How Vista Disappoints

MCSEBear writes "Writer Paul Thurrott has given Microsoft a verbal dressing down for what has become of Windows Vista. He details Microsoft's broken promises over the years since Longhorn/Vista was first previewed back in 2003. He demonstrates where current Vista builds fail to live up to Microsoft's current hype of the much reduced feature set. From the article: 'I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future ... It some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, Windows Vista will do what so many other Windows releases have done, and simply offer consumers and business users a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates. That's not horrible. It's just not what was promised.'"

Comments

Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[yagu]

Well, in summary, the new Vista:

• Introduces the new user security model similar to Un*x, only 30 years later. But it is (so far) incredibly inane in its interaction model with the user (from the article):

  The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.

• they've taken the "windows" metaphor to its (in their opinion) next logical step, i.e., "glass", offering translucent and transparent windows. But (FTA):

  Anyway, the reality of glass windows is that they stink. The windows themselves are translucent, meaning you can see through them partially. But the visual difference between the topmost window (that is, the window with which you are currently interacting, or what we might describe as the window with focus) and any other windows (i.e. those windows that are visually located "under" the topmost window) is subtle at best. More to the point, you can't tell topmost windows from other windows at all. And don't pretend you can.

• they've added a "Media Center", but (summarizing the article), it stinks.

Thurrott says he still doesn't hate Microsoft for not delivering on all of these promises:

I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises.

The world needs friends like Mr. Thurrott. He's a pretty forgiving guy. But, it would have been nice had Microsoft really been able to deliver this as promised. I was looking forward to buying a new upgraded computer!

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[IAmTheDave]

It's funny how one of Microsoft's biggest champions (and, despite that, a man I highly regard) really liked OSX and is honest enough to come down on MS when necessary.

This article and its points (good ones) make me respect Paul even more. Not to mention TFA has some really well thought out points. MS is blowing it, hard.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[ConceptJunkie]

I think the biggest problem with Vista is that it doesn't really give us anything new. Just mild improvements (or not based on your comment) to what's there now. From what I've read, it sounds like Windows NT 5.3... some performance improvements (much needed, but will they be overshadowed by the inevitable additional bloat?)... lots of eye candy (wild monkeys must have designed much of XP's look... I hope Vista isn't so hideous)... and improved security (something we've been promised, and were owed, for many years).

I'm sorry. I don't see any compelling reason (or hardly any reason at all) to move from Windows 2000 or (for those couple of laptops of mine that have it) XP.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[j3thr0]

"a means of managing access to administrative rights without forcing the user to always operate as Administrator"

You mean like sudo?

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[Jugalator]

People consistently bash Paul Thurrott on pro-Windows forums these days and I find that sad because I think he's one of few people left that write thorough, and actually rather unbiased, reviews of Microsoft products these days. Heck, with this review he even got an MS employee (that I'll avoid naming the username of to not point fingers) to call him a "douchebag" in a one-liner flamebait as an opinion about this entire article. Such non-existant motivation behind a flame can only come from one with little to defend himself with.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[joshv]

NT's had that for ages as well, "runas", at the command line and in the GUI.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[drinkypoo]

RunAs doesn't work properly when you RunAs a process which spawns another process, unless that program was written specifically to work with RunAs. The second process will run under your user context, not the context of the program which launches it. This is done by design, although I have a hard time imagining what the design purpose was...

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[Cunk]

You're hardly a representative of general PC-buying public.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[kimvette]

Well the drawback to Linux is that it is only part of the equation.

Your computer is a tool and for certain things you need pretty specific tools, like Quicken, Adobe CS2, Premiere/Final Cut/Media Studio Pro.

While there is Inkscape, Scribus, The Gimp, Ghostscript, and Krita on Linux, they don't match up feature-for-feature with Adobe CS2. They do their jobs "Good enough" but. . .

Image editing/digital painting: Every time I use The Gimp, I just cringe at the UI, I hate its window management (when I bring one Gimp document to the foreground, so should ALL of the palettes), and it only does about 95% of what I need. It does not have ANY vector support. :(

Illustration/drawing: Inkscape? It does its job fairly well, but its PDF support is horrid. If you use alpha blending, export to TIFF or PNG and use another program to convert to PDF. Also, printing directly from Inkscape stinks.

Accounting: Quickbooks? There IS no replacement. Folks will quickly suggest kmymoney or gnucash, but not having ever owned a business, they naively think that the Linux equivalent of MS Money or Quicken will get the job done. Hint: it won't.

