Tom's Overly Detailed Vista Review

prostoalex writes "The weekend is here, and several software sites have published extensive reviews of Windows Vista for your reading enjoyment. Tom's Hardware is running a 500 hour Windows Vista review that spreads out 40 pages." From the article: "This new operating system is huge: it has more than 37,800 files, taking up a total of 10 GB. Part of this size stems from the fact that the current Beta is for the so-called "Ultimate Edition", which contains all available components, including complete versions of both Tablet PC and Media Center capabilities. In addition, many applications have been compiled in debug mode, so some space savings should occur for final versions once that debug switch is turned off. For our Windows Vista preview, we used Build 5381."

Comments

I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[yagu]

Let me save you some time, this is a dupe.

As a "subscriber", I get the preview of articles with the blurb: See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor. at the bottom. This gives opportunity to correct errors (doesn't happen much) and more importantly help stem the tide of dupes. I replied, told them "DUPE, BIG TIME", but alas. (It's a dupe of Tom's Hardware Looks at Microsoft Vista Beta.)

So, since it's a dupe, and I already posted to that story, feel free to read my post again.

(I don't mind the occasional dupe, I wonder why a mechanism to prevent them is offered if it isn't used. Sigh.)

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[plasmacutter]

what's really sad is, i've submitted stories about actualy police state tactics being used in the US (no not tinfoil hat, as in i actually have and linked video of jackbooted thugs beating us citizens who did nothing illegal) and had the stories rejected.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Sawopox]

Perhaps /. needs to implement a "DUPE" link that's accessible to subscribers. Have it function like Digg, totaling the number of DUPE clicks each article receives.

Then, allow subscribers to set a DUPE filter limit. Anything over that limit is not displayed on the page.

(Also, I've always wanted to use this in a post.)

3. ???????
4. PROFIT!!

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[nmb3000]

what's really sad is [...]

It's Slashdot: News for Nerds, not Slashdot: News for Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists (well, most of the time anyway).

On a related note, I've got video and pictures to *prove* that UFOs are responsible for 9/11, but all my stories get rejected! Slashdot is run by censoring fascists!

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[slashdotnickname]

Let me save you some time, this is a dupe.

Not to me and many others it isn't. Much like TV re-runs, dupes are great for us casual readers that aren't able to constantly check /.

I would also say why complain considering /. provides a great free service, but then you say you're subscriber... which begs the question, aren't there better things you could be doing with your money? It strikes me as kind of sad that you'd value being the first to see a story as worth more than an act of charity, like donating to the poor or taking an ugly out.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, if we wanted to read indymedia, we know where to find it.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be argumentative....post a link to your story if it's so goddamned important. I really don't care about your issues with the editors of slashdot, nor do I care about Suzy or Mary's karma. POST YOUR LINK!

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[cosmotron]

Isn't this what the point of the tags are? They were supposed to make it so if an article is a dupe, and people tag it as that...stuff was supposed to happen.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[__aaclcg7560]

POST YOUR LINK!

I don't think you're ready for the truth... ;)

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[mikesd81]

THat's why, if you look to your left, you'll see a history of the stories posted. Look for the title 'Older Stuff'.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[sammy baby]

So, to sum up:

"Hey, stop criticizing Slashdot. I missed this story the first time around, so I fully support that they keep running it until everyone has had a chance to see it. But why would you bother giving Slashdot your money? You should be more like me. I'm so cool that ugly people should be flattered to get taken out on dates by me."

Okay! Well, thanks for that contribution to the discussion.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[kfg]

I wonder why a mechanism to prevent them is offered if it isn't used. Sigh

Because in the spirit of the article they intend to repost this one 38 more times.

KFG

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[bj8rn]

You suck and your post sucks and I hate you all over the Internet.

(Likewise, I've always wanted to use this in a post)

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps /. needs to implement a "DUPE" link that's accessible to subscribers.

Why only accessible to subcribers? Pointing out dupes is DOING A FAVOR to Slashdot. It's helping them do their job. It's insulting to subscribers to tell them they get it as a special pay-for privilege.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[cgenman]

It's not a dupe. The original poster just finished reading the article.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[EvanED]

I'd say it'd restrict the people that could vote for dupes to those who are probably most serious. (Not saying there aren't serious people who aren't subscribers, just that there probably aren't many people who arent' serious who are subscribers.) This reduces the chance that people would essentially DOS a non-dupe story by voting it a dupe, because in order to do so you'd have to pay for enough screennames to do that, as opposed to just register enough bots.

At least that's what I would guess, and it seems somewhat reasonable.

(Note, I'm not a subscriber)

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Propaganda13]

If it's a rerun then it should have started with "This article was originally aired on..." since this is a news site.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

It gt modded "Troll" because there is no "Hideous, Ugly, Braindead Cocksucker"-option; I agree that you would deserve the latter.

Ha! And your comment got modded "Troll" because there is no "Insightfully Funny"-option; I agree that you would deserve the latter.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[muhgcee]

Wow...I hadn't checked Indymedia in a long time. I go there today, and the most recent story is from over a week ago. I didn't think they had any further to slip, but it looks like they actually did get worse since last time I checked.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[fm6]

All Slashdot needs are editors who aren't terminally lazy. Zonk is by far the worst.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

because its all about ad revenue. They dont care that there are dupes.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[davygrvy]

3. ???????
4. PROFIT!!

2. Steal Underpants!

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[TheSpoom]

Yep. From the Tags FAQ:

Our article tagger will know about tags like "dupe" or "typo".

For you non-subscribers, BTW, the very first tag on this article (and from my memory, since its creation) is dupe.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[iminplaya]

Look, man. Everything written since Socrates(so-crates) is a dupe. There is nothing new. And this is why they should eliminate the "redundant" mod. Accept it.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[ShaneThePain]

Thats the SECOND time today I've had my ideology insulted.
Fuck you Anti-Fascist

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[deficite]

Conspiracies thrive when they convince their victims there's nothing wrong. Funny you're so quick to judge something you have not seen as being mere paranoia when you haven't even the information the person wanted to submit. I can guarantee you injustices are more important than duped articles about an OS that won't even come out until next year.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[RandomPrecision]

Except then, a group of bitter slashdotters could go through and take every /. story off of the main page.

...

Hey, I guess I'll head over to Digg right now...feel free to also report every story as a dupe.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[fufubag]

Yeah, dude, the U.S. government and slashdot, as well as the whites, blacks, jews, and eskimos are all out to keep you down.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[geminidomino]

Suggestion: Create a topic in your journal and put it in your sig?

I'd be interested to see some of these, if they are for real as you say.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[DanielSchuller]

Let me save you some time, this is a dupe. As a "subscriber", I get the preview of articles with the blurb: See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor. at the bottom. This gives opportunity to correct errors (doesn't happen much) and more importantly help stem the tide of dupes. I replied, told them "DUPE, BIG TIME", but alas. (It's a dupe of Tom's Hardware Looks at Microsoft Vista Beta [slashdot.org].) So, since it's a dupe, and I already posted to that story, feel free to read my post [slashdot.org] again. (I don't mind the occasional dupe, I wonder why a mechanism to prevent them is offered if it isn't used. Sigh.)

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[jrockway]

> video and pictures to *prove* that UFOs are responsible for 9/11

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-202332089 0224991194

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[glens]

rezonk all over again

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[strider44]

I wonder how many people emailed him about stuff other than it being a dupe? Probably took maybe even over ten minutes to read through all that email before he got to yours... Hell even I take more than ten minutes to read my email a lot of the time and I'm not even an editor for a high volume site.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but he doesn't know what "begs the question" means, either.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[bill_mcgonigle]

All Slashdot needs are editors who aren't terminally lazy. Zonk is by far the worst.

And by "worst" you mean "best at selling ad impressions to people who like to bitch about dupes and bad editors."

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[fm6]

Right, they deliberately screw up so that people will login to bitch. Never mind all the people who think Slashdot has gone downhill, so they don't login at all.

Hey, maybe Jason Blair was supposed to get caught plagiarizing his stories. Think of how much extra attention the New York Times has gotten from this "scandal"!

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Right, they deliberately screw up so that people will login to bitch. Never mind all the people who think Slashdot has gone downhill, so they don't login at all.

Can you measure these two groups? Somebody could make some scripts to crawl the site to figure this out with data. I'm too lazy to do so at the moment.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[fm6]

As usual, conspiracy theories are the first resort of the lazy.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[bill_mcgonigle]

As usual, conspiracy theories are the first resort of the lazy.

And assuming people who run a profitable business don't know what they're doing is... I don't know, just condescending I guess.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[fm6]

You're the one who's making assumptions. Slashdot is owned by VA, which has only had a couple of profitable quarters in their entire existence. And when you see a Slashdot editor behaving like an idiot, you assume he has some hidden agenda. My only assumption is that some who acts incompetent is incompetent — which isn't the biggest leap ever.

Hey, Slashdot is just a bunch of Perl hackers who lucked into a big following. If they hadn't appeared right when there was a lot of VC to waste on marginal enterprises, they'd be out of business by now. I value their better work — but they screw up a lot. They're the first to admit it.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[bill_mcgonigle]

You're the one who's making assumptions. Slashdot is owned by VA [google.com], which has only had a couple of profitable quarters in their entire existence.

That's a strawman - we're not talking about VA, we're talking about Slashdot. Or are you saying Slashdot is a money-losing business unit?

It would be rather trivial to add simple duplicate screens to Slashcode. But it's never happened despite that, in all the years. So either we assume they're losing customers left and right and don't know how to run a business or they're not and they do.

Re:I TOLD them it was a dupe!

[fm6]

I give up. You're right. Zonk is fucking evil genius.

Too many pages

[Bromskloss]

Tom's Hardware is running a 500 hour Windows Vista review that spreads out 40 pages.

Please tell Tom's Hardware that in this age of wonderful technology, even a 500 hour review (whatever that is supposed to mean) doesn't have to span any more than a single page. I wouldn't read this one even if it was about something interesting.

Re:Too many pages

[LoonyMike]

You mean put all 53 paragraphs of the review in a single web page???

Re:Too many pages

[eldepeche]

Why not?

Maybe 10 pages would be a healthy medium, but surely there could be more than one goddamn paragraph per page?!?

Re:Too many pages

[nstlgc]

That's why God invented Print Versions: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html

Re:Too many pages

[kfg]

500 hour review (whatever that is supposed to mean)

How long you can expect it to take to click through it.

KFG

Re:Too many pages

[Lord Kano]

Here here. I wouldn't read 500 pages even if it were about a hot bisexual asian chick wanting to blow me, while her girlfriend helps. That's just too much verbiage.

LK

Re:Too many pages

[ben there...]

You have to copy-paste the link now. They went so far as to redirect Slashdot referrals to the ad-ridden version.

Re:Too many pages

[vtcodger]

Didn't read it, eh? A wise decision. Summary:

• Pages 1-3: They have again improved (i.e. changed) the graphical interface with, are you ready for this? tranparent windows (I assume this is different from not displaying the window at all).
• Pages 4-11 They've fixed IE so that it is secure, does what Firefox does, and prints properly (about damn time if true). People still use IE?
• Pages 12-15 They've added GUI IPV6 support
• Page 16 You can specify your language for voice input
• Page 17 They've tinkered with the help system (again).
• Pages 19-21 You will now have a choice of secure or usable. That's an exclusive or.
• Pages 22-24 They have expanded Windows Update (an accident waiting to happen if you ask me)
• Pages 25-29 They have tinkered some with Explorer. Some of the stuff sounds reasonable.
• Page 29 They have done more work on device driver installation. This is probably a genuine improvement. But XP was pretty good.
• Page 30 You can specify default browser, email, etc in one place
• Page 31 There will be a new DirectX, but it's not ready yet.
• Pages 32-39 All the old games are there and you can save and restore them. They've added chess, inkball.and purple place.(Yes, TH really devoted EIGHT pages to games)

It took five years for This ? I imagine that there is more, but I don't know what. I've probably trialized some genuine improvements. But on the whole, Vista seems pretty underwhelming, and in any case, my fondest hope is that I can stick with Windows 9 until either Linux really works well, or Microsoft rethinks its approach to OSes and delivers up somthing that does less and does it better.

Re:Too many pages

[daviddennis]

I read it, and I have to say your summary was pretty good. I wish they'd had a bit more commentary with their screenshots, but their conclusions seemed a bit over-flattering to Microsoft.

Unless I'm really missing something, it doesn't look too different from XP to me, and I noticed little to no usage of the supposedly famous transparency effects. Perhaps this is just as well; Steve Jobs got rid of a lot of them in the years since MacOS X was created. I think they probably wound up being too distracting.

They have eliminated browser-based updates from Windows Update, so (presumably) attackers won't be able to create simulated updates from their web sites. That always seemed like a huge hole to me and I'm glad it's gone.

And the new kids' games, which they devoted way too many pages to (one page would be too many) looked like they had mascots even more deranged than our pal <a href = 'http://www.ubersoft.net/">Binky the Paperclip</a>.

I didn't see anything making me want to upgrade my moldy old PC from XP, even if it were possible to do so. (The old system doesn't support 128mb graphics RAM or 1gb memory, so I would have to get a brand new one in any event.)

And as for switching my primary computing platform from Apple? Forget it.

D

Re:Too many pages

[Anonymous Coward]

if it were about a hot bisexual asian chick

make that a hot bisexual asian biker chick, then I'd subscribe!

Re:Too many pages

[Dissectional]

"People still use IE?"

No. Noone uses IE. About seven people alive today do. I believe IE remains for backwards compatibility.

Re:Too many pages

[oztiks]

The main feeling I got from reading the artical was that the developers attempted to "fix" security issues by adding top level precautions.

Instead of working on lowerlevel aspects of the operating system such as memory allocation/protection and better user to superuser management all they've done is add prompts and precautions....

Two things come from this ...

a) In computing the term "hacking" is all about making something do a function or proceedure that was not supposed to be its original purpose, on that train of thought is merely a matter of time before people just implement hacks that work around these prompts or precautions.

b) prompts and precautions piss the general public off, how many times do you hear "i switched my firewall off because it always gives me these stupid errors that annoy me when all i'm trying to do is just surf the web" now the operating system does this?

Yes i'm a bit disapointed too, Vista just looks like a bit of mac, a bit of firefox, a bit of new style microsoft eye candy (give 2 - 3 weeks and it will be boring to everyone). On top of that they try their very best to make it look nothing like *nix....

Re:Too many pages

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Instead of working on lowerlevel aspects of the operating system such as memory allocation/protection

In fairness, they did add a randomized address space layout like OpenBSD has. This doesn't stop exploit code but does create a less friendly environment for it.

