Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 For Windows 7 321
An anonymous reader writes "Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is out. Windows 8 may suck but now you can at least enjoy (most of) that version's Internet Explorer. IE10 for Win7, originally not planned, has seen the light of day after all — four months after it debuted in Windows 8. It is available via Windows Update as an optional update; however, if you've already installed a pre-release version, it will be updated automatically as an 'important' update. IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update to bring some Windows 8 APIs to the more mature Windows, and it will not feature embedded Adobe Flash as the Windows 8 version does (use the plug-in version from Adobe, as usual, instead)."
Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad to say, but you probably still will.
If you expect the same versions of the same software to behave identically on different OSes, then the shining glory days of your web development career are still ahead of you.
Incidentally, does IE still have a complete mental meltdown when talking to no-cache servers over SSL?
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Does it still have the broken document button that many home users accidentally enable ... making it identify itself and render in IE7 bugs mode?
To me that was / is the most backwards thing about IE ... that users might actually be running in IE7 mode without realizing it.
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I'm loathe to admit this, but Windows 8 + classic shell [classicshell.net] isn't terribly bad.
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought the "embedded" Flash of IE is similar to Chrome's embedded Flash. Meaning Microsoft maintains its own build of Flash like Google maintains its own Flash. So it's up to Microsoft to fix any security issues and not rely on Adobe to release a patch to the consumer. So it could be a good thing like Chrome or a terrible thing like IE6.
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm thinking "embedded" actually means "included", like how chrome included flash player instead of using the plugin version.
This is a good thing since updates to flash player happens at the same time as updates to the browser (in the case of IE, it's handled by windows update) and it's easier to update and therefore more likely for critical flash updates to be applied.
Not sure how different "embedded" vs plugin is for security.
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Insightful)
I never understood why Microsoft, with all its code signing, frameworks, and what-not, never opened up an API for Windows Update so there could be a single update system instead of every OEM and software company piling on their own update systems. Seems simple...
1. Register application and its update url with Windows Update API. ...
2. Windows API checks code signing, rejects invalid and unsigned code.
3. Windows Update updates all code-signed software on system.
4.
5. Profit?
Ah! Now I see why it hasn't been done!
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Indeed. A decent package manager is basically what's lacking in windows that's present in almost every other OS. WU could easily be it.
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:4, Informative)
You mean the Windows 8 app store? They have that. Yes, it's separate from OS updates, but it's centralized and drm-laden as you imagined.
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I never understood why Microsoft, with all its code signing, frameworks, and what-not, never opened up an API for Windows Update so there could be a single update system instead of every OEM and software company piling on their own update systems. Seems simple...
1. Register application and its update url with Windows Update API.
2. Windows API checks code signing, rejects invalid and unsigned code.
3. Windows Update updates all code-signed software on system.
4. ...
5. Profit?
Ah! Now I see why it hasn't been done!
Code signed by who exactly?
The problem is this in a nutshell:
1) Bonzibuddy releases version 1, a great clean freeware app with great smileys that everyone wants.
2) Registers with the Windows API and pushes updates regularly
3) Some beancounter at BonziBuddy says we need to include spyware and toolbars to make money so they include it in a new update
4) User uses Windows Update to update Bonzi Buddy, ends with 3 tray icons with notifications, 2 toolbars and changes to home page and the hosts file pointing Goog
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm impressed by your nitpicking on the first link while failing to address the bigger point.
What is "legitimate" and what is considered not "legitimate" is not even a fine line, it's a complete gray gradient. Even Apple is struggling with the App Store while trying to define it.
For example, newer versions of uTorrent(for Windows) contain ads and contain installations for toolbars etc while the older ones didn't.
As for an example of someone having trouble with updated software on Android, here's one http:// [androidforums.com]
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:4, Interesting)
never opened up an API for Windows Update so there could be a single update system instead of every OEM and software company piling on their own update systems.
If an update comes from Windows Update and it does negative things to the box, people blame Microsoft. Why would they increase the probability of this happening? They want Windows Update to only deliver safe and advisable updates.
