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Longhorn M4 Build Review
Gsurface writes "I finally got my hands on the new Longhorn build, 4008, that was announced two days ago. After installing it and looking around through it, I decided to write a review expressing some thoughts on the new build. This new longhorn build, upon the prompt to "press any key to boot from cd..." jumps directly into a GUI that is unique. This build Microsoft decides to abandon the setup interface of XP and dress Longhorn on its own. "
There is some interesting commentary on Longhorn, Build 4008, including cracks that are already being released :). You can read about them at http://www.xbetas.com/.
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Plus, there is a Longhorn 4008 wallpaper for those really interested.
NeoWin also reports that they got their hands on a new leaked version of Windows Longhorn. "The reporter insists that these are original shots. Lots of grandients are going on in the UI and while this is an alpha and the final version might look different (that's what happened with XP's Luna, MS only revealed XP's final design only a few months before the release, while most betas used another theme), these shots showing there are just pretty ugly IMHO. Bad taste on colors, no easy distinction between elements, it all looks like a big bad web page."
Finally, there are some nice screenshots available at http://www.windowsxpstuff.net/comments.php?id=460
Suhit
here
XP is extremely customizable, though not as much as linux...the look and feel can be changed and a lot of system resources can be changed because of turning off the overall look of windows xp. I agree with you...people using xp should try blkviper.com to get a thorough way to tweak their xp or win2k systems.
"Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet..and we are the cure"
Shouts to the AC mob,
here's the text of the "review" for what its worth
I will express my initial reactions to the new Longhorn build that was introduced by neowin. The installation was initially done using Virtual PC to capture some screenshots of the install process. The desktop screenshots were taking after installing Longhorn on my D: partition.
The install went through very smoothly, and minimal procedures were encountered. We no longer see the old setup which we were so accustomed to when booting from CD-Rom and installing Windows XP or 2000. This new longhorn build, upon the prompt to "press any key to boot from cd..." jumps directly into a GUI that is unique. This build Microsoft decides to abandon the setup interface of XP and dress Longhorn on its own. The setup continues after a small waiting period by collecting information and copying files needed for setup to continue. This process lasted for about 20 minutes, actual time being less because the initial installation was done using Virtual PC. Choosing this method first because I must admit that like many others, I was also skeptical and wanted to make sure this was not a fake before I made a partition on my hard drive.
Interesting fact about the content of the cd, there is no i386 folder which we typically see in other NT based OS's. Could this be prone to this build only? We will have to wait till the final release to answer this question.
I was greeted by a blue screen with the text "please wait..." for about ten minutes. I assumed this wait was due to Longhorn detecting my hardware. I would have been impatient during this stall and assumed the installation had crashed, but a friend of mine commented that this was usual, so with patience I held my horses. In no time, the installation went back into action. And before I knew it, it was done. Longhorn was installed on my pc. I have to say that this is one of the fastest Microsoft install to date. In total the installation completed in approximately 30 minutes using the Virtual PC. After I saw that it was the real deal, I went ahead and partitioned my hard drive and did the installation again. The whole installation took about 20 minutes. My system specs are Athlon XP 1800, 1GB Ram, 80 GB HD. I was never prompted about network configurations during the install process. This quick installation, reminds me of when installing Lindows.
The welcome screen is presented, where I am logged in automatically. During the installation I was asked to enter a username, by default this username was given full administration access. Maybe not such a good idea according to some security experts.
Immediately after login, Longhorn attempts to detect any hardware and prompts for drivers of unrecognized hardware. After installing some drivers here and there, a reinstall is necessary. I notice that, similar to the previous longhorn build, this build also hangs at the login screen before restarting (I wonder if I'm the only one that has encountered this problem).
The sidebar is started once logged in. A new feature is added to the star menu, a shortcut to "My Contacts"; where you can manage your contacts.
Interesting, even though I installed longhorn on the D: drive, it is seen as the C: drive by Longhorn.
The look of the devices in my computer is different than that of the previous build. No longer do we see the status bar indicator under the hard drives. Too bad, I kind of liked the status indicator. There is a new properties bar on top which shows details of a picture, video or icon selected. Right above the taskbar, the address field has been replaced by drop down menus. Even though you can toggle between the address bar and the drop down menu, they should have made it an add-on instead of a replacement of the address bar.
Going into the control panel, it's funny how the administrative tools icons still haven't been replaced to match the longhorn or XP look.
The sidebar doesn't seem to have undergone any new changes. Of course I may have overlooked some details.
"My Contacts" seems to be a new feature included in this build. The "My Contacts" folder seems to be a fresh add-on for longhorn since not much navigation was added to it. To add a contact, a right click on the folder will do the trick.
Windows Media Player 9 build 2991 is bundled into the M4 build.
The desktop is clean similar to its predecessor, XP.
