced to add the Classic Start Menu to Windows 7. Never underestimate the power of masses, which up to this point have not yet upgraded...
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No, I don't think so. Windows 7 is already showing a healthy profit (Remember: MS doesn't really sell its product directly to the end user. It sells the product to OEMs), so they really don't need to do anything to placate the masses. And aside from the "You will take $OLD_WINDOWS from my cold dead hands!" crowd, I don't see that many complaints about the new UI.
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I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was forced to add the Classic Start Menu to Windows 7. Never underestimate the power of masses, which up to this point have not yet upgraded...
It's really not as big a problem as you're making out. I was a Classic diehard until I installed 7. It took me all of half an hour to figure out the new UI changes, and now I prefer it to Classic. I have Classic on my XP machine for work, and there isn't a day goes by that I wish I couldn't just put 7 on it and be done with it.
It's like the argument of Windows 3.1 versus 95 - so it has a new, smoother UI that takes a little getting used to. Realistic end-users don't expect operating systems to develop in a vacuum. Frankly, I think it makes the whole taskbar much more efficient and cleaner overall - instead of the 30+ quicklaunch icons on my work machine, at home I have all of 11, neatly sorted and easily identifiable.
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- instead of the 30+ quicklaunch icons on my work machine, at home I have all of 11, neatly sorted and easily identifiable.
Right-click Quick-Launch (not an icon in quick launch, this can be tricky) > Open Folder. Remove and Add shortcuts as you wish. ;)
Or just browse for it:
XP:
<<Drive>>:\Documents and Settings\<<username>>\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
Vista:
<<Drive>>:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
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Except that that does not give you the awesomeness of the new taskbar. Combining the task buttons with the quicklaunch functionality was the best idea in a very long time. Saves time (As it only takes a right-click to pin a program to the taskbar) and space (Since the quicklaunch area and the task button area have been merged).
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Except that that does not give you the awesomeness of the new taskbar. Combining the task buttons with the quicklaunch functionality was the best idea in a very long time. Saves time (As it only takes a right-click to pin a program to the taskbar) and space (Since the quicklaunch area and the task button area have been merged).
:nod: But if you don't have 7...
Well, you could always use RocketDock (http://rocketdock.com/) and enable the "minimize windows to the Dock" option, as well as (if you want) changing its location to the bottom and the Taskbar to the top. Checkout the embedded YouTube video in the link above to see some of what I mean. :cool:
System Requirements:
Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
500Mhz or faster CPU
10MB RAM free
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- instead of the 30+ quicklaunch icons on my work machine, at home I have all of 11, neatly sorted and easily identifiable.
Right-click Quick-Launch (not an icon in quick launch, this can be tricky) > Open Folder. Remove and Add shortcuts as you wish. ;)
You missed the point; I use all those quicklaunch buttons on the XP machine, I just have to put up with the ridiculous spread of them (a good 15 of them are various network locations). In 7, all of the icons of one type can be organized into a single jump-list. I suppose I could set up a quicklaunch subfolder on the XP machine, but that's likely to be even more irritating.
I disgress; point is, I like the new UI immensely and it honestly isn't all that different from previous versions of Windows... it's just smoother. Considering it took me a whopping 30 minutes to figure it out and organize the jumplists on my home machine, it's not really onerous. Yeah, I saw the argument for corporations earlier, but considering I spend 10 minutes of each and every day just waiting for my damn computer to start up and load all the crap IT has on it at startup (which I cannot disable), 30 minutes of time really isn't all that important in the grand scheme of productive work life.
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...
Yeah, I have created subfolders in quicklaunch before ... as long as they are in the expanded portion (accessible by the double arrow) they function like a mini-start menu. And yeah, 7's way of handling it is immensely better. :)
What you may find interesting is Launchy (http://launchy.net/). Basically, like the Vista / 7 start menu search except it doesn't lag and it works on XP (and 2000 with a download of gdiplus.dll). I set the keyboard shortcut to WIN + BKSP, instead of the default WIN + Space. Give it a whirl, I think you'll like it. :nod:
EDIT: Sorry I meant WIN, not CTRL. :rolleyes:
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I don't know how you guys have got improved speeds with Windows 7 UI. I certainly haven't while using Classic Start Menu and the new 7 menu at tandem. I didn't find much differences in times, the only thing being the run box where you can write stuff for Windows 7 to search. I found that to be the best way to change the background in Windows 7, but this is because I couldn't find the damn option anywhere else!