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Simple Microsoft (rightly so) does not trust ISVs to keep control of their private key. What's harder standing up your own update server for $APP working out its protocol (probably simple) and making the DNS point to your rogue box; or breaking in once swiping their private key (probably left on some internet connected machine by and moron or on some code monkeys laptop he left on the bus), pushing your signed malicious update to Microsoft from the coffee shop two states over?
Re:Actually... I'm glad. (Score:5, Informative)
Type chrome:plugins in the address bar to open the Plug-ins page.
On the Plug-ins page that appears, find the "Flash" listing.
To enable Adobe Flash Player, click the Enable link under its name.
To disable Adobe Flash Player completely, click the Disable link under its name.
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Use chromium. Chrome - spyware - flash - branding = chromium.
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Chrome has flash built in, super annoying, its one of the reason I stick with FF.
That's not a good reason to stick with Firefox. Learn to use your tools. In Chrome:
Settings --> Show advanced settings --> Privacy Content Settings --> Plug-ins
Choose "Click to play" so you can run Flash on demand (by clicking, of course), or "Block all" to make it impossible to run Flash, even if you want to.
mistake in article (Score:4, Informative)
IE7 on Win7 requires a platform update
should be
IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update I think
Re:mistake in article (Score:4, Insightful)
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Platform update does say "there's a list on our website if you're interesting" right there in Windows Update. The link is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838 [microsoft.com]. It looks like it's mostly imaging and video component support brought back from Windows 8, plus something for XPS documents:
Direct2D
DirectWrite
Direct3D
Windows Imaging Component (WIC)
Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP)
Windows Animation Manager (WAM)
XPS Document API
H.264 Video Decoder
JPEG XR codec
How is using the term "platform" less in
So? (Score:4, Interesting)
last decade when active X came out and the promise of applications in IE, i thought it was cool.
for years nothing happened except for flash
i'm perfectly happy with chrome now and web apps like feedly, evernote and others. IE is still in the stone age of the internet where you have to visit a web site to read the content
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy crap! County yourself lucky.
I had to wrangle with websites that used activex controls even though they could/should have been javascript. What a freakin' nightmare. Thank goodness it seems to have come to an end.
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If you thought Active X was cool, you deserve any of the punishment that you can get.
I am quite happy that Flash kept ActiveX out of the picture. ActiveX was one of Microsoft Knee Jerk reactions to Java Applets. They figured they could make their brand more popular by making it so it runs faster by allowing it to run on one platform, and add more features that Sun decided not to add because of security concerns.
What happened... When we migrated to 64 platforms some Active X apps begin to break, and opened
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Hey, ActiveX changed how my entire industry thought and worked, and it sure was a milestone in our development.
Granted, I'm in IT-Security, but still.
This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Informative)
Artificially limiting what versions of the OS can run their other software is a huge annoyance of windows. There is no reason why this and newer DirectX could not be back ported to XP.
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Artificially limiting what versions of the OS can run their other software is a huge annoyance of windows.
And OS X.
Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Informative)
What about Siri? Apple certainly did restrict older devices. All it requires is a microphone and the ability to upload a recording to a server. And they pretended it used advanced technology on the phone itself. It wasn't even until a later phone that they actually improved the microphone to work well with Siri.
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Yes, I realize that's something they tied to hardware upgrades and not OS upgrades. But Apple doesn't charge for those OS updates. You see a lot of similar things in OS X but I couldn't come up with a clear example.
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Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong.
How is it "wrong"? How is the fact that itunes 11 won't install on Leopard in any way even the slightest bit different from what Microsoft is doing? Both companies just want to move on and not support the old stuff.
Apple doesn't artifically limit it.
Yes, actually they do. Hell there have been OS X upgrades that they have simply DECIDED not to let run on older Apple hardware.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26562/leopardassist [macupdate.com]
LeopardAssist is a simple tool to install Leopard on older, unsupported Power Macs.
