I really wish MS had stuck with the Windows 8/Phone direction - bright square blocks that didn't waste space, which felt like it was a full refutation of the transparent everything of Vista that was still there to some extent in 7.
Looking at macOS 26, it's hard not to compare it visually to Vista given the transparency emphasis. Hopefully in a few years an Alan Dye-free Apple will move in a different direction.
Nadella more than 10x'ed the value of Microsoft. I doubt many MS execs think it was the wrong call to move Windows work to the B team.
EDIT: somehow people seem to think I'm defending MS here. I'm not, I'm concurring that MS willingly turned Windows to shit (by moving it to the B team) because they thought they could earn more money elsewhere (and they were right). I don't like it, but I bet the people who got filthy rich over it do.
That mindset is why every tech product is turning to shit. They're not consumer focused. All Nadella cares about is making the stock price go up and extracting value.
At some point we went through the looking glass where the stock is the product.
Is this a new phenomena? Stocks aren't new. Why is the modern market treated like this? Did Henry Ford make his vehicles shitter to increase his stock value?
Companies with insufficient competition treated customers badly always. Antitrust enforcement weakened since the 1970s. And investors demanded short term gains.
It's the private equity era. Much like how legislative behaviour is now dictated by the wealthy even to the point of contradicting the will/desire of informed voters, corporate behaviour is now dictated by private equity investment to the point of contradicting the demand from informed user/consumers.
They're fucking up even gaming, that awful gamebar is a pain to disable. Had to do it from powershell and even after it's gone Alt + W won't work in games.
I have a de-bloated win11 build running on my gaming rig, and I still occasionally get the prompt "no program to open link: ms-gamebar://" or something similar
Sorry you’re getting downvoted. Ideally downvoting would be for unconstructive posts, or posts with good info / good contributions that are presented unconstructively.
You’re just being controversial.
That’s not a strong enough reason to downvote someone.
Thanks for pointing this out. I don't participate in HN discussions like I used to because the HN crowd and I don't agree on much, and down-votes is not an engaging counter-point.
Fwiw I think it’s perfectly fine if people downvote me if they disagree with me. I think that’s an unavoidable effect of having up/down arrows, regardless of what the rules say. If i say something controversial I expect some downvotes. I just hadn't expressed myself clearly enough initially, everybody took me as a “money makes right” capitalist (not a weird assumption, theres plenty of those here on HN) and fortunately could still edit to clarify.
Windows 10 is decent if you have the Pro version. 7 is good but is a PITA on touchscreen or HiDPI devices, although I have to say even 10 still has its bugs. Never tried 11 though, I'll keep riding 10 on my machines.
Windows 10 was the start of the forceful push towards use of Microsoft accounts and telemetry, dark patterns to achieve that and weird features nobody wants like like Bing search in the menu or the help opening bing in Edge rather than an actual help or your browser of choice, all that to improve random KPIs without considering user satisfaction.
Compared to that, Windows 8 was misguided but not a strong attempt at disrespecting user consent.
> Bob Pony, a known enthusiast in the Windows community
I am 100% sure this guy has all the good intentions, but from a security perspective, I don't know if it is any better than a completely unpatched Windows 7 ISO.
Not the point. The point is that nobody who doesn't know him knows whether he can be trusted, and the ISO itself might be prepared on a compromised machine unintentionally. This is very much a supply chain issue.
Going to get this and install it on my old Asus core2duo laptop from circa 2008 - damn thing still is going strong, despite plastic becoming so brittle it has not one single panel left without cracks in it. Currently it has XP on it, but that is missing whole bunch of drivers, like touchpad not working and BIOS AHCI has to be in compatible mode otherwise it will bluescreen. It's going to be nostalgia machine where all the games I used to play back in the days are installed.
From a security perspective, I'd really really like not just a pre-baked image, but also instructions on how to replicate that using only files and tools with known-good hashes and/or digital signatures.
I too distinctly remember the times I earned my money cleaning up malware, and a few times the root cause was someone using pre-cracked install media from some shady torrent.
I imagine some beefy Microsoft support contracts were required to get all of these updates through this month, with restrictions on redistribution; this isn't Linux!
Is there any reason that downloading this is more legal than downloading the latest Hollywood movie?
> Is there any reason that downloading this is more legal than downloading the latest Hollywood movie?
Windows ISOs with updates being baked in by third parties (usually computer magazines) has been a thing for well over a decade, ever since MS ceased to do Service Packs. So the pure act of distributing an ISO that hasn't been modified other than applying the official update packages should have enough precedence on the side of distribution being allowed that MS won't be able to do much more than maybe sending a nastygram your way.
