New and Improved Software

[Glenn Vaughn]

Am I the only person that is frustrated with the “New and Improved” software being foisted off on us? Microsoft is a big offender but they are not the only one. I have had to add a new computer here at home and it is a royal pain to get things functioning properly.
Windows 7 is the only Microsoft OS available now and it is massively improved. Here are a few of the “Improvements”:

· The Quick Launch has been eliminated and replaced with “pinning” on the task bar. Fine if you only run a single copy of a program.
· The start menu has been redesigned; it is now a bit more complicated to launch a program from the menu.
· Control Panel (which I use a lot) has changed – now it is necessary to do searches for common function.
· The OS has a terrible habit of changing how files are displayed I folders. Setting the folder(s) to what you want does not always work and if it does work, you can rest assured that it will change sometime in the future.

Google has improved their service as well. Installing Google Toolbar can cause problems linking to web sites. There are even time www.google.com (http://www.google.com/) will not work. It looks like they are manipulating the URLs in the browser for some reason. Uninstalling Toolbar cures the problem. Then there is the preview graphic that is sometimes displayed as you pass over a link in the search results. I cannot see a real purpose for the preview other than to eat bandwidth.

These are only he tip of he iceberg.

[Greg Peterson]

File management in Window 7 may be easier for people to learn, but I find file management in 7 to be tedious and counter intuitive to everything I know.

I find trying to get anything done in 7 usually requires more steps than in XP.

I guess I didn't think the old UI was broken.

[Bill Huber]

I agree 100%, 7 has just made things harder to use, things you used to do with one or two clicks not takes 4 or 5. the start menu is a real joke, what in the world were they thinking.

I really don't mind the pinning of the programs on the bar, that is just about the same as the quick lunch to me.

I did find a really good replacement for the start menu, its called Vista Start Menu and yes it runs on 7. I have the Pro version and it is really nice, two clicks and I am running any thing on the computer.

Here are some videos on it, it is really nice. The site is not the best to get around in but the program is great and for $20 it is worth every penny

http://www.vistastartmenu.com/flashplayer.html

[Dave Lehnert]

When computers were new everyone was all excited to get the new exciting software to hit the market.
I think everyone now just wants the thing to work and not have to spend time learning a new program every two years.

[Jeff Caskie]

Windows 7 is 'prettier'.... But certainly not an improvement in functionality IMO. What is even worse is Office 2010. Hardly any new features over 2003 (that I would use), didn't fix anything that I would have fixed in previous versions... and I can't find anything. Give me back the classic toolbar over the 'ribbon' any day. Though I trying to be patient to give myself time to re-learn everything. Maybe in a few years I will be back to where I was.... And they wonder why corporations are still on xp/office 2003/ie6. Who is going to foot the bill for the loss in productivity that is bound to occur?

[Bill Huber]

So who is the dummy that came up with the idea to change Add/Remove programs to Program Features. Does not Add/Remove tell you just what you wanted to do.
The control panel is really fun, you really have to watch where you click so you make sure you get the correct thing. Each icon has a bunch of different things under it, so you just don't click on the icon you click on a little string of words.

[Greg Peterson]

I'm still running Office 97. Meets all my needs. Even have a file converter for folks who send me .xlsx files. I tried a demo of Office 2010. I gave it a fair shake and went back to Office 97. I have that needs to get done and I don't have time to weed out the enhancements MS put into their latest offering. I pretty much live in Access and Excel which are about as mature as you can get. I don't create many documents so Word isn't even a consideration for me.

[Greg Peterson]

Bill, the Add/Remove procedure in 7 still causes me a momentary stall followed by an 'Oh yeah. That's how we do that now.'

This is less of an issue for me as I don't install/uninstall many apps in the first place. And in the grand scheme of things OS related I can understand the logic of this new procedure.

One thing I will give 7 kudos for is the method by which it prompts admin credentials if a activity requires those privileges. In XP or 2000, users would just log in as admin and the potential for misadventures ensued. Now the average user can just log in with standard user privileges and not have to log out and login as admin to fiddle with something. Security does not have to be terribly inconvenient and I am glad to see MS finally get this right.

