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

problem

[burrfux]

There is a problem with the database that is preventing the site from working. received from flexbeta.net :-/

Re:problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The site is probably running Longhorn build 4008 :-)

Re:problem

[mentin]

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

Re:problem

[Feztaa]

4.3.0 FrontPage

There's your problem... :)

Re:problem

[master0ne]

site uses mysql. No wonder it is down. MySql blows and so does Apache. - by Anonymous Coward most major web servers use apache and a good percent of they use mysql, so your saying "the internet blows, and most the servers on it blow too!" ?, maby you should crawl back into the cave you stumbled out of, and rethink your conclusion.

Only a FP up, and the server is dead

[Dixie_Flatline]

All that's here is one guy with FP, and I already get a database error. Talk about bad decisions, advertising your story to /. without preparing first.

Anyone manage to sneak in and get a mirror up?

Re:Only a FP up, and the server is dead

[frdmfghtr]

Just goes to show that /.ers are going to read the article before posting :)

Re:Only a FP up, and the server is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

What's worse is that it apparently sends the guy an email every time there's an error. So he is getting mailbombed and slashdotted.

Re:Only a FP up, and the server is dead

[gpoul]

It's up again now.

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.....

[the eric conspiracy]

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.

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.....

[prgammans]

Let's give Apple some credit here
Indeed, i could never see how microsoft gets away with drastic changes in interface and behaviour and everone says 'Yay' :) and when Apple so it eveyone says 'Boo':(.

Must be because Microsoft bassing dose not sell papers etc, or possibly ./ has a patented it ;)

Re:great.....

[chrisseaton]

It's not a new interface. All the buttons are still in the same place, just the images are different. I don't mind the interface's images changing with a new release - it makes things seem fresh.

Re:great.....

[SN74S181]

Do they include progman.exe in Windows XP? I'm never (or rather, not for a Looooong time) going to have XP on a system I own, but progman.exe is available all the way up to Windows 2000 for those who like the old Windows 3 interface. Use 'run' off the Start menu and type in 'progman' if you don't believe me. I don't know exactly how to disable explorer at startup on a W2K system, (I have several small win32 'ps' and 'kill' utils that work wonders, but that's after a system is up and running) but it was trivial to replace explorer.exe with progman.exe in the Windows 9x era.

(You just get a vestigal Windows Program Manager if you type the raw progman.exe command. You can manually build your groups and individual icons into the groups just like the olden days, though.)

Re:great.....

[schmink182]

user is king.

Only after the user knows how to customize the GUI does he become king. Unfortunately, many users don't know how to do much more than to connect to the internet and check their email.

Note: there's also the tricky business of using a bad GUI to customize itself. If the GUI intuitive, how will Joe User find your way to making it so?

Re:great.....

[ceejayoz]

Just tested - progman.exe is in WinXP... nifty!

Re:great.....

['The '.$L3mm1ng]

Do they include progman.exe in Windows XP?

Yupp, I have it here.

I don't know exactly how to disable explorer at startup on a W2K system

You mean replacing it with another shell? This should work:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Shell"="Progman.exe"

Re:great.....

[Wyatt Earp]

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.

Re:great.....

[TheRaven64]

So why didn't they just "revert back" to Windows 3.1?

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? :->

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.....

[TheKey]

Just ignore her. She's not only a regular troll, but a fan troll.

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.....

[t0ny]

I wouldnt worry about it too much. You can probably make a hard setting to keep the 95 UI in either your logon script or with your system policies.

The key in an enterprise is to standardize. I even take away the ability to change backgrounds!

Re:great.....

[rmarll]

I thought moving from 6 to 7 was a also a big change when I did it. MS's revision as of yet doesn't yet appear to be that significant a change from XP. For that matter most of the UI chages since 95 have been mostly in the area of window dressing. Changing gradients here, add an info panel there. Most of the real work being done in funcitonality and lower level tech. But the UI basically behaves the same. YMMV, but I personally think of OSX and Win95 being the first large scale functionality changes since the platforms got a GUI in the first place. But it's hard to sell something you can't see to millions of people. Apple changes their boxes, and MS changes the window dressing, all in an effort to keep people buying and get the really interesting but invisible parts in the marketplace. (a few billion in CASH MONEY doesn't hurt either)

Re:great.....

[kalidasa]

Because they were too young to remember 3.1, I imagine. Me, I learned on VMS and a TRS-80 (torture, absolute torture, compared to OS X). If it's got a command line, I'm home.

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.....

[neuroticia]

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

Re:great.....

[neuroticia]

Actually, WinXP is easier for the end-user. (Yeah, I know. Who woulda thought?)

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. ;) (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...)

-Sara

Re:great.....

[Wyatt Earp]

In an enterprise one can do that.

In education or Government or dealing with people that sign checks and make decisions, you can't do that.

Re:great.....

[EvanED]

I seem to be just about the only computer geek to *like* the XP interface. The frequently used applications thing in the XP menu is something I've wished Windows had for years now. I also like the XP style theme; I think it's more pleasing to the eye.

Though the first thing I do when getting on an XP computer that I can do this on without the owner getting mad (i.e. my own or the PSU computers when the roaming profile server is down) is to set the color scheme from the default blue thing (which I *do* think is ugly) to silver.

Re:great.....

[EvanED]

Any you'll probably be able to revert to a Win95 style interface under Longhorn.

Re:great.....

[rpresser]

and "Nay" when MS changes it's GUI (Luna? *ACK* designed by color blind mentally defective lunatics.)

I take offense at this. I can easily prove that I had nothing to do with Luna.

Re:great.....

[BlueGecko]

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.

Re:great.....

[th1nk]

does anyone else, like me, hate the stupid rounded edges of the windows?

right click on the desktop, properties, themes, windows classic

Re:great.....

[lewp]

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 ;).

Re:great.....

[ealar dlanvuli]

In addition, unless the user changes it, the default location to save things is *always* the user's home folder,

I'd give them props for this, but they are about 50 years late to the party.