What you definitely shouldn't do though is pre-crack the ISOs... but I doubt Microsoft even cares about that at this point. Massgrave (a very popular collection of activators for everything from Windows through Office) is hosted on Github.
Unlike earlier times, MS doesn't (need to) care about piracy any more, at least not from private users. The real revenue comes from enterprise and government contracts and, most importantly, the cloud.
Maybe a nit, but this isn't piracy. Windows has been officially free to download and install since Windows XP. That was when Microsoft switched to their Product Activation DRM, and the license key became the bit you paid for.
My understanding is that "free to download" means only from MS, but I could be wrong. And I suppose the only way to know for sure would be to take the issue to court, which is also going to be a subjective opinion from a judge.
Windows 7 was the last really good Windows. MS lost sight of the goal after that.
I really wish MS had stuck with the Windows 8/Phone direction - bright square blocks that didn't waste space, which felt like it was a full refutation of the transparent everything of Vista that was still there to some extent in 7.
Looking at macOS 26, it's hard not to compare it visually to Vista given the transparency emphasis. Hopefully in a few years an Alan Dye-free Apple will move in a different direction.
Nadella lost sight of the goal. Windows 7 was Ballmer.
Nadella more than 10x'ed the value of Microsoft. I doubt many MS execs think it was the wrong call to move Windows work to the B team.
EDIT: somehow people seem to think I'm defending MS here. I'm not, I'm concurring that MS willingly turned Windows to shit (by moving it to the B team) because they thought they could earn more money elsewhere (and they were right). I don't like it, but I bet the people who got filthy rich over it do.
That mindset is why every tech product is turning to shit. They're not consumer focused. All Nadella cares about is making the stock price go up and extracting value.
It’s the same with Apple. Sure, their product is proprietary, but the producers are not the only ones with a stake in it.
At some point we went through the looking glass where the stock is the product.
Is this a new phenomena? Stocks aren't new. Why is the modern market treated like this? Did Henry Ford make his vehicles shitter to increase his stock value?
Companies with insufficient competition treated customers badly always. Antitrust enforcement weakened since the 1970s. And investors demanded short term gains.
It's the private equity era. Much like how legislative behaviour is now dictated by the wealthy even to the point of contradicting the will/desire of informed voters, corporate behaviour is now dictated by private equity investment to the point of contradicting the demand from informed user/consumers.
Stock price does not equal good software. Quite the opposite because your trying to exploit the end user for more profit.
Through Azure, Office, LinkedIn, gaming. Not so much Windows.
Indeed! That's why they moved Windows to the B team.
They're fucking up even gaming, that awful gamebar is a pain to disable. Had to do it from powershell and even after it's gone Alt + W won't work in games.
I have a de-bloated win11 build running on my gaming rig, and I still occasionally get the prompt "no program to open link: ms-gamebar://" or something similar
I'm assuming they were referring to a non-monetary goal.
Sorry you’re getting downvoted. Ideally downvoting would be for unconstructive posts, or posts with good info / good contributions that are presented unconstructively.
You’re just being controversial.
That’s not a strong enough reason to downvote someone.
Thanks for pointing this out. I don't participate in HN discussions like I used to because the HN crowd and I don't agree on much, and down-votes is not an engaging counter-point.
It’s possible the HN crowd has more lurkers lately with things getting more controversial.. maybe seeing your voice more would help bring balance.
After all, you might be part of a silent majority!
Fwiw I think it’s perfectly fine if people downvote me if they disagree with me. I think that’s an unavoidable effect of having up/down arrows, regardless of what the rules say. If i say something controversial I expect some downvotes. I just hadn't expressed myself clearly enough initially, everybody took me as a “money makes right” capitalist (not a weird assumption, theres plenty of those here on HN) and fortunately could still edit to clarify.
Windows 7 kind of pulled me back from Ubuntu. Alas it was only for a few years.
Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, mainstream Windows 7 support ended in early 2015. The dark ages continue.
I find Win10 to be a much more refined and polished experience, only ruined by telemetry.
Windows 10 is decent if you have the Pro version. 7 is good but is a PITA on touchscreen or HiDPI devices, although I have to say even 10 still has its bugs. Never tried 11 though, I'll keep riding 10 on my machines.
Windows 10 was the start of the forceful push towards use of Microsoft accounts and telemetry, dark patterns to achieve that and weird features nobody wants like like Bing search in the menu or the help opening bing in Edge rather than an actual help or your browser of choice, all that to improve random KPIs without considering user satisfaction.
