Is it just me

[techyphil]

or has everything moved incredibly quickly @ MS?

 

I mean it was only a few yrs ago that I was messing with Vista RC1 and RC2. Now Vista's in the past, Windows Server 2008 lasted a yr and now we're deploying 2008 R2 and Windows 7!

 

I usually find myself reading IT articles for professionals, always looking to install OS's and get a lab going but knowing it's going to be replaced with something different has put me off.

 

Now I find having just deployed Vista clients amongst XP clients and upgraded our entire Server infrastructure to Win2k8 that I'm going to HAVE to upgrade to R2 because Windows 7 (after installing on my laptop) is kickass and I need R2 to fully manage it. Arg! Annoying.

 

There's soo many little bugs as well that I'm still trying to sort out and now Windows 7 posses a greater problem because of the new Library's system. I can only assume there's going to be a folder redirection / libraries policy to manage these in R2. Windows Server 2008 sharing has annoyed me because it makes files available offline by DEFAULT. My colleague created an Vista Image using Ghost only to find it's +60GB. Turns out the account sync'ed all our setups into it

 

Don't suppose any of you have a problem whereby you redirect My Documents to the users home folder... but there's yet another folder in the start menu that says their name pointing at a local my documents folder - causing great confusion as they then click on it thinking their work is in there.

 

FRUSTRATION!

 

However, there's some awesome preferrence's with 2k8 - very powahful! *thumbs up*

 

Semi-Rant-Kinda-Over

[maniac]

They're making up for the previous 6 years, which is how long XP was with us until it's sucessor was released, making it the longest running edition of windows ever so far.

 

Look at the late 90's, Windows NT4, 95, 98, ME and 2000 all within 5 years of each other, then XP a year later and then no new desktop OS for 6-7 years. That's a very long gap considering the previous 5-6 years of development.

 

I guess we're at the same stage again now, Vista then less than 3 years later Windows 7 so how long until the next edition?

 

I'm placing my bets on another desktop OS release around late 2011 early 2012 then another long gap.

 

Mike.

[superfletch]

I'd agree with that - everything does seem to have moved incredibly quick. Having only had a brief play with W7 I have to agree about the libraries functionality. The concept is well thought out and everyone here understands it, but explaining the idea to the luddites might prove tricky.

 

Without the right tools it could prove a nightmare to manage - I'll look forward to seeing whats in 08 R2 to control it. I'd imagine something to "Redirect Doc's Library to X, pictures library to Y, disable music library etc"

 

As for the betting on when W7 will go - I'll throw my hand in to say I reckon it will stick around for a while - especially if it cracks netbooks properly and becomes the default OS. I reckon it will be 2015 before an OS replacement from MS that really contends. (Assuming the *nix boys don't take over in that time).

 

I'd like to know what people favourite/worst bits of W7 are?

 

I like:

 

The Snipping Tool,

Being able to run it from a VHD,

The quality desktop background photography and art,

Homegroup,

Customising the system tray.

The default behaviour of the taskbar.

The more finely tuned UAC.

Security Centre.

 

I don't like:

 

Locally customising the Start Menu - preferred XP's management of this,

The network and sharing centre,

Not all of my apps work in 'compatibility mode', + XP mode won't help lower budget PC's.

[Michael]

I also think with the likes of a big player like Google throwing their OS hat into the ring, it will make things very interesting next year. Windows will still be no.1 for certain, but I think its market share will drop oh so slightly and the likes of Linux will also have a true equivalent to fight against.

 

The only thing I am not clear on is just how Google plan to profit from Google OS. Covering it with ads will just annoy people, but with a few here and there I'm sure most won't mind so long as it's not in your face.

My feeling is that Google OS will seriously challenge Windows on netbooks initially. It will be extremely lightweight compared to Windows 7 and will allow OEMs to profit even more from an already tight profit margin selling netbooks/notebooks.

 

After this, will Google challenge Microsoft in a corporate environment? Who knows. I'm not qualified enough to say how feasible is it to have the same OS functionality in a lightweight browser OS compared to a full OS which is what I'd classify Windows as. It'll all become very interesting I'm sure.

 

As for the current state of play, there aren't that many differences between Windows Vista and Windows 7. On the surface they look similar, but it's only until you dig a little deeper that Microsoft have been hard at work. I also think Microsoft had to react quickly as adoption of Windows Vista wasn't quite what they had planned. How many copies they sell and how many copies in use are two completely different things! Roll on 2010

[gshaw]

It really does need to stabilise a bit now tbh, too much up in the air at the moment to be sure your investment in time \ configuration won't be out of date the week after!

 

We're a bit stuck here as our servers can't run 2008 due to lack of driver support (hate Supermicro ) so we'll have to wait until the next server refresh when we go virtual to get all the funky new toys. In the meantime it's lucky I've got a decent spec test network to keep up to speed with everything