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. "

Comments

great.....

[Lord_Slepnir]

SO microsoft is changing its interface yet again. Of all the CompE majors that I know here at school, every single one had their version of XP revert back to the old windows 95/98 look and feel. One of these days, people at microsoft and apple (and KDE and Gnome) will realize that people don't want a change in the interface every other release, and stick to their own standards.

Re:great.....

[Anonymous Coward]

if you can change the interface to the one you like, how is that bad? customizability(lol) is a big word and also a big subject in GUIs nowadays. winxp doesnt FORCE the new look on you, you could change back. user is king.

Re:great.....

[$$$$$exyGal]

So why didn't they just "revert back" to Windows 3.1? Or even DOS 2? For some reason, they got past those releases and moved onto Windows 95, why?

Re:great.....

[orbital3]

Because Windows XP is, as my boss calls it, the Fisher-Price OS. Alot of people think it's gaudy or just plain ugly. I agree that it's not so much the change itself that made people want to switch back, but that it's just not nice to look at. Personally, I like the old start menu better as well... simple, quick, and to the point. Not a big mess of stuff that imo, should be consolidated and nested. While I appreciate that Microsoft tried to make WinXP more friendly and pleasing to the average user, I think they really dropped the ball on WinXP.

(Side note: does anyone else, like me, hate the stupid rounded edges of the windows? If you have a window that's taking up the whole screen, but isn't maximized, you throw your mouse cursor up in the corner to close the window, and you close the maximized program behind it. Grr!)

Re:great.....

[jayslambast]

I think the change in interface is more related to the lack of content they provide with the new OS's. If you look at feature difference (ignoring the interface) between XP Pro vs Win2k, you would find that you're paying for Remote Desktop Connection services (which is handy), some minimal movie edit software and new 3d screensavers. oh, and the driver fallback stuff. While Remote desktop stuff is nice, its not worth the $200 to upgrade. So to entice people to pay XP, they had to update the look, or people wouldn't think it was worth their money.

People do this all the time... If the content they are trying to say can't stand on its own, they try to wrap it in a pretty package, and some people are fooled by that....

But that's my 2 cents...

Re:great.....

[Orion_]

So why didn't they just "revert back" to Windows 3.1? Or even DOS 2? For some reason, they got past those releases and moved onto Windows 95, why?

Because the Windows 95 interface was better in many tangible ways than the Windows 3.1 interface. I'm sure there was some resistance to the changes, simply because there is always resistance to change, but I don't think there are many people that would want to go back to 3.1, having experienced the improvements in 95.

The XP interface, however, was not improved significantly. They just took the old interface and gave everything bright colors, that in my opinion and in the opinions of many others, was a significant step backwards. The point is that there was no functionality added in the new interface, so we have lost nothing by switching back. The only effect is that we have created an environment that we consider more asthetically pleasing.

There were a couple of improvements in XP, like the new Start menu, and an improved taskbar, but those things are completely independent of which widget theme you choose.

Re:great.....

[neuroticia]

Err. no. Everyone says "Yay" when Apple changes its GUI (I'll admit it's beautiful when it's on a 19+ inch monitor with good color output, and at a resolution of 12xx-xxx+. God, it is beautiful.) and "Nay" when MS changes it's GUI (Luna? *ACK* designed by color blind mentally defective lunatics.)

Most people who can figure out how to change the theme to Win98... Do.

-Sara

Re:great.....

[mentin]

The reason people change UI behavior back to Win 95 or Win 3.11 ways is not that old behavior is better or more intuitive, but because they are accoustomized to it, so it is more intuitive for them.

For new users, who are not used to old ways, the new interface is usually better. So novice users have no need to customize interface - the default is usually better for them.

A good example is standard File Open/Save dialog. You are probably well familiar and comfortable with it. But why do we use it? Should not we drag and drop from File manager, would not this be more intuitive?

The answer is yes, it would be more intutive. But since first Macintosh was single tasked OS, you could not have Finder and your app running simultaneously. So you could not drag and drop from one app to another. File Open/Save dialog was born. Now we are so accostomized to it, that we think it is very natural and convinient way. But the only reason for its existance is restriction of 20-year old OS.

Let the speculation begin.

[Ricky M. Waite]

I've a strange feeling that no matter how revolutionary or improved Longhorn is, there will be crowds of zealots with their anti-Microsoft sentiment in hand, ready to propogare their GNU agenda. Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to it.