Video NLE: Cinelerra is a bear to build, configure, and learn. Hell, you're lucky if you can resolve the 3,129,812 dependendencies and get it built.

With that said, I use Linux on my work machine >99% of the time. If I need Adobe CS2, I go to another workstation and do my work there, then copy it over. If I need to access Quickbooks, I remote desktop to the office manager's desktop and take care of what I need, but otherwise, we're running mostly Linux. Windows (and OS X) will always be around on at least one or two machines due to certain applications being unavailable on Linux, and no real suitable alternatives to those applications being available on Linux.

If Adobe CS2 and Quickbooks were to come out for Linux tomorrow, we'd be able to punt Windows for the most part, booting to it only when we need to develop a Windows solution for a client. Until the tools we need are available on Linux, it's not the complete solution and there is still some room for Microsoft at my office. In fact we're in the process of punting Exchange right now and hopefully by next Monday the cutover will be complete. :)

Sounds like an apologist

[thewiz]

'I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future ... It some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, Windows Vista will do what so many other Windows releases have done, and simply offer consumers and business users a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates. That's not horrible. It's just not what was promised.'

Hmmm... Sounds like something I've heard before from a sister-in-law:

'I don't hate taking care of the kids, and I certainly don't hate my husband for disappointing me and the kids with his actions that don't even come close to meeting his original promises. I'm sure I learned something from this debacle, and hopefully he will be more open and honest about what he can and cannot do in the future ... In some ways, my husband actually will exceed other men, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, he will do what so many other husbands have done, and simply promise us a few major changes and many subtle or minor ones. It's not so horrible that he misleads me and the kids. It's just not what I was promised at the alter.'

Both sound like someone trying to apologize and explain away someone elses bad behaviour.

Re:Sounds like an apologist

[run4ever79]

but not to the depth we were promised.
Interesting double entendre.

I still waiting.

[jellomizer]

Heck I am still waiting for MS to give us what they promised us in Windows 95

Re:I still waiting.

[nine-times]

You're right. The quote shows the author to be naive/uninformed:

I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future

This has always been Microsoft's MO. Late and with most of the intended features dropped out. They promise the world when they start development, but the new versions of their software tend to be the old version with a few tweaks, updates, fixes, a new skin, and all the controls in different places.

Re:I still waiting.

[besenslon]

And what is that? The only think they promised was more networking ... and THEY DID IT - with all their products they let the whole world network in your machine :)

PSSSSST!!

[goldspider]

It's not done yet!

A credibility problem

[clevershark]

It's hard to trust the reviewer when he writes about how disappointed he is, but still gives the product 5/5.

Vista will dominate

[MarkByers]

It doesn't matter if Vista is good, bad or indifferent, it will get installed on millions of new machines and eventually the majority of users around the world will be using it. You better get used to it, because you will probably have to use it one day.

Re:Vista will dominate

[clevershark]

A place I used to work for (very large bank) was using NT 4 as recently as 2004.

Then they relented and let *some people* install Windows 2000 on their machines, if it was determined that they really needed it. That's not an uncommon practice with very large companies. All the PCs we had had license stickers for more recent versions of Windows, but we still had an OS which had been released back in 1996.

I've nothing against using Windows, as long as someone pays me for it...

Sorry but we are a Microsoft shop

[LWATCDR]

We tried out the live distro of GLX and most of us liked the new 3d accelerated Linux GUI better than Vista's Aeroglass. Since pretty is a big selling point that is very important. I have to admit I was shocked by how useful it was and how much Vista drove me nuts.

Don't care. Don't want to care.

[plover]

Frankly, I don't want to get excited about Vista.

Since they're building DRM right into the core of the OS (including crap such as the Protected Media Path and all its ilk) I have absolutely no reason to think they won't allow corporate partners (RIAA, MPAA, BSA) to abuse this to kill pieces of "unapproved" media or "rogue" apps. What happens when the .*AA tells them Azureus is being used to pirate software or media? Shut 'er down! Even if you've only ever used it to share the latest fad video or big open source distribution, it won't matter. And that's wrong.

Whether I agree with them on issues of piracy or not (I don't approve of pirating software myself) I refuse to allow my computer to participate in extending or enforcing their policies, and I refuse to install DRM based media players. I'm going to keep XP on that machine for as long as it runs, or until I replace it with an open OS.

So just for perspective...

[cgreuter]

Can anyone here name any Microsoft product that lived up to its hype? Anyone?

