Thursday, July 23, 2009

Windows 7 blues

A good friend told me the other day that Win 7 was stable and in Release Candidate status and that I could go out and get it before the kids from Redmond turned-off downloads. So I did, just to keep up with Windows developments for all times sakes. I wouldn't dare install it on any of my Windows boxes though, as past Windows experiences scared the living shit out of me. Instead, I went to try it as a virtual machine running under Parallels over my other Beta Mac operating system, that is a Mac OS X 10.6 (10A411) a.k.a. 'Snow Leopard', on both of my boxes: iMac and Macbook Pro... looking for trouble? You betsa! Surprisingly enough and probably due to the great virtualization work those Parallels kids have put into their framework, Win 7 installed pretty much flawlessly. And rather quickly, half hour something. Only thing, when I tried to install it over my previous XP (Parallels) install, it goes, "sorry dude, Win 7 is not made to upgrade from XP, only Vista!" Ain't that so cool? I loved that ingenious decision Microsofties made on this issue and went to twit about it. Not long after that a follower responded to me by saying, "not true, it's doable". I sez, "Ok", since I didn't know much about it, "I believe you".

Then came Goatberg. As was nothing else on TV, I picked one of Goatberg's recent podcasts (I wouldn't know what the URL is as the AppleTV gives me a list automatically and I pick 'n choose) and almost fell off the sofa by listening to him. Good ol' Wallie was all over Microsoft on this. I found a transcript of what he said here, and I just copy two of his key paragraphs for your to enjoy right here, right now:

"By contrast, if you’re using Vista, the upgrade to Windows 7 should be a fairly easy, straightforward process. Because the new version shares most of the underlying guts of Vista, it installs itself on your current machine relatively quickly and smoothly, preserving all your files, folders, settings and programs. In a test of this process earlier this year, using a pre-release version of Windows 7, I upgraded a Vista laptop with no problems and little effort in about an hour.

But Windows XP users, including the millions who have recently snapped up cheap, XP-powered netbooks, will first have to wipe out everything on their hard disks in order to install Windows 7. on their current machines. In fact, Microsoft doesn’t even call migrating to Windows 7 from XP an “upgrade.” It refers to it as a “clean install,” or a “custom installation.” This disk wipeout can be performed manually, or automatically during the Windows 7 installation process."

Can you just believe what you just heard? Wait a min... there's more!

Apparently Microsoft, with its deep pockets, recommends that users go buy a new PC because a PC that was good for XP is no more good for Windows 7. Because, per Goatberg, in order to install Windows 7 on an old XP box, you'd need to wipe out your hard disk entirely after you backed up your useful files (documents, pictures, music) and lost all your application installs. You'll also need to have copies of the original XP install disks (I didn't quite understand why he sez that). I mean, MOSES! Are they totally NUTS? Have all these billions of dollars Monkeyboy made on our backs turned him into a retarded zombie? Spell ARROGANCE! Jesus!

Enough with that shit! I'm happy I got XP and Win7 as virtual machines on my Mac for the little I still do under Windows, like Money etc... oh, yes, and since recently Chrome, ever since it was launched last April, wasn't it? Not that I use it regularly... just for kicks. Now that Safari has beaten the hell out of Chrome in terms of speed, who needs it anyways. Safari and Firefox offer me more than I'll ever need.

How 'bout the rest of you folks? Still sticking to those morons from Seattle? Good luck then! Or go buy some Macbook box to see the light for the rest of your Win-miserable lives.

UPDATE: Just peeked at MSFT afterhours trading and lost my appetite. They announced a miserable quarter (what else?) and the stock is heading south 8%, as we speak, after picking up 70 cents during the day's trading session. I hate myself for being an owner... seen nothing else than pathetic performance in the last so many quarters...

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