Re:Too many pages

[oztiks]

Granted, but this all boils down to the fact that they cant do too much because of legacy and all sorts of issues can stem from putting a fortified memory enviornment, its a shame they cant plug the leaks a bit better and soon rather then later ... and put up with the legacy issues now rather then sit back and hope that they can eventually fade these issues out over time.

Again money is the big issue here and the reason why we have this vista package the way it is at present. Add more more more and people will see more "lights on the dash board of the car" so-to-speak rather then adding better "fail safes" in the engine to stop it from overheating.

Re:Too many pages

[drsmithy]

Instead of working on lowerlevel aspects of the operating system such as memory allocation/protection [...]

The low-level changes and improvements made in Vista are *significant*. They alone easily justify the major version bump (NT 5.x -> NT 6.x).

Re:Too many pages

[drsmithy]

It took five years for This ?

No, it took five years (really, three, since they basically started over in 2003) to create a significant upgrade to XP.

You shouldn't judge the improvements in Vista from a bunch of screenshots any more than you should judge the improvements between two Linux distros three years apart based on a few screenshots.

Re:Too many pages

[oztiks]

I guess then only time will tell if those *changes* are going to be affective in terms of security.

Re:Too many pages

[drsmithy]

I guess then only time will tell if those *changes* are going to be affective in terms of security.

Can't see how it will make any difference. NT's low-level features have never been lacking in terms of security (or much else).

Re:read it?

[melonman]

5 hours? I don't think so: that spreads out 40 pages on Tom's Hardware means about 300 words plus 5Gb of adverts and screen clutter.

all-on-one-page-with-less-ads link?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a print preview link anywhere on that site - anyone willing to go dig through the previous /. article to find out of this particular site does their print previews and provide me with a link to this easy to read in one go format? (you'll probably earn yourself some decent karma)

Re:all-on-one-page-with-less-ads link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, how dare he link to an obvious scam like Toms Hardware. For shame.

Re:all-on-one-page-with-less-ads link?

[Anonymous Coward]

nm - found it (there was a comment in the original article about it meta refreshing to an ad and then not wanting to show up again, but my SeaMonkey doesn't seem to be bothered by that). Nothing much worth seeing here though - 35 pages of screenshots, and less than five of text, of which maybe two lines non-obvious.

The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this is getting out of hand. He's already had 2 articles today, every one of them linking to a different site of his. Did Slashdot's contract with Roland expire or something? This guy is clearly using Slashdot to pad his various semi-scammy sites. Something smells rotten here(and it's not RMS without a shower...).

Re:The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say you're trolling if you call Tom's Hardware a scam. prostoalex is just a prolific poster, unlike Roland who is the actual scammer.

Re:The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[agent dero]

You simple, simple man.

By spanning articles over multitudes of pages, you can display more ads, and generate more ad related traffic. That's the only reason most news sites (I hate it too) make things span 3-4 pages for no good reason.

Re:The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[PatrickThomson]

prostoalex's name at the start of the article is clickable; Submitters get to link a site of their choosing as a reward for getting a successful story in. In Roland's case, the article itself linked to his blog as well as his name. In this case, prostoalex's name has linked to 3 different sites he runs.

Re:The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[myowntrueself]

and it's not RMS without a shower

Hah!

That would be an oxymoron!

*ducks*

Re:The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[grammar fascist]

That would be an oxymoron!

A GNU/oxymoron, Philistine.

Re:The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[snuf23]

Actually ads aren't the only reason although it's "big super plus" for management.
One of the big reasons is that usability tests show that most people don't like long articles that scroll down forever. They are used to getting there information on the Internet in more bite size chunks. Seperating it into pages and providing links that jump to particular sections allows the reader to choose what they want to read. Every little detail? Just one part that interestes them? Jump to the conclusion?
Additionally if you throw it all on one page and have a lot of images, someone skimming the article by scrolling down may do so before all the images load in. Which causes impatient web surfers to think the site is slow.
Agree or disagree, a paged setup is being taught as the best way to "webify" longer form content - particularly material that may originate in a print publication.

Re:The 3rd Prostoalex Submission Today

[ashot]

I bet this depends a lot on age..

Waste of Space

[ludomancer]

Maybe the extensive review is a tribute to the OS in question: Bulky and unnecessary.

All I have to say is http://www.nliteos.com/ (nlite Windows software) to the rescue.

Re:Waste of Space

[nogginthenog]

nLite Features

- Service Pack Integration
- Component Removal

It needs .NET Framework 2.0 in order to run it...

Oh the irony!!!!!

Re:Waste of Space

[Anonymous Coward]

You realise that nLite needs .NET to *build* the custom Windows CD, and not to actually *run* this custom Windows, right?
So after you're done making the cd you'll never have to deal with the eeeevil .NET Framework again, don't worry. Tough luck trying to run some of the newer programs out there, sheesh.

Printable View?

[earthstar]

Doesnt a printabe view exist for http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/ ?

Or is it just me who is missing it?

Dupe with print-view link

[thewldisntenuff]

This was a dupe from last Wednesday, posted mysteriously in the Linux section (something in the dupe post about Ubuntu 6) of /. -

You can read the original thread here

And if you don't like clicking through 40 pages, there's a print view here

10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[RobertLTux]

im mean really mandriva is 12gigs total debian is 12 gigs i think that just about all the big distros are that big

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Ekarderif]

But the 12 gigs of Linux also include all the programs you will ever need. What does Windows bundle with that same amount of space? Virus scanners, spyware removal, and the beautiful Aero!

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[sunset]

10 gigs may not be huge, but 10 gigs of eye candy is.

A normal/basic Linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) installs to about 2 GB. You can add tons of stuff to that, but they are all useful applications, not fluff. And you sure don't need 2 GB of RAM to run them.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Nightspirit]

Arguably vista has all the programs the average joe will ever need (minus an office suite). I have no idea what takes up the space, but keep in mind that Vista has much more of a driver base than linux. Also, vista has GUIs of almost all windows versions (classic, standard, xp, and aero; not sure if this takes up any space, but it is possible).

XP is stable (I have no idea of vista is), the only thing that I think really needs to be imporved is security, networking, the registry, and the ability to insta-kill an application. Looks like they are working on security and networking, too bad about the registry and task manager. I'd try out OSX if they made a tablet, until then I'm likely to be stuck with vista.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[ABoerma]

Might be why they are called big distro's...

Anyhow, most installers come with a "No, I do not want to install twelve web browsers and seventy-four text editors, thank you very much"-option.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Lorkki]

You don't install the entirety of Debian on your hard drive. A lot of that bulk is comprised of mutually redundant, rarely needed and even obsolete applications. You can easily cram a working desktop system in under one gigabyte, and that's "working" as in you could actually do some work with it.

Currently the root filesystem in my Ubuntu installation is filled up to 5 gigabytes, but that includes things like development, image processing and 3D modeling tools, an office suite and a flashy, composited, 3D-accelerated GUI (Xgl and compiz).

Vista isn't exactly up to par if it offers comparatively nothing in twice the space. Won't be even if it contracts to half its current size before release.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[xXenXx]

Larger driver base? Windows? That's a joke.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[zlogic]

Yup, but these come with an advanced image editor, various programming languages, compilers, kernel source code, a couple of mail clients, a pack of browsers and a dozen media players. Vista doesn't have lots of these (at least as I understand).

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[jlarocco]

Comparing full install size of Vista to a large Linux distro is apples to oranges.

Yes, some of the large Linux distros are huge, multi-CD behemoths. But they include just about every piece of free software under the sun. For your comparison convenience, here's a list of programs usually included with a mega-distro:

• Compilers (gcc, g++, gnat, fortran, perl, python, ruby, ocaml, haskell, lisp, scheme, awk, ...)
• Office suite (OpenOffice, KOffice, ...)
• Several word processors (OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, LaTex...)
• Spread sheet program (Gnumeric, OpenOffice, Koffice, ...)
• Databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, OpenOffice's Access equivalent, ...)
• Dev environments (KDevelop, Anjuta, emacs, vi[m], eclipse, ...)
• Graphics (Gimp, ImageMagick, [x|g|k]pdf, ...)
• 3D graphics (POV-Ray, KPovmodeler, blender, ...)
• Debuging tools (gdb, cachegrind, ...)
• Java development tools (gcj, jdk[not in strictly free distros], eclipse, ...)
• Mathematical/scentific tools (GnuPlot, Kalzium, KmPlot, Latex, ...)
• Window managers (XFCE, KDE, Gnome, WindowMaker, IceWM, Enlightenment ...)
• Web browsers (Opera, Firefox, Mozilla, lynx, links, w3m, ...)
• Mail clients (Opera, Thunderbird, Evolution, KMail, Mozilla mail...)
• Network tools (ethereal, tcpdump, wget, ...)
• Drivers for just about everything (not everything, but a surprisingly large selection)
• Text editors (Emacs, Vim, pico, nano, gedit, jedit, ...)
• Multimedia (Xine, MPlayer, XMMS, ...)
• Tens of thousands of other apps

That's a fraction of what you get with a distro like Suse, Mandriva, or Debian.

Now, a list of what you get with a full Vista install:

• Window Manager (only 1)
• Games (Solitaire, Minesweeper, ...)
• Basic network tools (Internet connection wizard, ...)
• Basic drivers (See /. article from a week or two ago)
• Graphics (paint)
• Internet (Internet Explorer)
• Email (Outlook express)
• Word processing (Wordpad)
• Text editor (Notepad)
• Multimedia (Windows Media Player)

Notice something? Nobody uses Paint. Nobody uses Wordpad. Nobody uses Notepad. Nobody uses Outlook Express. Nobody plays Solitaire and Minesweeper. For most intents, Windows is just a 10 gig OS. If you want to do anything useful, you have to install other programs.

A full install of a large Linux distro has programs for just about anything someone might want to do on a computer, and it's actually useful software. If it didn't include AbiWord already, I'd go download it. If Windows didn't have Wordpad, I wouldn't care.

But I run Slackware. It's 2 CDs - a full install is less than 3 GB, and comes with word processors, latex, compilers, debuggers, network tools, 4 window managers, XMMS, and some other stuff. It's very useable, comes with a hell of a lot more stuff than Windows, and is less than 1/4th the size for a full install.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[tacocat]

Minus the Office Suite is a pretty fucking big omission. That's second only to minus the internet. But Microsoft pulled that one out of the fire on Windows 95

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[jthill]

Notice something? Nobody uses Paint. Nobody uses Wordpad. Nobody uses Notepad. Nobody uses Outlook Express. Nobody plays Solitaire and Minesweeper.

Why would anybody wrap so much verbiage that's apparently intended seriously around such a blatant troll? Worst of all, you forgot Space Cadet!. Sheesh.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

Nobody plays Solitaire and Minesweeper

You obviously don't have relatives.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[EvanED]

P is stable (I have no idea of vista is), the only thing that I think really needs to be imporved is ... the registry ...

Just out of curiosity, what's your gripe with the registry?

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[EvanED]

Compilers (gcc, g++, gnat, fortran, perl, python, ruby, ocaml, haskell, lisp, scheme, awk, ...)

To be fair, the .Net framework (at least one version will almost certainly included with Vista) has compilers for C++, C#, and VB.Net.

Basic drivers (See /. article from a week or two ago)

Which article?

Nobody uses Paint. Nobody uses Wordpad. Nobody uses Notepad. Nobody uses Outlook Express. Nobody plays Solitaire and Minesweeper.

That's a big BS. Maybe Wordpad. But paint; people use that sometimes. I personally use Notepad all the freaking time.* So do many people I know. I'll occasionally play Solitare and Minesweeper. I'm pretty sure some people use Outlook.

I'm not disputing your overall point which is that comparing a Linux distro to Vista sizewise is a stupid comparison, but you're being *slightly* unfair to Windows here.

*I was using Notepad++ instead of Notepad, but then I had to reinstall Windows (and everything else) when my hard drive I guess decided that it was tired of spinning, and I've never reassociated .txt files with Notepad++ because Notepad works just as well as Notepad++ would for them.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Mad Merlin]

...but keep in mind that Vista has much more of a driver base than linux.

Wrong. Windows may have more driver *support* in some cases, but those drivers don't come packaged with Windows. Linux supports more hardware out of the box than any other OS.

Also, vista has GUIs of almost all windows versions (classic, standard, xp, and aero; not sure if this takes up any space, but it is possible)

And most Linux distros will package at least KDE and Gnome, along with Windowmaker, Enlightenment, Fluxbox, Blackbox, Xfce, IceWM, etc. Again, Windows takes more space to do less.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[aevan]

That's a big BS. Maybe Wordpad. But paint; people use that sometimes. I personally use Notepad all the freaking time.* So do many people I know. I'll occasionally play Solitare and Minesweeper. I'm pretty sure some people use Outlook.

Backing you up a little...

Notepad is my quick and dirty editor for html, xml, ini files and other text readable files. I use it to make tiny text files on the desktop for jotsheets of reminders and things. I use it when on the phone to copy down information. I use it to proof posts to forums before submitting.

Paint...has a devout following for some forsaken reason. People seem to enjoy the crude drawing they create in Paint and use them for avatars or signature files on some forums. While it is hardly used for a professional purpose, it does get used.

Some friends of mine have their parents utterly addicted to solitare. I myself load up minesweeper at work, since I have frequent 1 minute breaks while we're broadcasting, and a more complicated game just wouldn't work

Unfortunately I know many people who use Wormhole Express and enjoy being able to get their hotmail accounts easily through it. I try to get them onto other email clients but generally they drift back.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Paint...has a devout following for some forsaken reason. People seem to enjoy the crude drawing they create in Paint and use them for avatars or signature files on some forums. While it is hardly used for a professional purpose, it does get used.


To expound more, I use it a lot for quick and dirty stuff. Like if I take a screenshot with printscreen, I'll paste it into paint to save it. I've also used it for converting between JPEG and BMP.

Back when I was a kid I used to actually draw in paint.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Lord Kano]

Yeah, but that 12 gigs would include the full source for ther kernel, and virtually every type of app that's in common use. Word processing, spreadsheet, database, presentation, web server, print server, proxy server, file server, mail server, games, and you name what else.

12 gigs on Vista will get you what, the OS, Wordpad and Windows Media Player/Center?

LK

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[evilneko]

The registry just seems to be a bad idea in general. It's a glorified ini file acting as a central repository for system settings, file associations, program settings, hardware and driver information, and probably a few other things that I can't remember off the top of my head.