And no, Freecell doesn't count.

Re:So just for perspective...

[tehshen]

Halo?

Hi!

Re:So just for perspective...

[jdbartlett]

But seriously... Excel. I've thrown the rest of the Office suite out the window: I try to work in plain text, so Word isn't for me. I use SQL for databases, Access doesn't suit my purposes. Publisher is to DTP as Paint is to photo manipulation, I don't even bother installing it any more. I use Flash to compose presentations, I only use Powerpoint when forced to. Apple's iLife beats the stuffing out of Outlook, so the same applies there (I've been in offices that have an enforced Outlook policy). Gnumeric, KSpread, OpenOffice Calc... they're all based on Excel because it's a good application. Can't think of anything else, though!

This just in...

[Kohath]

This just in:

A product's performance doesn't live up to the hype.

I know we're all shocked that he unthinkable finally happened.

"The Bad Old Microsoft"

[mrchaotica]

As I've noted in the past, the Windows Division retains, as employees of the software giant have told me, the last vestiges of the bad, old Microsoft. This is the Microsoft that ran roughshod over competitors in order to gain market share at any cost. The Microsoft that forgot about customers in its blind zeal to harm competitors.

He talks about it as if they've changed, but Microsoft is the same as it ever was -- and it always will be, because the core of those "bad" ways is the upper management, including Gates and Ballmer themselves.

My Vista sucks

[VAXGeek]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Vista fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Windows Vista PC (Pentium 4/3000 w/64 bits of power) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than Windows Vista, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Windows Media Player 11 is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Vista PCs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista machine that has run faster than its XP counterpart, despite the translucent interface. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 3000 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Vista is a superior operating system.

Vista addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Windows Vista over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Re:My Vista sucks

[Penguinshit]

Wow.. according to your UID, you've been around since this troll was first crafted!

Bravo.

Re:My Vista sucks

[mrchaotica]

Not quite; it was a Mac troll (from the "old" Mac OS days, when it didn't have proper scheduling). This would never have applied to Linux, since it was multitasking from the get-go.

You Have to Have to Have to

[bogie]

Watch this video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-413444611 2378047444&q=Motorrider&pl=true

I've always been of fan of each OS borrowing from one another, but this is just sad. MS ripped everything out of Vista that was truly innovative and we are left with XP rethemed and few nice subsystem tweaks. Frankly Vista is a decent update if it had be released in 2003. WTF have they been doing for 6 years?

exceeding OS X and Linux

[kaan]

"In some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux..."

For example, with Windows Vista, you will get more:
- system instability
- viruses
- application crashes
- lost data
- maintenance time
- security patches
- bug fixes

But it doesn't stop there! In order to take advantage of all new features in Vista, you will also get to spend more money on fancy hardware, including juiced up graphics cards to render the fancy new user interface.

Re:exceeding OS X and Linux

[mrchaotica]

...But wait! There's more! The system even has built-in DRM, so you can get that nice cozy jail cell feeling all the time instead of only after bashing someone's head in because you were too frustrated with XP!

Re:Promises

[eln]

So when people tell you they'll do something, you expect them not to do it unless they explicitly say "I promise?" Or do you require some sort of pinky swear?

Microsoft marketed a load of vapor to people for years so they would wait for Vista. And if someone is waiting for Vista, they aren't installing Mac OS X or Linux.

Either Microsoft did this to intentionally slow the growth of other products while their product was in development, or they screwed up so badly in their development that they were forced to strip out all of these planned features. Neither one of those options says anything good about Microsoft.

Warmed over MacOSX

[MCSEBear]

Microsoft's grand plans for Vista have turned into a warmed over version of MacOSX. The new graphics engine is definitely lifted right out of Apple's OS. The advanced WinFS filesystem has been reduced to nothing new with a copy of Apple's Spotlight bolted on. Microsoft's User Account Protection is so annoying as to be pretty much useless. It kicks in when you delete a shortcut to a program? Are they nuts? Paul Thurrott lets Microsoft have it with both guns in his review.

"Promises were made. Excitement was generated. None of it, as it turns out, was worth a damn. From a technical standpoint, the version of Windows Vista we will receive is a sad shell of its former self, a shadow. One might still call it a major Windows release. I will, for various reasons. The kernel was rewritten. The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials.

Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you, but not just for not doing better. We expect you to copy Apple, just as Apple (and Linux) in its turn copies you. But we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth."