"It bypasses the 867 MHz processor check in the Leopard installer to allow systems that don't meet the requirements to complete installation. It achieves this by temporarily faking the clock speed in the device tree, changing it to 933MHz, and then launching the Leopard Installer. No modified Leopard DVD's, no hardware hacks or tweaks, just a one-time run application. (Much like XPostFacto)"
It doesn't get to be any more of an artificial limit than that. 900MHz = "Ok" 800MHz = "No you can't install it".
There are a number of other similar OSX upgrade related jerk moves like this over the years.
What could be more artificial than that?
They make it clear they move on and don't support old stuff because that's what they want to do not because it's physically impossible.
Same as microsoft.
Microsoft doesn't want to support directX on XP. They said so. Nobody ever claimed it would be "impossible". Ditto for Internet Explorer. They could support IE10 on XP but they don't want to, and said so. But at least in those cases it would be actual work to get them running on the older system.
Apple is the only one that completely artificially blocks you from running new software on old OSes, or new OSes on older hardware. Safari 5 was artificially exclusive to Tiger. Itunes restrictions have also been pretty artificial. I think my favorite is itunes because you needed the latest itunes to support new iphones, but itunes only supports the latest macs.
My brother got burned by an iphone, forcing him to update itunes, forcing him to update his OSX, forcing him to buy a new computer. And he wasn't running a decrepit old computer either; it was meeting his needs just fine.
It was rather ironic that itunes supported Windows XP PC which came out years before his Mac computer. (Granted it required XPSP2... but XPSP2 is a free upgrade that worked on any computer that ran XP. vs OSX updates which were not free and which do not run on any Mac made in 2002 onwards with nothing more than a (optional) ram upgrade.
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...isn't that exactly what this article is about?
Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Considering how
a) An incredible lot of consumer machines are still running XP.
b) most consumers don't give a damn about updates ("updates? I make updates? Must be some automatic stuff.")
c) Computer games are nearly entirely bought for consumer machines
I'd say yeah, unless you require high end specs for your games where it's likely that the average dufus got Vista or 7 with his new box anyway, you might want to consider supporting XP.
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Except that MS considers the OS to include the graphics drivers and drawing API and window compositing. IE10 was specifically written around the more modern compositing system in Windows 7 and up. Then they decided not to support Windows 7, because they wrote specifically to a few API's new to Windows 8 (for probably no good reason). And now they are backporting some of the updates that makes Windows 8 an upgrade into Windows 7.
It's not magic to go back and support XP. It's a complete rewrite of the ren
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Does Red Hat or Apple support a 10 year old OS? Do any open distros do this?
RHEL has a 13 year support window. https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/ [redhat.com]
Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Insightful)
that's hot fixes and patches, just like MS
who is writing new software for 10 year old Linux kernels or distros?
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For the record, "10 year old kernel" would be 2.4.
So "yes, but only embedded folks".
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Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Interesting)
I can still build software for 2.2 if I want. I could backport any fix I like.
I am not actually expecting them to backport something to XP, just pointing out that until recently they held IE10 from Windows 7 for no good reason.
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THAT is the main difference. Whenever someone comes along like baka_toroi and asks whether there is still patches for an ancient version of Linux around, this is the answer: If not, roll your own. Or if you can't, fire up the browser of your choice and it's usually easy to find someone who already rolled.
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Or, you know, update to a newer distro. Except in rare cases (RHEL), it's /free/, and if your computer can't run a modern distro then take $35 and either buy a Pi or something better that's used.
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Because they won't give me (in the general sense: I don't personally have any interest in doing it myself, personally) the tools and legal permissions to do it myself, that's why.
Re:This is why people hate MS (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing is that everyone else manages to produce a modern browser without altering the underlying OS to do so. That's why the latest and greatest Firefox, Chrome, and Opera run on anything XP and later but IE versions are segmented.
Yet MS claims that they do not leverage their unique level of control over the Windows OS to benefit their non-OS products. Things like using secret un-published APIs or hacking on the APIs to benefit their other software exclusively...