[Lee Ludden]

I guess I'll go against the flow here. I've been a programmer most of my life and was quite happy to no longer have Windows XP on my desktop. Sure windows 7 is different, but I find it much easier to do most of the things I do than it was in XP.

[Eric DeSilva]

I agree, I actually like Win7 over XP. I'm unwilling to say that just because something is somewhere different, it is worse.

On the other hand, I hate what they did to the Office apps in '07. There, it isn't just moving things, it is taking up a huge amount of screen real estate based on a functional flow as to how they think you use their programs. Which is generally not how I use their programs.

[Harry Hagan]

Mozilla recently released Firefox 4.0. Norton Toolbar is not compatible with Firefox 4.0 at this time. If you rely on the Norton Password Manager feature to enter your password and ID information—you’re out of luck for the near future:
"We are currently working on an update for the latest version of Norton 360 to fix the compatible issues with Firefox 4.0. This update is planned to be released in early May."

I reinstalled Firefox 3.16 to restore the Norton Toolbar and encountered some other issues that took about 40 minutes to straighten out. Save yourself the hassle and wait for the updated Norton add-on.

Norton sent me this link to monitor so I’d know when the "patch" is available. No offer to notify me by email was made:
http://us.norton.com/support/kb/web_view.jsp?wv_type=public_web&ssfromlink=true&sprt_cid=0f5cdba2-6b39-49e2-8f62-f5c608d2e982&seg=hho&ct=us&lg=en&docurl=20100720113635EN

[Jerome Hanby]

If you're going to go through a massive "re-learn" when you upgrade to Windows 7, why not just bite (or is that byte :D) the bullet and go to Linux. My total lack of faith in positive aspects of human nature leads me to believe that tens of thousands of programmers all over the world looking to rub Microsoft's nose in every facet of the computing world will turn out better solutions than one huge company that could care less how you want to work and insist you do everything their way (and pay handsomely for the privilege).

I wonder how many of us have a list of programs that as soon as we have a Linux equivalents we're going to boot Windows to the curb? The last program on my list was UltraEdit and now they have a Linux version. Windows will be relegated to my daughters PC for playing WOW in the very near future.

[Greg Portland]

Ehh, I prefer office 2010 (once I learned where everything was). Just like any new software it takes awhile to ramp up.

If you don't like learning a new O/S every few years then follow Jerome's suggestion. Linux/Unix decouples the GUI (what you see and interact with) with the backend operating system. You can update the backend (Kernel) without having to change how the front end looks. Some front ends (like fvwm) haven't changed -visually- in a very long time. Caveat: the programs you like to use may not work or be available + you need to be a little computer savvy to use the system. Ubuntu is a free distribution that has the most shallow learning curve.

[Glenn Vaughn]

Whether or not to use Linux depends a lot on your needs. Running a few programs on a single computer makes the decision a bit easier. In my case I supply software support for both Windows and Linux. I have a number of computers running: 1 XP-Pro, 1 XP-Home, 1 Vista Home Premium, 1 Windows-7, 3 Linux (1 each Ubuntu, Redhat and Debian), 1 Laptop XP-Pro, 1 Laptop Vista Home premium, 1 laqptop windows-1 Pro. Since the software support is not a good money maker, keeping the 7 Windows machines on the same version would be too expensive. One of the development tools I use will not work in Windows 7 - that iis why I have the pro version on 1 laptop so that I can run XP mode. It turns out this does not work well for what I need.

I do tons of SQL work and use both MySql and SQL Server. Personally I prefer MySql but need SQL Server because of work.

I started in computers on Main Frames (Control Data and NCR). I have done Robotics programming in 8080 and Z80 assembly. I am proficient in a number of computer languages from Assembly to Cobol. It used to be that updates to operating system and to programs had to have backwards compatibility; this is no longer the case. I have an extensive library of Visual Basic programs and code snippets that are completely useless in Visual Basic .net. Microsoft has changed the syntax of most commands and thus rendered the earlier version of VB code invalid.

