Engineering Windows 7

brons2 said:
What more do you want? An OS designed for your personal needs?
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Yes that's exactly what I want. Is this a rhetorical question? What else would I want?

The majority of people aren't interested in having their otherwise perfectly good computers made obsolete for artificial reasons, so I think you're probably in the minority on this one.
 
jimmyb said:
Yeah I meant supporting in new products. If they don't support 32 bit OSes in Windows 7, then I and many other people won't be buying it. It's in neither their or the consumers interest to stop supporting 32 bit procs.
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You shouldn't be buying it anyways in that case. Are you seriously going to run windows 7 on a Pentium 4 with less than 4 gigs of ram? If I find a single post by you bashing windows 7 for being slow I'm going to point out your running a 2009 OS on 2005 hardware.

No, a 32bit version of Windows 7 would be a poor move. The state of 64bit software is good and it forces people to put this OS on modern hardware.
 
I'm not suggesting that they should support 32 bit processors if the performance requirements of the OS necessitate something faster. I'm saying they shouldn't be artificially limiting themselves to 64 bit systems, when the performance requirements don't necessitate it.
 
Windows 7 is supposed to be built from the ground up, on a Unix-like base system. The engineers at M$ are getting pissed at how Windows kept stockpiling compatibility from version to version and got super-bloated, so that's going to change with 7.

I hope...
 
quite frankly vista is 64bit native if you ask me. The box says min ram is 512MB, most people say "yeah but you need 1GB", I say that you need 2GB to have a nice experiance, 4GB is comfertable. When ram costs $30/GB, even the $600 builds can afford to have 4GB of ram in em and as such the vast majority of computers I built heading out my door are running a 64bit copy of Home Premium.

The Mojave effect is intresting to deal with too.
 
jimmyb said:
I'm not suggesting that they should support 32 bit processors if the performance requirements of the OS necessitate something faster. I'm saying they shouldn't be artificially limiting themselves to 64 bit systems, when the performance requirements don't necessitate it.
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A 32-bit OS can't address 4GB of system memory.

Done.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
quite frankly vista is 64bit native if you ask me. The box says min ram is 512MB, most people say "yeah but you need 1GB", I say that you need 2GB to have a nice experiance, 4GB is comfertable. When ram costs $30/GB, even the $600 builds can afford to have 4GB of ram in em and as such the vast majority of computers I built heading out my door are running a 64bit copy of Home Premium.

The Mojave effect is intresting to deal with too.
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It costs like $35/2 GB, even better.
 
i'll be excited about 64-bit when hardware manufactuers get off their ass to provide better drivers

thats been the achilles heal of all windows x64 releases.....stable support for the hardware you wanna run thats been around for years in 32-bit releases
 
Parja said:
A 32-bit OS can't address 4GB of system memory.

Done.
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So you're saying that Windows7 will require 4GB of RAM?

From what I've heard, the modular design will actually allow for memory requirements to vary depending on the configuration of the system.
 
jimmyb said:
So you're saying that Windows7 will require 4GB of RAM?

From what I've heard, the modular design will actually allow for memory requirements to vary depending on the configuration of the system.
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He didn't mean that. 2GB is the current "standard" in any PC. 2GB is quickly being replaced by 4GB. Why would I want a 32-bit OS that can't use the 4GB it comes with?

Just toss 32-bit into the dumpster. 64-bit is where we are now and it's where the rest of the industry needs to go. If MS has to help it along by offering Windows 7 in nothing but a 64-bit version then so beat it.
 
I'm well aware that that's where the industry is going. Amusingly enough, I work for a company that designs and fabricates 64 bit processors, despite using primarily 32 bit machines at home.

Unless there's a technical reason why support shouldn't be offered for 32 bit processors, then I think support should be provided. My perception of the issue is that a large segment of the enthusiast community is jonesing to have everyone forced to upgrade to 64 bit machines because it serves their interest, despite the fact that everyone else is quite content saving a bit of money and using what they currently have.

Yes admittedly, no one is being forced to upgrade OSes, but presumably there's some extra functionality in these new OSes that people might want to have. There's no sense in artificially tying that to a mandatory hardware upgrade.
 
jimmyb said:
I'm well aware that that's where the industry is going. Amusingly enough, I work for a company that designs and fabricates 64 bit processors, despite using primarily 32 bit machines at home.

