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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.'"
how can it be not ready? they're always keeping a tight schedule that never falls behind. Duke Nukem anyone?
(Futurama) Fry: "My folks were always on me to groom myself and wear underpants. What am I, the pope?"
Yea, I don't know why this is such a shocker. They should really not rush it.
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!
If MS hadn't been promising it for so long, it wouldn't be such a disappointment. IE7 is finally out, put it on a client's laptop, and it doesn't look that bad. I haven't seen it do anything terrible yet, but now that I've been using FF, I'm not really excited about the look and feel of it at all. I'll probably have the same 'oh, it looks a bit crayola-ish' reaction to Vista too. Oh well, as long as MS is trying to keep up with the rest of the world, all can't be bad.
Seriously though, all the people that are trying to predict this or that, call it good, or denounce it already.. well, all I have to say to that is wait for Vista SP2 before you make up your mind. That's when all the bugs will be worked out, and by then, two or more Linux distros will be better than Vista. By then, many more people will have figured out that the OpenOffice apps are good enough for what they want, and the little lightbulb in their heads will turn on and they will realize that a computer doesn't need MS products to be useful or relevant.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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..."
True enough, but then again, people will claim the final release not to be sufficiently tested, either. Not that I will be using Vista nor am I a Vista fan (I run Linux exclusively for my own reasons), but people should realize that almost no software released today is free of bugs and exploits. For a codebase that large, I think Microsoft deserves some credit for keeping it as well as they have... while still maintaining legacy compatibility! Not that I am saying they are right for letting it grow so big, they should cut off legacy support in exchange for codebase reliability and the chance to regain their name around the "poweruser" group by removing old exploits, etc, etc. Basically not be bloated, as people claim. Maybe in their next release they will be able to start on a clean slate and have RCs that people don't complain about. Props MS for getting this far. Lets see how it sells. The name Vista/Longhorn have been floating for years... so they can't blame publicity if it isnt a hit :)
Microsoft has always rushed it. No new version of Windows has ever been ready for primetime. Windows 3.0? Crap. Windows 3.1 made it barely usable. Then there's 3.11 to add the microsoft networking. Windows 95? Crap. There's four versions of that, at LEAST; Win95, OSR1, OSR2, OSR2.5, and OSR3 that only went out to a handful of corporate customers. Win98? There's a second edition. Windows ME? CRAP. PURE CRAP. Windows 2000? There's what, six service packs now? And at least one of those broke more than it fixed. Windows XP? Two service packs, and there really ought to have been a third by now due to the sheer number of updates that get installed after SP2.
All microsoft operating systems are crap until near their end of life. It's like a law of nature.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As we all know, Vista will have many key upgrades since there are
many important features that will be added after the launch as time passes. (such as Monad)
With only part of the 'features available' at launch, vista is far from 'complete'.
Let's see if it is ready after the final release AND when most of the stuff is complete and has been
properly integrated into Vista.
I would like to see how that new OS works then.
Solid crap? or solid gold?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
It's safe to say that this is the most disputed release of any operating system made by Microsoft. The software giant has not had huge delays prior to this release and therefore it had not yet stressed out a pre-Vista product like it is doing it now.
Microsoft loses whatever they do from now on. If they delay the product even further, share holders will complain and people will lose faith in them. If they release it too soon (i.e. as currently planned), it is likely going to require significant upgrades and probably also a super fast SP1 upgrade. That too will make people upset and techies will have to upgrade computers over and over again.
I am a Windows XP user and I must say that I am satisfied with this product as it is right now. I am not going to upgrade to Vista before we see the first, second and third wave of reactions.
Full Tilt
Where I understand your frustration is that individual media outlets tend to grab evidence that sells papers. Slashdot editors maybe happier reporting this, than the rejected story I submitted yesterday about the future directions on Windows. So yeah, I'm tired of people predicting that it will or won't work. But Microsoft gathers that very anecdotal evidence and understands what needs to be fixed and what doesn't! :)
Based on my experience with Microsoft products (which dates to the early days of DOS) they are never quite ready for the production environment until SP1. To judge based on an RC1 is just silly. At home I have already upgraded to a Linux environment and will not need to throw money at Vista. In the office I will be holding off until SP1 before I even start testing our production software on Vista. It is not worth my time or money to go through the hassle of making a Release Candidate my primary OS (which is what is truly needed to shake the bugs out). I don't forsee even considering a switch until January '08, and that is if they release close to schedule.
