Windows 7 & Classic Start Menu ?

[DeathNACan]

All ninety-nine percent of business users and most home users want to do is whatever it is they need to at the time, they way they know how to do it. They are afraid of change and for good reason. In the business world, it can cost them productivity, which can in turn cost them their jobs! In the home environment, they just don't want the hassle of changing things because most of them don't really understand what they are doing anyway.

I don't see how making programs searchable by typing is a terrible thing. I'm currently on an XP machine (soon to be formatted to Vista) and I wish I had the built-in search that Vista provides. If you've ever used it for day-to-day work and finding documents, you'd know that it is faster, and lets users be more productive in the end. For most of my collegues and friends who have made the switch, it hasn't taken more than a couple of weeks in order to get the hang of how Vista is laid out. After the switch is made, they all say they like it more. And no, they're not in IT nor are they tech savvy.

If employees are having a really hard time making the switch from XP to Vista, they're lacking experience/training in general computer usage, and that's no fault of Microsoft.

I did not say making programs search-able was a terrible thing. What I said was that it is not the job of the IT Professional, whether working at your company or for Microsoft, to force change upon the user unless absolutely necessary.

At the heart of this discussion are really two important issues:

First, who decides when changes should happen and how much things should change. If I give you new options, you have a choice. It's your business decision or your decision as the home user what to do? If I take away those options you have, you have no choice. Microsoft wants to force change and taken away your choices. If they deploy Windows 7 with this GUI, they will have made decisions affecting companies and home users effectively without their consent.

Secondly, any competent IT Professional who ever had to support users will tell you they not afraid of changes, they are terrified of them! If something goes wrong, it can cost them their jobs, along with potentially cost their company thousands or even millions of dollars in lost productivity or revenues.

As for Vista, most companies do not want to go anywhere near it! Look at the stats for how many people still use XP. Most people don't want to go near it. And why, the learning curve is too steep for an the average user. By the way. Most users fit into that category you mentioned. That of "lacking experience/training in general computer usage".

We IT Professionals don't want users learning on the job and getting experience. We want them working! The less time they spend having to learn a new OS, the more time they are working. As for the home users, well they are afraid of 'breaking it'. With the exception of the Power User, most home users don't want things changed, they just want to browse the Internet, pay their bills, IM their boyfriends, watch their porn or download their MP3's... the way the know how!

[CoffeeFiend]

Wow, you're making such a big deal out of nothing, it's incredible. All this, over a much improved start menu?

People will adapt to new ways and new GUI changes, just like they always have.

And no, it's not gonna cost anyone their job, nor any of that nonsense.

As for Vista, most companies do not want to go anywhere near it!

[Citation needed]. That's merely your own opinion on the subject. Of course not a whole lot of companies have rolled out Vista yet -- last place I worked rolled out XP like 2 years ago (like 5 or 6 years late). They've *always* been upgrading late, nothing new here. It's not that they don't want to go near it, just like they weren't avoiding XP either. They'll eventually upgrade, just give them the time.

Look at the stats for how many people still use XP.

Vista has a nice market share. There are still XP boxes because most people don't see a need to upgrade yet (nor a reason to buy a new computer -- which is how most people get a new OS), and they'll be getting Vista or Win 7 with their new box whenever they upgrade next. No news here either. XP's adoption rate at the same point in history was no better (some would say even worse).

Most people don't want to go near it. And why, the learning curve is too steep for an the average user.

Again, just your observations and opinions. I've seen a LOT of people getting new boxes & Vista lately, and have been very happy with it. I personally ain't ever going back to XP.

If we listened to you, nobody would have made the jump from MS-DOS to Windows, nor from Windows 3.x to Win 95 (and so on) -- it was different people had to learn new stuff (the learning curve was FAR steeper than a new start menu)

[DeathNACan]

It's a good thing why some posters in this thread are retired. You know what they can, "Can't teach an old dog new tricks."