Unless there's a technical reason why support shouldn't be offered for 32 bit processors, then I think support should be provided. My perception of the issue is that a large segment of the enthusiast community is jonesing to have everyone forced to upgrade to 64 bit machines because it serves their interest, despite the fact that everyone else is quite content saving a bit of money and using what they currently have.

Yes admittedly, no one is being forced to upgrade OSes, but presumably there's some extra functionality in these new OSes that people might want to have. There's no sense in artificially tying that to a mandatory hardware upgrade.
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Who said anything about stopping support for current 32-bit? This is stopping 32-bit support for future OS's. If you have a PC that can't run 64-bit code then continue using XP, 2K, Vista x86 or whatever OS. That's not forcing anybody to upgrade anything as support for those OS's is not going anywhere. Plus if you're trying to run the latest OS on a PC that's old enough to NOT be 64-bit capable you've got bigger problems anyways...

We need to move forward. If we continue to cater to old technology we will never see the benefit of the newer technology until we're already looking at something else in the future.
 
jimmyb said:
I'm not suggesting that they should support 32 bit processors if the performance requirements of the OS necessitate something faster. I'm saying they shouldn't be artificially limiting themselves to 64 bit systems, when the performance requirements don't necessitate it.
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We understand what you're saying. We're just saying that your point is moot and that there can be appreciable benefits to moving to a single integrated platform, rather than having to maintain two things. Why is your point moot? Because the likelihood that it will affect a user that wants to install Windows 7 is low (predicted). Actually, very low.
 
I agree that there are benefits to moving to a single platform, however there are also benefits to supporting both 32 and 64 processors, and I'm inclined to say the benefits are much more significant.
 
jimmyb said:
I agree that there are benefits to moving to a single platform, however there are also benefits to supporting both 32 and 64 processors, and I'm inclined to say the benefits are much more significant.
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The last of the 32bit processors barely run Vista as it is (okay, "barely" is a bit hyperbolic, but anyway). Do you really think it get better moving forward? People are going to by Windows 7 and run it on their 32bit machines and dog the shit out MS for producing such a crappy and bloated OS, when the fact of the matter is their processors just can't keep up anymore.
 
Like I said, if it really is a case of the system requirements increasing to the point where 32 bit processors aren't enough, then I'd be cool with it, but assuming that's not the case, I don't see the point and I think it's bad for both consumers and MS.
 
jimmyb said:
Like I said, if it really is a case of the system requirements increasing to the point where 32 bit processors aren't enough, then I'd be cool with it, but assuming that's not the case, I don't see the point and I think it's bad for both consumers and MS.
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To play Devil's Advocate, I can see his point here somewhat. What if Windows 7 really is the debloatification of Windows lots of people on this very thread are calling for? If it uses significantly less resources than Vista, and possibly even less than XP when installed in a minimalistic configuration, why not? There's no harm I can think of making both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version, as long as the 64-bit version is what consumers buying a new computer at a brick-and-mortar store get by default, and MS keeps demanding 64-bit drivers for certification. If they really can make things less bloated (I know, doubtful considering who's developing it...), Windows 7 might be a perfect "last harrah" for the still rather large 32-bit install base.

And this is coming from somebody who does not have any 32-bit OS on his computer other than XP; I've been running (and prefer) 64-bit Vista and several 64-bit Linux distros rather than their 32-bit counterparts for quite a while.
 
Brons2

You haven't listed any reason for keeping 32 bit other than wanting to run legacy hardware on newer versions of Windows. Well, you've got XP and Vista, which will continue to receive security updates for the forseeable future.

How about the fact that it is not possible to run any 16 bit software application on a 64 bit system.
 
Okay, well it is possible, but Vista 64 does not allow it. In Vista 64, They dropped support for all 16 bit apps.
 
jimmyb said:
Yes that's exactly what I want. Is this a rhetorical question? What else would I want?

The majority of people aren't interested in having their otherwise perfectly good computers made obsolete for artificial reasons, so I think you're probably in the minority on this one.
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That's just selfishness then. Nobody is going to design an OS to meet YOUR very specific requirements. It has to sell in the marketplace. 64 bit is now and there is lots of hardware out there that supports it.

Your perfectly good computers are not being obsoleted. Microsoft will support 32 bit Vista with security patches for many years to come. XP will have mainstream support until 2010, and extended support for several years beyond that.