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
...I mean, heck, with an MS operating system, "ready" is something like SP2. (joking. mostly.)
You want anecdotal evidence? I'll give you anecdotal evidence! In my research lab we've been using Windows Vista to control the video cameras that point into the womens toilets, and we've had no end of trouble. Last week one of the female professors was about to use one of the lavatories and my assistant, curled up in a duct, pressed Alt-Windows-F10 to take a screengrab, causing Vista to *instantly* blue screen. He tried to reboot but got his beard caught in his shoelaces when he blinded himself fumbling with the optical mouse. Another assistant managed to capture a grainy, blurry image of a ragged, scholarly minge, but of course Vista corrupted the JPEG before we could all take it home! Thankfully I was able to load it into Paint and draw over the corrupted blocks, but her dithered red and yellow clitoris was not very arousing. So you can take your Vista and shove it, we never have this trouble with Linux.
While it might perhaps be best to withhold judgement until vista actually ships, I would tend to agree with your sentiments. I assume many others will too. For the future: Macs are the longtime favorites of publishers, artists, etc. If you are comfortable with apple and their offerings, give it a shot -- many of the tools with which you're already familiar run well in OSX. Otherwise, you might be quite honestly surprised by modern offerings in the linux software universe. If you'd rather avoid gimp, vim, and other popular OSS tools, you still have a variety of options. For graphics, you might instead try inkscape and/or run photoshop in wine (it is quite useable, stable, and more importantly: stable). For development and editing: http://www.nvu.com/index.php or again go the wine route with dreamweaver and flash. By all means do what works for you.
All microsoft operating systems are crap. /* until near their end of life. */
There. Fixed that for ya.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Yes, if everything would be a-Ok when it comes to Windows it would be the story of the century. :-P
home
You didn't happen to get your Divx codec from zcodec.com, did you?
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
No wonder you cant run it. Your video card is slower than most by a factor of ten. If only you had bought the 6600 you cheap bastard. Not only that, your Athlon is missing a bit. I'm surprised you can boot XP.........
This isn't a beta; this is a release candidate. Despite the feedback from beta testers who wanted a Beta 3 or at least an RC2, Microsoft has released RC1 and already forked an RTM branch off of it. It's full-steam ahead with this thing.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Windows 2000? There's what, six service packs now?
Four service packs. SP4 was released June 2003.
BTW, its kneejerk posts like yours that make Slashdot a diminishing resource for all things Microsoft.
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.
What made you think it was a good resource for all thing Microsoft in the first place? All the rave reviews of Windows?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The windows ME beta was actually quite good, much faster, seemed to be more stable.
What was released, was, as you say, CRAP. PURE CRAP
I actually went back to the beta until I installed 2k
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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.
Has a Red Hat, Suse, Debian build ever come out bug free. Hard to say since so many of the packages that you can install via apt or whatever are not really associated. If apache has a bug it's apache's fault, not Windows.
This is a major disadvantage, but also a major advantage that both Windows and Mac to some extent share.
With any software you have to get it out the door. It'll never be perfect, and no matter how long they wait there will be an SP1 fairly soon.
To me what RC1 means is that nothing big and fancy is going to get ADDED. What you see if pretty much what you get. If a major flaw is found they might rearrange a piece of functionality, but most things are going to be bug fixes.
While in Beta they might completely take something out. In RC you probably are not going to get away with it, although you migth "delay" something to SP1 like Microsoft did with database mirroring in SQL 2005 in order to get it out the door.
As much as I hate patching, I'd rather get it out in the field and get some use out of it. Early adopters will get hit the hardest, but that is what they expect. Dell and the other manufactors will be the ones finding most of the bugs from now on anyways.
Apparantly you have to be a Microsoft-paid reviewer for the "evidence" to not be "anecdotal" ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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.
I disagree. I know a lot of "knowledgeable geeks" who like Windows just fine. No OS is perfect, but it's good enough and that's the best we'll ever get.
RC means just what it says: A candidate ready for release. In fact a couple times RC1 and final have been the same thing, because no problems were found in RC1.
This time they are just lying. It's Beta 3 but they don't want to call it that since people are so discontent with how behind schedule they are.
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?
... that one of the guys quoted says he installed it on a Mac with Bootcamp. Running a beta OS with a beta boot manager?