I guess when you get to that retirement age, you like things the way they always were.

Sooooo.... that doesn't mean keep things as they were. Some people **CAN** HANDLE change and ADAPT to new way of doing things. Hey, it might actually be faster.

Gosh, if we didn't improve, we would still be getting out of our car and winding up the engine!

So, come on. Quit posting the same old crap about MS this and MS that. If you don't like it, don't use it. Simple.

Gee, at 49 years of age I had no idea just how 'Over The Hill' I really am. Thanks for telling me. And you're absolutely right about not being able to teach and "old dog new tricks". What was I thinking of when I downloaded Windows 7 in the first place. Must be my senility kicking in. Why in the world did I ever beta test IBM PC DOS 7, OS2 Warp, Windows XP or Windows Vista in the first place?

You've got to be kidding me right? Have you ever heard the words "Forced Retirement Due to Disability"? Just so you will know, my hands, arms and shoulders took too much damage from too many years of using a computer. But then, maybe that's because I spent as much time at home in front of my computers, notice that was plural, installing and testing both new operating systems and software as I did doing my job.

By the way, I currently have three machines dual booting between Windows XP 64 Bit and Windows Vista 64 Bit. I have one machine dual booting between Windows XP 64 Bit and Windows 7 64 Bit beta, not counting my server running Windows 2003 64 bit. I have four browsers on my desktop, seven different media players, three pieces of anti-spyware (don't need more when they do the job), at least a dozen different media file converters, four ISO and image utilities, three email clients and more codecs than I can count, and one really good file manager. That, for your information, is the short list. Now tell me truth, you don't honestly think all that software miracle itself onto my computer with out being tested by me do you?

Please tell me you don't actually think that I did my jobs as Network Support Technician, PC Technician and Local Area Network Administrator with just the knowledge I had the day I was hired? It's not a good idea to support 3500 users after an OS migration unless you have 'played with it' for a really long time before it's deployed. What were you doing while I and my fellow workers were keeping all those users working so they could feed their children and pay their bills? Where were you when I was testing over 80 different pieces of software to make sure they would run on Windows NT 4 and then later Windows 2000? What bar were you in December 31, 1999? I was at work verifying that the world as we knew it in IT did not come to an end when the clock rolled over to the year 2000. I don't remember seeing you there while I was explaining to the head of Corporate IT the effect spyware was having on our user's ability to do their jobs. Did I miss you while I was at home testing, on my own time, thirty different pieces of anti-spyware so I had a solution to the problem? Do you really think all those years of experience have no value at all and I just stopped learning the day the put me out to pasture? If that's so, I guess I should burn my A+, Network+, Compaq APS, MCP, MCP+I, and MCSE cards.

Look, what I've been trying to get across to you is that there is more to operating systems and software than their pretty new features. There's how they are used, who uses them, what they are used for and how much it cost to used them. This is something Microsoft has either forgotten or never learned.

Edited January 13, 2009 by DeathNACan

[DeathNACan]

Wow, you're making such a big deal out of nothing, it's incredible. All this, over a much improved start menu?

People will adapt to new ways and new GUI changes, just like they always have.

And no, it's not gonna cost anyone their job, nor any of that nonsense.

As for Vista, most companies do not want to go anywhere near it!

[Citation needed]. That's merely your own opinion on the subject. Of course not a whole lot of companies have rolled out Vista yet -- last place I worked rolled out XP like 2 years ago (like 5 or 6 years late). They've *always* been upgrading late, nothing new here. It's not that they don't want to go near it, just like they weren't avoiding XP either. They'll eventually upgrade, just give them the time.

Look at the stats for how many people still use XP.

Vista has a nice market share. There are still XP boxes because most people don't see a need to upgrade yet (nor a reason to buy a new computer -- which is how most people get a new OS), and they'll be getting Vista or Win 7 with their new box whenever they upgrade next. No news here either. XP's adoption rate at the same point in history was no better (some would say even worse).

