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Early Testers Say Vista RC1 Not Ready
digihome writes "A number of partners and analysts who have downloaded Vista RC1 say the code is solid but they are not convinced it will be ready for release this fall. A Directions on Microsoft analyst said, 'I would call this at best a Beta Three and not a Release Candidate One.'"
I never understood this MS terminology. From my point of view a Release Candidate is in a shape that I could just recompile the software without the debugging symbols if no major bugs are reported. No one considers this to be even a remote possibility in case of Vista RC1. My guess is that they will also need a RC2, RC3 and maybe even RC4 and than a RRC1 (real Release Candidate) before shipping.
I'm getting really tired of people predicting how vista or anything will do based on anecdotal evidence
actually using the product in question and reflecting upon its immaturity is anecdotal evidence?
My experience with RC1 has been mixed. Do I think it's light years ahead of the disaster that was Beta2? Yes, absolutely. It's stable enough to use as an everyday operating system. Is it ready for showtime? Eh. Perhaps. Is it what we have waited six years for? Heck, no. Where are all the interesting bits gone?
The more interesting question is that of nomenclature. I agree that this is Beta3 - but more because an RC everywhere else is something that is ready to go, it just needs spit and polish to get it ready, fix a couple of bugs. Then again, this is what Microsoft is telling people to test their applications against to check for breakages, so yes, I suppose you could call it a "Certification Beta" or what have you. But call it what you may, I think it's the Ultimate version, with all the games, and goodies, that needs more time. Enterprise-wise, it looks stable enough for use - networking is better than XP (even though it's a new stack), group policy has been better fine tuned, UAC is usable enough, and hardware detection is light-years ahead of XP. All of those basic things are ready and if thats what enterprise customers are expected to get, then I think it's good to go, after they fix the occaisonal dialog box with three different fonts.
I just wish there was something truly innovative to encourage an upgrade. Halo 2 doesn't count, especially for business!
Or you could just stick with Windows XP as it seems to have the tools you like. It's not like Microsoft is going to suddenly stop supporting XP.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I am not an anecdote. I am a free man!
;-)
Vista has major Explorer bugs, still in evidence. Thumbnail rendering (the default setting)is buggy, and causes crashes.
DivX codec is a big culprit here. On trying to render the thumbnail, the codec causes an excepton under Vista. Explorer SHOULD trap this, and render a grey square, or something.
Instead, explorer faults, and the entire desktop - including the menu, taskbar, and any current file transfers - goes HUP.
The "cure" is to check the option for opening all new explorer windows in their own process. That's incredibly wasteful of resources - of course, if you can run Vista at speed... you probably already have a Lamborghini. You can also tell explorer to never render thumbnails. Seems like a real waste, 'tho'.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I've been really surprised at Vista pricing. It seems to me there's no reason to buy Vista at retail when you could buy a new computer when Vista comes out for not that much more money than the upgrade alone. I could see paying $99 to upgrade to Vista, or even meeting Apple's upgrade price at $129, but pushing $200 to upgrade XP Pro to Vista pro sounds like a bad dream.
From an aesthetic point of view, MacOS X is a no-brainer. You can run Photoshop on it, and if you decide the GIMP or other open source applications are your cup of tea, you can run them too.
Also, if you do video or plan to do video, the Apple applications are absolutely unbeatable.
D
The performance is closer to Windows XP if you factor out the still awful sidebar. In some areas it equals XP's performance, in other areas it still lags a bit behind. Compatability isn't much of an issue either at this point. Honestly, compatability wise, considering the changes under the hood, the changeover to Vista should be a lot smoother than when everyone started transitioning over to Windows 2000 several years back.
The reason why Vista is definitely *not* ready for release though, is the overall design of the OS itself. Vista has no unified feel to its design, and certain key changes from Windows xp feel more cumbersome(or at the very least awkward to get adjusted to).
Vista really does highlight the differences in design philosophy that went into it versus Mac OS X. While technology implementation wise the two OS's are rather similar in what they can offer the user, OS X goes to great pains to offer a unified and relatively easy to use design. Vista, on the other hand, feels exactly the way it was designed: done in pieces by various different groups then pieced together.
The short of it is the core of Vista, baring a few more bug fixes and performance improvements, is certainly there. But, Vista right now is like that unassembled bike you got as a kid for Christmas. All the parts are there but you can't quite get it fitted together right.
In my honest opinion Vista needs about 3 more months and one more major release to get the final kinks out of the system performance and bug wise, but then it needs another 6 months of heavy and pure public beta use and feedback to get the interface and design unified into a user friendly operating system. As it stands right now, I think performance and bug wise Vista should be pretty much ok by the time the consumer release hits in January, but it is going to be far more cumbersome and even less intuitive to use than Windows XP is on release.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
This is being promoted by Microsoft as a Release Candidate 1. By stamping this a Release Candidate product, the product team is saying "We believe this product is completely finished, polished, optimized, bug free, and ready for mass production. Unless you, our fearless users, discover something, THIS is the product we mass-produce and distribute by the millions."
Except for the inconvenient fact that everyone who has seen it knows that's simply nonsense. In reality, this is a late alpha (unoptimized, feature incomplete, substantial bugs remain) or at best an early beta (feature complete, largely optimized, some bugs remain), but based on reports calling this a Beta is being generous. But to call it a release candidate is absurd. No way! Seriously, we're STILL hearing reports of features being removed from the product.
