Just bought a Macbook after promising myself to remain PC.

[blizt]

Useless Firewire 800? Data go lightining fast between my mac and the external HD Although I agree the new Macbook pro connections really suck, I'm lucky I have the old version.

[dyte]

What I really dislike about Win7 is how they makes things harder by trying to make them easier. The control panel has so many sub-categories in such an illogical fashion, it makes tracking things down a pain in the azz.

In agreement with this, but I'm not sure if it's just because I was so used to XP's control panel layout (do people who had never used XP have the same issue?), becoming more accustomed to Win7's now, however initially it was quite head mincing.

[kivetros]

In agreement with this, but I'm not sure if it's just because I was so used to XP's control panel layout (do people who had never used XP have the same issue?), becoming more accustomed to Win7's now, however initially it was quite head mincing.

Yes. They made about a million useless changes to the control panel from XP to Vista / 7. It was infuriating, to say the least.

Also, the new network management stuff absolutely sucks. XP got some things right, no doubt about that.

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

all I can say is that for a 1200 euro MacBookPro, it sucks donkeyballs that you have only 2 USB ports while you are stuck with those utterly useless Firewire800 and Thunderbolt ports. Grr etc.

I wish I had firewire on my laptops. I have a Presonus Firebox audio interface which runs on firewire.

In agreement with this, but I'm not sure if it's just because I was so used to XP's control panel layout (do people who had never used XP have the same issue?), becoming more accustomed to Win7's now, however initially it was quite head mincing.

Yes. They made about a million useless changes to the control panel from XP to Vista / 7. It was infuriating, to say the least.

Also, the new network management stuff absolutely sucks. XP got some things right, no doubt about that.

I have not had any problems with it myself. I don't think I have had to fiddle with my network stuff at all. It seemed to work out of the box for me. Generally though I just type the name of the networked computer I am looking for into the explorer window and it seems to find it every time. ie \\acomputername

If you don't like the control panel its probably much quicker and easier just to hit the windows key and type what you are looking for. The new search feature is excellent. It is even quicker than Ubuntu's gnome3 or unity.

my studio computer, window's 7, quad core, i5 will destroy anything I've every throw at it. let alone a i7...

Sounds like a solid setup. All my computers have been AMD except for one or two odd oldies that people have given me. Are the i5 and i7 all they are cracked up to be? I am still using dual cores but for the last few weeks I have been thinking about building a dedicated video editing and music machine. Hardware prices are pretty damn low these days. (except for hard drives) I priced out an 8 core AMD 3.2 ghz core at about $200-220 cdn. That is pretty decent. Ram is dirt cheap these days and motherboards are reasonable as well. Throw in one solid state drive for the system and three 1-2 Tb hard drives in raid 0 and it would be one hell of a computer. A couple years back I can't even imagine what a 8 core CPU would have cost. Probably a thousand bucks. The most expensive part would be upgrading my Creative Suite from 4 to 5.5. Probably set me back almost a grand. I think it would be worth it just for the new Mercury Playback Engine which utilizes Nvidia's Cuda. My computer can't smoothly edit native AVCHD footage but I have seen the latest CS5.5 software edit it smoothly even with 9 videos on the screen while all full of effects. Damn impressive.

[kivetros]

I have not had any problems with it myself. I don't think I have had to fiddle with my network stuff at all. It seemed to work out of the box for me. Generally though I just type the name of the networked computer I am looking for into the explorer window and it seems to find it every time. ie \\acomputername

If you don't like the control panel its probably much quicker and easier just to hit the windows key and type what you are looking for. The new search feature is excellent. It is even quicker than Ubuntu's gnome3 or unity.

Everything is quicker than Ubuntu Unity. Oh god. 0_o Unity is why I use Debian these days if I want to play with Linux.

No, I'm talking like, if you want to bridge a few connections together, you have to go to the Network Connections dialog and hunt for a tiny line of text at the top right that says "manage adapters" or something stupid like that... it's not immediately accessible from the Control Panel (from what I can tell) and it took awhile to remember how it was done.