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Right here on Slashdot, I've heard people argue that hardware acceleration is way faster on IE than other browsers. I still prefer compatibility over performance, but, devil's advocate, there appears to be a reason for IE doing what it's doing, rather than the usual case of lock-in.
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Never attribute a blunder to techs when it can sufficiently be explained with marketing. Who is the more likely culprit? The browser division, who has a record of one blunder after another, being privy to the deep magic of undocumented features, or their marketing goons, who have a record of screwing over customers time and again?
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Firefox, Chrome, and Opera manage to run on XP, Vista, and Win7 just fine.
Fully agreed that the deep integration, particularly the way they did it was bad. That doesn't explain why a newer browser that's not doing any of that won't work when everyone elses' newer browser that doesn't do that works just fine.
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There is no reason why this and newer DirectX could not be back ported to XP.
Actually there is. With Vista the graphics driver model was radically changed to run mostly in user mode rather than kernel mode, improving stability and security. As such graphics drivers needed major modifications from the XP versions, and DX10 was built on top of that driver model. Porting and maintaining that port would not be trivial.
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There is no reason why this and newer DirectX could not be back ported to XP.
No technical reason, perhaps (although I don't know), but I also would not want to support software that is 10+ years old, and several versions behind, with the latest technology. Sort of the same reason why I, as a web developer, don't want to spend any time debugging IE6 and IE7 issues. It's just not worth it. We no longer even have an IE6 testing platform in-house. How much testing do you think Microsoft really wants to do for their newest technology running on XP? Instead of "hating MS", just get W
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Artificially limiting what versions of the OS can run their other software is a huge annoyance of windows. There is no reason why this and newer DirectX could not be back ported to XP.
Yes there is. It would mean less profits from Vista sales.
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Artificially limiting what versions of the OS can run their other software is a huge annoyance of windows. There is no reason why this and newer DirectX could not be back ported to XP.
This is also why people hate Mozilla - because they refuse to support newer FF on older OS's like XP?
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DirectX is a big reason why IE10 wouldn't port well back to XP. It uses a hardware-accelerated compositing renderer. Something that a web browser needs more than most programs, with all the little pieces that have to be combined to make one page. To port IE10 to XP would require writing a completely separate rendering engine, or providing a massive free update to Windows XP.
Can we have the story with the additude? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok you guys dislike Windows 8, we know. You guys hated Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 when it came out too. When windows 9 comes out you guys are going to go why change Windows 8 windows 9 add whatever features that makes my life so much harder. This will be the version people will finally shift to Linux in droves.
not so... (Score:3)
Like star trek movies the consumer versions of Windows tend to alternate between good and bad.
98 was good, then ME sucked
XP was good, but Vista sucked
Win 7 was good, but Win 8 sucks
Windows 2000 was good, but was more of an enterprise OS so it doesn't count for the good/bad cycle.
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with ME i agree, that sucked (when i personally tried it, i had to get rid of it after half a day since no matter what i did, i couldn't get it on my home network -_- )
but vista and windows 8?
I've used vista both at home and at work for quite a while, and it was just the step between xp and 7. The only vista issue i know of is that aero was ridiculously heavy for the cheap pc's people were buying. But for anyone with a half decent pc (as i'd expect from the slashdot crowd), i'm sure it must've run really we
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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8 Yes [sucked].
Really? Have you guys even used Windows 8? It's virtually exactly the same as Windows 7. Even the hated "start screen/new UI/Metro" performancs exactly the same as the Win 8 start menu for the majority of people that use it
1. Click the lower left of your screen (Windows 7 and 8)
2. Type the first 3 or 4 letters of the program you want to run (Windows 7 and 8)
3. Hit Enter to launch it (Windows 7 and 8)
In addition, I'm the only one that runs Windows 8 in my office because everyone else hates it. Yet they
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Yes.
No, its not.
Assuming you mean Win7 start menu (there is no Win8 start menu), this is just wrong. It doesn't work at all the same.
