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MS 'Whistler' Looks Solid To ZDNET
dynoman7 writes: "eWEEK Labs has tested the first public beta release of Whistler, which became available Oct. 31. They think it is 'stable.'" He points to a review at eWEEK, also playing on MSNBC. It's a bit of a mixed review, actually -- the review points out that by "leaving its Windows 9x code base behind, [Microsoft is] creating many potential Windows platform compatibility problems in the process," and notes of the included "remote help" feature, "[G]iven Microsoft's well-documented security gaffes, sites will have to carefully evaluate the potential security risks of such a widely deployed remote-control feature." Whatever its faults, this Windows-to-come is supposed to have improved type handling and other goodies which every other OS will inevitably be scrutinized for, including [your favorite].
The whole "task bar" thing in general drives me a little buggy ... I usually end up with a lot of tiny rectangles at the bottom of my screen that say "mozi" "mozi" "mozi" etc. because that's as much room as they have space for text. Which removes all the alleged helpfulness of having those taskbar buttons at all.
That's one of the reasons why Microsoft's UI Style Guide shifted from "app-centric" to "doc-centric": the browsers give the doc/page's title followed by the app's title. It avoids buttons that read "Micr...", "Micr...", "Micr..."
I don't know if computer interfaces ever will really achieve data centrism, but I think it's the right way to go. Give me a file, and if I don't have the widget that lets me view or edit it, let me get it.
Of course, it's exactly this trend that has also put Microsoft's security in the crapper: automatic installations of who-knows-what code.
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Non-firewalled home users run them for a few hours in the evening (if that), connect to the internet for part of that time, then turn them off.
Linux users, OTOH, tend to spring for high-speed permanent internet connections on the best hardware they can afford, and leave their computers on for months at a time. And, of course, only a minority of Linux home users know anything about security, and plenty of default installations are full of holes. Furthermore, the Linux boxes are full of toys like compilers and network utilities.
Which sounds more tempting for someone who wants to subvert other people's equipment for their own purposes? An unstable mishmash of proprietary apps, or a perfectly stable long-term hacking platform where every application has the source available so he can control all local displays to hide the fact that he's in there?
Cable-modem, static IP, default install, Redhat Linux boxes are a cracker's bonanza.
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Didn't Microsoft at one point say that the remote administration capabilities of Unix-based systems constituted a security flaw? They better lock their code down REALLY WELL or else we'll start seeing a surge in Windows exploits. If you thought it was bad with Linux, just imagine what it would be like if every desktop system, run by completely clueless users in a majority of cases, had this kind of remote control built in, without the need for sneaking in BO or Netbus.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
(sort of like various distros of Linux with subtle incompatibilities because of differently located libraries etc.
I didn't mean to distort the point of that sentence; the review I think is a little glib in accepting that a list of compatibilies for tons of applications will work correctly in all cases it covers.
It sounds like for many applications (perhaps even all but a handful, but I dunno which ones or how important they are) the built-in database should be sufficient (is it built in? is it internet-available and constantly updated? not clear from article
All versioning does this (at least potentially), but the larger the leap the greater the risk
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Dear Slashdot:
My computer runs a somewhat non-standard operating system called "Linux." This "Linux" operating system does not come with Microsoft Windows fonts. Hence, I cannot see the Microsoft "smart quotes" that appear in the "MS 'Whistler' Looks Solid To ZDNET" story. If you could be so kind as to fix the headline, me and my fellow "Linux" users would appreciate it.
Thanks.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
No scrollable buffer. Honestly, I can't figure out why someone would use telnet.exe when they have HyperTerminal on their system. (Except for the NTLM authentication.)
No, it has a scrollable buffer.
Start Menu->Run: telnet xxx.xx.xxx.xxx
Click the Icon (top right of window), select Properties from the Menu.
Select the Layout tab.
Change Screen Buffer - Height to however long you want it to be. The default is 300 lines.
Use the scrollbar then to scroll.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
File types? Yet another "innovation" MacOS has had from Day One, and Microsoft is only now realizing that storing file type information in the filename is an ugly, archaic hack that needs to die sooner rather than later? BeOS has an interesting mechanism for this, by storing MIME types, but this is still inadequate, for reasons I'll get to in a second.
.DAT, you've seen this. .BIN is another common extension. And let's not leave Red Hat users out of the loop; haw many times has RealPlayer tried to play your installers, which end in .RPM?
With filename extensions, you have the problem that only a datatype is specified, and not the app that created it. If you've ever had to deal with the hundreds of mutually-incompatible formats all with the extension
MIME has the opposite problem. It was a great idea in theory, but in practice it broke down. Depressingly few file formats actually have registered types, and in most cases the result is that no two people can agree. I've had to register no fewer than three MIME types for Zip files, three for m3u format MP3 playlists, eight for MP3 itself, two each for QuickTime, AVI, MPEG, and RealPlayer formats, three for Stuffit, and so on and so forth.