Aug 1996 NT4
Dec 1999 NT5.0
Oct 2001 NT5.1
Dec 2006 NT5.5
Well good thing it's shipping in January then! That gives them 2-3 more months to work on it!
WINE them. On either Linux or MacOS X (Intel). WINE works on them both.
and CodeWeavers recently released a beta of Crossover Office for MacOS.
Dreamweaver and PhoSho run fine on it.
But really, The Gimp kicks the pants off of PhoSho if you know how to use it.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
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.
It was NT4 with 6. Sort of.
/. a poorer Microsoft resource when we can't even get /. editors to get the summaries straight. It's just articles and comments, for better or worse.
NT4 SPs 2 and 6 broke more than they fixed. SP3 was rushed, as was "6a" (which shows up in winver as Service Pack 6) to fix the problems that the prior SP broke.
You could make the arguement for Windows 2000 having 6 as well, 4 proper SPs, a post-SP4 rollup, and the malware removal tool. Suffice to say, you can't simply download one or two items to be patched to date with Windows 2000, even in a bare configuration.
Moreover, I wouldn't worry too much about being critcized as making
Well, the Windows $400 price tag is reasonable when you consider the simple and friendly $400 Bittorrent Rebate for home users.
Sony and the $600 PS3, however, require a lot more red-tape, requiring me to steal a wallet and use an out-of-town WalMart for my purchase. You can bet I'm not happy about that.
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..."
But a quick list from the top of my head (ways it's better than XP):
And that was just off the top of my head. There is LOTS of other stuff if you bother to do some research. I can't speak for Ubuntu... one thing is for sure, Vista has a much cooler name.
Every software product is rushed. Nothing large is ever released perfect, there are always known problems and things you could have done better.
As for Windows, the NT line has always been pretty solid. You could always install RC1 and expect it to work normally with maybe a driver going crazy every few days. Final releases were always an improvement in overall user experience from the previous version. (Though not an improvement in overall stability as it's pretty hard to beat the previous version that has been through every imaginable scenario on millions of computers.)
Vista seems to be another story. If you analyze the Beta and RC timeline of every NT-line OS up to now, you see that Vista is abberation. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is lowering its standards in order to push the product out, and that's just going to turn around and bite it in the ass.
Service packs: They are a mix of patches and new functionality. We also do that in the Linux world, just in smaller steps as there is less to worry about compatibility and localization.
And stop badgering Windows 95. It looks lame now but it kicked ass on 4 MB computers with broken hardware back in 95. It ushered process isolation many years before Macs got it. It ushered a reasonably good UI many years before Linux got it. Plug & Play, ugly as it was, brought the end to fiddling with jumpers which is something that 99 percent of the population doesn't know how to do. It ran all your DOS and Win 3.1 stuff. So go easy on it. It may suck by today's standards, but in that day and age it was miles better than any of the alternatives.
Take out half your RAM. Put in a hard drive 75% the size of your old drive. Remove your processor's clock crystal and replace it with one of half the frequency. Done.
-b.
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 ?
Am I the only one who sees "Completely new TCP/IP Stack" and thinks "Massive security holes bound to be lurking just below the surface?"
Why would you rewrite the stack that you (finally) got the damn bugs out of?
I guess it technically isn't re-writing, since they lifted the majority of the stack from BSD in the first place, but hey, did this wheel really need to be reinvented?
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
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.
Thinking about all the pain you describe just makes me want to put on a black turtleneck, grab people by the shoulders, and tell them "For God's sake, life is too short! Get a Mac!"
"Sufferin' succotash."
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.'"
Oh, yes... right.
I take it you never installed Windows 95 on a computer with 4 MB of RAM.
OK, so neither have I.
But I have installed it on a computer with 8 MB of RAM.
My mother used it for work. She said she'd come into the office, turn the computer on, go grab a coffee, and when she was back, the system was usually up. Or nearly so.
Windows 95 didn't kick ass on computers with 4 MB of RAM. Especially not with broken hardware.
It did make you kick the bloody machine senseless (misery loves company, after all) and kick the ass who said 4 MB was minimum system requirements.
</rant>
Ignore this signature. By order.
