Looks nice, but really it still sounds like an incremental upgrade. Like some kind of new tools suite that could have been tacked onto XP if desired. Hell I have 90% of this stuff already - a better process manager, good security, virtualization, tabbed browsing, arbitrary file searching, yadda yadda. Sure it's nice to have some of that bundled into the OS, but I really feel like MS should have been focusing on deeper core stuff. The new user management and networking stuff sounds like it has potential and hopefully it'll help guide people toward better security, but for my own use I had no problem with the existing system and have rarely, if ever, had security issues. So it kind of feels like a lot of these features weren't aimed at me. Maybe at my customers though - it *would* be nice to get fewer calls about awful spyware invasions.
Anyway, I'm always torn on this stuff. I actually feel that starting with Win2k MS has really had a solid OS on their hands. Some of the changes in XP actually really annoyed me, like the *terrible* new Start menu. So on the one hand I want a lot of stuff to stay the same. Win2k and XP are stable, so that should be kept, and improved on if possible of course. The theme of the UI? Yeah no thanks, I didn't need changes there. First thing I do when I install XP is turn the themes *off*. But I understand this was desirable for marketing and the average user (even though sys requirements will be high, hehe). But I digress. Essentially in one way I'm a conservative when it comes to OS changes, but on the other hand I am super excited about WinFS and would really have liked to see even more fundamental, progressive changes to the OS. So I guess I want to have my cake and eat it too - take everything that's great about 2k and XP then build on it, extend it.
I think what I'd really like is to see an OS that feels to me as intelligently designed as an application like Opera does. An OS that appears to know the best way to do things already, without me having to tell it. An OS that anticipates my moves and makes all my work faster. That was probably some other previous OS that failed, like Amiga, BeOS, NeXT, or something, and I haven't tried any of those. It's just a shame that kind of innovation isn't what's driving the *success* of Windows. OS X *does* seem to be introducing stuff like that fairly frequently though and it drives me nuts. I won't go into why I simply *can't* switch over to OS X here, but just trust that my reasons are legitimate and not out of random prejudice.
- Oshyan
