Windows 7 will replace Vista AND XP. The speed increases over XP/Vista are really impressive, it'd be soft to not use it.
But I haven't seen how badly set out it is, Vista was such a massive pain in the arse to have to do anything beyond word processing and looking at photos.
Why would someone be "soft", simply because they choose not to run Windows 7? Okay, ill consider myself soft, because im not going to deploy Windows 7 across my fleet of CentOS servers... and anyone running OSX, well that's just plain soft... And I must be soft for wanting to stick with Vista/XP for the long term, instead of just changing because something is new and looks flashy etc...
Vista is not a pain in the arse to do anything beyond word processing - if you think this, you have not used it; I use it every single day of my life, no matter where I am, for my business, and have done since November. It is no more difficult than XP or 2000 even, to perform the majority of tasks.
Indeed, if you have the knowledge and the time, you can realy kick Vista into gear, like I have done, and I can't think of a way or a programme I have changed in doing anything - oh, maybe I use the start menu differently now, but thats about it. Im running programmes from 1995 on the damn thing, without hassle. Some of the weird and random workings of Vista can be annoying on the odd occasion (the way you set an icon style, and Vista thinks it knows best, next time you navigate to that folder, the icon style has changed etc) but all in all, its not too far off XP after SP1 is installed.
One area where Vista severely outdoes XP, and even 2000 to an extent, is longevity between reboots on a heavuily used and fully loaded system - I reboot my laptop approximately once every 2 months, and I only usually do this for reasons such as programme installations and updates etc - the damn thing does not seem to slow down and its true they have addressed the memory leakage issues significantly in NT6 when considering NT5, though its still not perfect.
Of course 7 will replace XP and Vista, Blackcomb was always supposed to replace NT5, NT5.1 aka whistler was mainly an interin product, but Blackcomb hit massive delays, and Microsoft spent a hell of a lot of time developing WinFS, and when they realised they could not meet their roadmap for Blackcomb, which was supposed to be Q4 2006, they started hurrying along with the development of Longhorn and for a while they dropped development of Blackcomb altoogether whilst they were rushing the development of Longhorn. As soon as Vista was released, they re-instated Blackcomb, and changed the codename to Vienna, and after a bad response to Vista indusry-wide, they have been rushing to finish Vienna as soon as possible - quite when Microsoft will learn that rushing is not good and its better to develop something that works out of the box, instead of developing something that works sort of, and then you need a few major fixes to address issues in the following years, I don't know. Id rather they had stuck to the original roadmap of a 2011 release for Vienna, instead of pushing out another half-arsed attempt at it for Q4 2009. These rash decisions and rushed work, are going to cost them in the long run, because the industry is losing confidence in them. By hurrying the development of Vienna, and releasing it just 30 months after a product you touted as the best thing since bread was sliced, and still not wanting to admit that you messed up with the product, is not good.
I still prefer the working enviroment of 2000 and XP, no doubt about it, just feel more at home; but then as they are both NT5, which is an insnanely mature system (NT5 has been around since 1998 as a product) compared to NT6, then there is little wonder. Also, they are closer tied into the Windows 95 way of doing things, whereas Vista has tried to move away from it. It's still "shit", because its a big mistake and Microsoft wont admit it. I despise the stupid hardware requirements, just to run an OS, so it can look fancy, and question why the thing needs to use so much hard drive space etc, but as for actually using it, its not all to bad. XP was already a 3 year old product by the time it came to market, and very refined and mature, Vista was brand new when it came to market, and very immature, but has actually probably proved more reliable at launch than XP was. It is just too much of a change all at once, and it doesnt always do as one would expect, such is the "wizardness" of it, whereas with NT5, the user had control over 99% of everything that happened on the OS, which is one of the main reasons myself, and the IT industry in general, don't particuarly like it. SP1 was a massive benefit for Vista, but should we really need an OS to have a major fix done to it, just to start getting things into order? In my world, the fix should be made prior to public release, but so many companies are happy to throw raw versions of software onto the public and address the problems later nowadays, that Microsoft could be forgiven for simply following a modern market trend.
But, I guess I must be soft, not wanting to change from something
that works 100%, merely because there is a new and fancy OS to be seen with!!
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