The vast majority o
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Several more of them were than you want to admit. Windows 95 and 98 both got a lot of negative press at the time, and Windows XP was almost universally panned as *horrible* until SP1 came out. (Granted, it got better press than Windows Me. Art Modell got better press than Windows Me.) As for Seven, all the people who had upgraded to Vista jumped on Seven like college boys on free pizza, but among the overwhelming majority who wer
Re:Can we have the story with the additude? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Windows 95 and 98 both got a lot of negative press at the time,
Are you kidding? When Windows 95 came out, it was like god himself opened up the skies while everyone yelled, "it is good". Stores had launch parties at midnight, and there were lines out the door of people buying it like twinkies & toilet paper after a nuclear attack, along with pretty much ANYTHING that had the number "95" printed on the box.
People bitched about 98 because ActiveDesktop made your shiny new 60-100MHz Pentium crawl like a 33MHz 486SX. For years, Win95 OSR2 was the gold standard against which everything was judged, especially if your USB needs began and ended with "mouse" (95OSR2 could deal with USB mice, though I don't remember whether it was 'out of the box', or 'by hand-copying a few DLLs ripped from a 98 system').
Win2k Pro was either the best or worst OS Microsoft has ever made, and your opinion depends almost entirely upon whether you cared about using software and hardware that was supported by NT Workstation 4. If you (like me) came from NT4W, it was a gift from ${deity}. If you cared about running "Pooh's Alphabet Adventure" from 1993 on your old PC, it sucked.
People's opinions of XP were pretty much their opposite opinion of Win2k. People who loved Win2k's compromise-free perfection hated XP's compromises made in the name of legacy compatibility (especially its endless reboots for everything). People who loved Win95OSR2 and hated Win2k loved XP's compatibility and prettyness. Most of the Win2k camp grudgingly ended up with XP 2-3 years later, when XP's superior SMP won them over, and Win2kSP3 or SP4 made Win2k need reboots as often as XP, anyway.
Everyone hated Vista, or at least had a grudging love-hate relationship that left them feeling like a battered spouse. I loved the real symlinks, but hated its video driver dysfunction. It was my All in Wonder 128 Pro's deathblow.
Then came Windows 7. Ahhh. Flawless perfection, especially once I discovered that Win7/64 requires signed drivers, but I can sign OTHER people's binary drivers MYSELF with my own self-signed certificate & Windows will quit nagging and leave me alone to install them as I please (this is a big, huge deal for anyone who does embedded development, especially anything that involves a legacy parallel port).
Windows 8? Endless suck. I suspect that, like 98(SE) with 98Lite to make it tolerable (98Lite removed Active Desktop & basically let you have 98's guts with 95OSR2's much faster Explorer), I'll probably end up with 8 eventually... but I have zero desire to put myself through Win8's misery just to make it tolerable. Plus, I'm still hoping that Microsoft will see the light, and quickly release Windows 9... giving us back Aero Glass, and allowing us to apply the translucent-titlebar effect to the ENTIRE WINDOW when it's being dragged. Assuming, of course, that Microsoft is willing to compromise and let us HAVE multiple windows again, instead of turning "Windows 8" into "Window 9" (no "s").
Truth be told, Vista briefly pushed me over the edge to Ubuntu. Ubuntu's then-dysfunctional handling of dynamic multiple monitor configurations on a laptop killed it for me, but apparently Linux/Xfree86 *finally* fixed that problem sometime around 2009 or 2010. Early in the Vista era, I used Ubuntu 6... right around the time Compiz became official, and booting a laptop configured to use monitor #2 as the primary desktop meant having to boot into single-user mode and hand-edit xinetd.conf (I think... it was a few years ago) to put it back to single-monitor with laptop = main display. Oh, and circa 2007 or so, Linux's handling of multiple cores with non-SMP-aware apps basically sucked. The prevailing attitude was, "If the application's author wanted to make use of multiple cores, he should have made it properly multithreaded", as opposed to "application authors are lazy, so make the OS itself as aggressively multithreaded as possible so that even single-threaded apps kind of benefit from multiple cores by virtue of their implicit library calls". From what I've read, it was kind of a kernel-level holy war between the purists and pragmatists, but the pragmatists won, and Linux is now about as good at faking SMP support in single-threaded apps as Windows is.
