Windows Vista - Not So Bad?

Shantyman writes "ZDNet has a counterpoint to the negative impressions of Vista's Beta 2 going around. Entitled Vista Beta 2, up close and personal, Ed Bott writes: 'I've spent the last three months running beta versions of Windows Vista on the PCs I use for everyday work. February and March were exasperating. April's release was noticeably better, and the Beta 2 preview - Build 5381, released to testers in early May - has been running flawlessly on my notebook for nearly three weeks.'"

Comments

Yep

[bmajik]

I partially agree with you, and because of my unix background, I am running vista as a non-priviledged user.

There are two aspects of this. The first is that, if you truly are running as a low-priv user, you need to get elevation prompts at the correct times to be able to live life. This works pretty well, although I keep a cmd.exe window running as local admin sitting around sometimes.

The other aspect of this, however, is that in the real world, a lot of people just dont run as admin, and a lot of apps just can't. So a bunch of work has gone into making admins "virtual admins", so to speak, where operations that actually require priviledge use still involve user interaction/confirmation.

In that sense, people running "as admin" are getting the customer experience - and internally, the way the "did you really want to do this, Mr. Admin?" stuff works is passionately debated :)

My opinion is that people are complaining about the wrong problem - as we continue to eliminate things that require priviledge use, the amount that we have to care about putting up with a just-in-time priviledge escalation model goes down.

Microsoft IS Eating Their Own Dogfood

[Quantam]

I disagree with your assessment of the situation. Microsoft employees running as admin means two things. Of course it means that they don't have to worry about programs that require admin (or have bugs if not used in admin mode). But even in this case, your hostility is misdirected. MS produces some of the programs most capable of performing correctly in limited user situations I've ever seen (in fact, I can't think of any notable bugs in MS programs when running as limited user, apart from obviously administrative programs, like chkdsk or defrag). That's why I was completely indifferent to the news that MS employees might have to run as limited users: they already know how to play nicely in the limited user situation. What REALLY needs to happen is that third-party developers who write these steaming pile of shit programs need to be forced to use limited user mode. There's absolutely no reason some of these programs (Intuit's It'sDeductable comes readily to mind) need to be admin.

However, running as admin opens them up to all the nasty exploits and viruses (especially if they're using IE), those being probably the biggest blunder on Microsoft's part. As a limited user, a virus can delete your MP3s and porn. As admin, a virus can reformat your entire hard drive, install a rootkit, etc. If that isn't eating your own dog food, I don't know what is.

Sorry this post is a bit scatterbrained. I'm in a pretty big hurry :P

Re:Runs flawlessly

[gunnk]

Better yet, he claims it has been running flawlessly for three weeks, but the screenshot he posted:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?page_id=65&page=19

indicates a system crash on 5/21.