Why is it that all the Win7 reviews seem to compare it to Vista and not XP? They all gush about how great Win7 is...compared to Vista. Of course it's better than Vista, Vista sucked. That's why no one but don't-know-any-better average Joes and corporations used it. How about comparing Win7 to the version people actually used instead of Vista? Well here's the first Win7 vs XP comparison, as far as I'm aware...
Compared to XP, Win7 sucks donkey balls. Here's a list of Win7 pros/cons:
+ It starts up and shuts down faster.
- My system's usually on 24/7, so I only give half a crap.
- The MS devs have started thinking they're Mozilla devs.
The first two are self-explanatory. The third needs explaining:
In case you're not familiar with Mozilla, this is what goes on in the mind of a Mozilla dev: "Let's fuck around with UI elements that work perfectly fine and refuse to make the changes optional".
Obviously, for something a person uses as frequently as a web browser or an OS, the details of a UI are extremely important, and what works best for different people tends to vary. One of the most damaging things a UI designer can do to productivity and usability (not to mention the extreme arrogance involved) is to pull the rug out from under people with a new design they've convinced themselves is "obviously" better, and not provide a "turn that crap off" switch.
Too much around-the-bush beating? Ok. The AwfulBar can suck my nutsack, and so can the unified Forward/Back dropdown (I thought that unified dropdown was a nice idea when IE7 introduced it...then I actually tried IE7...yea...fuck it. Dumb design).
Back to Win7: Here's the things I've tried, hated, found no way to disable, and cite as reasons MS can pry XP from my cold dead hands:
- Goddamn taskbar tooltips. I hate shit constantly popping in and out every time I move my mouse. It was bad enough in XP. Win7 just makes it worse. Sure, a thumbnail image of the running window sounds nice. But in practice, I've never found them useful. Not once. But they do get in the way. Every...fucking...time. Never found a way to fix it.
- I *like* XP's Quick Launch panel. I don't want my shortcuts scattered around with my running tasks. If I wanted my computer to look and act like a fucking Mac I'd use a fucking Mac (Why MS imitates an OS that has a fraction of Windows's marketshare, and for damn good reason, is beyond me). Never found a way to fix it.
- On XP, I always have the taskbar set to a height of two-rows. Works great. On Win7, you can technically do it, but it's clear it was a completely half-assed attempt. Hell, the system tray outright ignores the extra row. Never found a way to fix it.
- Vista-style "All Programs" list. Another on my list of "Things that sounded great until I actually used them." Never found a way to fix it.
- Drag-select files is borderline broken. I always use "detail" view (and for good reason). But in Win7, you can't drag-select group of files in detail view unless you start from all the way outside the entire table. Incredible pain in the ass for such an incredibly basic operation. Especially-so if you have a lot of columns or files in a given directory. Never found a way to fix it.
- Where the hell are damn tree-view expand/collapse icons? Oh, there's one of them...and now it's gone...now there's another...shit, now it's gone too...Could Microsoft really not figure out it's a pain to click on something that's not fucking there until you're already over it? Their famed usability lab somehow didn't clue them in? Useless invisi-expansion icon. And it sure takes its damn time fading in, too. Never found a way to fix it.
- In XP, I quite like being able to expand a directory in the tree-view by clicking the label. Win7 mandates that I use the useless never-there mini-invisi-expansion icon. Yea that's right Win7, slow me down for no reason. And make me shell out money for the privilege. Never found a way to fix it.
- Explorer's tree-view seems to be starting to take a cue from GTK in "how to needlessly waste screen real-estate." Never found a way to fix it.
- The open/save dialog is gimped. And by "gimped" I mean "It's visually-bloated and slows me down in a way reminiscent of GIMP's notoriously shit open/save dialogs." It's not as bad as GIMP's dialogs, of course, but that sure as hell ain't saying much. The primary problem seems to be the large GTK-style-excess-padding favorites section inserted above the real directory-tree. Problem is, I don't use the favorites much. But Win7 expects me to. Fuck them. And guess what? Never found a way to fix it.
