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Microsoft Plans WinXP "Reloaded"
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Microsoft changed their minds and are planning a new OS release before Longhorn. They are calling it XP Reloaded."
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if this OS will have full 64bit compatiablity? As if it doesn't it could seriously slow down 64bit sales, as I for one was waiting for Longhorn to upgrade to 64bit, and I know a lot of my friends were.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Not much difference from what they did with 98SE or 95B (or 95C).
Um, the Win98SE analogy is perfectly valid, but the later editions of Win95 were never sold retail, only to OEMs.
Microsoft learned their lesson from the huuuuuuuuge gaps between not only NT4 and Win2000, but between NT service packs. Forgot it for a little bit, and something must have reminded them. What they really need to do is get service packs back on some kind of schedule. Critical security fixes exempted of course. And quit calling them service packs when they're really (remember these from the DOS days?) step-up versions.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
My guess is that the Longhorn will not be out soon enough for those who bought XP under software assurance program. By having a forced update out, MS can claim that the software assurance program is indeed a good buy.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Nope, sounds more like 98SE to me (that one was free, btw).
Real big architectural changes a-coming (64 bit CPUs, PCI-X, BTX (more of a form factor but i believe ties into OS controlled temp and whatnot), etc..), and the current OS doesn't support them, and the next OS is too far off.
I wouldnt be surprised if they merged the 64bit and 32bit code trees, or something of the sort.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... that Longhorn will be even more delayed. As others in the thread have noted, this is exactly what happened with 95 (B and C) and 98SE and ME's entire reason for existance.
Today we have learned that "new intermediate version" means "omigod, I am up to my eyeballs in delays, and I don't want to look like an ass to my users^W customers"
The previous sig has been removed due to
Remember Windows ME, filling the gap between 98/NT4 and Windows 2000?
The most unstable OS I've (n)ever used.
Well the idea of the 3d accelerated desktop is that your video card will be able to do all the work. Considering how simple the graphics are on a 2d desktop (versus something like doom 3) i imagine almost any mediocre graphics card will speed things up immensly.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
but not by that much. it looks like windows reloaded really kicked some arse, though.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Umm... the Macs don't. The macs use display pdf which can be scaled much like vector graphics that longhorn will include. However Longhorn will do almost all of that on the card (Which macs are starting to do (Quarz Extreme which still does some things in software (CPU)).
Nor will longhorn be a '3d' desktop for the most part, instead it will be more like doing 2D acceleration in 3D spaces, which most cards cannot do efficiently. They mostly flush the render buffer for every switch & the 3D part is still seperate from the 2D portion with the end 3D buffer being blitted to the 2D buffer when it isn't full screen. The main benefit is: vector grapics (which can be done in 2D easily, (example: kde's crystal svg icons) but all 3D apis provide this accelerated if the hardware does it.) which allow smaller sized icons which can scale up & down better than bitmaps, and is useful for high resolution windows so that even if you need large things (poor eyesight) it can only look better running at higher resolution (by having the computer calculate how to display something at 200dpi to a monitor which was at 100dpi (it isn't hard, and if you don't use vector graphics, it is essentially just pixel quadrupling, however with vector grapics & aa, it looks better)
And for anyone who doesn't think cards need a lot of ram: my current desktop is using more than 12MB, and that's only going to go up.
Any computer I am in charge of with Windows, the first thing I do is disable every "visual feature" (aka performance degrader) and strip the OS as bare as possible. Do I want to view a directory as a webpage? Fuck no. I don't want to view it as a 3d studio max file either! It's bad enough that simply highlighting any media file in explorer makes the system read the file (even if no preview is enabled). Want to max out your processor? Rename a file so that it's .avi and highlight it in explorer (I assume this will work because a broken AVI will do it).
95B at least added USB support. 98SE was a definate DOWNGRADE from 98.
It even says it in the article. They don't have enough to make it worthwhile, it's just a security/bugfix release. They are trying to pad it with "value added" crap, half of which will get deleted after install.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Look at Quartz Extreme on any AGP equippen G4 or G5 Mac. It is heavily 3D accelerated and looks 2D. The built in scaling and other acceleration tools that the 3D hardware brings to bare makes the OS extremeley snappy and responsive.
And it's not wastefull at all. It is simply taking advantage of commonly existing hardware that didn't exist when the original 2D API was created.
The reality is that unless you buy a Matrox card, the 2D acceleration that your video card brings to the tape hasn't improved that much at all in the last five years. The 2D core is more than good enough to do what's required of it so most video card companies don't bother expending much energy improviing things. 3D acceleration, on the other hand, has improved at rates that throttle the imagination.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Alright, I believe in a couple years we're going to start seeing some serious version hell. For example, in the future how will we know what is "newer" than the other when we have:
Windows XP
Windows XP Reloaded
Windows XP Revolutions
Windows Xtreme
Windows Xtreme Unleashed
Windows Opposing Force
Windows Blue Shift
Does that stuff mean anything? No. With letter versioning and now this word versioning, to know what is newer than the next the user is just required to know. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, it all makes logical sense. Words, unless they come up with alphabetical names (which would be kinda cool, but still limiting) mean nothing other than "this one is kinda different".
Complie that with other pieces of software which will follow suit (Look at all the software using 2 letter naming convensions for their versioning already) and we'll have very little knowledge what version is actually what.
