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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.'"
What? How many killed and injured? An unfortunate choice of words, considering what happened in Japan. I think that's a bit colored anyway from someone who hates mornings and is undoubtably in a less than spritely mood.
I thought the bit about "Longhorn will run fine on a 1GHz computer with 256 MB of RAM" being good (This is good news for today's PC users, some of whom are concerned that they won't have the PC muscle needed to run the next Windows.) rather disturbing. Sounds like the thing is going to be an absolute pig, like XP and 95 before it. (Remember when they said you could run 95 in 8MB? We found you realistically needed 24MB) Even though RAM is cheap, I'm not fond of loading 1GB into a box and then seeing about 1/3 of it taken up by stuff 'I may need and would be really neat if already loaded in memory so IE and other apps would appear to load quickly.' A bit like asking if someone has a pen knife and they hand you one of those swiss army knives with the works, when all you need is just a small sharp blade for 5 seconds (you spend 30 seconds trying to find the actal knife blade in the Victorinox monster.) A PC is a hole in your desktop into which you continually shovel money. With Longhorn you'd better get a bigger shovel
Lovely screen shots. What about the operating system are they supposed to convey, other than it looks more annoying than even XP (I don't do icons in Explorer windows, I do Details.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's even uglier than XP, which is no small feat.
(On a serious note, it'd probably be a good idea to fix that--otherwise, grandma's gonna have a hard time figuring out what the "Shu..." button does on her large-text setup...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Well it's still in beta, and a long way to release so a lot can change.
Wow, a pre-beta release that isn't feature complete has 'the makings a train wreck'.
Give me a break, it's not even considered beta 1.
It's like complaining about interior design of an unbuilt house.
'OMG, I didn't want open walls and exposed wires! I wanted green wallpaper.'
The first screen shot is in monochrome, the original Macintosh had more shades of grey than this! :)
Jonathanjk.com
backend first, frontend last - I wouldn't worry, they have a year or more.
I've played with the 3DWM, it's fun.
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
He's complaining that the screenshots aren't very different? I thought the point of Longhorn was primarily the changes within the OS internals.
I could pop a Ferrari engine into a Pinto, and this guy would complain about the air freshener hanging from the mirror.
--
get a free laptop
"Redmond speed-up the copies."
Dashboard Widgets
The purple start button is aweful. Generally I think it looks ghastly, but atleast they ditched the sidebar.
Does/did the Windows 2k classic style GUI really need replacing?
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?
It was made very clear that the build for WinHec was soley provided as a platform to test driver compatability. MS still has a couple of months until it releases Beta 1.
Please hold your flame till then.
A speech...
As long as they don't totally fvck up what they already have, I can't see a train wreck.
Windows ME. Now that was a train wreck.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I actually like the new look. It is 20 times better than the default XP theme. I have to switch every XP work machine to "Classic" because I hate the "Fisher-Price" coloring scheme of XP. Computers should look professional and not like "My First Computer".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is 5048 the expected release date?
We go through this same thing every year before Microsoft releases their next OS. Everyone gets all gloomy and doomy about how it's going to take too long, and all the features that get trimmed (cairo/winfs again), and the 632235 bugs still outstanding. A year from now all this will vanish and the hype will be unbearable. The press will be going nuts over the coming computer rapture. And then the same thing will happen as always when the OS is released. A few people will buy it and upgrade their computers. Most everyone else will simply get it from their OEMS when they buy a new computer, whether they want it or not.
Don't tell me you guys actually expected Microsoft to come up with something good ;)
"My thoughts are not positive, not positive at all. This is a painful build to have to deal with after a year of waiting, a step back in some ways. I hope Microsoft has surprises up their sleeves. This has the makings of a train wreck. I'll have more on that later."
This sounds pretty honest from an aledged Microsoft-shill.
For once, I think Microsoft did things right by focusing on usability and not on pretty graphics to make geeks go "weeeeeee". Why is it that they can do no right? If it's too pretty, geeks complain. If it's not pretty enough, geeks complain. I would much prefer to have a solid bakend in alpha, and worry about the pretty stuff later. Do you pick the color of paint before the foundation of your house has been laid? If so, you might just have your priorityies misaligned.
Furthermore, if you watch videos of the beta (which aare actuall of build 5060, no 5048), you will see Longhorn with the new effects enbaled, which is not the case by default on installation. I think it looks damn sexy and will give Mac OS X users a run for thier money.
Do your homework before you post.
Did you see the scroll bar in one of the menus?!
Why? There's still room on the screen for it to taller. A scroll bar should be the last resort.
Yuck.
Slashdotters making non-microsoft hating comments in a post about Longhorn.
Enough said.
Most of the marketing hype around Longhorn isn't how pretty it'll look, but how much a programmer can do with it. Remember the DB driven file system, for the searches and everything? And what about XAML?
To be sincere, I really DON'T KNOW what to expect from Longhorn. Anybody does?
I watched the 1hr45min keynote from WinHec that included a number of longhorn demos. I haven't personally been playing with LH builds so seeing the stuff demoed was new to me. I thought it was nice. The desktop search capabilities that will be in LH client inspite of not having a real WinFS underneath are surprising.
I'm not interested in getting in a comparative argument with some other eye-candy oeprating system that apparently ships this month; i'm only speaking about longhorn in terms of what i saw demoed and comparing it to what windows xp does today.
One interesting thing i noticed is that i thought some of the demos would be a bit.. "cooler". The underlying possibilities with the new frameworks that are going in should really have some growing room in them that the demos really didn't convey.. or so i'd think.
The Metro format was a surprise to me as well. I'd be curious to see some sort of technical analysis of it. Note also that from a cursory glance it seems like a royalty free format that wouldn't necessarily shut out F/OSS implementations.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
"This has the makings of a train wreck."
Shouldn't that say plane wreck now that Microsoft is using black boxes?
What's so exciting about an OS? Isn't it the apps that we really care about? As long as the OS is secure, doesn't crash, and runs what I want it to run well on the hardware I choose to run it on, isn't that what counts?
(And tack on "and is open source" as well for the perhaps 3% of the world who really understands why that matters...?)
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
>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
you'd know it was really not much.
The name of the project is a reflection of the ski hill area.
And so Longhorn is really just not that interesting, either.
Now, if it had been called Granite, from the Red Mountain Ski Area in the Purcells up in BC, instead of from the coastal mountains, we'd be cooking with gas!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Microsoft is one of the most profitable software companies of the world (the most?). Despite of having basically an ilimted amount of money to invest in technology, they've had to remove half of the features of longhorn (the latest one was a href="http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10 422">NGSCB).
And even doing that, they've delayed it several times. They can hire the engineers they want, they can waste the money they want. Still, they aren't doing anything useful. The problem is, as always, the not-engineer people, who don't have idea of were Microsoft is going. The golden days of getting revenues by changing the document format in Office are gone. The days where being compatible was everything and people loved it are partially gone because internet allows to update things
And because they don't have an idea of where microsoft is going, they invest in nearly every market they can: Servers, games, xbox, search engine, keyboards, mouses, data bases, programming languages. Microsoft is trying to fight with all the industry, and they can't win.
Frankly, I think Paul has the need to call it bad at this point.
If it is bad, Paul is the guy who should be the one to call it first, he's life is so tied up with Windows Development.
Second, by calling it a "train wreck" prior to release allows him to provide a nice counterpoint to his ridiculous cheerleading, so that when Longhorn is released, he can whoop and holler and say stuff like "It was touch and go for a while, but MS has released the greatest OS since TOPS-20!".
