Slashdot Mirror
"Longhorn" Alpha Preview
An anonymous reader submitted an actual review of the leaked Longhorn Alpha. Finally someone has provided us with more than a few screenshots. Here's your chance to see what the future of the microsoft desktop is gonna look like!
Am I the only one who prefers a clean minamalist desktop. I still haven't seen anything that would make me want to upgrade from 2000. Desktop themes are like kids hanging plastic effects on their cars because they think it makes them look better, it doesn't. It's just heavy crap that slows you down and gets in the way.
The "Sidebar" seems (functionally) very much like The Dock in MacOS X. The rest is just, pardon the pun, "window dressing".
The big questions have yet to be answered:
1) Is it more stable?
2) Is it more secure?
3) Will the licensing restrictions be reasonable?
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
A major objection for the average office worker to both Mac OS and Linux is the need to learn new ways of doing things, and the things they do not want to have to learn to do are often amazingly trivial. (Only this morning I had to show a white collar professional how to turn a Mac on, and explain that the reason IE didn't start immediately was because the double click interval on this particular machine was set quite short and a faster double click was needed.)
The constant drive for change on the Windows desktop could, paradoxically, reduce market share if it perceived that each new version of Windows is going to need as big a learning curve as switching. One for Apple and KDE to exploit?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
No, you're not. Since my company went under a few months ago I haven't touched a Windows machine, but at the time I was using Windows 2000 exclusively. I just didn't have a good reason to upgrade. All that stuff that Microsoft touted for XP-- media, burning, wireless-- I get on my Macs, and in a form that's a hell of a lot easier to use.
From my chair, Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of Microsoft's operating system development, and we've been heading downhill ever since. Not because XP sucks, but just because it adds much stuff I don't need and no stuff I do.
I write in my journal
looking at the screen shots i noticed that the location bars simply say:
My Computer\ something\something else\...
does this mean they are getting away from drive letters? what a novel concept.
-- john
I still use Win2K as well. I think XP is utterly annoying. Win2K is (mostly) stable, and doesn't come with all that bloat that I don't have a need for.
For me, it's Win2K + FreeBSD 4.7 on my main boxes, the rest almost exclusively run FreeBSD.
Pretty soon we'll need a quick launch bar for the quick launch bars.
Most of the time, I think Microsoft has made "innovation" a four-letter word. That's just when I'm pissed. When I take a step back (especially when I see stuff like this), I get the impression that Microsoft's idea of innovation is visual masturbation. Sometimes I think they measure success by number of entries in the Interface Hall Of Shame.
Two points:
1. I don't see how eye candy is ever innovative without improvements in the underlying architecture such as security or ease of use. My definition of ease of use is slightly different than most however. I would define ease of use the ability to quickly and easily get what you want done, regardless of skill level. One of the things that really irks me about Windows in general (and to a certain extent OS X) is that it is targeted so much at the ignorant user, that it is nothing but frustrating to me as someone who knows a little more.
2. What's worse is that the free software world seems to emulate this behavior more and more. There is a lot of imitation in OpenSource. This is good. It is extremely important to have free tools which support POSIX standards (like awk and find). What's great is there's a lot of innovation too (emacs, gcc, the Linux kernel module architecture). There just doesn't seem to be much innovation in free software UI design. The default behavior seems to be to "make it like Windows". Microsoft UIs attempt to hide so much from their users they become unusable. KDE attempts to mimic this behavior. RedHat took this direction with 8.0 for its entire UI, and as a result I'm frustrated to the point of looking for a new distro.
moto411.com
I love these threads - nothing like passing off an opinion as fact and backing it up with an anecdote or lies and/or ignorance (not just the parents - I mean in general, though in this case, there are no forced updates in Windows XP - default is on (which is good for the rest of us, considering how an ordinary user never thinks about security patches) but it is easily turned off).
:)
:) - but I am quite certain that a number of people have never had problems with different distros or Windows versions and can't get XP to run for them (or it crashes constantly or whatever).
I hear the same arguments against all the operating systems (Jaguar is too slow, XP is too flaky, Suse won't work with my display driver, etc) and it's just convinced me to quit listening
I personally have had problems with every Linux distro and Windows version I have ever tried except for Windows XP (approx 1 year w/o any crashes - no uptime to speak of because I shut it down at night due to noise
Unless someone actually quantifies this information, it's pointless.
Os benchmarks on comparable hardware, on the other hand, actually mean something but hardly ever get published.
Information on os security is also readily available, although security is subject to the skill of the admin as well, so it's hard to evaluate purely on technical merits as well (ie/ I would trust a Windows box managed by a competent admin much more than a Linux box managed by some dumbass).
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
...who like to pretend that the last 30 years of UI research never happened, I'd just like to say please take some notes. Not that KDE and Gnome have to look like a cartoon (ala the default Windows settings), but that is something Windows DEFINETELY does better.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
because, all the other information residing on that machine that aren't under one of the My* 'folders' belongs not to you but is just licensed to you.
therefore it actually makes sense.
That sidebar looks just like the dock, only uglier and even bigger (I didn't think that was possible). I also notice it only contains MS applications... I sincerely hope that's because of this particular setup.
Did anyone else notice over 20% of the screen space was taken up by "navigational help" (eg these are the folders you might want to go to, then again you might not) in almost all of those screenshots? How does that help anyone by confusing the interface to such extremes?
I like the new preview pane, a little big for my tastes, but it's there (albeit 7 years to get right after the introduction in windows 98). I am hoping it's not hardcoded which directories you can use it in, that would be a serious shame.
I really wonder why they don't just license the look and feel of finder already, I can already tell their explorer is going to be very cluttered (then again that might be partially because of their insistance on a really pecular file heirachy for user directories..).
I live in a giant bucket.
there are no forced updates in Windows XP
Yes there is. The UELA doesn't say "If you consent" it says "Microsoft has the right."
It may not be happening today, but how do you know it won't happen tomorow? Do you trust Microsoft to be a "good citizen"?
I live in a giant bucket.
I run a 19" PF790 monitor at 1024x768 (supposedly its limit is 1600x1200). Higher resolutions get uncomfortable for 47-year-old eyes that no longer focus like they used to. After all, not everything can scale up fonts, menus, etc., and not everyone can use computer glasses. :(
:)
One thing I see a lot of, particularly in free software, are programs that were clearly designed and tested at obscenely high resolutions -- and are all but unusable even at 1024x768, let alone below that. Kids tend to forget that most of the world still runs at 800x600, in particular the over-40 crowd.
Then there are commercial apps like Dreamweaver, where the workspace is inundated by the taskbars etc., yet if you turn all those off so you've got some elbow room, you've got no uick way to access certain functions. What was it designed for, wall-sized monitors??!
I've had the thought that it would be nice if I could set resolution on a per-application basis
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?