Re:great.....

[Wyatt Earp]

The admin tools are the same.

However when you are dealing with elected and education persons, in my experiance, one is often not allowed to say no or to attempt to "control" them.

Re:great.....

[TeknoDragon]

perhaps the reason ppl like the XP start menu and such, is that they're hardly original ideas

Mac OS classic had a "recent applications" menu, altho it wasn't listed up front

wish that you could put the Run... item next to log off (where it used to be)

Re:great.....

[Cazis]

Yea, seems like all their new apps gets a slap with the metalic paint brush. Are they trying to get their current desktop users to buy from PowerBook (with them brushed metal casins) line instead?

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.

Re:great.....

[40000]

95 was a big change because it was 32 bit. What applications need Windows XP? Which hardware only comes with XP drivers?
If you went back to Windows 3.1 all your USB devices would stop working and it would be hard to find any 16 bit applications for things like CD burning and mp3s.
Windows 95 v 2.5 was the last big change, FAT32 and USB. It's hard to go any further back than that now. That was 6 years ago.

Re:great.....

[Planesdragon]

wish that you could put the Run... item next to log off (where it used to be)

You can. Switch to the "Use Classic Start Menu", enable the RUN function, and it'll show up at the bottom.

XP's Explorer/Taskbar/Start Menu overhaul is very possibly the best UI advancement MS has had since Win95. You can turn on or off not only all of the new flashy @%#%, but you can do the same for all of the old standbys!

Re:great.....

[TeknoDragon]

You can. Switch to the "Use Classic Start Menu", enable the RUN function, and it'll show up at the bottom.

umm, except that I also like the "recent programs" list as I said in my post

Re:great.....

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

Speaking of progman.exe, I actually found it in the Windows directory of my XP installation. I suppose if you absolutely wanted to, you could go back to something like the win3.1 interface. It was a very consistent interface IMO, but did have its limitations.

Re:great.....

[Eric Savage]

Ahh multifinder. In its day that was the bomb-diggity. The familiar scent of nostalgia brings to mind the old "two floppies means infinite storage!" SE.

Re:great.....

[spruce]

What really is it you don't like about the windows interface, that Macs do so well? You read all these "macs are just so more usable" posts here but their's never and details to back them up. Maybe you can help me

Re:great.....

[Reziac]

Whereas I use so many different apps in such random order, that "recent programs" is a sure way to make me insane.

It's as if every time I went to drive my car, someone had moved the ignition switch.

Re:great.....

[andrewski]

So does OS X. It's in the apple menu and can list a whole bunch of the most recently used applications, kind of like XP.

It also has a way to get to the System Preferences. Pretty similar to the old way; unless you're a rabid Old School Mac User you shouldn't notice a difference.

Re:great.....

[lewp]

Simple example:

The application menu bar on the Mac is always in the same place, at the very top. This means that if you need to click the file menu in 500 different applications it's always going to be at the exact same spot on the screen. You can hit menus considerably faster and more precisely because of this.

On Windows (this applies to KDE and GNOME as well) the menu bar is at the top of the application window. It's in the same place relative to the application, but in a completely different place relative to the desktop. You are slowed down by having to "find" this location.

Not only that, but the clickable regions of the menu items on the Mac's menu bar extend to the very edge of the screen. As any usability guru will tell you, the fastest places on a screen to hit with a mouse are the four corners, followed by areas along the four edges. This is because no matter how quickly you move your mouse to the edge of the screen, there is no way to "overshoot" the edge with your cursor. So on a Mac, not only do you always know where the item you want is, it's very easy to hit with your mouse.

Windows, due to its menu placement, cannot take advantage of this for application menus. Unfortunately, it seems they don't take advantage of this even when they can. I'm banging this post out on a Windows XP laptop and if I drag the pointer down to the very bottom of the screen clicking does not activate the taskbar buttons immediately above the pointer. It seems you have to go down to the bottom and then up a pixel or two.

That's just one example, and there are many more. They don't sound like big deals, and if you think of them in terms of, "Oh wow, I have to move my mouse a whole two extra pixels. Boo hoo!" they aren't. But think how many times you need to hit an application's menubar in the course of the day. If Apple's UI is just *that* much better in a couple of high traffic areas, it can mean a potentially huge savings in time, effort, and frustration over the course of the user's lifetime.

Now to clarify something:

I don't hate the Windows interface. I think it has gotten a lot more intelligent since Windows 95 and I think XP works better than ever once you turn off all the goofy shit and make it look like a nicer version of Windows 2000. I just think the Mac UI works better. I'd still take either long before I'd take KDE or GNOME, though I'm really hoping that changes someday.

I also don't *personally* think the UI alone is worth me spending $3000+ on a Mac to be a close match for the PC I built for just over $1000. I spend most of my day in Mozilla, PuTTY, and gvim and interface with explorer mainly through shortcut keys and the Run dialog, so I rarely even need my mouse.

The only reason I wish I could afford a Mac is because I want a real UNIX desktop (you can argue that OS X isn't UNIX, but compared to Windows... close enough!) that has the "it just works" feel to it. As much as I like ripping boxes apart and putting them back together, and as much as I like FreeBSD-CURRENT, sometimes I just want stuff to work. The free UNIX desktop doesn't without feeling like a house of cards that's about to fall over.

Re:great.....

[t0ny]

You can do it in Government. I am doing it for one right now.

I will admit, a lot of the challenge in working here is that there was practically NO networking infrastructure before I came here, but its cool. Its not often you get to set things up from scratch.

Its slower than doing it at a new place, obviously, because there are hundreds of users already using the network, but its fun (if you are a networking geek, anyway). You just need to plan this stuff out in advance, and inform people before you make any changes.

A funny thing- people started freaking out when I implimented logon scripts =) Problem was, I just started and didnt see it as a big deal, and thus didnt inform anyone. Needless to say, when you have people that were used to email being unavailable a few days a week, when you start fixing things and making changes its like you are throwing them off their routine... and of course they complained about the two little black screens that flash on the screen. Users- gotta love em.