Microsoft has really fumbled the ball over and over with the development of this OS. It's nice to see them get called out for it.

Easy

[MarkByers]

Can anyone here name any Microsoft product that lived up to its hype? Anyone?

Word 2007 will easily live up to the hype. I've heard it's going to be absolutely amazing.

Disappointing? Certainly. But...

[zapf]

• Most Windows users won't even know what Microsoft was promising two and a half years ago. They'll be happy with their shiny new glass windows and amazing alt-tab feature. Vista is ultimately going to be successful, despite the glaring development problems it's has had.
• What Microsoft should really be concerned about is the poor current implementation of the User Account Protection feature. It is really annoying as is, and there's a night and day usability difference between it and OS X's implementation. This is something that regular end users will actually notice and complain about.
• A deeper problem is interface consistency. Thurrott points out how Microsoft has basically turned into what it once despised: a reactive bureaucracy in the model of IBM in the 70's. This is really reflected in the current builds of Vista-- the interface is incredibly inconsistent compared to OS X, Gnome, or Windows 2000. It feels like twnety different teams worked on fourty different things without any real coordination or a common set of user interface guidelines.

Re:Disappointing? Certainly. But...

[dbc001]

Interface Consistency = Business Model
How does Microsoft make money? 1. Selling software. 2. Selling Books for that software. 3. Selling Certifications.
So what happens after everyone who is going to buy an OS, Book, & Cert has bought them all? What does Microsoft do? They announce that the old stuff is no longer supported, everyone has to buy the new stuff now! Then the mayhem starts. Applications slowly begin to break. Interfaces are no longer "flashy" or "in style". Then it hits the mainstream. "You don't have the new version yet? Wow, that OS is like 6 years old. You must not be on top of the IT world after all." Adoption hits critical mass, consumers start to flock to the new software. Now even the hard-core techies have to learn the bullshit new interfaces, programming languages, etc.

Point is, Microsoft's business model relies on breaking things. They can't sell the new stuff until they break the old. This is why Microsoft is dangerous to business on the whole.

Insightful

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Actually, you are correct on this one. Win 95 was cobbled together from parts of the Cairo project that either fell apart. You can see exactly what cairo was supposed to be here Ironically, enough the part that still hasn't been introduced is Winfs. Yes that's right winfs is over tweleve years late.

Re:Insightful

[telbij]

Ironically, enough the part that still hasn't been introduced is Winfs.

Far be it from me to be a grammar nazi, but even so I gotta say:

"Worst... Comma... Placement... EVER!"

Leopard

[Diordna]

The funny thing here is that Apple is going to get OS X 10.5 out the door soon after Vista is out. So if Vista will be a "warmed-up version of OS X Tiger," Apple certainly isn't going to let Leopard be the same. This is a great opportunity for MS mockage by Apple marketing.

Re:View from a non programmer

[The-Bus]

"But basically Microsoft will bring Flash like GUI programming for real programs"

I know you meant to have that line as praise, but you've put the fear of God in me and anyone that's ever used a Flash-based UI.

Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Um, when did Linux ever kill Windows?

I mean, to say something is a linux killer suggests that Linux is the mainstream OS that everybody is using, and so Windows will overtake their dominance.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but 95% of the world runs Windows on their Desktop.

Sure, Linux is dominant in servers and server technology. But I would never have claimed that Windows 95 would kill Linux as a server OS.

When Windows 95 came out, where as Linux? Linux back then WAS a difficult POS to use, a convoluted OS with a lot of potential and very little innovation. In fact, it wasn't until Windows 95 was released that Linux actually started to adopt a UI that people liked to use on it (i.e. no more X-Windows). Gnome and KDE all got a lot of big design cues form Windows 95.

Back then, people though Linux was going to kill Windows, and with each new version of Windows that was released since Windows 95, Linux failed to make a dent in the market.

Today, in 2006, with Ubuntu being the lastest flavour of the mont Linux distro(but waining with rumors of other must have distros like a Google version of linux), Linux still is failing to captivate an audience for desktop users. In the past 10 years, Linux has failed to focus into a consise and effective replacement of Windows, failed to take 100 renegage distibrutions and consolidate it into one super-uber-distro that could rule them all and truely compete with Windows. Linux, and all its fragmeneted groups of developers still cannot unite to develop ONE good replacement to Windows, and while they all feel they can make a better Windows, none realize how damaging keeping seperated is having on their beloved hobby OS.

