Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With tech Stuff from how stuff works dot Com. Hi there, everybody, Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com with me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland as along the likum okay because in height wow Okay, So hi guys, um, you know what time it is already?
What time is it? Listener mail time? Oh? Man? They love it when I throw those in at the very beginning of the show. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is one of those shows where we actually respond to a listener mail and that forms the basis of our show. So if it doesn't go well, we can blame the listener. This mail comes from Stephen and Steven says, Hey, guys, guess what it's time for listener mail. I'm not gonna
do it again. With Windows seven being rushed out of production because of Windows Vista's bad press in quotes, I think it would be interesting to talk about Windows Vista slash Windows seven. Have you used Windows Vista and or tried the Windows seven beta. What's your opinion on the issue, love the podcast, Stephen. Well, Stephen, I'm glad you asked this question. We actually do have a beta copy of
Windows seven in the office. I picked it up from the Microsoft gurus themselves while I was at the Consumer Electronics Show the two thousand nine one just this past year. Um, and uh, we've had a chance to kind of play with a little bit, and so we thought we'd talked a bit about Vista Windows seven kind of the whole brew haha around that. So, um, I guess we should
start and set the stage by talking about Vista. Okay, So well, first of all, let's go way back, way back to Yes, it was August two thousand one, and uh, back in those days, those those happy days of two thousand one is the pre nine eleven days, think about that, just barely, but Microsoft released Windows XP and uh, and you know this, this operating system became sort of the standard in corporate America as well as most PC machines
that were released from that point onward. And so um XP was was kind of the go to operating system for for most of the the personal computing world. Uh. Of course you have the Apple Mac users as well, but we're talking about most mainstream corporate America. So the nice thing about XP was that they managed to work out a lot of the kinks early on, and uh, and everything seemed to work pretty well, everything being things like you know, video cards and sound cards and uh,
extra devices and applications. Um, things were running pretty smoothly. But after a while, the operating system begins to show its age and Microsoft starts to develop a new operating system. And they were actually in development for this new operating system for more than five years. Yeah, and uh it had a snazzy new name, um Longhorn, Vista, Uh Pallette. Oh you're so drolly. Yes, it was Vista, and and like it. Like we said, it was about five years
in the making. And uh, some people would say that was one year too few. Um, when Vista came out, it looked pretty snazzy compared to XP. Oh. Yeah, I had a lot of a lot of I candy was some one of those things where everybody was excited about all the widgets and all the cool things that you could do because you know, hey, then the mac os had had dashboard and of course, uh, confabulator got gobbled up by Yahoo and turned into Yahoo Widgets. Widgets are
the thing. So yeah, you know, everybody was looking at the pretty beautiful new Vista interface and said, you know, this has got to be the awesomest os ever. Right. So Vista goes gold in the fall of two thousand six. So when you think about it, that means that Vista of course was going into development the same time they were releasing XP. So that kind of gives you an idea of the the cycle of operating system development. What by the time something's coming out, they're already working on
the next generation. And I think that's pretty typical of a lot of tech, right, Yeah, but it's interesting to think about, sure, at least for me, because you figured they would rest on their laurels for a year or so and then you know, I guess I should come out with another operating system or maybe you know, take some time to evaluate what's working and what's not working before they go into development of a brand new thing. Now you're just talking gibbering, I know. So anyway, two
thousand sixs A gooes gold. By early two thousand seven, that's when most of us could get our grubby little hands on it because but you know, two thousand six it was mainly big enterprises that we're getting hold of it, or UM or a computer manufacturers who were installing it on the computers that they were offering in stores. So two thousan and seven, the rest of us get a
chance at it um And there are some problems. Uh, there's some major problems, and most of them have to do with things like well, the two big ones would be drivers and application compatibility issues, so not to mention the massive amounts of RAM that it takes to run all that I Candy I was talking about, right, Okay, so yeah, there was also that problem is the fact that it was extremely resource heavy. Actually Windows has always been that way really, I mean some more than others.