I'm no MS fanboy, don't get me wrong, but isn't it better with a couple of service packs for big changes instead of the way Apple does it, releasing a slightly upgraded OS at full price (Cheetah, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and now Leopard, 2001 - present)?
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
Did anyone read TFA?
The review was based on an install done on a Powerbook.
Look at what Apple has been able to accomplish by mixing the code and culture of thir own system with that of NeXT and with that of the FOSS community. Eighty-six million lines of code from all of these sources comprise their marvelous operating system, a great success that continues improving across the board.
When will Microsoft, with all its economic power and marketing prowess, realize that they need to take the plunge and go open source? When will they realize that by mixing all of their software with lots of stuff from the FOSS community, they can grow the functionality of their software by orders of magnitude while increasing its stability?
One thing that Linux does worse at then Windows? Despite being a real Windows anti-fan, I can easily answer that question: WPA on WiFi. Actually WiFi in general.
This is a real problem for Linux. You can get there, but only for certain hardware, and there is often a lot of blood sacrifice involved. I have even seen WiFi drivers that kernel panic linux. There is a good argument that this is because the vendors are not supporting linux, and have heavily restricted access to the driver APIs. But you still cannot count it as a place where linux is superior to Windows.
There are lots of other places were linux is simply not polished enough... or better said: is rather rough. It has been improving, but still has a long way to go.
You have never written software, I take it?
It is the job of the Windows Explorer to recover gracefully from faulty plugins/libraries.
It wouldn't matter the source. If the plugin faults - Explorer should trap this and revert to its default/null response, as if no plugin were present.
If you are not trapping this generically, you have an incomplete design.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The problem is we do not compare the two product correctly.
What I mean is Windows 2003 cost about 800$
Linux (Most distro come at NO cost)
Second Windows is supported by a huge corporation (and support device reseller (ie Wifi, SATA, MB, WinModem)
Linux is created by a bunch of "lunatic" (I'm one of them)
Windows aims to be as easy to use as possible (Lower cost of ownership = Low salary wages) (Check box, Wizard)
Linux aims to be as "powerfull"/features/customizable as possible. Complete Config txt files.
So Windows is easy and Linux is complexe (high learning curves)
When you ask "Name one thing Linux does worse than Windows" there are tons of stuff, others will probably point some of them to you. My point remains, Linux and Windows are not on the same playfield.
Don't you think ?
We all know (and I'm not a linux or apple fanboy) that it will be released regardless of whether it is ready or not. People will also buy it.
But the trick, according to the conspiracy theory, is that no one actually upgrades Windows. They buy a PC, which happens to have Windows sold with it by the OEM. I have never upgraded a copy of Windows until I bought my next PC, which came with the OEM version of the next release.
Vista will take over, not because we'll upgrade en-masse, but because people will buy new PCs with it installed by default.
No, I don't. I disagree completely.
Basically your argument is what windows users use when Linux is eating windows' lunch in the server market. which, by the way, it is doing. Only Linux and Windows are gaining market share in this space now (they seem to trade off gaining ground here and there, but that could simply be due to the release of various studies at various times.)
Linux is competing directly with Windows. Period. It's competing for the desktop (somewhat poorly) and it's competing for the server market (with great success.) It's competing for the embedded market (where it has made serious inroads against the incumbents, including the aptly-named wince) quite well, too; for instance, I work in a Casino, and I walked in one day and saw kernel messages on a slot machine that had just rebooted. Using Linux for slot machines is something of a no-brainer due to the high level of security and reliability, and low cost.
By the way, have you even used Ubuntu yet? The learning curve on that is, if anything, shallower than Windows. The install is easier, and using it is no harder.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> The Gimp kicks the pants off of PhoSho if you know how to use it
What we need is a mod rating of "-1, crack baby".
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Toward the end of its life, a Microsoft OS becomes fairly reliable and stable.
This is bad, because people might decide it's worth sticking with indefinitely.
Therefore, themasses must be goaded into upgrading to a shiny! new! OS which is a 1.0.0 release at best and will require umpteen more rounds of patching.
This is, of course, accomplished by EOLing past versions, and pointing out that oh, by the way, the latest batch of 43 security vulnerabilities has been in every version since Windows 3.11 and will only be fixed in this shiny! new! version.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Dammit, twitter. Every time I stumble on one of your posts, it's like an icepick in my ear.
Typos aside, that's the one fair statement in the whole post. Microsoft has monopoly power, so there's nowhere to go but down.
Ah, typical twitter logic. "Hmm, I want to get my software on 90% of desktops in the world. I'm not building it for that nasty, tricksy Windowses. If I make it cross-platform, somebody might run it on Windows anyway. I know! I'll write it for Linux, then wait for 90% of the desktops in the world to convert! And if anybody asks for a Windows version, I'll tell them to fuck off! Then they'll convert to Linux for sure!"
Oh, bloody hell. I fell into a decade-long coma again? The first time, The Police broke up. Now Linux has conquered the desktop and Microsoft went Chapter 11, and they're just building keyboards and mice for Sun?! At least my hairstyle is back in fashion again.
Of course, the only reason you picked that quote from the parent post in the first place was because somewhere, deep down, you recognized yourself in it.
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No, just the cognitive dissonance of how someone who, by all evidence, knows Linux well can allow their primitive, reactive hindbrain to lash out at every post about Microsoft with such aggression and hatred.
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