Re:jeepers

[moonbender]

I'm sure the admin will be euphoric when he checks his mail later the day.

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?

Re:Let the speculation begin.

[iamacat]

Can you post a list of revolutionary and improved Longhorn features for us to enjoy? All the article shows is some minor UI changes, especially at the relatively-unimportant install time.

Re:Let the speculation begin.

[zulux]

crowds of zealots with their anti-Microsoft sentiment in hand, ready to propogare their GNU agenda.

I agree - It's terrible!

I met this GNU/Linux guy, and he wanted to give mt a disk with over 5000 peer-reviewed, stable and interesting peices of software. And get this, the fucker even tried to give me the source code!

God, I hate those GNU bastards.

Re:Let the speculation begin.

[Shelled]

I've a strange feeling that no matter how revolutionary or improved Longhorn is...

A true zealot considers Longhorn revolutionary and improved without every using it only because it came from Redmond.

...there will be crowds of zealots with their anti-Microsoft sentiment in hand, ready to propogare their GNU agenda.

Yours is the only post so far raising the issue of licensing models.

Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to it.

I think you are.

Re:Let the speculation begin.

[nathanh]

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.

You have gno idea what you are talking about. I gknow for a fact that gnobody is trying to brainwash you into gnusing GNU/Linux.

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.

Re:Note to Desktop Developers:

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean this picture?

Re:Note to Desktop Developers:

[JDWTopGuy]

Oh I dunno, she's kinda cute...

Great article

[millertime3250]

I don't know how he got his hands on a copy of longhorn, but it's exciting to see that it's not crap yet.

New Security on Longhorn

[superpulpsicle]

From an inside Microsoft source - "Longhorn will be released with a retina and fingerprint scanner since the previous product activation code was not effective enough. We are currently on beta 2 of our scanner. By RC1 we should be able to scan your retina without detaching your cornea."

Re:New Security on Longhorn

[Corbin Dallas]

Boy, I'd hate to have Windows crash on me while scanning... You'd have a high-res image of the Blue Screen of Death burned into your retina.

Re:New Security on Longhorn

[eet23]

By RC1 we should be able to scan your retina without detaching your cornea.

I think that's a typo you made there. Surely you mean "Service Pack 2" rather than "RC1"?

Re:New Security on Longhorn

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't already?

/.ed

[Distinguished Hero]

I guess he decided to install Longhorn on his server...

where can i sign up for longhorn?

[mstandfest]

where can i sign up for the beta of longhorn?

Re:where can i sign up for longhorn?

[JPriest]

You can't, or at least not for a while. When it is made available Microsoft will announce signups or you could get a TechNet subscription.

Re:where can i sign up for longhorn?

[TheRaven64]

I asked some guys from MS this last week. Apparently the answer is nowhere. They're dog-fooding it, but they have no plans for a public beta. (Although since this is MS, they may have made some plans for a public beta by next week.)

Re:where can i sign up for longhorn?

[sitruc37diesel]

www.kazaa.com

Re:where can i sign up for longhorn?

[H3g3m0n]

Shouldn't that be kazaalite.com

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

[Wingchild]

From the article,

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". :P

Work on your bias. Good work submitting the article; news is news, regardless of the bearer.

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

[rmarll]

Ain't that the truth.

My inability to mod this up is going to have to be sated by a me too post.

Back on topic, this review is pretty much useless asside from the screenshots showing off the *GIANT BITMAPS FROM HELL*. The details are pretty marginal in and of them selves. The most obvious change(*GIANT BITMAPS FROM HELL*) didn't even get a mention, while other featurs that have been around a while (box displaying file properties) get a mention. An examination as to if there is a checkbox in the Tools>Folder Options panel that read "Turn off *GIANT BITMAPS FROM HELL*?" would have been nice.

This was obviously a "Get the review out and up on Slashdot before anyone else" review(and a successfull one too). Not to say that's the most horrible thing in the world (the pictures were certainly of some use), but I hope a real review will make it onto the front page in a couple weeks.

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

[Elwood P Dowd]

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.

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

[FireBreathingDog]

The guy said:

I'm sure a couple of more minutes while browsing would have done provoked Longhorn to squeal.

But then you accuse him of being biased and unfair, claiming:

*Any* operating system can be broken through maliciously beating on it.

I don't know what planet you come from, but where I live, a few minutes using a web broser does not constitute "maliciously beating on" an operating system.

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

[kalidasa]

Since the person installing probably is an administrator, it only makes sense to give the installer admin access. He can then create and change permissions at will later. You don't have to work this hard to find thing to criticize about MS.

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

[Razzak]

Calm down, sparky. He meant that by *browsing* he could have gotten quite a few more errors. If you build your browser into the OS, and the browsing gets kernel panics, yes you're allowed to criticize that OS.

Just like how the finder is slow in OSX.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys don't understand Windows.

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 ... just like Windows XP.

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

[ElGuapoGolf]

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.

I dunno... I don't think he was talking about taking an axe to the system. I know I can crash XP by plugging in some combination of USB devices, which won't crash my linux box.

Not to mention XP's poor handling of multiple network devices when used in conjunction with a docking station. I had to deal with that headache for nearly 3 months.

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

[Elwood P Dowd]

Um... no.

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

[pjrc]

Does any *nix installation *not* start you off as Root, with the ability to create more accounts?

Most have you create non-root accounts at installation. All RedHat installers in the last couple years have done this.

You know the admin password. Meaning, the user will know the admin password.

So, non-issue.

If you misunderstand the issue (that by default the user is logged in with full admin privs) to be the an issue user _could_ login with admin access, then it is a non-issue.

But in fact, the issue is that ordinary, unskilled users will by default be running with full admin privs, rather than a set of privs that are adaquete for the tasks they normally would do and protect them from accidental mistakes and malicious code they may be duped into running. Some people might say "well, they chose to run as admin", but in fact they just clicked-their-way-through without paying much attention. Good design and security practice is the make the default settings as secure as possible. This is a basic, well established principle... on of those things all Microsoft developers were supposedly off to "training" for a month after Bill's famous "trustworthy computing" memo. But it appears that even now, Microsoft is still making the default for ordinary users to run with full admin privs.

