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Getting A Handle On Vista
visination.com wrote to mention a news.com article which runs down some of the basics on MS's new Operating System. From the article: "Among the key features of Vista as it currently stands are: security enhancements, a new searching mechanism, lots of new laptop features, parental controls and better home networking. There will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself. On the business side, Microsoft said Vista will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted."
"... Microsoft said Vista will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted."
Reboot = Coffee Break
this alone will be worth the upgrade: Rather than having to remember the single folder where something is stored, users will be able to put documents in any number of virtual folders. They can also establish folders that will automatically update, such as "files edited in the last week" or "documents from Jane." I've always hated the way files are stored on a computer... I understand it, of course, but I hate it. The whole point of a computer is to do the work FOR me, you know?
Beauty is just a light switch away.
I think anyone who has used a win95 or win98 box would say that things have gotten *MUCH* better in terms of reboots. The kluged driver model and TCP/IP stack that used to exist forced people to restart their computer to change their IP address and there were no permissions whatsoever (just a fancy-dan do nothing password box which you could get out of by pressing escape).
He who controls the past, commands the future... He who controls the future conquers the past.
Of course when touting a 'forthcoming' product, the pitch is going to be focused on the improvements its going to bring. Due to the length of time it's taking to get Vista out the door, the improvements and new features Microsoft are publicising now had better be impressive, otherwise they're going to be old news by the time the product actually ships. A new release of Windows is always going to be a 'big deal' to the computer-using masses sheerly because of its market penetration, but competitors like OS X have stolen the thunder on GPU-accelerated interfaces and improved filesystem metadata. At the end of the day, it wont be that these features are cutting edge, it'll be that they're available to the masses in something with high market penetration.
As for the new deployment features, I can't help but wonder how many organizations by the launch date will be considering deploying alternate operating systems instead, as Windows new foundations are compared directly with the latest and greatest Linux distrubutions have to offer...
Business Voyeur
I'm a UNIX guy who works in a largely Windows shop and I've been working with some really sharp Windows guys who know their stuff and know how to use the goodies that Microsoft is putting into the operating system and as a result I'm getting a new respect for a lot of MS stuff.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
it does only have seven events that necessitate a reboot:
1) Installing anything
2) Uninstalling anything
3) Being connected to a network
4) Not being connected to a network
5) Running an application
6) Not running an application
7) Starting up
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
So 3.6GHz and minimum 512MB to make it useable. How much you want to bet that if you disable whatever shitty built-in desktop search program they include and set it to "Classic Windows Look" you'll be able to run it on a 1.0GHz cpu with 256MB.
You know, there are Microsoft supporters out there that constantly get pissed whenever we point out how bloated, slow, and buggy Windows is. Do they unlike us not expect more from a company that literally has billions and billions to sink into their OS? With that much money at their disposal Longhorn, I mean Vista-(insert-joke-here), should be doing my laundry by now. Speed, security, and ease of use shouldn't even be on the radar screen. Those problems should have been solved years ago.
Microsoft, clumsily wasting your computer's resources for over 20 years.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
It is possible that they are overstating the RAM requirements, but holy cow, that seems like a whole crapload of memory to run... what, exactly? 128 MB is suggested for XP Pro, but I know that's more or less BS, because I run Pro, and tend to use ~300 MB on average, and I rarely have anything extra running besides Firefox, gaim, and AVG. So, does that mean they're actually understating the RAM requirements?
Anyway, just from reading the article, I am not inclined to spend the money on upgrading. As of now, none of the new features seem very impressive.
But you've already indicated how such a system would work on Windows. The installer should rename the old binary and have it marked to delete on reboot and install the new binary. If an app gets restarted, it'll pick up the new lib. If the OS gets rebooted, all the old copies will automatically be deleted on reboot when nothing has an open handle to them.