But you know, for someone who comes from the good old days of Doss, where we were used to our operating system not taking up a huge amount of our our computer's resources, Windows has always kind of had a sour taste. Um, I'm just saying. You know, I was one of those lated adopters for Windows three point one. If you can believe it, you know, there's a there's a reason Bill Gates said that Windows would only require a certain amount of am and you know that was
before they decided to get into all this stuff. So right, So beyond the massive amounts of resources that it would drain, meaning that you would need a powerful computer just to run Vista effectively. Uh, the two big issues, like I said, we're driver problems and and application compatibility issues. So drivers think of drivers and sort of a liaison. It's a liaison between various hardware, uh, items that you have installed
on your computer and the applications that you run. Yeah, you plug in that new printer and you're going, okay, I gotta print this thing out from my class. It's do at ten o'clock. And then you find out that your computer won't drive your printer and actually print the document because it doesn't have the the proper plug in and it's it's really a tiny piece of software, but
without it, you're stuck. And you know, the a lot of the operating systems out there will detect hardware soon as you plug it in and will search for the proper driver and make sure you have it so that it ends up being kind of a painless operation. It's sort of the whole plug and play um philosophy. You know, you plug it in and you don't have to do anything. The computer does all the work and next thing you know,
it works. Well, Vista wasn't working like that, and it wasn't just things like printers and copiers and fax machines, which in fact did have problems. In fact, Chris Parillo had a major problem getting his copier to work. And if Chris Parillo is like a geek genius, if he has trouble with his network on Vista, what hope is there for the rest of us. But the the issue here was that things like like video cards weren't working
with this stuff. So you would try and boot up a game and it wouldn't work because your video your computer wasn't recognizing the video card. UM. And there were so many of these problems early on that that people began to abandon Vista. They began to say, you know what, UM, I preferred Windows XP because all of my stuff worked with XP. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna downgrade back to that system and I'm gonna wait until the next operating system or until Microsoft manages
to fixed Vista. UM. Now, once that happened, businesses tend to move a little more slowly than consumers when it comes to this, and it makes sense. Well, yeah, I mean, especially if you've got tons and tons and tons of users, you know, thousands of users at your company. You've got to support all those people. And if you move them over to a brand new, untested operating system, that's not going to be an effective use of your time because you're gonna be running around like crazy and just just
rolling it out. We'll take tons of time. Like imagine something like a T and T where you've got thousands and thousands of employees. You'd have to roll that out department or division, probably department at a time, um, because you can't. It's just too big a job to do all at once. So you really want to make sure you're you really want to move to a new operating system before you start the process. So businesses said, hey, there are problems here getting things like printers to work
or video cards. Maybe we should just wait because XP is doing what we need it to do, um, and we don't need the headaches that Vista might might create for us, So let's skip this one. This was a huge, huge problem for Microsoft and uh, I mean, you know, if you even paid attention at all to the tech news. You had heard someone complain about Vista and how Microsoft needed to do something too sweet to fix it. Yeah, and uh, unfortunately they didn't do anything too sweet, although
they did do something. Yeah, they released some service packs which addressed many of the problems that Vista had. In fact, by the by the final service pack of most of the big problems were taken care of, and many of the smaller ones too, to the point where if you were to, uh to give Vista a try, and you didn't know that it was Vista, you might think it's a really cool operating system. Microsoft had a whole ad campaign based off that, where like, hey, guess what it
really is. This operating system you thought you were using is actually Vista. You know, it's like those old coffee commercials. Let's replace this operating system with Thista and see if he notices. And the idea here was to show that, hey, this is really not that bad. The problem is, the damage was already done. Uh, it already gained this reputation and nobody really wanted to get back into the Vista game.
Plus again, it's still very resource heavy, so even with the problems being fixed, there were still issues with just the fact that it's gonna consume a lot of your your computer's processing power. So that meant that Microsoft only had really one option, which was to come up with a new operating system, which they were already doing because they had rolled out Vista, right, so they were already hard at work on the next version of the Windows
operating However, you know, look at the time frame here. Okay, so so FP we're talking two one, Vista we're talking two thousand six, two thousand seven, and these seven we're talking two thousand So that's pretty quick turnaround. So the message that might send is that Microsoft is saying, hey, uh, we kind of screwed up and we want to regain your trust. So we've built this really killer operating system that is so much better than everything you've ever seen before.