Most people don't want to go near it. And why, the learning curve is too steep for an the average user.

Again, just your observations and opinions. I've seen a LOT of people getting new boxes & Vista lately, and have been very happy with it. I personally ain't ever going back to XP.

If we listened to you, nobody would have made the jump from MS-DOS to Windows, nor from Windows 3.x to Win 95 (and so on) -- it was different people had to learn new stuff (the learning curve was FAR steeper than a new start menu)

I could spend the next couple of hours posting links from various websites and drawing this out but it would just be a waste of time. You have already made up you mind that I am just some old guy who is behind the times and too stupid to learn or know anything. As for all that market share Microsoft has 'gained' with Vista, I will tell you how they got it. They made deals with OEM's PC Manufacturers to push it on customers. Try buying a PC with Windows XP or NO OS installed today. Unless you go through the business side of a vendor it is almost if not totally impossible. That is not my opinion; that is a fact. I will end my part of this little debate by challenging you to Google, Yahoo or what ever you want the following phrases and finding out for yourself...

Microsoft Vista Downgrade

Vista sales 2008 (I'll give you this one for free... http://weblog.infoworld.com/sentinel/archi...ng_the_vi.html)

OEM's reject vista

Change can be a good thing... most of the time. New features are can be good things... most of the time. But in the end, innovation does not come first, customer's needs and desires do. Please understand that the people who are writing the code and creating all those nice new features you are using for the most part have a really bad history of not listening to either you or me. You have no idea how many times I went to a user's workstation and tried to show them a better, faster way of doing something just to have them return to doing it the way the 'knew how'.

I don't know what you do for a living but try and remember this, the people who fix and keep your computers running at your job are given the awesome responsibility of keeping you working. Your job literally depends on them doing their job and vice versa. They have to take a conservative approach to it. They can not afford to openly embrace every change Microsoft or any other software vendor introduces without testing it first. Businesses do not deploy an operating system usually until after it's been out for a minimum of two years. That is because vendors take that much time fixing the bugs they should have had corrected before it was every shipped. You can't just drop a new OS on a computer every time it comes out. It is an expensive process. That bloated code I keep hearing about comes with a cost... hardware upgrades. Upgrade the RAM for one computer for $60.00 and you won't go out of budget. Upgrade the RAM for 3000 computers and you just spent $180000.00. If you have to upgrade 250 workstations just to run the new OS at a cost of $1200.00 each, it will cost you 1.2 million dollars. Sometimes, people loose their jobs to pay for it.

Finally, you might want to remember that just because someone likes or dislikes something different than you do does not make them stuck in their ways. As you said, they have a different opinion.

As for your "If we listen to you comment" I answered that in another post. You do not know me. You do not know anything about what I did for a living or how I did it. It was people like me that kept people like you doing their jobs. People like me were given the responsibility to test and deploy and then keep running every operating system and software product people like you had to use because we understood the importance of change. In the world of PC support, whether home or business, you can't just force change on the user without considering its impact. When you are responsible for not only your job but the jobs of thousands of others, you will understand that. You have missed the entire point I have been trying to make and that is that you don't force change without a really good reason in the IT world.

[cluberti]

No one is saying you're stupid (or if they are, they should stop NOW - I'm watching). However, saying that because *your* experience that businesses aren't going to "go anywhere near" Vista or that it's because the learning curve is too steep is just that - your opinion. Businesses haven't upgraded to Vista largely because they do things slowly (large businesses, and most small ones, aren't real keen on being on the cutting edge of technology), and it's also quite likely that businesses that aren't upgrading also have (older) apps that either don't run on Vista, or haven't been tested to see if they do. I do think businesses will largely skip Vista and get Win7, but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year (and even then, it'll be at least a year or two before mass migrations ensue, and that will be Win7's lifetime, not Vista).

