Technology | All the world is a stage

2009 upgraded

10 11 2009

After some years in silence and hard work, writhing and moaning over its horribly-gone-wrong OS (operating system) Windows Vista, Microsoft last month retailed Windows 7 as its comeback OS.

At its demo at the Consumer Electronic Show at Las Vegas in January 2009, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the OS would address the basic premise of “simplicity, reliability and speed”. And if the initial flush of reviews from some of the most respected tech blogs – engadget, gizmondo and allthingsd – are anything to go by, then it looks like all the hard work has paid off. In fact, Gizmondo proclaims Windows 7 as “solid, nimble and the prettiest Windows yet”.

According to some reports, Windows 7 had the longest running beta-testing in the history of OS. In the past, they have been let down by bugs at the time of retail release, and the critics have been severe as they always have been.

Windows Vista has been a story of Murphy’s Law or the humourous interpretation of it. Almost every thing did go wrong, and the average consumer still stuck with good old Windows XP, giving Vista and its promise of an OS of the 21st century the royal snub. Also, Mac users could not stop sniggering at Microsoft’s failed attempt at giving its desktop the uber-cool effect. But now reviews suggest that Microsoft may have corrected some of those flaws.

Close on the heels of Windows 7 release – now clearly seen as not an evolutionary upgrade but more a refinement of Windows Vista – two others have appeared. In early August, Apple launched Snow Leopard, an upgrade to the Mac’s OSX. Surprisingly Snow Leopard too seems to have faced reviews similar to Windows 7. It was not a game changer, but rather a decent upgrade with tweaks.

More recently the ‘Linux for Humans’ Ubuntu has come out with its Karmic Koala release. In terms of number of users around the world, it would be unfair to tag the open source OS against the likes of the proprietary Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. But the Linux user groups believe they are contenders nevertheless. A review on Guardian Online’s Tech Blog in fact faces off Ubuntu KK vs Windows 7, offering some good insights.

A question like which is the better OS of the three is very simplistic and unfair at the same time. Users of Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac and Linux all belong to a cult of their own and are vehemently defend their OS. A self-proclaimed cyber cynic, in fact, proclaims Ubuntu as the better OS on Computerworld.com.

But if we can draw a conclusion it can be this: Windows has been the dominant desktop for the average user. It would be hard to ignore what it does, despite not liking some of its shove-down-the-consumer’s-throat behaviour; The Apple Mac has been the Rolls Royce class; whilst Ubuntu, like most Linux OS, is the on-the-outside contender.

Oh, did you know that Ubuntu can run even on a fossil of a PC? Look at the minimum specs. Now compare that with the minimum specs for Windows 7. You wont be able to play Warcraft on Linux but it pretty much does everything else at a much lower cost of computing than the Windows PC or the Mac. Now if only that made perfect sense…