My initial reaction of this new build is that it has notably come a long way from the previous build. Noticing the installation changes we are able to determine that Microsoft is taking a different approach wit Longhorn. I didn't encounter any crashes while playing with Longhorn, even though I would have loved to see what kind of errors I would have gotten. I'm sure a couple of more minutes while browsing would have done provoked Longhorn to squeal. Even though longhorn is still in alpha phase, Microsoft is slowly beginning to unwrap the future of its OS, codename Longhorn
Most linux distros I've used ask for a root password, and then the name/password for a regular user all in the course of installation. Then you're supposed to log in with the name/password for that regular user.
Yes, it's different. It's an issue. Are you trolling? Many unix types consider running as admin to be a security risk, whether or not you know the admin password. When you run some shareware app you downloaded, it has access to the entire computer. Trojan horses are a serious risk. If you are running as a limited user, the trojan horse cannot infect other binaries, cannot install kernel modifications, etc.
Agreed, however, that the reviewer may have been biased. I'm just picking nits.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
2.25 times.
There was the change to "Platinum" at OS 8.0 that added some little nuggets like the pop open windows and drilling down to where you want to move something, then closes all the windows behind you, and it added the drawers at the bottom of the screen.
When I saw the bit about another Windows UI change, I cursed. Thats just what we need at the support level, having to train staff on yet another Windows UI. Because you know at some point MS will ban the sales of XP and all the new computers with come with Longhorn and then places like schools will have Win2K/XP/LH running at the same time.
Few nice screenshots, longhorn screensaver and wallpaper. http://www.msfn.org/comments.php?catid=1&id=13 75
Try it out... in a virtual machine, of course. When MS say alpha, they mean it.
o |
eDonkey2000 network link (Emule strongly recommended):
ed2k://|file|longhorn_usa_4008_x86fre_procd1.is
687122432|7f006a56ea5a4068c32351b2c837f763|/
Copy and paste both parts onto one line, with no space, | next to 6. Paste result into Direct Download ed2k link space in Search tab. This assumes you already have a working emule.
Sorry - I couldn't make the link clickable. Slashdot wouldn't let me. Share and enjoy - carefully.
For a key just do a search for Longhorn on edonkey, you should find the very common files which are the activation crack and a sample key.
Obviously none of this is for production use, duh, just an idea what The Enemy is up to next.
from this picture it seems they changed the "Yes to All" button when doing a multi-file copy/replace with a checkbox like in Jaguar (OS X) however the wording is terrible "Repeat my answer each time this occurs".
And what's the point of having a slideshow in the taskbar?
Actually, you just have to log on as administrator and shut off the service 'Themes', which will effectively revert you to the Win98 theme globally.
-Sara
try this one
Well (as a CompE), I turned off the theme service all together. Not particularly because I hated the themes (the silver one I could tolerate), but because it made screen refreshes even on my Geforce2 Go in my laptop slow as hell. Massive curtain effects moving windows around. Maybe it was the drivers, maybe it's windows. I dunno. But disabling it makes it soooooo much better.
Besides, the less services the better. My computer started taking over 2 mins to boot and windows was using over 200MB RAM at startup. Just a few services disabled and I'm down to 45sec boots and 160MB RAM used after IE, AIM and Outlook Express are all opened. Stupid bloat...
You guys don't understand Windows.
... just like Windows XP.
In a managed environment, your regular user accounts are not stored on the local machine -- they are on the domain controller. You do NOT want to create local accounts. So, the installer prompts you to join a domain. Now unprivledged users can login.
Also, you are wrong about MacOSX -- the installer creates a single Admin account set to auto-login
hers a link where u can download the .doc file of this review :
"http://www.iebeta.net/modules.php?modid=5&action= show&id=32"
it's not a fake, it's a real beta/alpha piece of software - right down to the 180 day license agreement.
I couldn't get it to go on VM-ware (wouldn't see my VM disk file as a valid disk to install on) so I will just have to leave it at that.
The poster of this story apparently Slashdotted himself?
Nice move.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Do you mean this picture?
A more authorative answer from netcraft:
Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) AuthMySQL/2.20 mod_log_bytes/1.0 mod_bwlimited/1.0 PHP/4.3.0 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 on Linux
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
> On a side note, are explorer, progman, litestep, etc.,
> really shells?
explorer is a shell. Post Win95, progman and litestep are very limited shells.
The last version of Windows to have a shell in the classic sense of the word was Win3.1: progman (default), winfile, norton desktop, etc.
But explorer.exe is a very *deep* shell, in the sense it provides a (rather rich) set of services (not in the NT services sense) to Win32 apps as well. For example, the FileOpen/FileSaveAs common controls use Explorer to enumerate the system namespace. IIRC, it manages the desktop as well, and show MRU history in dialog boxes.
There's no good way to *really* replace it short of re-implementing each of the shell interfaces, which no one will likely do because (a) it's too much work, (b) too little documentation unless you have access to MS' shell team (c) it probably won't sell very well because most people are so overwhelmingly familiar with explorer now (which is why you'll never see a Norton shell for XP).
Which is why running litestep doesn't take you away from explorer: it runs every time you hit File|Open in notepad.
Bottom line: post-Win95, Windows' shell was just not *designed* to be snap-in replacable (although it is very modular indeed) the way the Win3.1 shell was (or X is).