"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!

Comments

Faked?

[chrisseaton]

I've seen loads of leaked screenshots. Why should I believe this are not faked like they rest?

Re:Faked?

[Jugalator]

Why should I believe this are not faked like they rest?

Because an ISO of the alpha has been leaked as well and a spokeswoman of Microsoft has commented the issue.

Visit #Betas @ irc.betasonline.com for more information. Also see xbetas.com. This is the .nfo.

Also, here's a guide to fix certain boot problems with Longhorn.

Re:Faked?

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy who wrote the review, Paul Thurrott, has a lot of contacts within Microsoft. The stuff he writes is almost always accurate (I regularly read two of his sites, WinInfo and the SuperSite for Windows). He was the first journalist to report on the merging of the Odyssey and Neptune projects to form Whistler (better known as Windows XP). Basically, he knows his stuff.

Re:Faked?

[davidsansome]

To quote from the .nfo:
Please note it is still in Alpha stage, so you may experience constant crashes.

So nothing's really changed from the past Windows versions then :-)

Re:Faked?

[Forge]

Actualy that's the only reason to not think this is faked.

Otherwise it looks like Windows XP with a few obvius decorative splashes.

Notice the hardware section? S3 Trio 32/64?

What are the odds that The next Windowswill support such old video chips? I.e. If you dobt me on this remember that basic things like serial mice stoped working in Windows XP andwere flaky in 2000. ISA NICs don't work which probebly makes Windows the only OS on the planet which dosn't work with any of my NE2K clones.

Re:Faked?

[AppyPappy]

If it were real, I would think MickeySoft would have tried to shut it down.

Obey your inner Mickey

Mmmm

[i_need_no_nick]

Looks like a pretty kick-ass windows distro.

Shame I won't be able to get an AMD CPU to run it on though :(

Re:Mmmm

[the way, what're you]

Shame I won't be able to get an AMD CPU to run it on though :(

Why not? Do you not have enough money?

Yawn

[VTg33k]

Am I the only one that still uses Windows 2000? It's clean, stable, and doesn't stick its head quite as far up my rear end as XP does...

Re:Yawn

[Phosphor3k]

Nope. As far as stability, availability of drivers, windows compatability, and non-forced updates, win2k is the best windows IMO.

Re:Yawn

[Twirlip of the Mists]

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.

Re:Yawn

[RinkSpringer]

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.

Re:Yawn

[TheGreek]

Windows XP volume licensing is identical to Windows 2000 volume licensing, because you're buying the same thing: Windows Pro. My company's Windows Pro license allows us to have either all Win2k, all WinXP, or some mixture of the two.

Oh, and the copy of Windows XP Pro on the Volume License media kit doesn't require activation.

Thank you, come again.

Re:Yawn

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

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).

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 :) - 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).

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).

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

A few things about XP are a little prettier but I have a feeling that Win2k isn't going anywhere for a long time. I use XP at home (came w/ computer) but win2k at work. No one wants to change. Interestigly there's a mix of reasons. Part of it is the the new licencing scheme and part of it is the general fear that microsoft has instilled in people with their new OS versions. General concensus seems to be that one should wait at least 1 year before considering changing to the new OS. Given that win2k is arguably really hitting maturity now (sp3) people are really likely to stay put for a while.

and speaking of the burning capability in XP...

Does anyone actually use it? The idea is good but, the interface has some problems. Drag the files that you want to burn into the CD-R's folder, see files in the folder, forget to hit burn to CD (it just puts fake links in the folder as place holders and waits for you to hit burn to CD to actually do anything). Also, I've found that it uses a screwy driver or something. I haven't been able to burn CD's reliably this way, most (>80%) are F'd up. I've had to use the burning software that came with the drive instead of using the XP interface. It's a good idea, but it doesn't seem to work. If CD-R's were still $2 each I'd be pretty pissed. Can't wait for them to mung up DVD-R burning as well.

Re:Yawn

[hitzroth]

You get many converts with that kind of biggoted attitude?

Most people tend to believe that computers and their associated bits are tools, not support structures for religions.

Re:Yawn

[Master Bait]

I for one appreciate Microsoft's up-front attitude by them including a separate folder for My Viruses and another one for My Exploits.

Re:Yawn

[Photon Ghoul]

Yes, I've used the burning capability in XP. It's actually very easy-to-use and I've found that very non-technical people pick up on it very quickly. To them, the CDRW becomes a much more useful storage device.

Maybe you should get a CDRW that costs more than five bucks in your local Fry's bargain bin. :)

Re:Yawn

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The idea is good but, the interface has some problems. Drag the files that you want to burn into the CD-R's folder, see files in the folder, forget to hit burn to CD (it just puts fake links in the folder as place holders and waits for you to hit burn to CD to actually do anything).

Since I've never used XP, I can't comment directly, but on the Mac the Finder's CD burning feature works pretty much the same way. You drag the files to the CD, and then either tell it to burn, or simply eject the disc. When you eject, it asks you if you want to burn the contents, or just forget the whole thing. So you can't really forget to burn the disc.

Doesn't XP do something like that? Seems fairly obvious to me.

Re:Yawn

[Dun Malg]

Nope. As far as stability, availability of drivers, windows compatability, and non-forced updates, win2k is the best windows IMO

A strange, non-factual opinion. XP and 2K have (nearly) the same NT5 kernal, use the same drivers, the same API, and updates aren't mandatory in XP. Essentially, going from 2K to XP is going from WinNT 5.0 to WinNT 5.1. I've noticed considerable improvement in stability, but then again, most stability data I hear is anecdotal so it's probably the same as 2K. THe one thing I've found much improved is startup time. Win 2K takes almost 3 minutes from poweron to desktop ready, whereas XP takes about 45 seconds.

Re:Yawn

[ealar dlanvuli]

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"?

Re:Yawn

[Pius II.]

Erm, Windows 2000 may not have a defrag.exe, but it sure as hell has a defrag utility in the management console. Of course, the first I'll do on a new setup is replace that one with a trusted one; the original defrag tool comes from a scientology-controlled firm.

Re:Yawn

[mbogosian]

I personally have had problems with every Linux distro and Windows version I have ever tried....

This is off-topic, but the act of installing "modern" operating systems has almost never been completely without hitch (okay, the BeOS install has come the closest in my experience...). Windows is already installed on most computers that people buy for their homes, thus removing one frustrating step. The problem is that Microsoft does not allow OEMs to offer anything different.

Re:Yawn

[Reziac]

Well, I'm kinda in the other camp. I've got a bunch of Win95/98/ME/XP systems here (Win2K's absence is chance, not selection; the Win3.1 and pure DOS setups are retired), and have little to no trouble with any of them crashing. I use sound hardware and drivers, and I maintain them well (regular defrags etc) but they were all pretty easy to get to highly stable states. My Winboxen (and clients' Winboxen that I set up and maintain) go months or even *years* between crashes, and I've come to regard that as *normal*. I could generate a pile of boring stats if you'd like. :)

I've had a great deal more trouble with linux (on some of the *same* hardware), until I tried Mandrake, which is the first one I've used that has been as stable, and approaching as usable, as I've come to expect of an OS. I might even learn to like it. :)

As you say, a lot of it is area of competence, and attitude. I know a guy who can make Netware sing, loves it and treats it most tenderly, but he hates Windows and refuses to do even the most basic maintenance -- well, naturally it crashed all the time when neglected and abused like that, what did he expect?? I spent 5 minutes cleaning up his Windows box, and now it *never* crashes.

Re:Yawn

[Eight 01]

I know that XP is configurable. I know I could probably turn off the search wizards "what do you want to search for? A photo? Music?" and just type in *.mp3 like I can in Win2k. I could turn off simple file sharing, etc. I could probably find tweaks to get all my older games runnning. I could even get a hacked version that didn't require registration from MS every time I reinstall or change too much of my hardware.

However, why should I? My new Dell came with XP. I spent about 30 minutes with it, looking into how I could change it to not be so annoying. After 30 minutes, I formatted the drive and put Win2K on.

Re:Yawn

[MalleusEBHC]

Most people tend to believe that computers and their associated bits are tools, not support structures for religions.

I'm guessing you have never used emacs or vi.

Re:Yawn

[vsprintf]

I'm guessing you have never used emacs or vi.

Pssst! Keep your head down. All those posters are Microsofties.

Re:Yawn

[Jace of Fuse!]

Doesn't XP do something like that?

I seem to remember it asking if you want to burn the contents at some point, but I can't remember if it's while ejecting, or at some other point.

Either way, as other people have mentioned, I'm not very fond of that method of doing things. I prefer to use NERO.

Re:Yawn

[Reziac]

Well, unless you know linux well enough to pick and choose every little detail of an install, all you really can do is pick "default install" and hope the disty knows what it's doing.

Saying they're all the same is about like saying all Windows versions are the same except for the details. While it's true to some extent, once you leave the core OS and base apps, things can go in any direction.

Anyway, when some default installs fall over, and some don't, I have to go with the one that runs. YMMV :)

Re:Yawn

[Reziac]

I know some people have that experience, where Windows gradually goes unstable and they can't seem to fix it. But in EVERY case I've looked at, there has been some identifiable problem, whether it's a buildup of temp files in some odd location, fragmentation that affects the swapfile (this is one reason why I *always* put it on a dedicated partition), a registry in need of cleaning, residue from piggybackware, or whatever. In one case it was all due to a fancy keyboard driver!

When all else fails -- it's usually hardware. Most commonly flaky power supply, flaky RAM, shared video RAM, or AMD CPU + VIA chipset.

Re:Yawn

[hitzroth]

I'm guessing you have never used emacs or vi.

I'd hazard a guess that emacs and vi fall under "associated bits."

Just because I've used them doesn't mean that I feel the need to be fanatical. I prefer 0.7mm HB leads in my mechanical pencil, but I won't snub a pink pen if that's all that's handy.

But, that said, I never understood why people compaired vi and emacs. They seemed like comparing apples and llamas. They both do what they're supposed to -- and rather well I might add -- but they've evolved into two different things.

The reason, I suspect, that knowledge of the emacs vs. vi holy war is so widespread is that -- like in most religions -- the most vocal people on the subject are those of the fanatical minorities. And the rest of us encourage them because we find the show interesting. A good flamewar is like a cross between a summer night of fireworks and an automobile accident: very colorful, and you morbidly can't help but watch.

Re:Yawn

[Jace of Fuse!]

NERO isn't complicated for me. Perhaps if I didn't know what all the options did, yes, it would be complicated. Since a more advanced program that lets me have greater control over the burning process is more useful for me than a "put it in and burn it" solution, I would prefer deal with a more in depth interface than a simple "would you like to burn it now?" prompt.

Re:Yawn

[doodleboy]

Well, unless you know linux well enough to pick and choose every little detail of an install, all you really can do is pick "default install" and hope the disty knows what it's doing.

Disagree. Most installers will flag a dependency if there is one, and will work fine otherwise. Whenever I install redhat, for example, I always do a custom install and trim the stuff I don't want/need. I have never been bitten by doing this. Ever.

In general, the major distributions (redhat, mandrake, suse, etc.) do a very good job of installing the needed software and detecting and setting up the hardware. Even slackware, which I still use, allows great customizability in the install without blowing up.

I've read most of this thread, and you do seem to know your windows. But you're less familiar with linux. Try doing a custom install of redhat 8. Pick whatever software you want. Sort out whatever dependencies the installer finds (i.e. installing kde and not xfree86), and it'll run no problem.

The fact is, there's no great skill or luck needed for custom installs to work. Newbies do them every day.

Re:Yawn

[Reziac]

Actually, I did that with RH6 and a few others -- went thru the entire mess and had it tell me which needed what. And that's fine as far as it goes -- it's not really much different procedurally from doing a custom install of a complex WinApp that knows Part A also needs Part B. But the problem is that there's such a huge pile of interrelated stuff, often poorly named and even more-poorly described, that unless a person really knows what all those packages are, they aren't going to have a clue what they need for a useful system.