If there's one good thing about it, though, it's that it strikes fear in the hearts of the average user who might be so bold as to mess with it. Some do anyway and get burned. Some stay away. As for the rest of what it does, it'd be better to have it decentralized. Then maybe those bold fools will only break part of something, rather than all of windows.

And whoever thought up the idea of storing application settings in it should be shot.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[naelurec]

Just out of curiosity, what's your gripe with the registry?

While in *theory* the registry is ok, I find major problems in the following areas:

1. Migrating configs from one system to another system. On a *nix based system, I can simply copy the text configs and be on my way.. With the registry, there is no standard way to export the config of a given application easily and consistently.

2. Organization - ties into #1 -- there are LOTS of programs that store/update/modify registry information in various parts of the registry. As a result, it is *VERY* difficult to track down configuration issues unless it has been previously documented (ie KB article). Outlook tops my list for aggervation with this one.

3. Lack of alternate configs .. as programs store their configs in the registry, it is not possible to point an app to a different configuration. Ie- in a *nix config, I can simply point my apps to different config files and this adjusts runtime accordingly. Pretty nice for testing as well (much easier than attempting to locate a config key, export from registry, make a change, run it.. see if it works, reimport the reg key, yada yada..).

4. Lots of data loaded un-necessarily. The registry contains a LOT of information. Configs for apps I use infrequently still are loaded and still need to be dealt with (a source of general slowdown).

5. No ability to add comments to particular settings (ie a comment line in a text config file).

6. AFAIK, no built-in versioning control (can't see how the registry has changed over time)

Having said all that .. I do like the fact the registry provides a standard interface for configuration data (versus various config file formats when dealing with text configs). Though I would like to see separate registry files for each app (ie a user config, system-wide config) so I have the ability to see *exactly* what config settings a particular app uses and modifies.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[SillySnake]

How can you say no one uses paint and notepad? Those are the two most reliable windows apps, and I use them on a regular basis. Well, at least notepad if I'm jotting down a quick phone number or something.

Actually I guess these days I use nano for that, but when I used windows regularly they were useful :)

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[coop535]

Whoa. Don't knock the mighty notepad.

It's the one application I can't live without. Ever try to copy and paste from one "rich" app to another? Notepad to the rescue! It strips off that font color / background color / font size in a flash. Oh, and don't get me started about calc. I love that thing. I stopped hunting for my calculator somewhere in the 90's and never looked back.

Besides, it's more like (cut 'n pasting with calc: (40-15)= ) 25 GIGS!

A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Jugalator]

Yes, some of the large Linux distros are huge, multi-CD behemoths. But they include just about every piece of free software under the sun. For your comparison convenience, here's a list of programs usually included with a mega-distro

Yes, but much of the reason the Vista install has grown is because they're including much more bundles in this one than before, so yes, Linux may include even more, but the reason both grows is the same. Vista will compared to XP also include: a search based on Windows Desktop Search, Windows Defender, Windows SideShow, Windows Calendar, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Collaboration, BitLocker, new games (Chess, Mahjong, Purble Place), Services for UNIX.

So it's unfair to say that it's unfair to say that only Linux is gaining size from bundles. ;-)

Personally, I thought the idea of overly many bundles were idiotic, Windows and Linux editions/distros alike.

Instead release free/cheap "Addon Packs" to order on CD's for those who want, or via a slick OS integration for direct downloads if you have a good connection. For Linux/Windows to assume that everyone should want the bundled Movie Maker or other esoteric applications is just plain stupid IMHO.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[modecx]

With 12 gigs of space on a Linux machine, I could have everything I needed to do pretty much anything prouctive and then some, a virtual drive with a full install of Win2000 with plenty of room to grow, a few dozen hours of 128kbit MP3, and still be quite comfortable... I'd probably be hindered in tyring to work with largish images, but then a 12 gig drive is pretty ancient tech.

Funny that the full install of 2000 SP4 takes up less than a gig. Does that mean that Vista will be 12 times better?

My biggest concern is that it's going to be a bitch to backup all of that shit, un top of the rest of what people use. Is vista going to come with a tape drive?

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Marc_Hawke]

The software our company writes uses the registry to store settings. However, the customers that buy our software like to lock down their users to where they have to 'write' access to ANYTHING, especially the registry.

The two are incompatable. It's a constant barage from Customer Support trying to tell Development to "get the heck out of the registry."

Of course, our other product writes to text files...and we are constantly having to tell people to give write access to those text files. And finally, another product writes to files that are stored in the users space. (Flavor of the day is "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\application\" Have fun walking a non-techy user through checking that. (Especially since it's typically hidden by default.)

I guess there's no way to win...but we've definitely 'lost' the most when using the registry.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Tadrith]

The registry is definitely a frustration... the design was not what it should have been.

Thankfully, Microsoft is now pushing developers to use XML-based configuration files that are stored in the user's profile... this is a huge improvement, if you ask me. Applications should be mostly self-contained, with user-based information with the user's profile. Makes corporate networks much cleaner, and much easier for me to administrate.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Benzido]

I actually view this as a huge flaw in the Linux distros, and a minor flaw in Windows.

I want an operating system to install, by default, just those programs which are needed to run the software that I put on there. If I'm confronted with nine million icons before I even install any software, that's just clutter.

The worst thing about the linux distros is that a lot of the clutter is worthless to professionals. For 3d rendering, for example, I would estimate that maybe 1% of professionals use POV-ray. A similar percentage of graphic designers would use GIMP.

I do not want an operating system to offer me other software unless everyone else is going to have it installed - for example, a lot of windows software makes use of notepad becuase it is assumed to be installed. A lot of linux software assumes you have compilers.

Because of this dependency issue, it actually hurts Linux's usability if it comes with too many tools. Developers can assume that a user has GIMP and POV-ray on their Linux system. So some software will likely have GIMP and POV-ray as operating requirements. But the user probably doesn't want them.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

hey idiot...nobody uses 90% of the programs u wrote for linux...and guess what IDIOT the programs u wrote for windows are used...a lot.That's why they get updated...IDIOT.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[michaeldot]

Agree, the "Nobody uses Notepad" sentence in the parent post was the only one I disagreed with.

Right-clicking then Open in Notepad has to be the most common action for me and many others on a Windows machine.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

"Vista has much more of a driver base than linux"
 
I was under the impression that linux supported more hardware than practically anything else? It supports a lot of legacy hardware that existed before windows was coded.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, you'd like to use Mac OS X, which uses XML plist files for nearly all settings (system and application) and stores them in separate files in your preferences folder.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

The Vista driver library is a substantial part of that 10GB and it COMPLETELY dwarfs any Linux distribution library. Linux does NOT have 'drivers for just about everything'. It doesn't even touch 98SE, let alone XP.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Aranth Brainfire]

Nobody uses paint? Nobody uses Outlook Express? Nobody plays Solitaire? Nobody uses NOTEPAD?

What the fuck are you smoking, and where can I get some?

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[jlarocco]

I want an operating system to install, by default, just those programs which are needed to run the software that I put on there. If I'm confronted with nine million icons before I even install any software, that's just clutter.

This is mind blowing, but here's an idea: If you don't want a billion things installed by default then...here's the crazy part... don't use a distro that comes with a billion things you don't want. Or - careful, this is really crazy - deselect everything you don't want when the installation asks what you want to install. Whoa! I'm going to have to sit down after that.

Seriously. It's not rocket science. If you want to install every open source program known to man when you install the OS, do a full Debian install. If you want to install everything yourself use something like Ubuntu, select no extras when you run the install, and install what you want afterwards. Shit, why stop there? Download a DamnSmall Linux mini-CD iso and go from there.

Because of this dependency issue, it actually hurts Linux's usability if it comes with too many tools. Developers can assume that a user has GIMP and POV-ray on their Linux system. So some software will likely have GIMP and POV-ray as operating requirements. But the user probably doesn't want them.

But developers can't (and don't) assume that. I was pointing out that the huge Linux distros will likely have those in the full install, not that most people actually install all of it. Most people don't use the huge Linux distros, and the ones that do are usually smart enough to only install what they're going to use.

Every distro I've tried (at least half a dozen), gives an option for a bare minimum installation, where nothing that isn't required gets installed. We're talking the kernel, glibc, maybe an x server, a window manager and the required libraries. 300 or 400 MB installation at most.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

The Vista driver library is a substantial part of that 10GB and it COMPLETELY dwarfs any Linux distribution library. Linux does NOT have 'drivers for just about everything'. It doesn't even touch 98SE, let alone XP.

LOL - Way to make yourself look like an idiot. Maybe next time you should, you know, try Linux first... Dumbass.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[TemporalBeing]

1. Migrating configs from one system to another system. On a *nix based system, I can simply copy the text configs and be on my way.. With the registry, there is no standard way to export the config of a given application easily and consistently.

Sure there is - select the key and go File->Export using regedit.exe - or write your own to do the same thing.

2. Organization - ties into #1 -- there are LOTS of programs that store/update/modify registry information in various parts of the registry. As a result, it is *VERY* difficult to track down configuration issues unless it has been previously documented (ie KB article). Outlook tops my list for aggervation with this one.

The Registry itself has a very strict organization that breaks down into both user and system configurations. However, software developers (though more likely PHB's of software companies) have instead tormented us by trying to obfuscate where things are stored. (Ex: trying to find a license key for a program in that is stored in the registry - it could be spread through several different keys, etc. depending on the program and company.) This is no more Microsoft's design fault than it is Microsoft's fault for the existenance of the IRS. Rather it is the fault of the programers (and PHB's) that try to use the registry for something it is not.

Lack of alternate configs .. as programs store their configs in the registry, it is not possible to point an app to a different configuration. Ie- in a *nix config, I can simply point my apps to different config files and this adjusts runtime accordingly. Pretty nice for testing as well (much easier than attempting to locate a config key, export from registry, make a change, run it.. see if it works, reimport the reg key, yada yada..).

The Registry is, at its simplest, two files - a system fail (system.dat on Win9x - I think it's the same on WinNT and later, but don't remember off-hand) and a user file (user.dat on Win9x). Win NT3.51 and NT4 actually used a multitude of Registry files (hives) to compose the registry, but that seems to have disappeared in 2k and later. Unfortunately, Microsoft stores these files on disk in binary, which makes loading them quick, but does not work well for backup purposes or portability.

While you can easily provide an alternate config in some respects (e.g. for user settings), it is very hard to provide an alternate config for most anything. It's even a decently hard task to keep one user from affecting another user, or even from a user messing up their registry during development and being able to restore it on logout.

Lots of data loaded un-necessarily. The registry contains a LOT of information. Configs for apps I use infrequently still are loaded and still need to be dealt with (a source of general slowdown).
No ability to add comments to particular settings (ie a comment line in a text config file).
AFAIK, no built-in versioning control (can't see how the registry has changed over time)

Very true. And there is no way to clean it all either.

I do like the fact the registry provides a standard interface for configuration data

The Win APIs have provided standard interfaces for config files for quite a while. There are APIs for the INI files and those too can even automagically switch from an INI to the Registry if used right. This is one nice thing about Windows - the APIs are not hard to use either.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[warkda rrior]

The software our company writes uses the registry to store settings. However, the customers that buy our software like to lock down their users to where they have to 'write' access to ANYTHING, especially the registry.

The Windows registry has access control built-in. In XP, in the registry editor (regedit), look for the Permissions entry in the Edit menu.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[jibjibjib]

So, I assume you must be one of those n00bs one hears about sometimes who believe Internet Explorer == the internet.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[drsmithy]

The software our company writes uses the registry to store settings. However, the customers that buy our software like to lock down their users to where they have to 'write' access to ANYTHING, especially the registry.

Denying users write access to their own Registry hives is just silly. Indeed, I can't imagine you could even run Windows in such a configuration.

Unless you developers are trying to write to non-user parts of the Registry. In which case they are incompetent and should be fired before they can cause any more damage.

Of course, our other product writes to text files...and we are constantly having to tell people to give write access to those text files.

Why ? Where are you putting them ? Users have write permissions already to files they create in their home directories - where else are you trying to create text files ?

And finally, another product writes to files that are stored in the users space. (Flavor of the day is "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\application\" Have fun walking a non-techy user through checking that. (Especially since it's typically hidden by default.)

I hope (but doubt, based on the information given thus far) your developers are aware they shouldn't be storing anything that's meant to be persistent in that directory ? It isn't part of a user's "persistent" profile and, for example, won't be copied if you're using Roaming Profiles.

I guess there's no way to win...but we've definitely 'lost' the most when using the registry.

Follow Microsoft's guidelines on where to store different types of data. Then, it's not your fault if some over-zealous administrator tries to lock their machines down too hard.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[tacocat]

No... I am one of those who remembers when Gates didn't think the Internet was going to be anything useful and almost omitted any tcp/ip stack from windows 95. Where were you?

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[Kuscheltier]

> [...]Nobody uses Notepad.[...]

I dare to disagree. Notepad is probably the most useful app Microsoft ever shipped.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[naelurec]

Sure there is - select the key and go File->Export using regedit.exe - or write your own to do the same thing.

Well yah.. but .. umm ..

However, software developers (though more likely PHB's of software companies) have instead tormented us by trying to obfuscate where things are stored.

Thats the issue.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[naelurec]

Are you sure your software is developed properly? Seems like writing registry entries to HKCU/Software/YourProduct and other data/settings to the user's "Application Data" folder should work and fit within the user level security of Windows.

"Local Settings" are intended for only the local computer (ie it is _NOT_ saved when doing roaming profiles, etc) -- Ideal for cache files, etc. Needless to say, I agree a PITA to have a novice navigate to that folder to do anything.

You should be testing your software using regular user accounts .. If it works under regular user accounts/with roaming profiles/etc than it sounds like the customer's issues are meritless and the sys admin is overzealous.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[TemporalBeing]

However, software developers (though more likely PHB's of software companies) have instead tormented us by trying to obfuscate where things are stored.

Thats the issue.

As I said, it is standardized, but it's not MS's fault. There's not too much one can do about controlling that kind of behavior. And you get the same behaviour on the unix/linux conf file type systems - except now it is in files scattered across the hard drive that are just as hard to locate.

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[naelurec]

As I said, it is standardized, but it's not MS's fault.

Nah. I don't buy it... this problem doesn't exist on other systems so it HAS to be MS's fault :) .. so here is the reason: Regular user level access is inherently broken on Windows.

On a unix/linux system, a user has access to their own home folder and perhaps a temporary location -- thats about it. An application can be installed without having to *run* the application with super-user access (ie via a package manager). The package manager tells you _exactly_ what files it installed on the system and where those files are located.

