MS Windows 7

[DonnyEMU]

Personally I have used Vista since 2006, the 64-bit version and had no problems with reliability or speed or any of the accusatory stuff being lobbed here.  

I run Vista ultimate 32-bit on a Netbook at home with an Atom processor running at 1.6 ghz with 1 gig of physical RAM. No problems there either..

Most of the people who have complained about Vista never tried the release version or Service Pack 1. The thing in my opinion that killed Vista was the nasty Apple advertising with false to fact accusations. Most people that I know who had problems tried to install it on their Pentium IV or less unit and didn't even have enough of a modern graphics card that could do glass windows (even though no OTHER software wouldn't run because of the lack of that support).

I have installed Windows 7 on three machines so far and I don't find it any less snappier or better than Vista Service Pack 1 personally of which I never have had any problems with.  There are some neat new features in Windows 7 like a new tool that fixes the startup on your machine should any of the files go bad or get delete. It does this automatically.

Media Center is now complete with PlayReady DRM that should allow you to record (with proper hardware) copy protected HD TV shows that are protected. In other words you can now record shows from cable and over the air that you couldn't before.  

Other features include the new start bar.. which has live previews and extended menu functions. Anytime you pull a windows to the top of the screen you can have it automatically maximize..

The background can now change automatically, but the really cool feature where you can play a movie in the background on your desktop as a living moving graphic (DreamScene) seems to be gone..

On the laptop I installed it on, it let me know my battery was bad (which I knew but vista didn't tell me)..

The device stage is a bit difficult to get used to but it's a nice way to see everything you have plugged in, including cameras etc..

The libraries feature lets you coral all your files from multiple machines into one shared area. For instance if you have multiple computers all of your pictures, documents etc can show up in each of the computers as if it were in one folder (when in reality multiple folders).
This file sharing is also now associated with HomeGroups (a feature I know Amiga Samba users are just gonna love (LOL)..

Files are also now more living and breathing. Metadata now seems to have taken on a whole new life with this. You can search index contents of files now, not just file names attributes and metadata.

Anyway, Microsoft seems to be getting a lot of approval for this new Windows. I look forward to seeing it progress. Oh and yes virginia the multithreading is better.. If you are still stuck with Vista, I suggest something called "Process Lasso" it's public domain and will keep your machine from ever having freeze ups or other problems..

Hope that helps some folks here.. I am not sure a P4 is the best machine to be using the new OS or Vista on either..It's gonna be slow no matter what you do or how much RAM is there. Virtually no games on the market really run even now on a P4..

[DonnyEMU]

@Pyromania: Microsoft doesn't hate Vista, Windows 7 is built on it.. But just what is the aero interface anyway besides a theme with pretty glass. No WPF application requires it to run no windows app does either.

It basically is just another theme that can be turned on and off.. The fact is not having Aero doesn't mean software will run or not run at all. No one really calls any of that in their software. It's either there or not, in the case of not it works just like XP.

By the way I have done plenty of HD editing on Vista, I never had it play nasty with ANY editing, including Adobe software.

This summer Microsoft threw an event to give back to local community charities and I volunteered time to edit the event footage, in full HD on Vista on my home quad core machine. It was a great event that brought together many community charities, here in Michigan and the entire IT community to help others, including the Red Cross and others..

if you are curious about the event check out:

Ann Arbor Give Camp  

I also know Microsoft pretty well, I am a Community MVP for Expression Studio (and Expression Blend) for 2008-2009.. For those who note it's not something Microsoft pays me for. It's an award given for someone who helps out others in the user community. There are about 4000 given out a year in various disciplines.

I know lots of people at home and enterprise who work happily with Service Pack 1 of Vista and the comments you have made really reflect someone who played with Vista Beta and RTM, but haven't really used it since or even have had a Service Pack 1 experience. It's not really a fair assessment.

Just the same the improvements to Win 7 are nice and wether you'd admit it or not, Windows Server, Vista, and Windows 7 all come from the same family tree They really aren't any different at all at the heart of things.

I have been doing Windows programming including MFC, DirectX, etc. stuff since 1994.. I know the OS quite intricately and I was a CATS developer on Commodore-Amiga's before that.. So believe me when I say I know what makes that software tick (down to the millisecond)..

The reason Vista didn't do well was public opinion and those funny and cute but so wrong Apple commercials which planted this seed in people's minds. The mojaveexperiement.com really proved that it was more fallacy than fact. I don't think Microsoft will go without responding to those kinds of tactics ever again (IMHO).

Windows 7 is getting great response and this beta is open to the public, so they can get early feedback and make it what their customers really want and they are listening to them very carefully. To me the changes are mostly cosmetic, but it's important if you look at the beta to note just how much they have listened to customers over the past few years. This is a really nice customer driven product so far.

@adolescence as for setting the start bar tasks if you drill down into the win 7 start taskbar setup (right click on it and select properties) you can completely customize how that works and is setup, so you can make it like the old days or the new way of doing things..

By the way the old start bar from vista exists in the preview and you had to turn the new one back on in the pre-beta. So I suspect there might be a way to go back to the OLD start menu (just like you can select the windows classic theme) by setting some internal registry option if you really need to do it.

[DonnyEMU]

For the record, I haven't been to the Seattle since 2003 when I attended a game developer conference.. I just won the award this last year for starting a user group in Michigan USA (home of the endangered auto industry). I do make money going out and consulting to enterprise and give individual training in WPF and XAML for mostly interactive advertising companies. And I do create custom controls for businesses that pay me to do so.

Before that I did a lot of Macromedia based web development and before that I worked on several CDROM storybooks for Disney Interactive (Lion King, Winnie the Pooh, and Pocahontas)..

As far as McBill goes, I tried to visit Amiga Inc. back in 2003 when it was in Snowqualmi Falls or supposedly. The old saying "The lights were on but no one was home".. It looked like an abandoned building if you ask me..

I tried to get back into Amiga development also when they called for developers but I got a really nasty snubby response back. Considering my actual Amiga background I expected quite a bit different response than I got..

I really don't think Microsoft would really even see the product as competitive based on marketshare etc..

I still have a fondness for the product and even AOS 4.1. I am just getting more and more disappointed with the community and the realities involved with people who even think you could eek out even a meager living at the moment creating Amiga software.

If you look at the "community bounties" the work isn't commensurate to the amount of work required to produce something. What's there is out of love for the product.

Of course there are a lot of people on this forum who are negative about other platforms, but in the real world people have to eat work and live no matter how much they are diehard Amiga folks or fans of other platforms. I remember and still know people who made a living writing Amiga software. Most of that ended for them about 1994. It's 2009 today and while I'd like to see more, I think we are just about where it can go.

In my mind the folks at Hyperion who did OS 4.x are COMMUNITY HEROES, and they certainly didn't get anything out of doing it so far (except maybe lawsuits.)

To be honest the world is a free place we should all use what works for each of us the best.. I just don't like misinformation spread about anything.. I spent many years close to ten defending Amiga. I still am happy to do it with anyone, it was way ahead of it's time. The world moves on though too..