[Zxian]

I'll add one more thing to cluberti's post. I've worked at several companies in the past few years, and almost all of them have paid for training with a particular piece of software. These training seminars were not always cheap ($2500 for a 3 day course for one of them), and I still got paid while I attended. The company had decided that my training was worth that, even for something as short as a 4 month internship. There are times when a company is willing to pay money in order to have increased future productivity.

$400 per person (which is roughly the costs that you described above) is not that large of a sum of money for a company with 3000 workstations and, presumably, 3000 employees who use them.

[DeathNACan]

No one is saying you're stupid (or if they are, they should stop NOW - I'm watching). However, saying that because *your* experience that businesses aren't going to "go anywhere near" Vista or that it's because the learning curve is too steep is just that - your opinion. Businesses haven't upgraded to Vista largely because they do things slowly (large businesses, and most small ones, aren't real keen on being on the cutting edge of technology), and it's also quite likely that businesses that aren't upgrading also have (older) apps that either don't run on Vista, or haven't been tested to see if they do. I do think businesses will largely skip Vista and get Win7, but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year (and even then, it'll be at least a year or two before mass migrations ensue, and that will be Win7's lifetime, not Vista).

I agree with you. I addressed that in another post. If Microsoft had their way we'd all be upgrading every two years or so. That's just not going to happen in the business world nor for the most part in the home environment. As far as application compatibility is concerned, no argument here but it's not just other vendor's software they had problems with. Remember the XP SP1 debacle? It broke, for lack of a better words, a lot of apps including some of heir own. I too believe that most businesses will wait for Windows 7. Assuming that Microsoft is responsive to the IT Professionals that is. Look at some of the post in this very forum on that.

I remember having to go take a week long class when we migrated from NT 4.x to Windows 2000. It barely scratched the surface but wasn't too bad. XP was, for the most part, a cleaner code with a flasher GUI. No real big changes there. But Vista! God that is a nightmare from an IT perspective... policy and GPO changes, not just moving but busting up the way profiles are handled, adding the Trusted Installer service, and to top it off major GUI changes that moved, renamed or split up too much stuff. It's for the IT Pro not to mention the end user. Many of us were hoping that the would have learned from their mistakes with Vista and fixed them in Windows 7. It doesn't look as if they did but the jury is still out on that one.

[CoffeeFiend]

You have already made up you mind that I am just some old guy

Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up.

They made deals with OEM's PC Manufacturers to push it on customers. Try buying a PC with Windows XP or NO OS installed today

You mean exactly like it always was? Like when you could get XP but not Win2k anymore? (and son on for every n-1 version)

OEM's reject vista

OEMs complaining? Yeah, that'd be because they now have to sell you a machine with more than 256MB of RAM and onboard Intel GMA video.

the people who fix and keep your computers running at your job

That would be me.

Upgrade the RAM for one computer for $60.00 and you won't go out of budget. Upgrade the RAM for 3000 computers and you just spent $180000.00.

You can get enough RAM to run Vista for much less than $60 at full retail price, in big name brands no less, at full retail prices and in quantities of 1. And that's assuming you had no RAM at all, or will dispose of the old one. Newegg will sell you 2GB of DDR2 667 for $17 everyday. If you shop around, and are buying 3000 packs, you'd get a better price (let's say $13.33). So let's say $40000 total, which isn't much $ for a company with like 3000 employees. Iit may still looks like a large number, but a company that size pays several millions of $ on salaries weekly. $17 is a ridiculously low investment in fact, and it'll pay itself VERY fast. If it just saves a single hour worth of wait time over the lifetime of the machine (several years), then it already cost less than nothing. If it saves a single second everyday it already paid for itself. It's nowhere near as bad as you try to portray it. BTW, 250x$1200 isn't 1.2M but 1/4 of that (not that it would cost anywhere near that in the first place).

but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year

That's if they don't wait until extended support is over in 2014. And then upgrade to Windows 8. They're not avoiding Vista at all (unlike what DeathNACan claims), they're just in no hurry to upgrade yet as they just got XP recently.

