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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. "
apple
Let's give Apple some credit here - they have only changed their UI design once in the 20 year history of the Mac. In fact they were routinely getting hammered by the computer press for having an outdated UI.
From the article,
:P
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.
That's standard behavior of Win95 and 98 (you're just the admin by nature), Windows NT (you start as the admin account), Windows 2000 (creates an admin account, then prompts you to create a user w/ full administrative rights) and Windows XP (see Win2k).
Does any *nix installation *not* start you off as Root, with the ability to create more accounts?
By the way, Windows installations from Win2k onward will not prompt you to create a local admin account (i.e., Please enter your Username so I can make you an admin, too) provided that you're joining a domain right off the bat -- which, as the installer of this OS, is the only case where your local account's security rights becomes a real concern. If you're doing it at home, for yourself, you're already the installer/admin. You know the admin password. Meaning, the user will know the admin password.
So, non-issue.
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.
"I said it died screamin' like a stuck Irish pig!"
(with props to Untouchables)
Likewise, I'm sure that me evalating any Linux kernel of your choosing could smash it into a million pieces through careless use of rm * -o , whack Solaris by repeatedly throwing the power while it's doing disk writes, or break any other *nix operating system you choose to name.
*Any* operating system can be broken through maliciously beating on it. "I bet I can make it squeal" doesn't imply "I am going to conduct a fair and extensive beta test of this newest distribution to see where it's faults still lie". It implies "Let's see what we can destroy".
Work on your bias. Good work submitting the article; news is news, regardless of the bearer.
Did the XP users at least try the new interface for a while or instantly turn it off? If you give it a test you'll find the XP interface is nice. The changes are fairly minor but do allow you to access things more quickly. Some things do cause a performance hit but you can easily turn them off.
In fact, I've found the XP interface to be pretty granular in control so if you don't like something, just turn it off.
A lot of people don't like new things just because they are different. Sit a new user in front of Win2K and XP and I bet they prefer XP, especially after tweaking it to their work habits.
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.
He either one brave fellow or all his other data are belong to the recycle bin.
I wouldn't let an early beta o/s on a system that even had another partition or drive in the same room. I'm still pissed from when that dumb-assed release version of Win2k "upgraded" my NTFS 4 on another drive to NTFS 5 (making it incompatible with NT4) WITHOUT WARNING when I simply looked at the other drive. Yes, they warn that it could happen during the install if you have any NTFS 4 partitions, but this was after the install, when I connected another drive to copy some files over! Luckily, I had imaged the drives beforehand just in case.
Sigs are bad for your health.
When Win95 came out, a lot of people I knew reverted back to using progman as their shell. In many ways I prefer it to the start menu. In fact I don't use the start menu any more, I have a quicklaunch bar spanning my second monitor (it was a row above the taskbar before I got the the second monitor). Having to click more than once to lauch an app seems unintuitive to me.
Or even DOS 2?
Have you used DOS 2? *shudder*. Having said the cmd prompt is the first icon on my Win2K quicklaunch bar, so I guess that implies I still do go back to the old DOS interface quite regularly.
I'm a girl.
Why do you feel the need to tell us this? Suffering from some insecurities are we? :->
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
..the more they stay the same.
.net, which I think will be the equivalent of embedding the channel bar into the OS and trying to make it look more "seamless" in the OS. Remember the subscription channel bar in Win 98, that no one ever uses and hates?
Having survived the Windows 98 to ME, Windows ME to 2000, and Windows 2000 to XP migration curves, I have to say, that until this thing reaches release candidate status, all bets are off.
I remember installing every single Win 98 beta that came out -- what a buggy headache (especially the early Active Desktops) -- when I could have spent my time being productive, and waiting and watching.
This time, I will wait and watch.
So far all I see in Longhorn is Windows XP with a few new panes, some screen reogranization and some pretty icons. Until I see a dynamic, functional difference that is not just screen reogranization or eye candy, I'll be convinced that this is just more of the same, in a new package, with some bugfixes, speed optimization and additional hardware support (like DVD burning, for example).
Oh, and I forgot
I could have guessed those "improvements", without even seeing one screenshot. Come on, MS, where's the real innovation?
Time will tell.
Chris
Actually, WinXP is easier for the end-user. (Yeah, I know. Who woulda thought?)
;) (Clicking the little oblong button on the upper right thinking it would minimize the window, and instead turning the toolbars on and off repeatedly while laughing at myself comes to mind...)
My lesser-computer-inclined family folk love XP, and have finally started to be able to do things like make their printer work, remember where they saved their files, etc.
I think that the blue rounded-corners give the end-user the illusion they're playing with a toy, and puts them off their automatic defensive "I don't know how to DO ANYTHING! IT'S A COMPUTER FOR GOD'S SAKE! IT'S THE BRAIN-SURGERY OF 2003!" mode.