So at best, the application can write multiple files in the users folder. If you get paranoid about this, there are security options in most *nix systems to not allow arbitrary create/modify dates on files. After an app is run, I could do a find in the users folder and locate each and every file that the application touched or modified during its execution and determine what type of data it wrote.

To get more sophisticated, I can setup versioning (as it is text files/regular files that I am dealing with) so I can see how a particular configuration changes over time. I don't get this with the registry. To do something similar with the registry would require a full backup of the registry then some method of combing the registry, one key at a time to compare the contents with a previous version. Needless to say, with the wide variety of system services running and reading/writing to the registry, determining which program wrote which keys can be nearly impossible (perhaps compare that against regmon or similar verbose logs.. yikes!!)

So having said all that.. it gets me back to some of my original complaints --> if the registry had a method to audit certain keys (ie query the registry for keys modified by a particular app during a certain time window) and had versioning capabilities to see how keys changed over time (ie revert back a section of the registry before a certain date) and if Windows' security model actually allowed users to run as regular users instead of administrators (even Vista's UAC seems quite broken to the point of severe aggervation) then the standard organizational structure inherent to the registry might be adequate.

If registry access is controlled through an API, it would seem that these types of features would be possible to impliment. It would significantly improve the usability of the registry to the point of being perhaps a preferred method of storing this data (ie provides a method to actually CLEAN OUT the registry when you uninstall an app.. :-).

Re:10 gigs thats not huge anymore

[mgblst]

There are tons of great replacements for notepad... but being realistic, it is only a notepad, who cares if you have the greatest one. Most people don't spend that much time using it. And I only use it to hold text for a short time. I even have notepad open at the moment, with a variety of different copies that I need. It is the ultimate clipboard for text.

Yes.

[electrosoccertux]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html

All you have to do is append print.html to the end.

40+ pages on Tom's = 400 words

[EllynGeek]

Someone needs to tell Tom's that you can fit more than 10 article words per Web page, even if 99% of it is advertising.

Re:40+ pages on Tom's = 400 words

[masklinn]

There are ads on TomsHardware? How come no one ever told me?

Re:40+ pages on Tom's = 400 words

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads? What? I haven't had to deal with ads for over a year now thanks to Firefox's extremely powerful extension system.

Printable View Link

[earthstar]

Thanks a lot dude for the simple trick !!
The link you gave didnt work though.
Here the right one.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html

Re:Printable View Link

[KimmoA]

Heh. Actually, your redirects to the main article... Weird.

Re:Printable View Link

[Cal Paterson]

The print.html page will only be served to use if your referrer is tomshardware.co.uk. So go to the page, and then alter the url to be print.html

Woa...

[suv4x4]

This new operating system is huge: it has more than 37,800 files, taking up a total of 10 GB.

When you make a sci-fi, you can brag how many frames have CG and how many special fx shots you have, but this is just wrong I tell ya...

Re:read it?

[KimmoA]

You mean "RTFA".

Re:read it?

[oostevo]

Indeed.

I copied and pasted everything, then stripped out the advertisement text, and the wordcount is 5119 words.

So about 120 words per page, spread out over 40 pages. That's a joke.

Watch out for referrer checking

[Night Goat]

I tried going directly to the printer friendly version and was redirected to the standard version. Tom's Hardware seems to be checking to make sure that people are coming only from their site when they try to see the printer-friendly version. So if you're running into trouble, try manually changing index.html to print.html.

Re:Watch out for referrer checking

[assassinator42]

Just curious, where is the link to the printer friendly version on the main article page? I can't find it.

Re:Watch out for referrer checking

[Night Goat]

Damned if I know! That site's a maze.

10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[kimvette]

10GB for just the operating system is just plain ridiculous. Take practically any Linux distribution, you will have a full installation of the OS, assorted userland utilities, scores of server and desktop applications (hundreds if you count them by component), and a whole slew of games and still struggle to reach 10GB. Ditto for OS/X.

Okay, so the beta as ships is compiled in debug mode, so the final release won't be 10GB; assume an average of 30% overhead for debug hooks (that's a generous figure). That would still give you 6.6 or so of disk consumption for the OS itself. Now, let's remove the extraneous files you never need - all the readme files, the install logs, and so forth - all the junk text files Microsoft leaves in %windir% - that's maybe 50MB or so, if you're very, very generous with rounding up for each file before adding them together. It's still around 6.6GB or so. Let's be more generous and call it 6GB just to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

That's just ridiculous. It's clear from other, better-written reviews that Vista is much more than a simple update to Windows XP, but does the increase in functionality actually justify occuping over 6GB of disk space? Is the 6GB the result of extremely inefficient, sloppy code (which would explain Vista's minimum requirements compared to Linux+XGL or OS X's much more modest minimum requirements for similar eye candy capability), or is the entire thing written in VBscript and run through an interpreter at runtime? 6GB just seems to be a bit much, and if 10GB is closer to reality for the release mode build, it's even more absurd. They bundled in Media Center functionality - so? ATI's media center application and *nix's MythTV are far smaller than MythTV, and in the case of MythTV, does far more, without the DRM emcumberment - and highly extensible due to the source availability, if you are so inclined. They included tablet functionality? Well, I have that capability (pretty much screen rotation and handwriting recognition) with my PocketPC, in only 32MB of ROM, so that does not explain the tremendous size of the OS. Networking? OS X and Linux and BSD all include far more network stacks, drivers (Well, OS X does not include many drivers due to the limited hardware support matrix), etc. right out of the box and still takes far less space than Windows Vista.

Just what exactly is adding the bloat?

Regarding the review: Tom's "review" is not a review, but a glorified screenshot gallery - I didn't get past page 13 because I want a review and not just a bunch of screenshots spaced out over 40 pages for the purpose of generating billable ad impressions. If you want me to view the ads, give me worthwhile content.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[imsabbel]

So it uses 3$ worth of hdspace.
Thats really the deciding factor of a 200$+ OS.

Btw: you realize that its the "kitchen sink" version with all crap, too? Including for example the Media Player edition? How much disk space does iDVD, for example, use again in a full install, as a point of comparison?

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[MSFanBoi2]

Last I checked a full load of SUSE with all the fixings to give me a comparible level of software capabilities was just a tad over 8 GB...

Glass houses folks...

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[liangzai]

My System and Library folders on Mac OS X occupy 7 GB. It is practically only native Apple stuff going in there. Add a number of applications, and you are up to 8 GB, standard installation.

Much of it has to do with "internationalization", having language resources (help files, menus whatever) in some fifty major languages. Hard core 7-bit people can get rid of this, but for many of us this is very very practical.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[pilkul]

What's the big deal? Hard disk space is ridiculously cheap and computers that aren't used for heavy music/video have gobs of unused space (those that do, meanwhile, will have vast HDs on the order of 300gb). Can't you find anything important to complain about?

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[cgenman]

With Windows 95 you had a reasonably large system, with a lot going into it, but it was unstable and crashed all the time.

So they started introducing redundancy, including the .cab files for the original installation, allowing the system to be repaired with the original files at the expense of keeping the original files around.

Then they added system backup points, which backup huge chunks of the system across multiple points automatically, functionally doubling the size of the installation.

I'm guessing they'll start doing automatic full backups in Vista, thus doubling the OS size again. Hence, a 1 GB system balloons out to 8 GB.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Comen]

So I love this, SUSE takes 8GIG and OSX takes 8GIG, VISTA will take maybe at most 10, and I am sure wants you to have at least 5 GIgs free still on the drive just for use, like any other OS.
So why I keep hearing so many people bitching about the drive space that will be used for Vista?
Please STFU, people just decide its Microsoft;s next version of windows, and look for anything to make a fuss about.
It ridiculous. I am sure there is penty to pick on without picking on shit that dont matter. And I am sure you can not install everything and save some of that space that you consider so precious.
I got almost 800GB, ill be ok.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[EvanED]

You've got to spend more time with laptops. The IBM X41 tablet has a max hard drive offering of 60GB. Using 1/6 of the hard drive for the OS is ridiculous, especially when you take into account another 500 megs at least of swap. Together that's almost 18% of the hard drive.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[EvanED]

So I love this, SUSE takes 8GIG and OSX takes 8GIG, VISTA will take maybe at most 10

I can't speak to OS X (but I think it's somewhere between Suse and Vista), but comparing the space provided by Suse and Vista is utterly ridiculous. That 8 gigs of Suse will get you binaries at least to more programs than you can imagine. It might get you source to all of them too. I have a 3.43 gig virtual machine with SLES 9 that has programs for more things than Windows comes with.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[pilkul]

I still don't see the problem. So that leaves 40Gb free. I've just spent 3 years using a laptop with a 15Gb hard drive and I did everything I wanted with it except video --- games, music, programming, image editing. If you really need more space, cheap USB hard drives are available.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

My very functional OS X installation is 1.8 gigs. Unless you want to include Xcode and the dev toolchain in that figure. Then it's up to about 2.6 gigs.

Then again, I dropped everything I didn't need. No international fonts, for instance. IIRC, the "recommended" OS X installation is about 3.5 gigs, without the dev toolchain.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Skuld-Chan]

Ditto for OS/X.

Not true at all. The default install for my G5 was well over 10 gigs on OSX 10.4.x.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[alphamugwump]

Don't be so sure about your 30% figure. Firefox built with debug symbols is over a gigabyte.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

Youre answer is really simply, translations and drivers.

when you drop the intel build of OS X tiger you are greeted by shockingly large 6GB install! But you can slim that down to 3GB, just by removing _printer drivers and language localization. 3GB for the OS, no ilfe no nothing, 2Gb for printer drivers, 1GB for the translations. and the is 3GB with now more then maybe 500mb(very forgiving, i would say 250 at most, but whatever) of specialized Mac hardware only drivers.

And since the windows hardware base is HUGE, there are alot of drivers, far more then in XP which is 5 years old, far more then OS X or linux. I would not be too shocked if the OS is only 3-4 GB if you remove alot of the crappy drivers, the media Center and the tablet PC Stuff.

BTW, I am no windows fan boy, I have been using linux and Mac OS for 8+ years now.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[jZnat]

`du /Applications/iDVD.app/` on my sister's Mac Mini says iDVD takes up 1.5 GB of space. I never knew that...

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Star_Gazer]

Yeah, but that includes iLife, which is preinstalled with every mac. And there the amount of space is even justified because Sound loops for garage band, templates for iMovie and iDVD just take space.

But there is nothing like that in Vista.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

1.5GB ??????

Try "du -hk /Applications/iDVD.app"

The report is 70MB. For contrast, "Get Info" on iDVD.app reports back 69.7MB.

10.4.6 (Build 8I127). iDVD version 6.0.2.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[DimGeo]

Okay, so the beta as ships is compiled in debug mode, so the final release won't be 10GB; assume an average of 30% overhead for debug hooks (that's a generous figure). That would still give you 6.6 or so of disk consumption for the OS itself.

Have you ever compiled anything with MSVC? The "Debug" build produces an executable that is usually 6 *times* bigger than the "Release" version. One example: A pet MFC application of mine compiles into a 480 kb file (statically linked) with the "Release" config, and to a whopping 3 mb file with the "Debug" config.

I predict that when Vista is ready to ship, it will take no more than 3 GB hard disk space. And that's a worst-case prediction.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[GaryPatterson]

I just did a 'Get Info' on the System and Library folders and found the total to be 4.03GB.

This is 10.4.6, everything up to date.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[llamaluvr]

Perhaps, he is counting the pagefile and the hibernation file. When Windows XP first came out, the low-end PCs would have about 128 MB RAM, and Hibernation wasn't touted much. Now PCs have a lot more RAM and Hibernation/ Standby are featured more prominently. If the reviewer has 2 GB RAM, that's 4 gigs combined for the page file and hibernation file.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Mattsson]

Just what exactly is adding the bloat?

Most probably tons of graphics, video and audio.
If it's simply code, a rough estimate would be that they'd need 6 - 10 times the amount of code, compared to XP. This seems ridiculous.
On the other hand, if they've been adding even more useless animations while copying, searching, configuring, booting for the first time, etc, and all this at higher framerate, with more colours and higher resolution...

Eyecandy is what makes XP and OSX as large as they are, and eyecandy-centric linux-distributions are generally much larger than more productivity-centric ones...
Since MS probably has included high-res eyecandy in even the most obscure, used once every century configuration-wizards, I'd guess this is where most of the bloat comes from.

Ever since Win95, I've wished for a "Install without animations/audiofiles" option... With every new version, it becomes even more attractive to find an alternative installation-solution.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[kimvette]

A similar level of capability?

I wasn't aware that Microsoft was bundling SQL Server, Microsoft Office, a variety of development suites, full mail servers, various database front ends, multiple scripting languages, a HUGE selection of drivers (including source), a huge variety of desktop environments, a huge selection of media players, a slew of networking protocols and enterprise-capable server applications AND dropping the 10-connection limitation. Thanks for enlightening us! ;)

(Hint: 8GB of SuSE or any other Linux distribution includes the capabilities of all of the above and much, much more)

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[kimvette]

30% overhead was average for debug builds of huge applications I managed builds and releases for. I can't imagine that Microsoft would have a 1000% overhead for debug builds of OS components considering they use Visual Studio for development of most of the components.

Re:10GB? You have got to be kidding!

[Skuld-Chan]

Thats not a default install - I'm talking about all the stuff included with the OS including programs.

A lot of the stuff that comes with Vista is in fact application software you'd probably buy or install anyhow.

Index

[thesupermikey]

Well...that is far to much

and index would of been really nice.

Re:Index

[thesupermikey]

boy im stupid
never mind, nothing to see here...move along

Re:Index

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

Grammar for fucks sake! It's HAVE, not OF.

"Index would HAVE been really nice"

Some other typos as well, but who cares about those >_>;

Re:Index

[jibjibjib]

Grammar for fucks sake!

"Grammar for fucks sake!" is not even a grammatically correct sentence, as it doesn't have a verb. "Some other typos as well, but who cares about those" isn't grammatically correct either. Also, "fucks" should have an apostrophe, and "who cares about those" should have a question mark.

Re:Index

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

Well yeah probably. I'm not a native english speaker. I know that whatever i write probably isn't 100% gramatically correct.

However, i don't know a single non-native english speaker who makes the mistake of using "have" instead of "of". It's like writing "applepie" instead of "the".

NOT a dupe

[iced_773]

This one is the revised version - no unnecessary pull for Ubuntu 6.06 :)

One good thing...

