Journal twitter's Journal: The Vista 7 Hype Log. 2
Update 2/3/2010. There were 7 points of hype, I'm going to look into which ones I got right and which ones they hype was right about. So far, I count: Hype 1, Twitter 6. Windows 7 sucks. It came "on time" if you think it was "ready". Battery life, security, sharing, netbook function, performance, and compatibility were all BS. More links will follow.
Update 10/22/2010 - The technical points remain valid after a year on the market. There are no tablets, mobile devices or anything resembling the "connected world" launch hype. Security is an obvious failure. Microsoft boosters brag about sales, just like they did for Vista, but business does not really want then new OS and it is stuck in single digit land. In fact, GNU/Linux is winning the race because 36% of businesses are using GNU/Linux on the desktop.
2010, Now we start to see the dust settle I'll post confirmation of failure as it arrives.
- 11/18 - Preston Gralla admits Vista 7 is too fat for tablets and netbooks, "[Steve Ballmer] Ballmer was being a bit disingenuous when he said that [tablets would run Windows 7]" Compare this to his previous "Linux killer" gloating.
The Hype Log as written.
Windows 7 is being pushed by all the usual suspects as the "cure" for what ails Vista. It's the same talking points and hype that surrounds any "upgrade" but the M$ and friends are hysterical given the technical and public relations nighmare that Vista was. "This one will be secure, fast and better than competing software that you could have bought years ago," they always say but Windows remains Windows because non free software development does not work. People who make a living with M$ really, really want to see Windows continue as the dominant OS. A little bribery here and there (list) and punishment for objectors makes friendly press coverage too but these represent the tip of M$'s manipulation. It's one thing for M$ to make this stuff up, it's another for it all be reported so uncritically by a press corps that's been lied to repeatedly. This kind of stuff has destroyed the reputation of the Wintel press. Vista should have been their last hurrah, but they are at it again. In fact, the worst offenders have already started to promote Windows 8 because Windows 7 in on track to fail.
Here's what they promise and how it's unlikely. The most obvious reason Windows 7 is unlikely to be better than Vista is that it's sill Vista. They were not able to get right in six years of development, it's doubtful they will fix things in two years of light use. The failures are cataloged separately as they happen. Anyone inclined to believe the promisses should revisit this 2002 video promotion for Vista and the launch of XP. Windows 7 hype is reaching new extremes of shameless lying as M$ itself fails. Benchmarks show that the average user is better off with Ubuntu and other Debian based distributions are likely to give similar results.
It will be ready for Christmas 2009. Trying to freeze the market. Even as they promise the date, most of the people below admit that it's prudent to add months or years to M$ release dates.
- James Bannan, APC, said this January 22 of 2008!
- The Register
- Mary Jo Foley, "When anyone asks me whether they should buy a new PC now or wait, I tell them I'm banking on getting a new Windows 7 PC next fall." [2], "early 2010. I still believe that's a worst-case date and we'll see Windows 7 by the second half of 2009."
- Ed Bott, June (said 9/25/08), then 2nd half 0f 2009 (10/21), then July (1/10/09). The phrase, "In five minutes" from a SNL spoof comes to mind. . June passed and we now have a Vista Capable (fiasco) style "upgrade for less" on Vista computers that might happen by the end of July.
- Paul Thurrott
- Alexander Wolfe, "Microsoft isn't going to launch what might be its best OS ever in the midst of a PC-upgrade-killing recession. I'm betting that the Redmond brain trust is hoping things will ease up in time for next December's Christmas shopping season, where Windows 7 could spark the kind of computer buying spree Microsoft dreamed of for Vista." Sickening.
- InternetNews.com quotes Windows 7 blogger Brandon LeBlanc and estimates general availability for late October, and notes that this is not meeting the company's earlier promises to deliver in June. This is the usual lie, it's always less than six months away.
- PCWorld publishes the latest lie from a "leaked" Best Buy memo. M$ will start selling "upgrade rights" at the end of June - promissed to be available in October. This is the Vista Capable fiasco all over again.
Score: they pushed something out the door in late October.
You can share it with your family - M$ generously charges for something people used to take for granted and GNU/Linux will always provide.
- Todd Bishop of Tech Flash, without knowing any real details, uncritically promotes the deal, "a Family Pack would start to look very economical for people who need to install Windows 7 on multiple computers." Shame on him.
- Ed Bott, of course.
Score: of course Windows 7 is not free software and can not really be shared. In fact, users of the "family pack" will not even be able to share their own media because of built in restrictions.
Will run on Netbooks. They can't get XP to do that, but this claim is critical to their ability to compete with GNU/Linux which can. M$ all but concedes that this is a lie with their SKU scheme which has nothing but "starter" versions for netbooks. You won't be able to chose ARM, MIPS and other frugal chipsets that you can get with GNU/Linux and OSX. At RTM, Vista 7 Netbooks are still Science Fiction.
- CIO Magazine [2, shows some scepticism by different author]
- Mary Jo Foley, "Sinofsky spent a considerable amount of his keynote demonstrating that a full implementation of Windows 7 will be able to run on netbook, even as stripped down as an Asus Eee PC with 1 GB of RAM."
- Joanna Stern tells us Windows 7 already runs well on an upspeced EEE 1000H, but "well" does not mean to me what it means to her. 58 second boot, 720P has playback glitches, 485MB of the RAM was in use with no applications. The few things that worked were free software applications, GIMP and Filezilla and a network manager that works better than Vista or a sharp stick in the eye.
- Preston Galla of ComputerWorld takes the last story and transmorgifies Windows 7 into a "Linux Killer". Garbage in, garbage out.
