sprocket i/o - Latest Comments in Farewell, Windows 7.

Re: Farewell, Windows 7.

toxygen — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:34:51 -0000

just 2 quick notes:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/0...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

I wonder what will be leopard like in this order

Re: Farewell, Windows 7.

Troy — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:40:03 -0000

I still can't believe they didn't ship with SSH out of the box. Practically every other seriouse operating system does this, even the not so seriouse ones do. Why doesn't microsoft include an SSH server by default, or a decent client. I'd be happy if they just ported the BSD versions of these tools.

Is this really just a unix user gripe? I can't imagine that Windows-culture admins relish having to install, sometimes quite old and buggy, third party support for this at every install.

Re: Farewell, Windows 7.

Todd — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:17:42 -0000

One of the biggest gotchas with the WoW64 architectures on 64-bit windows servers involves applications requiring ODBC connections (unfortunately they are as prolific as ever). There are now two different versions of the ODBC client and determining which one to use can be a pain depending on the data source. To setup a DSN for 32-bit application you must use: /WINDIR/SysWOW64/odbcad32.exe. For 64-bit application you must use: /WINDIR/System32/odbcad32.exe.

Now you've got me curious enough to run Windows 7 because I want to know if this 32-bit DSN support is carried over from the 64-bit servers and Vista.

Re: Farewell, Windows 7.

Brian — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:31:57 -0000

Yeah, you've definitely been spoiled, my friend :-)

>> You can’t create a .bat file using Notepad without changing your Explorer preferences to show file extensions.

That's been the case since XP, and maybe 2000 as well... can't remember if I had to flip that switch after the last time I installed 2000.

>> When you drag a Window toward the top of the screen, it wants to automatically maximize it for you.

That may be useful for some but, yeah, it could get annoying after a while for someone who didn't want it. Did you find any sort of switches to control that feature?

>> Some applications have menus, some don’t. Windows Media Player in particularly confuses and annoys the hell out of me.

Some are just particularly hard to find, far from their normal space :-)

As for that instant name-based file searching, someone wrote an app called Everything that'll do that with older versions of Windows, at least if you're using NTFS. It works very well, too. I guess Microsoft saw that and figured they would just put that into version 7 by default.

Re: Farewell, Windows 7.

John — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:49:52 -0000

I'm going to pick at you a bit cause I think you're suffering from being spoiled =). Don't take it wrong, just trying to see where the bar is being set.

>>I never got file sharing to work with another computer. I always gave me file permission errors trying to list the directory =(

If you remember, when XP or 2000 came out (can't remember), they changed up the hashing and it required some screwball registry hacking to reduce the encryption level and working with the latest-greatest samba to work. If I remember right, the samba team fixed this later to not be a problem. Perhaps they're screwing with SMB again? Lame... MS -1 Kudos..

>>It can’t read photos from my Nikon D300 without installing software.
Are they RAW? Yaknow, even the newest OSX for PPC can't sync with my 6 year old Motorola phone either (although they support the version before it). I'm sure it's annoying but I'm curious why you'd expect this....

>>No built-in way tools to communicate with UNIX or Linux machines: no SSH or SFTP client.
As I have been told, Hyperterm was lost in Vista as well... MS -1 Kudos again!

>>Doesn’t ship with a Flash plugin or Java support.
Why ship with something that'll be an old version by the time it goes Gold? Maybe it's handy but isn't there already a problem with bloat in the OS?

>>No spell checking — in 2009? That’s just uncanny.
I couldn't agree with you more on this one. One of my favorite features on my Mac when I first got it. I was always misspelling their...Why O Why did they teach me that lame-o "I before E except after C" when I can't think offhand of a case where that's true...

Re: Farewell, Windows 7.

Thomas Stromberg — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:45:49 -0000

Hey Mikey, Thanks for the tip! I had not seen the (x86) directory structure before, but I guess this is the first 64-bit version of Windows I have used. It does seem a bit less elegant having a 32-bit ghetto, rather than one directory. Most users (including myself) don't really care to know which applications are 32-bit. If I did, I would view info on the application.

Re: Farewell, Windows 7.

mikeycooper — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:06:46 -0000

The accent characters are specific to each keyboard layout. There is a US-English-International layout that turns ', :, ` keys into dead keys. Pressing :a gives you ä, 'e gives you é, doubling up on the dead key is like escaping, so :: gives you a :. Unfortunately, I haven't found a solution for Dvorak layout + accent dead keys, they only have US-International for QWERTY. No idea what support is like on other language layouts.

The "(x86)" directory structure has been around as long as there's been 64-bit windows and SysWow6432, it's nothing new to Windows 7.