Edited January 14, 2009 by crahak

[DeathNACan]

You have already made up you mind that I am just some old guy

Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up.

They made deals with OEM's PC Manufacturers to push it on customers. Try buying a PC with Windows XP or NO OS installed today

You mean exactly like it always was? Like when you could get XP but not Win2k anymore? (and son on for every n-1 version)

OEM's reject vista

OEMs complaining? Yeah, that'd be because they now have to sell you a machine with more than 256MB of RAM and onboard Intel GMA video.

the people who fix and keep your computers running at your job

That would be me.

Upgrade the RAM for one computer for $60.00 and you won't go out of budget. Upgrade the RAM for 3000 computers and you just spent $180000.00.

You can get enough RAM to run Vista for much less than $60 at full retail price, in big name brands no less, at full retail prices and in quantities of 1. And that's assuming you had no RAM at all, or will dispose of the old one. Newegg will sell you 1GB of DDR2 667 for $17 everyday. If you shop around, and are buying 3000 packs, you'd get a better price (let's say $13.33). So let's say $40000 total, which isn't much $ for a company with like 3000 employees. It's nowhere near as bad as you try to portray it. BTW, 250x$1200 isn't 1.2M but 1/4 of that (not that it would cost anywhere near that in the first place).

but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year

That's if they don't wait until extended support is over in 2014. And then upgrade to Windows 8. They're not avoiding Vista at all (unlike what DeathNACan claims), they're just in no hurry to upgrade yet as they just got XP recently.

You win! Your vast years of experience is overwhelming me too much. You have shown me that I have no idea of what I speak. Thank you for educating me about the way things really work in IT. Have a nice day.

[CoffeeFiend]

You win! Your vast years of experience is overwhelming me too much. You have shown me that I have no idea of what I speak. Thank you for educating me about the way things really work in IT.

Good attempt at trying [rather poorly] to attack someone instead of trying to refute his points (obviously you had to resort to a ad hominem attack as you were wrong from the start). All this, just because of a new (and much better) start menu...

No need to quote entire posts BTW (then again, why should I be pointing this to a experienced IT "guru"? BBCode ain't exactly rocket science...)

Edited January 14, 2009 by crahak

[cluberti]

I remember having to go take a week long class when we migrated from NT 4.x to Windows 2000. It barely scratched the surface but wasn't too bad. XP was, for the most part, a cleaner code with a flasher GUI. No real big changes there. But Vista! God that is a nightmare from an IT perspective...

I'll agree it's a huge learning curve (especially considering that not much has changed since 2000 and AD with the platform), but I would argue the nightmare point (assuming the company was willing to let you train on things, even if just in a simulated lab). The changes are good (and it's about time on a lot of them), just don't migrate thinking it'll be like NT4 -> 2000 or XP, because then it'll bite ya.

not just moving but busting up the way profiles are handled,

These things really are necessary evils with the new 2.x profiles. The old profile storage system was slow, didn't roam well, and could cause (lots) of problems with roaming users and terminal server-heavy environments (this ultimately stemmed from the way winlogon and the group policy engines were designed). Again, a pain, but a necessary evil to make differential profile roaming and removing the winlogon handles to locations in the user's profile (especially if it was stored remotely) needed to be done. They were problems since NT4, and finally addressed.

adding the Trusted Installer service,

Whilst this was a pain during Vista RTM due to problems with it's design, the Vista SP1 (and Win7) changes to the servicing engine have pretty much removed most, if not all, of the "Trusted Installer service" quirks that plagued Vista machines during RTM. Plus, Trusted Installer is needed for a lot of things in the platform (including hotpatching and AxIS), which I really have grown to appreciate.

and to top it off major GUI changes that moved, renamed or split up too much stuff.

