In message <
[email protected]>, Seum <
[email protected]>
writes:
[]
I bought my first Win 7 computer and, from the beginning I thought the
whole program was scattered all over. In my opinion previous Wins were
much more coherent with small variations from one Win to Another. This
7 is out on a limb.
I am making a post of what happened last night to my Win 7.
Thanks John.
My introduction to 7 is a bit unusual.
I thought there was something different about it, because of the
silence! Whenever any new Windows has come out, at least from '95 on,
there has been plenty of moaning and gnashing of teeth. While there
wasn't _none_ when 7 appeared, there certainly seemed to be a lot _less_
than with previous iterations. So I did wonder if they'd done something
right for once. (Plus it was on the "good" pendulum swing that starred
around '98: 98 good, Me bad, XP good, Vista bad. [And yes I know Me has
its fans, and my brother's happy with his Vista machine.])
However, I was in the position of thinking XP is where 98 was: end of
life (and Microsoft wanting it to die!) but _lots_ of people know it
well enough to "fix" it, and it does all I need and can foresee wanting
to do for some time. But I could see that new hardware/software support
was tailing off a _bit_, and this would only accelerate.
Then a friend and I decided to persuade an older and not particularly
computerate friend to get a new(er) computer: her 800 MHz XP desktop was
a bit flaky, and she would like to use Skype (which had crashed it). And
we thought that a change to a (big) laptop (and wireless) would be
beneficial - she wouldn't have to hunch in the hall any more, but could
use it in (for example) her conservatory.
We decided that, as she'd probably not change again for many years, a 7
machine would be a good idea, for futureproofing reasons: once she was
inside her applications, the OS probably wouldn't be that relevant. So
it's down to me to set it up: I have obtained it (good second-hand
bargain: 17" 4G 250G 2 core, 7 Home Premium, legally activated with me
watching [upgraded from Vista] - for less than lesser machines are still
being sold for new, I'm not sure where the catch is yet!), and am now
learning all about 7, having previously been an XP/98SElite person.
Apart from the initial reaction - which I experience at _any_ new
Windows - that it has lots of unnecessary eye-candy, I'm cautiously
optimistic about 7. There are a _few_ things that seem to be the usual
"change for change's sake" (an example I came across earlier today was
that they've changed a button from "Apply to All Folders" to just "Apply
to Folders", despite the function not having changed), they have
improved things a lot. I'd say the main thing I've noticed as an
improvement is that the search/help finally seems to work reasonably
well: instead of going into menus or whatever, which route is still
available, if I want to do something, I type a keyword into the search
box, and there's a fair likelihood that the list of things it comes up
with will include what I want to do fairly near the top. And the library
system - with proper links rather than shortcuts - seems as if it might
be a good idea too, once I get the hang of it. And the default UAC, i.
e. where the default user has administrator privileges but gets warned
sometimes, seems about right. (That was widely held to be the worst
aspect of Vista - it nagged so much that people tended to turn it off
altogether.)
To the extent that I am _wondering_ about how easy (financially I mean!)
it would be for me to move to it on my desktop machine. (And _maybe_
this XP netbook - in time.) [I'm not asking for answers to that, as
things'll have changed by the time I decide if I do; I'm just thinking
out loud.]