I have no idea where your coming from saying something like Vista will require driver disks if you plug your USB thingy into them. At least on Windows, drivers EXIST. Driver CD's actaully come with the product, and you can download the drivers online at least. This is unlike Linux where if you have new hardware, until some open source developer gets around to buying it you won't get any driver support for it. Even once you do, if the driver isn't for the specific nightly build of the kernel your running, your SOL for getting it to install properly without configuring scripts for hours.

Sorry, I know your trying to make a point about how cool and great Linux is over Windows, but you have to have some platform to stand on. Never once did I even consider that Windows needed to be a Linux killer. Linux speaks for itself, 95% of the world computer users say so. They all can't be mindless lemmings.

On the Programmers View

[ratboy666]

You look forward to exploiting the "3D interface". But you won't be able to. Here's why:

The "home" edition of Vista won't support the interfaces. So, any software oriented toward home use cannot depend on the feature.

Corporate desktops are plain. The investment in the required dx10 infrastructure won't happen for years. So, the feature cannot be exploited in corporate applications either.

After eliminating home and coporate, what is left? AERO really won't have much of a place, outside of enthusiasts. Unless there is an application that can start in the enthusiast domain and drive the migration.

My prediction: the ONLY application that exploits this feature will be Vista itself. Possibly Microsoft may update some applications, but it must remain an optional part.

Microsoft will offer .NET updates and maybe force MS IDE users to use the interface (not as many desktops to migrate, and its a minor part).

Don't count on this feature as a platform for 3 to 5 (or more) years, though.

Ratboy.

I understand, but don't agree.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

It would be very fun to program in avalon, but utlimately the best applications are the ones with the simplest interfaces. Too many comapnies try to be innovative and cool with their UI design and its crap. Its all nonstandard and does not behave the way all of the other controls in windows do. MAYBE avalon will entice those compaines to write all their crap in avalon, which will bring standardisation and a higher level of stability to these programs, but nto for a good 2-3 years after vista. Probley just in time for the update. I can't wait that long, as a user or a developer. I'd just rather use things ina simple elegent way without animated 3-d buttons. I'm not going to buy another computer, for a nother year at least. Even if vista is out then, I might have to take a real look at getting an intel mac Mac.

Re:Filesystem

[WindBourne]

What other operating system in widespread use has an SQL-based filesystem?

OS-400 comes to mind as being the original (probably was not). Of course, that was YEARS ago.

Re:Vista will dominate, maybe, maybe not

[slashname3]

From what has been described so far there does not appear to be any major features that will get the corporate world to jump on the upgrade bandwagon for Vista. If anything there are features that will cost a lot to use if you do upgrade. Many many companies will opt to continue to use XP for most of their systems for some time to come. Unless Microsoft can give corporate users a solid business reason to spend millions upgrading there won't be as big an uptake as Microsoft is hoping. The product has been delayed repeatedly, features have been cut, and there are viable alternatives available. As another writer wrote in another thread the reasons for the delay may be due to the software assurance deals they managed to get many many corporate users to sign up for a few years ago. Now that they have delayed the release of Vista long enough for those contracts to expire they can release the new version and charge those companies again. If they fall for it a second time shame on them. They deserve to through away that money on something that is not going to provide any real benefit to the end users. Eye candy is not a valid business reason to upgrade OS and hardware.

Most likely the biggest market for Vista will be cosumers buying new systems from the likes of Dell or HP which will bundle the new Vista OS with the hardware. They won't have a choice. Unless those vendors continue to sell lower priced systems with XP and reserve Vista for the high end systems which are apparently is needed to see all the eye candy.

He overlooks the biggest crime of all.

[Captain Rotundo]

I am not very familiar with this guy, as I dont ussually read microsoft press, but how can he link to a dialog like this: http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_5 342_rev5_00.jpg (it says 'You dont currently have permission to delete this file." and then offers the choices "Continue", "Skip", and "Cancel") - and not point out what a total usibility disaster it is? How can a company like microsoft in today's world put up something that abnoxious and unusable?

In case you don't get it its making a decarative statement and then presenting options that have no correlation to the statement, I'm a professional in computers, and have been using them for well over 15 years and couldn't possibly even guess what each of those options should do. Continue what? if I dont have permission to do it how can I continue. Cancel what exactly?, as far as I can tell it just said it wasn't going to do anything anyway. Skip? skip the delete I was just told I can't do? I am baffled... based on the article I guess that it should have said something like "You currently don't have permission to delete this file, what would you like to do?" and given choices like "Grant Permission", "Don't Delete" etc...

