serious - Why I hate Windows 7

Why I hate Windows 7

Sunday, February 7, 2010 7:40:06 PM

So, I finally installed Win 7 (x64) on my box, basically because I wanted to get better FPS when playing WoW (and a working mic in teamspeak) - and because I needed a version of MS Office because some people are too stupid to create PDF forms.

So, here is my personal hate-list for Windows 7 that accumulated over the last days:

No scrolling in windows that don't have focus: This is really annoying when you do comparisons or simply read from one window and write in another other one (eg. reading a lengthy webpage and chatting -> chat window has focus but you may want to scroll the page down)
No "always on top": This is annoying for two reasons. First every app that wants this feature has to implement it itself, often in different fashion regarding user interaction and the like. This also leads to many hours of time spent on a feature that should actually be centrally implemented only once. The second reason arises directly from this: I can't set the window I want to the foreground, but only those where the app chose to implement it. Real-world usage example: Small browser window with flash video playing -> total fail on Windows, works great on Gnome.
Still no useful screen-shot feature. When I press the "Print" button in Gnome I get a nice preview of what I just snapped with the options to either save it, copy it to the clipboard or cancel. In Windows (and I am talking about 7 here, not 95) the image is still copied to clipboard and if you want to retrieve it you have to start a separate app -> much inconvenience just for saving a screenshot imo.
Window handling: The window handling is really bad. Neither can you customize Aero-snap, but windows also don't have any sort of edge attraction so they would nicely plop to the borders of your desktop and other windows. Even without Compiz I can do more sofisticated stuff in Gnome, and with Compiz the possibilities are even bigger (best extension imo: Maximumize - fit window to biggest free screen space)
Multiple desktops: really nice when using virtual machines (one VM per desktop in fullscreen, and then switching between them through the desktop cube of compiz ) and when hiding stuff from sneaky parents
Size: Hell, after freshly installing Windows 7 (with some updates and the like) it took somewhere between 15 and 20 GB!!! of my disk space. In comparison, my Ubuntu system has about half that size (not even), but with everything I ever need installed (OpenOffice, NetBeans, build-essentials, Java, decent media player (banshee), wine (for WoW), other useful stuff (1), ...)

Basically, the only nice thing I have here is Opera 10.50 (which btw I'm just using). Hm, maybe I should simply switch to a VM with some (preferably geeky) linux variant for doing work with an underlying windows for the convenience of playing (disk space is cheap anyway)

(1) esp. many console tools (which have decent names in contrast to windows)

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Comments

Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Thursday, February 11, 2010 7:56:37 PM

Other than the size, your complaints are about any version of Windows I know.

Unregistered user # Friday, March 12, 2010 12:15:07 PM

Anonymous writes: The Windows Presentation Foundation, which implements a lot of Win 7 GUI, is beyond awful, especially for small fonts. Try - just try - to disable font smoothing system wide. Not gonna happen. Program jump lists also suck. I have a taskbar - why can't I use it? Even if you disable grouping, Win 7 insists on stricking all your Firefox windows next to each other. No more remembering the order in which programs were opened!

Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Friday, March 12, 2010 1:37:40 PM

IMHO the worst thing about latest versions of Windows is bloat, which is absolutely not proportioned to the improvements from older versions like 2K or XP. It is like you have a car engine that goes 50Km fester but consumes 200 times more fuel.

Rafael Luikrafaelluik # Monday, March 15, 2010 9:37:13 PM

"Still no useful screen-shot feature." try the tool under accessories folder in the start menu: SnippingTool.exe

I agree with you in the other points, but maybe the size is to support more hardware than Linux does actually??

serious # Tuesday, March 16, 2010 6:44:44 PM

afaik linux support more hardware than windows per stock [citation needed

]

Unregistered user # Wednesday, March 24, 2010 4:38:16 AM

Donnie writes: Networking - ha - upgrade all your machines to W7 - then you might be able to network ?? wouldn't think of it - just had my teK guy 'dumb down' a vista to xp - may have to do it with W7

Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:39:32 PM

Serious, about "hardware support", the problem is Linux supports much more hardware but the hardware it does not support is the most used on personal computers. I do not care much if you can install Linux over your wrist watch when I can't get the right monitor resolution on my PC.

Besides, the more I look at it and more hopeless Linux looks. Just think of "X", that is crap.

serious # Friday, March 26, 2010 8:22:44 PM

@anonymous guy: Win7 networking is rally cumbersome ... took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to reach the adapter settings for setting an IP, etc (after opening the "Network Center"). NetworkManager of Fedora/Ubuntu has a much cleaner UI and features are easier to find ... not to mention how annoying it can be to set up a network share on a two crosslinked PCs if one was previously in a public network ...

@Lorenzo: I have different experiences. Esp. Ubuntu is really doing much to support as much hardware as possible (and it really shows in every release). Problem is some (consumer) HW companies ignore Linux and even hinder open source driver development by not giving out any information about the hardware

Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Saturday, March 27, 2010 10:39:13 AM

I've taken a look at major computer vendors online and you can't find any product sold in Italy with Linux on board. This means you can buy an HP computer (for example), pay for Windows and then install Ubuntu to discover that the standby does not work, or the webcam does not work or the graphic card is half supported etc.
This is the problem on one end.

On the other end there is the problem about the average quality of "Linux", intended as mix of different software. Like I said, core components like "X" are defective. Then you get the DE (Gnome, KDE, etc) with their own flaws. Then you get the single applications with other bugs, etc. Here the point is the "tradition" of "free software" as "free of doing whatever I like" that means it is impossible to focus developers on common (consumer oriented) goals. The result is Linux lacks resources and coordination to be really competitive.

The point is most people, me included, do no enjoy spending time in setting their computer and customizing and working around possible problems. The "freedom" of doing whatever you like is not needed, while stuff like editing "conf" files just to get the correct monitor resolution are just annoyances.

Yes I am annoyed by Windows as well, because of bloat mostly. I am annoyed by Apple with their "locking" on anything. I really really wish Ubuntu was an alternative but every time I try it after a while I give up because simply it is the worst way to do what I mostly do with a computer. Maybe if I was a system administrator I would think differently.

Mihail GershkovichMihail-Klr # Thursday, December 16, 2010 3:10:29 AM

I use Win7x64 with blackbox, Directory Opus9 and Opera. What I want to say here is: most of your problems come from the explorer-shell, not windoof itself.
And additionally: after using the "print" button, go to some directory and paste: tada, you have a bitmap with a name like "copy-board save...."
:-)
Yes, linux is better, but Opera waits often too long for actual reliases for some of the distributions. So I have to stay with win7