The fact that Longhorn likely WILL be a trainwreck is orthogonal to whether Paul would call it one at this point in it's development.
The article was kinda short on content. The author failed to tell why Longhorn is going to be a "train wreck."
Microsoft touted Longhorn's features such as WinFS however they have failed to appear in this, the first Longhorn "release". It seems like Microsoft is simply releasing an OS as quickly as possible as opposed to checking it thoroughly for bugs (I know, I know, it's a beta release, but beta with MS = pretty close to the real thing). This is yet another reason why Microsoft is steadily losing ground to Linuses and other alternative OS's. The quality of their software is simply low as they are trying to force out features to meet a schedule, as opposed to FOS OS's, which are simply there for the features (and yet update more often). A good sign of where the world is heading in terms of computer software.
Whereas his web server is a train wreck. These jokes aren't funny, btw.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
NOTHING from Microsoft is disappointing.
I call shenanigans.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Strickly referring to the title of this article. Are you suprised? I know this will be modded redundant. But, seriously, what starkling breath taking innovation has Microsoft invented or implemented into their OS'es in the past however many years that someone else didn't have first?
The commenters on Paul's site are even more juvenile than we are.
Is to cram DRM down everybody's throat.
DRM in the form of better license enforcement from MS.
DRM in the form of WMP 11 which will attempt to lock away any trace of our ability to copy music and video to our PC and use it at will.
DRM in the form of "trusted" computing which, not ironically, is exactly untrusted computing, since it turns your PC into a spy and snitch for MS.
I'm not even a Mac fan, but my next PC will be a Mac. This is all too much. I guess its par for the course for "World Intellectual Property Day". A day set to remind us that "All your base are belong to us".
The Recycle Bin icon casts a shadow to the left. All the other shadows, including RB's own text, casts shadows to the right. Is it because the RB is itself in a shadow world halfway between here and oblivion??? Such subtle metaphysical goings-on in Longhorn!
MS has been working on Longhorn even longer than they worked on Windows 95. So its appropriate to comment on the state of the beta after billions of dollars of work over a long period of time.
After 4 years, if this is all they can show, then I'm buying stock in Apple, because if MS attempts to "lock down" digital "rights", then people will be sprinting towards the Mac platform just as fast as they can to get away from this abortion of an OS.
Longhorn Beta is Disappointing I, for one, am shocked. Shocked not only that Microsoft failed to deliver ont this beta but that such blatant anti-M$ rhetoric made its way onto SlashDot. Okay, just kidding. But in all seriousness, this shouldn't be a surprise. A version of Windows is generally not out of beta testing until SP2 for all practical purposes.
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
That's interesting, since linux can look pretty much any way you would like it to. You've seen Debian? With Nautilus, Gnome, and X11 for example?
get a free laptop
..and no, nor I waiting for Longhorn nor hyping about it. In fact, I'm free software advocat and active GNOME user and developer. But whole article smells for flamebat mod point, because it will only anger Windows users. It could use more calm language for setting tone for discusion.
I hate to see any flame wars because they are, well, worthless. Longhorn is still two years at least away. When normal product will come out then we could disscuss this.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
It's just because those screenshots show that the default wallpaper looks like a prison fence. Sobibor, anyone?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
The slogan is very subject and so incomplete.
John Smith calls Longhorn disappointing would have been better.
Essentially slashdot turned a story that should have been called "New longhorn build/screenshots" into major flaimbait.
I seriously think that Slashdot should allow their subscribers to "vote" on the new stories that most people don't see...or a subset..if to many people think it is bad it gets red flagged for Taco to stare at or something.
Well, yes, I kind of did.
So far, I'm not impressed, (the GUI looks like a complete rip off of GNOME) but what really counts is the internal workings. Like, having less bloat, fewer security holes.
I'll wait and try beta 1 for myself before making any judgements about spyware and vunerabilities.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Okay, I think there better be a helluva lot under the hood because I'm not paying $400 for a new GUI theme.
But that said, I much prefer the Longhorn theme to anything I've seen to date. I thought it easy on my eyes. Sleek. Mechanical. Sexy.
*shrug*
Am I the only one who looks at screenshots and feels no clue as to usability or efficiency? These pics of Longhorn just look like pics of any OS.
As a long-time Mac user, I've seen more than a few shots of upcoming OS X releases in rumour sites and felt much the same thing. Pictures of preference panes or windows don't excite me much.
What are much more interesting are people's reactions to using an OS. This is where I get excited about OS X 10.4 but I'm not seeing so much excitement from Longhorn pre-beta users.
It's early days yet, but when a company releases something publicly it has to be taken as indicative of the final product. Sure, things may change lots, but the fact that Microsoft are willing to put their name on it and have it seen by anybody and everybody says that this is something closer to final than anything seen before.
"I'm looking forward to IE7"
No offense, but why...because you don't like to use a non-MS browse, but want the features of firefox?
Honestly, I don't know a technical user that uses IE these days. And further, I look forward to Longhorn with dread because it has DRM wrapped into the core. Longhorn will be the decision point to whether my next PC will be an x86 or a Mac.
I hear notepad can now render line feeds correctly!
Does anyone have a link for that window pane desktop used in the screenshots?
I quite like the background.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Longhorn will run fine on a 1 GHz computer with 256 MB of RAM, according to Microsoft + new Microsoft mantra = "It just works slower!"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'd feel cheated if I were a shareholder in Microsoft. Look at what a small group of volunteers has done with Enlightenment in basically the same time frame.. Okay, it's not a perfectly fair comparison, Microsoft has to deal with hardware/driver/etc issues and a crazy amount of users and platforms. But for the amount of resources they have on hand to build a new operating system, they could have come up with something better than this. I'll be waiting for Enlightenment DR17 in the meantime.
"and will give Mac OS X users a run for thier money."
Closer to "will give Mac OS X users the runs.
No seriously, why do you think "effects" are what will be make or break? They've still got the core wrong. Architecturally, Windows XP started MS down a path that they should abandon, but they won't. So they add "effects" call it longhorn, and it won't be a trainwreck, its going to be more like the Graf Zeppelin.
You don't get why OS X.4 is good, so you think its because it looks sexy. No sonny boy. Its sexy because its good under the covers. Apple go it right.
Exactly how is Longhorn more secure than Linux?
Even LESS people will use it!
-Randy
Looks like the new longhorn theme is to build a glass house. Guess they intend a "do no evil" policy for the future.
Is it just me?
The first thing that struck me was "Damned.. those Windows look just like those in MacOS, with the shiny look and all.."
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
If you want sleek, mechanical, and sexy, get yourself a bash prompt.
On a more serious note, I like a gui that takes up little space, does everything needed, and is not distracting. Win 95 through 2000 seemed pretty good at that... but winamp is the best imho. This new thing has winxp sized bars and 1/2 95 buttons. Oh well... I will be running linux 3.2.48 on my 10 Ghz box by the time longhorn comes out.
I have freaks! I did something right...
...they'll have exact details of how the wreck went down.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Notice the inclusion of a RC0 build, which is unusual. The last time Microsoft shipped an RC0 build of a Windows product, I believe, was with Windows Millennium Edition (Me). RC0 releases are typically designed to give Microsoft's hardware and software partners enough time to develop drivers and compatible software in time for the final release of a product.
Does that mean Longhorn will be more like ME then?
It's OK if it's small. There are pumps that can make the horn longer. I can forward some e-mails to anyone interested.