When I did my latest round of "lets look at the past year's collection of disty CDs" -- well, now it's worse, by virtue of sheer volume! Some disties tried to sort things out by user and programmer type stuff, which is at least a start (tho I told one to omit the optional programmer packages, and it installed them anyway!) I think there needs to be more such sorting into clear categories, rather than handing the user the entire 1000+ packages to root thru one at a time. Some are getting there with groupings like "image editing stuff", but as noted the accuracy and granularity still needs work.

OTOH, the "close your eyes and pick default everything" settings seem to have become much better than they were. Some formerly didn't even include a GUI, which makes it kinda useless for a newbie. :)

If only I were a coder... [g]

I like Windows, and it's fairly easy to beat into submission [g] But I really would like to see linux become a desktop I can give my clients, because the Windows I foresee after XP is nothing I care to use or support. :(

Quick Launch Bar

[DJCouchyCouch]

So, (as I've said before) besides the systray, task bar buttons, icons on the desktop and the start menu we have *another* way to "quickly" get to applications and documents? Pretty soon we'll need a quick launch bar for the quick launch bars.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Digital Dream Shaper]

Maybe they will finally wise up and move the "Shutdown" option from the "Start" menu ;)

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[DJCouchyCouch]

A question I should've asked in the original post is why the heck aren't they sticking to just one application finder/launcher and making it the best it can be instead of having 4 to 5 half-assed ones? They're just adding more shiny buttons without merit.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Fjord]

I don't know. I kind of like the new quick launch bar. It makes it feel more like GNOME.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[mbogosian]

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.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[perlyking]

They don't know when to stop it seems.

"Longhorn... what can we have? Bigger fatter UI!"...
"Lets call more things 'my....'"

Whats with all the redundant "my..." anyway - e.g The "my" in "my hardware" is totally redundant, is a user really going to wonder if they are configuring someone else's hardware?

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Reziac]

Whereas my own gripe with the direction M$'s interface is heading, is that it's eating more and more of my valuable screen estate. The workspace is already cramped enough, and they want to cover it up with another menu bar, more irrelevant graphics, etc.. ??! Up thru XP, such crap can at least be turned off, but I suspect the day will come when it can't be.

While I don't agree with all of your post, I do think "visual masturbation" is an entirely apt description. Unfortunately, free software tends to suffer from that more than does commercialware. :(

#include "standard_rant_on_why_I_have_come_to_hate_skins"

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Razzak]

I think making the claim that liking eyecandy=ignorant is pretty ignorant in and of itself.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Reziac]

Yeah, what started as "My Computer" and "My Documents" has gotten out of hand .. just who the hell did you THINK they belonged to, Bill??

Oh, wait...

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Dionysus]

I disagree with you on the issue of new users. I don't think most people have a problem with trying new interfaces. And I think Microsoft knows this. Why? Because they usually make some cosmetic change between each version of Windows, not counting the huge change between 3.1 to '95.

The problem I see in the Free Software community is that it tries to copy the Windows interface, but only on the surface. People will look at it, and expect it to work like it did in Windows, and then they find out that it doesn't. I rather have an uniq GUI (like Mac is uniq, or OS/2 was uniq) for UNIX/Linux so that people won't be confused.

It's also one of the reason I really like Enlightenment. It's finally a window manager that doesn't try to copy something that went before. It creates an identity uniq to the system.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[fferreres]

"Sometimes I think they measure success by number of entries in the Interface Hall Of Shame."

Woah wait a second, the most usable OS in the world probably should be the ruler for the Interface Hall of Fame. Not perfect, but works for hundred on millions of us.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[jez9999]

But what really annoys me is when an application makes FULL use of this, and inserts itself in every little nook and cranny it can. AOL, for example, puts itself (automatically) in the Programs folder, the Start Menu, the Desktop, the Quick launch folder AND the System Tray. Just in case the user forgets where they can find it, eh?

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[fferreres]

I would like generic interfaces to utilities. Everything should be a library that implements different interfaces.

1) A CLI interface
2) A GUI Interface
3) Linking against it of course

The interfaces to these utilities should never be hardcoded, but should follow a single standard way of exposing the functionality. Of course, configuration files should follow the same behaveour.

It should all be some kind of huge API or set of complementary libraries (or classes if you want).

if "grep", or "find" have functionality hardcoded in them, it makes it harder for GUI apps to benefit from them.

- GUI wrappers arround CLI utils will always be a bad thing,
- Duplicating functionality is also bad.
- GUI only apps limit you to a great degree if you know more that to click buttons.

I think of the CLI not as text-only duplication of a GUI system or the inverse. The CLI is kind of a "vertical chain" between apps (combines what would be different subparts of apps) where as the GUI is a coherent crosssectional integration of utils "that fullfill specific goals". They use the same resources in different ways (say Find only Finds stuff, where a word processor may want to use find services but in a very limited fashion).

As I see it, the .NET Framework spirit makes a lot of sense to me, it's a step in the right direction.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[DickBreath]

Quick Launch Bar?

Is that a bar that can be quickly launched? Are the drinks in non-breakable containers?

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Reziac]

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 :)

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Codifex Maximus]

I agree with your assessment however, I would add regardless of user interface to the definition of ease of use.

I just keep thinking... Debian and Windowmaker are there as an ace-in-the-hole.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[joshwa]

I've been looking for a windows zoomable UI (ZUI), too. 3Dtop is the closest I've found though, and I don't have the patience for it. Does anyone know of something more useful??

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[doormat]

The "my" in "my hardware" is totally redundant, is a user really going to wonder if they are configuring someone else's hardware?

Heh, after the next generation of DMCAs and DRM in general, it wont be your hardware in the same way that your car is yours.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[valmont]

well. i'm a pretty savvy user too, and i've found OS X to dramatically increase my productivity at work, whether it is for J2EE development, surfing the web, fooling around in office suites. And i'm not the only one at my work to think that way. *A lot* of senior engineers, may they be unix/solaris geeks, linux fanatics, windoz sluts, just happen to find OS X a better platform.

The Dock is a truly inovative and powerful application-launching *and* context-switching all-in-one metaphore: Hold the ctrl key while clicking on a running app's icon (or use the right mouse button) (yes OS X natively supports pretty much all two-button USB mice). Lately i'm trying to further maximize my desktop real estate by putting it on the right side of the screen, turning off magnification, making it very small, and always leaving it on. i had it at its default position before, worked pretty well too, so we'll see how that goes.

Having multiple terminal windows opened with tcsh, and, sporadically, with bash, allows me to use all the utilities i like, such as find, sed, awk, grep, xargs, vi, emacs and even ... pico. heh. Those of you who have tried to get a development environment set-up with tomcat while fooling around with classpaths must be intimately familiar with how GAY and RETARDED the DOS shell is, and while cygwin is a very nice tool, any time there needs to be interactions between windows OS and cygwin layers, dealing with 'cygpath' is still highly gay.

For those of you familiar with BareBones Software's BBEdit, one of the Macintosh Platform's most old-school text-editor/code-authoring software (i still have my BBEdit, it doesn't suck t-shirt), it comes with a command-line executable called "bbedit" that gets installed with the app, and you can use it to open files from the shell:

find . -path "*some/path*" -name "*.html"" |xargs bbedit

incredibly cool.

Anyway, there are a ZILLION ways you can customize OS X to work better for you, check out sites such as macosxhints.com and of course, Fink.

Of course, you should have Apple's Developer Tools installed, which is a CD that comes with your OS X package.

The bottom-line is, once you install Developer Tools, OS X comes out-of-the-box equipped with a slew of geek power tools, with a *all* the unix utilities you are accustomed to, plus a slew of application development IDEs and utilities, such as Project Builder, MallocDebug, ThreadViewer. Beyond that, you can easily install additional unix tools such as X-Windows, Gnome, KDE, Gimp via Fink. I've got those running on my TiBook 400mhz 384MB RAM.

To further customize your working environment, the finder's "favorites" (heart icon on a finder window toolbar) are also highly useful, as you can quickly make any folder or drive or shortcut a "favortie", which will be listed in any dialog box that asks you to save or open a file.

So like ... how is OS X frustrating to you?

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Arandir]

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".

I used to think that the developers were behind this plot. Then after spending a few months on kde-look.org, I realized that it's the users who want this crap. One of the most frequent use of the "other" category at kde-look is to post mockups of what Kicker, the main menu, or some random dialog should look like. Many of them make those Longhorn screenshots look like models of simplicity and elegance.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[kitzilla]

> I don't see how eye candy is ever innovative without improvements in the underlying architecture such as security or ease of use.

Look at that clock on the dock: beautifuly rendered. Useless, too. Does MS really think I don't have a clock or a watch? Geez! Sure, Mr. Gates, I'd love to tie up my precious desktop with a frikkin' Daliesque clock. Toss in one of those moon phase animations, while you're at it.

What I do like about Longhorn is the desktop pager. Wish my Mac had that. Hello...Apple? Now that MS has a pager, can I?

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[schlach]

As I see it, the .NET Framework spirit makes a lot of sense to me, it's a step in the right direction.

I totally agree. What has been a huge source of frustration for me is when I want to improve / utilize someone else's application in a way they didn't think of.

On Linux: chances are, I've got the source, and can do pretty much whatever the hell I want. But if I don't, or if I don't want to take the time-hit to read the whole damn thing (anyone read the netcat source? *shudder*), there's a good chance I can just have perl grab the output and pipe it into whatever form I need it to be in.

On Windows: no such luck. It's exceedingly unlikely that I have the source for the app, and there's a very good chance that the only way to interact with the data is the GUI, so unless I build something that will hook the window and grab the frame to read its text (I've heard that this is one way to go, but never tried), I'm SOL. I'll be manually save-as'ing or text-select cut-n-pasting.

If .NET adoption provides everyone a default way of allowing others to hook their logic, that will be fine with me.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[StarFace]

The main reason it frustrates me is responsiveness. I don't care how elegantly or efficiently you can do things, if you have significant latency on the window management level, the whole thing becomes frustrating -- and this is running it on a nearly new processor!

Now, if I were to install Linux on the same computer, suddenly the hardware comes alive. Case in point, I have a 700mhz iBook G3. OS X is all but unuseable on it. If I were not a "power user" and it might suffice, but I am always doing five things at once, and I expect modern hardware to keep up with that. I run Gentoo on the iBook. X is sitting on a small partition, in case I ever need it, but I haven't booted up in a long, long time.

The second most frustrating thing for me is the window management itself. Very basic, which is fine for their intended market. I need just a wee more power though. Virtual desktops that don't take three seconds to toggle using third party "auto-hiders." the ability to manipulate windows anywhere using modifier keys instead of just the small widgets (I don't even use window buttons in Linux, all Mod1+mouse controls, and keyboard shortcuts. All to say the very least. Working in X just feels idiotic to me, like I'm fighting the interface to get work done. In a well configured X11 environment it just the opposite. I forget th e interface entirely -- the way it should be -- something a lot of X advocates forget.

The dock really is not that innovative for my uses. Perhaps if I only used a handful of programs on a regular basis. Instead, I use way more than that, and there is no way to store them all on the dock. It just becomes a nuisance for the most part. Yes, you can minimize it to hell, but that is a workaround, then you have a bunch of miniscule icons. I'll take a root window text read-out application menu, where I can click anywhere instead of having to traverse thousands of pixels to launch something, or raise an app to the foreground.

Single instance limitation for applications is not cool. Leave that option up to the application developer. There is no reason why I should have to create fifteen copies of gvim so I can run multiple instances concurrently. And bbedit just doesn't cut it for me. I've got vi ingrained my neurons.

The mostly hidden configuration options is another drag. Just use standard text files like the rest of the *NIX world. I heard a rumour that they were thinking of doing that -- but we'll see. Yeah, there is X hints sites, and you can do a bit, but not enough, and why oscure these things? Just get them out in the open. I'm not the type of user that likes to be babied by the software developers.

