To your points:

Microsoft may be the best operating system MS has ever put together, but that doesn’t make it a stellar operating system. I honestly can’t verify that it is or is not the best operating system ever, as I don’t know anyone who has actually purchased a machine with it or installed it. A coworker installed a beta on his home personal laptop and he said it crashed less than Vista but that was really all that he had to say about it.

I don’t know anyone other than friends working at Microsoft who are using Windows 7 in the workplace. In fact, all the people I know working in tech for the most part are still using XP. There was no compelling reason to upgrade to Windows Vista and there apparently isn’t all that many convincing arguments to spend the money to upgrade to Windows 7 either. And no, I and my friends do not work at some small back office government location, but rather at various small, medium, and large corporations in Microsoft’s own backyard.

You point out that there is a shortcut with Windows 7 and Vista that allows you to see all our Windows at once…but what’s the point? That’s not amazing technology, and the point is that if it’s been out for years then why make it seem like a new feature? OS X has done it for years now, but they made it “new” feature when it was new, and moved on. In fact, you might have been able to do something similar with PowerToys in XP but I can’t remember.

Regarding the Paint–again I was pointing out that one of these highlighted features was an updated crappy image editing program. Other companies make free tools that allow for easy editing for average computer users–and they make it for free. Why not bundle the Live Photo Gallery on the machine? It’s free. The point of the comment was they added the Ribbon to Paint. Wow! That sounds like one of the many enticing reasons to go upgrade today!

As far as the Ribbon goes, I actually very much like the design and use of it. I think it’s still too big, and suffers the standard Windows/Office problem of toolbar bloat, but at least they’ve done an elegant job of exposing lots of features that were otherwise hard to get to. Excel is perhaps the best example of the use of ribbon. See, a compliment to Microsoft–I can do that, and understand good design when I see it and am more than willing to point it out.

But adding the Ribbon to Paint in this case is really just a UI consistency issue which could have been done with any upgrade of the software. An upgraded Paint and Wordpad program shouldn’t ever make the bulleted list of awesome new features for Windows 7, and yet here the reviewer was doing just that.

So, having jumped to conclusions long ago, I will have to stick with my original theme that most of the world just isn’t all that excited about Windows 7. Sure there were some folks lined up at the Best Buy in Bellevue where Bill Gates made an appearance on release night. But that was about the most excitement I heard about. Never have I talked to anyone who’s been super stoked about Windows 7, complained that there system is just not good enough to run it so they simply *must* go upgrade, etc. etc. Congrats to MS for getting it out earlier than my prediction. But Microsoft still has failed to blow me away with this operating system. Perhaps one day if my company ever upgrades I’ll sing a different tune. But they’re still passing out brand new machines at my company that they’ve specifically downgraded to XP, so the day my machine runs 7 seems like it’ll be pretty far away.

And should the commenter above ever return and comment again, I would ask that they please provide me a list–of any length–of why they feel 7 is the best operating system MS has made. I’m sure it is, as one generally strives to create something better with each new iteration. But don’t just come to my blog and call me an idiot and a child without at least providing some supporting details or legit counterarguments. You complained about my statements yet provided nothing of substance to challenge them (sans comment about serious digital artists buying a 3rd party product).

Regarding this: ” and most of your commentary was not only from a clearly uneducated viewpoint but also mostly trivial.” …..

I would venture to say that my viewpoint is also anything but uneducated with regards to computing and technology. I have been using, building, and upgrading computers since DOS 6, and have used practically every version of Windows that’s been out there (starting with Windows 3.11, followed by Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, XP, Vista, 7, NT 4, 2000, 2003 Server). I’ve worked at Microsoft both as a vendor and as an employee. I’ve worked for Apple. I have worked for Intel. I’ve run and maintained computer labs. I’ve sat on a committee that made technology purchasing decisions for a university. I own a Windows desktop, multiple Macs, and a Linux box. So I would venture that my comments were far more educated than the typical person bashing Windows or Mac.

But that’s just my opinion.