I do not really see a point in pseudo-improving the visuals in Longhorn. Being almost addicted to Linux where the system core and graphicsal environments are totaly separated - new widgets or whistles in Windows do not impress me at all. In Linux I can freely choose between Gnome, KDE and several others and a lot of custom themes for each. So an extra toolbar in Longhorn or an extra bar with "Administrator" written on it - what kind of joke is this?
IMHO it is a VERY unreasonable to bind visuals to the system core. If gui goes down - the whole system does. Integration gives you (naively thinking) positive values, but what you can see in Linux or MacOsX is the counterexample.
Ok - so Microsoft is promoting the new os with a few whistles added, perhaps drm integrated and will require you to buy a 3GHz processor to preserve the same quality and conveniance you had on a 166MHz running Windows 98.
IMHO _IF_ MacOsX would be available for x86 along with all the drivers and software Windows has now - Windows would go down.
I am also affraid the guys from Microsoft are permanently making some ideological/design mistake when developing next Windows edition. Look at Apple: they decided to go Unix and... MacOsX is one of the most stable and secure systems available. Microsoft keeps upgrading DOS 6.22 and patching security holes. The result is just... funny and sad. Funny when you just look at their attempt to fool people and force them to buy their shitty products and sad because... they succeed. And people WILL but Longhorn.
michal
"Longhorn Beta is Disappointing" Now there's a surprise and it ain't even out yet. Roll on the 29th!
Good, that giant analog clock took a shockingly large amount of real estate. Boo sidebar.
--
RumorsDaily
The owner of a "SuperSite for Windows" says that OS X rules and the Longhorn sux. This must mean something... Signed: A long time PC user who's looking at the Apple Store for his next computer.
Seriously, you can endlessly talk about security but i think whatever OS has most (clueless) users will be targeted most because there's always security issues, but i really can't think of a single thing i'd like XP to do better in Longhorn (except making it more secure).
Not a single thing. Why should Longhorn be anything else but disappointing?
Sample this!
Fine. You are a nut. However if it makes you feel any better...I liked the default XP theme better than all the other...yeah yeah I know. I am a nut to.
or does the longhorn logo look like it was modeled after the cDc logo
Of course you only see "minor visual updates". How many changes did you really expect to see in:
1. A screenshot of the Boot Screen.
2. A screenshot of Desktop
3. A screenshot of the Start Menu
4. Another screenshot of the Start Menu
5. A screenshot of the My Documents Folder
6. A screenshot of the Control Panel
Was anyone really expecting a revolutionary new Boot Screen, Desktop, Start Menu, My Documents Folder or Control Panel??
Does Longhorn still use the Themes service like XP? Meaning: could I get a Windows 2000 style desktop again? I really don't care for the themes -- they take up too much desk space and the Themes service occupies memory that I'd rather have for apps. (Also, my PC is pretty old)
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Even LESS people will use it!
You mean fewer, not less, because people are individually countable discrete units. Only use less when you're talking about something that is not composed of discrete countable units, as in less water.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
No, it really is "Shut Do".
When you hit the button, Mr. Do runs across the screen, kills a few penguins with his bouncy ball, and shuts down the machine.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Okay, so this is "pre-beta" (isn't that called "Alpha"?) but what I see from the limited information is that MS is really afraid to take some giant leaps.
Looking at other OS updates that made major improvements (Mac OS -> OS X, OS/2 -> OS/2 Warp, Linux pre-boot floppy -> Red Hat Fedora), they all abandoned antiquated concepts in favor of innovation.
Take for example the "Control Panel". Same old Windows crap. Tons of grouped 'wizards' for managing your system. Why not take a page out of Apple's Spotlight book and allow the user to type in what they are wanting to do "add a user", "change desktop wallpaper" and give them the control.
Other examples? Okay, the Start menu is old and busted. It was in Win95 and it still is. Can't MS, in their innovative, new OS, get with the usability? I'm not saying Apple's Dock or Linux's menu bar and virtual desktops are better, I'm just saying that they are CLOSER to providing an intuitive interface. Why the hell would anyone go to "Start" to logout?
Just consider for a moment that the My Documents screenshot takes your eye on a journey just to figure out what is going on. For navigation we have what looks like a left nav tree structure, but we also have a drop down at the top (above the menu for goodness sakes!) and there is ofcourse the window name, "My Documents". I am assuming there is a third way to navigate, via the left arrow to the side of the drop down - whew, what is a computer novice to do? Then there is all the text - six menu bar options, presumably with drop downs, and four columns of file information (though it is not displaying the files in the columns, it is displaying them in an icons view, leading me to believe this is a mockup and not a real screen). Lastly, there is this summary with a folder icon (won't it ALWAYS be a folder icon? and, what's this, a link to "Show all properties..." Who is designing this screen anyway?
Of course, the file browser isn't what Longhorn is all about, but it does show that MS isn't reaching too far from where their feet are firmly planted and it also shows that integrating system wide searching ontop of this design is going to ADD confusion and complexity, not eliminate it.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
No, it's the program that's going to be essentially free (or if not free, then the price will be so intermixed with the price of the computer as to be irrelevent) and already installed on my next laptop. And, quite probably, yours. It's still not an easy task to buy a computer without an OS.
Good luck, though.
--
RumorsDaily
I just thought they were stuck for some wallpaper and ran outside with a digital camera, quick and snapped the outside of their building. Wallpaper is a poor reason to buy an operating system, but I think the default for XP looked a heck of a lot better.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
WinHEC: The beta version of WinHELL?
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
ok...so you knew there was going to be one smart ass that would point at that water is indeed discreet countable units...H2O. What you were probably not counting on was the fact that it would be someone with the name 'chemistry'
click click click, ....nothing.
I like microcars
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
It might be better than some linux UIs, however, we get to have more than 1 UI. At once. And even some of the crappy ones are more consistent, simpler in the "simpler is better" sense, and customizable.
I say this from Firefox running in Windowmaker with several partially obscured xterms peeking out behind it.
What I'm wondering, is whether M$ will have sense enough to steal OSX's network "location" feature, so that I don't have to tell customers that there is no easy way to set up their XP machine to have a static on our DSL, and DHCP when they take the laptop to work. Might not hurt to lose the "we won't let you start IE from a fresh install" thing they have going on too...
Looks exactly like XP using an OS X theme...but remember kids, It Just Works!(tm)
Although I'm glad they've decided to use technology created in the late 60s (which SCO owns and Al Gore invented) as well as a lovely new password scheme guaranteed to create jobs in the IT support workforce from all the clueless office lemmings. Not to mention how IE7 won't be exclusive to Longhorn nor will WinFS be included.
So like I said...we're paying $299 for XP with an OS X theme.
Slashdot Headline: Longhorn Beta Is Really Amazing
:P
bonch writes "Well, Longhorn beta 5048 was released a day before the start of WinHEC 2005, and, wow, everyone was totally impressed here. 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, and they've pulled through in spades. To quote Thurrot: 'Who needs MacOS? Windows is incredible!' RMS could not be reached for comment, but mumbled something about his 'world crumbling around him'."
. . . Yeah, wake me when we'd see *that* on Slashdot.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
....and this is their revolutionary new product? Its clearly just a further dumbed-down higher bloat-factor version of Windows XP. Nothing new or revolutionary to see here. Same old "pile on the extra redundant layers" Microsoft mentality.
Oh joy that even the "My Documents" folder is becoming uber-complex in the name of trying to over-classify everything. I wonder how many more gigahertz, gigabytes, and licencing fees this new monstrosity will suck out of an already overpriced Windows PC budget?
The funniest thing is that most people still just use windows as a GUI for launching other apps. Which means it doesn't actually provide any more useful functionality than Windows 3.11 that came on 3 floppies.
