@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.