Of course, there is the other argument that, your 32 bit only computers already ARE obsolete!!! It's not like you are going to be able to play the latest games, are you? Do you think the makers of Crysis had you in mind? I think not.
 
Hamfiles said:
Brons2

You haven't listed any reason for keeping 32 bit other than wanting to run legacy hardware on newer versions of Windows. Well, you've got XP and Vista, which will continue to receive security updates for the forseeable future.

How about the fact that it is not possible to run any 16 bit software application on a 64 bit system.
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If you have a need to run 16 bit apps and are too cheap to buy updated software versions that are at least 32 bit, why would you be dropping coin on new computers or Vista licenses? Your first IT budget dollars should be spent on upgrading those 16 bit apps.

In addition, If you're a company running 16 bit apps, you really need to examine the security implications of doing that. The app is most likely not supported and a security risk. I guarantee you, 16 bit line of business applications would generate an audit finding in our environment.
 
jimmyb said:
Unless there's a technical reason why support shouldn't be offered for 32 bit processors, then I think support should be provided. .
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Do I have to use a sledehammer to apply this point into your thick skull??

32 BIT PROCESSSORS ARE BEING SUPPORTED FOR QUITE SOME TIME. 32 bit Vista will probably be supported until at least 2015! At which point, if you are still running a system from 2003 or earlier, you'll be a complete moron. Just because you may not get Windows7 doesn't mean you won't have a usable Windows version.
 
Steve said:
After all, what do analyst know? Windows Vista “failed” to meet analyst expectations but has had strong sales, hitting the 180 million mark months ago despite their complaints about the OS.
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Vista was shoved downs peoples throats. Hardly what I would call "welcomed by the masses". You have to go out of your way to get a new PC without Vista.
 
Hamfiles said:
Brons2

You haven't listed any reason for keeping 32 bit other than wanting to run legacy hardware on newer versions of Windows. Well, you've got XP and Vista, which will continue to receive security updates for the forseeable future.

How about the fact that it is not possible to run any 16 bit software application on a 64 bit system.
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Virutalization. Its free. (Virtual PC)
16bit apps are what, 10-15 years old at this point? Time to cut the umbilical cord buddy.
 
Monkey God said:
Vista was shoved downs peoples throats. Hardly what I would call "welcomed by the masses". You have to go out of your way to get a new PC without Vista.
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As was XP, 2000, ME, 98SE, 98, 95, 3.1, 3.0....

However, most people don't care what OS they use as long as they can do their school/work activities, play a game or ten, and check their email. It's not like MS is standing there forcing people to buy new computers with a gun pointed at them. No one says they must accept Vista and can't put whatever OS they want in it's place. People buy it willingly.
 
Monkey God said:
Vista was shoved downs peoples throats. Hardly what I would call "welcomed by the masses". You have to go out of your way to get a new PC without Vista.
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Yeah and a majority of those people that don't want Vista are the misinformed masses who believe the Apple commercials and believe all the FUD about Vista.

If I overhear someone telling me Vista is slow it must be slow right? :rolleyes:

Now back to 32-bit vs 64-bit - MS Exchange 2007 is purely 64-bit. Is that a bad thing? Should MS still have a 32-bit version of Exchange 2007? No way. This allows Exchange 2007 to page stupid amounts of RAM and stop using the hard drives!
 
ryan_975 said:
As was XP, 2000, ME, 98SE, 98, 95, 3.1, 3.0....

However, most people don't care what OS they use as long as they can do their school/work activities, play a game or ten, and check their email. It's not like MS is standing there forcing people to buy new computers with a gun pointed at them. No one says they must accept Vista and can't put whatever OS they want in it's place. People buy it willingly.
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I agree, most people dont care. I was simply pointing out it wasn't like people were lining up at midnight at the stores to buy it ala I-phones.

The whole mantra of "vista is selling like hotcakes, its a success" is retarded. Its selling because its the only thing they sell. Its not selling because people are choosing it over XP for the most part. Thats all I was saying.

And yes, its just like every other major release MS has done. Microsoft stops selling the old OS, eventually stops supporting the old OS, and all you can get anymore is the new one. That doesn't make it a success per se, just means thats all thats available. Sales by omission of alternate choices isn't intrinsic victory.