They have been working on this thing for four or five years now. It's not like they started yesterday and have another five years to go.
Just exactly how much work do you think they are planning to do in the next two months to take it to beta and final production anyway?
evil is as evil does
If MS is going to try and wow a market with some new desktop icons and some alpha tricks, they better tout the bigger benefits louder. I'm in no mood to consider a new desktop interface a new OS; I don't want a longhorn demo to be someone pointing out shadows on dialogs. sheesh. I'm kinda miffed they don't make the whole desktop interface more replaceable anyway.
Ahh, but you're still wrong, because water is not a plural noun. Regardless of its composition, it's still incorrect to say fewer water.
On the other hand, molecules is a plural noun representing individually countable things. So it would be correct to say fewer H2O molecules, and incorrect to say less H2O molecules.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I've seen nicer ones. Where's Longhorn?
_ 02_07.jpg
The one shot of anything remotely Longhorn looks difficult to quickly scan (see left bar, or even the center area) http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/lh5048
I understand that this is a beta and all, but why even bother releasing those shots.
It's a developer release. I remember it being stated earlier that it's primary purpose is for developers to test apps and drivers on. Hence it doesn't need all the visual features etc completed and running.
It's not a "demo" of Longhorn so people with a craze to see pretty icons on their PC can install it and show it off to friends.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
In other words, the OS is trending from promising towards disappointing. The whole point of the big screen dog and pony show is to build excitement about the coming OS (yes, even at the developer shows). By bringing out a version that seems worse than the last one MS is killing enthusiasm for Longhorn.
The buttons are fine. The colour alone tells you what they do, and the icons are identical to the ones found on numerous home appliances (ex., DVD players, TVs, etc.).
Red (w/ power button icon): shutdown
Yellow (w/ remote power button icon) : stand by
Green (w/ spark icon): restart
If you can't associate green with "go", red with "stop" and yellow with "stand by", I hope you don't drive.
RMN
~~~
I use Fluxbox and Rox Filer on all my Linux systems and between them they provide everything I need from a window manager. If Longhorn will be anything like XP, by itself it will probably eat half my memory even before I run applications.
We can look forward to another decade of...
"So how do I stop the computer?"
"You press 'Start'."
[Cue head pounding]
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Admittedly, I love three features that I have experienced on XP machines:
- Having the ability to monitor network traffic in the task monitor
- Running multiple users simultaneously
- ClearType
Despite these nice features, well, there just seems to be some deep, overall suckiness with Windows XP. It doesn't seem right: It's like Microsoft forgot why it was in business.Has anyone else experienced this feeling? Is anyone else worried about the day when drivers for new hardware no longer work in Win2K?
Yes, I know longhorn will be out within a few years, and I know it supports 64 bit computing, (leaving it about 10 years behing linux at projected date of release).
If they want their name everywhere, they can afford to buy ads.
What I noted looking at the control panel screenshot, is that it looks a lot more complicate than what I remembered back from the days when I still used Windows (:grins:).
I mean, people always say "GNU/Linux is difficult to master, you need to be a genius to use that"... "what a mess of options, how can I find a way through that"... and then... please compare: Windows (Ok, the "classic view" link is there, but that's just an example) - A GNU/Linux desktop
This seems a common trend while time passes: systems become bigger and more difficult to use if you're not a literate (who, ten years ago, would have cared about what's a gateway being on Windows? who _doesn't_ now?). Good luck for GNU/Linux, then. It has been ten more years of experience in being complex. :-)
Seriously, computer literacy is becoming a prerequisite for every system out there, and this makes switches easier from Windows to anything else. Even if this isn't the matter, they're all becoming "more to read and less to click".
(PS: Counting the seconds before someone says something about how MacOSX solves all these problems by being the most simple system in the world yaddayaddayadda. :-) )
42.
...the Recycle Bin is in an alternate universe, where light operates in the reverse direction and files magically cease to exist (unless you need to restore them).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Two things to me say it's not all that far off from release. One is that beta 1 is very close - which you'd think would mean pretty mcuh all the features were in place right now, but kind of buggy.
Also in the main article is the expection of RTM in Mid-2006, but more importantly the "public release" for holiday 2005 (whatever that means - I'm guess the "holiday" is not Halloween!).
That would seem to me that around the end of the year they'd have the product pretty much done if they felt it ready for public consumption. So if people are complaining of features they do not see now, that seems pretty justified given the short amount of runway Microsoft really has left to them. It seems to me that for something the size of an OS, beta 1 at least would be "feature complete" if not perfect. And as I said beta is very close now.
Personally I do feel it's way to early to call for a "train wreck" but this guy also knows more than most of us, so perhaps that's an intuitive statement based on a larger body of knowledge than we have access to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm starting to think that they're at the same point Apple was at in the 90s: every attempt to build a modern successor to OS 9 from scratch crashed and burned horribly.
...
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent
It seems that Apple was working on "an object-oriented OS on top of a new microkernel" in C++ since *1988*, following System *5.0*. They finally gave up on it in 1996, when they bought NeXT, which had many of the same concepts and was released as part of OS X in 2001
It's a lot like reading the history of the space program, isn't it? First you've got airplanes that can go into space being ready any day now, and Mars by 1980, and now we're just happy if we can get satellites into orbit
Those who dislike Microsoft should rejoice if this beta *is* a train wreck.
I am entirely confident, and have been for some time, that one way or another, Longhorn is going to represent Microsoft's last stand...this will be made even more certain if it is a failure. I've said it before and I'll say it again...Microsoft have never had a coherent roadmap after NT 4, and that fact is now clearly showing.
Bankruptcy won't be here for a while yet, but market irrelevance is coming up fast...I'm predicting that by 2012 at the latest, Windows' market share will have almost completely evaporated.
If you're a Microsoft shareholder, I have one word of advice for you at this point: Sell. This is one ship which, when the sinking process is closer to completion, you really won't want to still be on.
Didn't Microsoft recently say that you can use their betas in a mission-critical production environment? In which case, what does it matter if this is a beta release? If Microsoft deems that usable, then that is the standard it should be measured against.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Linux can look great with modification (Gnome is your friend); Windows can be modified as well... I'm just talking about the default "out of the box" look. It is a fact that most linux distros simply don't look good by default. It is stupid to criticize the look of a pre-release version of Windows just because it is Windows and is "evil".
...the more things stay the same
Come on, people. Exactly what can really be divined from a handful of fairly bland screenshots of a pre-beta build posted on a blog? The only thing they tell me is that MS is not changing much in terms of its UI for Longhorn. Big deal. From their point of view, radical changes to the UI are a bad thing...they have an established (if admittedly not pretty) look and feel, and an absolutely enormous userbase who are utterly dependent on that UI staying exactly as it is.
And it isn't as if the "ugliness" of the UI is going to turn people away. At the end of the day, it's the OS that came preloaded with their computer. OSX may be pretty, but it's not what their school or office is running or has trained them on, and, besides, those shiny computers are too expensive compared to the more homely boxes that run Microsoft's OS. Yes, they can always defect to GNU/Linux, or *BSD, or even FreeDOS, but why go through all the trouble?
Here's what he says about the requirements for Longhorn:They're talking about a box that's somewhere between my Beige G4 (Beige G3 upgraded with a G4/466 CPU) and my Mac mini... and closer to my Mac mini. Both of these boxes run OS X with the full blown Quartz Extreme experience just fine.