For sake of comparison, in Redhat 8, users are likely to run the system as ordinary users. The installer encourages them to create non-root accounts. The first time the GUI is started, it will complain with a warning dialog box if the user is running as root. Thing like this warning go a long way to helping protect users. Some other apps will also complain if the user is running as root. The other notworthy feature in Redhat 8 (and possibly other distros) is that GUI-based configuaration programs prompt for the root password, and a security manager maintains the root access for a while so the user isn't punished by having to retype the root password constantly as they tweak settings. And most linux-based apps are designed to run without root access. All of these factors work together, most of the time, to cause users to run without root privs and all the unnecessary risks associated with it.

Compare to Microsoft land, where by default the unskilled user runs with full admin privs, and nothing warns them and attempts to get them to "do the right thing".... and historically lots of things "just don't work" unless the user logs out and logs back in as the administrator. Those conditions all conspire to drive ordinary users to run with admin privs (when 99% of the time it's not necessary and needlessly opens them to unnecessary risks).

Ordinary users just want things to work, and they usually take the path of least resistance. Modern linux-based systems make that path relatively secure. But Microsoft, despite their "trustworthy computing" marketing still appears to take the easy approach, where they make the easiest path one with unnecessary security risks.

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

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Windows 2000 (creates an admin account, then prompts you to create a user w/ full administrative rights) and Windows XP (see Win2k)

FYI - thats WinXP Pro! WinXP Home edition however supports both kinds of users - administrators *and* limited users, which is, err, nice.

Oh, and by default you're logged in as an Administrator, but if memory serves you do get the oportunity to create other users (both kinds!) during the installation.

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

[Whatchamacallit]

does any *nix installation *not* start you off as Root, with the ability to create more accounts?

Yeah, it's Mac OS X. The slickest easiest installation I've ever seen and I've seen them all!

OS X prompts you to create a user this user account is an administrator but it is not root. Root is disabled by default in OS X. Admin accounts can do quite a bit but not everything. I've left root off on all my OS X boxes because sudo or 'sudo -s' works just fine. Any admin account can run sudo and use their own password to access root functionality.

The security in OS X is rather flexible yet very very simple. It's possible to make a normal user where they can't shoot themselves in the foot. You can also make a restricted user where you can lock things down even further so they can only run the apps you want them to run. This is nice for kiosk systems.

Unix systems are secure out of the box in most cases. OpenBSD being the absolute best at this. Mac OS X is not secured heavily but it's really easy to make it secure. It even includes SSH! Microsoft is horrible, you have to really run it through a major security audit process as just about everything is wide open by default! It's a nightmare!

Granted this is fixed in post NT, but as of NT 4 you could lock down registry editing but it would still process .REG files. So if you knew enough you could make up a .REG file and literally give yourself full admin rights by just copying a file to a floppy and double-clicking it! Of course that's local admin rights and not domain admin rights. But still I can lock out domain admins from remotely getting to the box this way. It won't stop physical access but it kills SMS reporting and remote admin.

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

[tabby]

Well both Redhat and Mandrake prompt you to create non-root users during install so it is possible to never login as root and only su

The big difference is that the idea is old and well entrenched in unix but only new in win*. So there is little win software that can take advantage of it so limited access users have less utility for everyday use, particularly if you want to play games, although this is changing.

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

[WeedMonkey]

Slackware, off the top of my head, lets you set up the partition table and then tells you to log in as root (no password) to run the setup program.

Once you've completed installation, you get to set a root password. Once you've done this, you can log in (as root) and add your users.

Not sure how other distros work, but I see absolutely no functional difference here between Slack and recent Windows versions.

commentary

[suhit]

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/.

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& catid=1.

Suhit

Re:commentary

[EdgeTreader]

"...interesting commentary on Longhorn, Build 4008, including cracks that are already being released"

If they had to name it after a cheese, I would have thought 'Swiss' more appropriate than 'Longhorn'.

Re:commentary

[ender81b]

Stolen directly from osnews.com!. Congratulations you have succesfully plagarized!

Inteface choices?

[Hythlodaeus]

Is it possible to configure Longhorn to use a no-sidebar no-frills Windows 2000 interface? The only new features I care about are the ones "under the hood."

A Mirror

[DigiBoi]

If you cant get to the site, here is a Mirror.

Re:A Mirror

[kc8apf]

Of all the times for me not to have mod points.....

Re:A Mirror

[mstandfest]

gee... thanks.

Re:A Mirror

[brejc8]

Oh no! I hate wood themes. And now the're standard in windows?
Just look at those tacky varnish borders

Re:A Mirror

[MrHanky]

Or you may take a look at Longhorn itself (it's free to download! Thanks Microsoft!). I think it looks a bit old-fashioned.

Did they try it?

[NetJunkie]

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.

Re:Did they try it?

[dpvtank]

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.

Re:Did they try it?

[Azureflare]

The XP interface is cluttered and annoying, I find all emulations of it to be disturbing. The win2k interface is much more pure and less eyecandy. I'm not running windows to be entertained. I'm running it to do work. XP reminds me of a baby's toy.

Re:Did they try it?

[rosie_bhjp]

Agreed, I've always thought of the XP interface to be acceptable if the machine I was working on was called "Sony's My First PC".

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.

Re:Did they try it?

[Jeedo]

I tryed, however i didnt like the dublo theme so i tryed StyleXP.

my current desktop looks a little bit like this when i need to boot into windows.

Re:Did they try it?