This I'll almost agree with you on - I actually like the new shell and control panel design, but they were definitely not geared towards the IT professional (well, the searchable address bar in the start menu and the search engine in general were, but that's not quite covering the whole thing I think you're speaking of). It was a desire to make the start menu and system menus easier to use and less imposing on the regular user (even old-time Windows users), but it is a bit of a learning curve to get used to. Whereas XP's changes were mostly "throw some color on that start menu and blow up the icons a bit", Vista (and Win7) design changes were for the better for overall system usability. I *hated* them at first, now I go back to XP and can't figure out how I made due without the changes (and now that I've used Win7 for awhile, I can't get used to *not* using the superbar taskbar, and when I go back to Vista I get frustrated that it's the "old-style" taskbar too - funny how things grow on you when you aren't paying attention.

It's for the IT Pro not to mention the end user. Many of us were hoping that the would have learned from their mistakes with Vista and fixed them in Windows 7. It doesn't look as if they did but the jury is still out on that one.

Well, I personally find that the people I've helped migrate to Vista from XP (both large-scale corporate and much smaller personal settings), with a bit of initial help on the transition, are almost to a person much happier with Vista and the way it works to the way XP used to work for them. Yes, XP was fine and there was no driving reason to switch to Vista, but the complaints people had about Vista during RTM really just don't hold up, and almost everyone genuinely likes the Vista changes. I think Win7 will actually be more of the same for XP users who will migrate to Win7, although it should have most of the bugs that plagued Vista out of it's system before then.

[CoffeeFiend]

I'll agree it's a huge learning curve (especially considering that not much has changed since 2000 and AD with the platform)

Things on the OS side have stagnated during the XP years (very little changes, over a LOT of years). An awful LOT of people got very lazy, and somehow now seem to think having almost no changes and nothing to learn is the norm.

From any OS to MS-DOS was pretty drastic changes. MS-DOS to Windows 3.x was too. Win 3.1 to Win 9x as well. Win9x to the NT series too. Overall, most transitions brought us big changes.

Sure, Vista brings a LOT of different stuff (be it on the GUI side, where it's all minor IMO), as well as on the "system" side (new deployment method, new installer not dating from the early NT days, etc) but once you learn it, for the most part it's better. And like I said, having to learn a LOT of new stuff all the time is more or less the norm when you work with computers.

Programmers have learned new languages (C#, VB.Net, etc), the .NET framework, MSIL, changes to the language with some new versions, winforms, ASP.NET, new versions of SQL Server (which changed significantly since 2000), new APIs in general, various ORMs, TDD and refactoring and other similar/related things, new SCMs (e.g. VSTS and Hg), new IDEs, new tools (e.g. codegen tools), changes in architecture (and patterns and such), SOAP/REST web services and remoting, now replacing winforms with WPF (a HUGE change), LINQ, new IIS v7 and various system components, TONS of web stuff (CSS design and the box model, javascript, AJAX, new frameworks like jQuery, etc). It's a VERY long list. Hardly anyone can keep up with all that stuff.

There's TONS more new stuff coming up, like ASP.NET MVC (currently looking into that), the .NET framework 4, Windows 7 (yes, we still have to learn all that new OS stuff too, just like sys admins -- and yes, I did learn PowerShell too), Visual Studio 2010 (already using the CTP), SQL Server 2010 next year, etc.

And that's assuming you do only that for a living... Lots of us do all that stuff to a fairly advanced level (programming win /web apps, sys/network admin work, assume DBA duty, maintain the internet site and the intranet, work with various "advanced" apps like wireshark/windbg/etc, do server backups and so on) but only part time (a few hours a week, or a few days a month, or whatever the case may be). I also have to write code (in different languages, using different compilers, etc) for different embedded platforms (we sell custom embedded solutions), do EDA work (and I don't mean 74LS chips here... things are also moving REAL fast there) e.g. capture schematics & route PCBs, use various CAD apps, test/repair stuff and various lab work, resolve various problems, do graphics work (just took a Photoshop CS4 "what's new" course as a matter of fact) and what not...