It looks like Microsoft has finally leapfrogged Apple in at least one area... excessive hardware requirements. The whole point to QE is that because it's handled in the GPU it doesn't matter if the CPU is a bit wimpy... the CPU isn't doing any of the heavy lifting. Did Paul misunderstand Joe or did Microsoft miss the point?
The icons you see in the beta screenshots are NOT the icons that will roll out with the actual final release. MS is keeping those and the theme a tight secret. Afterall, they have to have SOME element of surprise to use in all their glitsy marketing.
Talk about dumbed down. Especially the Control Panel. This is worse than XP. At least there's still the Classic View option.
Who immediately gets the Beck song "Novacane" stuck in their heads whenever they read anything about Longhorn?
"Got so numb, longhorn drum
Detonate with the suicide gate
Test tube, stillborn days
Telescope rays in the rabies haze
Got the momentum, radioactive
Meltdown!"
Yeah, I guess I probably am.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
That desktop background looks quite evocative.
I downloaded it and installed it out of curiosity, as you do.
;) Top speed, no queues, no uploading, and direct to your ISP's servers so *very* little chance of getting intercepted. Yum.
Apart from their first attempts to try and copy Apple with the pretty effects when you restore a window from minimize and the little search engine appearing everywhere, nothing much has changed. Funny how they've finally "accidentally leaked" a practical demonstration (if buggy) of these technologies just before Tiger is released.
To their credit though, there is the revolutionary scrollbar on the start menu which I've been crying out for for 10 years, and about bloody time! It's magnificent. But apart from that, almost nothing seems to have changed.
To be fair, this *is* a pre-beta... but I wouldn't even call it a pre-alpha at this stage. They still seem to be throwing ideas around after all these years.
Anyway - the fastest way to get this is on usenet alt.binaries.mac.osx.apps - we're all slashdotters so hopefully everyone knows how to get there
BOY do they need help.
I wonder if Max Rudberg would be willing to help them fine-tune them.
Does anyone really need all those descriptions? Doesn't everyone know what's in a control panel and etc? Why does this GUI seem to be saying "Hey, I know you've been using this computer for several days now, but just incase you're a functional moron, here are nice wordy descriptions of what all this crap does. Don't worry, I'll popup a dialog box describing them further if you move your mouse over them." ???
Also, who needs two columns of stuff on a start menu? It's annoying! I truly believe MS peaked with Win2000.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
OS-X has proven this well. There are a number of features it has that are bad from a usability standpoint, worse than the thigns they replaced, or not as good as others out there. However they have big wow factor. People like the eye candy. Most people who see OS-X for the first time comment on how cool it looks. Tog rails on the dock (http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.h tml) as being a tech demo, not a good tool. However that's what people like about it, the looks. We can learn to deal with idosyncracies, we do all the time, and people will if it means they get to have something shiny and cool like the dock.
While all the geeks will agree that things like this SHOULDN'T matter since, after all, an OS is just a tool for getting things done, it does matter to many people.
The whole tone of Slashdot when it comes to Longhorn sounds like someone who is desperate to believe their own propoganda. Here we are, over a year from final release, and because of a few screenshots, people are already claiming that this looks like it could be a "train wreck". Puh-leeze.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
So, for example, the icon for a Word document in Longhorn displays a miniature version of the first page of that document and a Microsoft PowerPoint slide show icon displays the first slide
Sorry but, don't KDE have this feature now?? and frome quite some time? Again, I think MS is just copying features from other platforms and selling them as Great Inovation(tm)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgat es.mspx
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Why not simply throw in some screenshots to help show your point? I thought it looked alright, but it wasn't revolutionary. However, I'm not expecting one of these releases to look revolutionary. Let them tweak the inner workings and then work on the GUI theme.
"And what do those screenshots tell us anyways? I did not see anything new..."
One thing I noticed *IMMEDIATELY* from the screenshots is that the windows are drawn in gray, with a centrally-highlighted region, that from a distance, looks entirely too similar to the gray windows with a centrally-highlighted region from that *OTHER* operating system.
Jobs was right - they are copying fast. Even the icons are changing again. They are afraid to stand on their own two feet and just "do what they do". Longhorn won't be a better Windows, it will be a clone of OS X on PCs.
It will be irrelevant once the market share picks up under the Mac Mini and Tiger.. Windows will be that "Old OS" that nobody uses because it doesn't play UNIX like Linux/OS X does. It will 'pretend' but, it just won't be there.
I just got done with their Internet Security and Accelerator training. This, plus the stuff i've seen in Longhorn, plus the other things I've seen remind me of the movie 'The Hudsucker proxy':
"Idea man treading water"
Microsoft has not produced ANYTHING compelling in the last three years. It's more an excercise of 'lets sell them on more features', rather than 'lets sell them on something that improves the experience'.
The constant treadmill arms race of spyware/patch/reboot (Which I've seen take well running machines and reduce them to perma-reboot) plus bloatware that sucks the life out of a P4 with HALF A GIG of RAM. (Have you noticed the difference in performance between a new installation pre and post Office 2k3?)
So, lets pitch the API, lets pitch the file system (oops, can't do that in time), lets pitch your old hardware, and lets do it in the usual lock-step upgrade deathmarch again.
I think they've run out of useful features to add...and I think it's gonna bite them in the ass.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I'm not as concerned about how it looks as how it operates. Still, my sense is that people are getting fed up with MSFT's crap. And the quality of their software doesn't matter. They still treat their customers like a revenue stream and now there's an alternative. And people are picking the alternative for quality AND price.
www.itworldcanada.com/Pages/Docbase/ViewArticle. aspx?id=idgml-8f87ddb3-bfe0-4b69&s=90323
The IT world no longer revolves around the products MSFT puts out. Glory days, they pass you by.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
What I gather is this release is specificly for driver writers, so they can get a nice long head start on getting drivers for their hardware ready, since the driver model is changing quite a bit from the 2k/XP one.
Thus I can see why they'd not give two shits about the UI. They just want to get something workable to the hardware companies so they can start work.
I read the title of the entry: "Longhorn Beta is Disappointing" I didn't have to read beyond that. In fact, I could've told anyone that without even using it or looking at it. Ha.. (flamebait, oh shit)
Gentoo Linux - Wouldn't have it any other way. And fuck beta.
I was wondering what happend of all the idiots that were barelly passing the computer science classes in my college years but I guess they got jobs at MS. This is by far the most user UNFRIENDLY interface that I have seen. Do those idiots at MS think that people really like the XP look? Cause I know of countless users that want nothing other than the way Windows "used to look". Also the control pannel looks rediculous. It is like they wrote down a list of the worst design decisions ever maid by KDE, Gnome, and MacOS X and put all of them together in Longhorn. Well this gives me one more reason to just pretend that Longhorn was never released only MS will never let me live in my dream world. After all unless I upgrade they don't get any money.
If they are still complaining that there is too much piracy after a product like Longhorn they are compleare assho***. Longhorn needs a miracle to be still on top of things at release time. After all MS is giving over 1-1/2 years head start to Apple and all the OSS projects. Oh yeah and plus by the time Longhorn comes out the whole hardware in most computers would be compleatelly different from design time. How's that 1gb of ram sound now?
I agree about the selection. How hard could it be for them to put a thicker border on the currently selected button, like they do on virtually all other dialog boxes...?
The power icon with a closed circle is for power off; you'll probably find it on your TV's power button. The power icon with the broken circle is for stand by (soft off); you'll find it on your TV's remote control. Usually with no text, in either case.
I don't think there is any generic icon for "restart" (the concept doesn't really apply to most appliances). A spark seems reasonably good to me. Two "turning" arrows could work, too, but it would be too similar to the "switch user" icon.
