Geek Tested:

What Microsoft Must Change for Windows 7

Posted 09/11/08 at 12:45:30 PM by Will Smith

By now, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s working and what isn’t in Vista. Here are our recommendations for how Microsoft should proceed with Windows 7

Fight Piracy in a New Way

Face it, activation is a failure. For power users who frequently upgrade their PCs, dialing in to reactivate the OS is beyond irritating. Instead, Microsoft must come up with a novel way to punish pirates without annoying its paying customers. (May we suggest displaying massive popup ads in pirate copies of Windows?) For legitimate customers, a realistic home-licensing program—buy one copy at full price, get four more upgrades for $50 to $100 each—would go a long way toward creating goodwill.

Streamline the UAC System

We definitely approve of the spirit behind User Account Control—it’s good to warn users when they’re doing something risky. However, the implementation is so chatty that it trains users to automatically click Approve on any popup they see. This is insanely dangerous behavior that must be fixed in Windows 7.

Add Something Inspirational

Say what you like about Steve Jobs, but he stirs the Apple faithful into a frenzy with his promise of “one more thing.” Apple has done a great job of adding features, applications, and functionality to OS X that inspire its users. Some of that is just marketing mumbo jumbo, but the tight integration and the user-focused design of Apple’s integrated apps impress even the most die-hard PC user.

64-Bit is the New 32-Bit

It’s time. The 64-bit revolution is upon us, and it’s time for Microsoft to lead the charge. The hardware is available and common, and software vendors should have been planning for the 64-bit change for the last five years. Please, Microsoft, make the 64-bit edition of Windows 7 the default install. And while you’re at it, allow users to install the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows on the same machine without buying two licenses. Anything less is just crass.

Create Fewer Versions

We understand that creating many versions of an OS with a few key differentiators can help drive sales at the higher end. But it’s a viciously consumer-unfriendly practice that needs to be stopped. Nothing’s worse than finding out you’ve purchased the wrong software or that because of obscure upgrade paths you’re railroaded into buying an incredibly overpriced version of the OS whose only differentiating factor is that it works with your rig. Actually, one thing is worse: finding out you can’t return that already opened Vista box for a version you can use.

Jettison Backward Compatibility

So many of Vista’s problems are directly tied to backward compatibility, but we have the perfect solution. Instead of building backward compatibility into the OS, ship each copy of Windows with Virtual PC and bare-bones images of Windows XP. Let users run old apps in a virtualized OS, and strip out all the cruft that’s required to make them run natively in Windows 7.

Make Performance Paramount

We expect to take a small performance hit in games anytime we upgrade our operating system. We don’t like it, but we understand that it’s the way things go. What we can’t abide is taking massive performance penalties in basic computing tasks—like transferring files over a network. There’s no wiggle room on this one: Get it right the first time.

Upgrade DirectSound3D

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but we like good audio too. There’s more than enough blame to pass around between Creative and Microsoft for Vista’s sound woes. At this point, we don’t care who is at fault, we just want a successor to DirectSound 3D in the next version of Windows and DirectX.

COMMENTS:10

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$50-$100 upgrades?
Submitted by Perplexing Man on Mon, 09/22/2008 - 5:33pm

Sorry I'm a bit confused. First I pay lets say 100 to 300 dollars depending on what product I decide on then I must pay an additional amount to upgrade? Sorry but a while back i read online (go figure) that Microsoft ultimately wants to make having their OS a subscription type deal, whether this is true or not I sure as hell would be against it as I am not keen about the notion of paying full price for an OS then shelling out more money for upgradability. Now I would not be against say a free copy of a Windows System that would then require a subscription type deal provided the price was reasonable as oppose to paying big bucks then continuing hereafter with additional bucks. Then again either route and I'm most likely to go 100% Ubuntu all the way.

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I really think they did XP
Submitted by Wildebeast on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 6:51pm

I really think they did XP pretty well, if you ignore Office and IE being given the right to modify the OS. [a pretty big thing to ignore...]

They may even have been moving in the right direction with Vista, but they jack-knifed the whole driver/compatibility thing.

They either needed to more closely track whate driver/hardware worked and did not work, or make efforts for the use of legacy hardware.

Forced obselescense was bad enough, but poorly implemented? The performance problems, the price-tag on the higher-end OS versions, tying Halo 2 to Directx 10?? Those concepts/ideas were just totally f******. Did they really need a longer Beta test, to figure that out?

Now they've got to show us that they're not just jerking us around --- for fun & profit.

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Backwards compatibility
Submitted by nightkiller on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 7:21pm

Back in the early 90s when Microsoft and IBM split over Presentation Manager, IBM cut a deal with Microsoft to allow seamless integration of Windows 3.1 with OS/2. The result was a couple of DLLs that launched Windows based programs when required.

It worked well.

Granted, while the sophistication of XP is light years ahead of DOS based Windows, the metaphor is still apt. Developing the hooks that allow for that scale of seamless integration should not be that much of a stretch given all of the work they have put into WindowsPE. Even if the new OS included a stripped "gamer version" of XP, with the size of Oses these days, the extra code would barely be noticed.

You choose a flightless bird as a mascot and wonder why it doesn't take off?

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All aboard the failtrain
Submitted by hogkill on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 12:39pm

It's just going to be like Vista again. At first they said they were going to make it more efficient, now they are talking about adding all these crazy features and building it off core Vista archetecture to ensure complete compatability with Vista.

They are going to fail so unbelievbly hard. I think Microsoft has become so bloated with $ by now that they have to completely screw everything up by having to many people working on it and adding their own ideas.

Microsoft needs to move more towards the core architecture (more like Linux less like Mac). I want Windows 7 to look just like XP but powerful and with better driver support for video and sound. It needs a whole lot less features than Vista.