In addition, unless the user changes it, the default location to save things is *always* the user's home folder, and the user is logged out (Not logged off, if they re-click their icon at the login screen, they'll be returned to their applications just as they were. Although there seems to be an issue with another user being able to log in, re-run the application, and force the termination of that app under the other's user account.) after a short period of inactivity, which enforces users to log in as themselves instead of doing account sharing which was common under Win95-WinME. This forces users to save to their home folder most times, which drastically diminishes the number of "Oh my god, I lost my file that I just spent 10 weeks working on." incidents.
I don't seem to have any problem with overshooting rounded corners. But, I think I overcame that with Apple's Aqua interface, in which I was initially doing stupid things on a regular basis.
-Sara
I wrote my own review with a bit more detail and thoughts. It is availible on www.betaone.net as well as below. My review assumes you had seen the previous M3 leaked build so doesnt go into details about the sidebar etc:
.NET (which I was running previously). Even with the WinFS service disabled, the system runs painfuly slow.
----
Well, I finally got around to installing Longhorn build 4008 on my laptop, and have decided to write a mini review. Rather than writing a full review of each possible screen, I will concentrate on changes from previous versions of windows.
Installation
Behind the scenes a lot of changes have happened to the setup program.
* Rather than having all files in one folder (i386) there is now a directory dtructure in 'boot' which resembles the structure of the system once installed.
* Rather than having a text-mode preinstall upon booting the cd which then spawns a graphical setup, the entire Longhorn M4 setup is graphical. This seems to be based on Windows XP PE (preinstall edition).
The changes look very promising, although the GUI is clearly unfinished and seemingly rushed;
* In many places the wording is quite unproffesional
* You are informed you will be informed when you can "just walk away" and "setup will complete on its own". While setup requires little user interaction, you are not informed when your input is no longer required.
* There is a nice treeview for selecting the installation partition, but your options are quite limited. In XP you can select Fat32/NTFS, FULL/QUICK format. In LH M4 the only option you have is a checkbox - "Format this partition (NTFS)".
* The layout will need more work. Currently everything is centered, giving a kind of pyramid look. The previous setup style with several 'panels' proving information looked more visually pleasing.
I am sure the little flaws will be ironed out sooner or later, but one thing is for sure, a lot of work has gone into improving the setup wizard which until now had remained largely unchanged ever since windows 2000.
Visual and Features
When longhorn M4 first starts, you are greeted with a much nicer screen than in Longhorn M3. In M3 there were a lot of visual imperfections and the plex theme looked worse than the luna theme on many windows. Now these imperfections have been ironed out and longhorn looks truly beuitiful as far as visuals are concerned.
The sidebar, in additional to being much nicer visually, now has a few essential features that were missing in M3. Namely, there is a tray icon tile, so you do not lose access to trayed programs when using the sidebar in place of the taskbar.
Glitches, Speed, Stability
I tested M4 on modest hardware - a laptop with a 600Mhz P3 and 128MB of RAM. Longhorn ran SIGNIFICANTLY slower than
After altering the screen resolution the sidebar seemed currupted. Hiding and then reenabling it made the sidebar completly invisible.
Stability is difficult to comment on because I have only been running LH for a short time so far. Till now I have not had a single crash or even error message.
Rant on WinFS's implementation
A lot of effort seems to be going into WinFS. The idea behind it seems brilliant - store files in an SQL like database so you can search for files, run queries, and receive results in a fraction of a second rather than having to wait for the computer to scan through each folder and take several minutes to search through the entire drive. Unfortunatly if the implementation in M4 is anything to go by, MS are going in completly the wrong direction. The new search panel prompts the user to enter a search string "Example: 'Pictures from John' or 'What is a firewall?'". It can search both the local files. This seems very newbie-oriented. Computers are usless at interpreting natural language queries. They should do what they are good at - fast indexing by filenames and keywords in the files contents. Also, searching a local filesystem for a jpeg and searching the internet are two entirely different activities. Combining them into a single search seems to make no sense and will just confuse advanced users.
The current search system in XP is good enough as far as the interface is concerned (at least after you kill the faqing dog - again classic newbie-oriented bloat). You can search by filename, modified/created date, and a files contents. It is layed out in a perfectly logical way, and you know exactly what you are asking the computer to do. If only this was based on SQL and queries lasted under a second it would be perfect. Why replace this clean, logical interface with a textbox claims to supposedly understand plain english questions and automatically decide for you if you are looking for an email message, file, internet document, or application. Pointless artificial intelligence which will be far from perfect. I think ill stick with 'grep' and 'ls -R' - they do everthing I need them to.
KDE and Gnome are not the only Linux desktop options. You're ignoring another faction, those that just don't like the Windows paradigm at all and don't care. It's good to see someone unapologetically state that XP and Longhorn are little more than re-jigging the Win 95 concepts, and there's nothing wrong with that. Familiarity breeds efficiency. Some of us though prefer other ways of working and use Windowmaker, Fluxbox, Ion, etc. No start buttons and in some cases no desktop in the classic sense at all.