I haven't really used windows extensively in a very long time so maybe if I did I would be used to figuring out these obscure dialogues, but I don't think I would ever stop cringing when I saw them. It reminds me of the dialog windows used to put up when you went to access help for the first time in an app, it would ask how big the search database should be (or something) and give you three choices similar to "small (recommended)" "medium" "large" and no other info, not even a clue as to how this would effect your help at all. do they still do that nonsense?

Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh?

[TheRaven64]

This windows NT 4.0 will kill Linux

I was using NT 4 back in 1996. Back then, it has SMP (scaled up to 32 processors, although the cheap version was limited to two). Linux was just starting to get SMP capability.

It had native threading, which Linux only got last year.

It had full support for ACLs in the filesystem. Linux got that in, what, 2000? Does it even work with the standard filesystems? I've been using ACLs with UFS2 (the default FS) on FreeBSD for a couple of years, but I've not seen them in common use on Linux.

It had a GUI with a single, consistent, user interface toolkit. Linux got one of those in 2030?

It had support for hardware accelerated OpenGL and later DirectX. I can't remember the first time I got 3D acceleration of anything other than GLide working with Linux, but I don't think it was before 2000.

It had a stable ABI and component system that allowed some basic introspection and management of reference counted objects. These objects still work on current versions of Windows[1].

Did NT4 kill Linux? No. It was, however, a long way ahead of the competition. Now, let's look at MacOS of that era; it had the consistent UI toolkit (and a set of HIGs people actually used), but no security model, no memory protection and no pre-emptive multitasking. NT4 was pretty far ahead of that too. Apparently OS/2 was in a similar place, but I didn't use it so I can't comment.

Now, let's look at Vista. It's got the same VMS-lite kernel. A nice architecture - much nicer than UNIX, in my opinion - but they haven't really done anything interesting with it for a decade. It's got a 3D accelerated desktop, which may be slightly better than OS X 10.4 (although 10.5 will probably be out before Vista), and fairly similar to Cairo on something like XGl. It will have a horrible mish-mash of visual styles and behaviours that will make a GNOME/KDE hybrid look like the paragon of usability. It will have...uh...

Vista may be ahead of the competition when it launches, but if it is then it will be by such a small margin that it will be the last release that is. When Microsoft originally announced Longhorn, people thought they might actually deliver. Their competitors were worried. They started developing the same sorts of features Vista promised and eventually came very close. Meanwhile, Microsoft started dropping the same features from their version until Vista became so anticlimactic that even Windows fanboys stopped caring.

[1] I think. I haven't actually used Windows for two years, but I haven't read anything to the contrary.

Transparent Windows: learn from Apple's Mistake

[Aqua OS X]

There are a few useful nitches for transparent windows, but applying them to system windows is a giant no-no.

You'd think MS would learn from Apple's mistake... instead they took it to the next level of ridiculousness. When OS X first came out it was littered with transparent menus, menu bars, dialogs, etc. A lot of the elements have either been removed, or brought up to about 98% opacity. You might not even notice the transparency unless you really look closely.

Drastic transparency looked -awesome- in marketing screen shots, and it was promoted as a way to know if content existed behind something such as a window bar. However, it was really annoying. Interface elements become difficult to distinguish and it hindered the speed in which it took to accomplish a task.

But, at least MS gives users the option to turn this crap off. Apple never did that. Mac users needed to wait for Apple to slowly remedy the UI elements we were complaining about.

Re:Posix and security

[IntlHarvester]

This is "role-based" security, not "user-based"

So, no, Linux/Unix has not been doing this since inception. There's been military versions of Unix that have done it for a long time, but it's hasn't been a generally available feature (and still isn't on the desktop even for SELinux distros).

Re:Filesystem

[ickoonite]

Nice troll.

I've karma to burn, so just a couple of points:

Vista doesn't look vastly different...

This is such bollocks it's hard to know where to start. As Thurrott laments, one of the most fundamental features of a windowing system - the idea of depth in a 2D space and so marking out the active window - has been thoroughly fucked up by a team whose sole goal seems to have been to chase the teh pretty crowd. Those screenshots were damning. Usability has gone to shreds.

...even though most of the OS has been rewritten...

Do you actually have any evidence of this? Judging by the icons in some of the dialogue boxes (try here), some of the stuff hasn't seen an update since Windows 95. There's a reason it "'appears' to not be different to push away current Windows Users".