Compared to that, Windows 8 was misguided but not a strong attempt at disrespecting user consent.
> Bob Pony, a known enthusiast in the Windows community
I am 100% sure this guy has all the good intentions, but from a security perspective, I don't know if it is any better than a completely unpatched Windows 7 ISO.
Unpatched Windows 7 is vulnerable to WannaCry/EternalBlue, among other well-known weaknesses.
Not the point. The point is that nobody who doesn't know him knows whether he can be trusted, and the ISO itself might be prepared on a compromised machine unintentionally. This is very much a supply chain issue.
You're right. The ISO might have been prepared on a Windows 11 machine.
And it downloads at ADSL speeds for the full experience (although Cloudflare in front of the ISO kind of breaks character).
https://imgur.com/a/HEjIEVn
Going to get this and install it on my old Asus core2duo laptop from circa 2008 - damn thing still is going strong, despite plastic becoming so brittle it has not one single panel left without cracks in it. Currently it has XP on it, but that is missing whole bunch of drivers, like touchpad not working and BIOS AHCI has to be in compatible mode otherwise it will bluescreen. It's going to be nostalgia machine where all the games I used to play back in the days are installed.
I have 24h left on the download. Is anyone who has the file willing to create a torrent to share? I can't click on the twitter link for some reason.
Twitter links via xcancel https://xcancel.com/TheBobPony/status/2014011109406105858 https://xcancel.com/TheBobPony/status/2012654119811432608
Archive.org link in the first has a torrent link.
Waiting for the torrent for the Win7 ISO
He posted it on Twitter, not on Archive.org yet
https://dl.bobpony.com/windows/unofficial/Win_7_ESU_AiO_x64_...
The Vista torrent is there already https://archive.org/download/en_windows_vista_sp2_with_updat...
There's also one with just en-US: https://dl.bobpony.com/windows/unofficial/Win_7_ESU_AiO_x64_...
Thank you!
Not something I expected to read today.
Thank you
Security updates up to 2026? If I knew this I wouldn't have upgraded to Win11 recently :)
From a security perspective, I'd really really like not just a pre-baked image, but also instructions on how to replicate that using only files and tools with known-good hashes and/or digital signatures.
I too distinctly remember the times I earned my money cleaning up malware, and a few times the root cause was someone using pre-cracked install media from some shady torrent.
I imagine some beefy Microsoft support contracts were required to get all of these updates through this month, with restrictions on redistribution; this isn't Linux!
Is there any reason that downloading this is more legal than downloading the latest Hollywood movie?
> Is there any reason that downloading this is more legal than downloading the latest Hollywood movie?
Windows ISOs with updates being baked in by third parties (usually computer magazines) has been a thing for well over a decade, ever since MS ceased to do Service Packs. So the pure act of distributing an ISO that hasn't been modified other than applying the official update packages should have enough precedence on the side of distribution being allowed that MS won't be able to do much more than maybe sending a nastygram your way.
What you definitely shouldn't do though is pre-crack the ISOs... but I doubt Microsoft even cares about that at this point. Massgrave (a very popular collection of activators for everything from Windows through Office) is hosted on Github.
Unlike earlier times, MS doesn't (need to) care about piracy any more, at least not from private users. The real revenue comes from enterprise and government contracts and, most importantly, the cloud.
So legally a gray area, but ethically and financially not a problem.
Windows Vista technically got to live to see Frutiger Aero come back
Only the ones after it got bad
Infinite captcha loop for me. Not using a VPN/proxy/1.1.1.1/anything like that.
Piracy is allowed on HN now?
Yes? All news articles contain a link to archive.is as a pinned comment.
There are no pinned comments here. Any archive.is links are posted by random members.
But are pinned by mods.
I don't see one here?
because this one isn't paywalled
This still requires you to have a valid Windows 7 or Vista key.
Maybe a nit, but this isn't piracy. Windows has been officially free to download and install since Windows XP. That was when Microsoft switched to their Product Activation DRM, and the license key became the bit you paid for.
Tangent: I miss MSDN AA
My understanding is that "free to download" means only from MS, but I could be wrong. And I suppose the only way to know for sure would be to take the issue to court, which is also going to be a subjective opinion from a judge.
It's Abandonware, isn't it?
AFAIK That is not a valid legal defense in the US. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
Always have been
Piracy is a socially responsible thing to do these days, when MS reportedly helps persecuting and killing people. IBM of 2020s.
Imagine if we actually discussed hacking!
Gosh the horror!