You hear me Microsoft? LESS FEATURES=BETTER

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Hold your horses ...
Submitted by BitCrazed on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 1:17pm

Before you assume that Microsoft has not learned from Vista, go read Steven Sinofsky's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/e7. For those that don't know, Steven was the guy who led the Office team for many years and took over the Windows team after Vista shipped. It would be an understatement of gigantic proportions to say that he's shaken things up a bit!

The Windows team hasn't had this kinda shakeup since Brian Valentine took hold of the team building Windows 2000 and helped stop them falling off a cliff. Steven brings a whole new approach to developing product, breathing some much needed discipline and some much appreciated passion and pride back into the Windows org.

Reading through his blog will give you a taste of just how much more effective, more thorough, more professional and more empowered the Windows team now are under his enormously capable leadership.

-- Bitcrazed --

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interesting article
Submitted by Jipstyle on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 11:36am

Interesting article, guys.

I really like the solution presented for backwards compatibility. It has long been a thorn in MS' side and using a virtual XP install to run legacy apps is a great solution.

As a previous poster mentioned, this could be troublesome for non-power users. However, you (or MS) don't need to tell them that they are running Railroad Tycoon 3 in a virtual OS. MS could (and should) provide a tool that allows them to install their app seamlessly into such an environment without them knowing.

One question for the previous poster, though: when did Microsoft stop being a development shop? They are devs too, after all. Finally, the open source community has proven that running 32-bit code in a 64-bit environment isn't all that difficult. We've been doing it for years now. ;)

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Virtual PC isn't a solution
Submitted by Shilar on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 1:21am

Actually, Virtual PC is the worst thing you can do to someone trying to run Poser 5 on a virtual XP environment. One, VPC emulates a 500-900mhz computer on average, even on a 4ghz machine. Plus, not all the 4 gb of ram is available to a virtual pc, you may have 2gb. Lastly, lack of 3D will make for a bad day. It'd take 2-3 day to make an image.

Why not do like linux, and make an API layer. At least then 90% of the programs would work at full speed.

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The good and the bad...
Submitted by the_river on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 11:07am

I'm in fear for doing the update to my Creative drivers on my X-Fi Fata1ity because the last one broke my audio integration into Premiere Pro 1.5. Don't ask me how that works. The UAC is off on my machine, then again I run 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate, but without Avast! and do a file scan from time to time but that's it. I'm pretty careful with files. I don't like performance cut, and most virus apps slow down Vista so much with boot time and load times. I like to be the first one on the map.

And trying to reboot into XP is just a pain in the ass. I rarely do it, but in order to make Adobe Encore 1.5 even install, XP had to be it. That's Adobe's fault, not Microsoft's. I wish I had just left Vista on the system and then installed the (now) free VMware Server app and just used a VMDK file for all my installs on a virtual machine running XP x32. Partitioning is the OLD way of doing it. I'll have to use Partition Magic to just get rid of my XP install when I need to. Hate to kill 25GB on an XP install on a nice Raptor drive.

Come on Microsoft, make us happy, and give us Retail buyers a free upgrade to the latest version. You make all your money off of the deals with Dell, HP, and IBM manufacturers anyway. Give the new person an incentive to update their older machine...something that doesn't kill their boot time. I understand 512MB aint going to run it, but better features and such will encourage them to upgrade memory which is dirt cheap and the video card which are dirt cheap also. They really don't understand the memory management against viruses and all that stuff...give them the bells and whistles!

And for the love of God, get rid of Vista Basic! It's almost as bad as ME...almost. Business has some good features and is a lighter install, but still, Home Premium and Ultimate should be it. I agree with apps and media codecs being taken out of Business, but I liked the choice of XP Home or XP Pro. Office and power user got the latter. It was easy. Networking was better and for those of us that cared, we held on to our XP Pro builds as our backup for Vista. You did good in a lot of ways, but some things are a dissapointment. The crap that should have worked but didn't....I can't burn a freaken CD!? Granted updates and SP1 fixed that stuff, but file transfer speeds are unforgivable.

Listen to MPC. We need it to be better!

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Absolutely.....but
Submitted by brostbeef on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 10:57am

Great article. I am all for what you said, however, although I agree something should be done about backward compatibility, I'm not sure if I like the solution.

Maybe it's just me, but I have family and friends who would gloss over big time if I said they needed to start a VM. It's not simple enough. I also don't know how much "backwards compatibility" code there is, and what would classify as software which is being held up by said code.

Is Word 97 only working because of specific code, or is the same code running Word 97 needed to run Word 2007? I can see stuff needed for the 64-bit shift, but I always get the feeling that we're not talking about this when we talk about backwards compatibility.

Simply put: Is it Microsoft who needs to change or is it software developers?

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Microsoft Leading the way to 64bit?
Submitted by Jonnan on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 12:35pm

"He assailed OEM system builders for including bad, buggy, or just plain useless apps on their machines in exchange for a few bucks on the back end."

I hate to be this blunt, but it's rather late to assail OEM builders for including the exact kind of software that Microsoft has helped design into their business model since at least Windows 98 SE (and arguably before that).

As for 64 bit Windows - it's *way* too late for Microsoft to "Lead the Charge" - My mom is 60 years old, and 64 bit Ubuntu works so well on the machine we bought for her birthday she doesn't care about the copy of Vista we left on her machine.

Other than the time I accidentally left hidden files visible in Nautilus and she 'cleaned' all those stupid files beginning with periods by putting them in a sub-directory out of her way - That was exciting - .

But - Ubuntu 64 is rock solid, runs about four times faster than the 32 bit Vista it came with, and if you can talk her into giving Windows 7 a chance, you're better at it than I.

Jonnan

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