Please do not pay attention to the man behind the curtain, which would be Vista. Um. And some people are even calling Windows seven really what Vista should have been all along. UM. I have to admit for my own personal use, UM, I don't have a copy of Vista that I normally use. Uh. The computer that I have here at how stuff works dot Com is running XP um. Although some of us here in the office do have Vista. UM, I am not one of them, so I haven't really spent a
lot of time on it, mostly on other people's machines. UM. I didn't really have that many problems with it. But again, I wasn't spending hours upon hours, and I wasn't trying to print or you know, use external hardware. UM. But having the opportunity to use Windows seven, you know, I gotta say I like it. Yeah, it's pretty, and it's fast and it's fast. Yeah. I also have not used Windows Vista very much. My machines at home are either Max or they run which might surprise some of you, um,
or they run Windows XP. And uh my computer here at work runs Windows XP because the tech writers shouldn't have to deal with the latest operating systems apparently, I mean, my boss listens to this. I mean I love Windows XP. Actually, you know, considering some of the problems I've heard about Windows Vista, you're you heard about the the iTunes issue,
right then if you have iTunes on Windows Vista. Yeah, one of the problems that you had with some people had with Windows Vista was, um, they would try and use iTunes, and then when they would try and pick the the safely remove hardware feature to to remove their iPod, Um, it would corrupt the files on the iPod. You'd have to reset the iPod. Yeah, that's a small issue. If you have five thousand songs on your iPod like I do, it's that's a big issue. It takes hours to fix that.
So um, but moving on to Yeah, I've also tried Windows seven a bit and I agree. I I think it's pretty snazzy. Um. I'd just like to point out, mostly because it's a non sequitor, so before we get in deeply into two Windows seven, every operating system has these weird little things. I mean, it's it's not just Microsoft Windows. You know, mac os has had these problems from time to time, and I'm sure Lenox I've I've used one to a little bit. Um, you know, every
time it comes out with a new operating system. My advice is this, don't I mean, unless you're just a hardcore geek who has to have it. Um, you know, don't jump on the very first release because you're asking for trouble. There's gonna be something that doesn't work with it, and it doesn't matter who the manufacturer or non manufacturer. In the case of lennox Um, every time you come out with the a new release, I advise that you
wait till the dot one. Which Windows version was it that had uh that used the Rolling Stones start Me Up as its theme song? Was that? I thought it was. Yeah, it's been a long time. I just I remember that whenever someone someone said that, Someone told me that that song is so apt because the next line is you'll make a grown man cry, which is exactly what you will do if you try to install this operating system
on your computer. And it was the same thing. It was that the early build was a little buggy, and uh, they hadn't worked everything out, and you know, some things you just you can't predict until it hits the market and people start using it, and that's when you start seeing where oh, you know what, we never even when we when we did quality assurance testing, we never even put it through that kind of test because, I mean, the variables are huge, right, You can't plan for everything.
Everybody's got a different cocktail of software in their individual machine, and you never know what combination of things is going to hang it up exactly. So uh, you know, it's always a little better to wait and back up your machine before you install the new operatings. So important we to say that all the time. But yeah, but yeah, but it's true. It is true. And it's just that Vista I think came out with less Uh. It just it just had more problems than the average, so that
was a little Yeah, it's a little underdone. But but there are people who want Windows seven out the door before the beta testing phases even over. They're they're happy, they're so happy with it with the beta that they wanted out, and I think that they would have learned a lesson. Microsoft is saying it'll be out when it's ready.