...and has tons of new protections and features that just work..

Evidently not. Evidently they are so poorly implemented that even fanboy Thurrott is banging his head on the table.

Vista is a new OS with the first radical change in Windows since Windows 3.0.

You're a fucking idiot. A first class fucking nutcase.

Then I read the rest of your post, where you start talking about this fire bollocks, or something, and I realise that you actually are a fucking nutcase...

...you need to prepare, learn and even USE some of the ideas Microsoft has recreated in development, and bring these to other OSes.

OK, I'll give you that. Apple brought decent search to Mac OS X in 2005 after Microsoft announced it would implement it in Vista, then Longhorn. Alas, Windows users will get their hands on it in...2007. Hmmmm...

iqu :|

(And, just one thing, moderators, before modding me down, take a moment to read and consider the parent's post. I am normally a rational and controlled type, but sometimes things just have to be said...)

Re:Resistant to change

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Nobody wants a change for the worse. But chances are that, just like Win95, 2k and XP, everybody will learn the new features, understand why the change is better and will be thankful they are past the old days of the previous OSs.

The problem is, most of the actual features were ripped out and mothballed, while most of the anti-features were left in. For features you get a graphics card accelerated UI, some security enhancements that reviewers claim are really annoying and poorly implemented, Some dev tool improvements, and that is about it. For anti-features you get DRM restricting use of your data, intentionally crippled OpenGL performance, a built-in proprietary replacement for the open PDF standard in an attempt to lock you in even more, etc. You do get indexed files (done less well than Google desktop or OS X), you don't get a database file system, you don't get resolution independent UI, you don't get a usable shell environment, etc. All the reasons to get it were ripped out while all the reasons to avoid it were left in. This makes sense for Microsoft. You have to buy a new computer eventually so you'll be forced to buy a copy of Vista bundled with it, regardless of the feature set. It just sucks donkey balls for users.

Re:It's Paul Thurrott...

[diegocgteleline.es]

"I've been a Mac fan my entire life"

"Microsoft is working on similar, if further-reaching, technology for Longhorn. Apple's solution, however, is here right now and it appears to work quite well. Score one for Apple."

"Overall, I've always been a big fan of Safari, and I'd use it rather than Firefox or IE if it were available on Windows. It's an excellent application."

"Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is, in fact, a minor upgrade to an already well-designed and rock-solid operating system. It will not change the way you use your computer at all, and instead uses the exact same mouse and windows interface we've had since the first Mac debuted in 1984. That isn't a complaint about Tiger, per se: It's a high-quality release. My issue here is with marketing, not with reality."

"Apple Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is the strongest OS X release yet and a worthy competitor to Windows XP"

"And unlike Longhorn, it's shipping any day now. What a concept."

"The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials"

"Windows Vista will still include pervasive index-based searching features modeled, apparently, after the Spotlight feature in Mac OS X."

My Wife is Switching to the Mac

Yes, it definitively sounds like the typical Windows who can't write non-biased opinions about other products

One memorable line from his review of 10.4 had it that Windows XP SP2 was a more significant update than was Tiger, yet elsewhere in that review he just casually pointed out how 10.4 was little more than a large collection of bug fixes

Maybe because it may very well true? Sorry if it doesn't means the same for you, but the addition of applications to get the time, weather and stocks (nice, but "revolutionary"???), spothlight, quartz 2d extreme (an optimization to an already good graphics subsystem) and core image looks to me like a light addition compared with all the internal features microsoft touched/add in SP2 (rewriting part of the IE UI, rewrite part of the IE internals to handle better the security objects, the add-on manager, the much-improved firewall, the much improved wireless support, the reworked RPC internals, updated directx, the non-executable stack protection. You may argue that Mac OS X already does all what those XP updates do but for XP SP2 is a HUGE jump, much bigger than what 10.4 for mac os x 10.3

Re:Biggest Problem with Windows...

[tenco]

In Unix, I can assign a file an owner, one or more groups, and the type of access I want groups, owner, and everyone else to have to that file.

I know, I know. ACLs (you are using NTFS, right?) are a bit complicated to someone used to standard UNI* rights managment. If you cannot find ACLs in Win XP Pro, just turn off simple rights managment in your explorer preferences.

I can also be logged in as a user, and then also log in as root if I need to make some system changes, without logging off as a users. In Windows, I must go through an annoying process of switching accounts to log in as an administrator.

Discover "runas" or "Fast user switching".

