Windows 7 – Just keeps getting dumber NicholasOverstreet.com

Windows 7 – Just keeps getting dumber

by Nick April 26, 2009

Attention: This content is 15 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading as its contents may now be outdated or inaccurate.

Well, I played around with the Windows 7 beta a while back, but not too much.

Recently the Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 came out, so I decided to pop it in and see what is new, and what I’ve found is painfully disappointing in most cases.

Microsoft is continuing in their tradition of dumbing-down their operating systems to the lowest common denominator, making power users such as myself feeling… well… feeling like Micorsoft is calling us dumb.

Case and point; first thing I do to any machine I own running Vista (or Win 7 now) is to disable Windows Defender, and Windows Firewall. These are 2 services I have never ever once found useful, and ALWAYS end up being a pain in the ass at some point, and they generally slow down your computer. So, I went ahead and axed both of these services as usual by first disabling them in the control panel, then disabling their actual service from starting up.

So, a while after I did that I was getting stuff set up, and went to enable Remote Desktop, and what do I see when I try and enable it…

Windows 7 Dumbing Down

Yup, that’s right… If you have the Firewall disabled, you can not enable remote desktop.

WHAT THE FUCK MICROSOFT?! Ugh, this shit is just killing me. Seriously… why does Microsoft feel the constant need to baby sit people? It’s not their job to make sure their computer is secure, or whatever point they’re trying to make by enforcing these completely ludicrous requirements for things.

Sure, it is easy enough to enable the service, enable remote desktop, then just disable the service again, but why the hell should you have to do that? Complete retarded.

Something else that has ALREADY annoyed me with Win 7 is what happens when you right click an icon in the taskbar now (yes, I set my taskbar to look like a traditional Windows taskbar, I fucking hate the shitty stupid little tard-icons that come defualt with complete lack of window description next to them. How useless is that?)

fuckwin7b

Ok, you right click on the taskbar item and you get the box with the program name, the useless “Pin this program…” and the Close Window option. Where the fuck is move? If you right click the program name as I did above, it’s not there either.

So, what happens when you inevitibly lose a program off the side of your monitor now? You can’t get it moved back on to your screen? (This happens a lot with dual monitor setups and if you remote in to the computer, or change resolutions). Awesome Microsoft, way to continue on your path of REMOVING features from your Operating Systems.

And one more annoyance… this auto windows snap feature has already driven me crazy. Now, I’m not sure if you can disable this or not as I haven’tsearched yet, but let me describe this to you.

Say you have a window up that you either just need to see a part of, or need to monitor but still remain visible, so you want to just slide it mostly off screen to see the edge. This is something I do ALL the time. But if you do it in Windows 7, look what happens:

win7a

Here I tried to place a 7-zip windows on the edge of the screen, and this little halo box forms… wtf?

So you let go of the mouse button thinking your window is going to stay where you put it, then BAM

win7b

The window is now taking up HALF YOUR FUCKING SCREEN!!!!

Oh genius Microsoft, just pure fucking genius right there. How could they implement something so annoying and frustrating?

You know, a bit ago I wrote about how there is nothing wrong with Vista and I still maintain that position. Vista is a fine OS, and while it has it’s share of annoying dumb-down “features”, it is still plenty useable. I have not had any issues with Vista and I think it is a great OS. This Windows 7 shit is really bugging me though. I mean, I’ve only been using it for a few hours, and I am already feeling very annoyed by it, and finding that these annoyances are already out-weighing any advantages. So far the only improvement over Vista I have seen is faster boot times. That’s it. I can’t tell a single other thing Windows 7 does better then Vista.

I for one will probably not bother to worry a whole lot about going from Vista to 7. When I build a new machine, I’ll most likely go with 7 just to stay current, but I really do not see my self upgrading my current Vista installs to 7. There is just nothing new and demanding in it to make it worth the shit load of hours it’d take to reinstall, and set everything up again, and dealing with it’s complete ignorant design decisions from the Microsoft bureaucracy.

Good luck with 7 Microsoft, you’re going to really need it. (Or maybe you won’t, because I bet the media will swing from 7’s nuts and call it the best thing since sliced bread… much the opposite they did to Vista by ignorantly bashing it every single chance they got. I hate media outlets, seriously hate them, that’s a rant for another day though.)

14 comments

KrAzE May 8, 2009 at 12:37 am

So I am currently moving files over to another drive to reformat. I dont really have to, but you know the whole side by side issues.. I assume if I start over fresh I wont have all those driver patches from the begining of vista that the side by side is full of (nvidia patching every month, and creatives endless patches).

We will only see. I bought a dedicated drive just for videogames, 1.5 TB means I can install all the games and not have to play swap the install.

Nick May 8, 2009 at 6:11 am

Yeah, there really needs to be some way to clean the side by side folder. My current Vista install is from the original release, and my side by side folder is currently 7gb! I can’t believe Vista feels a need to archive 7gb worth of drivers and dll’s.