BTW, personally I would prefer them to put the log off and switch user buttons in the same dialog box as the shutdown, stand by and restart buttons. I'd also like to see a "lock workstation" button that worked even when fast user switching is enabled.
RMN
~~~
The screen shots look like a rip off of Mac OSX and GNOME. Everything but the dock...
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Couldn't you get Monica Lewinsky in there too?
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
They've had a hard enough time motivating people away from Win95/98 with significant numbers of people finding no real reason to change. Given how hard it has been to get a good uptake of XP, how hard will it be to get people to move from XP to Longhorn? It is going to be a very hard sell.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I challenge others to so colorfully draw metaphors of Microsoft's Longhorn adventure!
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
And what do those screenshots tell us anyways?
They killed Clippy!
Now if that little "Your computer might be at risk" thingie doesn't cry out of an appearance by Clippy, I don't know what does.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Microsoft has only one thing to thank for its success today: IBM. In 1980, IBM was getting its butt kicked in the exploding desktop computer market by companies like Commodore, Atari, and Apple. And IBM was in a big hurry to join the party. IBM had all the hardware plans for its new 8088 desktop computer in place, but the operating system software was a much different story. The problem was, IBM was a huge, bloated company with layer upon layer of management and bureaucracy that stood in the way of accomplishing anything quickly. Even IBM's own leadership optimistically guessed that it would take them 2-3 years to build a working operating system from scratch. Clearly this would not do. They had only one year to get their new computer to market, and IBM could not do it themselves. In July 1980 the founder of a small software company called "Microsoft" answered a phone call and very soon after met with IBM's top executives. Bill Gates confidently said that only he could write the code IBM needed in the time available -- nobody else in the world was up to the task. But in order to do it, Microsoft wanted to keep full control of their software. This was completely unheard of -- a brash little programmer playing hardball with one of the richest companies in the world. However IBM realized they were stuck between a rock and hard place and Bill Gates was right. If they wanted their operating system within a year, they had to agree. So IBM and Microsoft entered into a deal that essentially saw IBM make money by selling the hardware, while Microsoft made money by selling IBM copies of their OS. IBM's PC was released on August 12, 1981 running exclusively on Microsoft software -- and the rest is history. Of course almost 25 years later the irony is clear. In 2005 Microsoft has become IBM -- the bloated, bureaucratic dinosaur that now stands in the way of its own success. Admittedly developing Longhorn must be a massive undertaking, however so was MS-DOS 1.0 back in 1980. The development cycle of Longhorn is now five years (and counting) with no firm end in sight. Meanwhile the development time of virtually every other product is getting shorter and shorter. Perhaps Microsoft needs a history lesson, or at least a sharper focus on what it is really trying to accomplish. That is what Steve Jobs brought back to Apple, and that is what Microsoft now desperately needs. In the ocean there's always a bigger fish. In technology there's always a smaller, faster, and more responsive competitor.
I, for one, hope it fails miserably. I can dream that M$ would pin their hopes on it and bet the bank and slowly go bankrupt or at least be reduced to actually having to COMPETE with other software makers, but that's just a dream. The screenshots look far too much like Win2k3 and XP for anyone to be visually blown away at this point.
see subject
Power to the Penguin!
In nearly every review I read about Longhorn all they mention are the new graphics engine (avalon), and their new file system (winfs).
(Honestly, who really cares about the new graphics engine? I'm perfectly comfortable in a shell. ooh animated windows)
The file system is pretty cool, but the glaring ommision in any review is their new messaging subsystem. Indigo will provide an even easier way for computers to communicate. In fact, it will be just as easy to create a native application as a network application.
Even though the average user probably wont see the difference, new software will be more seemlesly internet based than ever before!
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
I mean really, it's not like you're stuck with the default background, even on MSWind.
Screenshots are used as comparisons because they are easy, not because they say anything important. (I've known it to happen, but only once or twice.)
And this isn't to say that I expect anything laudible of Longhorn. Everything I've noticed is something that is either insignificant or terrible (but I'm not believing their claims of stability...that might be better). But this has to be a boneheaded basis for a technical site to compare the systems. (I'll grant that we don't have much other basis, but that means that we don't have much of any basis.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
So if the alpha's called WinHec, what will Beta 1 be called?
In short, a "|" really means "power on", as in physically connected to the mains, while "0" means "power off", as in physically disconnected.
When combined with an unbroken circle, as found on older monitors, it's a power toggle switch. The button is supposed to be sunken in while in the on position, and popped out while off. But it is still a physical power switch.
The broken-circle with line, as found on newer stuff, is "stand-by". Functionally, on my monitor and where I can find it the key part about its behaviour is that it only signals the device to turn off or on; it does not physically disconnect the power.
Still no sign of that green exploding circle icon though, but with a bit more training we might all eventually be able to shut down a Longhorn machine with confidence...
When I saw this story in the Slashdot drop-down in Firefox, the first thing my mind saw was Longhorn Beta is Disappearing.
Too bad it isn't. I'd pay Copperfield or some other magician to do it, too.
Actually at one stage they advertised the fact that you could run Win95 with 4mb of ram. I've seen it done, it was not pretty.
If they made a movie of your life, would anybody buy a ticket?
I'm starting to think that they're at the same point Apple was at in the 90s: every attempt to build a modern successor to OS 9 from scratch crashed and burned horribly.
That's an interesting point and I have to say that I agree to a certain extent that that's what they seem to be trying to do. What I don't understand is why.
Apple HAD to make a break from classic Mac OS, because it was really pretty awful. NT isn't awful. It's not great, but it's in nowhere like the trouble OS 8 and OS 9 were in.
Microsoft really could do what Apple's doing and introduce new bundled features on a year-to-year basis, or even sell them as $50 Plus Packs, and maintain a steady income without either losing market share or alienating customers. They don't need to be pulling the "All New Windows" every few years like they did in the '90s... they reached a reasonably stable peak in terms of what they're really capable of doing right with Windows 2000.
They've got a mature product they can build on, sell new accessories for it, bundle it as "Windows 2004, you get Windows 2000, the XP Plus Pack, the GUI Glitz Plus Pack, and a special this-release-only sidebar, a combined value of almost $300, for $150. For only $75 more you get the Professional Pack, normally $125, in Windows 2004 Professional".
That's how a mature company sells mature products, and it's what microsoft really needs to do. Because, Microsoft is a mature company, they've got the brass ring and there's no way they can significantly boost Windows sales over what they'd be without building a "successor OS". They don't need to act like a startup now, it's just getting in the way of doing the best job and making the most money.
Great. people that didn't pay attention in drivers ed. class. (Sorry to you non USAians where it may be different) YELLOW means stop. If you're going too fast to safely execute a stop, then you are allowed to continue.
(I know that's a nitpick but if people actually heeded drivers ed. instead of sleeping through it, maybe it wouldn't be safer to strap a rocket pack to your arse and fly around the sears tower than to drive there from four miles away.)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'm tired of every story on Linux or Windows being used by Macintosh fanboys to attempt to promote Apple. Every time it's the same lies, distortions, and inaccuracies. What do I have to do in order not to see that kind of junk anymore?
As for Tiger, just about every supposed "innovation" in it (scripting, RSS, search, Dashboard, Video Chat, etc.) is either not new, or even a blatant rip-off from some other company. As far as I'm concerned, Apple seems to be back to their old evil ways: patents, false marketing claims, and blatant rip-offs. The engineers who ran MacOS into the ground seem to be in charge with OS X again. The software architecture still sucks relative to something modern. But, unlike a few years ago, Apple doesn't even have a research lab anymore, nor do they even manufacture their hardware anymore.