X is still heavily dependant upon reaching and waving the mouse pointer around a lot. This is a real drag. It's not as bad as 9, but it is bad. This is heavily complicated by the maximum reliable pointer speed. There is a tool to boost that, but in my experience it makes optical mice go nuts. I need accuracy as well as speed. You are working with three monitors, each 1,600 pixels across, it takes an age to get your pointer anywhere. With X11 I can use acceleration so that I get smooth precise accuracy when moving slowly, and blistering speed to warp across monitors. Don't even bring up "Keyboard Access." It's a joke. The whole point of keyboard access is being able to hit off a menu function or something with a minimum of two key strokes. Try doing that with X, you are tabbing and leaping out of the home-row to use arrow keys, repetively, just to access one function. It is quicker to use the Rat.

Yes, having many multiple terminal windows open is nice, but guess what! Because of X's idiotic single instance limitation, all of those terminals are children of the same proc. Crash one of them and all twenty of your tasks go down in a horrific pile of smoke. I'll take single threaded rxvts or xterms, thank you.

Yes, I've seen the "slew" of "die-hard *nix geeks" switching to OS X. Eh, I don't listen to crowds for one, I don't know why people keep throwing that phrase around. I suppose other people are easily influence. I do whatever is best for me, not what unknown ex-Linux user froth's about. Secondly, whenever I read these articles you can tell these guys aren't really die hard. Sure, there are rare exceptions, but most of them sound as if they never really got Linux in the first place, and were trying to use it like Windows or Mac OS intends to be used. That's fine for them, and I don't think I'm any better or worse than they are -- but it isn't who I am.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[mbogosian]

I realized that it's the users who want this crap.

Users are not visionaries. Users want what they've already seen. I'm sure there can be some work done in Gnome and KDE that hasn't been seen on windows that, once it's out and tested, users find they really like. Then users will want that.

I'm the same way. Here's an example. For the longest time, I used Mac OS 6.x and 7.x. I was satisfied that you had to move your mouse to the bottom right of your window to resize it. I wanted everything to behave this way because I was used to it. Now I run Sawfish. I won't even accept a window manager that doesn't let me configure key/mouse combinations the way I want to. Now, Alt-LeftClick allows me to move a window regardless of where I click (yes, even in the window's content), and Alt-MiddleClick does resizing based on quadrant (okay non-rant?). It's much more efficient than my old Mac, and I'm pissed when I come across a windowing system that can't be configured to behave like that. Try moving your Windows windows (how absurd is that?) by grabbing anywhere but the title bar....

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[mbogosian]

What was the pressing need to upgrade to 8.0 anyway?

There wasn't really. That's why I'm back to 7.3. But eventually, there will be some functionality I'd like to get from the convenience of my distro without having to download a bazillion third-party packages from who-knows-where. To take advantage of this convenience, I'll either have to accept RedHat's new dumbed-down interface (yech) or find another distro (recommendations)?

It just sucks, because over the past 5 years, I've grown quite accustomed to RedHat's method of configuration. I'm not looking forward to a whole new set of quirks....

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[mbogosian]

So like ... how is OS X frustrating to you?

Try writing a bourne shell script that launches IE with a given URL.

Try writing a bourne shell script that is double-clickable by the user.

As far as I know, you can't do it (and I've tried). This is something that Windows actually does half-right. OS X has two distinct categories of "executables". Those which can be treated as regular executables (in the BSD UNIX sense), and those which consist of directories of various different files which must be double-clicked by the user.

On OS X, there are two distinct "types" of programs with two separate methods of execution which are not compatible with each other.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[fferreres]

On Windows ... I'll be manually save-as'ing or text-select cut-n-pasting.

That gets worst as the number of "repetitions" needed go up, in which case you are forced to learn yet another propietary scripting language with NO long term value (it changes and all the experience with that goes to the sink).

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[mbogosian]

use apple script

This is exactly what I'm talking about: I'm not allowed to invoke IE from a shell script, I have to use AppleScript. This only goes to support my original claim.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[bdash]

This is getting a lot of topic but...

Writing a bourne shell script that launches IE with a given URL:

#!/bin/sh
osascript -e 'tell app "Internet Explorer"' -e "OpenURL \"$1\"" -e 'end tell'

And to write a double-clickable shell script of any variety, just give it a .command file extension, and make sure its exectuable bit is set. The script is then opened in a Terminal window and executed when double-clicked.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[schlach]

Actually, perl to the rescue again. I recently needed to do some work with libraries exporting a COM interface, and all the docs and currenly-existing scripts/libs were written in vbscript. Long story short, I was super-impressed with perl's COM support on windows (ditch ActiveState, the win32 build of the main branch works correctly - I had problems with AS's version, like using variables in VT_ARRAYs), and the vbscript to perl conversion is practically scriptable itself.

Bottom line, no reason anyone should be stuck with stupid scripting languages, even on windows.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[mbogosian]

I think making the claim that liking eyecandy=ignorant is pretty ignorant in and of itself.

I agree. I don't think I ever made that claim. Or was this not in direct response to what was written?

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[MyHair]

Amen to that. 800x600 is a perfectly respectable resolution, especially for a 15" monitor.

I have the same monitor you do and run it at 1024x768, too. My eyes aren't as old, but who needs tiny tiny fonts and icons?

I'm constantly annoyed by all the title bars, status bars, task bars and tool bars; they take up at least 20% of my screen area, and they generally do it in a way that reduces the height of the working view when it seems more natural to me to work with a view that is taller than wide.

</gripe>

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[valmont]

whooaa really cool, moderators please mod parent up!

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Reziac]

Yep, my workbench monitor is a 15" -- 800x600 and not above is all it does without shrinking to a size that only one with little teeny eyes could love .. http://www.well.com/~bubbles/LilTEyes.txt :)

Radius used to (maybe still does) make a monitor that's taller than wide, but in the olden days it needed a matching video card and had a tendency to fry the whole system, which along with pricing 3x above normal monitors, may well be why it never caught on! They, or someone, also made one that could be swiveled to either position.

Speaking as a writer, having only half a page of text visible at one time took some getting used to. In some cases you can tell exactly when an author got their first computer, because they start editing in fairly obvious half-page chunks!

Occurs to me that this increasing tendency for fluff to fill up the screen, ie. for presentation to overpower content, is partly a side effect of the ongoing craze for webizing the UI (a concept that doesn't thrill me at all). Thus when XP's search got revamped, it was done so as to more resemble a web page, including all the wasted space and annoying need to scroll to see everything. I don't think this is chance, tho -- M$ reps at their local seminars have gushed about how soon all our work will be done over the net, via web interfaces. I speculate that the UI changes are largely an effort to train new users to *expect* nothing else, so they'll be easier to get into the mindset of *renting* apps to be used solely over an internet connexion.

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[tempfile]

I'm just happy that the German translators put some diversity in there. So far we have (accordingly) "Workplace" and "Proper Documents/Pictures". They'll have an real outlet for their creativity in Longhorn...

Re:Quick Launch Bar

[Reziac]

Hmm. Where are the "Improper Documents/Pictures" ??

Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[glrotate]

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.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[baryon351]

Nope, I'm the same. While I use OS X and love its internals, the theme (no matter how slow or quick it may be) is blah. I'd rather be looking at the old style OS9/Platinum look. It's clean, takes up minimal screen real estate and kept out of the way.

Then again, OSX and Windows are commercial OSs which as part of their marketing focus is the look - it does attract some people one way or the other and if Joe & Jane User choose one over the other cos it's flashier, there's an extra sale.

That doesn't quite explain why perfectly good open source desktops are blindly following this kind of mess, however.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[garcia]

Not only that but we are now adding pictures of OTHER PEOPLE to Windows?

Explain to me why I would want to look at a picture of someone else using a camera?

An analog clock? I thought Windows was supposed to be easy to use! What are they thinking? (yes, that was a joke).

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[Jugalator]

Yeah, but Windows is designed to allow a mnimimalist desktop for those who wish so. I can make XP look like Windows 2000 anytime by selecting the Windows Classic theme (which actually disables part of the theme system of XP so it consume less memory). You can disable menu/window/combobox/listbox/whatever animations, set menu open delays to zero milliseconds and a whole lot more.

And in XP there are even Visual Styles you can download to get an even more minimalistic desktop than the one you find in Windows 2000.

Granted, for each new release of Windows there are usually more settings to turn off, but most of the time, the new features in new releases of Windows can be turned off. I have yet to see a visual features of Windows that can't, actually.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[Virus1984]

It get's worse because Max OS X 10.2 requires 32mb of video card ram or it wont run

Wrong, this could be the requirement for the (optional) Quartz Extreme technology, but in fact Quartz Extreme requires only 16 MB VRAM.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[Alan Partridge]

thirty two millibits? I would have thought that every gfx card ever made could manage at least THAT.

If you meant 32 MB, however, you're an idiot - as even Quartz Extreme will run on 16MB and OSX 10.2 is quite happy to run with as little as FOUR MB.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[nachoman]

So for $200, you get the upgraded version of windows which you can make work exactly like the old version of windows. Every new feature you turn off is one you paid for. I feel Microsoft should focus on the features people actually want and need.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Not only that but we are now adding pictures of OTHER PEOPLE [winsupersite.com] to Windows?

It's for those of us that leave the families in picture frames because they're more attractive than our own families - for example, they tend to have all their teeth.

An analog clock? I thought Windows was supposed to be easy to use! What are they thinking? (yes, that was a joke).

And the funny part is that, as it is still digital, it will lose a lot of time as all timers on computers tend to do (synch features notwithstanding).

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[ealar dlanvuli]

Actually OS X is geek heaven.

It's like windows -- but it doesn't step on your toes.

To quote a confrence I recently saw "In most of the computer world, we stand on eachothers toes; in OS X we can stand on the shoulders of giants."

Btw, my other box is a linux box. I have a Next box downstairs, and I've used windows a total of perhaps 200 hours in my life.

The you only see the "flash" on a very rare occasion to be honest. The only flash I see regularly is dock magnification, which is actually *very* usefull. Other than that I enabled larger icons (96x96?) because I tend to like bigger things on my screen (for eyesight reasons).

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[Reziac]

It's pretty annoying, that's for sure. I spent far more time making WinXP look and behave like Win95 than I did installing or configuring the rest of it -- because I want an essentially clean interface, cluttered by MY choices, not theirs. But did I get anything in return for my trouble? I'm not so sure. I'm still glad I don't have to use the XP box for everyday work.

I'd still really, REALLY like to see a completely modularized Windows, where if all I want to install is the naked base OS, I can. That way I'd get features I want or need, without being swamped by the ones I don't, or that I'd rather install my own preferred version of. AND, such a modularized Windows would be more practical for older hardware.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[BrookHarty]

If you really want a minamalist desktop in windows, checkout Blackbox for windows (bb4win) Top it off with AllSnap and you have a very nice little desktop relacement.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[DickBreath]

Every new feature you turn off is one you paid for. I feel Microsoft should focus on the features people actually want and need.

They've already exhausted the features that people want or need. Office 2000 does everything most people could want. Windows 2000 also. In Office, they have to introduce less and less important new features like smart tags in an increasingly difficult effort to persuade you to upgrade. If they can't persuade you then they can compell you through incompatible document formats. With Windows, they can add new important API's and woo most people with lots of new eye-candy. Oh! It has a new fendor and hood ornament, so it must be significantly improved under the hood! Right?

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[baryon351]

Nope sorry, in OS9 window titles are smaller, menu fonts are smaller, menu titles aren't as wide by far, menus aren't as long for the same number of items, tabs are smaller, sliders are smaller, radio buttons are smaller, fonts in control panels are smaller, lists are smaller... drop down menus are the same size. Which OS are you looking at again?

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[Llywelyn]

Where on EARTH do you get this?

I am running it RIGHT NOW on a system that has 8 MB of VRAM.

Get your facts straight before you troll.