Re:Let the speculation begin.

[eryk]

I've a strange feeling that even if no one cares about the revolutionary or improved Longhorn , you have to post a complain about the anti-Microsoft zealots.

Are you paid for that?

Note to Desktop Developers:

[handsomepete]

I do not want pictures of people I don't know built into my OS (for those that can't get to it it's a picture of a woman wearing headphones and smiling as an image appearing underneath the title part of the 'My Music' folder). Thanks.

Screenshots

[JewFish]

Windows Longhorn XP 4008 Alpha M4 screen shots can be found here.

http://www.206.dk/4008.html

Re:Screenshots

[netsharc]

That's a feature for which I too have been wishing! It wouldn't be so hard to implement, but it sure will annoy and confuse new users..

My idea was, when you do a copy/move function and the computer finds filenames in the target directory which are the same to filenames you're processing, record these names and then display them in a dialog box list, which should look like this:

| Original Name | Conflicts with target | Rename original as | Rename target as |
foo.jpg foo.jpg foo.jpg foo2.jpg
:
:
with buttons to auto-generate names for the original or for the target (but not for both), and the ability to click the rename columns to choose a name you want.

Like I said, I don't think it would be too intuitive, and in the end you won't remember what the files were called.

Re:Did they try it?

[Orion_]

The changes are fairly minor but do allow you to access things more quickly.

Which changes are you referring to here? As far as I could tell, aside from the new Start menu the interface was pretty much exactly the same as the old one, only with ugly garish colors.

I gave it a couple of days, then switched it back. The old look is much cleaner; more "professional" I suppose.

As for the new Start menu, I gave that a few days and then turned that off too. I tend to dislike interfaces that are heavily oriented around my recent activities... I prefer consistency.

exactly, turn off what you don't like

[n3k5]

I think with "reverting back to the old look and feel", the parent poster didn't think of switching off usable features like hiding all those seldomly used items from the start menu until you request to see them all. I think he rather referred to switching off the new kindergarten-style window borders, config panel lazout etc., which take up more pixels on the screen (so less useful information is displayed) and look different for no good reason.

Sure, maybe you can tweak the new l&f so you can be just as productive with it. However, the point wasn't that it's inherently bad, it was that _changing_ it around all the time is a very bad idea, and as the old one is just as good for most people, most people are better off continuing to use the old.

"Pointless 'innovation' considered harmful." I read that somewhere today, probably Wired News. Definitely applies here.

Re:Yay for biases? +1 for an article, though.

[zapp]

How exactly does "couple of more minutes while browsing" translate to "maliciously beating on it".

I hardly concider browsing the web malicious activity, and any box that crashes from that sole activity will not be used for long by me.

Re:jeepers

[thumperward]

You're not missing much. The article is poorly written and offers little insight to those who are (like me) unfamiliar with Windows XP. All of his examples come from how it's changed compared to XP.

What else is it going to be compared with? MacOS 7? Might as well compare it with the thing that (a) most people interested in the new OS are currently occupied with, and (b) it's intended to eventually replace. Anyway, the guy presumably got it off usenet last night like everyone else, so he's hardly likely to be aware of the extent of any underlying changes.

For anyone who still can't get through to the site, it really is nothing but a bunch of screenshots of the first hour's desktop experience.

- Chris

Enlighten yourselves.

[badasscat]

There seem to be two camps here (with a third lurking in the background), and they're diametrically opposed: those who think the GUI is too big a change from WinXP and therefore people won't like it, and those who think the GUI is too much like WinXP's and therefore people won't like it.

You can't have it both ways.

There's always a third camp around here (of which I'm a part), which seems to be strangely under-represented in this thread today. This camp believes WinXP is actually a perfectly fine OS, its UI is perfectly functional and easy to use. These people look at Longhorn and think "well, it's no worse than XP, and probably a little better."

Lots of people use Windows XP and lots of people like it. Heck, lots of people even use its new swanky GUI - I do, my wife does, and everyone else I know does too (including most of my co-workers... all of the ones running WinXP, that is). I'm not sure why anybody would expect MS to make any drastic changes to a formula that works, and that a lot of people are used to using. Honestly, the core functions of the GUI haven't changed since Windows 95/NT 4 (which were very similar with the exception of the added administrator functions in the NT 4 GUI). Some of you seem blinded by bright lights - the XP GUI is almost no different than the Win2000 GUI underneath, and what *is* different (the control panel layout, start menu, etc.) can be easily changed back without removing any of the functionality or the prettiness. For my part, I find the new start menu much more useful than the old.