Oh, and Longhorn is looking more and more like KDE, not the other way around. KDE looked like this back when 2k was a twinkle in NT4's eye. MS is looking at a the neat stuff created by developers free to express themselves (instead of serving a marketing target) and picking what they think best suits their market.
Platinum doesn't count. If you're going to count that as an interface change, let's not forget things like MultiFinder, window zoom, labels, etc. The critical thing with Apple is that, for all of the Classic line, there was steady evolution. Each version of the Mac had an improved interface that built upon the last one, not replacing it. Platinum gave the windows mildly revamped dressing, but otherwise did not really change the operation of the system. You could even ignore MultiFinder when it came out if you wanted to, along with the windowshade button of OS 8, the proxy icon of OS 8.5, etc. The biggest consistency problem of the classic Mac OS, in fact, was the massive control panel reorganization that began with System 7.5 and didn't finish until Mac OS 9.0.
Compare that with OS X. You fire it up and you've got a Dock (new), Apple menu is totally different (new), menu bar doesn't operate close to the same way (new), trash can is not on Dock (new), control panels have disappeared (new), Finder by default opens column view (new)...rather than evolution, Mac OS X completely redefined how every single control worked and operated. I read of no one having trouble moving from System 7.5 or Mac OS 7.6 to Mac OS 8 having problems with Platinum, but many Macphiles had serious issues with OS X, and even though I am extremely comfortable with Unix, even I think that Classic was just plain simpler and more intuitive in many, many ways than OS X. Since Mac OS X 10.0, however, Apple has mostly gone back to evolution rather than revolution, which I think is a good thing. No major new UI changes have arisen out of newer releases of OS X except that Apple randomly makes its apps brushed metal now.
Ignoring the depth of change, though, compare the Mac's steady evolution too Microsoft's jumps and spurts. Ignoring Windows the first four incarnations of Windows, Windows 3.0/3.1 to 95 was the first major UI switch that Windows underwent. Internet Explorer 4 was the second major paradigm shift. XP was actually in many ways closer to the adoption of Platinum than the OS 9 to OS X switch, since just changing the window dressings makes XP look like the steady evolution of Win 2K (with the Start menu and the control panel reorganization being the two big changes), but Longhorn looks like it will be yet another major paradigm shift with the addition of Microsoft's very direct ripoff of NEXTSTEP's Dock and reworking of the control panels. That means that Apple has had a major shift once over 19 years; Microsoft will have had four major paradigm shifts over the last eleven years with the release of Longhorn. That's just ridiculous.
I think the fact that people boo when Apple changes their interface is a testament to just how good it is. Computer interfaces may suck in general (as the usability gurus like to shout whenever they think someone is listening), but among them Apple stands tall as an example of things done right.
;).
What's goofy is, the classic interface was great. The OS X interface is just as great if not better IMHO. Why can Apple get it right twice, when Microsoft is still trying to do it once?
By the way, this comes from someone who doesn't own a Mac anymore. Wish I could afford one again
Game... blouses.
I was thinking of a different bone of contention I have when I said that: FAT32 support, which MS never provided under NT4 right up to SP6A (I mean, the provided it under '95a/b for goodness sake!). They probably thought that it would eat into Win2k sales. I have read-only support of FAT32 with a free driver from System Internals. You can also purchase the driver with full read/write support from Wininternals.
It was a couple of years ago, but I now remember that the problem was that the (SP4-6A) NTFS5 support was half-assed - you could no longer use low level disk tools (including MS's own *cough* tools) if you had NTFS5 under NT4. And that certainly qualifies as NFG IMO.
But that's not what really pissed me off. I knew that and didn't want NTFS upgraded. What pissed me off was that Win2k did it anyway and without warning. And that is unacceptable.
Sigs are bad for your health.
I do a lot of work in the Contact Management industry, and I find it very interesting that this build of Longhorn includes the My Contacts item. My interest in based on the fact that Microsoft has recently released their own competing contact management system (there are 3 or 4 established players in the field) (see Business Week article here).
I really have to wonder whether this is another MS "bundling to gain market share" tactic. We'll see how this turns out, but I really have a bad feeling that the DOJ's failure to split the OS from the application side of the company is going to reduce choice and innovation even further.
Which unfortunately makes them look just washed-out and lacking in attitude. It's like the safe corporate version of Aqua, only instead of being Playskool like the previous attempt, this time it's "OK, we'll make it all blurry and stuff!".
God help them, this is pretty sad.
It reminds me of a Roger Ebert review of 'Heaven's Gate': "When you don't enjoy even the physical act of looking at a movie, the director is in deep, deep trouble." Well- Longhorn appears both annoyingly blue, and annoyingly washed-out and contrastless. This is the best they could do? Windows 95 was more appealing, in a crude-but-cheerful way. Do you suppose they know they are downward spiraling?