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[gt25500]

OH NOES! I only have 16MB VRAM on my iBook. It's like Looney Toons... It just realized that it doesn't have 32MB and it crashed! Sorta like bugs bunny walking off a cliff and floating until he looks down.

Perhaps you should read up on stuff before you say it in public

Re:Keep all the eye candy, thank you.

[ivan256]

set menu open delays to zero milliseconds

Menu open delays... Now there's innovation. What I want to know is how much Intel paid them to ad that "feature."

Not that new...

[Malic]

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?

Re:Not that new...

[MrHanky]

I doubt Longhorn is more stable than XP (it's an alpha, after all), but I've had terrible experiences with the stability of XP. Of course, it's probably all my fault (installing drivers from the HW manufacturers instead of the ones you get from Windows Update). My point is, XP is far from crash-proof if you use crash-prone drivers. The same goes for 2000, BeOS and Linux. And probably FreeBSD, although it hasn't crashed on me yet.

The moral of this is of course: if it works, don't try to install drivers supplied by ATI.

Re: Not that new...

[Alan Partridge]

what does "candy-assed" mean?

I mean, apart from the fact that you're a wrestling fan?

Re:Not that new...

[ednopantz]

4) Will it include Trojans and Backdoors?

No, unfortunately sendmail isn't available for Windows.

Sorry. I couldn't resist!

Re:Not that new...

[Aneusomy]

Has anyone tried the new "objectdock" from stardock? if you like the dock from apple, this is kind of neat. it's zippy and looks great.

i have no sig.

Re:Not that new...

[namespan]

I think your big questions are excellent ones, but I also think that most everyone here has missed something. The sidebar probably isn't just window dressing.

It looks as if what Microsoft has done is taken Netscape's concept of a browser as a platform for computing and aggresively adopted it... except rather than keep the concept of browser-as-application and OS-as-platform, they've decided to turn the OS into the browser/OS-as-platform and make the user experience browser-like and browser-centric. Where was the first place you saw a sidebar in a windows app? IE. What has Microsoft been aggresively integrating into their OS since Win 98? What was Microsoft on trial for?

My guess (for some reason) is that it's part of a larger strategy to own the browsing/internet use experience... not just in the way that they very nearly do with the dominance of IE. That's something that someone will always be able to duplicate and threaten them with, especially if they build off open standards. This is the extend part of embrace and extend. This is the platform for the MS proprietary browsing experiences that are coming down the line. It will be a line easy to cross on Windows systems, harder on others.

Re:Not that new...

[kalidasa]

Honestly, I've had about 3x as many crashes on XP as I have on OS X and RedHat 7.3. Which sounds bad ... except I've had maybe 3 crashes on OS X. This in contrast to 98SE, which crashed every time I looked at it funny.

Re:Not that new...

[zapfie]

Uh, no, actually the Dock came from NeXTStep. NeXT was bought by Apple and NeXTStep was reincarnated as Mac OS X. NeXTStep had had the dock since LONG before Windows 95... I think the first release of NeXTStep was in September 1989

Mirrors?

[Nefrayu]

How soon before: 1. This is /.'ed or 2. MS "requests" that the info be pulled? Someone better mirror pretty fast...

Ok, I Switched

[zentec]

Looks like they shoved it through the AOL interface maker and called it "new".

Microsoft needs to realize that cosmetic changes to the OS are not a reason to upgrade. Although that won't stop them, through yet more forced upgrades and built-in obsolesence from pushing this on the computer world.

I use Mac OSX at work, and occasionally SuSE 8.1 at home. If Microsoft depricates my Windows2000, I'll just move to OSX or SuSE.

Re:Ok, I Switched

[GT_Alias]

Microsoft needs to realize that cosmetic changes to the OS are not a reason to upgrade.

Yes, well, the general population in't going to get too excited about an NTFS replacement, an XML-enabled sidebar, or OS-level DRM. In fact, the latter would probably send them running.

But slap a pretty new face on it and suddenly you've given them a tangible reason for upgrading, regardless of whether the new interface is actually an improvement or not. It represents something newer, so it must follow that it is better. At the very least cooler, so that when the Smiths come over and see your new machine they can go "Oohhhh...you must be running the new Windows [insert catchy release name here]!!!"

Leaked screenshots?

[GnomeKing]

what about leaked videos?

I'll say it again that this server is unlikely to cope with many requests - so if anyone can provide a mirror, feel free ;)

Re:Leaked screenshots?

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Oh, c'mon! We know that somebody just photoshopped all those frames and strung them together in an AVI. An obvious forgery!

(Seriously though, thanks for the link! It's interesting to see it in action - seems rather sluggish, but it's an alpha so we shouldn't comment on that... yet) - Looks better than XP (i run in classic mode) though, which is good, cuz xp is UGLY

Is it going to be another case of ..

[EvilCabbage]

.. more stuff I need to disable to stop my users from hurting themselves?

Hope not.

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[Large Green Mallard]

I especially like Windows XP in this regard.. the _professional_ edition, alledgedly for business use, comes complete with "MSN Gaming Zone" .. and all the files in it are covered by Windows File Protection, so you can't delete them easily.

Dear Microsoft, this is not a way to win over your corporate customers.

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[TheAncientHacker]

Heaven forbid that users actually get to use their personal computers. That might make IT staff have to work at supporting users rather than just preemptive retrofitting to make new tech just as useless as it was 20 years ago.

Maybe you could get all the computers in a room with you. Maybe with glass walls so they could see the magic boxes and the elite. Maybe you could have them submit requests to you for things the computer could do. In triplicate. With VP level approval and several months of costing analysis. Wouldn't that make life so much better.

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[scrytch]

Quickest test of whether DirectX is hosed or not: pinball. And WFP only protects stuff you actually installed in the first place. God knows how you'd probably piss and moan about how sterile the OS is if they left it out.

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[jez9999]

Windows File Protection sucks, that's why I disabled it.

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[DennyK]

Haven't had much experience with XP myself (still using Win98 at home, Win2K at work), but this is typical of what I dislike about newer versions of Windows; more annoying "features" with no built-in way to turn them off. I don't need my OS to tell me what files I can and cannot mess with. From that link, I gather in XP you not only need to edit the registry manually to fix it (which is pretty typical of Windows anyway, but is still annoying for an option that could easily have been included in the GUI), but you need to hex-edit a DLL just to *enable* the registry key? That's absurd!

Yet another reason to stick with Windows 98 for now, I guess... ;)

DennyK

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[Large Green Mallard]

The scary thing is that knowing Microsoft, it probably is ;)

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[Large Green Mallard]

Yes, XP is 1000% on NT4 in regards to what you can lock down and deployment is easily automated, evem if you don't use Active Directory. A lot of the things I've locked down on our student labs are only available for control in Windows XP.

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[TheAncientHacker]

You obviously don't bother training users or have a company culture that discourages their thinking.

Treat them like mindless sheep and they'll generally act like it. Treat them like responsible people and they'll generally act that way, too.

But, then that would mean treating users like people. Can't have that.

Re:Is it going to be another case of ..

[TheAncientHacker]

The difference is that IT's job isn't to support the people on the internet. It IS, however, their job to make the people who are doing the real work of the company more productive.

Just the same as the plumbers working on the bathrooms. It's a job of supporting the real workers. IT seems to get that backwards.

Apple's not gonna be happy...

[crumbz]

Well it looks like Microsft suceeded in duplicating the OSX dock. Can't they leave poor Apple alone? Or buy them outright?

Re:Apple's not gonna be happy...

[jez9999]

Ya know, it might be me, but that 'dock' looks suspiciously like what appears when I uncheck 'lock the taskbar' and drag it to the left of the screen.

Excessive change rate

[panurge]

I am currently doing some work for a major services company which is still running NT4 on the desktop and still using Office 97. They really do not want to change and they see no reason (other than being forced to) why they should. The fact is that most users want something familiar to do their jobs on.

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?

Re:Excessive change rate

[Decameron81]

I agree with this.

Completely changing the GUI to make the OS look better won't make it more intuitive. For instance just click in the "Start" button in XP and read through the items that pop up. To me it looks like the menu has been slapped together in a day or two.

IMHO a good graphical user interface is one where you have 1 quick access point per important section of the OS. The need to have quick launch items all over the screen means poor design.

Windows isn't bad, and XP has some really nice improvements over older versions... unfortunately it can't compare to *nix bases OSes from the stability and reliability point of view. They have to show that they can win when it comes to ease of use over any other OS. And a good idea would be to spend some serious bucks on GUI research and then stick to whatever they liked most for at least a couple of windows OS generations.

Just my 2 cents,
Decameron

Re:Excessive change rate

[dead sun]

I agree for the most part, and personally was horrified when I looked at the new XP start menu. Why not just give me all the programs like 2000 and let me go after whatever else I wanted?

Horrified or not I left it on for a little while, just to give it a shot anyway, and I've actually come to appreciate parts of it. First off, the extra level of menu to get to all the programs doesn't happen all that often, as my most common programs have been put in the quick launch. Things like 'My Computer' are then immediately available from the start menu without having to run to the desktop. The list of six programs recently run from the start menu is nice too, just to prevent that extra step to get to the programs. The menu is a tad large, but that hardly matters when you're going to it anyway, and I think that it has some decency to it.

Having one quick access point per important section is a noble goal, but where do you put it? In a menu like the start menu? That's what you get with MS's older versions of windows. In a single menu in the upper left like Apple? They still have the quick launch like thingy too. Most WM's for X or OpenWindows have some form of quick launch as well. It's merely a convenience, not the sign of a bad design. The things that I want to get to quickly aren't necessarily the things you want to get to quickly. By giving the user the power to make quick shortcuts to what they deem important you can create a system that is flexible for the user. I think that all the major OSes have them, as well as having a single access point for important things, though it may be hidden down a menu a couple steps.

XP indeed isn't bad, and MS is making progress as far as what's friendly to use. I don't think you can make your blanket statement about stability and reliability anymore either. Even in the event an application goes down in Windows the system is going to stay up. It's been this way since Windows 2000 for the most part. *nix does very much the same. In my opinion the place that MS is really lacking is in the multiple user scene, though fast user switching in XP is a step in the right direction. It would be nice to be able to login to a graphical session remotely without disturbing the current user, like X is capable of doing. That and going back to the Win2k user permissions and such. This XP admin or user thing is a little bit on the weak side.

no drive letters ;-)

[gimpboy]

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.

Re:no drive letters ;-)

[Jugalator]

Yes, remarkably like that funny concept of `mount points`?

Maybe Microsoft is replacing UNIX by BECOMING UNIX?

Virtual desktops, mount points - what next, /bin/sh?

Even Windows 2000 support mount points. Not sure if even earlier Windows NT-based OS'es do since I haven't checked. Anyway, you can easily mount your CD-ROM to a cdrom directory if that's what you wish.

Re:no drive letters ;-)

[sql*kitten]

does this mean they are getting away from drive letters? what a novel concept.

The NT kernel doesn't bother with drive letters, you can see during bootup if you're watching it load drivers that it sees \HardDisk0\Partition1\Blah\Blah. And if you use DFS, it can happily mount a remote share anywhere on your filesystem. The drive letters are an illusion maintained by the user interface, nothing more.

Re:"Plex" styling.

[plone]

The plex styling is obviously a placeholder theme. The Whistler alphas also had a completely different (and superior looking) theme than the current Luna one that XP ships with.

The future of the microsoft desktop?

[Black Parrot]

> Here's your chance to see what the future of the microsoft desktop is gonna look like!

I already know what the future of the Microsoft deskgop is gonna look like: Nowhere to be seen on my desk.

I went cold turkey five or six years ago, and there aren't enough whores in Vegas to drag me back.

it's not really that impressive

[Necronomicant]

I've used the leaked build for the past few days. There's nothing super impressive about it yet. True, it looks nice from the screenshots, but when you actually start using it, most of those dialogs give you placeholder text whenever you select something. For example if you open the "display" applet from Control Panel and actually choose one of the categories, you get either "currently under construction" or an exception (what fun!). Other than that, it's just plain ole win xp.

