Yeah, that’s right, nothing. No positive connotations, and to Microsoft’s benefit: no negative connotations.
At least, that is my train of thought after a few days with the Windows 7 Beta. Is it better than Vista? Yes. Is it faster than Vista? Yes. Are the changes significant enough to warrant another OS name iteration? Not in the least.
For instance: Many of the speed (or lack thereof) issues I had with Vista disappeared after Service Pack 1. There were also file transfer issues, not to mention all of the driver incompatibilities. But, unless you are only developing for a specific set of hardware, the driver issues are to be expected. You need time for hardware vendors to catch up.
You see, while there are many significant improvements from Vista, I assure you that no major changes were made (for instance, all of your vista drivers will work). Well, they changed the taskbar and removed that annoying-as-hell sidebar.
I DID notice one major problem with the beta, however. It seems that 7 has all the problems that Vista had when it comes to connecting to WPA2 Enterprise wireless networks.
The name Vista (much like the name “Windows ME”) just has too much negative stigma attached to it. The OS shipped entirely too early and never seemed to crawl out of the hole it dug itself into. And the Apple ads (or the Microsoft ones, for that matter) didn’t help the situation.
The other problem is that there were too many versions of Vista. It was also too dependent (like games that are coded horribly) on the latest and greatest hardware specs. For something as big as an OS, you HAVE to have scalability.
Alas, the damage is done, and Microsoft is only left with one option: Slash and burn…without much of the slashing and burning. Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been when it launched, polished to a spit-shine -a service pack with a new name.
But don’t take my tone to mean that I am not happy with Windows 7. It is a worthy successor to Windows XP.