[Dylan Zimmerman]

The standard Windows xp interface was designed to be more suitable for pen-based computing. The window controlls are larger, they finaly fixed that Start menu problem (it was one pixel up and one pixel right of the bottom left corner), they added the mouse position effects so that it's easier to tell just what you're going to hit with the stylus, etc. They just made it more pen friendly. I, personaly, like the new Start menu. It adds a nice list of my most frequently used programs and such so that I don't have to go diving through the whole thing just to run my development environment. Other than that, I despise most of the changes. Only the Recycle Bin on the desktop feels like MacOS (good), but they don't mount drives to the desktop (bad). It makes it much harder to use. The classic "OK" and "Cancel" buttons are still a UI programmer's nightmare and MS still hasn't figured that out. I go to close a window and it says "By closing this window, you will not be able to log out. Logout now? [OK] [Cancel]" Now, what would you expect the Cancel button to do? I, persoaly, expect it to keep the window open, but it turns out that that is the button to close the window and not logout. Weird, huh? The list of useability fauxpaus goes on and on.

Re:Did they try it?

[mausmalone]

I'm one Comp-Sci person who tried it, and for the most part went with a blend. I like the XP skin, but hate its start menu (mostly beccuase the thing I use most is burried). I like the cleaner input-box style, I despise that stupid dog that added another step to my search process.

See, it's not the visual part of the UI that I dislike, it's the usability. Add a step to search that helps it none and I get mad. Institute a default "thumbnail" view which adds load time to folders and I get mad. Create a start menu that occupies half the screen and yet "programs" stays just as small, and I get mad. Lock all toolbars by default, hide desktop icons, and try to shove both IE and MSN Messenger down my throat and I get really really mad.

So as long as they don't force any features on me (hey, best intentions aside, not all users love all new features), I'll be happy.

Re:Did they try it?

[madcow_ucsb]

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...

Re:Did they try it?

[bob65]

The old look is much cleaner; more "professional" I suppose. Exactly. The moment I saw the bright blue windows with big red buttons, I switched the silver theme (which, unfortunately, still has big red buttons, but is much more tolerable). I switched to the old look after awhile too, but after using the silver theme, the old look just looked too...outdated. As for the start menu, I switched off the "recent programs" list, but kept the new style menu, where I have more space to put my favourite (and most often used) programs right on the root start menu (not in a programs subfolder).

Re:Did they try it?

[Selfbain]

When I first installed XP, I was running it with the new GUI and my brother asked me why I was using the sesame street scheme.

Re:Did they try it?

[Lawrence_Bird]

I needed cleartype for my new LCD's so went and upgraded a very stable (for microsloth) win2k to a not so stable XP. And I've already turned off just about every bit of eye candy. Unfortunately the field I work in has no linux/bsd software base, so I'm stuck. For now..

Re:Did they try it?

[EvanED]

I second that, but still, "Logout" and "Don't Logout" buttons would be better.

Re:Did they try it?

[SoLoatWork]

Obviously none of you used the "Silver theme" which is installed by default. All your complaints are nullified are that point. Why ignore the silver theme? ...

Re:Did they try it?

[j2demelo]

Driving in a square box with wheels should be fine for you then.

Re:Did they try it?

[Selfbain]

So you're saying the default color scheme doesn't suck... because it can be changed? By that logic, windows doesn't suck because you can switch to another operating system. AOL doesn't suck because you can always switch to another provider.

We were just talking about the kid's show color scheme that they chose as the default. The fact that it can be changed just alter the fact that it looks stupid.

Re:Did they try it?

[Selfbain]

Hmm no I think my point is valid. He was saying that you shouldn't complain about something if you can switch it to something else...

If you read someone's post and don't comprehend it, please don't respond. As to me being a retard at least I know how to create a /. account. It's not hard really, you should give it a try.

Re:Did they try it?

[holy zarquon's singi]

The main thing that keeps me on Linux and off Windows wherever possible is sloppy mouse focus. Is this possible in Windows XP or is control not that granular?

Re:Did they try it?

[Unordained]

i noticed when disabling that service on my g/f's dad's computer that, uhm, windows suddenly forgets how to make square buttons for min/max/close! it's fine if, like me, you're used to reading small fonts. but it big fonts/big bars ... it just made really tall, skinny buttons. turned the service back on -just- so that would stop.

or i could just be a dork. and not know how to use windows. wait ... isn't their argument that it's easier? i don't remember having that king of problem with my slackware 8 installation ...

(admittedly, i get confused fixing my dad's mandrake 9 installation ... nothing is where i want it to be, too many automated features that don't fully work ... and *drake need to die.)

Re:Did they try it?

[Jucius Maximus]

"They just made it more pen friendly. I, personaly, like the new Start menu. It adds a nice list of my most frequently used programs and such so that I don't have to go diving through the whole thing just to run my development environment."

If you like that, then you'll love this. It's a quasi command line freeware tool called MCL that has all but obsoleted using the mouse to start programs on my windows machine. Once you're used to it, you can't live without it.

Re:Did they try it?

[iamsquicky]

I frequently use the recent programmes list to start programs. I increased that to 10 and I rarely run something that isn't on the list. I find this an incredibly useful addition.

The only other UI changes in XP that I think are an improvement is the grouping option in My computer and the font cleartype.

I don't like the default XP UI, it added bulk around the icons/windows so you lost window space. I found the old look skin wasn't an exact copy of the Win2k look so I'm using an alternative.

Re:Did they try it?

[doofsmack]

Switch to Windows classic theme in the display control panel, then disable the service. No more non-square min/max/close buttons

Re:Did they try it?

[Seq]

Agreed, I've always thought of the XP interface to be acceptable if the machine I was working on was called "Sony's My First PC". Fisher Price, isnt it?

Re:Did they try it?

[binner1]

There always used to be a TweakUI package available for older versions of windows. Thankfully, I haven't spent enough time in XP to see if it's available there.

A quick google turned up this MS page for you...should have what you need.

-Ben

Re:Did they try it?

[Unordained]

i thought i did ... but oh well. =) it's fixed. i don't have to see it again for a while.

thanks anyway =)

i'll see if order matters next time i see that on someone's machine. and they let me remove it. icky. icky theme-ing.

Re:Did they try it?