If MS wanted Vista to be more of a success, they should have
1) made UAC less annoying (they admitted to making it annoying on purpose)
2) pushed 64bit/ >4GB more (a valid reason to upgrade over XP32!)
3) not dumped the new file system
4) found ways to improve performance, lean the kernel out, etc
 
Vermillion said:
Yeah and a majority of those people that don't want Vista are the misinformed masses who believe the Apple commercials and believe all the FUD about Vista.

If I overhear someone telling me Vista is slow it must be slow right? :rolleyes:
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Dont be asinine. Vista is slightly slower under the best of conditions. It was MUCH more slower for me, although I never knew why. I got rid of it after 3-4 months of trying to get it to perform at XP levels. For some people its fine. For some people its very slow, and for most people its only slightly slower. These are facts.

Now back to 32-bit vs 64-bit - MS Exchange 2007 is purely 64-bit. Is that a bad thing? Should MS still have a 32-bit version of Exchange 2007? No way. This allows Exchange 2007 to page stupid amounts of RAM and stop using the hard drives!
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Im sorry, what is this in reference to? I never said anything about 32 vs 64.
 
Monkey God said:
I agree, most people dont care. I was simply pointing out it wasn't like people were lining up at midnight at the stores to buy it ala I-phones.

The whole mantra of "vista is selling like hotcakes, its a success" is retarded. Its selling because its the only thing they sell. Its not selling because people are choosing it over XP for the most part. Thats all I was saying.

And yes, its just like every other major release MS has done. Microsoft stops selling the old OS, eventually stops supporting the old OS, and all you can get anymore is the new one. That doesn't make it a success per se, just means thats all thats available. Sales by omission of alternate choices isn't intrinsic victory.

If MS wanted Vista to be more of a success, they should have
1) made UAC less annoying (they admitted to making it annoying on purpose)
2) pushed 64bit/ >4GB more (a valid reason to upgrade over XP32!)
3) not dumped the new file system
4) found ways to improve performance, lean the kernel out, etc
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1) UAC isn't really that annoying. In the Beta/RCx stages, yeah it was bad. But with SP1, I rarely ever see it.

2) agreed

3) there was no new file system. WinFS was a layer on top of NTFS that was supposed to allow for incredible flexibility in searching and organizing files. But it was too demanding on the system and they couldn't get acceptable performance from it. The search function included in Vista now is still incredibly fast and somewhat flexible.

4The kernel itself is already incredibly fast and lean. Its all the stuff added onto it that slows Vista down. Even then, it's not that slow at all, provided you have reasonable hardware to run it on.
 
brons2 said:
Do I have to use a sledehammer to apply this point into your thick skull??
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Let's simmer down now. I'm talking about 32 bit support in Windows7, in case that wasn't already extraordinarily clear by the thread title, or my post where I admit that nobody is being forced to upgrade.

My point still stands though, for the majority of users, providing support for 32-bit processors is significantly more beneficial than removing it artificially.
 
UAC annoyed the *shit* out of me. Maybe its because im a developer, or just the way I work... I dunno. I ended up turning it off, which sort of defeats the purpose.

re winfs: My point was they added no real useful new features other than Aero.

What stuff added that slows it down? Can it be disabled?
 
Monkey God said:
Dont be asinine. Vista is slightly slower under the best of conditions. It was MUCH more slower for me, although I never knew why. I got rid of it after 3-4 months of trying to get it to perform at XP levels. For some people its fine. For some people its very slow, and for most people its only slightly slower. These are facts.
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Just because somebody says it's slow I have to believe it's slow? Give me a break.

I've used Vista with 768MB RAM with an Athlon @ 1365 (test bed system back during Beta/RC releases), 2GB RAM with a 6000+, 4GB with a 6000+ and 8GB of RAM on my current system. 768MB was iffy but not too bad. A Vista Basic would run reasonably well meaning you're only missing out on things like Aero but still gaining SuperFetch.

2GB Vista was good. 4GB was even better after I added 2GB. Ran XP as well by dual-booting on that same system. 2GB Vista was probably on par with XP except in games which was due to immature drivers in my opinion. The 4GB system was faster because of SuperFetch actually making use of the 4GB of RAM and storing all my commonly used applications. It's much nicer seeing next to no hard drive access for simple things like Firefox or E-mail.

8GB is far faster then XP ever was. Everything I do is sitting in my RAM ready to be used. That's something XP could never do, even in its wildest dreams.