I'm not sure Windows takes this category either. It's true that Linux has some big WiFi problems (WPA and chipset support, namely), but my experience with wifi in Windows has been even worse (!) than my Linux experience. Setting up WPA worked, although my successes and failures seemed to occur randomly. When actually using WiFi, I get failed connections, random disconnections, and the like regularly. Currently, my computer connects to the access point just fine, but all the while it tells me I'm disconnected. After five minutes or so it loses the connection and I get to wait for Windows to go through its exceedingly slow connection process again. On top of that, it's nearly impossible to figure out what's going on from the Windows wireless network configuration screens.
By way of contrast the same computer, running Linux, connects perfectly and stays that way, even if I turn off the antenna for a while. It works so well that I never even use the wired interface. On the other hand, I wasn't able to get WPA working when I tried it. I haven't taken a look at it for a while, so the software may have matured.
I'm not trying to say that Linux is particularly good with WiFi, just that Windows's wireless networking is as screwy as the rest of the OS.
'I would call this at best a Beta Three and not a Release Candidate One
.NET 3.0 and other new API systems are finalized for syntax, so developers can start testing new products against the OS and not have to worry about API changes.
.NET 3.0 APIs were changing on a monthy basis up until July, as you will notice that there were .NET3.0/WinFX releases each month, with the APIs for the developers changing. And that is just ONE new API subsystem of Vista.
Ok, why is this a RC and not a Beta? Well in the MS world since about 1992 that I can personally 'testify' to, a product makes the RC milestone when it is feature complete from a DEVELOPER standpoint.
This means that the product is feature complete and 99% of the OS bits and all the APIs are how they will be in the final release.
Why was Beta2-Pre-RC1 NOT a RC. Simple, from a developer's standpoint the OS was not feature complete.
RC1 is the FIRST release that that
Sure things will be optimized, and this will be polished, but this IS A RC solely based on the definition that MS has used FOR YEARS. It is feature complete for developers...
(So aside from all the Joke at MS and other FUD, this is technically a RC, and even though it is not a 'finished' polished product, it is the first feature complete versions, especially from the API standpoint.)
This is NO different than they did with Win2k RC1 which was actually less stable than Vista RC1, but AGAIN it was API feature complete for developers, hence why it was called a RC and not a Beta, just as this release.
As for proof of this, look at the Win2k Beta history, or even lookt that Vista Beta History, the
So once again repeat,"This is a RC, this is a RC because it is API and Developer complete."
PERIOD.
The text-based config files are actually more user-friendly than registry-based configuration, because it offers another easy way to modify the configuration, and it is more easy to backup and deploy.
(Both storage methods allow for GUI tools to configure the software in question, they're equal in that respect.)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Um... Are we talking about Vista? Let me run you through the process to delete a file.
1. Right-click file.
2. Click "Delete"
3. Get a dialog box: "You'll need to provide administrator permission to delete this file."
4. Click 'Continue'.
5. Get an OS-modal dialog box: "Windows needs your permission to continue. If you started this action (Delete file), click Continue."
6. Click 'Continue'.
I do not call that "WAY better file operations dialogs".
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
Well, I'm sure BSD heavily influenced Windows sockets, just as it did for virtually every other OS, but the new stuff in the Vista TCP stack is actually pretty impressive. The performance gains they've seen in testing are upwards of 400% for many types of common links.
Read more about here and here. There is also a good video about it on Channel 9.
So it's not really a question of reinvetion but of dramatic improvement.
You must be using Beta 2. Try using a later build. The UAC dialogs are no longer modal and pop up far less often.
What I was talking about specifically is the better feedback and progress information you get during file operations. For instance, if I copy a lot of files from point A to point B, and point B contains some files with the same names, it prompts me at the end of the operation (not at indeterminant points in between) and allows me to selectively choose what to do with each file without cancelling or screwing up the operation as a whole.
Sounds like a simple thing, and it is, but it's a HUGE improvement over the piss poor way XP does things.
The price is a little high (okay, a lot high). That, and the lack of compelling new features, means that most individuals won't feel the need to run out and drop several hundred bucks. People will "upgrade" to Vista when they buy a new computer and it comes pre-installed - the same way they upgraded from 9x to XP. That has worked for Microsoft in the past. The big question in Redmond is: When will the big IT contractors and consultants start pushing Vista to their corporate customers? Those guys are getting more and more conservative. I work in an organization that uses Windows 2000. It took quite a while to get all the bugs worked out and now it basically functions and nobody really wants to mess with it. At our last IT planning meeting (read "contractor sales pitch") the lead contractor never mentioned the word Vista.