[EvanED]

I have to say that this IE7 feaure of previewing tabs (similar to how Expose previews windows) is pretty cool... anyone know of anyone using this in the context of a tabbed program before?

Re:One good thing...

[idonthack]

There are a few Firefox extensions that have done that for a while.

Re:One good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone know of anyone using this in the context of a tabbed program before?

If Microsoft is using this in their program, it must have been used elsewhere before, right?

Re:One good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

yea... the expose plugin for firefox! https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1457/

Re:One good thing...

[EvanED]

*installs*

Sweet, thanks!

Re:One good thing...

[binary paladin]

You might want to look at foXposé. Pretty much the same thing for Firefox. I've never actually used it, but if you like that feature and you use Firefox, you might like it.

Re:One good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you are correct. This is the first time a "tabbed" browser has been used on an OS that already has a shell with perfectly good "taskbar tabbing". While some browsers have had "tabbing" before however, they were neccessary because the silly OS they were running on didn't have a shell that was capable of "tasking". So this requires said silly OS to have every program have its own "tabs". Stupid really.

Re:One good thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

See the 'canvas' element.

Re:One good thing...

[pabster]

Yeah, it's a free browser called Opera. Faster and light years more secure than Internet Explorer. Not only does it have tab previews (just hover the mouse over the tab), you can assign 'gestures' to manipulate the tabs as you wish.

Re:One good thing...

[Spug]

Yeah, the Opera 9 Beta has it.

Not only a dupe, but...

[TheNetAvenger]

Not only is this story a repeat, but it is worth mentioning that the Tom's review is basically pictures of the OS with almost NO technical details on Vista. They even are incorrect on features of DirectX 10 in the review.

All these 'wonderful' reviews running around on Vista, and still none exist that talk about the OS itself, all the reviews are doing is throwing up some pictures of the desktop and talking about AERO.

For example have you yet seen a review that mentions key points of the new OS of things that changed, like kernel changes, new memory management, new process scheduling, how the Video Driver is moved up from kernel level to user level, but still getting kernel level performace or even anytyhing on the vector based composer that is behind the AERO or WPF?

Nope...

Until you see these types of reviews, all you are going to get is a taste of the freaking eye candy and nerds going, "Here is the control panel" (Picture)

Re:Not only a dupe, but...

[Momoru]

All these 'wonderful' reviews running around on Vista, and still none exist that talk about the OS itself, all the reviews are doing is throwing up some pictures of the desktop and talking about AERO.

Um...thats all thats new in the OS. Shiny desktop, pretty pictures, lots of annoying security dialogs.

C: Drive Partition...

[__aaclcg7560]

Under Windows XP, I normally keep the C: drive partition small (lately, 20GB) to make making an disk image easier. Applications and data are stored on a different partition, and a FUBAR partition for storing disk images. Since the specs for Vista is a minimum 40GB with 10GB free, I'm kinda wondering if I should let Vista take the whole 250GB hard drive and just get another hard drive for applications and data. Any ideas on how to handle this space hog?

Re:C: Drive Partition...

[Gyga]

Easy

format C:

Re:C: Drive Partition...

[balthan]

Since the specs for Vista is a minimum 40GB with 10GB free
 
That's only the specs to be declared "Vista Premium Ready". The "Windows Vista Minimum Supported System Requirements" are a 20GB HDD, so your partition is probably fine. I'm willing to bet the HD requirements are inflated and you won't even need that much.

Re:C: Drive Partition...

[DeadManCoding]

That's the way I've been doing it since the late 90's. My system now has 2 drives, 200Gb and 160Gb. The smaller drive just has the "My Documents" folder and other associated stuff, personal files like music, but all apps still stay on the larger drive. Larger drive is also partitioned so that I can dual-boot XP and Gentoo, split evenly. Basically, I have a 160Gb drive for personal stuff, and the other drive for OS and apps.

Games galore

[Anonymous Coward]

In the review 8 out of the 40 pages were dedicated to the games that are included in Vista. I don't think that really says much about the OS itself, but calls in to question the reviewer's priorites. Did he really spend 100 of 500 hours playing pur[b|p]le place?

-Lee

Re:read it?

[kimvette]

I copied and pasted everything, then stripped out the advertisement text, and the wordcount is 5119 words.

You went through all that? What a f'n nerd!
Oh wait, this is slashdot. Carry on, then! <disclaimerforfolkswithnosenseofhumor>(just kidding, don't take offense, etc.)</disclaimerforfolkswithnosenseofhumor>

File count is not a measure of OS size

[Anonymous Coward]

"it has more than 37,800 files"

For comparison: my Mac (Mac OS X 10.4.6) has:

• about 78000 files in /System
• about 100000 files in /Library
• about 40000 files in /usr
• about 65000 files in /Developer
• about 110000 files in /Applications (this includes third-party apps I installed)

The lesson you should learn from this is that the number of files is not really a meaningful indicator of the complexity of a system.

Re:File count is not a measure of OS size

[Dunbal]

You're mixing up your apples and oranges. Your listing is for your complete system. The 37,800 files is just the OS.

Lovely to see drm and the fritz chip in action

[Billly Gates]

Here are one of the ways Microsoft is trying to sell the fritz chip as a good thing.

Funny I thought drm was not required to encrypt a drive? Oh yeah, all the components will have a trust relationship to lock data from the user and to force upgrades as windows will refuse to run if you change more than 2 or 3 things without paying for it again.

Re:Lovely to see drm and the fritz chip in action

[ScytheBlade1]

It's not required, it's optional. The thing that prevented these guys from doing the install was their partitioning, Vista requires a 100MB partition to installed needed bootloader stuff onto in order to boot from the encrypted partition. The key itself can be kept on a USB disk, no problem, no "fritz" chip.

HDD Space

[Konster]

Really, a 10GB install isn't that bad, considering that I can get a weenie 250GB drive for $80, and it doesn't even make a dent in the new 750GB drive.

Laptop users may have a valid whine, with low-end drives at 40GB, mid-range at 80GB or so, but I'd expect that a notebook install wouldn't take that much on a low-end product.

I'm not fond of the Microsoft Vista Ultimate Extreme De Luxe Ultra version that's a complete system-resources orgy that wants a few GB or so of RAM or a UI that makes my Geforce run at a good % of max for a good slice of time et cetera.

On the plus side, MS Vista will be shipping (eventually) with a copy of Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:HDD Space

[EvanED]

Really, a 10GB install isn't that bad, considering that I can get a weenie 250GB drive for $80, and it doesn't even make a dent in the new 750GB drive.

LAPTOPS! Why does everyone forget about laptops?

The largest 2.5" drive Newegg sells is 160 GB. And that's $224. Some other samples:
100GB starts at $109
60GB starts at $70

Even with the 100 gig drive, that's 10% going to your OS! I don't know about you, but that seems a bit large.

And the problem's worse if you don't look at buying drives separately. The IBM X41 tablet has a max hard drive of 60 gigs. Once you add in swap, you're looking at 18% of your hard drive as being unusable!

Re:HDD Space

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a debug build. The MS compiler creates huge code in debug mode.

I'm sure the final version with be more like 4 or 5 GB. Everyone is complaining about a BETA DEBUG build and if you have ever used these in the past with Microsoft products you would know they shrink massively on release.

With that said, even XP is bigger than a basic Linux install.

40 pages?

[DSP_Geek]

Every goddamn article in Tom's is stretched out over way too many pages, no exceptions. Until they change that policy, they're dead to me. I have better things to do with my time than banging on the Next link like an ADHD 6 year old in front of a whack-a-mole game.

Re:40 Pages?

[FSWKU]

The thing is, the review isn't even all that long winded. It's mostly screenshots of stuff we've all seen before, less than a page of actual text, and the remaining space taken up by a metric assload of advertising.

I swear, Tom's is becoming the fracking EGM of the Internet. More annoying ads than actual content. And what content IS there, is laughably substandard...

Re:40 pages?

[Short Circuit]

And it's worse for us dial-up users. We spend half our time waiting for the server to respond after each click. (My dial-up connection has a high latency.) Then we spend another half waiting for images and flash animations to load. And then another half trying to get back to the page we meant, when we clicked on a "Click here to read more link" that was really just an ad.

And yes, that adds up to 150%.

Re:40 pages?

[LoRdTAW]

I just click the conclusion page and read that. If they are reviewing 10 motherboards and reccomend one I goto the page of the article that covers that board. Aside from that reading the whole thing is pointless I just want to know what works and what doesent.

Re:40 pages?

[Spug]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html

"Haha"

[Mongoose]

Are you kidding? All this talk about card games and "we don't even have a design for admin privleges, but it'll 'just work' when we ship" is laughable. They need something a little more compelling to bother to read these articles ( duped or not ). I'm sure a lot of people will get vista reguardless of any factors due to the OEM preinstalls, but why does anyone care about new card games/eye candy/etc?

Someone make a real article comparing vista to xp or vista to ubuntu.

And if Toms Hardware Thinks

[Master of Transhuman]

I'm going to click on 40 freakin' Web pages just to read their review - and their ads - they're out of their goddamn minds.

Learn to put stuff that big in a PDF and make it available for download - or at least one big HTML page.

Idiots.

Re:And if Toms Hardware Thinks

[Daath]

Here you go :P

40 Pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

40 Pages? I think someone needs to change their name to Tom's Long Winded Hardware. If you can't win your audience with quality writing just bore them to shit and they'll think you've taken the time to research and come back to display more of your google ads! :D

Oh, give me a break.

[vought]

Tom's Hardware is running a 500 hour Windows Vista review that spreads out 40 pages

Another Tom's Hard-On review with two paragraphs per page that stretches out to 40 pages is supposed to be thorough because it is long?

You think MAYBE it has something to do with the thick coating of ads all over TH's pages? I mean, they could have put it all on two pages or even one if they'd wanted.

Is somebody at Tom's paying you guys to post these dupes about hard-to-read articles that add little insight to the pool of knowledge about Vista?

you call that a review?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom's needs to take lessons on how to write operating system reviews from Ars Technica. 40 pages of screenshots of what is in the box doesn't is not a review. Where is the technical stuff?

Re:you call that a review?

[Warlock7]

Several pages about Windows Update technology and Minesweeper don't make for a good review?

Pshaw!

Trick for Tom's -- append "print.html" to URL

[novafire]

I learned this from a post on another Tom's related link on /.

Just append print.html to end of the Tom's URL and get the one page print article.

I figure if the article is a dupe, might as well dupe any useful comments, right?

Subscribers can be trolls too

[kgruscho]

I'll agree that subscribers are more serious, but serious about what? Serious about modding, editing, and reading, or serious about fucking the place up?

Re:Subscribers can be trolls too

[Anonymous Coward]

They *can* be, but I was working off of the assumption that fucking up /. isn't worth paying much for. Though I just looked at the /. subscription FAQ, and it works a lot differently than I figured it did and is effectively a lot cheaper. I probably should have checked that first.

So I largely take back what I said before.

Re:Subscribers can be trolls too

[Knetzar]

Instead of restricting reporting dupes to subscribers, they could restrict it to those with good Karma. That way only the people that seem to add something to /. can report problems.

Re:Subscribers can be trolls too

[grammar fascist]

Instead of restricting reporting dupes to subscribers, they could restrict it to those with good Karma. That way only the people that seem to add something to /. can report problems.

Or restrict it to subscribers with good karma, so people who subscribe actually get something for their money.

Of course, that's yet one more step toward "subscribe so you can help us lazy editors do our jobs," isn't it?

Replying to yourself is lame...

[EvanED]

To be fair, the .Net framework (at least one version will almost certainly included with Vista) has compilers for C++, C#, and VB.Net. ...but I should clarify something. There's space taken up by compiler logic even in the standard .net redistributable, however I don't think the command line tools go along with it (unless you get the .net SDK), so you need to install a 3rd party tool in order to take advantage of it. Go figuire.

Custom install?

[antdude]

Does Vista have custom install? I noticed in Windows XP there isn't a custom install. I don't care about XP's games and things like that. I don't remember if 2000 and Me could do that too. I know 95 and 98 could. I want custom install!

Re:Custom install?

[zeroduck]

I believe you'd have to use their special install tools that they give out to vendors (there is the disk with the license 5pack and the tools are probably downloadable on their website) to completely not install them... otherwise it's easy enough to get rid of the extras using Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs->Windows Components.

Re:Custom install?

[antdude]

zeroduck: Yeah, I know you can do uninstall but it would had been nicer to uninstall during installation/upgrades. :)

Re:Custom install?

[Myen]

The "Special Tools" is on the XP CD. You use that to generate a text file (or you can do it manually) which gets stuck into a floppy while XP installs. (Unfortunately, I don't have the CD handy to find the stuff with; it's in deploy.cab or something)

It's basically for automated installs. Very useful also for not installing crap.

Secret TH Printer Friendly Layout

[TubeSteak]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html

Someone in a previous Tom's Hardware thread pointed out that adding "print.html" to the end of any TH article will magically give you a ONE Page article.

Thank you fief (12961). It looks like you've learned a thing or two since getting that low UID .

Reminds me of a high school term project...

[divisionbyzero]

Lots of pictures but not a lot of text... If he removed the screenshots, he could have fit it all on one page! Of course some people *LOVE* screenshots. So, I guess you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Damn you, Tom!

There's nothing to read

[Tim Ward]

There's essentially no text - it's just lots of pages of screen shots. (Well, up to page four or five anyway, I got bored and stopped at that point.)

3vs6

[Nightspirit]

My current xp install is about 3gb for the OS. The one thing MS is ok at is backwards compatibility, so I will assume they will leave most of the previous functions as options instead of just rewriting them (I really have no idea as I have not used vista). So I will assume anything they add will be additional.

So what do we have additional:
new network stack
new GUI
new indexing
spyware/defender stuff
couple of additional programs
plus a few things I'm likely missing.

Assuming the GUI uses a variety of different textures for different types of machines, 1-1.5gb for all of the above is reasonable to me. But, this is the ultimate edition. So now they add in media center functionality, plus tablet PC programs, and some other stuff.

The tablet pc stuff likely includes windows journal, sticky notes, possibly One Note, the voice trainer, and since it is the ultimate edition I'll assume it includes the power toys, which is about 16 tablet pc programs. Not to mention some optional upgrades to the XP version. 1 gig for all of this sounds reasonable to me.

I don't know what their media center is all about, so I'll assume 500mb for the UI, codecs, and other crap. I bet the media center is where alot of bloated crap goes.

So that leaves us with 3 + 1.5 + 1 + 0.5 = 6. Which is what you estimated.