Re:Can we have the story with the additude? (Score:5, Insightful)
GP is talking about summaries and +5 insightful Slashdot posts.
7? No. Widespread rejoicing as almost everything that was wrong about XP was fixed. There were even die-hard GNU/Linux users who were willing to run it. Even I like 7.
Perhaps you missed the FUD campaign with faked benchmarks that Slashdot lapped up against Windows 7?
Or the stories about how it was horrible?
A refresher, go read the summaries and comments:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/2259257/draconian-drm-revealed-in-windows-7 [slashdot.org]
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/11/1735210/anti-piracy-windows-7-update-phones-home-quarterly [slashdot.org]
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/01/30/1437233/if-windows-7-fails-citrix-not-linux-wins [slashdot.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/09/08/1345247/windows-7-reintroduces-remote-bsod [slashdot.org]
One of the faked benchmark articles http://tech.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=10/02/18/0429258 [slashdot.org]
The big reveal http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/21/2329249/windows-7-memory-usage-critic-outed-as-fraud [slashdot.org]
It's funny to see the modded up posts on Slashdot on given stories. Comparing Windows to Linux or OS X? Windows absolutely sucks and everyone has or is moving away from it. Windows N vs. Windows N-1 ? N-1 is suddenly the best OS ever and version N sucks horribly.
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It depends. Plenty of us have had brief love affairs with Linux at one time or another, before discovering that the grass on the other side of the fence had clumps of dogshit strewn around, too. Until fairly recently, Linux sucked at handling laptops that were occasionally connected to second displays (especially if you wanted to use the external display as your primary display in an adhoc manner). Likewise, Windows has historically done a MUCH better job of making sure that even apps that are oblivious to
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Don't most Slashdotters who have to deal with Windows actually like Windows 7?
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Ok you guys dislike Windows 8, we know. You guys hated Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 when it came out too.
Actually, Windows 7 was fairly well-liked when it came out. As for XP, the reason it was disliked at first is because it wasn't really fully mature when released, and its hardware requirements seemed too high – remember, this was 2001. However, the first two Service Packs fixed most of the bugs and glitches and made XP a bit more secure by default, and Moore's Law meant that t
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Actually, no.
I thought Win3.11 was pretty cool. 95 mostly sucked at blue screens. 98 was better, but 98SE was almost good, as long as you were the only user. Multiple users kinda screwed things up. ME sucked donkey balls. 2K was good stuff - my first exposure to the NT system. XP was great, and each service pack was better. Vista sucked dog's balls. Win7 isn't bad. If I weren't firmly entrenched in the Linux world, I would say that I like it. Win8? It sucks something. I just haven't figured out
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Ok you guys dislike Windows 8, we know. You guys hated Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 when it came out too. When windows 9 comes out you guys are going to go why change Windows 8 windows 9 add whatever features that makes my life so much harder. This will be the version people will finally shift to Linux in droves.
I wish people would stop making these lame arugments. Seeing as they can be applied equally to anything with *total disregard* for merit including hypothetical absurdities like Windows for abacus or a future Windows only supporting CGA displays unless you willingly sign away your first born.
If your argument cannot be falsified I recommend thinking twice before making it.
Re:Can we have the story with the additude? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much hate, it's simply "why bother?" At the very least, very, very few of the Windows versions that came out were a "must have" the day they hit the street. Most matured first, and after much maturing they became useful.
Win3.1: It was something new, and it was something very useful to people who couldn't memorize CLI commands, but face it, it gobbled away a lot of the very precious 640k most programs NEEDED to run. It wasn't even useful as a launch platform, but programs written for it went ... well, they went. I almost said went fine. Still, for its time it was serving the purpose, but it was of little use to me.
95: 95 sure WAS a step ahead, but again, in the beginning, it was mostly a "what for?" thing. Few programs were "for 95", but it sure did run Windows programs much smoother than 3.11 did. Since I had few 3.11 programs, my use for it was pretty limited, considering that I had to boot into the DOS-Mode it (luckily) had more often than not. Still, over time, it became very useful, but only after programs appeared that made use of it.
