Wow people I can't imagine mac fans and MS fans are fighting I mean come on we all know that there is nothing better than windows XP!!!!!
and If you don't then you don't know anything
I can make windows XP looks exactly like windows vista and I can run with it mac os if I want and the best thing is it still runs on my AMD sempron 1.4 Ghz processor (can leopard do this???)
and MS I'm still not interested in windows vista or 7 because it won't run on my AMD.

"that there is nothing better than windows XP!!!!! and If you don't then you don't know anything"

What exactly are your credentials for such statements? And what do you know about logical fallacies? Are you really saying that if a person doesn't agree that there is nothing better than Windows XP, than they are completely lacking in all knowledge on any subject in existence, including the fact that they exist?

I agree XP is a very good OS. It's had very good shelf life but.. it's got some very old and outdated code which now, people need.

Making a n-1 OS like XP look like n (Vista) has something we've all been doing since Windows 3x. I remember loading up norton desktop so I had a "start button".. but thesedays the market demands more features, more integration and more security.

Your flippant comment regarding Leopard is debunked pretty quickly - Apple sell OSX Leopard purely for it to operate on Apple branded PCs. It runs on my pretty low-spec mini just fine..

I hope that with Windows 7 we get to the stage where the "desktop experience" and "instant-on" experience meet. How great would it be to be able to check mail, weather, PIM, play media .. on a small sidescreen/laptop top-cover then simply flip open the lid and experience the full suite of features!

Windows cannot be a one-size-fits-all OS anymore. Vista was always designed with greater PC specs in mind, it will always struggle on low-end and net-top PC's -

I'd love to see Windows 7 "Net-top" edition run on the atoms as well as some of the linux/xp hack OS's do.. now there's a challenge!

I always make my taskbar two lines, so that I can fit all my windows in and so that I can see the date with the clock. It looks like they've solved both issues and managed to do so with only a single line taskbar.

Poor microsoft thinks that people like apple because it looks pretty. Not really. People like apple because it looks pretty AND because the os is functional and at the same time solid as a rock. Windows is neither here not there unfortunately, especially vista.

People like Apple becuase they're high.

http://theelitist.spaces...98CF465D44BAC!145.entry

You think so huh?

Parrot-speak is the universal language of brainless zealots.

not going to defend Vista, but haven't had a blue screen on XP for years

I don't know about you guys, but the interface of Windows 7 is pretty ugly. First of all, it looks just like Vista (oh wait, we can't say that word anymore). Second, all they (really) changed was the taskbar. The taskbar in Mojave looks way better than that IMO. Third, the transparent Aero windows are annoying.

Microsoft needs to follow one UI design rule that many companies (like Apple and Canonical) have followed and that is KISS (keep it simple, stupid). The new Start menu is horrific.

Here are more screenshots: http://arstechnica.com/n...-look-at-windows-7.html

Granted, Apple didn't really get their UI theme under control until 10.4. OS X went from "white plastic" to "brushed metal" to "weird flat gray plasticy-metal". It made some applications more noticeable, in good ways and bad.

It was exceptionally well behaved throughout System 7, 8 and 9 - until the whizbang graphics offered the option to make everything look purty at the potential expense of efficiency.

And now it appears that MS is totally caught up in the appearance at the expense of the functionality.

Agreed. I'm not digging that weird gray look. Simple, but looks kind of out-dated. Are there any themes for OS X?

You could and can define it however you like. That capability has been there since 1984...

Lmao... Seriously.

I think that's the ugliest task bar I've ever seen.

FUGLY to death, god... i wouldnt stand my pc if i had to see everything made of glass.

it makes the environment feel so confusing with many windows open! everything transparent!

if only there were a couple of decent interfaces to choose from besides this and the other horrible two.

Thanks goodness it's insanely easy to darken the "glass" effect...or turn off transparency all together.

;)

See, that's something. It could be worse. I suppose they could've thrown in some weird Aero-themed Program Manager.

Hmm...

If you could have more than one program manager open at a time and switch between them on the fly...

Bada bing, bada boom, multiple desktops.

I actually kind of like that idea....

And they want to convince people not liking Vista with this? That would be a second big mistake. Not that I care much by now.

First, I HATE the application icons all over the desktop approach - that simply end up under another window...A few resources on the desktop such as were introduced in the Mac Sytem7 were fine - but the current 'let's dump all of our drawers of junk all over the desktop' only to cover them with application windows is simply a mess.

And a crowded dock is no better... Not even on the Mac. But its nice to see MS is innovating again by looking to Apple.

I would be happy with a dynamically organizable drop down auto-expanding resource menu, with the ability to flag/sticky independent resources for quick access. These can be placed in a header menu - the notion that I need pictures is great if we assume all users are les than 6 years old, but they are not necessarily better.

Again, the idea is not to tell everyone what they need like, but to provide an elegant manner allowing each user to configure the desktop environment in a manner THEY like and find most useful, should be the goal. And to that end, I would suggest the organization of the original Mac System7 interface came very close as a model - although lacking a few technologies that are now commonplace - something from which even the new Mac interface suffers.

And the logical organization AND completeness of the control panel as well as other preference functionality has GOT to be improved.

Its hilarious to attend a MS roll-out and watch the MS engineers go on a scavenger hunt to find a particular control when asked an unscripted question only to have them assure you that its in there, somewhere, but in the interest of time insist on moving on...That has not ceased to be an amusing event since NT was introduced...