[Reziac]

Sesame Street? And here I was *sure* it was PlaySkool!!

I wouldn't mind the new XP interface so much if it hadn't stabbed me in the eye, and wasted so bloody much screen estate with pointless pictures that remind me of magazine ads.

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:Screenshots

[EvanED]

Better would be just a simple addition to the replace dialog: 'Rename Old' and 'Rename Copying'. Perhaps better titles; that's the best I can think of at the moment.

Re:Screenshots

[Attis SH]

I see M$ didn't quit annoying people with MSN Messenger. http://www.206.dk/photos/lh4008/10.jpg

Re:Screenshots

[djcinsb]

Hmmm, I'd at least like to have a "Rename" button for the file, along with the "Yes / No" options for the replacement. Not hard, and it would be VERY useful (and probably not very confusing, either).

Re:Screenshots

[WeedMonkey]

Overclocked! w00t!

cheesy mirror

[lizzybarham]

here

mirror mirror on the wall

[seeksoft]

here, a nice mirror. Dont click the links yet as I am still gathering them. http://members.aol.com/JOHNNIECHINO555/index.html

It may be a new build...

[I Love this Company!]

But underneath, Longhorn is the same old bull.

Re:It may be a new build...

[crm114]

yes. and slower than the last pile of poo no doubt.

Microsoft Does it Again

[Omega's Wildfire]

I only have one question... Did they finally get rid of the random error generator?

Re:Microsoft Does it Again

[joch1]

If you dig around you'll find that all the new syuff still sits on the old stuff. Therefore, the random error generator still exxxxxxxxxk.dsj\afKKH;ASEFG-ARRRRRGH!!

Re:jeepers

[aePrime]

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.

Re:jeepers

[avij]

An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.

OMG, now we've /.ed someone's email server, as if slashdotting the web server wasn't enough. Shame on us.

Text from "review"

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Isonews

[Jugalator]

It's a review.

Looks a bit better...

[mrseigen]

It looks like a somewhat more drab version of the Luna theme (bright colors have all been replaced with varying shades of blue) that looks not bad in my opinion.

Re:Looks a bit better...

[Junta]

But I can't help but to think users would think it strange that the UI, while possibly keeping a consistant Feel, change looks with Every release now.... I mean, adding gradients in 98 and 2000 was pretty minor. The changes to XP were drastic enough, and looks playskool to me, but occasional change I understand (3.x to 95 for example) (even though Apple seems more concerned with this and only underwent one 'major' Look and feel overhaul in the Days of MacOS, everything until OSX was quite small, incremental changes, that only tend to add color). This really makes MS look like a company that really doesn't care about consistent UI, favoring instead eye candy. I appreciate Eye Candy (hell, I change Window Managers quite frequently, but I *do* seem to always come back to WindowMaker), but if you are supposedly catering to ease of use, it should be low on the priority list.

That new start menu seems in XP seems to be more about keeping the desktop clean and looking flashy. The frequently used items menu can be annoying as it can change, and some users just skip that list because they can almost never be sure what they are looking for is there, so why bother looking?

Everyone I know stuck with XP switches at least to the classic start menu first. A lot of business users I have dealt with insist on the classic look, because the new look doesn't look professional...

Yeowza!

[Snork Asaurus]

after installing Longhorn on my D: partition

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.

Re:Yeowza!

[snajdarn]

NTFS5 is compatible with NT4 if you are running SP4 or later.

Re:Yeowza!

[Snork Asaurus]

Only to read, not to write. NFG.

Re:Mirror of site that has images

[Jugalator]

It isn't that long actually, but Michael's and Predator's banners suck. :-P

Setup UI != OS UI

[tshak]

From the _article_ -
The desktop is clean similar to its predecessor, XP.

Re:Setup UI != OS UI

[mausmalone]

That's great, but the article was slashdotted before I got here. :(

Having no idea what it says, I'm mostly responding to XP complaints. :)

Re:longhorn is a system resource hog????

[nemaispuke]

What I am waiting for is Microsoft to announce the system requirements for Longhorn only to change them (by a factor of 2 or 4). This happened with Windows 2000 Server where until the launch day the minimum requirements was 128 MB of RAM. On launch day the memory requirement doubled to 256 MB! Not that I advocate installing on minimal hardware but it would have been interesting to see the requirements for this release. If for nothing else than to see how much hardware Microsoft wants us to "toss out and purchase new stuff" in order to get decent performance from Longhorn!

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:exactly, turn off what you don't like

[Havokmon]

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 really HATE that option, I remember where stuff is on the screen, if the computer moves it around, it screws me up.
It's great too, when you tell someone to go to 'File - Print' in MSOffice, and they never have used it, so it DOESN'T EXIST. The two little 'nubs' at the bottom of the menu just don't cut it for most people. They don't know what the hell those mean.

Longhorn M4 Build Review

[krele]

Few nice screenshots, longhorn screensaver and wallpaper. http://www.msfn.org/comments.php?catid=1&id=13 75

Re:Wheee-ooo yet another bum

[Anonymous Coward]

Most sensible people don't buy windows products, they use free illegal versions.

Re:Windows for women and small children

[TheNetAvenger]

Sexist and expectedly ignorant.

So do you normally attack all creativity when you don't understand it?

The more things change..

[shadowlight1]

..the more they stay the same.

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 .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?

I could have guessed those "improvements", without even seeing one screenshot. Come on, MS, where's the real innovation?

Time will tell.

Chris

Re:The more things change..

[shadowlight1]

At the time I was both a "gotta have the newest thing" freak and a habitual procrastinator. :)

I think we all go through that stage in our late teens.

Chris

Guess I shoudn't have swithced...

[justMichael]

> uname -a
Darwin here 6.4 Darwin Kernel Version 6.4: Wed Jan 29 18:50:42 PST 2003; root:xnu/xnu-344.26.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
[me@here:~]
> progman.exe
bash: progman.exe: command not found
[me@here:~]
>

I do so miss that lovely interface ;-)

Re:Yawn...