98: 98 was the working version of 95. Especially in the networking area it sure was a huge leap ahead. 98 was actually one of the few versions that I didn't ask "what for?" but got it instead. Funny enough, its big advantage over 95 was mostly "invisible", because what set them apart was not the surface but actually the inner workings.
ME: ME was a solution desperately looking for a problem, and in their infinite wisdom MS made ME the problem so people could start looking for a solution instead. This was the true "what for?" moment in the development of Windows, because not even after it was out a while it became more useful than its predecessors.
2k: 2k was groundbreaking. It was, as far as I'm concerned, the ONLY OS MS ever made where there was simply no reason to ask "what for". It had its right to exist right from its inception. It combined the stability of the NT line with the compatibility of the 9x line. Seeing how this was also the time when security actually started to become an issue, there was no reason to tardy.
XP: Another initial "what for" that gradually earned its right to exist. In its early stage, it was pretty much 2k with little useful add onto it. Its useful features only became more prominent as they became more widespread.
Vista: Vista is IMO still waiting for its reason d'etre, as is 7 (and considering how I deem 7 the final version of Vista, I will lump them together). So far I couldn't identify any features in Vista or 7 that XP didn't provide sufficiently, aside of arbitrary compatibility issues that could easily be backported if MS so pleased.
And finally Win8 may be useful on a tablet, but so far I didn't see any features that would convince me that I'd want it on my desktop. It's not "worse" than 7, mind you, but the eternal MS question applies to this one as much as to nearly every version before:
"What for?"
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They probably comment on it because it's impossible to open a trade rag or even just watch TV without MS commenting on Windows 8. Fair is fair.
Meanwhile, up until this announcement it was looking like MS was trying to cram Win 8 down people's throats.
Re:Can we have the story with the additude? (Score:4, Informative)
"If people hate Windows 8 so much, why do they even bother commenting on it, "
Apparently you have failed to notice, that the things we hate the most about Win8 are also being adopted by OTHER operating systems.
We bitch, we moan, we threaten and cajole, we even develop new desktop environments in rebellion against the metro-cloud thing. Not only are we not going to use the damned thing, but WE WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW WHY!!
Does that help you to understand?
Re:Can we have the story with the additude? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do consulting work and have to work with, and share files and working environments with clients. My previous laptop was a Dell XPS M1330 which I downgraded to Windows XP Professional. I hated Vista and continued to use Windows XP until last June when I replaced my laptop with a Lenovo W520 running Windows 7 Professional. I've played around with Windows 8 a bit - my son's computer has it, but I don't see anything that would cause me to update my laptop that is less than a year old. Likewise with MS Office. I used 2003 for the longest time, and quite frankly, would have been content to continue using it except for 2 reasons. 1) Clients started providing materials in MSO 2007 formats, and 2) I upgraded my old versions of Visio and MS Project to 2010, and it caused instability and incompatibility when embedding Visio and Project objects in Word 2003 and Powerpoint 2003 documents.
The switch from Windows XP to Windows 7 was relatively transparent. The switch from Office 2003 to Office 2010 wasn't too difficult. I don't find the ribbon quite so annoying anymore and it it nice to be able to Save As PDF rather than printing to a virtual PDF driver. I don't know what or when the next MS Office release is, but I can't see myself upgrading unless they change file formats again, and client documents force me to upgrade. Windows 8 is a whole new UI, and from what I have seen of it, I'm decidedly meh on the whole thing. I don't have (and have no plans to get) Windows Surface tablet - I have a Samsung tablet and an iPad2, so I don't see much benefit in a unified UI. Windows 9 is due in 2015 (if not delayed) - that is probably about the time frame I will need to replace my laptop, so I'll defer the decision until then. Hopefully by then, third parties will have a Windows 7 compatibility shiv for Windows 8 as I am usually loath to adopt versions of Windows prior to the first service pack.