Re:it's not really that impressive

[NanoGator]

"Other than that, it's just plain ole win xp."

Question: Did it update faster or anything like that?

What I find mind-boggling dumb about this article is that all it looks at is an early artistic look at Longhorn, not at what's really interesting about it. From what I've read, it's supposed to use hardware accelleration to paint the windows on the screen. I think that's damn cool because it means some of the overhead of drawing the interface on the screen can be offloaded, thus making it more responsive.

Did you have any luck like that? Is it implemented?

Re:it's not really that impressive

[scrytch]

> From what I've read, it's supposed to use hardware accelleration to paint the windows on the screen

Windows has done that since Win98. Even X does that (XAA).

I disagree

[jimhill]

I don't think Apple should (or should want to) commit much to the improvement of Classic. The sooner people stop using it the sooner they can lay that rickety old stinker of an OS to rest. Yes, it would be nice if Quark (the last of the holdouts) had an X-native version but there's no excuse but their own halfassedness; X has been out long enough that they should either release the new version or admit that they're a third-tier company without the resources to stay nimble and competitive.

Working to make Classic better would be like asking the Linux developers to spend their time making DOSEMU run better.

What Paul Thurott has to say about this leak

[Drestin]

Taken from his > Friday website post:

Notes on the Longhorn Alpha

It's always humorous seeing other news agencies pick up stories days after they've first run in WinInfo or the SuperSite, and my Longhorn alpha build preview is one perfect example, with a variety of legitimate news Web sites suddenly discovering Longhorn build 3683 after I wrote about it ten days ago. Two items arose in the aftermath of this event. First, this build is old, and doesn't even slightly resemble the Longhorn we'll be using years down the road (heck, it barely works), let alone more recent builds. Second, much of the email I've gotten about this and other leaked alpha builds revolves around where I got it and whether I can distribute it. I won't generally answer email of that nature, sorry, but to answer to one bizarre query, no; I wasn't responsible for the leak either. There's something about leaked Windows builds that gets people in a tizzy, but remember: We're on the XP train now and will be for some time. This Longhorn stuff is really just a shell for technology tests at this point. It isn't something anyone would actually use day-to-day.

So, as anyone who actually thought about it (hint: ALPHA release, strictly internal), this isn't what Longhorn is about. This is some internal MS messing about with ideas for a UI - that's all. Might be twenty more variations on taskbars and quickstarts and what-have-yous. And, besides, who cares about changes to the UI. You'll get used to them, as you got used to going from W3.1 to W9x to W2K to XP. They are small changes, progressive improvments/refinements. Why get so hung up on some screenshots.

Instead, read about some of the new features and improvements to Windows that Longhorn introducts by reading Paul's Longhorn FAQ. I especially like the SQL Server .NET-based file system - "Originally slated for Blackcomb, I've now verified that Longhorn will ship with a new SQL Server .NET-based file system, originally code-named "Storage+". Based on the "Yukon" release of SQL Server, this file system will let Microsoft's search tools work across a wider range of storage devices, including the file system, Active Directory, SQL Server databases, and Exchange Server data stores." Sweet!

Re:What Paul Thurott has to say about this leak

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Ok, so the file system is going to be based on a database. All I have to say is that it better be damn fast code, because the file system is a very active, core part of an operating system. Granted, it still is fast compared to disk latency and such, but over time in disk-heavy applications it'll catch up and bite you.

Re:What Paul Thurott has to say about this leak

[jez9999]

If the 'Search' dialogue implemented with this new file system is ANYTHING like the one in XP, i'll stick with my Windows Grep, thank you very much. The Windows XP dialogue uses a 'filter' system to search through files with extensions *which it has filters for*. If it doesn't... the file is ignored. There is NO way to do a Windows 98 style search for an ASCII string, unless you use a third party app (not as far as I know, anyway).

Frankly, it doesn't matter much how well the filesystem is designed if its implementation is crap.

Re:What Paul Thurott has to say about this leak

[spruce]

Off-topic, but I think it's pretty neat that Yukon will include support for the .NET CLR, allowing people to right stored procedure and user-defined functions in any .NET language, as well as TSQL.

TSQL gets the job done, but it's not always the most elegant solution. Also having a full featured language should allow for more powerful and flexible code.

Re:What Paul Thurott has to say about this leak

[jafac]

Read this week's Cringely, and find out why the computer industry desperately needs you to run an extremely resource hungry server as the backend for one of the most important parts of the OS.

Why "My"?

[AdamHaun]

Would anyone really be worse off if Microsoft took the "my" off of "My Computer", "My Documents", etc? I already *know* that they're mine! Do people really like their computers to talk down to them like that?

Re:Why "My"?

[inburito]

According to the new MS licensing policy they will be now known as "My Licensed Computer, My Licensed Documents, My Licensed Music, etc.." You will have no option to run anything not preapproved by MS/RIAA/MPAA/etc.

Re:Why "My"?

[Spoing]

"My ____" is degrading. It's like Microsoft saying "You little child, you don't know anything so I'll tell you what is yours".

Unfortunately, it's not even accurate. It only really applies to the computer not the person using the computer. Even with profiles, the local machine is the dominate factor under Windows not the user. Ironically, a network with X stations is more likely to be correct; the desktop, settings, programs, and any files are 'Mine' and the local machine is just a piece of machinery.

Yet, most novices I've talked to refer to specific programs as "My ____" as in "My Quicken" -- even before Microsoft started using the phrase.

Personally, it annoys me.

Re:Why "My"?

[Hooya]

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.

Re:Why "My"?

[grub]

"My ____" is degrading. It's like Microsoft saying "You little child...

Have you seen OpenBSD 3.2?

$ ls -l /
total 9066
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 1024 Apr 13 2002 My_Bin
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 19968 Oct 23 10:48 My_Dev
drwxr-xr-x 21 root wheel 2048 Nov 24 09:55 My_Etc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 4543036 May 18 2002 My_Kernel
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 512 Oct 25 03:44 My_Home
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Apr 13 2002 My_Mnt
drwx------ 3 root wheel 512 Oct 24 04:51 My_root
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 2048 Apr 13 2002 My_Sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Apr 13 2002 My_Stand
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 11 Oct 22 16:38 My_Sys -> usr/src/sys
drwxrwxrwt 2 root wheel 512 Nov 24 01:34 My_Tmp
drwxr-xr-x 17 root wheel 512 Oct 23 10:58 My_Usr
drwxr-xr-x 24 root wheel 512 Apr 13 2002 My_Var


Dammit, I knew Theo was getting soft in his old age..

Re:Why "My"?

[Frac]

Actually, it has always been on Microsoft's roadmap to support a consistent and unified interface to hax0r someone's computer.

It's actually a naming convention that Microsoft planned out to transparently support desktop shortcuts such as "My ex-girlfriend's Computer", "Company CEO's Documents", "Girl Next Door's Webcam Pictures", "IRC l4m3r's Hardware", etc etc.

Re:Why "My"?

[Andrewkov]

Just go with it, man. Create your self some folders, such as "My Porn", "My Backups", "My MP3's". You can even do the same thing in Linux!! ;-)

Re:Why "My"?

[Dr. Awktagon]

I know.. it didn't make sense at first: "Why is the computer claiming ownership of the files I made?"

Shouldn't it be saying "YOUR Pictures", "YOUR Videos", etc? Imagine talking to a co-worker who calls *your* report "My Report".

I think either it's typical Microsoft arrogance coming to the surface "I am your computer, and these files are MINE", or maybe just an offshoot from "My Computer" that went totally out of control.

I prefer the Mac version: just "Pictures", "Music", "Videos". Or the Linux version: mkdir ~/pix ~/mp3 ~/vid :-).

Re:Why "My"?

[scrytch]

Score 3: interesting? Morons, that was supposed to be funny.

The "My" refers to the fact that everything under "My" is profile-specific. This is why Program Files is not called "My Programs" (though it really should exist). It could have used the username, but the convention started with win95, which wasn't multi-user in the least.

Re:Why "My"?

[fferreres]

It's just a remainder what you own something in your PC. Everything not market "My" is either at the control of MS Corp or the script Kiddies :)

Re:Why "My"?

[jez9999]

This is a retarded comment, especially as the answer is obvious. The action of opening a link beginning 'My' is clearly meant to have the same effect as telling the computer that you want something, or telling someone that you want something. If you were doing that, you would say 'I want My files', not 'I want Your files'.

Re:Why "My"?

[superyooser]

Would anyone really be worse off if Microsoft took the "my" off of "My Computer", "My Documents", etc?

"Computer" might not be your computer. It could be a shortcut to your co-worker's computer on the network. As for "___ Documents" you might have a shortcut to a shared folder of documents on another PC or a different user account on the same PC.

Windows XP automatically puts more than one Documents folders in My Computer, like: Administrator's Documents, CurrentUserName's Documents, and Shared Documents (from the All Users account). (I assume that the only reason I have access to Admin's Documents is because I designated myself a Power User.)

Frankly, I think Microsoft's primary purpose of "My" is for it just to be a means of hand-holding for newbies. The implication of ownership on a typical home PC ought to go without saying, but saying it's Mine makes it special and easier to remember.

Eye candy vs. Functionality

[Gothmolly]

Why do screenshots make or break a new OS? Shouldn't the functionality (encryption and privacy options, performance, failover, multi-user access, etc. etc.) of an operating system be its primary features?
Ever notice how when *BSD or Linux kernel updates come out, there are technical articles about them, while Windows updates (pun intended) are all about the new GUI? Can you say "fluff" ?

Re:Eye candy vs. Functionality

[garcia]

the majority of Linux/*BSD users are technically oriented.

the majority of people that MS really cares about marketing to are people that are home users and bullshit artists at businesses who don't care about anything...

So how the computer looks is important to people who don't really care how their computer works, just that it does and that it looks nice.

Re:Eye candy vs. Functionality

[alext]

Yes, though "technical" discussions often go astray too. We sometimes forget that IT is how technology manages information, rather than information about technology.

IMHO worthwhile subjects of discussion are things like the SQL-Server based file system that was supposed to appear with Longhorn, or maybe Dotnet security, or real real-time capabilties, or DRM.

I'd put these rather arbitrary GUI issues down at the relatively insignificant end of the feature list, along with ephemera such as tablet PCs, XML "technologies" and C#/Java syntax differences.

Re:Eye candy vs. Functionality

[Reziac]

Funny, I'd noticed it going the other way round -- where the first thing said about any new Mozilla build or linux desktop was all about the latest in skins and themes. Gag!!

But you make a good point -- a great deal of fluff gets passed off as "reviews" on every side of the OS fence. People forget that it doesn't matter HOW pretty the OS or app is, if what's under it doesn't work, or is no real improvement over the previous version.

Myself, I turn off all the eye candy anyway.

Re:Eye candy vs. Functionality

[Arandir]

Whenever I mention to someone at work that I'm running FreeBSD, they all want to see what it looks like.

"But... but... that's looks just like Mandrake!"

"No, not really. If you look close you'll see that every icon has tiny little horns and a pitchfork..."

Re:Longhorn

[Lumpy]

I'm sick of linux people being elitists. Its like they wont admit there is some stuff windows does better than linux.

ok put your money where your mouth is.

what? what the hell does windows do that linux cant. or can do better?

dont cop out and use some lame "easier for the new user" crap.or something like "it doesnt have quicken" that's not linux's fault that they dont have X app for it YET.. tell me what critical function that is useable for a computer that microsoft does better than linux? tell us all. please.

everything else is smoke, mirrors and lies... take the base operating systems of each and show me ONE thing that windows is better at.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Wow, those are some pretty pictures

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I have stopped counting the times that I've had to reboot my Jaguar workstation in the school's art lab after it failed to handle some bizarre error in Classic environment. It just gets worse with every release

I really, seriously don't mean any offense by this, but... what the fuck is wrong with you, dude?