It is amazing how much money the Classic Start Menu program authors ask: 25 $ per program! The need is certainly there, and there seems to be similar issues with Office 2007 Ribbon interface, there are utilities bringing the old menus back for 25 $!
In other news, I downgraded Office 2007 back to Office 2003. The next office suite I'll be using at work is most likely OpenOffice. What I have read and heard about the new Office 2007, pretty much everybody in my technology center hates it. Two colleagues have had it for a year by now, and haven't been able to figure out a way to use it effectively. Rest have been avoiding it like plague after the first contact.
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I don't know how you guys have got improved speeds with Windows 7 UI. I certainly haven't while using Classic Start Menu and the new 7 menu at tandem. I didn't find much differences in times, the only thing being the run box where you can write stuff for Windows 7 to search. I found that to be the best way to change the background in Windows 7, but this is because I couldn't find the damn option anywhere else!
Right click on empty desktop -> Personalize too hard to find?
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My mistake. But what exactly does "Personalize..." mean there was probably the main problem. It was not at all evident what I could find under it. It could mean anything from personalized power settings to personalized themes. I was sure I did find from the desktop earlier, but couldn't repeat the process. I couldn't either find it from control panel, and God Mode list was too long to bother. Entered "background" to Search and found what I was looking for.
It took me about two working days to configure the Windows 7 to be usable. But now it is a working OS that I can use with ease.
Again, I'm curious to know what kind of improvements in time have you gotten with Windows 7 and the new interface? I would prefer to see the differences in seconds.
As a comparison, I could launch all the software I need in XP in less than a second, including minimizing the screen of the current active window and returning to it. By putting stuff on the quick launch bar in XP it could be decreased still. Though I rarely need to launch program in less than a second, and might occasionally take that oh-so-massive two second time penalty.
I didn't get much improvement to that from Windows 7 quick launch buttons, though they are improved due to larger size. My experiences of typing stuff into the "run" prompt actually made things a little bit slower. However, I wouldn't need to use the mouse to do that which is a property that I can see as a plus for some people. I in any case need to use 3D modelling environments quite a lot so I tend to keep either the left or the right hand on the mouse nevertheless.
So what are your experiences and where have you gotten faster in Windows 7?
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Ah, I need to check if that Window key + D combination works in Windows 7 also. Quite handy combo in Windows XP.
Off to bed, let's see what tomorrow brings up.
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So what are your experiences and where have you gotten faster in Windows 7?
Missing a document? Search is super fast, it's right there, it takes one click and I can look for whatever it is that I want to find. I have a application with multiple windows or tabs open and I want one specific one... I mouse over (no clicks) and select the exact window I want. I don't have to search through because I can see what the content is in the preview. If I hold for that brief second then that window will highlight and all other content will go away. I want to make everything go away and go back to desktop? Move the mouse carelessly to the bottom right corner and it's done. I want to split screen something? I drag one window to the left and the other to the right and the snap to 50%. All of these things were much harder and in some cases (like split screens) time consuming. EDIT: Oh here is another one. I go to the start menu and I want to open up a document that is in my recently opened documents in say... Word. I click on the arrow next to the name and immediately open that document. Faster... MUCH faster.
Personalize is so you can go and personalize your system. You don't personalize power settings. Power settings are power settings. Personalization immediately implies that you're doing something to the visual look and feel. When you personalize your car... people add flames, or stickers, or wings, or whatever... a visual impact. So this is what you get when you open it up. It is a bit ambiguous because it does cover a number of items yes... I will give you that. But I don't think it's a mistake. It's fairly logical.
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It's fairly logical.
Surprisingly so, actually. At first I was cursing as I went hunting for my frequently-adjusted Windows settings, but if you ignore the fact that you knew where they used to be and simply went based on what the items were named, you found them very quickly. And godmode is useful for putting all the control options in a single place if you really can't find what you're looking for.
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Ah, I need to check if that Window key + D combination works in Windows 7 also. Quite handy combo in since Windows XP '95.
Off to bed, let's see what tomorrow brings up.
;)
EDIT: for those interested in increased productivity, MS has a list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449