And from what I'm seeing of Longhorn, it's hardly any different from the XP GUI. It's a bit flatter, with fewer 3D effects - an attempt at being a little more tasteful and understated without going back to the ugliness of Win95 (though I'm not a fan of rounded window corners - especially when maximized, they just don't like right). Still has the start button, the systray, the quicklaunch, very few desktop icons, etc. A few new transparency effects on the new sidebar. Honestly, if anything I'm disappointed they haven't made more visual improvements to the UI, though this is still an early build, and most of the visual flash comes last in any software development. I'm sure the final release will look even better than this.

I think you all need to stop expecting Windows to be Linux (or BeOS, or whatever), and accept the fact that not all of us want to worry about customizing every last bit of our GUI or working in terminal consoles to get anything meaningful done. This doesn't mean we don't have "half a brain", it just means we want to spend less time with our OS and more time with our work. But it's nice if the OS looks good out of the box, so we don't *need* to spend time with it to make ourselves comfortable with it.

On the other hand, it seems KDE and Gnome are both trying to move closer to the Windows GUI. They both have "start" buttons of their own, they both have quicklaunch equivalents, etc. They're both even going for eye candy lately. So what are some of you complaining about? This is what most people want, and it's the way most people are used to working. Just deal.

Re:As an anal retentive person...

[StormySky]

Hrm. My comment got modded as 'troll'. While I am trollish, in the physical appearance sense, my comment was not intended as such.
I was not soaping linux, or bsd, or even BeOS, for that matter. I was simply responding to the article, and seeing if anyone else felt the same: That the lack of options during an install is a *bad* thing. The only reason I can see for it, is OEM installs, or unattended installs over a network. However, that's what (currently) winnt.sif is for. It works rather well: With a winxp, you can set the initial state to 'classic' mode and never see the, in my opinion, rather gaudy default desktop.
My OSen of choice tend to be the standard wannabe hacker faire, but, I'm 'forced' to use Windows a good bit. Okay, I whore myself so as to be able to eat. It's life. Am I the only one that wonders why yet another 'version' of windows is needed, and why it now installs itself with next to no user input, much like a good virus, just without the whole tiny memory footprint?
WinXP is a nice melding of the 'normal' windows with some stability. As far as M$ produced... 'software', it does rather well. It crashes only about once a week on me, compared to the earlier versions of Windows that crashed with every compile of any program I might be working on. My linux 'router's' currently got an uptime of about 164 days, but we had a power out. Anyway, I only run a web server, smtp daemon, dns, ip masqing, seti, squid, and other trivial programs on there, so there's no reason for it to crash; I use the XP box for major code production (yes, ugly... but, whores need not be pretty, nor what they produce...) so once a week is acceptable.
Why would I be interested in Longhorn? The article doesn't say what's new and super duper about it. Just that it's got a different interface, and, I infer, will install even more bloat, without so much as a click from you.
I had an interesting time the other day with Norton System Works 2003. My personal opinion is that it's a piece of shit. On the other hand, I'm too lazy to go get all the separate pieces that it's got (jv16 Powertools only goes so far). Installing is a bear; I had to remove it, and reinstall, but it doesn't properly remove itself, hence one must do so by hand. That leads to exploring the .dlls in \windows\system32, which in turn makes me boggle in wonder. For example, there's 7 or so AOL .dlls for displaying 'Art' graphics. Very close in version and size. Why do I have these? That's one of many examples; I'm guessing 75% of the .dlls there, about 200 meg worth of space, is useless and wasted, and never used. 200 meg might not seem like a lot, but, it's a decent Sliders or Buffy episode in divx. So, again, why do I want yet another version of Windows with more useless stuff? As I said in my original post, I'm quite anal. Having empty directories like 'xerox' and 'msn gaming zone' under my programs directory just makes me lose sleep.
What scares me is that there are actually some people here who use Windows by pure choice. Not because they have to in order to make a living, but because they WANT to. Call that trolling, if you will, but until Slashdot's run off... erm, "Longhorn", I think there should still be a place for those of us without "I'm a Bill Gates Acolyte (Wanna play monopoly?)" t-shirts to gently poke fun at it and whatever other 'innovations' to come out of Redmond.

And, seriously, does no one else find installs with no options, and ever changing user interfaces annoying?

ENDP RANT