I won't even go into ease of use issues (anything that makes it unsafe to rename a file at will is a Bad Thing); there are practical reasons that filename extensions should have died a very long time ago, and while I'm glad to see Whistler finally getting rid of the need for them, I only wish they'd done it much sooner.
This does, of course, all assume that this is in fact something Whistler is doing (no one seems to know what "type handling" means; this is my guess).
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How can someone say that about any OS after only one week of actual use !!!
Apple fell back to a very simple lineup and now it's Microsoft that has five different various options for everything. I hope they choke on it :)
Think about it- logically for every user there are four sorts of Windows that are _wrong_, correct? How much of a jump would it be to decide that all six are wrong and go with Linux, or Macintoshes? :)
Cut off Xbox (because it's not real and we'll never see it) and 98 (obsolete) and we still have four sorts of Windowses, of which three are wrong ;)
The thing i notice more than anthing else when using windows (besides BSOD etc) is the lack of virtual desktops...
Well, if you want virtual desktops, take some initiatize and code some! Or you can download a freeware version at here. I like this one because it's simple and gnu-ey.
the review points out that by "leaving its Windows 9x code base behind, [Microsoft is] creating many potential Windows platform compatibility problems in the process,"
This is a distortion of what the point of that sentence was in the first place. If one takes in to account the sentence just before it in the actual article, the point that there will be compatibility problems is negated:
Whistler contains an application compatibility environment designed to allow the operating system to run many applications intended for Windows 98. This is particularly important because, with Whistler, Microsoft is leaving its Windows 9x code base behind, creating many potential Windows platform compatibility problems in the process.
don't mod me down just because I disagree with the post. I'm just clarifying something.
If anybody wants to check out (or make fun of) the new "flat" theme in Whistler, head over to Paul Thurrott's Windows SuperSite. He also has pictures of an older build.
...and here's what I think.
I hate the dumbed-down interface. Period. The new start menu is no more intuitive than the old one, and I'm thankful that there's at least a way to switch back.
I also -hate- the new "View as Tiles" mode in Explorer. It scales the icons up hugely with no anti-aliasing - and then makes the clickable area extend to the side. Can you imagine how confusing that'll be to a complete novice?
Theme support is spotty and inconsistant - Explorer remains unthemed, as does IE. (Same thing happens with Windowblinds, both these apps bypass the normal Win32 widget stuff)
Besides the modified UI, it's just plain ol' Win2k with a few added services and minor tweaks.
I realize most of this may be due to the fact that it's a beta, but I'm rather disappointed with what I've seen of it so far.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
The taskbar thing has been available on BeOS for years. Whos following who?
Mods away!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
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The NT/2K/Whistler product line will never be a standalone complete end-user system solution until MS provides the ability to create a bootable DOS floppy from within this product line. Just about every BIOS flashing utility (not just system BIOS, but peripheral card BIOSes and possibly even some CDRW device firmware) requires booting to a DOS prompt in order to run the flashing utility. What does every NT-based system vendor tell their clients to do when they need to flash their BIOS? Find somebody with a W9X machine and format a bootable floppy. When I built my W2K system, not only did I buy an OEM copy of W2K, but I also picked up a copy of W98SE, just to make sure I had a (legal) way to boot to a DOS prompt for these situations.
Oh yeah I forgot, this is Slashdot.
Whistler Pro - I turned off moron mode as I found it difficult to live with the new interface, which might be fine for my mum, but useless for me. Remember, this is a Microsoft beta (equivalent to 0.4-0.7 or therabouts in most open source software). When I was beta'ing Win2K, Win2K went from NT 4.0 look with new barely new color schemes and Win98 pop outs in build 1477 through to Win2K's look and feel in about six hundred new builds. Expect Whistler's appearance to change until about April next year.
It seems stable enough. It has ATA-100 support (something that I had to retroactively add to Win2K when I got my Dell) and the screen drivers seem snappy enough. I'm intrigued to find that people are already reporting stuff doesn't work as everything I've tried (including a couple of games) works fine for me. My Logitech USB joystick just worked, and my USB Canon Ixus similarly just worked (in fact, the new features in Whistler for this stuff is just fantastic).
I like the new user "disconnect" feature. It allows multiple users to remain logged on and you can quickly move between them (if you have adequate memory).
I like the way print drivers seem to be kicked out of kernel mode. My 710c never gave me grief in Win2K, but now there's even less chance with Whistler.
Other than that, it's too early to make a full judgement. I've already found one potential security flaw and I have a negative installation experience during the express upgrade, but as I'm a tester and this is a beta, I've told Microsoft about both issues, and they'll fix it, like they did with the six things I found during the three years I tested Win2K. If every one of the "beta" testers did this, the product would be a far better product for it.
Andrew van der Stock