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Latest Vista Build Making Real Progress
feminazi writes "Computerworld's Scot Finnie has reviewed the newest Vista build and found some significant improvements over Beta 2, which he had previously criticized in pretty strong terms. There's improved performance, greatly reduced installation time, four network control panels and some wizards have all been combined into one nicely organized Network and Sharing Center. Microsoft is also reducing the number of annoying User Access Control (UAC) prompts. There are some minor improvements in the way Media Center handles windows, but it's still buggy."
The sun is HOT!
Seriously, New Beta is more stable then Old Beta. A company takes the advice from beta testers and fixes issues the everyone complaines about.
Congratulations M$, you have amazed us all again!
-EL
Printable view herem mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9001888
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co
Wincopy
The server is pretty sluggish right now, so here are some choice tidbits:
..."
... license verification now involves a latex glove for Microsoft's safety, and astro-glide for customer comfort, a major improvement over ..."
"... when powering up the hardware required by Vista, we had a brownout affecting neighboring homes -- a massive improvement over the four-city-block blackout resulting from the prior build. This is likely because I was able to pull several pre-release Xeon 5100 boards out of the render farm for Aero
"
"While it was annoying to have to confirm my Firefox download 18 times, Microsoft graciously refrained from sending another squad of Khazak mercenaries to 'verify safe uninstall of hacker tools.'"
"Vist has not yet drowned the remaining kitten."
taco needs to create windersvistabeta.slashdot.org for all this shit.
Seriously why does a friggin beta need so much coverage here.
Some goofs may be obvious to us because they were seen with fresh eyes. When you work with something long enough you tend to forget that bad things are there.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
That's an odd criticism of UAC. With XP, if you run as a limited-access user, it simply prevents you from deleting the All Users shortcuts at all. Of course Vista's UAC would require a password for that. You don't have permission to modify that folder.
Apparently the criticism must be coming from people who never ran XP securely. That said, it's probably more convenient now. No right-clicking Windows Explorer and having to hit Run As like you do in XP to delete All Users shortcuts.
I find it interesting that Bill Gates at a recent symposium told Microsoft affiliates that there is a 20% chance that Vista would slip again. Since I live in Seattle, I have friends who are developers over there who swear it will never make the January deadline.
I love it when they are already talking about the new release slipping when they have already made promises through their teeth for the last 3 years.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Am I the only one that is hoping that Microsoft can deliver a better OS? Like it or not (or for most ./ers), it's widely used, it will be in use at some point, and frankly, if it is an improvement, then doesn't that help everybody out. Less windows problems and better windows software seems to mean less headaches for everybody all round. Wouldn't three major (okay, 3.5 Sorry BSD folks 8-) great OS choices be better than two? Personally I don't think XP/2003 is all that bad, I use them everyday.
I just don't buy the whole Microsoft is hurting Linux/Apple/BSD etc. because all of those systems are growing and getting better all the time. Linux is getting better and better, OS X is super cool, and so on.
Sure, I think some people would hope that a awful Vista will sink MS. Well, it won't. because if ME didn't, I can't see Vista doing it. So, maybe it's best to hope for a good OS from MS, more secure, less bugs, less @#$@#$@#%%^ spyware/adware infections for us to all fix, etc. etc, and then just focus on using what we like.
2K?!? For a modern operating system? The average Atari 2600 game is larger than that!
How is this a troll? WinME was a horrible crashfest that was actually less reliable than Windows 98, and ran less software. It's pretty hilarious to me that they eliminated the 16 bit system in an effort to make it more reliable, and failed completely, only accomplishing a dramatic reduction of backwards compatibility.
If you were going to give the parent comment a negative mod, it would be flamebait. The difference between a troll and flamebait is that you believe your flamebait, but trolling by definition means you are expressing a view that you yourself do not believe in order to elicit a desired response. However, I consider it to be a salient point given Microsoft's track record. WinME isn't the only example, either, I can remember a service pack for NT4 and another one for Win2k that both screwed things ALL up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Where the hell do comments like yours even come from? There is so much negative PR around Vista that I guess people just ignore the reality of the system.
Download Beta 2 (you can get it for free), install it, use it for 20 minutes, and you'll see just how stupid a lot of the FUD is. Vista is very, very much like XP in terms of DRM, restrictions, and the like. TPM support is minimal (only used for BitLocker), you can still install unsigned drivers, uTorrent and Azureus still run fine, K-Lite Mega Codec Pack still installs fine and XVID movies still work.
I guess the most annoying thing about posts like yours is that they are so nondescript. Which DRM features are you referring to? What limitations are you referring to? I see an OS that is no more restricted than XP. The new DRM features don't mean a thing to me because I don't buy WMV-DRM movies.
Vista is making real progress and is shaping up to be a substantial, albeit not revolutionary, upgrade from XP. Slashdot doesn't like that.