I've been using Jaguar every day since before it was actually released; I bought a new G4 back in August, and it came with 10.2 on it about ten days before the retail boxes hit the shelves. I have never had to reboot my machine for any reason than an OS update. I shut it down once to move it to another room, and then one reboot for each of the updates since (most recently yesterday's security update). And that's all.

I'm pushing a pretty wide range of apps, too, including Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Quark (although less and less lately because it's my only OS 9 application, and InDesign is better), and sometimes Maya for doing weekly menus and signage for the restaurant. I push my machine pretty hard, and I never have the kinds of problems you're talking about.

I don't know what your deal is, but I think it's important for people to know that your experience is definitely not typical.

Quite interesting

[murat]

Check this screen shot.

It shows a My Hardware "window".

Are we gonna see "everything is a file" concept in Longhorn too?

Re:"Plex" styling.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It looks like a dreadful KDE theme.

Talk about being redundant...

bah

[Gavitron_zero]

it doesn't matter what they add to the UI, I'm just going to make it look like windows 98 anyways.

Why there are so many screenshots about ...

[js995]

This abundance of screenshots and reviews is due to the actual ISO being available at various "windows beta" sources on the internet. More information on this is available here.

spoiler leak

[rawshark]

First of all, regarding the hoax comments, I consider Paul Thurott an authority on Microsoft news-- his site comes up first when you google for "Microsoft News", and I read it periodically to see what They are up to.

That much out of the way, there are a few UI tweaks which I think are interesting. The enhanced explorer nodes for "My Pictures" and "My Music" look like something I might use-- not something I would pay $200 for, but if my computer shipped with it or if similiar functionality was in GNOME/KDE.

On an even more trivial note, it looks like their Virtual Desktop manager shows the different wallpapers to the different backgrounds. I think this Makes Sense as a quick and easy way to identify different desktops.

Of course, I must throw in the "har har, been there, done that"s to virtual desktops in general and the dock. I haven't say it yet, so even though it may be obvious, le tme say "WinFS concerns me"

That was probably more lectrons than an alpha with two years to go deserves

Re:spoiler leak

[RFC959]

The enhanced explorer nodes for "My Pictures" and "My Music" look like something I might use

Think carefully before you say something like that. I recently discovered a very annoying thing about XP: it tries to figure out what the contents of your directories are and choose an "appropriate" way to display them. I discovered this when I looked at a directory I keep MP3s in and discovered that I didn't get the same Explorer display as for other directories.
(Screenshot here.)
Note that "Date Modified" is not one of the columns! You wanted to sort your MP3s by date? Sorry, Microsoft has decided you shouldn't. Please note I did not choose this behavior; Windows just started doing it on its own. It looks like you can turn it off (View/Choose Details...) but the fact that the GUI is making decisions for me about how I should visualize stuff is highly annoying. (But that's Microsoft for you.)

theme looks familiar

[jd142]

The "plex" theme looked familiar, and then I realized where I've seen it before. It is Redhat's Bluecurve theme, with windows with rounded corners, combined with Aqua's jellybean/translucent buttons.

Or am I imagining it?

uhm, it's a machine

[Twister002]

IT doesn't talk to anyone, it just does what it's programmed to do. Do you blame the TV for the dumbing-down of television. Maybe it's your modems fault that some of the posts on /. are dumb?

"and like the OSDN bar at the top, it says 'Our Network'. I know it's their network, it's not mine. Does anyone else like it when OSDN talks down to them like that?"

Good luck on getting the "funny +1" mod. :)

UI

[Apreche]

IF indeed those are real screenshots, and that is indeed a real leak of the "new windows" then I have the following to say about it.

Even if under the hood it is just as stable and powerful as win2k/XP, and even if it is faster or better with new file systems and other new features. Win2k does everything I need. And it doesn't have DRM or a crappy UI like the one pictured there.

Disregarding all the other factors in the linux vs. windows battle I must say the even though win2k's UI is pretty good, I dislike XPs UI greatly. And that even though linux might have 100 to choose from I like KDE, and at least I know that if I put in the time and effort I could make it look and work however I wanted. In Windows that option just isn't there.

You wont see me upgrading windows until they add a real UI, custom UI, or new games just don't run on 2k anymore.

Re:UI

[gl4ss]

you can custom ui just about any win(from 95 upwards) to mimic xp's look&behauvior, or 2k's.

these eyecandy shots are just pointless, because 99.99% of the eyecandy in them is available _now_.
personally, i use 2k on my windows machine, because xp has nothing over it that would make it worth changing, and i don't take into the 'it was designed better for games' bs that most people cite in 2k vs xp comparisions, and use it as argument that it was discussed so on the magazines(during release hype), and i use windowblinds to mimic beos look&feel.. works splendidly, is 'nice' and efficient to use, and completely cryptic to most people visiting me(which is major geek+++ points).

big clock, biiiiiiiiiiiiig clooooooooooooooooooooock. clock. big. biig clock. bigclock bic GLOCK blam blam.

This is only the beginning...

[weird mehgny]

Features of coming Microsoft OS:es:

- We'll be required to log on to our computers through .NET Passport.

- The whole UI will be based around MSN explorer.

- If we wish to write programs that'll run, we'll have to do something like:

.NET_PROGRAM
{

// Must receive clearance to do this!
MS_PALLADIUM_REQUST_SESSION();

// Must check that the data doesn't infringe any copyrights!
MY PRIVATE STRING STR1 = MS_PALLADIUM_AUTHENTICATE ("NEW STRING (\"Hello world\")");

// Must check that the data doesn't infringe any copyrights!
MY PRIVATE FUNCTION MAIN = MS_PALLADIUM_AUTHENTICATE ("NEW FUNCTION ()");

// Must check that the data doesn't infringe any copyrights!
MY MAIN = MS_PALLADIUM_AUTHENTICATE
(
"/* Logon to passport to send the message through MSN Messenger */
PASSPORT_LOGON_();
MSN_MESSENGER_PRINT(STR1);"
);

// OK!!!
MS_PALLADIUM_END_SESSION();
}

- Exponential growth of area of objects such as "start menu", "option bar", etc.

- Every program, file and message will of course be required to have the prefix "My".

- Exponential growth of number of alternations to an obvious and given task, for example, there'll be 62 ways to create a shortcut to a web page, none of them intuitive.

- There'll be more curves and pastel colors. By Windows 2010, there'll be curves so complex that they have to be express in 11-dimensional morphed space! Windows will require 2048-bit color GFX hardware to operate.

- Meh...

Re:This is only the beginning...

[Reziac]

Actually, they ultimately DO want you to log onto your own computer via .NET, and use MSN as the interface. That's essentially the direction M$'s own people have been talking about at their own seminars.

And you thought you were joking!!

Re:This is only the beginning...

[Karora]

Every program, file and message will of course be required to have the prefix "My"

Heh! I never realised how forward-compatible perl was until you pointed this out!

:-)

Re:This is only the beginning...

[ilyag]

We are sorry, your program infringes the copyright of the Microsoft Corporation. It 's idea, as well as implementation, is taken from MSDN, Chapter 2:10:1342. Your right to use your computer will be suspended until you pay us the $10^n fine.
Sincerely, ....

Re:Longhorn

[Brento]

tell me what critical function that is useable for a computer that microsoft does better than linux? tell us all. please.

Offhand, I'd say TAPI, which is the ability to write one telecommunications program (like a phone answering machine or touch-tone interface) and have it work with all voice modems off the shelf without any customization or kernel-recompiling whatsoever. It just works. Try that on Linux - you find plenty that will work with a specific line, like only USR's, but never with any old modem I pick up from the store.

Obvious shot but...

[MacAndrew]

...I can already see the bumpersticker: "Windows 2006 is Macintosh 2001."

(2006 may be a little ambitious; it's a guess.)

Granted, they are catching up, my compliments. But what happened to all that innovation they keep promising? Push the envelope Bill, and I don't mean profit margins.

Stop whining about "copying features".

[jevring]

What's the matter with you people? Every time someone, be it apple, microsoft, or anyone else, comes out with a new GUI feature, there are always claims that "well this windowmanager had this years ago", or "they've copied this from apple" and whatnot. When are people going to realize that saying that someone copied a certain feature from someone else in the operating system world is like saying "hey, BMW copied that thing with having doors from Volvo", or "hey, linux had a 'kernel' before I heard the windows NT talk about kernel/user-land separation". There are just some things that are basic operating system concepts, rather than vendor-specific ideas. I'm not saying that this is always the case, but more often than not. So please, stop the whining, it really just makes you look like you value advocacy over common sense.

Re:Stop whining about "copying features".

[inode_buddha]

Mainly I agree, but I don't percieve it as "whining", more like it pointing and laughing at it because it took so long for such a huge company with massive resources to deal with these concepts.

Re:Stop whining about "copying features".

[Izeickl]

I dont consider it pointing and laughing, its more of an attempt at making Linux people feel better. As for originality, when are we going to rename the KDE Kaskbar, Kxplorer, Kotopshop, Koutlook Express.....

Re:Stop whining about "copying features".

[inode_buddha]

Yeah, that's certainly true about originality... but I don't understand the part about "feeling better". I mean, I feel fine, and doing linux on the desktop gives me what I want from a computer. Why would I need to feel better?

A few reminders

[Jugalator]

Remember this is an alpha of Windows. As someone on Microsoft said -- "we had six different visual styles of XP before the final". Whatever Longhorn looks and functions like now, it will likely not look like that in the final release. Just like the early alphas of Whistler.

This alpha contains very few improvements over XP, and the stability and optimizations are horrible. Yes, even for being Microsoft, if someone would like to pull off a bad joke about that. For example. the new WinFS file system runs in Longhorn as a service that consume a lot of CPU power while not offering any special WinFS.

Re:A few reminders

[Reziac]

[plaintively] Were any of the rejected XP styles less cartoonish??

Re:I hate to bust everyone's nuts here...

[EvilCabbage]

I hate to bust everyone's nuts here...

Bollocks, you enjoy it just as much as the rest of us.

Re:I'm getting old

[moonbender]

There isn't really anything to give a chance to. It's not like it was a different interface, it just doesn't look the same, it works the same entirely. I'm sure everyone who has used Windows 9x+ for some time could easily adapt to the new look, but why bother.

Re:Attack of the Clones

[Jugalator]

If these are real, then I've gotta say, except for the brushed aluminum look, it looks exactly like XP.

It would surprise me if it wouldn't, since it's only an alpha yet.

To all of you Linux UI developers out there...

[Raul654]

...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.

Re:To all of you Linux UI developers out there...

[Reziac]

I remember when I first encountered KDE. Now, I'm not one to get entrenched in some particular interface -- I tweak each to be usable and non-annoying depending on what it's used for, and that can vary radically from one OS to the next. But funny thing -- when I got done making KDE 1.x useable, it looked and behaved exactly like Win95. OTOH, I've left more of KDE 2.x to defaults.

But you're right, this "anything M$ did, we'll do the opposite" is just counterproductive. Why not take advantage of the years and million$ they've spent researching the UI? Most of the time, they've got it right. If they didn't, even ubiquitous market penetration wouldn't have made Windows as widely used as it is. (Nonsense like XP's defaults aside -- everyone fucks up sometimes!)

Sometimes reinventing the wheel leads to square tires. :)

Re:To all of you Linux UI developers out there...

[Raul654]

Tell me this - how did you overcome KDE's problem with seperate windows. I've noticed that Konq takes a full 1-2 seconcds to instantiate (compared to about 1/3 of a second for Windows), so browsing thru a file system heirarchy is an excercise is patience. Is the problem KDE in general, or some obscure setting?

Also, call me picky, but in windows, the mouse is linear and has a threshold of 0. In KDE, I set it to be linear and the threshold as low as it will go but it still isn't enough. If I only want the mouse to move a small distance, it doesn't register at all. It's small things like these that drive me crazy.

Re:To all of you Linux UI developers out there...