Also the recycling bin sets aside space. Perhaps they set this in the windows directory? If so, that can add an additional gig.

Re:3vs6

[Dunbal]

The one thing MS is ok at is backwards compatibility,

      Only when it suits them. Have you tried most MS-DOS games in XP? Oh yeah good thing that Microsoft wrote "DOSBox"...(/sarcasm)

Re:3vs6

[Nightspirit]

I run conflict: middle east political simulator, and wizards crown, with no problems and under no emulation. Some games require sound blaster emulators, such as romance of the 3 kingdoms III. I doubt MS has the rights to offer dos soundblaster emulation. Otherwise I've never had a problem.

Very unbiased review...

[Warlock7]

...it outshine its Linux and Mac OS competitors.

This isn't because of the fact that it steals most of it's features from those competing products? Then again, with beautiful non-buggy windows that look like this, who could argue?

...we're still dealing with a relatively early beta version.

Wow, after, what is it now, seven years? It's an EARLY beta version?!?!?! Daniel Schuhmann needs to get his head out in the light more often because something is affecting his brain up in that dark damp place he's got it now.

It's amazing that a "hardware" company like Apple can roll out a new OS nearly every year while it takes a "software" company like Microsoft seven to steal all of Apple's ideas... :P

Re:Very unbiased review...

[drsmithy]

Wow, after, what is it now, seven years?

Seven years ago, Windows 2000 wasn't even released.

While Vista the *product* is superceding Windows XP, releasedonly in 2001, the Vista *codebase* has only been in development for about 3 years. They basically started it over again from scratch (as a development of the Windows 2003 branch) in 2003.

Re:Very unbiased review...

[rbarreira]

It's amazing that a "hardware" company like Apple can roll out a new OS nearly every year while it takes a "software" company like Microsoft seven to steal all of Apple's ideas... :P

No it isn't. Can you even imagine the complexity of making a software product which is supposed to work well on ALL possible computer configurations? Apple doesn't have to do that.

Re:Very unbiased review...

[Warlock7]

You are correct, I blew that number out of proportion. However, you are mistaken as to when Microsoft started talking about Vista/Longhorn.

From Wikipedia:
Microsoft first talked about "Longhorn" in July 2001, even before Windows XP's release in October of that year. It was originally expected to ship sometime late in 2003 as a minor step between Windows XP and "Blackcomb" (now known as Windows "Vienna").

With a supposed 2007 launch, that is still getting pushed back, it'll only be just under six years from first mention to launch and only four years since the first reported launch date. Also with a completely stripped down feature set since most of what they had originally touted it to have won't be present.

For the largest software company in the world with the most monetary resources available to them than any other software company, I find that timeframe amazing, don't you?

Re:Very unbiased review...

[Warlock7]

Sure, there are more configurations, but Microsoft essentially dictates how those hardware configurations interact with the OS. They also don't supply their own drivers, like Apple does. Microsoft leaves driver development up to the third party hardware vendors to figure out. If a driver doesn't function properly under Windows you generally go to the hardware developer site to get a fixed version, not Microsoft.

Re:Very unbiased review...

[drsmithy]

However, you are mistaken as to when Microsoft started talking about Vista/Longhorn.

I didn't say anything about when Microsoft "started talking about Vista/Longhorn".

I said Windows Vista (ne: Longhorn) was the product that was going to supercede Windows XP. Windows XP was released in 2001. Based on that - without knowing anything else - the *earliest* anyone would expecting a successor would be ca. 2003.

I said the codebase from which Vista has been developed has only been being worked on since about 2003. This is pretty well known, as there was quite a bit of fanfare at the time about Microsoft "rebooting" the Longhorn project and basing it off the Windows 2003 codebase.

With a supposed 2007 launch, that is still getting pushed back, it'll only be just under six years from first mention to launch and only four years since the first reported launch date.

Measuring from "first mention" - if you're talking about software development - is, well, meaningless. Measuring from the first projected release date is marginally more reasoanble, but taking the first date that was ever talked about is silly, considering every major (and even most minor) software projects run well over time. I can't imagine there was anyone outside of Microsoft's PR department who thought "Longhorn" would see the light of day before mid-late-2004.

Also with a completely stripped down feature set since most of what they had originally touted it to have won't be present.

The only feature I can think of off the top of my head that Vista will be missing is WinFS, and while it does class as "major", I can't imagine many actual users will miss it. Saying it has a "completely stripped down feature set" is ridiculous.

For the largest software company in the world with the most monetary resources available to them than any other software company, I find that timeframe amazing, don't you?

Not really. But a) I haven't got a chip on my shoulder, b) I'm primarily interested in the the software development cycle, not marketing fluff and c) I'm well aware that throwing more people at a problem - particularly a software development problem - rarely helps it proceed more quickly.

When you consider that Vista pretty much started over in 2003 and that it is a significant improvement on nearly all aspects of Windows - including major changes in things like the display system, driver model, memory management and other low-level components - then the ~4 years the code will have actually been in development, isn't unreasonable or unexpected. It took Microsoft about four years to go from NT4 to NT5 (Windows 2000), which was a smaller magnitude of change. It took Apple 4 - 5 years to turn NeXTSTEP into OS X 10.2 (arguably the first production quality, feature-complete release) - that's a change on about the same magnitude.

So, no, I don't find Vista's timeframe particularly "amazing". As a *product*, it's extremely late. As a *software development project*, it's pretty much bang on time.

Re:Very unbiased review...

[Warlock7]

"Longhorn is going to stop being a whole new thing and more of an XP with a lot of good new stuff," said one developer close to Microsoft, who requested anonymity.

said the codebase from which Vista has been developed has only been being worked on since about 2003.

Well, not really, following your "reasoning" regarding NeXTSTEP and OS X Vista's filesystem has been being worked on since at least 2000. Keep reading, you'll see why...

WinFS, the new unified storage system that Gates referred to at PDC as a "holy grail."

Sounds pretty important. But, instead they're basing the file system off the 2003 Server file system. Which was "...first introduced to technical beta testers in mid-2000, it was known by its codename, "Whistler Server"..." which slightly increases your development timeline. Let's be fair, if you're going to insist that OS X is simply NeXTSTEP, which of course, it's got it's heritage in, then let's look at the "full development" cycle of Vista. The file system started being distributed to developers in 2000. Looks more like seven years after all.

These release dates come more than five years after the release of Windows XP, Microsoft's current consumer and business operating system, making it the longest time span between releases of Windows.

Wow, and you aren't buying into the marketing hype? Interesting that you don't appear to mind this little historical fact in the development cycle of this product.

Other features missing:
"Due to scheduling issues, the Windows PowerShell, code-named Monad will not be included in Windows Vista."
"Owing to significant difficulties in getting third-party developers to support the system (particularly due to the lack of support for writing for the Trusted Operating Root using .NET managed code), the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base architecture was abandoned for Windows Vista."
"Support for Intel's Extensible Firmware Interface was originally slated to be included with Vista, but has been removed due to what Microsoft has described as a lack of support on desktop computers."

NeXTSTEP's final version came out in 1995. When Apple bought NeXT in 1997 it was OpenStep, but that doesn't really matter. Apple also didn't hype their production of OS X in 1997 when they purchased NeXT, so you can't really make the comparison that you are without looking at the marketing machinations of both companies. Microsoft likes to announce things way in advance to get people talking, while Apple generally likes to keep things tightly under wraps until they make their announcements. The two companies work differently than each other, certainly, but you can't simply ignore how they hype their products as that shows quite a bit about how they do business. To ignore the company announcements as not being part of the development cycle is ignorant of the reality of how much progress has to have been made in the planning of the product. You don't develop on a large scale project like this without a lot of planning first, which then allows you to release the hype, if that's the way you do business. I still contend that Microsoft's development schedule from first announcement to actual launch, which is still to be seen, is the true measurement. This software development timeline is embarrassing for them.

Re:Very unbiased review...

[drsmithy]

"Longhorn is going to stop being a whole new thing and more of an XP with a lot of good new stuff," said one developer close to Microsoft, who requested anonymity.

Your sources need to be more credible.

Well, not really, following your "reasoning" regarding NeXTSTEP and OS X Vista's filesystem has been being worked on since at least 2000. Keep reading, you'll see why...

Your comparison is broken.

My "reasoning" regarding NeXTSTEP and Vista is not only sound, but solidly backed by known facts. OS X is a major revision of NeXT, with similar levels of modifications made as those going from Windows 2003 -< Vista.

Sounds pretty important. But, instead they're basing the file system off the 2003 Server file system.

WinFS is not - and never was - a filesystem. You might want to get the basic facts right before you start trying to get too advanced. However...

Which was "...first introduced to technical beta testers in mid-2000, it was known by its codename, "Whistler Server"..." which slightly increases your development timeline.

Let's be fair, if you're going to insist that OS X is simply NeXTSTEP, which of course, it's got it's heritage in, then let's look at the "full development" cycle of Vista. The file system started being distributed to developers in 2000. Looks more like seven years after all.

No, it doesn't, because as I have repeatedly said, pretty much all Longhorn development was thrown out ca. 2003 and the project started over from the Windows 2003 codebase.

Your assertion that "the full development cycle of Vista" should be measured from the first alpha code that would eventually become the codebase that Windows Vista would be branched from (ie: two degrees of separation), is ridiculous on its face. You may as well say OS X is ten years late because NeXT appeared in the late '80s. Do you measure the development time of OS X 10.4 from the release of OS 10.0, or 10.3 ? Do you measure the development time of Linux 2.6.16 from 2.6.15 or 1.3 ?

Apple also didn't hype their production of OS X in 1997 when they purchased NeXT, so you can't really make the comparison that you are without looking at the marketing machinations of both companies. Microsoft likes to announce things way in advance to get people talking, while Apple generally likes to keep things tightly under wraps until they make their announcements. The two companies work differently than each other, certainly, but you can't simply ignore how they hype their products as that shows quite a bit about how they do business.

You *really* seem to be having difficult separating "Vista the product", from "Vista the codebase". Since this is a discussion about *software development*, "Vista the codebase" is what matters. "Vista the codebase" branched from Windows 2003 ca. 2003. It's been in development for around 3 - 4 years. I have no interest in what emanates from various companies' PR and marketing departments in a discussion about a development lifecycle.

I still contend that Microsoft's development schedule from first announcement to actual launch, which is still to be seen, is the true measurement.

And from the perspective of measuring the actual software development time of the codebase that will be Windows Vista your contention is wrong.

Now, you can certainly argue that the *product* Windows Vista is very late. You can certainly argue the project for a successor to Windows XP has been badly managed. But you can't argue that the codebase of Windows Vista has been around for more than 3 - 4 years, unless you're also going to apply the same principle (and subsequent criticism) consistently to every other platform as well.

Or maybe you do ? I wonder, when each minor (or even major, for that matter) revision of Linux comes out, do you apply the same logic to call its development timeline "embarassing", since it started back in 1991 ? Do you call every release of OS X "embarrassing", because NeXTSTEP started back in 1986 ?

(As always, the logical gymnastics (and just sheer effort) that some people go to just to get another version of "Microsoft sucks" really does amaze me. Why bother with the fancy verbage ? Just say it.)

Re:Very unbiased review...

[Warlock7]

"...with similar levels of modifications made as those going from Windows 2003 - Vista."
And that's the point, the filesystem for Vista is based on the filesystem from 2003 Server, which was first being seeded to beta testers back in 2000. NTFS or New Technology File System is the standard file system of Windows NT and its descendants: Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. WinFS, implemented on top of NTFS, WinFS is a centralized data store for the Windows platform. Sorry I guess that I didn't take the detail far enough. Vista is worse off as it's being built off of the NTFS without the WinFS layer. The Vista file system is a simple extension of the NTFS which exists back to 2000. The same concept as your correlation that OS X is NeXTSTEP.

Since this is a discussion about *software development*...
That's your interpretation of this discussion. I am saying that you cannot ignore the planning stages of development which then lead to PR. You seem to be suggesting that there is no planning stage prior to the PR, which I am telling you is wrong.

I have no interest in what emanates from various companies' PR and marketing departments in a discussion about a development lifecycle.
And this is how you are choosing to ignore the planning stage of the development life-cycle. That's your own issue. The PR doesn't start prior to development. Throwing out your code-base and starting over doesn't justify a new development life-cycle as you are proposing, sorry.

...another version of "Microsoft sucks"...
I never said anything as simplistic as you suggest, I am being critical of what I see as a failed schedule by a company that shouldn't be making these kind of mistakes.

Compare Linux

[fyoder]

With Linux you can do lean installs. But try doing a default install of a contemporary distro. Long gone are the days when installing from floppies was realistically doable. 10GB may be a bit on the large side for an 'everything' install, but not by much.

Re:Compare Linux

[WilliamSChips]

But that provides much more.

Here is your fix.

[Tama00]

I think this review sucks but for you guys who want to read it..
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html

Tada!
Its on one page :) and much more readable.

Re:Here is your fix.