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I actually almost like Windows 8 (Score:4, Interesting)
It's really sad that Microsoft screwed up so badly with the whole UI formerly known as Metro. And the licensing. And, well, pretty much everything beyond the core OS.
I bought the upgrade as a cheap way to get the latest Windows running on my MBP, but the installation was an amazing hassle. They don't tell you up front that you're not allowed to do a clean install, so you have to run through registry hoops and calls to the Microsoft Licensing hotline thingy just to get your legal copy of windows working properly.
Once I got it installed, I found a start menu replacement. I ended up spending the 5 bucks for Start8 by Stardock cause it's head and shoulders better than the freely available ones. It lets you bypass Metro completely unless you specifically want to use it, and from that point on I've actually really liked Windows 8. It's wonderfully snappy, and it's understated window dressing is a refreshing change from the kaleidoscopic orgy of previous versions of Windows.
For the cheap upgrade price, I'm not TOO upset, but there is no way in hell I would put up with this crap if I was paying full price. I'd sooner do without.
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You bought an upgrade; you're allow to do an upgrade, why would you expect to be able to run a clean install? This has never been true for any version of windows. (and even I know this, being a pure *nix user).
How to block IE10 (Score:4, Informative)
Open an Administrative Command Prompt (click Start, type "cmd" then Ctrl+Shift+Enter) and paste in this command.
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\10.0" /v "DoNotAllow IE10" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
From my blog: http://tidbitsfortechs.blogspot.com/2013/02/blocking-ie10-on-windows-7-heres-how-to.html [blogspot.com]
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I'm curious: why would you not want IE10?
I mean - sure - you should be using chrome :-)
Re:How to block IE10 (Score:4, Informative)
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If you're a company you should use WSUS instead of some unsupported hack.
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The same reason people asked Mozilla for a longest update cycle: ESR http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ [mozilla.org] to have time to test the changes on your environment before you apply an update that will break your old applications
Still need IE 9 to test in IE 9 (Score:2)
I'm curious: why would you not want IE10?
Because historically, Microsoft has not supported side-by-side IE versions within a copy of Windows. Not all other IE 9 users will have the opportunity to upgrade to IE 10, notably users whose PCs came with Windows Vista. Unless IE 10 has a perfect IE 9 simulator, web developers (yeah, I know anything "developer" is the minority) still need a virtual machine running IE 9 to test in IE 9.
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I use the developer modes of IE9 to test pre-IE9 browsers. It's not perfect, but I don't need it to be (my requirements are pretty simple).
Does IE10 have the same developer modes?
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ahahahaha (Score:2)
enjoy ... Internet Explorer
Haha, good one.
Who uses IE anyways? (Score:2, Informative)
Using IE is an indicator for incompetence. The worst browser all around....
I am so excited... (Score:2)
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The fighter was more useful as a web browser than IE.
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And more real, too.
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Hey look - it got fixed. Thanks for the credit, Timothy. Oh wait, there was no credit given for noticing the error. Meh.
IE10 improvements over IE9 (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Summary is FUD. Windows 8 does not suck. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure which world you are in, but in the age where humans dont have elephant arms for holding their hands up all day every day messing with a touch screen on a desktop, it sure isnt this world where windows 8 Does suck. This is primarily a website for IT and Developers, people who make things/work for others, if you want a site that is about the average joe with his laptop, go ahead praise it all you want, but this is news for nerds, and according to nerd usage, yes, it does suck.
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Oh? From my own and 3rd party observations (friends), win8 sucks badly because a) they force a specific UI on their users, which an OS has no business doing and b) said UI is an utter violation of all guidelines for good UI design.
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I actually do like Windows 8.
As a setup option you get you choose your color schemes. I don't see the UI as unpolished but using a different design methodology. From Windows 3.1 to 7 they were trying to give a more realistic desktop look to the OS. Fancier buttons shadows and depth. While such changes looks good for the first impression after a while it just gets old and you end up disabling a lot of these features. Windows 8 is much faster without the useless eyecandy.