They have not as of this recording, announced a launch date to my knowledge, um, and they're sort of hinting that it may be before the end of two thousand nine, but you haven't anything said in December two thousand nine. January two thou ten is what I've heard. But that's just you know, that's not an official launch date. And I think that's a smart decision on their part, because one they're they've built up a lot of ex excitement from the people who are using the beta who say, wow,
this is so much. This is what Vista should have been. And second of all, that does give them the opportunity to work out any bugs that they've found before or it hits market and then people are like, wow, at first I thought it was cool, and then I tried to do this and everything went to hell in a handbasket or whatever. UM. In fact, and and Microsoft cut burned so badly that it's gonna There are a lot of people who are taking Plette's advice about waiting before
adapting adopting rather this operating system. UM. I read uh that a survey conducted by UM by Information Week that U of companies that they surveyed said they would delay adopting Windows seven until two thousand eleven at the earliest. That's funny because a survey I read from Dimension Research Permensions putting it off. Wow, that one percent. You know, there's probably some guy who changed his mind. Oh wait, wait, wait wait wait wait, that's I guess that's assuming that
they surveyed the exact same people, and that's probably not likely. UM. Just as a point of curiosity, if you're wondering what they would do if they weren't going to change. UM, twenty seven percent of them would consider using mac os instead, And you'd say, well, that's that's pretty significant. That's more than in core. That's actually down from the previous year. Most people. The only group that are only operating system increased in that survey was blunt to other flavors of
lennox Um, including red Hat all dropped. But you know, so there it's possible. If if Microsoft doesn't pull off a home run with Windows seven, you know, they're opening the door for other operating systems to move in there. Interesting, and we should also point out today, the day we're recording this podcast, is an historic day, two thousand nine, the final day that Microsoft will provide support or Windows XP. I don't believe it. No, I don't either, but that's
supposedly this is this is the day. So if you aren't hearing this podcast is because the world ended, or you know, possibly I r S reclaimed all of your stuff because you didn't get your text is on time tomorrow, um. But anyway. The other the other thing that's kind of interesting about it, and everybody's making a big deal about it in the in the articles that I've read, is that Windows seven comes with an option to downgrade your machine to XP uh not to Vista, mind, you to
xp gepping an entire operating system. So if you if you're not happy with it, you can you can back it up. But it's not really that big a deal. They've offered that to uh to Vista users too. Yeah, and it's well demand it. Well you know. That became actually a point of contention at one point. Let's let's talk about a couple of things about Windows seven. I was gonna say, let's let's you know, rather than talking about what might go wrong. Yeah, let's let's talk. It's
got some neat features. It's got some really understand before I get into the features though, Okay, okay, there's one other little thing I want to talk about. That is the versions. There six There are six versions of Windows seven, although you won't have all of those. You'll only encounter a few of those. There's Windows seven Starter, which is kind of I think that's for like netbooks, right, Yeah, it's uh. I saw listed for emerging markets, so I
saw that for Home Basic. Uh, the Home Basic package was for emerging markets. But started they're really scaled now Yeah, Starter only allows up to three applications to run uh concurrently and you can't run high definition monitors with it, so so I think it'll pop up a message in fact to say, hey, you know, if you really want the seven experiences, you might want to upgrade your operating
nice nice, busting out the accent. So then you have So you've got Starter, Home, Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate And um, I hate that they call it Ultimate. That is just because everyone's gonna sit there and say, oh, I gotta have Ultimate. If I don't have Ultimate, I'm missing out. And really Ultimate has some cool features, but not not what the average consumer needs. Well from what I read, it's going to be limited availability anyway, that's good.
Um that and it shows you know, fling a flying disc at you right. So home premiums what most of us will will encounter and need for our home computers. UM, Professional would be what small businesses use, an enterprise would be business is used. So that's that's the versions. Um. That was one of the things that also got some criticism from you know, uh folks. You know, Windows Vista had the same thing where they had multiple versions and
that that drew a lot of criticism. So unfortunately that has not changed and I assumed that you know, Microsoft's already fielding criticisms based on that. But let's go onto the features go for it. Um, multi touch yea, you have to have a monitor that also, I was getting that. Okay, okay,
I'll be quiet. Unlike Apple, which is uh incorporating the touch system into its computers through like the track pad on your on your laptop, you know, basically you have touch screen or know touch sensitivity, you would move your your finger on the mouse pad. Well, multi touches using more than one finger like um, if you have used an iPod touch or an iPhone, you can squeeze your fingers together, move them together to make things smaller, or
if you want to magnify things, you move your fingers apart. Well, that's sort of what Windows seven incorporates, except you can do it on a touch sensitive monitor. Um. And that's not how Apples doing things. So they're they're moving there' zagging unless the unless Apple actually is going to offer that tablet that we've heard rumors about, I don't think
that's going to happen anytime soon. Well, you know, but you know this is this is a pretty neat It shows you how much Microsoft thinks touch uh touch functionality is going to be incorporated into the computer of tomorrow because it's you know, they're bundling it into the operating system itself. And we got a little hint of that when they introduced the surface U. Yes, but those don't surface very often because those are very expensive and so
only businesses really have them. Some other things that Windows seven has it has some new power saving features. So if you haven't used your uh, your computer and a little bit like haven't touched any keys and it's not yet time for it to go to screen saver, it might dim the screen briefly, which will lower the power consumption rate. UM. Let's see what else. There's the the
taskbar previews. So you've got a task bar at the bottom of your screen where you can when you have when you open up an application, a little icon pops up on the task bar at the bottom, and um, if you want, you can pin that application to the task bar, so it's always there and it makes it pretty fast for you to to activate it. UM. I'm not sure why you need this, uh, because you could always put desktop icons on your desktop, which essentially do
the same thing. Now, granted, the task bar gives you a preview, which is very useful, but really, just to me, it just means is more clutter. I mean, unless you decide that you're not going to have any files listed on your desktop at all and you're just going to use the task bar, but you're really just relocating files or icons at that point, right you know, when I looked at it, I've read some reviews, and then when I actually played around with the Window seven a little bit.