It is not just me that has this problem. My employer has to support tens of thousands of computers (I work for a Community College system with 13 colleges and over 100,000 students). We are still on XP and office 2003. Updating 20 or 30 thousand computers and retraining the users is a monumental task not to mention very expensive. Every time we upgrade, productivity falls off for quite a while.

It is not just software, hardware is an issue as well. For example Windows 7 has rendered my KVM switch useless on laptops - their soultion is to purchase a different type of KVM switch at about 4 times the cost of the original. The KVM issue is DRM related, Win-7 will not allow the monitor to be switched with the KVM just in case it is a recording device instead of a monitor and thus bypass the DRM validation.

For a casual user most changes are no big deal. I am not a casual user - I am a power user (in addition to being old and cranky). If I was 10 years younger I would chuck it all and move to Fiji.

[Bryan Morgan]

Don't get me started on new and improved software.... we just had an hour long discussion about this at work the other day. These big public companies have all but crushed real innovation. Adobe is just as guilty as Microsoft and Apple. They are slaves to their share holders. They release substandard garbage and make us pay for it. Rather than fix any issues that come up to perfect the product, they just make a new product and charge you money for it, that has a whole new set of issues along with the old issues. We, as consumers, should not tolerate this. We get forced into it by CEOs that come to you and say "we need to update to Office 2010" and when you ask them why they have an asinine statement like "I read in this magazine that its the best one".... there are no features that we would use in the new version, nor does it fix any of the issues we've had, yet we will spend thousands upgrading....

I could rail on this for hours... :) There is a reason I push open source software...

I should add, theres nothing wrong with change for the better, even if that requires learning something new. But change for the sake of change to fake people out that somehow its a "new" product is unacceptable.

[Jeff Caskie]

If I recall correctly.... The interface I prefer is 'classic mode' in xp, which I believe is the Windows 2000 interface. It is so long since I had a new pc, and I change all those settings as soon as I get one, that it is hard to recall.

I really had no problem with the Windows 3.x interface and the office product of that time.... but was forced to change w/ the times there as well~

[Glenn Vaughn]

If I recall correctly.... The interface I prefer is 'classic mode' in xp, which I believe is the Windows 2000 interface. It is so long since I had a new pc, and I change all those settings as soon as I get one, that it is hard to recall.

I really had no problem with the Windows 3.x interface and the office product of that time.... but was forced to change w/ the times there as well~

Somewhere in my home office I have my original copy of Windows 1.0 (5 5-1/4" floppies). Beginning with Windows 7 you can use the "Classic Theme" but that no longer affects menus.

[glenn bradley]

We are all resistant to change. XP is its own worst enemy in that it ran for so long. I work with people who never touched anything but XP and are completely unaware that IP is not the original (and only) network protocol on this planet ;-) Resistance to change aside, as mentioned in several posts here; sometimes thangs is just built wrong. I was told to "upgrade" to Windows 7 but, joyfully my hardware was incompatible to the point of them buying me a new machine or letting me install XP again. Give it a couple years; if you recall, XP was horrible for the first 18 months or so. ;)

[Bruce Page]

Comcast just revamped and “Improved” their television guide. It’s more difficult to navigate and just plain ugly. But on the bright side they have a full time ad at the bottom of the page now.:rolleyes:

[paul cottingham]

Its true! I watch with interest when people who say using linux would be too hard 'cause they have to learn a new system, blithely and obediently learn a new system when a new version of windows rears its ugly head.

[Jim Becker]

The Quick Launch has been eliminated and replaced with “pinning” on the task bar. Fine if you only run a single copy of a program.

Right click on the pinned item to launch a second instance. This is the same on MacOS, too.

Honestly, I like Win7 over every previous version of Windows that has come out of Microsoft's hands. But I agree that changes can be difficult at first. I have a lot more issue with the changes in Office than in the OS, however...

[Jim O'Dell]

I'm really starting to like Win 7 after about a week of playing with it getting the computer set up. I do have a Print Shop program that won't load.:( Other older programs have loaded just fine. Even imported all my old files from the old computer running Win2K, and they pull up to access just fine. This same Print Shop program works fine in TLOML's XP computer. Just another one of those things that make you go "Hmmmmm" ;) Jim.