[jez9999]

This just sounds like Windows is polling the mouse more often (about time because they used to poll it as 40hz in Win95, now I think the default 200hz). This results in 'smoother' operation of the mouse; however, if it's impossible to get the mouse pointer to actually go to a certain pixel on the screen then yes, that does sound like a pretty serious flaw in the OS.

Re:To all of you Linux UI developers out there...

[Reziac]

I've noticed KDE's poor mouse handling, compared to Windows. I tried various mouse settings but all that did is exaggerate the acceleration, rather than improve the response and feel. I prefer not to have singleclick activate stuff (oh no! stop!! I didn't mean to click that! :) but gave up on doubleclick because I couldn't seem to get a setting that was comfortable. So far I don't have a good answer, and I'm not yet familiar enough with the innards to tweak at that level.

Have also noticed a bug in common with Win98-and-later -- sometimes in KDE 2.x (but not in 1.x), the mouse cursor leaps from where you last had it to the top of the current window or even beyond. WTF? -- Doesn't happen on Win95 either, and no, it's not hardware-related. Did it with the same MDK install on two totally different machines. Didn't happen during my brief forays into the alternate desktops, tho I didn't stay long enough for that to be definitive. I still prefer KDE to the rest, bugs and all. :)

And yes, I know what you mean -- it's the little things like this that drive me off my flip! Sometimes it's easier to deal with big problems, because there's usually another solution entirely, or you just avoid the entire issue. But little annoyances often have no good alternative and are more likely to be pervasive and ubiquitous.

Re:I thought Longhorn was cancelled...

[Jugalator]

Hmm... I think Longhorn is very much "alive", but there will be no server version of Longhorn when it's released. Instead, what was previously "Blackcomb" will be the successor to Windows .NET Server that's about to be released pretty soon now.

So, in short Longhorn = next generation client, Blackcomb = next generation server. :-)

Re:lacking promised FS

[Jugalator]

And where's the so-talked new starwars-like filesystem [osnews.com] that was to appear on the new windows version

It's in there and the WinFS stuff currently seem to come from a service running in the background that's known to just consume CPU cycles. :) At least to a normal user not working in the Longhorn development team. I guess you'll have to wait at least until the beta to see a major feature such a new, functional file system.

The new "plex" look and feel...

[seldolivaw]

While new, MS is trying to make people used to older versions of Windows feel at home: the new look and feel is a big blue screen.

Re:Wow, those are some pretty pictures

[kennylives]

I'm sorry, man, but that's just a load of shit. I have stopped counting the times that I've had to reboot my Jaguar workstation in the school's art lab after it failed to handle some bizarre error in Classic environment. It just gets worse with every release; you'd think that they'd want to provide something decent, considering that major apps like Quark still don't exist as OS X-native code.

I'm sorry, man, but that's just a load of shit... too. Apple has been very clear about the future of Classic - there will be very little improvement of the environment. Now, Quark is a special case (and I think you know that), but most apps work reasonably well under Classic. I used Photoshop 5.5 in Classic until 7 was released, and although it's not ideal (startup of Classic was an exercise in patience), it works. That was the typical experience I had with Classic apps.

The only time I ever have to reboot my Jag boxen is after a software update that requires reboot. (Dare I say it here?) My Macs are every bit as stable as my Linux boxen. Based on comments I've seen here and elsewhere, I doubt that that my experience with Jag is unique. It's a helluva bit more than a 'marginal gain in stability'.

I think it's horribly unfair to characterize that fact that Quark isn't native yet as somehow being Apple's fault. Quark are dragging their feet and are, in my opinion, solely responsible for the fact that they're not expected to have X native code any time soon. There was a bit of discussion about Quark over on macosx.com a little while back. The interesting thing is that "In a Macworld Online readers poll, 91 per cent of respondees said they are either considering an alternative to QuarkXPress or have already switched." The feeling I get from all of this is that the only reason that Quark hasn't switched to native is that they feel they don't have to. Their market position in DTP seems similar to Microsoft's in Desktop OS.

Have you looked at InDesign?

An OS for my grandmother

[Flamesplash]

It still seems like MS it targetting everyone's grandmother.

Most of the new visual features look fine for a small number of files, but I just can't really see them scaling well, and does the average actual user really need most of these new UI features?

Re:An OS for my grandmother

[DickBreath]

Make a software so that everyone's grandmother can use it, and only they will ever use it.

Not true!

While your remark would be true in general, it is not true in this specific instance.

The masses of sheep who aren't enlightened to open source are locked in to windows. Its like a narcotic. They can't break free of it. (Just like 50% of slashdotters who still can't break their habit.) Therefore the existing locked in users are not who the new interfaces are designed for. The new interfaces are designed for sheep who are so sheepish that they have not yet dived in and gotten a computer. How much pain this causes existing users is irrelevant, they are stuck with it. (Except for the few who get enlightened and break the cycle.)

Your remark would be true in a general sense. Make a {car,phone,tv} so that idiots can use it, and only idiots will use it. Implication: because the non-idiots will flock to competition. But in this industry there is no significant competition.

Re:An OS for my grandmother

[Soul-Burn666]

Ya... I meant it to sound like the common saying...

In general, I think software should have "simple mode" and "advanced mode" so both the grandmothers can use it and the uber-1337-geek-d00d can use it too :)

All, I see is...

[MarvinMouse]

eyecandy... Where are the meat and potatoes?

XP does have some useful features, but I've found that they are commonly destroyed or "ignorable" by the fact that the eyecandy takes away from it all.

Eyecandy has an unusual effect on users. Commonly they'll love it for about a week, and then they come to you and go, okay this is really annoying and shitty, how do I remove it. Yet, it seems that MS spends most of it's time building more visual eyecandy then actually adding useful functionality that people will like in the long run.

Makes sense to me, though, because all MS wants is to make money. It's like guys watching girls on the street, if the girl is attractive, but has nothing more to them, he'll still want her as a g/f. Then, after a week, he'll realize his mistake and not want her as a g/f, instead he wants to someone who has more to them then just good looks. Since all that matters to MS is the initial payment for the purchase of XP, and perhaps the general upgrades (Which will always have more eyecandy), they spend more time building on the eyecandy, then on the useful functionality. (When all you have to compete against is yourself, then you just need to make the new version 'look' better)

XP looks great, but it's just a large plate of eyecandy with few actual meat and potato features. This, of course, is only how I feel. Some people may have found useful functions that I don't use.

Not likely.

[FreeLinux]

No, I'm afraid that this is not the case. While it is true about the Location Bar not showing the drive letter, this is not new. Windows 98-XP show a similar behavior if they are using recent versions of Internet Explorer. There is a configuration option that allows you to select whether you want the full path (including drive letter) displayed or not.

If you look at this screen shot, you will see that the location bar displays My Computer\yada\yada. However, if you examine the contents of the directory in the pane below, you will notice the hard drive, which is displayed as "C:" along with its usage statistics.

Microsoft's drive letter analogy/concept has a deep rooted history. Users have grown accustomed to this analogy and it is highly unlikely that Microsoft will cahnge it in the future. Most average users that are used to drive letters find the mount point tree that is used in Unix to be almost incomprehensible.

Now, having said all that, it is really impossible to tell what the future holds. Remember that Longhorn is supposed to use a new file system. This new file system is not yet functional in the alpha release so there's no telling what it will actually look like. None the less, if I had to bet, I'd bet that drive letters will continue to be used in Microsoft OSes for a long long long time, regardless of the underlying file system.

One big improvement

[quantaman]

Multiple desktops!
This is one of my favorite features with *nix systems, anytime you're running more than a few apps using one desktop even with minimizing gets just plain unmanagable this is one feature I'm very M$ glad has learned from *nix.

Re:One big improvement

[jtharpla]

XP has this with a free add-on from Microsoft, I believe.

Also:
JSPager: Free
GoScreen: $30 shareware, but more stable than JSPager

There's others...there's a version in Object Desktop by StarDock, I believe.

I use 6 desktops on my home box running Windows 2000 and 12 on my box at work, running 2000 Server. So you don't Longhorn for this.

Windows Enthusiasts?

[Andrewkov]

From the article:

Last month, some of those builds leaked to the Internet, causing a stir in the Windows enthusiast community.

There is a community of Windows enthusiasts? Who are these sick bastards??!! ;-)

Re:Windows Enthusiasts?

[sql*kitten]

There is a community of Windows enthusiasts? Who are these sick bastards??!! ;-)

They hang out on some web site called c-colon-backslash :-)

Wow I must say

[ealar dlanvuli]

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..).

Shell Games, Gripes, Requests

[xigxag]

Is this what Windows improvements are going to amount to in the future? More shell games? There's really nothing in those screenshots that couldn't be implemented now on an XP system with a tweaked UI. How about improvements to the underlying stability and reliability of the OS? E.g., I'd like to see the file "Details" such as Author and Dimensions integrated into the actual filesystem instead of hacked on top so that it no longer takes forever to list a folder with a bunch of mp3s in it, and so that a command-line dir shows selected extended attributes. How about a self-defragging system with a self-repairing registry? Might put Norton Utilities out of business, but there's no reason why after all this time Windows should still be slow-loading and jerky after a few months of usage. How about a way to say "NEVER trust content from Gator Corp." so I don't have to worry about accidentally pressing YES when one of those damn spyware controls pops up on my browser? How about getting rid of modal dialog boxes, or at least being able to configure a task so it is not interrupted by an alert box from another application? Are we working on any of these things MS? Also, I suppose this is just a UI gripe, but I'd like to be able to move my scrollbar over to the left-hand side, seeing as I'm left-handed and all.

Since I'm sure MS has their spies reading this discussion, perhaps we should all go ahead and mention substantive improvements we'd like to see in Longhorn.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"Plex" styling.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

So are you implying there are gnome themes that *don't* suck?

Absolutely not, I apologize for giving you that impression. When I said the phrase "dreadful KDE theme" was redundant, I was really only referring to the "dreadful theme" part.

UI themes suck. Period. All of them. I think we'd get more appealing results if we just hand every man, woman, and child in the world a canvas and a set of finger-paints and tell them to go at it.

Windows Longhorn is a true usability nightmare

[FooBarWidget]

I don't understand why people call Windows XP or Longhorn or whatever new version of Windows "userfriendly". Look at the screenshots!
There's now some kind of sidebar which duplicates the functions of the Start menu ---> confusing to new users.
If you open Windows Explorer and check My Computer, you get a complex screen with buttons, icons and progress bars.
If you go to My Documents you get overloaded with options! Any new user will get confused by that!
Not to mention all the eyecandy. Sure, it looks nice, but all those gradients and icons do is overload the user with information. New users will get confused and will have a hard time recognizing standard controls.
The entire UI is extremely cluttered.

The Longhorn GUI is good for advanced users, but will confuse new users! If GNOME or KDE do this, the Windows people will flame us down for creating a "hacker desktop" that's "not consistent" and "overloads the user with too much information". But if Windows does this, it's suddenly allright and called "huge improvements" or "innovation".
I just don't get it...

Sidebar

[Anonymous Coward]

The sidebar actually looks very interesting. I've heard talk of it before, you can auto hide it and when you move the mouse over to the side of the screen you can quickly see info from all the sidebar plugins. Like, a list of unread emails and a local traffic report. Seems better than flashing icons next to your clock.

Wrong review

[jez9999]

Slashdot, you've linked to the wrong review. Sorry to have to point it out, but if you look at the screenshots, you will see it's just Windows XP. And the title also says that it's ... oh.

Re:Longhorn

[scrytch]

everything else is smoke, mirrors and lies... take the base operating systems of each and show me ONE thing that windows is better at.

Auditing on a per-file-per-operation basis. A single service control mechanism that doesn't require an interactive session. A filesystem with fully extensible metadata. Hardware support for things like FC controllers (it's not linux's fault, no, but if I can't use it I can't use it)

As far as non-core OS end user experiences go, printing still sucks on any unix.

It was only a two word review:

[selectspec]

shit sandwich

Butterfly?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

From the screenshots, it seems Paul likes butterflies. Is he the new (shudder) MSN guy?