The new search feature is really awesome, but it's essentially the same thing as OSX's Spotlight, which has been around for a long time. Then again, as a person who does still spend a lot of time in Windows, I'm not knocking it. It was necessary. I mean, sometimes there is really only one "best way" to do something, you know?

[junger]

i love windows 7 .... skipped vista too and was very pleased with the advantages of windows 7 when i first switched.

give it a go blm

[Shepherd_of_Anu]

I have not had any problems with it myself. I don't think I have had to fiddle with my network stuff at all. It seemed to work out of the box for me. Generally though I just type the name of the networked computer I am looking for into the explorer window and it seems to find it every time. ie \\acomputername

If you don't like the control panel its probably much quicker and easier just to hit the windows key and type what you are looking for. The new search feature is excellent. It is even quicker than Ubuntu's gnome3 or unity.

Everything is quicker than Ubuntu Unity. Oh god. 0_o Unity is why I use Debian these days if I want to play with Linux.

No, I'm talking like, if you want to bridge a few connections together, you have to go to the Network Connections dialog and hunt for a tiny line of text at the top right that says "manage adapters" or something stupid like that... it's not immediately accessible from the Control Panel (from what I can tell) and it took awhile to remember how it was done.

The new search feature is really awesome, but it's essentially the same thing as OSX's Spotlight, which has been around for a long time. Then again, as a person who does still spend a lot of time in Windows, I'm not knocking it. It was necessary. I mean, sometimes there is really only one "best way" to do something, you know?

I honestly don't understand what the hell is going on over there at Canonical. Even the Gnome folks have lost their minds. The latest direction they are taking their software is not looking too good. Their motivations are kind of mystifying quite frankly. I have read articles droning on about studies on user behavior and why x approach will be better then whatever has been working for a long time and is tried, tested and useable. I think they are gearing everything towards the technically inept which is fine because so many people are not technically adept but in the process they are screwing over everyone who is competent with technology and computers. They don't even have a taskbar anymore. Imagine if you are a web developer and you need to need to use many programs at once like, terminal/putty, ftp, graphics program, web browser, mysql tools, IDE, umpteen file folders and so on. Trying to manage all that without a task bar is just ridiculous. They say that they want to develop the environment is such a way that the application you are using dominates the experience and the os fades into the background. That is fine if you are just going to sit there and do word processing all day but if you actually need to do anything requiring multiple programs or complexity then you are going to have a frustrating experience. I feel really let down by the new way they are designing things. Looking for a new distro. Its too bad, I really liked ubuntu.

I read some review of the new changes and this guy pretty much summed it up, "1980 called, they want their workflow back."

You know in Gnome 3 they got rid of the minimize and maximize buttons? What kind of sh!t is that? They did that because some study suggested that the visual imbalance in the top bar of the window was somehow going to throw people off somehow. In the future programs should be designed in a fashion that is more centered or some nonsense. The whole thing is beyond me. I don't understand it. Surely functionality should be paramount to some minor psychological bump when looking at a gui.

Its just foolish imo.

[Johbremat]

A couple of reasons I've stopped using Ubuntu includes Unity, and a rather...heavy...investment in Mac.


HTPC is still W7x64, but the MBPs (bar the 15" which is used exclusively for tunage) are Boot Camped. OSX is solid as a rock, and my W7 instances inherit it. How? Targeted drivers for a specific hardware set.


People find/take issue with Windows failing to realise the heterogeneity that impacts such systems. You've got one OS at the most basic level trying to cater for multiple manufacturers with multiple devices for which multiple drivers have been written. Then, you're using near-limitless combinations of the above...

The "Apple Tax" is paying for a robust OS engineered for a specific hardware set. Doing a pretty decent job of allowing 4 and 5-year old MacBooks running current versions of OSX.


The other thing? Built like a tank. My 17", open, dropped off the couch on to the power brick, leaving the lid creased (so that if you closed it, one corner would remain up). Just put it against my knee and bent it back in to place.