> 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
A quick clarification since I think many Slashdot users don't realize this - the $200 is a family pack license which covers up to 5 users. So it's hugely cheaper to legally upgrade multiple Apple machines than Vista. An extra Vista Home Advanced license is $243, a whopping $16 discount over the charge of $259 for one.
This doesn't even consider the fact that newer Apple operating systems run better on old hardware than their predecessors. Tiger on my ancient laptop still runs great and is a wonderful upgrade. By contrast, I don't have any PC hardware, even computers bought at about the same time as my Macs, that will run Aero [Vista's MacOS X-like interface] at all.
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Don't humour him, he's an idiot. How can you make complaints based on the number of service packs or updates? These OSes have a life span of many years, compared with say Linux distributions that have a major revision every 12 months. May I suggest that you look at how many security patches there have been for major releases of Debian (a Linux distro with longer life spans)?
BTW, NT4 should have had 7 service packs, but MSFT killed the last one. Quite inconenient of them. Another XP service pack would be nice too to lower the number of updates required on a new system. Maybe they're waiting for IE7 and wrap that in to it.
Nope, it definitely says Windows Vista RC1. I know it's not Beta 2, because the terrible fading mouseover animations are gone.
I also have a few other complaints: Aero Basic looks terrible without anti-aliasing. And Desktop is treated too much like an Explorer window: After I enabled "Show hidden files and folders" in Explorer, two desktop.ini files appeared on my desktop.
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
I'm sure the three links directly from MS are completely objective on how awesome they are.
I'm not not licking toads.
The difference is Windows is taking either new marketshare, or from existing non-Windows installs, whereas Linux is largely just displacing legacy unix installs.
I'm highly sceptical of any assertions Linux is "eating Windows's lunch" in the server world - the evidence simply doesn't bear it out.
I also have to agree with the GP. By and large, Windows and Linux are not competing in the same market spaces (there are some crossovers, eg: webservers, but not that many). On the Desktop it's not even worth talking about - OS X is the real competition to Windows there. On the server side, most people who are after a Windows server, are after it because of functionality Linux can't provide as well (if at all). Similarly, for people actively looking at Linux as a server OS, it's unlikely they'll be considering Windows, usually due to an existing reliance on a unix-like systems (be it software or skill sets), or the higher licensing costs (although that's almost always false economy).
We use both Windows and Linux servers, and the Linux machines vastly outnumber the Windows ones. However, where we do use Windows, Linux is simply not an option - domain controllers, fileserving, groupware, windows-only software. Similarly, where we use Linux - mostly for in-house applications - Windows is a relatively poor choice due to its lack of easy customisability.
I can't think of a single Windows server we have that I would want to replace with a Linux server (and, believe, me, I've considered and even trialled it many times). Likewise, I can't think of any of our Linux servers that would be better off running Windows.
Apple obviously puts a lot of thought into how stuff fits together on their desktop, and their laptop just freaking works with everything. Wireless? No problem! Connecting to the Internet through my bluetooth enabled cellphone? No problem! Naturally the iPod works like a charm. Those media-rich web pages that I don't tend to browse on my Linux (or Windows) machines? No problem! Back in the day you could configure Linux to handle more file formats than Windows was capable of, but all that stuff just seems to work out of the box with Apple. It's an impressive experience and whenever anyone asks me what machine to buy, I tell them they should go for an Apple.
That's not to say I've got a love affair with Apple going on. My big desktop machine is Linux and will remain so for the foreseeable future. I also still do most of my non-web development work with Linux. I use the Apple laptop for a lot of experimental ruby on rails stuff. It's got all my favorite UNIX utilities on it, too. Ever try to get all your favorite UNIX utilities on Windows? Sure you can use Cygwin but that always feels hackish at best.
Of all the operating desktop environments I've used over the years, OSX feels like the nicest. I was using it pretty much the minute I had the laptop out of the box. Naturally your mileage may vary.
All that being said, my room mate has a Mac mini for some media work she does but she still prefers her windows PC for most things. It's possible that if you're only used to the one environment nothing else will do. I've used so many desktop environments over the years that the transitions don't feel so awkward anymore. And there are still things in the latest version of Windows that have been bugging me since 3.0 days (And which OS/2 happily copied.) I don't expect those to change when Vista comes out.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I don't think it's fair to call a $120 OSX upgrade "full price" when the cheapest version of Vista will be $233 (almost twice the price of Leopard), and useful versions will cost even more.
