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Longhorn Beta is Disappointing

Posted by Zonk on from the time-for-extreme-programming! dept.

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.'"

11 of 1,086 comments (clear)

  1. Train wreck indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's even uglier than XP, which is no small feat.

    1. Re:Train wreck indeed by Phillup · · Score: 5, Funny

      God..Why can't - after 2000, XP and 3 years in development - the HORRID ancient bitmap artwork for "Control Panel" icon, etc. go away!

      Because Apple doesn't have a control panel icon for them to use?

      (yeah, yeah... I know. System Preferences. It was a JOKE!)

      --

      --Phillip

      Can you say BIRTH TAX
    2. Re:Train wreck indeed by avalys · · Score: 5, Funny

      "For example, XP had the desert dunes wallpaper as default in the beta but switched to the grassy hills wallpaper for the release."

      Uh huh. Quite the paradigm shift, there.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank.
    3. Re:Train wreck indeed by loconet · · Score: 5, Funny

      Because the Control Panel is tightly integrated into the OS and thus the icon cannot and MUST NOT be changed. You cannot change the icon colours without changing the way the calc.exe does addition, if you change calc.exe, Windows Explorer will change to a maroon colour which then will result in kernel32.dll not being found which is needed by notepad.exe and thus it will not start-up and if notepad doesn't start, Internet Explorer will need to work "Offline" and we know what happens when Internet Explorer is "Offline", you cannot login to MSN Messenger!

      --
      [alk]
  2. sarcasm by DarkHelmet · · Score: 5, Funny
    What is he talking about?

    No more Super Mario Land default theme! I'd say that's a step forward.

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
  3. ME? by shamowfski · · Score: 5, Funny

    Train Wreck nothing. If we are going to refer to unreleased software as a trainwreck, then what the hell are we going to call Windows ME?

  4. Black boxes... by MisterLawyer · · Score: 5, Funny

    "This has the makings of a train wreck."

    Shouldn't that say plane wreck now that Microsoft is using black boxes?

  5. Fester... by Stanistani · · Score: 5, Funny

    >to quote Thurrot: 'This has the makings of a train wreck.'

    *Dons engineer cap and lights cigar*

    Just call me Gomez Addams!

    --
    You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
  6. Re:Jack of All Trades, Master of None by Loki_1929 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I'm sure many of you would strongly disagree with the idea that XP can run acceptably with 128MB of RAM."

    Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM. The problem comes when you try to install or run applications which require any memory whatsoever.

    But Windows XP runs fine on 128MB of RAM.

    --
    -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  7. Wow by Pike · · Score: 5, Funny

    The commenters on Paul's site are even more juvenile than we are.

  8. Re:Screenshots? by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, it wouldn't flip itself -- as soon as the rear bumper touched the ground it would blow up!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz