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Windows Vista Leaks ... Again!

10101001011 writes "The latest build of Windows Vista (5231) has been leaked to the public, again. This latest build includes some major revamping of Windows Media Player, including a smart interface. Also, IE 7 now sports tabs a la Firefox, under the address bar. Are these leaks accidental, or is Microsoft actually trying to pull a 360?"

19 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. 360 definitely by Zlib+pt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just check this story http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EEklAEVplZ YuqLANUS.php

    Publicity is the soul of the game

  2. Nothing to see here by Underholdning · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why is it that Vista is all about the user interface? Transperencey and tabbed browsing is just a part of the GUI and could be included in XP just like that. I want to know about the OS. There is one slightly amusing thing in the screenshots though. He's chatting with someone named Ryan|Topside Porn

    1. Re:Nothing to see here by tehshen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You will be able to raise the volume for the movie you are watching and not go deaf when someone IM's you.

      Like you can do already, in every media player, ever?

      --
      Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
    2. Re:Nothing to see here by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Why is it that Vista is all about the user interface? Transperencey and tabbed browsing is just a part of the GUI and could be included in XP just like that. I want to know about the OS. There is one slightly amusing thing in the screenshots though. He's chatting with someone named Ryan|Topside Porn

      Dunno about that. To my knowledge, they are implementing a completely new graphics engine. Yes, you *could* kludge together a bunch of crap and release it as a SP, but that's not a fantastic idea. Also, if they're going to do a fair amount of work, I'm sure they expect to acutally *sell* it.

      Additionally, there's a small company in Cupertino who seems to believe that focusing primarily on the user interface isn't a bad idea. I'm not saying MS is doing it *well* necessarily, and there's a lot more to a UI than lickable graphics, but if they actually do care about the UI for once that would not be a bad thing.

      Don't know how Vista's going to be from a usability standpoint (obviously), but at least it's not ass ugly like XP. That's at least one improvement.

    3. Re:Nothing to see here by unclethursday · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Application level audio control! You will be able to raise the volume for the movie you are watching (that was no doubt ripped from a DVD and has low volume) and not go deaf when someone IM's you.

      So, since I stopped using Windows for OS X they still haven't fixed this?

      I've gotten so used to it on OS X, I figured MS might have fixed that on Windows by now...

      Nothing worse than watching/listening to something and suddenly AIM/MSN messenger/Yahoo! IM going off and scaring the shit out of me... Well, yes there is, but not in the context of what we speak of here.

    4. Re:Nothing to see here by Soul-Burn666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's a simple solution to that which I have found a couple of years ago. Go to your messenger, to the "sounds" configuration screen and choose "No sounds". Life became much less annoying ever since I did that.
      Do you REALLY need an audable signal to know when someone sends you a message? The blinking (or not blinking) icon is more than enough for me.

      But I also disable all the interface sounds (login, logout, open window, close window...)

      The only program that is running and is allowed to "surprise" me like this is the temp/fans monitor.

      --
      ^_^
  3. Gotta hand it to em... by SpasticThinker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft does an amazing job marketing and promoting their products. With "leaks" like this, they get people to download and look at their software who wouldn't normally do so if it were an "authorized" release/preview.

    Not to mention the fact that with leaks like this, they keep the Vista name in the news...no matter if it's politics or selling products, name recognition is one of the most important things you can shoot for.

    1. Re:Gotta hand it to em... by gunpowda · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Absolutely. It's not nominally a public beta, but they're not immensely selective about whom they grant access to. If you think about it, the only users that are going to be downloading beta software are the dedicated fans - potentially these users, even the unauthorised ones, will test it out and provide some useful bug reports. Microsoft don't stand to lose much either way.

  4. tabbed browsing by Celt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh come on, this is hardy new news!
    We'ev known for ages that IE7 will have tabs and its more ala Opera then ala Firefox given that Opera had them before any Mozilla browser did :)

    Please can we get some decent news today, its a very slow day.

    --
    "WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
  5. UI Design in Vista and XP by john.mull · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why is so much space devoted to areas that don't require it? The title bars are too large and the task bar is way too large. I've always been fond of those themes that reduce the task bar, window controls, and title bar down to a more reasonable size. I've been mouse clicking for 17,18 years now. I can precisely click on an icon that is 24x24. They need to reduce the overall size of these controls because they aren't used nearly as much as the content. Right now, having a title bar, menu bar, button bar, tabs for tabbed browsing, and a status bar makes each window so much smaller than it should be. It's the content of the window that is important (even the desktop "window"), not the controls for it.

    Having said that, I do like the transparent window title bars. Kinda nice. Different like OS X was different.

    --
    Isaiah 43:19 (NCV)
    Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don't you see it?
  6. Clippy? by soloport · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Windows Media Player, including a smart interface.

    What does it mean when MS creates a "smart" interface?

  7. Re:Tabs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Damn right Opera had it first!
    But Firefox gets all the credit (even though Opera and Mozilla existed before Firefox).

    8-)

  8. Re:Oh wait...! by Taladar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is probably the only version in existance until they build in the restrictions for the other versions right before the release.

  9. I'd Like To Weigh In On this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What good is a leak. If nobody wants it?

    This is a gross misconception and an attitude that is causing OSS to fall further and further behind commercial offerings from Apple and Microsoft. The fact is that millions or people want it! There are countless fan sites like Flexbeta, BetaNews, NeoWin, WinSupersite, PCWorld, ZDNet, and thousands more that are all breathless with anticipation of Vista. They and theirmillions of readers eagerly await Vista's release and the countless "innovations" that it will bring.

    Meanwhile, back in the OSS camp, people are saying insightful stuff like Gaim is more than adequate and RTFM. Microsoft IE sucks, yet it is still the dominant browser and I guarantee that at least 50% of today's Firefox users will switch back to IE upon the release of Vista. That is very telling but, people don't seem to be interested in the message.

    People, like you, need to get a better attitude. They need to look at what Microsoft is doing and meet or exceed its capabilities. It is not enough to rest on your laurels while being pretencious and self important. Microsoft is charging ahead and is positioning itself to unleash ten years of its concentrated effort, en mass. Right now, OSS is rapidly slipping behind while people pound their chests saying; "but, we're more secure!". This is not enough to prevent you from being marginalized into obscurity by Microsoft, as if OSS wasn't obscure enough already.

    How many of your relatives know what Linux is? How many of them know what Windows is?

  10. Re:WMP11 by j-cloth · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Hopefully they trimmed some of the bloat from it too. Why should a media player be the heaviest app on the system? It's gone nowhere but downhill since 6.4.

  11. Vista to have insane DRM policy enforced? by Despero · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Now this is most likely not true, but just to confirm: I heard that Vista was going to have an insane DRM policy enforced. I heard that it would not allow any non-DRM music files to even play on the operating system. Can someone please tell me this isn't true? If it is true, does it just pertain to Windows Media Player or does it mess with iTunes and other media players too? Just want to clear things up.

  12. It's been Apple's week, so they had to do this by Nice2Cats · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Not to mention the fact that with leaks like this, they keep the Vista name in the news...no matter if it's politics or selling products, name recognition is one of the most important things you can shoot for.

    Especially because this has been Apple's week -- best year on record, 220 percent more iPods sold, about 50 percent more Macs sold, quadrupled quarterly profit, then yesterday a new iMac with built-in video camera and remote control, the big iPod with video features standard, a deal with Disney on selling Housewives. Microsoft had to do something to try to grab some mindshare so people don't forget they are still around.

  13. yeah by QMO · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't think that IE7 would be free for me.
    I suspect that it would cost at least a couple hundred dollars.
    As far as I can tell, I would have to upgrade the OS, then upgrade the hardware to support the new OS.

    --
    Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
  14. Where's the beef? by electroniceric · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I wouldn't be surprised either. One of the most striking things about the screenshots is how MS seems to have fallen into the KDE/Gnome trap of changing button themes, adding & subtracting transparency, tweaking position of widgets on the screen, and so forth, without making any substantial changes to the user interaction paradigm:

    • Mouse to Corner -> Start Menu -> Click on Icon to Run Program
    • Click on Browser Icon -> Click on Link or Address Bar -> Navigate Page
    • Click on taskbar item -> Retrieve application window -> Work with application

    I'm not naive enough to demand that either Windows or KDGnome implement revolutionary improvements in desktop paradigm - that stuff really seems to happen by accretion, especially since we seem to be on a plateau for the desktop interface. But I do wonder why we need a new OS for this - especially at $200 a pop. Vista really seems like a service release of XP with its core libraries rewritten for extensibility and stability. Good thing to do, but not a boxed release. Why should I pay for a more performant graphic engine that does nothing new for me? Or a redone version of PDF? A truly integrated file system-database-document-management system probably would have been worth $200 a pop, but in its current incarnation as MS Google Desktop, I'll stick to the download version, thank you.

    It's not like there's a lack of interesting things to do, either:

    • Aforementioned document management system, even without the enterprise database filesystem. Just generating a map and TOC of all the docs on the machine would be incredibly useful, not to mention some basic versioning.
    • "Save to cloud" universal data storage. MS could well have built Freenet in 5 years.
    • Save and restore state from machine to machine
    • Functional, user controllable password management (peer-to-peer Passport)
    • and many more...


    If you read those articles about Ballmer "realizing" that MS needs more frequent releases of their OS, it's because they've accepted that companies are not going to upgrade Windows or Office on their present machines, but they will migrate over 3-5 years no matter what - new machines will ship with Vista licenses rather than XP, and eventually it will be easier to just replace the old machines with Vista machines than deal with the "legacy" OS. MS will have a tasty revenue stream from Vista no matter what, because it will still ship with every new machine sold. Enviable business position.

    I hope companies and OEMs will realize that if they pressure MS with the threat of breaking ranks for KDGnomeJavaFireLinux, they can repurpose their "OEM" XP licenses to new machines, and get Vista for free or very little. There's got to be a limit to the number of times people can be sold the same product.

    I know I sound like every other M$ $uxor /. wanker, but Vista really does seem to be an empty release, and I resent that I'll be obligated to buy it. Somebody, anybody, prove me wrong, or speed up the release of GoogleOS, please!