0 1 - just my two bits
You can't really leave BeOS in if you're going to disallow NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux for being "relatively unfinished".
I don't think a serious argument can be made for Windows 95 being superior to OS/2 3.0, except in the area of available software.
Single Input Queue.
I was an OS/2 user back in the day (migrated to NT4 Beta 2 in early 1996) and I think picking between Windows 95 and OS/2, without any historical influence, would be extrememly difficult. OS/2 technical had "better" multitasking and memory protection, but in actual usage - particularly if you were only using 32 bit applications and drivers in Windows 95 - the two of them were basically the same. Windows 95 was much nicer in terms of hardware resources and was more usable on lower end machines. I only stuck with OS/2 because I already had a significant investment in OS/2 software (NT4 - even at Beta 2 stage - was vastly superior to both in pretty much every way, which was why I switched).
This is also ignoring hardware support, something which Windows 95 had orders of magnitude more of.
Oh and, Windows 95 can't take credit for plug and play. Most of that is done by the hardware; the OS can choose to move things around to other settings, but typically it does not. The drivers are more responsible for this.
How it's done is irrelevant. Windows 95 was the first mainstream OS that supported it (and you *did* need support on the OS side as well back then).
So basically, Windows 95 was a sad, sad joke even then.
Not even close. Windows 95 did what it was designed to do exceptionally well (too well, if anything - it and Windows 98 arguably worked so well they knocked back the migration to Windows NT by several years). It allowed people to install it on reasoanbly priced hardware of the time. It gave them complete backwards compatibility with all their existing software and a substantial chunk of their existing hardware (ie: peripherals).
Nothing else even came close. OS/2 needed at least as much - more, IMHO - hardware resources and had worse legacy support. Linux wasn't even playing the same game in terms of important capabilities (software, UI, hardware support). Windows NT required *way* too much hardware grunt and had even worse legacy software capabilities than OS/2. MacOS required expensive new hardware and software. NeXT required frighteningly expensive new hardware and software.
For those who had access to the media, and had no hardware requiring Windows 95, even NT 3.51 was a better choice.
Untrue. NT 3.51 had substantially higher hardware requirements, the sucky old Windows 3.x interface and dramatically worse legacy software support.
Then along came NT4, with support for that hardware, but with less separation between memory spaces, and it was probably about half as reliable as 3.51.
But with substantially better performance. For the market space, the performance was more important. Not to mention if you stuck with the bog-standard VGA driver the stability difference was negligible.
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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Here's the thing with OS X. I have bought every version since 10.0( to be fair I think I got 10.1 for free because I bought 10.0 ) and believe the ruler that these should be measured by is that a month after I install the New OS I wouldn't go back.
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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This post is totally correct.
WPA under linux is a fucking nightmare without the right hardware.
I'm relatively new to linux but after trying Ubuntu 5.04, 5.10 and 6.06 each time I've had more and more problems with wifi / wap, it's a bastard.
What's more annoying is I could've sworn that 6.06 was meant to be "WPA out of the box!" maybe I mis-read something but it totally isn't.
I love the new Remote Desktop in Vista. Beats the XP one hands down. Working remotely I couldn't stand the pain of not having the cleartype. In Vista, Cleartype and even Aero work over the remote desktop (you have to do Vista to Vista remote desktop to experience Aero). Now isn't that cool? My remote experience is so close to local that it's easy to forget that at times.
The only area where XP is still preferable to Vista is device drivers. RC1 is better than Beta 2 in that respect, but still not acceptable. In fact the only reason I'm not running Vista full time is drivers. I couldn't make any of my sound cards work (SB Audigy & Intel HD Audio). ATI TV Wonder doesn't work either. That pretty much leaves my home PC audioless and videoless under Vista.
On the home desktop, you could be right. I don't think you are, but you could be. It's still true that you can get a dinky low-end PC (the slowest crappiest PC you can buy new today is sufficient for 99% of the population, probably) and slap Linux on it for probably half the price of the cheapest Macintosh. Oh sure, it's a bit less powerful, but that won't even affect most people.
Macintosh does have something Linux doesn't, and that's marketing. If I were to think of one place money could best be spent to promote Linux, it would be advertising. Get the word out. Put out some clever TV commercials, etc.
On the corporate desktop, most companies won't even consider macintosh computers, because they can't be maintained the same way other PCs can - you just don't have access to the same commodity parts, which is mostly to say you can't just throw a new motherboard in a machine that HAS to be up today and reinstall the OS for drivers - if your OS even demands that, like Linux doesn't. Obviously there are some stunning counterexamples. NeXTStep rides again. Too bad it didn't gain acceptance when nobody else had features like those.
Linux can be a DC, but you're right, I wouldn't do that either. And that active directory shit wouldn't be necessary if it weren't a big fat windows network to begin with. Anyway, tt's better at being a fileserver than Windows, so I think you're on drugs there. Samba can participate in your windows network, and last I checked (not so long ago) Samba on Linux served files faster than Windows did. There's Linux groupware. Of course, there's always the windows-only software thing. That's not going to go away for a long time.
Actually Linux has a ton of features that make it one of the most compelling NAS OSes around, which is why so many of them are based on it. Linux md is a great software RAID system, and it's cheaper to add another CPU core and a half-gig of RAM to your system than it is to use a HW accelerated RAID. It's also faster. Then there's the fact that it supports every popular network filesharing system that has ever been, that's pretty compelling.
We're all familiar with the phrase "the hidden costs of running Linux" - but what about the hidden costs of running windows? Not least, that all of us giving them money are funding their fiendish plots to stamp out computing freedom which are simply enacted in order to achieve their financial goals. (For a prime example, I give you: Windows DRM.)
Of course, we've wandered off into the territory of the ideologue here. I do feel that Linux can stand purely on its technical merits.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Certainly you can. But a hell of a lot more people use Mac Minis, MacBooks, iMacs, etc than use bottom-end PCs running Linux.
Macintosh does have something Linux doesn't, and that's marketing.
Actually, the biggest thing "Macintosh" has that "Linux" doesn't is people selling it. Plus widespread commercial support (both hardware and software), better usability and better software integration. Apple hardware also tends to be fairly solid (if somewhat more expensive) - something that can be a bit hit and miss with PCs.
If I were to think of one place money could best be spent to promote Linux, it would be advertising. Get the word out. Put out some clever TV commercials, etc.
No-one is really trying to sell Linux PCs (and make no mistake, average consumers don't buy OSes, they buy computers). Given that in the cutthroat world of PCs, the economic advantage of being able to undercut your competitors on price by ~$50 (roughly the OEM cost of Windows) is huge, I think that's pretty indicative that no-one thinks Linux is a strong competitor to either Windows or Mac in that market space.
On the corporate desktop, most companies won't even consider macintosh computers, because they can't be maintained the same way other PCs can - you just don't have access to the same commodity parts, which is mostly to say you can't just throw a new motherboard in a machine that HAS to be up today and reinstall the OS for drivers - if your OS even demands that, like Linux doesn't.
Assuming by "corporate world" you mean "big business" and not "small company", then I think any suggestions people aren't buying Macs because they can't just throw an off the shelf replacement part in is rather naive (and that's ignoring that a significant proportion of hardware in modern Macs *is* replacable with off the shelf parts). The corporate world works on 3 or 5 year warranties and *loathes* having to do such hands-on maintenance itself - particularly especially labour intensive work like changing motherboards - because it's more expensive.
(There are exceptions to this, of course, but they're few and far between.)
Macs are (relatively) unpopular in business because they're relatively expensive, because until quite recently they didn't integrate particularly well into existing infrastructure and because frighteningly large numbers of businesses rely on poorly written software, often developed in-house and/or no longer maintained, that only runs on Windows.
Obviously there are some stunning counterexamples. NeXTStep rides again. Too bad it didn't gain acceptance when nobody else had features like those.
That probably had something to do with its pricetag.
Linux can be a DC, but you're right, I wouldn't do that either.
As far as I know, Samba can't be an Active Directory Domain Controller and, to be quite frank, even if the developers said it could, it would have to demonstrate trouble-free running in such a role for a good year or two before I'd trust it as an integral piece of infrastructure (not that I have anything against the Samba developers, or question their abilities, but their entire application *is* based around reverse engineering another very large, very complex piece of software).
And that active directory shit wouldn't be necessary if it weren't a big fat windows network to begin with.
If better alternatives were widespread and cheaper, they'd be used instead. Not to mention, AD stands up quite well on its own merits.
Anyway, tt's better at being a fileserver than Windows, so I think you're on drugs t