"but the current 'let's dump all of our drawers of junk all over the desktop' only to cover them with application windows is simply a mess."

I've always had the approach of "well what the **** else is the desktop there for?"

I know where my apps are on the desktop. I'm the only person using my account. I don't have to care what someone else thinks of my desktop.

It's what the "show desktop" button was invented for.

That's exactly the attitude that created the current kludgy Windows interface that has been for too long reduced to copying others.

And has always been the trait of Windows, your 'solution' takes multiple steps whereas the alternative only takes one. Sort of like resizing windows and assuming that one wants to see the contents thereof...who would have thunk it...certainly not MS...

Other than UI changes, if there aren't any significant changes under the hood to optimize it, make it faster and feel less bloated, how does this really solve some of the Real issues facing Vista 2nd edition?

The UI changes are commendable but performance and compatibly are far more important to turn around Vista 2nd edition's image of being an epic failure.

Well, we'll see. If performance some how is better, I wouldn't mind running this and Snow Leopard at the same time via Parallels.

*yawn*

Like pointing out any of the under-the-hood changes would have any effect on you whatsoever.

It would toolie, try it. I'm up for a rare intelligent conversation. I'd like to know how Microsoft's new Vista 2nd edition is going to be faster and more compatible with programs than it's predecessor.

You're so full of s***, I bet everything looks brown to you.

I've posted the link to the Win7 blog. It explicitly details how the development process has changed since Vista, how they are focusing in enhancing I/O (performance, background tasks, disk usage) and the main focuses of their "feature" upgrades.

If you had any interest at all other than to troll every MSFT article posted on BN, you'd have read it and you would already "know how Microsoft's new Vista 2nd edition is going to be faster and more compatible with programs than it's predecessor. "

Of course you haven't. But now that I've challenged that, I fully expect your response to be something along the lines of how none of it will make any difference.

Go play in traffic.

I hope to god they aren't actually emulating any other aspects of the OS X dock. I find it a horribly confusing and productivity-sapping approach. I think the biggest mistake is combining open applications with applications you can launch. So many Macs I see have literally 50 or 100 icons down there, and they get all tiny and squished together (especially on the laptops), and it's hard to even see the tiny little caret that apparently indicates an app is already open.

As for the screenshots here, I sure hope the changes to the taskbar are optional. I for one like the text next to the icon, most especially because I often have several of the same kind of window open (oh, let's say, several emails being composed, or several text documents, several Explorer windows, several images open in a viewer like XnView, etc.) and the title text tells me exactly which one it is, so I can jump right to it whenever I want to. This also makes it very easy to jump back and forth between 2 different images, for example, to compare them, whereas doing it by position in the taskbar can be harder.

The loss of specific identifiability for taskbar entries is the same reason why I don't use taskbar "grouping", which is also an asinine feature in my opinion. For those people that have a lot of apps open simultaneously (a decreasingly important problem with all apps becoming MDI and tabbed), they can just extend the taskbar to 2 rows, as I do. Auto-hide it if you don't want it taking up your app window space. Not to mention that the increasing prevalence of widescreen monitors is giving us more room than ever on our taskbars.

Collapsability for the system tray icons is perhaps the most important previous innovation in terms of taskbar real estate considering how many resident apps most people have installed these days. But removing the titles? That doesn't strike me as very innovative *or* very smart.

Agree 100%. While its kinda neat how a Mac's "taskbar" and "system tray" are one and the same, I can imagine it getting messy pretty quick. UI design rule of thumb: more clicking = bad.

Agreed in almost every way. I have two task bars (one from VirtualBox running in seamless mode), and one from the host OS (Stretched to two levels high).

Still not enough room, though. Hopefully there's some compromise to be made there...

It never gets messy trust me. The menu bar is a very clean and intuitive design, something Microsoft is still hoping to get right with Vista 2nd edition.

Menu bars are a terrible, messy design. More often than not, when you go for the menubar you just get lost in all the obscure features and never find the one they're looking for. Looks like it was just a place for developers to cram and stash features that don't integrate nicely into the other UI components. Surprisingly, just today I heard someone praise the Office 2007 Ribbon for helping him find features he didn't even know existed.

It's about time they added file filters! That was a feature I used in an alternate shell for Windows 3.1 that I've been missing ever since.

Good. The taskbar has needed some major work for a while. I hope this isn't *all* they've done in that regard.

^This^

Having something similar to the OS X dock isn't a bad thing in my opinion.

I've been using a taskbar stretcher (stretches it across multiple screens) for years now as I simply run out of room with it on one desktop.

Also: close the italic tag, Scott.

I have to admit, the current screenshots of the taskbar look absolutely horrible. Hopefully it's a UI issue they'll work on during the beta cycle.

Microsoft is designing this, what do you expect, a gorgeous consistent GUI found only in Mac OS X? Don't worry though, Vista 2nd edition will look better on a shinny new Mac via boot camp or Parallels anyway. :)

Go play in traffic, loser. You're barely even worth responding to anymore.

lol.
i hope he does.

Anymore? When was he ever worth responding to? lol

Awww, poor baby. It's not my fault you and the other M$ sheep are stuck on an awful looking and likely still poor performing 2nd rate OS for Years to come. :)

I guess we know who the real "losers" are... ^_^

Yah your right. We do know who the real loosers are....lol...

People like you.