[Jugalator]

At least give us some examples to not look like a flamebait... What's harder to find in XP than in 2000 for example?

Screenshots

[hackwrench]

Just looked at the replace dialog screenshot and saw that they still don't have the feature I want. When will they allow you to rename the file you are copying? In the My Computer screenshot the concept of libraries replacing the concept of My [object] is curious.

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

Fight club

[Repugnant_Shit]

When I look at the screenshots, all I can think of is "And YOU, you're too FUCKING...BLUE!"

Re:Fight club

[Xyde]

I love it how they have blue, blue, pretty blue gradients, blue buttons, then all of a sudden a big hunk of SHIT BROWN right in the middle of a window.

Re:Fight club

[cygnusx]

> then all of a sudden a big hunk of SHIT BROWN right
> in the middle of a window

It's only a beta. It's probably a placeholder for more work.

OTOH, what's the deal with blue and new MS products? The Office 11 screenshots seemed to be swathed in blue. Now, I like blue, but sometimes it feels like too much of a good thing.

Why take their word for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try it out... in a virtual machine, of course. When MS say alpha, they mean it.

eDonkey2000 network link (Emule strongly recommended):

ed2k://|file|longhorn_usa_4008_x86fre_procd1.iso |
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.

New "File Replace" dialog

[golo]

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?

Re:New "File Replace" dialog

[Nebu]

"Repeat my answer each time this occurs" != "Yes to all". If the user checks that box, and clicks on skip, then all duplicates will be skipped.

This is also not the same as cancel, because cancel would stop the copying/moving process right then and there, whereas "Skip to all" would continue copying files as long as there were no duplicates (and simply skip the cases where there are duplicates.)

Load Test

[Alien54]

It looks like that load test of their load balancing cluster is going well.

too bad it's a cluster of 486's

:-P

Re:Yawn...

[mrmag00]

My brain. Microsoft seems to have done away with that requirement.

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:Enlighten yourselves.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Enlighten yourselves.

[bstadil]

You can't have it both ways

Sure you can.

Most likely the windows users when Longhorn is released will split into same two groups.

Only interesting question is the size of each group.

Re:Enlighten yourselves.

[cpeterso]

Where in the world did Balmer say, "Longhorn is going to force them to rewrite lots of their apps, even office"?? And I have a very hard time believing them will DROP the Win32 APIs. I'm sure they will bundle and hype the .NET Framework, but Win32 will be hear for a long time..

Heh, I bet someone

[machine of god]

There is a problem with the database that is preventing the site from working.

An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.

has a very full mailbox.

Re:Heh, I bet someone

[WebMasterJoe]

didn't use the preview button!

Re:Checkout kde-current from cvs.

[wtmcgee]

seriously. mac os is in the 10.3 dev stages right now, and then will go to .4, .5 and who knows where else. jobs and company want to stick with the "X" thing as long as possible.

granted, i'd say 10.2 was really more like a .5 release, and when we see 10.5 for real, that will be much like an OS 11 release (as far as features, etc go)

Re:try this link at neowin.net

[Anonymous Coward]

try this one

Accessories seldom updated

[octothorpe]

Has anyone ever noticed how the default windows accessories almost never get updated? Why can't they spend a couple of programmer-weeks to update paint or notepad or the calculator? They have been the same since 95 and if I remember correctly 3.1. I know that these are trivial little tools and much better 3rd party replacements exist but would it kill them to support png's with paint?

Re:Accessories seldom updated

[mhesseltine]

Visit the W3 PNG test page using IE and Mozilla. IE doesn't fully support PNG, why would you expect Paint (IMHO the worst image editor EVER) to fully support the PNG format?

Re:Accessories seldom updated

[MNJavaGuy]

Paint does support PNGs. Take a look in the Open and Save dialogs.

Re:Accessories seldom updated

[Ben Hutchings]

Notepad was updated in Windows 2000 - they added keyboard shortcuts, the option to save with a specific character encoding, and some other useful features.

One of my cow-orkers showed me the other day that it has weird bugs relating to word-wrap that have been in there for ages, though.

Re:Accessories seldom updated

[unitron]

When they went from 3.1 to 95 they replaced Paintbrush with Paint, which not eveyone considered an improvement, and replaced Write with Wordpad, which not everyone considered an improvement.

Apparently the powertoys release for XP includes a replacement for the calculator that lets you graph and evaluate functions.

Mostly, though, Microsoft seems to "update" stuff that doesn't need it just to annoy people with having to learn a new way to do it.

And heres another one...

[Zone-MR]

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:

----
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 .NET (which I was running previously). Even with the WinFS service disabled, the system runs painfuly slow.

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.

Re:And heres another one...

[jemnery]

Computers are useless at interpreting natural language queries

Oh. Is that why when I ask it for:
"Tea -- Earl Grey -- Hot"
nothing happens? And I do have an English accent...

Re:Is this legal?

[Zone-MR]

Of course not... you are bound by a non-disclosure agreement...

But how was I to know. The EULA on the version I downloaded said it was free to share, and you could write all the reviews you want...

You say its been tampered with?? MY GOSH, really? Not like you can just replace EULA.TXT.

Re:longhorn is a system resource hog????

[calc]

It would be nice if it required 4GB of ram thus forcing Intel to release a desktop 64bit chip like AMD is already doing. ;)

Re:So sad

[Sunnan]

The UI of Win 3.11 had a gazillion flaws compared to it's competitors but unlike Win95, it was consistent. I actually like it better than Win95.

Re:Hoax

[caluml]

Please do tell me why, wanker.

Re:ToDo list:

[JackRuby43]

Here's a little info to help you make your decision...

Satan is much more likely to give you a reach-around.

: )

But it is real?!

[Lshmael]

According to our friends at winbeta.org, it is a dupe, and not of the dual-post kind.

And a bit I just added...

