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Longhorn Preview

Posted by Zonk on from the i'm-ready-for-a-filet dept.

prostoalex writes "News.com has up a preview of Microsoft's current build of Longhorn operating system, from Jim Allchin, Microsoft group vice president. The timing is not coincidental with Apple's Tiger release, as Allchin pointed out some advantages that Microsoft had over Apple's OS: 'High on the list of features are security enhancements, improved desktop searching and organizing, and better methods for laptops to roam from one network to another.'" Update: 04/15 21:24 GMT by Z : Thomashawk wrote in to provide links to less formal looks at the Allchin preview, one at his site, and one at Evan William's site.

2 of 605 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Amazing! by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Informative
    I liked this one:
    But while the OS bears plenty of similarities to Tiger, Allchin stressed that Microsoft has broken new ground in Longhorn. For example, document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself. The icon for a Word document, for example, is a tiny iteration of the first page of the file.
    Some new ground. Both KDE and Gnome have had this feature for a good while.
  2. Re:There are other differences... by mihalis · · Score: 4, Informative

    What is the number one reason people stay away from Mac? I submit that it is price. Not price of the OS Tiger, but price of "The Comptuer" you have to buy. Imagine the ability to have something as solid, feature rich, and protected as Tiger, that you can run on a relatively powerful system you made from parts you bought off of newegg for $600. Personally, I believe that's worth waiting for.

    The Mac Mini starts at $500 and it's a bit nicer than a home-brew $600 system would be, since it's very small, cool and quiet.

    I do take your point that the $600 homebrew PC you mention would likely have a bit more oomph in the CPU and graphics card, however you should also bear in mind that Mac OS X is really quite efficient at many things, for example Apple really gets the most performance possible out of its carefully chosen components, so things like video editing are surprisingly good on "weak" PowerPC G4 cpus. I have done about 10 DVD projects on my powerbook which has significantly less raw compute and pixel-pushing power than a Mac Mini.

    Depending on your actual needs, the Mac Mini could really meet your needs and budget well (I would recommend simply giving one a try in a shop, ideally running the applications you would want touse).