Finally, the system doesn't have a coherent way of managing permissions. For example, if I install a program as root/admin, it will create a directory in Program Files, and assign the permissions as such, that when a non-root user logs in and the program installed tries to write it's data to that programs directory, it will cause an error.

That's not the fault of Windows, it's the fault of the installed programm. A simple, but not very secure, workaround for me is to give write access to problematic files/registry values to a user who needs these.

Why can't Microsoft just borrow the Unix permission system, it is not like it is patented or anything?

The standard UNI* permission system is way more simpler than ACLs.

Until recently i only used Linux. But my new shiny hardware unfortunately isn't supported (sata_sil issues). So i had to use Windows XP Home (slightly extended through a registry hack). The last Windows i used was Windows 98, and i must admit that current Windows XP is not that bad, after all.

Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh?

[rossifer]

You've got a bunch of points (many of which are valid to one degree or another) but I'm only going to respond to one.

It [NT4] had full support for ACLs in the filesystem. Linux got that in, what, 2000? Does it even work with the standard filesystems?

ACL's are a filesystem feature, not an OS feature. NTFS has them, FAT and FAT32 do not. Ext2 does not have ACL's, though hooks were left for ACL's from the beginning and support can be patched into 2.4 and 2.6 kernels for Ext2 and Ext3. AFS (Andrew File System), which is the original king of ACL's, could be used on Linux in 1998. ReiserFS has them (don't know for how long). SGI's XFS is the same (I think this was pretty recent).

I've been using ACLs with UFS2 (the default FS) on FreeBSD for a couple of years, but I've not seen them in common use on Linux.

Evidently, people don't miss them, because the option has been available to Linux users about as long as NTFS has been on the scene. I would hazard a guess that ACL's aren't the "make or break" feature for most people's filesystem choice.

Now, I'm not going to seriously rain on your parade as the point of this argument seems to boil down to: NTFS is a great filesystem. I agree. NTFS is some sweet technology that works real nice in the here and now. But it isn't the only game in town for high performance journaling file systems (with ACL's no less). The fact that people don't really seek out ACL's on linux is simply that ogw permissions are so well understood by so many unix admins, and most of the time, ogw permissions are good enough.

Regards,
Ross

Not the first time they haven't met expectations

[Locke2005]

Imagine how poor Melinda Gates felt on her honeymoon, when she discovered what Bill had been promising her for years was going to be "the greatest thing ever" could be summed up in two words -- "micro" and "soft".

Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh?

[rjstanford]

ACL's are a filesystem feature, not an OS feature

More to the point, ACLs are an OS feature, not a Kernel feature. To linux-the-kernel they are irrelevant. To linux-the-os they are important, after all you need implementations in the filesystem, the file utils, system libraries, gui file browsers, et cetera, to really implement them fully.

The grandparent was making the point that linux-the-os, in whatever flavor, was less mature than windows-the-os. Personally, I don't see that anything you said goes against that point, other than by pedantically treating linux as a kernel only.

Re:Don't care. Don't want to care.

[AeroIllini]

and yes I have tried Open Office, but I got too many complaints from people who still use office and complain about OO screwing up doc conversions... plus OO is resource hog and takes ages to load.

Many of the complaints I hear along these lines are usually referring to the 1.x versions of OOo, and were true at that time. However, the 2.x versions of OpenOffice are very stable, not as resource intensive, and much more mature than their 1.x counterparts (Sun had a big hand in that). Document conversion from MS Office is a problem still, but even Microsoft has problems converting between various versions of MS Office, so it's hardly a showstopper.

Bottom line: employees are usually retrained when an office upgrades to a new version of MS Office anyway, so why would this be any different? And because the native format of OpenOffice is OpenDocument, once you make the costly conversion from MS Office formats, you will not have to worry about conversion again (not necessarily because OpenDocument is the end-all of formats, but because it is open and documented, so that third parties can easily write batch converters for whatever new formats might pop up).

Admittedly, third party Windows-only software can be a problem. But just work that $200-a-seat savings into a contract with some software firm to get electronics or drafting software ported to Linux. Many CAD programs exist for UNIX and can be easily ported, and the Windows-only programs could run through an emulation layer such as Wine. The long-term cost savings would be quite high.

The bottom line is that there are absolutely no technical barriers to switching to Linux/OpenOffice on a workstation computer. There are only human resources challenges such as training, fear of change, and complacency, and perhaps budgetary concerns during the initial switch.