Well, well, well. I’d been a reluctant fan of Windows 7 since I first got hold of the betas (long before the public betas were released). Its fast, easy to use within reason and after some practice, works better on slower, older hardware, and requires less resources. Sounds fantastic, I’d say, and I did for the longest time. Since then, however, I’ve come to know Windows 7. After all, its been my job, having worked on two books about the next Redmond OS. Its even more critical to understand since Microsoft has officially announced the date that Windows 7 will be released. Its not a good date…

October 22nd

Yeah. If that seems a bit short for a product development schedule, your not far off. Microsoft has become well aware that the term “Vista” has become a bad word amongst Windows users. It wasn’t hard to tell, what with all those consumers rolling Vista back to XP and enterprise operations flat out refusing it. Vista was released to manufacturers (RTM) November 8th, 2006. Microsoft announced last week that Windows 7 would RTM in mid-July, a little over a month from now. Hmm. That’s less than three years for Vista, and Microsoft will dump the name. Shades of Windows Me? 

I’m not going to run through a list of things which Microsoft has done to Windows 7, but I’ll touch on a few items. First, Microsoft chose to remove the included Photo Gallery, MSN Messenger, and Windows Mail installations, so that for the first time in years, Windows will not come with an IM or email client. Instead, they’ve bundled it all up into a tight little package called Windows Live Essentials. Oh, and you have to download it. The total package is almost 180MBs, too. Hope you don’t have dial-up. To make matters worse, I noticed a number of the slow behaviors from Vista after installing Essentials.

The other problem, and this one kills me, just cropped up today and speaks far louder than some VP in Redmond opting to yank basic tools from Windows. This one is a problem created by and experienced first in Vista, but its far from the first time there have been issues related to User32.dll. Problems swirling around User32.dll have been a nuisance since Windows 2000 was first introduced. There’s not even a knowledgebase entry for it. Its just there. I’ve found a solution to it, though. Some smart guy figured it out, I tried it on one of my test machines, and it worked. Damn, Microsoft. Get a grip! If you happen to be having the same problem, here’s the link.

So, the moral of the story is that if you think Microsoft is making good on its promise to deliver a workable, reliable, powerful OS to replace the crappy Vista, you will be mistaken. Windows 7 is nothing more than Microsoft’s failed advertising campaign, the Mojave project. In that, Microsoft crawled through Windows Vista and changed it to be called Windows Mojave, then had a bunch of people look at it. They liked it, but were then told that Mojave was really Vista in disguise. Anyone can give a guided tour of crap and make it look like gold, just like you can coach a 4-year old to make a slideshow. There’s no magic there, but this appears to be what Microsoft is doing to make “the Vista problem” go away. 

Don’t worry, Ballmer! The smart ones are seeing right through the smokescreen about now. I won’t be the only one.

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