Im sorry, what is this in reference to? I never said anything about 32 vs 64.
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Sorry, was not in reference to you. This was leading back to the 32-bit vs. 64-bit support discussion earlier in the thread with Windows 7 having or not having a 32-bit version.
 
jimmyb said:
My point still stands though, for the majority of users, providing support for 32-bit processors is significantly more beneficial than removing it artificially.
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The benefit is dubious at best. At the time of the Windows 7 release, the vast majority of computers worth upgrading to a new version of Windows will be 64 bit capable. That being that case, what is the benefit of sticking with 32 bit?

Of course, this will leave out the Athlon XP series and the non-EMT64 P4's but those machines already struggle to run Vista, so what's the point?
 
brons2 said:
At the time of the Windows 7 release, the vast majority of computers worth upgrading to a new version of Windows will be 64 bit capable.
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I don't believe that will be the case. The number of 32 bit machines produced far outnumbers the number of 64 bit machines. Of course you've tossed in the incredibly nebulous qualifier "worth upgrading", which despite its ambiguity is probably also incorrect, assuming we're to believe the rumours that the modular nature of Windows 7 will potentially reduce hardware requirements depending on the particular configuration.

If you have any sources (or rumours even) that suggest the minimum requirements will be significantly higher, please post them.
 
jimmyb said:
I don't believe that will be the case. The number of 32 bit machines produced far outnumbers the number of 64 bit machines. Of course you've tossed in the incredibly nebulous qualifier "worth upgrading", which despite its ambiguity is probably also incorrect, assuming we're to believe the rumours that the modular nature of Windows 7 will potentially reduce hardware requirements depending on the particular configuration.

If you have any sources (or rumours even) that suggest the minimum requirements will be significantly higher, please post them.
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Considering the move to modularity was supposed to have started with Vista, I can only doubt the benefits the we will see. Most likely it'll just be a way to offer even more "editions" without any way for the end user to actually customize the OS. Win95 was by far the closest to the "install the parts you want" version. Since then MS has move farther and farther from that model.
 
ryan_975 said:
The last of the 32bit processors barely run Vista as it is (okay, "barely" is a bit hyperbolic, but anyway). Do you really think it get better moving forward? People are going to by Windows 7 and run it on their 32bit machines and dog the shit out MS for producing such a crappy and bloated OS, when the fact of the matter is their processors just can't keep up anymore.
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Actually no, Vista is crappy and bloated no matter how you look at it.
 
Emission said:
Actually no, Vista is crappy and bloated no matter how you look at it.
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Bloated? maybe but that's the tendancy of all software. Look at any of the main GNU/Linux distros, you'll see the same bloat/feature creep there as well.

Crappy? Not at all. It's fast, stable, secure, and has terrific driver support. There are a few quirks that need to be address, but come on, even XP still had problems that needed to be addressed and it's 7 years old.
 
Emission said:
Actually no, Vista is crappy and bloated no matter how you look at it.
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Vista is not bloated and in many cases runs software, even 32 bit, much faster than XP. I now have it on 6 machines and nothing MS has ever written integrates this well.

The real problem that MS has is pretty simple. My guess would be 9 out of 10 copies of Win2k are out there in use both in public and I know for a fact most big industry.

The major blunder was allowing XP to remain on the market so long it almost adopted an entire generation of users who can’t or don’t want change.

When Vista hit the market it wasn’t Microsoft’s problem about drivers, it’s not their job to write them. The problem was companies like HP, Epson etc who refused to write drivers even though they had ample time. Face it, who wants to pay for new drivers for under $100 and $200 printers, they are mostly throw a ways anyway.

Strange there are drivers for my HP-4P which has to be 15 or 20 years old, but that isn’t a throw away printer.

Worse are the companies who have written all that software to integrate with 2K or XP. No way are they going to replace or pay to have it re-written. The same thing happened with a ton of existing corporate software, the commercial companies simply refused to re-write it because they had no market.

Even if you fixed all those problems think in terms of the time and money lost to training. In this economy it’s just not going to happen.

Another MS blunder; they made products so that people expected service packs. What was the first thing you heard about Vista? “I’ll wait for the first service pack”. Well, the truth is Vista didn’t really need a service pack, still doesn’t however it did bring forth a bunch of sales when they added SP-1 to the box.

I don’t care if we get to Windows 19 it needs a market bigger than a few million home users. Oh, and it has to be realistically affordable as well no matter how many tricks it does.;)
 
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