I hate to say it, but I don't feel pitiful or compassionate one bit towards people who cry over a new start menu that's essentially the same as XP's but with an added search box at the bottom. They just don't know how easy they got it!

Edited January 14, 2009 by crahak

[killerb255]

Finally, people are resistant to change. They are afraid of it, particularly where computers are concerned.

That's just human nature. The more we learn, the less we want to learn, and the more we want to apply what we know.

Change stimulates fear. After all, fear is nothing more than a perceived loss of control. When things change, we don't feel as "in control" as we did beforehand.

However, when there is no change at all, people end up lamenting in their comfort zones, even if that zone is a danger zone of sorts. Abused women are a perfect example of this. They would rather keep things the way they are, even if their lives are at risk, than to remove themselves from the situation and deal with the unknown--something that they don't think they have control over.

Bottom line: Zero change is unhealthy. Change for the sake of change does more harm than good (dealing with the resistance and having little to gain from it).

Were the Windows 7 UI changes simply "change for the sake of change"? To many, yes it is. To some, not really.

Being a veteran in the IT business, I'm sure you remember people complaining about the changes in Windows being too minute. In other words, a new version of Windows is pointless to the "S" (sensing) personalities out there that learn solely by their five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell). To an S personality, Windows 95 and Windows 98 were pretty much one and the same. The "N" (intuitive) personalities familiar with both OSes knew the differences, though (for better or worse): better networking support, FAT32 support out of the box, better USB support, integrated Internet Explorer...

So in reality, the Windows 7 UI changes were most likely to convince the S personalities out there that Windows 7 is "new," "different enough from Vista," and "different enough from previous versions of Windows in general."

not just moving but busting up the way profiles are handled,

These things really are necessary evils with the new 2.x profiles. The old profile storage system was slow, didn't roam well, and could cause (lots) of problems with roaming users and terminal server-heavy environments (this ultimately stemmed from the way winlogon and the group policy engines were designed). Again, a pain, but a necessary evil to make differential profile roaming and removing the winlogon handles to locations in the user's profile (especially if it was stored remotely) needed to be done. They were problems since NT4, and finally addressed.

QFT!!!!

I can't count how many times I've had to rebuild Windows 2000 and XP roaming profiles!!! I haven't dealt with a single corrupt Windows Vista roaming profile yet!

Edited January 14, 2009 by killerb255

[Ethaniel]

Well, it's gonna be a bit hard for me to adapt. I mean, I've been using the Classic Menu for the last... 13 years I think. It will be tough, but not impossible.

[wizardzg]

All respect to DeathNACan, couldn't of said it better. I'm not MCSE but have a one exam till MCSA and have SBS2003 specialist exams still got a lot to learn but stuff like this is like can be seen from a plane. Hope MS will make some changes on this beta after this comments. And a msg to MagicAndre1981, what is your problem kid, u could learn something here and not be so stupid and keep repeating the same thing all over again. All the man said was OK for u kids with small experience in windows administration which is obvious that u don't have it's OK to make inovations and everything will glow, and open with animations and it will make your eyes open wide, but all we wan't is and old way of clicking, because I can say for myself but pretty shore that you can wake DeathNACan in the middle of the night and ask him to tell you how to get to see the groups some user belongs to in AD. But now we have to think twice and look around to find stuff. And I also wouldn't bet my a** that it's fewer clicks in this new and "improved" interface. Oh yeah and what's next to stop booting and select Safe mode you'll have to press CTRL+Shift+B for example. That's wrong. It's ok to make inovations without it there would never be any progress but still why to change something what is working perfectly. Sorry to all, just had to say something in the name of those who obviously know something and have been bothered by the ignorant.