[Zone-MR]

Longhorn looks promising in some ways. If developed correctly, it could have the capability to compete with unix or bsd-based platforms. Unfortunatly early indications show that Microsoft is fighting for the market by making Longhorn appeal to novice and inexperienced users, rather than fighting for technological superiority. Technologies like WinFS should be exploted to their full potential and the emphasis should be on functionality and not excessive ease of use. Microsoft should not give in to pressure from coorporations to implement destructive technologies such as palladium. Appealing to newbies is a short-term solution that will inevitably backfire if power users and developers become tempted to move away.

Re:And a bit I just added...

[johnwroach]

If developed correctly, it could have the capability to compete with unix or bsd-based platforms.

Thank God someone said that (before I had to). I use XP at home (NT at one job, 98 and MacOSX at the other job; isn't being a student grand?) and I think it's great. Granted, I changed my shell to LiteStep, but the underlying OS works perfectly. I haven't had it crash yet, and if I don't like clicking through 8 menus to configure something, there's always alternative layouts.

Microsoft really is making headway with their OS.

On a side note, are explorer, progman, litestep, etc., really shells? They don't seem to change any of the actual interfaces or commands, just they way you go about them. Shouldn't they be termed something else?

Re:And a bit I just added...

[cygnusx]

> 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).

The EULA is void

[The Analog Kid]

If you read the EULA it says Whistler, this is longhorn they voided their own EULA. Not that a leaked OS has a valid EULA anyway.

What KDE should do...

[ryanvm]

You know what I think would be really funny - if KDE were to include a clone of Microsoft's Longhorn theme before it's even released. Stealing the thunder of their "amazing" new GUI.

I'm not sure when Longhorn is supposed to go gold, but it's got to be more than 3 or 4 months. Plenty of time for some bored themers to do a complete rip-off of the Longhorn style. I don't think KDE should make it the default theme by any means, just have them in there as an option.

Of course, MS legal action would surely try to squash it, but it's my understanding that "look and feel" is very difficult to protect.

a link

[a_moshg]

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"

Oops. Correction:

[Snork Asaurus]

Only to read, not to write. NFG.

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.

Re:Don't these people have anything better to do?

[negatv1]

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.

Nice move, slick

[osgeek]

The poster of this story apparently Slashdotted himself?

Nice move.

Re:jeepers

[NineNine]

Well, I don't think that it should be "compared" to anything. I use W2K, and like the parent post, I have no idea what the GUI of XP is like. But that being said, there's nothing wrong with W2K, so it's pretty irrelevant to me anyway. I'm not switching.

You know...

[LooseChanj]

...XP still includes edlin.

I think he was looking for a kernel crash

[spitzak]

Both Linux and Windows will stop working if the root user deletes enough files, but they will both likely stop with some kind of error like "Unable to locate file blah, I can't continue", which is not really a bug because in fact they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.

What he was looking for was a BSOD (or a kernel panic on Linux) or perhaps mysterious lockups (which are now much more common on both systems than actual crashes).

One dumb question...please.

[PSaltyDS]

In the sites with screen shots of the setup process: What is the easiest way to get these screen shots? The PrtScrn button doesn't work at that point in the OS load, so what is the best way to get these shots? Digital camera? Video out to another computer's video capture card? Or am I missing an even easier way?

Re:One dumb question...please.

[Wesley Felter]

VMware or Virtual PC.

Re:jeepers

[agallagh42]

I use a horse, and I have no idea what riding in a car is like. But that being said, there's nothing wrong with horses, so it's pretty irrelevant to me anyway. I'm not switching.

Read The Fabulous Manual

[kiwi-matgar]

It has been said, again and again and again and again that NTFS 4.0 is incompatible with NTFS 5.0. What do you need, a big friggin neon sign saying "for the dit witt in front of the computer, NTFS 4.0 isn't compatible with NTFS 5.0" whilst a marching band goes past?

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

Looks like eye candy . . . .

[Anonymous Poodle]

for the blind.

My Contacts ... another MS bundling tactict?

[trumpetinc]

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.

Wow.

[Chris Johnson]

Wow- they are desperately chasing after MacOSX Aqua while at the same time trying not to look TOO translucent, TOO rounded or TOO lickable. Check out all the rounded but not TOO 3D edges, and how they're pushing for a 3D effect but not too contrasty and aggressive in the manner of OSX.

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?

Speed and Glitches

[EtherBoo]

I ran a couple of tests with LH on my system (Athalon XP 1800, 512 PC2100 DDR, GeForce 3 Ti200). I actually noticed in certain areas speed was better. I upgraded the drivers for all my devices on my XP install and on my LH install. In UT, I managed 60 FPS on LH and 50 FPS on XP. I didn't have time for anymore gaming benchmarks, but I found that interesting. In terms of glitches, here's what I've seen. 1) In the task manager, it doesn't always show you who is running the application running (IE user, system). 2) When making changes to the desktop, the icons usually disappear, but right clicking and hitting refresh fixes that. 3) When changing the start menu to classic, there is a shortcut for "Activate Longhorn" but it directs you to the wrong path (c:\windows\system32\%USERNAME%\system32\oobe\msoo be.exe). Thats all that comes to mind for now. I'll see if any other games have the same result. I noticed when booting up, it gets to the GUI quickly enough, but it take a while for all the programs to come up, even with the computer in a selective startup. Also, there seems to be problems isntalling devices, even with MS native drivers.

counter rant..

[slittle]

A whole rant over one little thing. That's pretty thin.

The single menu bar is indicative of the Mac's single-tasking nature (not limited to the menu bar), which is a constant irritation for me (I have to use Macs daily at work, and I fucking hate them). The Mac menu bar is fine for an "appliance" but not for a computer, especially not for a multitasking computer and/or literate users.

And any programmer that implements modal dialogs (the kind that prevent me from doing ANYTHING else with the system, not just that one application), including MacOS programmers: file open dialogs for eg, should be shot, drawn, quartered and shot into the sun. And then REALLY hurt.

why all the complaining?

[jafac]

Windows is Just Fine for me, it does everything I need it to do.

As soon as I finish installing Cygwin.