Guys, please spare us both the debate: keep Apple fan fiction to the Apple section.
So it's a somewhat more bloated XP with the utilities shifted around, and a new search deal? No wonder it took so long. Not that it matters, XP has been barly began to catch on. I think XP only over-took Win98 about a year ago.
I must be missing something. What's going to have people dumping the XP boxes and running to their local computer store to buy a new PC?
I wouldn't bother waiting till next year, you may as well make your decision now, after all, Tiger is here : )
By the looks of things Longhorn won't ship in 2006 - it's now mid 2005 and they haven't even hit the first beta stage.
Does this smell of the Copland debacle prior to Mac OS X's introduction? Apple worked for years on their own OS (Copland). They gave up and bought NeXT and Jobs.
From TFA: This one's bizarre, but we heard at lunch today that Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible cheaps this very year. Yeah, seriously.,
Can anyone either confirm or deny this? I sincerely hope it doesn't happen. PowerPC is a much better architecture and is as much of a reason to switch to a Mac as OSX is. IMHO, anyways.
...will there THEN be any compelling reason to upgrade from W2K? I submit that there will not. =P
How should longhorn be better?
Simple: Just scrub the code. Top to bottom, every single goddamned line if need be. Eliminate any possibility of a buffer overflow. Optimize routines. I'd bet Microsoft could cut the HD footprint of XP in half, double its speed and quarter the memory requirements if they spent four years and a billion bucks working on it. Create an operating system that the engineers can finally be proud of.
I would actually PAY for my copy of Windows if they did this.
no such beast. You mean Pentium4-M, which is a totally different beast. The pentium M is indeed faster than its clock speed would lead you to believe.
You are right though, bus speed is a big factor too...
..they are hold LongHorn for ransom.
LongHorn looks like just another XP skin, just a bit uglier.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
As I discovered after installing it, Windows XP runs just fine in 64 Meg of RAM on a 400 Mhz PII. Course this was a lab system that only had to run the latest version of our backup software, and a VNC server. (ECC RAM is required more is out of the question) I do all my real work on machines running FreeBSD, but when you make your money from Microsoft Windows you have to test with it once in a while.
If you're building a custom house or buying a condo you damn well are going to see what the interior design looks like before you put your money down. You might go in and change it later, but the default design should be rock solid. Remember, we now have computers to plan all these things out in advance.
The control panels have always had multiple rows of tabs. Remember all those times you'd click on one and the whole row would seem to reorganize itself as if you had switched to a parallel dimension... same options, but TOTALLY different place. I've been using OS X for a few years now but I'm sure they've still got that million dollar feature.
Sure, people will continue to use this phrase for a long time, but maybe saying it within a few days of a really terrible train wreck is very unsensitive to the victims. It's like when I was in NYC after 9/11 they decided not to play "Independence Day" on TV because some of those pictures might really upset people who already had been through a lot.
BTW, I think this is totally different from how Clearwater sent out a list of songs to ban if they mentioned the word peace. The first is just being sensitive to people who had just been through a terrible trama, while the second is a clear example of censorship in order to control the reaction to that event.
A few months later "Independence Day" was back on the TV.
I don't think it is PC to just be aware of things that are happening in the world and to people. It's not polite to stare at someones unluck, bad haircut either!
Peace, or Not?
Windows XP already does it for some images and it apparently does it with PDF files (at least for me). I think it's just an expansion of something they've been trying to do for a while so it's exactly copying.
They have gutted anything we /.ers would think is cool (WINFS, etc?) - They have yet to get the OS secured, etc.
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Avalon and WinFS are?
Consumers hardly ever care about the underlying technology.
I never mentioned "Consumers".. I was thinking about 14-24 year-old Males. They buy a hell of a lot more computers than your Grandma.
Sure, people will continue to use this phrase for a long time, but maybe saying it within a few days of a really terrible train wreck is very unsensitive to the victims.
But there hasn't been a terrible train wreck in the past few days- not in comparison to what goes unreported except in Oddly Enough sidebars.
Within the past year, there have been other train accidents killing 3 or 4 times the number of victims. This one has got attention because it's Japan, "not 3rd world", "they're civilized like us", "they are so safety-concious", etc.
I am reminded of how on August 30, 1997, Taliban soldiers cut the heads off of 200 innocent people. But it didn't get any press in the USA, because a rich European was in a car crash the same day.
that... that's the point he was making... fiendishly fast and smooth, is what i would say to discribe it.
so uninstall IE!
Was it just me, or did anyone else notice the search phrase in the find box at the bottom of the screen in some of those screenshots?
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can almost "name one device with a button that has a bunch of lines organized in a circle meaning 'restart'."
In Mac OS X Jaguar (10.2 Jagwire the cognoscenti) Apple added a round progress bar icon that animates exactly in the way you describe while the computer starts up.
Maybe it is just coincidence? I mean it is not like given Microsoft's history that one would be led to assume that MS would copy something from Apple.
This is a preview build for hardware makers to test their hardware and drivers. It is NOT a beta, it's more of an alpha. NOT feature complete, and NOT meant to show off the capabilities of Longhorn.
Sheesh, people.
At least have the intelligence to tell the diffrence between a beta and a preview build.
Still IMing in the stone age?
What it should say is, "Your computer might be at risk. Currently downloading: 18,432 viruses, 94% complete. These downloads will automatically install upon completion. For your convenience, you cannot cancel or stop this operation. If you disconnect the network during this time or attempt to reboot, you will be arrested under the DMCA clause that prohibits anti-circumvention with regards to the intellectual property rights of the virus authors. Microsoft. Where do you want to go today?"
Screenshot here.
i used to run KDE 3.2 in a P-II toshiba notebook with only 128 MB and it ran fine, even with firefox open. with windowmaker i could even open firefox and a later openoffice 1.9.
all you need to do this is take some time to fine tune the interface. deactivate all eye candy, remove wallpapers, turn off all background apps ("services" in MS speak), adjust kernel parameters, et all.
in windows XP is possible to tune the interface this way in one go via "my computer" preferences. what MS should do is to put a "wizard" in the installation media or control pannel to do this automatically. KDE has this wizard and it runs everytime a new user logs in. it have a slidebar where the user adjusts for more performance or more eye-candy.
What ? Me, worry ?
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
It would also ensure a captive market for all those new DRM'ed CPUs (e.g. La Grande from Intel) and BIOS (something from Pheonix) that folks swore up and down they'd never buy, which just happen to be in the new boxes...
There's a real demand for an escape path, especially something that runs on the old hardware: NT is dead, and 2000 is being put out to pasture, and many got burned in the Software Assurance scam. I'd expect that Redhat, Suse and independent companies providing linux services and support would capitalize on this.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What? It was supposed to be an operating system? Oh, come on...
First, credit where it is due. That was Xerox in the 70ties, it's just that Xerox executives were not bright enough to use their own innovation and basically threw it away. Luckily, Jobs happened to be lurking in their backyard.
And even Xerox PARC's work was based on research done on universities in late 60ties, early 70ties.
Second, your description of how Apple scrapped a bunch of Unix daemons replacing them all with one, neat, XML configurable launchd.
That's great. It's probably the way it should be. And that surely is innovation. But it is a very miniscule one. It's merely an improvement, not something really new.
What Apple basically did was getting a 20-year old idea (Unix operating system), improving it some (like this launchd) and then adding a cute, well, thoughtfully designed GUI on top of it. Best of both worlds, it's stable, secure (thanks to Unix base) and it's easy to use and pleasant to look at (thanks to Apple's GUI design).