[FSWKU]

I still get kicked to the paginated-to-all-hell version =(

my mini review of vista beta 2

[signore pablo]

My experience with Vista started with build 5308, then tried 5365 and now 5384. Typically in Windows, I run firefox, thunderbird, battlefield 2 and starcraft as my main apps. Then there are the various media players, winamp with the clearone beta theme, itunes, and windows media player. My Windows XP experience has been relatively flawless. Sometimes I yearn for Mac OS's zen like simplicity and features like expose, but otherwise XP runs great on MY computer, meaning my computer doesn't run anything else with all the hardware supported very easily. Now, Vista Beta 2 is definitely an improvement over 5308, but it's still pretty damn raw. In 5308 I couldn't run BF2, but now I can. All it requires is that you run it in administrator mode. Performance at first was pretty bad, but after checking how much RAM was being used, I saw that Windows with nothing else running was up to 850 megs. I don't remember all the services I turned off, but it had a lot of unneccessary services running, stuff like tabletpc functionality and remote assistance (which ill never use). After turning off UAC and all the unneccesary services, I got it down to 400 megs, aero turned on, but usually DWM service and svchost.exe start climbing up as you basically just move your mouse around. So, it climbed back up to 500. BF2 then ran pretty well but it still wasn't as good as in XP. Ok, no problem, it runs, its playable, Vista performance hopefully will get better. NEXT, the game I absolutely can't live without, I fire it up when I'm stressed or generally feel like escaping: Starcraft. My god, this game runs great on a 166 mhz pentium 1 running Windows 95. Shit, well... under Vista if you don't select any compatability settings, the colors are all inverted upon first boot up. SO, enable 256 color mode and 640x480 and it boots up ok with colors all correct. BUT the game runs at a crawl when you actually get into any games. Starcraft in Vista at its current form is basically unplayable. And I wonder what other games are unplayable under Vista.
Next, WINDOWS VISTA WIRELESS NETWORKING SUCKS. 5308, 5365, 5384... all of them had the most horrible wireless networking i've ever experienced. I got a signal, connected fine. But my connection would only stay active randomly. Sometimes after 5 minutes it would be dead and I would have to disconnect and reconnect, which in 5384 usually fixed the problem (it didnt previously) But after reconnecting sometimes it would die within 30 seconds again. horrible, i hope they fix this.
Next, the UI is PRETTY PRETTY PRETTY. nice effects and hopefully they will allow modders and skinners to make some awesome add ons that could be quite nice. BUT the UI design scheme, having like 50 control panel items in classic mode (i know its not what they recommend but it's the advanced mode isn't it? it's too many seperate items in one folder) Welcome center is good, personalize menu sucks. This is one place where they should have copied OS X exactly, just put everything in one menu and like their laptop configuration menu, make it transition to the other control app in one window to other items. Not new windows for every control panel.
well those are my assessments, I have others, such as Firefox not being able to be made default browser no matter what i have tried with default apps configuration (same with thunderbird) and i dont know why they changed this, but it seems to be making it harder to use apps other than those that were configured to be used as default (Iexplorer, Outlook...) so thats lame. Also, firefox can't play imbedded media player anymore, the plugin wouldnt work and i couldnt figure it out. Long story made short, Vista needs A LOT of work. More than i thought previously. I'll be surprised if it is ready for Jan. 2007. I won't be surprised if it's released, but I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere near polished until 2008/9.

Oh well

[kilodelta]

Vista doesn't represent enough of an improvement for me to make the jump, at least not now. Considering I waited 6 years to go from Windows 2000 to XP this should be no surprise at all.

I'm particularly incensed that MS once again failed miserably on the innovation side and copied feature for feature from Firefox. That's probably a clear sign that they're on the precipice of their downfall. They've stopped innovating.

Re:Oh well

[808140]

Don't get me wrong, I'm a free software zealot and don't use and Microsoft products at all, at work or at home, and Firefox is my primary browser, but don't you think you're being a little unfair by picking this particular example? For one, many of Firefox's "killer features" were actually Opera innovations -- Firefox's primary innovation is its extensible architecture. Tabbed browsing etc existed first in a number of other browsers (I don't even think Opera was first.) I don't use Opera (not free) but this is my understanding.

Then, as strange as it may seem, some good features were actually copied from IE to Firefox -- for example, everytime Firefox blocks a popup or notifies you that a plugin is missing, it does so with an unobtrusive little bar at the top of the screen which does not interfere with your browsing experience. This was an IE innovation, ironically. I seem to remember that the different colored URL-entry field background for https and such were also IE innovations (they came with XP SP2 I think -- I'm sort of fuzzy because as I said I don't use any of these products, at all).

Let's also not forget that while IE's CSS support is not stellar by today's standards, Microsoft pretty much invented CSS -- good CSS support on Netscape didn't happen until Mozilla made it a priority (that is, Netscape 6). IE 5 (which was released more than a decade ago) supported large amounts of CSS2 when no one else did. Microsoft dropped the ball and stopped CSS development (IE 6 added very few features and fixed very few bugs), but it's worth noting that had IE 5 not supported CSS as well as it did, we probably wouldn't have the ability to seperate feature from content as well as we do.

It's funny to look at it that way. IE 5 and 6 are shitty browsers by today's standards, there's no doubt -- but when you consider their release dates, they were miles ahead of everything else out there. I remember being forced to use Netscape 4 in those days, because nothing else was available for Linux. Given that I essentially had to use a non-free product if I wanted to browse the web graphically, I know that I would have prefered to use IE 5, definitely. Alas the UNIX version only ran on SUNs (there was a UNIX version, did you know?)

I personally don't like MS's products, but sometimes I think people on Slashdot would do well to read RMS's article, "Is Microsoft the Great Satan?" Microsoft's corporate practices are a result of its monopoly status and the proprietary software industry as a whole. Any other company in the same position would act essentially the same way, so picking on Microsoft specifically all the time is sort of futile, I think.

Of course that's going against the general Slashdot meme, but for all its evil, MS has produced some ok products, if you're willing to look past their proprietariness. And they have innovated, it's wrong to say the haven't. Software is like math, you know... that Newton quote is appropriate: "If I have seen further it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Everyone always copies everyone else's ideas. That's how it should be. Apple copied from Xerox, Microsoft copies from Apple, Apple copies from CMU and FreeBSD, NeXT, Be, Amiga, and even Microsoft. GNOME and KDE copy from all of these too.

This is the whole reason that proprietary software in general and patents in particular must be opposed -- we all are "guilty" of copying ideas. When everyone does it, perhaps it's time to rethink whether it's right or wrong. I likened software to math: as it stands a mathematician publishes his ideas in a peer-reviewed journal and everyone benefits, including the mathematician himself. Everyone is able to learn from his innovations and his mistakes. But if math worked the way software works these days -- and algorithms are essentially just math, lest we forget -- all journal articles would be owned by private entities that would do their damndest to make sure tha

Re:Oh well

[Deadguy2322]

I don't need you, or any other hare-brained ideolog to tell me what software to use. I am free to choose to run whatever I want, and you and RMS have no right to harrass me or anyone else for the choices we make. Free Software: We'd take away your freedom to choose what sofware to use if we only had the chance!

Re:Oh well

[808140]

You know you read too much Slashdot when you feel like you're getting unreasonable amounts of pressure not to use proprietary software, hehe. Take a chill pill mate, no one is forcing you to do anything you don't want to do. Proprietary software is there and you're welcome to buy it or rip it off if it suits you.

Cheers...

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering I waited 6 years to go from Windows 2000 to XP this should be no surprise at all.

So what finallly made you switch? I have seen nothing compelling about XP to bother upgrading. 2k is the best Windows OS since 3.1.

Vista seems to be everything I don't want in an OS. It's becoming more and more likely that when I leave 2k on the desktop it will be for Linux, not a MS offering.

Tom's ancient history

[cgenman]

Wasn't there a point in ancient history when Tom's hardware was actually, you know, good?

I vaguely remember accessible but technical articles, which talked about important things. Hardware hackery that showed exactly what an individual with a soldering iron could do if they were so inclined. Articles that were written for people who had a clue.

How long ago was that?

Benchmarks

[rmdir -r *]

So, er, has there been a performance increase or loss? Why have none of these reviews done anything vaguely quantitative? Yes, according to the article, the majority of games that use DirectX fail, but there still are games that don't use all or only some of the DirectX stack. Plus, games aren't all computers are used for- how is the filesystem performance? Swapping? Have they done anything cool with memory management?

None of the ten-thousand new windows vista reviews seem to have anything interesting, or even new, to say.

Re:Benchmarks

[krray]

So, er, has there been a performance increase or loss? Why have none of these reviews done anything vaguely quantitative?

If you're running Windows (I am not) ... have YOU read the EULA lately? You're not allowed to (publicly) release benchmarks to state a performance [loss] and quantify the eXPerience.

Yes, there is a reason Windows is not allowed in my home (beyond the obvious security concerns :).

Article in 10s

[cynicalmoose]

1) Vista uses a cool new windowing technology.

2) Vista has new security features.

3) Some bits have been given a bit of a polish.

4) Look at all these lovely pictures (especially of bundled games - seriously, about 15/40 pages are games).

All of which teaches us:
1) Tom's Hardware is good at shilling for companies so as to ingratiate themselves further.
2) Pretty pictures do not a review make.

Re:Article in 10s

[FeSceptre]

Like any bloated article... just read the intro and finale paragraphs. "Microsoft's new Vista is surprisingly entertaining. The new look of the operating system is good, and lets it outshine its Linux and Mac OS competitors. One notices repeatedly while working with this software that Microsoft scoped out its competition very carefully. Unexpected crashes sometimes occur when working with beta software. It remains to be seen whether users will still enjoy the many colored effects in Vista after they've seen them for a while, or will decide to turn them off in favor of a normal default Windows scheme with gray windows. Either way, Vista incorporates many small but effective changes that can help simplify work and also boost productivity for everyday tasks. Many of these small details don't manifest themselves to ambitious users until weeks or months of exposure to Vista, and are easy to miss when working with early versions of this system."

Iconified tabs: pretty cool

[kitzilla]

Omniweb was the first place I saw this feature, and that was a year or two ago. It's resource-heavy, but if you're a visual person, you might find it useful when manipulating a lot of tabs.

I liked it enough to register Omniweb.

What took 500 hours?

[frdmfghtr]

Was it the screen captures? Maybe all that cutting and pasting took 500 hours.

very unbiased comment

[Superfarstucker]

Can't handle the other half-truths, maybe a bit of bias yourself? What is wrong with doing a good job copying something that works? It's hard to be a pundit when there is nothing to complain about, evidenced by you moaning about disk space requirements in the day and age that a single session of photography uses up 4 GiBs of memory. That is something Apple users do, right?

Are you scared that Microsoft might have actually done something right after 7 years? The company of incompetents everyone loves to hate? When Apple mimics, the occurence isn't worth mentioning, when Microsoft does so it is 'theft'? A priori you hated Vista, simply because it comes from M$.

OS X is a good design, but it hardly invented anything, they just looked at where the next dot was going to be on the trendline. Microsoft has employed the same tactic, its just taken them a 'bit' longer.

Some choice quotes from the man of 'no bias.'

"Could it be the anti-apple cultists?"

It's so funny that the biggest complainers about Apple products are people that generally don't even own an Apple product. When these people post to the Apple message boards, if you ask them simple Apple-centric questions to try and help them with their supposed problems they don't respond or when they do, they respond with things that clearly indicate that they aren't using, and never have used, any Apple products.

"wow what a fat os"

I can't get over the idea that it requires 15 GB of hard drive space. Heck, OS X comes in needing a measly "3GB of available hard disk space (4GB if you install the developer tools)" [apple.com] and most of the new features in VISTA were essentially stolen concepts from Apple, again... Microsoft needs to give up on the backwards compatible bloatware concept and finally release a quick streamlined version of their OS. Faster processors and more memory shouldn't be what's required to run the OS faster every single time. Nobody cares if they can run Windows 98 software or not.

Re:very unbiased comment

[Warlock7]

I'm not a "journalist" supposedly presenting an "unbiased review". I have made critical comments about a company that I see as needing to take on the role that they should be fulfilling, an industry leader that is creative and innovative.

You'll have to be more clear about this 4 GiB of memory for a "single session of photography". Aperture's entire installation requires "5GB of disk space for application, sample projects, and tutorial". While the iLife suite requires 10GB of available disk space, but that includes photo production, video production, DVD production, music production and Web page development tools. I've built 2 hour DVD projects using DVD Stupio Pro and iDVD which end up needing only about 12 GiBs of space, so I don't know which single photography sessions you're talking about.

I'm not scared about anything with Microsoft. I've come to expect more of the same from them. I'd be ecstatic if they'd finally do the whole thing right. I have to develop for their platform on a daily basis, which is why I've come to be disappointed in them. Please expound on the, I'm guessing, Apple mimicry that you mention. You've read way too much into my criticism of Microsoft, I don't hate Vista, I don't understand why it has taken the largest software development company with the most money in the world this long to produce a product.

The fact that Microsoft has "taken a bit longer" is what I find so troubling. When a company of their size with their revenues and their position isn't forward thinking without some other company doing it first then there's a real problem in the world today. Microsoft should be leading the industry forward with new and innovative designs and concepts, they shouldn't be playing follow the leader with other companies.

Thank you for referencing those quotes, they're great examples to my positions and they really show that I don't have the bias that you claim/assume that I have. Sure I make comparisons between Apple and Microsoft, but I don't appear to make off the cuff comments in either of those quoted posts, aside from the connotation of the word "stolen". I presented a situation in both of those and then expressed my observations.

Microsoft Appliance

[NullProg]

Windows isn't a generic OS anymore. You can't program your own devices. You have no control over what drivers are loaded. You can't delve into the inner chamber of ring 1 or 2. Vista means 'You can't get there from here'. Welcome to the world of centralized computing. A Mainframe on your desktop/laptop. Instead of being controled by IT, your computer is controlled by Microsoft.

Its not a personal computer if you don't have full control over it. Its a Microsoft approved appliance.

My two cents.
Enjoy,

Re:Microsoft Appliance

[QCompson]

Its a Microsoft approved appliance.

This is very true. However, this is what most Joe and Jane Sixpacks are looking for. An appliance that they can use to surf the internet, play music, and write email. Most people don't care how their tv or refrigerator works.

Re:Microsoft Appliance

[tetrode]

It is unfortunate that this comment cannot be upped to +6 or more, now that I have modpoints.

Your computer is controlled by Microsoft. It is not YOUR personal computer any more. That is also my feeling. You don't have any control over it when you don't have almost the full control about it.

A Microsoft approved appliance, that is the best term I've heared in a while.

Thanks, NullProg

Mark

purble/purple - ahh well who cares it all sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

After 500 hours you'd think they'd realise that the word purble is different to purple?!

Hey, I have an Idea!

[iced_773]

Every time there is a story about Vista, someone should post wondering why Ubuntu is not in the summary! Start a new facet of Slashdot subculture to join "In Soviet Russia" and K'Breel!

And the fix to the fix

[mattmacf]

That link's not going to work. It looks like Tom is redirecting anything that doesn't have "tomshardware.com" in the referrer heading. Funny enough, http://slashdot.org/tomshardware.com/ is an acceptable referrer. (Are you taking notes, Taco? This means you should set up a redirect script that sends Tom's hardware links through something containing tomshardware.com in the url and append print.html to the link.)

A blank referrer works too though, so just copy and paste the link. :)

Re:And the fix to the fix

[FSWKU]

Well its blatantly obvious what they're doing now. By checking the referal header they make sure that to see the print version, you HAVE to go to the default article at least once. Ergo, they're determined to get at least one ad impression out of you wether you like it or not. THIS is why people started using things like AdBlock in the first place. They HATE HAVING ADS FORCED ON THEM!

Default User *Still* Passwordless Administrator

[mpapet]

This one says it all:
"The first user defined during installation is automatically granted administrative privileges. Worse yet, the reserved account named Administrator is not required to have a password to log into the machine!"