Re:Woohoo! New computer pick up line!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Hey, baby, wanna check out my alpha copy Longhorn?

Buzz off creep. I don't want to get any viruses.

Multiple Desktops

[dalutong]

I don't know why... but i hate seeing multiple desktops for windows... i've always prided that as a reason to convert.

oh well. time to look for something new.

Try Windowblinds

[Cyno01]

It's a great gui program for windows, which does just what you'd expect, it skins the windows interface, all of it. There are hundreds of differnet skins you can get from places like the se. Its not free software, but the trial doesn't seem to expire, you just get a pop-up everytime you boot up or change skins, but an added bonus is it doesn't take up much in the way of system resources, unless your running some gaudy skin with animations everywhere. Some of the skins do have all the bells and whistles crap you seem to be complaining about, but others are very minimalistic. Also many skins have added features, like a clock in the window, winamp controls at the bottom edge of the window, buttons to launch noptepad, browser etc. Another cool feature is the roll up, right clicking on the top bar of a window, or clicking on the first button(roll up, minimize, maximize, close), rolls the window up into the top bar alla macOS. Another cool program that could ad some funcionality is Hoverdesk, the trial expires after 30, and i didn't have the time to completely configure it for myself, but with some time it seemed to me like it could make a really fucntional alternative gui. I know this sounds like a shameless plug, but i really love windowblinds.

What a crummy example

[judd]

The double-click interval is configurable. Why didn't you show him how to change it?

Not that impressive at all...

[Maul]

Given that this is probably much different than what the final release of the thing will look like, I'm not too impressed with the desktop so far. There really isn't anything very new or useful there. Most of it clutters the screen.

XP was really the same way, and that is why I disabled just about everything... causing my desktop to look indistinguishable from Windows 2000.

On the other hand, there hasn't been that much innovative and useful that is brand new to desktops in any Window manager that has come out in the last few years.

innovative software from Microsoft

[Ellen Ripley]

A clock?!? Wow!!!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Incase Microsoft Finds out

[jez9999]

It's not condensed, it's specially encoded in case Microsoft finds out.

Re:Finally ...

[dead sun]

You can have it now with XP if you install one of the PowerToys. Specifically the one that's called Virtual Desktop Manager. It's limited (or fixed rather) to four desktops, but it can be useful nonetheless. It doesn't do the neat deal where you can see where windows are on those virtual desktops like practically any WM will do with X though.

M$ Guilded Cage v5.0

[Shuh]

From the Article:

I prefer the standard blue XP style to Plex, and expect this visual style to disappear by later builds. In fact, Plex is so bad, that I originally thought that this Longhorn alpha was nothing more than a hacked-together XP build. I still wonder about it.

The truth shall set you free!

In other news: the proper "shell" for all computer interactions is a proprietary web-browser, and the proper "file system" for all computer data is a proprietary database. Gee, the Mac with all its open shells and file systems is looking less and less proprietary with every new Windows release!

Is it just me...

[Alethes]

or do those Windows just make you want to lick them?

I wonder how long 'til Microsoft gets sued for causing obesity in office workers.

Re:Metadata in files :(

[noewun]

What are you talking about?

Right click->Get info->Open With-> Look familiar?

If that's not to your liking, get FileXaminer and edit the type and creator codes, just like with ResEdit in OS9.

Re:"Plex" styling.

[Bodero]

[Longhorn] looks like a dreadful KDE theme.

Talk about being redundant...

And recursive!

Strange they don't call it...

[kazad]

MY blue screen of death

Re:Um, how?

[Jugalator]

As far as I can tell it is not possible. Would you be so kind as to point to an information source explaining how to do this?

There is no mount command.

Here's how I do it in XP...

1. Right-click My Computer.
2. Select "Manage".
3. In the Computer Manager, select "Local Disk Manager".
4. Right-click a drive.
5. Select "Change drive designations" (something similar, translating from swedish...)
6. Click "Add..."
7. Select "Mount this device in the following empty NTFS folder".
8. Voila ;-)

I don't remember how you most easily got to the Computer Manager in 2000 (I doubt you can right-clik and select "Manage"). There's a command line for it though... :-/

Re:Um, how?

[Jugalator]

Btw, not sure if you can mount shares with this method. Perhaps if you first map it to a drive letter and then mount the mapped drive to a folder.

Re:Doesn't help much

[Jugalator]

Windows Explorer is probably the worst thing in XP, horribly slow and unresponsive, doing strange things like parsing (in entirety) all HTML files in the current directory, even if thumbnails etc are all disabled. Scroll up over a directory filled with .URL files and the whole thing just *stops* for five or ten seconds before continuing.

lol, I agree about this ;-)
I'd suggest you try Windows Commander.

Re:DVD burning...hmm....

[Khan]

Wow, that was truly the most amusing thread I've ever seen from a group of AC's yet. For the record you fucktards, I am more than aware that burning a DVD is not OS specific. The point I was trying to make was that it was INTERGRATED into the OS and that yes, Apple did it first. And here we have MS following suite and no DOUBT they will taut it as an "innovation" on their part just like that have so many other features they have copied. Has Linux done the same thing? Absolutly! The only difference is that the community doesn't go and take credit for it like they invented it. They look at it and say "yeah, that's cool...let's do it our way now." The only trolls here that need to be moderated down are you MS apologists who hide behind the AC tag.

How I Make Windows Stable

[Reziac]

Rez's Quick Windows Tutorial :)

Start with pure Intel CPU and chipset (sorry AMD/VIA fans, but you're cutting your own throat from the start). Don't skimp on RAM. No shared video RAM either. Don't install non-M$ mouse drivers if you can avoid it; don't install fancy keyboard drivers at all. Overclocking can lead to crashiness, so be cautious about doing it.

Stick to Win95 OEM, Win98 original or OEM (*not* SE), or Win2K if you have a choice, tho XP is acceptable. WinME can be made 100% stable, but its resource management sucks too much for heavy multitasking, so I don't recommend it.

Kill tempfiles and defrag religiously once a week, whether it claims to need it or not. (The "how fragmented I am" thingee is borkend, it only reports how fragmented the FAT is, not the files!) Sort by date if your defragger gives you a choice. I'd recommend VOPT if you don't like the default defragger.

Always use the provided uninstallers. Run a good registry cleaner EVERY time you uninstall anything, and occasionally as routine maintenance. I use EasyCleaner (free from toniarts.com) and have found both its registry and start menu cleaners are 100% reliable. (Tho the dupefile finder is buggy, and remember to exclude "Help" on ME/XP systems.) DLL Hell isn't usually an issue so long as the registry is kept pristine. Remember to archive the registry occasionally -- usually the one from last month is good enough if the current one gets wonked.

Don't install M$Office if you can avoid it -- it is Windows' worst enemy (it even clobbers protected system DLLs in WinXP). IE and Outlook don't love Windows all that much either. Don't upgrade IE past 5.0 if you have a choice. (Being bundled with IE5.5 is apparently why WinME's resource management sucks so bad. IEradicating will NOT fix what IE5.5 breaks.) -- Note: If WordPerfect Office is unstable, it *usually* means your system needs updated system and/or video BIOSs, and maybe an updated video driver.

Put the swapfile on its own dedicated partition; don't let anything else write files there. That way it's never fragmented, which helps a LOT on a marginal-RAM system.

On WinME, apply 98Lite in default shareware "uncouple IE from the desktop" mode, and turn off Restore. If you ever accidentally call up WinME's new "Help" system, restart Windows as soon as is feasible. (That's all I did to "fix" my WinME box, which gets used to test all sorts of crap, and it hasn't crashed in two YEARS.)

On WinXP, use Classic interface. (Restore and Help are not issues on WinXP.)

NEVER EVER install anything like "Crashguard" -- these apps are really good at catching the crashes they *create*!! Turn off various "control centers" that want to run all the time as well (such as the one that the SBLive installs, the ATI-Desk thingee, etc.) Be cautious about antivirus TSRs too -- turn off needless parts (like the extra thing McAfee puts in systray). Kitchen-sink utility suites tend to generate trouble.

Never install a patch or update that doesn't address a problem YOU are experiencing (or that isn't relevant to a particular security issue YOUR system may encounter). What fixes your buddy's machine may break yours.

I also recommend that everyone run Resource Meter (Windows\RSRCMTR.EXE -- but it does not install by default; just drop a shortcut into Startup) as a handy gauge to the current condition of your system resources. Many crashes can be avoided simply by backing out of whatever caused a resource leak. Yeah, it'd be better if nothing leaked, but when you already know the road is icy, you should drive slower. :)

Once I've got Windows installed and tweaked to my satisfaction, I archive the entire thing to a dedicated location. (I also occasionally archive the registry and start menu to the same location. On clients' systems, I use the same partition as the swapfile, then forbid them to touch it. :) That way if something does get eaten, or a user deletes a critical file by mistake, it's easy to simply restore it from the archived copy. Most "Windows won't start" disasters are due to a single file that's gone walkabout.

The most important points are: solid hardware and drivers; regular defragging, tempfile killing, and registry cleaning; turning off Restore in WinME; avoiding some known killers like Crashguard. The rest can be cheated around as necessary to your situation, without causing significant instability. And if you do the maintenance, even poor quality hardware won't have too much impact (unless it's outright flaky).

More detail than most folk probably wanted to hear :) But it works wonders for Windows' stability and performance, and as you can see, it's not rocket science.

Anecdotal Evidence

[cornice]

Anecdotal Evidence == Oxymoron?

"Unless someone actually quantifies this information, it's pointless."

I see what you're saying but every benchmark that I have ever read has some sort of flaw or bias or hint of irrelevence. Does this mean that they are all worthless too? Sure anecdotal evidence is at best 1 data point but it's still better than nothing and usually it's all you have. So let's see these stories for what they are but not throw them out completely. That would also be irresponsible.

WinRar

[ghazban]

WinRar is pretty useless, I personally use 7zip, it's excellent, does zip, rar, 7z, tar, bz2, gz and more and is GPL'd, so what more could you want?

Grab it from http://www.7-zip.org/ and prepare to load it onto all future computers ('tis small too ;)

my

[mcc]

There was this great article i remember reading on theobvious.com around like five years ago or something. It's, um, here.

It basically suggested Microsoft started this whole "my"-in-computing craze for the same reason that products for very small children often contain "my" in the product title, as in "My First Sony". They want their products to appear hyper-ultra-unthreatening, so they encroach things in vocabulary that would make a small child feel comfortable. Apparently hoping to make windows-users feel like they are in some sort of comforting, embryonic state while using it.

Actually, now that i think of it, Windows XP/Longhorn's interface really, really has the motif of small child's toys. You know? The kind of colorful, rounded, chewable look you get becuase the toy manufacturers want to make the baby notice it, and becuase they want everything large and rounded and plastic so the baby can't swallow it. Maybe Microsoft's idea of "user friendly" is "it treats the user like a four year old"..

Re:Um, how?

[Jugalator]

Ah.. :-P

I don't really know how Windows mounts *work*, and if there's a neat sysinternals.com-style utility for this. I mean.. if it's just the stupid UI that's limited and Windows *can* actually map any paths, including network paths, to a folder. Perhaps there are more info about this on Google / Google Groups or someting. :-/

Re:Um, how?

[FunkyChild]

Well it's not quite so elegant, but you could symlink it. NTFS supports symlinks, however the ability to do it isn't built in to the Windows UI. There are a few free programs that can do it though.

Re:Wow, those are some pretty pictures

[jdbo]

sounds like you may have some bad RAM issues; OS X's more advanced virtual memory system is rather more sensitive to issues with cheap RAM; these often manifest as kernel panics, etc. replacement with higher-quality RAM has been "miraculously clearing up these issues".

before dismissing this post, please check out the variety of user experiences re: this issue in this this report.

also, I have to object to the (immediate) parent post's tone; berating the person experiencing the frustration is unhelpful, to say the least...