So, sorry to say that, but it is a 20th century concept. None of what is in OS X is a fundamentally new idea or technology unknown by the late 90ties. Apple is innovative in the market sense, but not so much in technology. Nothing wrong with that, their stuff is great and I love it (saving for a PB). But let's not buy into this marketing hype about "great innovations".
Yeah, I've got a 333 Celeron with 128 MB too, and you wouldn't believe the trouble I had trying to get OS X to run on it!
I gave up in the end.
XP has 100% professional look. The classic theme just sucks; it's way too ugly. I am one of many that I know that prefer the look of XP.
And the biggest window controls are not a problem; in a display of 1200x1024 (standard display for 17" TFT), they take a few pixels more than the classic theme; it's hardly a problem.
I don't quite get your beef: are you upset that Apple made the Dock the way they did, or are you confusing Exposé with the Dock? Which is the task-switching you find better: the old System 7-Mac OS 9 way of showing the program icon in the corner, the NextStep way or (shudder!) the Windows Taskbar way? Or do you miss having Alt-Tab? In other words, you've never used control-tab?
Your writing is a little confusing, but it seems to me that you've little experience in the differences between Jaguar and Panther, or that you've ever done more than a little futzing around with a Mac that was on display at a computer store. If that is not the case, then please clarify.
Regarding your term:
"Plane crash" could be "aeronautic ground avoidance exception (AGAE)"
The correct definitions are actually:
Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) - An event where an aircraft collided with obstacles, objects or terrain during powered, controlled flight with little or no awareness on the part of the pilot of the impending impact.
Managed flight into terrain (MFIT) - An event where an aircraft collided with obstacles, objects or terrain while being flown under limited control or reduced performance, with insufficient height/performance to reach a designated landing area.
Uncontrolled flight into terrain (UFIT) - An event where an aircraft collided with obstacles, objects or terrain after control of the aircraft was lost in-flight (includes cases where the pilot became incapacitated) but the aircraft structure did not change prior to impact.
(!)
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
if a train leaves New York at 10:17 EST, carrying 10,000 copies of Longhorn, and traveling at 120mph, and another train leaves Los Angeles, carrying 12,000 copies of Longhorn SP1, traveling East at 97mph, at what time to the two trains collide and how many copies of SP1 actually survive the wreck? How many copies of Longhorn survive the wreck? Extra Credit: Factor the averages of the number of copies of software on both trains, including the purchase price and marketing cost, and contrive the net loss to be incurred by the average consumer. Grammar counts.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
try XP+Office 2000 on 64MB, 233MHz Pentium MMX after you've done trimming services themes and skins, you can still play an mp3 in background. really
not really, I think it's the X server, Except for the direct rendering, which finally repaired some problems the entire concept sux. Any function call to X that must return a result requires two task switches.
This can be overcome by implementing xlib directly over the driver, skipping the client-server communication. I think athene/snap does this and they claim to have some improvement. I tried something but it didn't have real drivers for the videocard.
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And you can always edit NIBs to turn it off in applications that do.
Oh, thank god.
Why did it take a couple of ACs to answer this, instead of the guy who's actually working at Apple?
it still has Paint!
Oh Shut The Fuck Up you whining bitch.
I don't think you have this right here - ALL Aqua apps will have the new NSToolbar look (if they use a Toolbar). In fact this at least makes toolbars consistent between metal and aqua windows, so that's a plus - both have toolbars that extend the window title-bar : )
The thing that bugs me personally are those buttons, which are no better that the previous ones (which could be scaled anyway) and are fact much uglier IMHO - they remind me of Entourage. They are also out of style with all the other apps (including Apple ones).
Apple really should hire someone to look after the HIG again and try to be consistent, otherwise they *will* end up with every app pulling the GUI in 10 different directions like Windows. Especially with loads of new developers coming to the platform from other ones - the rules need to be stricter and Apple needs to follow them. Changing styles for a new version of the operating system is good (despite the inevitable whining), but having 5 different styles of window within a system with no consistency is not.
Wot? Just like there were no (princess) Diana jokes, Piper Alpha jokes (exploding oil platform), PanAm 103 jokes?
Different country, mabye? Different way of dealing with trauma (own or others)? Humor saved my mind after my grandparents died, including some very distastfull and hillarious remarks.
Ho hum, I guess different people deal with their empathy differently. (Shock horror)
Take care
Jo
As I understand it, Al Gore actually WAS responsible for government grant money, which was used to fund early research that led to the creation of the internet. He never claimed that he "invented" the internet. I'm pretty sure his actual words were twisted by Republican spinsters...
Take off every 'zig' !!
So, if you tweak the hell out of XP, it runs in less memory than a bone stock, out-of-the-box Linux distro that's 2 years newer.
Wow. That has the makings of a great Microsoft-funded study......
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I'm not trolling. All my desktop machines are running Debian, just not Debian woody.
Blinking yellow and blinking red do not mean the same thing as solid yellow and solid red. which is why they are blinking. If yellow didn't mean stop, why would there be blinking yellow for "proceed with caution" and blinking red for "stop, then proceed with caution"?
There is a misconception that (in the US) yellow means proceed with caution. When in fact it means (stop the car dumbass, the light's about to turn red) It's there to give a buffer between when the stop is announced and when it's official (because there are some values of position and velocity which would be dangerous to reduce to zero before the light). It most certainly does NOT mean gun it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
KDE wasn't innovating either. In fact, document previews are sufficiently peripheral and obvious that they're not innovations at all. Apple's implementation is especially nice since it allows the application to define custom icons per document (i.e. CPU time isn' being wasted rendering every time the file browser hits it). Microsoft isn't passing this off as innovation, they're just happening to add a feature that already existed elsewhere. It's not a crime. Microsoft isn't always 'wrong'.
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/implementation/arch ives/003999.asp
The1Genius - Littera Scripta Manet
I always do what you described, and I didn't say that WinXP doesn't run with more or less tolerable speed on 128Mb. I said that WinXP+OfficeXp don't.
Yeah, but as you just wrote I will not count that as an Impressive feature... while Mr. Gates thinks that:
Longhorn's icons will be particularly impressive. Because they are based on raster graphics technology and not bitmaps, they scale correctly to any resolution. They also display in a special thumbnail mode that graphically shows the contents of each file.
That can be realized RingTFA...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
So is the janitor. All but the smallest businesses still need one, either on staff or as a service on contract. And if he happens to be a competent handyman, he may cover your basic electrical and plumbing needs as well.
Moreover, speaking as an IT employee, I feel I do contribute something a little more than a tech-janitor. Users need to learn how to use their systems... and sometimes, how to learn to do something new. Furthermore, sometimes they'll have trouble describing what the new task is, making automated searches of help files unhelpful... even leaving aside the need to learn how to craft a well-tailored search. A good IT staffer also serves as an internal educational resource, that can provide as-needed training as users discover new needs. Training users who often don't fully understand what their training needs are is an AI-complete problem, and I wish you luck in solving it.
Of course, training produces nothing, transports nothing, and collects nothing for the organization either....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
No, yellow means "proceed with caution" / "be ready to stop".
You're probably going to be very angry when you get that ticket. In every state in which I've ever had a driver's license, if you can stop at the yellow and don't, it's the exact same charge as if the light had been red. The only difference is that if you're going the speed limit when the light turns yellow and you can't safely stop, you don't have to stop. If a person at your distance from the light and going the speed limit (or the maximum speed consistent with local conditions, whichever is lower) could stop, it's a red light, legally.