Additionally, a benefit to number versioning was it allowed us to say "ok, this is 1.0, this software is really new and hasn't undergone any revisons," or "alright, this is version 3.2, they've taken a couple cracks at it and added some fixes." What if I told you I just made Gigawhop Reloaded. What the heck is that? Unless you knew the name of the software already, is it called Gigawhop or Gigawhop Reloaded as a whole? Is Reloaded actually the version? What does that even mean to me? Is it my first release? Second? Third? Tenth?
You have been warned...
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Don't laugh. It's already happening to me. I have cousins a mere decade younger than myself. Introducing them to my MP3 collection was the first time I felt like an absolute, black-socks-and-striped-suspenders-pulling-my-pant s-up-above-my-navel-denture-wearing-geezer-who-
s pends-his-time-complaining-about-the-gubmint.
Elvis who?
That Metallica guy had a great beat going, but his voice ruins it.
Only three Linkin Park songs? Lame!
Whaddayamean, no Britney Spears? Can I download some?
Sucks . Sucks . Sucks. Boring. Sucks... Don't you have *anything* cool?
Then I tried to introduce them to The Cure. Bad, bad idea. You don't know the meaning of pain until you've proffered all your most cherished music to a dismissive fifteen year old.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Under windows the first thing I do is disable all the visual effects. On all but the fastest systems they cause performance issues, and if there are any bugs in the video drivers the visual effects tend to trip them.
I haven't disabled any of the visual effects on my Mac. The majority of them enhance the experience and None of them show signs of the issues I have seen under windows.
My, non-detailed, understanding of the interface on the Mac for the GUI is the CPU composes the 2D image and then puts it out to the video card as a texture. Once it is a texture it can do anything to the image and it is quite quick, scale it, move the window around, etc.
The worst case scenario for the Mac is video, or scrolling a large window; and neither of them show significant issues anyway.
I have a 1.6Ghz G5 , and a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 system. Both with Nvidia graphics cards, the only thing that seems faster (interface wise) on the Windows XP box is scrolling.
I've never seen so many Score: 5 Funnys.
Will XP Reloaded feature a new, more standards-compliant, less vulnerable (to spyware, worms, and pop-ups) version of IE? Because if they aren't planning to release the next IE before Longhorn, and if XP Reloaded will delay the release of Longhorn, Microsoft will have just driven another nail into IE's coffin, setting us up for a Gecko and/or KHTML-dependent web. (Maybe Netscape will win the browser war after all?)
Thank God, they didn't call it The Butterfly Effect.
Why not? I think it describes the state of XP perfectly - multiple minor changes add up to a nonfunctional box, and it's different every time.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Two weeks ago I participated in a Microsoft-sponsored focus group where we considered 20 or so new features that could be added to XP and then expressed our preferences for which of these should go in a new "Small Business" version of the OS. We were a pretty outspoken group and we all agreed on these points and then hammered them home to the Microsoft employees hidden behind the one-way mirror:
1. Splitting XP into different versions was a terrible idea, leading to even more of the dreaded "I'm sorry, you bought the wrong version" problems like when small business owners go buy cheap Compaq boxes with XP Home and then wonder why they can't connect to their domains.
2. The _minute_ a useful, stable version of Linux comes out for the desktop, we're all dumping Windows immediately.
3. Lastly, we all screamed at them that the last thing we wanted was additional "features" and that what we really desired was for them to take five years off and just fix bugs in XP!
They were paying for our opinions and they definitely got their money's worth.
Mozilla Firefox's tagline is "The Browser, Reloaded". (Mozilla stole it from the Matrix sequel, of course.)
The shareholder is always right.
Wait-wait-wait.. so Microsoft is claiming ownership of the name 'Windows' and 'MikeRowe'
Yet they hypocraticly think it's OKAY for them to use the 'Matrix Reloaded' popular name as a platform for their new campaign?
WTF!?
Apart from serious security upgrades, what does Windows XP actually need? I loved 98 but you had to reboot after changing any network settings and it effectively maxed out at 384 of RAM. XP doesn't have any annoyances of that magnitude that I can think of.
After a partial release of the source code. Honestly, I thought that this is all the discussion would be about and instead i found 85 "+5 Funny Matrix Reloaded Windows Rebooted" comments. Howabout the fact that the code windowsXP is based on was leaked to the internet last week. If you thought windows was full of holes two weeks ago that was just the beginning. Microsoft is in the position of never getting a liscencing fee again if their product starts to fail big corporations (many of whom are still running the "older" win2k that was released.
I view this as more of a sign that MS realizes that the source code leak was more of an incredible disaster than they are letting on....Even throwing in some absurd comment about never having a sploit in windows before a patch just to draw your attention away from the real news: "Microsoft admits winXP no longer secure by even their definitions, unscheduled major overhaul coming."
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Whilst here we are rejoicing in a decently mellow winter...and what was that I saw about global warming simply changing climate in many locales around the world?
Only "" 6 inches of snow? We'd take the snow here - we need the moisture, the last 5 years have been the driest ones in over a hundred years - it's the lack of below zero temps that have us happy
I grew up in Minnesota
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
There already was a Microsoft Bob...
and it was deamed creepy
I'm waiting for the spiritual conclusion, "Windows: Reveloutions" where we see Bill Gates portrayed as the savior of human-kind. Maybe the Windows logo will change to a cross when you shutdown too.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
You are new here? This is not a news site. It's news and entertainment site. If you don't like it, block all Windows stories. And while you are at it, select a -5 modifier to all Funny posts in your user preferences.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.