If you're used to using Windows and haven't use a Mac, it's going to be a little weird because you're used to seeing a tab in your task bar that shows you an instance of the program, the program that you're running, and it will say, you know, I have a little text in there to say what's going on. Um. It doesn't seem to do that in Window seven. Uh. It shows you the icon, which is what I don't get about the pinning it to the to the task bar is it still looks like the icon for Mozilla Firefox,
where whether it's running or not. Now if you mouse over it, then you see that there is actually a window open or more than one window open, um, and all of them are together, unlike in the past, you might have you know, Firefox and four other programs that open in another instance of Firefox, they'd be a different ends of the taskbar, not so anymore exactly. So it's it's a little different, and it might take a little getting used to. And there's some other neat things about
Windows seven. Uh. It makes networking a lot easier. Um. It makes setting up a home network very easy. It makes UM, finding and consuming media online very easy. Yes, or you can even hook up a cable card and turn it into a media center. Um. The media center software is actually really really cool. I got to see a full demo of that at c ES and UM,
and it is really neat. If I still had cable, I would use that, but I don't, right, so I that's why I don't use that, all right, So yeah, I mean it everything that I did, you know, I didn't like. I said, I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. Um, but everything seemed very fast, extremely stable, um, you know, very stable beta build. Yeah, remarkably stable. So um, it looks like it's going to
be really positive. Yeah. I'd love to have it on my on my work machine, but I have the feeling that if I upgraded to Windows seven and they weren't ready to upgrade us all that, I would probably be in a lot of trouble when August rolls around in that bag expires. Right. Yes, we tested it a little
bit and it is pretty nice. I mean, I am curious to see if enough people adopted to keep the the desktop based operating system alive, because there are rumors that, you know, the next thing that people will move to is the cloud based operating system where you know, your your computer essentially just has a browser and you you log in remotely to access a an operating system. And Microsoft is working on something like that, so it may be you know, who knows, Windows seven might be the
final Dusktop operating system offered by Microsoft. That's amazing to think about. Quite frankly, it's a pretty one. If that's the last one, it's a nice note to go out on. Yeah, and if they're working on getting things smaller, faster, more stable, that's certainly going to help them in the long run if they're moving to cloud, because that's what you need, right you just that in a broadband internet connection. Well yeah, so um, well I am done, Yeah, I'm done talking
about operating this. You know, I think we'll probably end up revisiting Windows seven we've had more of a chance to play with it and when it's closer to launch actually being released, because you know, there's far more that we can do with it. Um. But for now, I think I'm tapped out. Cool. Well, that means that that brings us to listener me. You just love pulling it on me, don't you? I do? Dear John and Chris.
This is about your podcast about cameras. I tried out putting a fruit by the foot on my flash and it worked really well. Thanks for all, Tim, If you're welcome, Tim, I'm so glad I pulled that weird camera trick the gummy bear the gummy bear on these and I all ups needed. But yeah, alright, folks, So if you need some gels really inexpensive that are also tasty um and sticky, you may need to clean the flash afterwards. Um, and if you don't, you might have some ant issues. Thanks
very much, Tim. If any of you have anything you would like to say to us, you can write us text stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember, we've got blogs up. You can find those at how stuff Works. Dot com. Just look on the right hand side and you'll see a whole bunch of blogs from various writers and editors here and how stuff Works. It's like a blog jam, right and sure is a blog jam. It's a blog jamboree. And uh and if you want to learn more about operating systems, you can check out several
articles we have at how stuff works dot com. And we will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com? Brot to you buy the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you