I wonder if they changed how side by side works in 7? With 7’s new Windows XP mode, I would think that would eliminate most need for side by side…

Peter May 18, 2009 at 10:05 am

Meh, just tried Windows 7 too and I fully agree with the article. Windows 7 is really something that I can dislike wholeheartedly.
I’m one of those that didn’t go from XP to vista, why? I didn’t see the need to and I also just recently went from 2000 to XP (1.5 years ago I think).
I must admit that coming from XP to Win7, and having had some experiences with Vista, I’d say that Win7 is a step in the wrong direction… sometimes it seems that progress isn’t always a step forward but quite the opposite

– Peter

Peter May 18, 2009 at 10:16 am

Oh, and the “snap to edges”. You can disable that in Controlpanel-> Ease of access-> make mouse easier to handle-> remove checkbox(prevent windows from being automatically…)
I’m not sure I got names of the things you need to click right but the steps are there.

– Peter

Nick May 18, 2009 at 10:27 am

Ah, thanks Peter. I’m glad there is at least a way to disable the obnoxious “features”

emelde October 25, 2009 at 8:04 pm

its just another shit microsoft os. back to xp if it has to be windows

Quest October 26, 2009 at 6:58 am

Yes, it has it’s little quarks and annoyances, but there is no reason to avoid it. It is a great, fantastic, VERY stable OS. Anyone who claims otherwise probably doesn’t understand computers and is scared of change.

Nick October 26, 2009 at 8:21 am

For the most part I agree. One shouldn’t be scared of change, but MS should also consider that these “added features” might be annoying to power users… and since writting this article I found that some of these annoyances can be disabled.
This was a review of an early RC version.

billy wobble October 27, 2009 at 9:45 am

Some time ago i was given a new operating system from microsoft to install. It was in a fancy box and i was very enthusiastic as the last operating system was so good, windows xp. I had heard it had native dvd burning, and installed faster. First it complained that my partitions were too small, but soon after, i was quickly on the way to installing a shiny new operating system. It seemed to install very quickly. Then i clicked the start button … as first i thought it was a joke, then i thought i had got a virus, then i realised, microsoft had completely given up. What i installed was the most tragic sorry piece of shite i’d ever come across. What was this total catastrophe ? Well, needless to say, i never adopted it and only used it for compatibilty testing our software releases. Several years later, a more sober microsoft made a successor available to much fanfair. Obviously they would have done a lot to fix what was wrong with that debacle called vista. I cautiously installed the new operating system, known as windows 7. New desktop background. Share limit up to 20 from 10, nice. That was it. Everything else was the same old shite. Sluggish, multitudes of button clicking to find the unfindable. What was the point ? Why didnt they just stay in bed and not waste people’s time ? Total catastrophe #2. Whoever set the XP service lifespan to 2018 has known for a long time what we just discovered, and given a three year release schedule, windows 8,9 and 10 will be equally tragic …

Russ October 30, 2009 at 8:57 am

With Ubuntu gaining popularity and Apple gaining market share, MS can ill afford to release yet another mediocre operating system.

‘It’s not their job to make sure their computer is secure’

– Yes it is, but MS have no idea how to achieve this with a fundamentally insecure OS, hence these stupid features.

Never has there been a better time to switch operating systems – Linux is no longer only suitable for geeks, my Nan now uses it quite happily.

Nick October 30, 2009 at 9:18 am

I do like Ubuntu… and I would use it more if it weren’t for PC games. I’m a [very] amature gamer, and playing the latest and greatest isn’t really an option yet.
I do have an Ubuntu bootable USB drive in my bag though if I want a secure environment to do something in. Especially with their recent 9.10 release, I can boot Ubuntu faster off the USB drive then I can boot 7 off the hard drive, haha!

Solarstone November 2, 2009 at 9:15 pm

seriously, neither vista nor 7 are step in right direction, XP was fine because it was light and yet very stable and usable for both work and entertainment, vista and 7 being built on top of .NET bloatware code made them stupid – literarly stupid and bloated, they can be 2x secure than XP but that does not excuse them from being resource hog and totaly stupid to use

i personaly hate in both vista and 7 that they REQUIRE dual core processors and atleast 2 GB of RAM so user can normaly use those piece of crap OS-es with their full “features”

i tried to run 7 on single core 2.8 Ghz intel with 1 GB of RAM and all i got was choking whenever i (JUST !) watched a movie
seeing DWM eats 10-20% CPU, movie player ~60% and rest of 42 proccesses the rest, so it was overall at 100% for single movie watching… just terrible

peter buch November 7, 2009 at 6:59 am

yes i hear it from many pepole they have a lot of problems beginning with the desktop ending with anythings.i use xp sp3 even the dvd from window 7 is on my desk i do not use this piece of shit,sorry to say that.do not waste any money for this fake!!

Hacker November 15, 2009 at 12:03 am

I have been a MicroShit XP user since it’s release. Not one that will venture into another MS waste of time before their product has been tested and exposed… Meanwhile, friends and lovers all switched first to Vista and recently to 7. I get on their computers and I wonder how in the world those ass holes are ever so successful in managing to make their piece of shit Windows user interface more and more stupid with every release.

All I can tell you is this – from shitty minds comes shitty products. Aside from the shit user interfaces both miserable releases are resource hogs and offer nothing and I mean nothing that has not been in existence for the past ten years (or at least your could not get from other vendors).

Those clowns managed to monopolize the market, drive everybody else out of business for the sole purpose of stifling the industry into a poor performance shit product full of superfluous code (to make it virtually impossible to reverse engineer) thereby guaranteeing their existence forever.

Soon to switch to a MAC…

Yours Truly.