Slashdot Mirror
Longhorn Beta is Disappointing
bonch writes "Well, Longhorn beta 5048 was released a day before the start of WinHEC 2005, suggestive of the fact that it is not terribly impressive. Paul Thurrott (a Windows writer whose previously reported review of Mac OS X Tiger was updated after user feedback) confirmed this today in day two of his blog from WinHEC. Microsoft needed something big to kill the hype of competitors, but screenshots show minor visual updates from the last beta, and to quote Thurrot: 'This has the makings of a train wreck.'"
Shut up. Are you seriously suggesting that given an actual train wreck happened in Japan, that the author is somehow insensitive to the issue? Or that he should be sensititve at all? "Train Wreck" is used all the time to describe projects or whatever that are going off the tracks. Who cares what you think anyhow. Shut up.
Much as I don't like Windows, all the stuff Apple claims as innovative in Tiger has already been out for Windows free or cheap for a while.
Download Konfabulator from konfabulator.com (this is where Apple ripped off Dashboard).
Download Google or Yahoo! desktop search for free. (Google also gives you Picasa.)
For RSS, use Firefox and LiveBookmarks--better than Safari.
Pretty much all the major IM clients have offered video chat for a while. I have personally used it with Yahoo! IM.
For scripting, there are lots of choices for Windows. There are some visual scripting environments analogous to Automator, but they are a bit pricey. I think for most people, AutoHotKey is actually a better choice anyway.
The only thing "innovative" about Tiger is that Apple is bundling that stuff with the OS. Whenever Microsoft does that, there is lots of screaming and complaining. And Linux, of course, pretty much bundles all of that in its distributions (desktop search is still a separate install, but that will be bundled as well soon).