I'll admit, I do like how renaming a file automatically selects just the filename without the extension (even though there's still no reason not to at least have a way to turn that off for anyone who might not like it). And I like that Win7's explorer actually obeys my "always show the tree-view instead of that useless task pane" setting, unlike XP. But those aren't remotely enough to sell me on the "upgrade".
Oh yea, and then there's the RIAA/MPAA reach-around with the driver-level restrictions on A/V output quality without passing DRM checks. And the driver-revocation-for-the-protection-of-DRM system. Did I mention "Fuck DRM"? No? Fuck DRM, and fuck all who use or create it, no matter what their reason or intention for doing so. (And no, I'm not talking about Palladium. Hell, Palladium's not even what the Slashdotter kids claimed it was anyway.)
So yea, compared to WinXP, Win7 is nothing more than another Vista. Better than Vista? Maybe in some ways. XP-killer? Not fucking remotely.
I'll switch to either Linux or BSD before I upgrade to Win7. (But not OSX. Fuck OSX.)
4 comments for "Why I refuse to upgrade to Win7"
OSX is the only pretty BSD out there. And actually a lot less flashy/animated then windows.
Why hate it? It's not like the stock windows install is any better. You can customize the shit out of OSX.
Everything is scriptable. It's a proper programmers environment that doesnt make your eyes bleed.
I mostly use Terminal.app for my file managing needs anyway :P Windows cmd simply sucks. The terminal isn't even a properly resizeable window, wtf?
Ahh, I miss XP *sniff*. Actually, I remember that although Win95 was way better than Win3.1, there were still *soooo* many things that I thought Explorer got wrong... I think I wrote MS a letter with 20 or 30 things they did wrong (half of these were all the useful things they failed to copy from the Macs of that era). Not sure if I sent it. Anyway, 10 years later and they hadn't fixed any of these problems, they just added a horribly wide list of "tasks you probably don't want to do right now" on the left side.
I would add a couple of other things to your list:
- Win7 search is horrible, just horrible. THERE ARE PRACTICALLY NO OPTIONS. You get to type a search string in a box. You can add a date range and a size class (1-10KB, 10-100KB, etc). NOTHING ELSE. You cannot do a full-text search unless the folder is indexed, in which case, er, you can't not do a full-text search. Now I miss that stupid animated dog.
- The file association dialog is broken. Choose a program that is not officially installed in Program Files? Not allowed: Explorer silently creates a association with a DIFFERENT program like Internet Explorer instead. And YOU CANNOT REMOVE A FILE ASSOCIATION. What's that, puny user? You want to specify a custom command line? Create a custom context menu command? Screw you, I'm Windows 7, I laugh at the features you took for granted 15 years ago.
- It's hard to figure out how to get rid of that folders/favorites pane on the left. I figured it out once. Then I got a new laptop and couldn't find the kill switch again.
Gotta love how they remove the simple little features that every power user used, while still bloating up the OS to twice the size of the last OS. Windows 3.1 was 6 MB installed. Windows 95 was more like 100 MB. At the time, I was concerned about the bloat. But currently my C:\Windows folder is 27.8 GB and I never even noticed this atrocity before now.
Yea, I think the problem is:
1. They saw how "hip" Apple's last 10 years of "You'll be happy with what we LET you do" garbage has been.
2. They decided they had to become Apple.
3. Somewhere along the line, they completely forget that *Windows* is what *already* had about 90% market share. Clearly their non-Jobsian ways must have been doing *something* right.
Unless MS knocks if off with their Apple/Jobs-mimicry, then all it would take is for Linux to provide the XP experience MS refuses to (and they're not far off), and I think we could very well see an unprecedented mass exodus from Windows.
Also, I have another big new Win7 post coming up, as I've actually been using Win7 regularly on my new laptop for the last month or two. Turns out there are obscure ways to make it suck less (much like there was with XP), although there's still a LOT of new annoyances I've found that I can't turn off. Sometimes it is more and more tempting to go back to XP. Which is a very real possibility.