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/page18.html [tomshardware.com]

I know I'm going to have plenty of work when the OS finally releases because this one doesn't look any better than the last.

FYI: if it hasn't been clarified yet, the beta release ships with *everything* AND the kitchen sink. So it's reasonable to assume it will come in bigger than XP, but I'm guessing smaller than their beta release by a long shot.

Re:Default User *Still* Passwordless Administrator

[mvdw]

This is no different behaviour to that of Ubuntu: the first (and, in fact, only) user defined during installation is the one granted 'sudo' priviledges; effectively, that user is root.

duh...even better

[mattmacf]

Sorry to reply to myself, but there's a much easier way to do this. Simply run the link through a dereferer service. As such, the link below should work for you guys.

http://ultimod.org/?url=http://www.tomshardware.co m/2006/05/31/windows_vista/print.html

Tablet *and* media center?

[Atario]

Does this mean I can finally use their OS as a telestrator?

here is the link...

[plasmacutter]

a post by one of the acts booked to perform at this rave

quoted from this:
This event was 100% legal. They had every permit the city told them they needed. They had a 2 MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy for the event. They had liscenced security guards at the gates confiscating any alcohol or drugs found upon entry (yes, they searched every car on the way in). Oh, I suppose I should mention that they arrested all the security guards for possession.

video of the bust

Another?

[Wooky_linuxer]

No, not another 40 page article. It is actually the same one.

Maybe its for SEO?

[patio11]

That way they get all the keywords on one page for Google's benefit but an actual user has to go through ad city. Funny, that sounds like it should be penalized...

Well that pretty much goes for the whole website

[JudgeFurious]

  Seriously, Tom's Hardware could crank out 40 worthless pages reviewing a fucking toothpick these days. I eludes me why anyone continues to try and read that shit. The thing hasn't been worth looking at in over 5 years.

What's good for Bill Gates...

[DocBones]

Rather OT, but I'm unable to submit stories [from Win XP], hope someone will find this worth submitting. How 'the system' works to help Bill produce huge systems without running out of money - cheap labor.

Doc

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/26/visas / (may require your sitting through a sponsor's animated ad)

What's good for Bill Gates...

The Microsoft mogul says America needs more foreign engineers and programmers to compete. Critics say it's all about cheap labor.

By Rebecca Clarren
Salon Magazine ...

Generally, industry lobbyists are quick with statistics and reports, but in this case it appears they weren't needed. Neither Microsoft nor Intel would reveal how many Ph.D.s or master's students they hired last year, and how many they need for next year. When the companies and their lobbyists were asked what data and reports they showed Congress to convince them of the need for these new visas, they reported that they don't have any reports and statistics. Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech/CWA, a tech workers union, says as long as they have Bill Gates on their side, "they don't need to use anything to substantiate their arguments."

"William Gates was in Washington, lobbying -- a pretty high-priced lobbyist -- to come talk about the needs of Microsoft, a marvelous company, high-tech, enormous advances for America -- he wants more people with Ph.D.s and wants a larger quota of visas for those people to come in," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the bill's author, told Salon when asked what data the industry had shown him. "We have accommodated that. And we have created more opportunities for people to come in who are students."

Such ardor for Gates flows from both sides of the aisle. When asked about reports and data presented to convince Democrats on the Judiciary Committee that the U.S. didn't have the workforce it needed to fill these jobs, Tracy Schmaler, spokesperson for the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, responded: "Did you know Bill Gates has been pretty high-profile on this?"

Critics of the bill, mainly academics and those who represent American tech workers, say they have no voice on this issue; that Congress has been blinded by campaign contributions of big companies. In 2004, Microsoft alone spent $9.46 million on lobbying and hired 16 different firms; it listed immigration as one of its top issues on lobbying disclosure forms, according to data from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. That same year, computer and Internet industries spent $70.5 million on lobbying.

"There is no greater case study to understand corporate power in politics," says Courtney of the tech workers union. "I could give you 75 reports that prove that H-1B is a horribly flawed program that hurts American workers, but it doesn't matter. As long as Bill Gates says there's a shortage, and that's it, thanks for playing, game over, try again next session."

Vista: Pros, Cons, and should'ves

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they can; they could overhaul almost the entire OS like they did in NT, or literally the entire OS like Apple did in OS X, and support legacy applications via a virtual-machine based compatibility layer.

I might add, the advent of CPU-assisted hypervisors (Pacifica, Vanderpool) make this even easier on their part. So has the fact that they've already bought a hypervisor (VPC) and plan on integrating it into their Server products at a later date. Hell, they could even support DOS properly. If they put some effort into it, the compatibility could improve immeasurably, at a simple cost of some part of performance (and with older apps that wouldn't be such a burden, and again, wouldn't be such a burden with the already extremely high system requirements of Vista and its successors).

Hell, they could've chucked NTFS away as the default filesystem, licensed reiser4 from Hans, and implemented their entire precious WinFS (along with a performance and reliability boost) in under two years.

They could have built on the Volume Shadow Copy tech, and removed Windows' more serious locking problems while simultaneously making SxS a lot saner. They could've even removed the 255-character limit on every component in a Unicode UNC path, and fixed other deep design limitations in Windows, and have to worry far less about breaking legacy because they'll just emulate it.

That's what they could have done.

They have done some things, beyond eye candy.

System Restore (a resource drain, but a godsend) is now Volume Shadow Copy-based, so lower overhead and much more comprehensive.

They've moved a lot more drivers to user mode to increase kernel stability in the face of buggy graphics card drivers; they've had to do that because of graphics card acceleration of the UI; that's proper tear-free offscreen compositing, they can even use pixel shaders there. That means slightly tacky shady windows, but it also means much more stable and reliable hardware acceleration of video, and the ability to incorporate 3D stuff more naturally into the GUI without screwing things up.

Unified DX10 (WGF 2.0), they've created a much more homogeneous gaming platform (that aligns closely with the xbox360 target, naturally).

They made the loading even faster (though with the debug flags on, you'd never know), which is quite a feat (if XP is feeling in the right mood; linux is rapidly catching up thanks to that wonderful profiler).

They tried to make Explorer a little more search-oriented.

They added widgets. Well, let's call them desktop accessories to acknowledge their heritage a little. Only I remember how damn useful those things actually were. The sidebar might be a gimmick? Try it on a widescreen LCD - that's what they reckon they all will be soon (and that makes a certain amount of sense, lots more taskbar room). OK, so, there are no decent widgets, that's true. But there could be, and in time there will be. That might mean less system tray overload. It's an interesting idea that's worth a try.

IE7. ... well, I can't really comment on that because my heart's already set on Firefox or Opera, and with IE's turgid security record I'm never going back. But it's an incremental improvement, standards-wise and security-wise, on IE6. The reduced-privilege is simply a way to try to mitigate the security implications of running IE; they know it's awful. They possibly consider it unfixably complex. They also think an mshtml control is now essential in the OS. I'd love to see them use Gecko in there instead (won't happen, but it'd be amusing).

They added DVD stuff. Woo. 'Cause no-one could ever play DVDs before.

And along with that... you mention all this DRM stuff, but in fact, they haven't tweaked it all that much. The bad points are, no XPC1 firmware support (AnyDVD or some related product will of course add it back). You might argue about HDCP too, but that'll be so rare for several years (remember, still only one graphics card anywhere wi

And, the final version will be less than 10 GB!

[rbarreira]

10 GB for Vista is the space of the BETA version, which probably has tons of debug code and is compiled on debug mode, which increases the size of the executables/dlls a lot!

so what if it takes 20 gig

[cinnamon colbert]

Nothing is cheaper then hard drive space. That anyone would care how many gigs vista takes indicates that they don't understand anything about mass market computers.

Karma sssshmarma!

[Anonymous Coward]

Karma sssshmarma, that never works. I go throught life doing nothing but good, and all I get is personal plagues and a t-shirt.

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people even bother making a ./ for this crap?
Everytime someone makes a post that Tom's wrote an article about something, all everybody does is rant about the 20 and now even 40 page long ad-filled bogus full of screenshots and hardly any real information. I dare you to find one (1) reply that's talking about the article without bashing it.
Is there something to be gained to piss off the entire ./ community by posting this? In that case, please do tell me, and I'll happily log in and write an article about every cursed new review on Tom's Hardware. But as for now, I really don't see the point in doing this. People that are willing to read trough all those pages without learning something probably will anyway, so please stop posting this stuff.

haven't seen this yet....

[jesusfingchrist]

...does it run linux? I`ll be upgrading to vista two days after never.

10 GB???

[Anonymous Coward]

My entire Linux installation, including lots and lots of software (much of it redundant with multiple office suites and such) and multiple GUI/window managers with lots of widgets/gadgets totals less than 6 GB! I could almost run two full Linux distros and take up about the same space as one installation of Windows Vista alone, with no software!

How much spaghetti code do they use? Geez!

No silver bullet

[lowe0]

"You will now have a choice of secure or usable. That's an exclusive or."

And it always will be, regardless of the operating system. People want powerful information systems on their desk, yet most of them simply don't want to put in the effort to secure those systems (or even learn to do so).

Re:No silver bullet

[vtcodger]

***And it always will be, regardless of the operating system. People want powerful information systems on their desk, yet most of them simply don't want to put in the effort to secure those systems (or even learn to do so).***

Not always I think. There's no obvious reason that security and usability can't coexist someday, it's just that no one knows how to align them.

The issue with Vista appears to be that Microsoft seems to have misguessed how to best to secure software using current technology. Maybe they can tweak it into something that folks can live with. Maybe they can't. If not, I imagine that (almost) everyone will turn User Access Controls off, and Microsoft will go off to try something different in the next major release. In the interim, they will claim that they have world class security and it's the user's fault for not using it.

It'd help if IT folks would get a grip on reality. Users are not very programmable. Users can't remember complex passwords, don't follow instructions consistently, and will not, with rare exceptions, deal properly with endless access permission screens. If we depend on stuff like that for security, then our systems are not going to be very secure. It's not the user's fault that systems are insecure any more than it is the fault of US taxpayers that no one can fill out any but the simplest income tax form correctly.

When Vista gives me the functionality of Linux...

[M3ohm.Com]

When I can do on Vista, what I can do on my SuSE 10.1 Linux desktop, I might consider switching to this alternative desktop OS. Until then, it's SuSE Linux. I can't believe Microsoft can pass up Windows as an Enterprise level OS!

A little bashing and some questions...

[madsh]

First off all... Why would you ever call this a review? Shame on Tom's hardware. I remember five years ago when I considered Tom's to be a reference source of information. Second... why would Slashdot post this story? Shame on Slashdot. I remember five years ago when I considered Slashdot to be a reference source of information.

And then on to a few questions that pops up...

1) Would your mom be able to install/run Windows Vista?
Personally my mom had a great experience shifting from Windows XP to a Mac OS. A lot fewer settings, and most things work out of the box and is fairly simple, most importantly wifi and file manager. I know it is a touchy subject, but viruses does matter too.

2) Would you, as a sysadm, recommend/allow your users to install Windows Vista?
I do have quite a problem with XP in an environments of Linux, Mac and Windows. Problems with centralized account management, file sharing and deployment of applications. Looking at the features in Vista I dont think the average user, would get any benifits from the upgrade.

3) Would you actually buy a full license for Windows Vista for your own home computer?
It seems to me there is a few different use cases mixed up here. I am thinking gaming, media, internet and office appliances. My guess is that there will be Xbox/PS/Ninetendo in the gaming/media corner. An internet/office installation on a Windows, Mac or Linux box in the other corner. But the crucial question here is why buy an upgrade to windows for this?

I am not gonna make any bold conclusions from this, but if I had my retirement savings in Microsoft shares I would either hope for all chinese people to buy Xbox's or get ride of all my shares ASAP... Seriously, if this is the best Microsoft can do on the Personal Computer OS, they have to find another way to make money...

Re:Invalid Argument

[mpapet]

The facts show otherwise:

The first user created in Ubuntu has linux user priveleges and all of the security features that come with it. If something attempts to escalate privilege, it won't happen. For example attempting to install software will fail because the user doesn't have the right to do so.

Windows Longwait on the other hand goes straight into admin. Install software? Can do! Good software? Bad software? Some of my users still don't know the difference.

My Linux users don't know anything about sudo and they don't want to know. I know they can't do anything to really screw the PC up.

a bit harsh.

[solomonrex]

I think MS is on the wrong track, but they are hardly going to lose their franchise.

1. Every new computer will have Vista in it by holiday season next year.
2. Vista (and the 1 billion configurations they sell) will help retain subscribers, their most important revenue-enhancing initiative.
3. Vista will help sell PC games. It helps that the PS3 is over-priced.
4. Security is actually really much better since XP SP2. Certainly good enough for their corporate sales.
5. Office shows real improvement.
6. X360 has a real chance to make money.

Here are the only things that should trouble an MS investor, in order of importance:
1. Sparing no expense to chase Google. Good money is chasing bad, and it isn't obvious to me how their monopoly power is helping - or is going to help them 'innovate'.

Worse, as a stockholder, they're withholding dividends of a massively successful monopoly to chase an advertising/broadcast segment that can only hurt their customer relationships.

2. Virtualizing and remote desktop services will eat away at MS's core income. Outsourcing plays into this, and it's a negative sum game for MS. Without networked clients, they sell one OS per computer, and one computer per user. In a networked world, 3 people in India share the same computer AND OS and replace three users in U.S. Plus, they are more likely to use illegal or old copies of the software to save money. Clients are cheap, but this effect is real.
3. Their media center initiative is going nowhere. It looks like online TV is headed to regular online standards: abc.com came after itunes, aol has tv shows, youtube has video. Media Center was going to be a premium edition and create more profit, and that isn't happening.
4. They are competing with too many customers, picking too many fights, especially online (so, if Fox owns Myspace, and MS creates a myspace competitor, why would Fox use Windows Media formats?).
5. Windows/Office development is getting unwieldy for the pre-eminent technology company? Not a good sign.
6. Their SoaS/Windows/Office roadmap doesn't exist.

Personally, on the consumer side, Vista is the only choice next year, because it's "free" with every computer. My only serious problem with Windows before was security, and UAC should solve that, even if my relatives end up confused half the time, at least they can't completely disable the computer with spy/adware. Of course, I wouldn't buy it before sp1.

Re:Invalid Argument

[mvdw]

Fair enough; I use ubuntu at home and I know that the first installed user can sudo, although the distinction you make is subtle, but very significant. What it boils down to is the first user created on an ubuntu system can sudo, while the first user created in Vista is root (with all the implications that carries for usage).

Thanks for the clarification.