- Andre Da Costa
- Todd Bishop
- Jack Schofield is an innovative liar, "[Windows 7] uses far less memory than Vista, and runs well on today's netbooks. [but you will never see it because Microsoft wants to protect notebook sales with Vista 7 starter edition which is intentionally limited]."
Score: Windows 7 will make any computer perfrom like a netbook. Only the very foolish will try to actually run it on a netbook. I bought a netbook with Vista 7 and saw Debian Lenny run rings around it.
Security They claim it's just as good as Vista. That's true, but Vista is just as bad as any other Windows release which have all been failures. Exploits have already been demonstrated. Now comes news that Windows 7 will run XP in a VM. This is being done in such a way that all of XP's flaws will become Windows 7 flaws too.. Windows 7 may be the least secure version of Windows ever.
Score: of course Windows 7 is a mess.
Fast Boots, Better Performance. GNU/Linux on Netbooks shows this is possible, but not for Windows. Performance is that of Vista now, change is unlikely. Now we see, leave it to M$ to cheat with hibernation and lie about it. They promise what others deliver honestly:
- Eric Traut of M$ promisses MinWin, aka Windows 7, will be small and stable like GNU/Linux.
- Mary Jo Foley, March 20, 2008, says Windows 7 will be modular to combat bloat. Ars Technia thinks it's paradoxically about more lock-in.
- Mary Jo Foley "Microsoft execs hinted that Windows 7 might boot up in under 15 seconds, but didn't officially commit to that number."
- Andre Da Costa
- Adrian Kingsley-Hughes Better than Vista, XP even. Oh please.
- Ben Hardwidge, Custom PC Graphics will work on your CPU if not on your GPU. This is transparent Vista Capable damage control. Given M$'s OEM lock, GPUs will always work with Windows unless M$ wants to punish a chipmaker like Intel for releasing free software.
Score: it's not even faster than Vista.
It's a major release and it's a minor upgrade It seems to depend on what is being talked about. For compatibility, they claim minor. For Vista reputation damage control, they might as well claim it's a ground up rewrite.
- Paul Thurrott, "I'm going to give Microsoft a pass on this one. Windows 7, in many ways, is indeed a major Windows release."
Improved battery life. This one conflicts with speed improvements and DRM. If M$ really cared about power consumption, they would spend their money porting to ARM instead of false advertising claims. Windows 7 probably has the worst battery life of any Windows yet.
- Mary Jo Foley
- Andre Da Costa
- Todd Bishop. Blinded by jargon and details he misses the obvious.
Score: Windows 7 is a battery wrecker.
It won't break your old software and hardware. This lie happens every upsell. This time, it has already been exposed by Randal Kennedy but people are still passing it around. Now comes news that Windows 7 will run XP in a VM. You can get that kind of compatibility now with GNU/Linux, and better with Wine which runs DX9 games. Finally, Walt Mossberg breaks the bad news that Vista 7 is the least compatible version of Windows ever, requiring users to reinstall all of their software or start from scratch.
- Paul Thurrott, "customers, partners, and developers won't face the same tortuous incompatibilities that dogged them with Vista"
- Paul Thurrott again, " It is feature complete, it is reasonably stable, and it is highly compatible with the software and hardware I use on a regular basis."
Score: it won't even work with software for Vista. Here's Microsoft executive telling people they should be like Boeing and only use the 7,000 of their 11,000 applications that work with Windows 7.
08/01/2009 - RTM and the hype goes into overdrive. Various "reviews" repeat all of the above. The list of shame includes:
- Seth Rosenblatt CNET, Windows 7 is more than just spin. It's stable, smooth, and highly polished, introducing new graphical features, a new taskbar that can compete handily with the Mac OS X dock, and device management and security enhancements that make it both easier to use and safer. Importantly, it won't require the hardware upgrades that Vista demanded
- Brooke Crothers, CNett, Windows 7 will be more than just a better interface. Under-the-hood changes will allow chips from Intel, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices to ratchet up Windows 7 performance above previous Microsoft operating systems.
- Brian X. Chen, Wired Magazine, makes the "Microsof's Best OS Yet," automotive analogy and many other cliches. a clean, modern look that competes with Apple's finely designed Mac OS X Leopard.
- Windows 7 is better than Mac in every way claims from Mitchell Ashley of Network World and Randall C. Kennedy of [dis]InfoWorld. Apple is just as vicious an enemy of software freedom as M$, but their software works a lot better.
- Windows 7 is just as good as Mac, claims Samara Lynn, of ChannelWeb. Windows 7 is a desktop operating system as performance-nimble, aesthetically pleasing and, dare we say it, as potentially secure as Apple has delivered with OS X.
- M$ themselves try to teach Best Buy employees to lie about Windows 7, and are called on it in public.
- Jennifer Bosavage, of Channel Web, hits all the lies in a compact space with, "Five Things That Separate Windows 7 From Vista." Meanwhile, David Coursey of PC World has the nerve to say, "If you've lived with Vista this long and installed the Service Packs, you now have an OS that actually works pretty well.".
Sooner or later, most of these people will be apologizing the same way everyone who praised Vista did. Where I find them, I'll quote the Hall of Shame Winner's previous Vista quotes.
- David Coursey, "At First Glance, Vista Looks Like a Winner" Beta 1 of Microsoft's next OS has a sleek interface to rival Apple's Tiger, and its search capabilities look promising.
- Jennifer Bosavage, "Time's A-Wastin" "There's an easy fix for Windows 2K and XP [daylight savings problems]; Vista is ready with the new updates already,"
Mmmm (Score:2)