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Windows Vista RC1 Impresses Critics
bradley fellows writes "Early feedback from testers already using Windows Vista RC1 (Release Candidate 1) report that the OS is more stable than expected, which bodes well for Microsoft's plan to have Vista out according to its current schedule." Mind you, "expected" is relative given how many users regard their frequent crashes as normal operation for a PC.
I'm so confused.
I'm seeing both "more stable than expected" and "not ready for prime time" being used to describe Vista.
Seemed to be bit of trouble logging in to Slashdot this morning...?
Taco, please tell us you are not testing Vista RC1 for Microsoft!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
OK, I've been running windows XP without reinstalling it for over 3 years. In that time the only reason I've seen it crash is problems with 3rd party apps going haywire.
If you're going to bash Vista, bash it on something more interesting and true like for instance DRM issues. Windows bashing might be a past time on slashdot, but you would think by now people would have refined their techniques beyond "Windoze is teh crashering thing, shnarf!".
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Followed swiftly by:
By the same writer. Methinks he doesn't really understand the term "Release Candidate".
Of course the expectations should be high. While 98 and Me were pure crap, XP Pro is very robust. My home machine goes months without a reboot - except when a patch demands it, and the work computer goes from monday to friday just the same.
...
Overall I think a well-kept XP box is very stable indeed, and I'm not expecting a bit less than that from Vista.
just my 0.03(*)
(*) adjusted for inflation
Andrew Brust called driver compatibility Microsoft's "biggest impediment" to getting Vista out in time. "Driver compatibility will be key," he said.
Is the driver format the same as before or has it changed again? I wonder how many hardware manufacturers are going to need to port their drivers and how much hardware will break again this new release. Also, while these hardware manufacterers are at it, they might give a thought to setting up a cross-platform codebase for their drivers, which will benefit everyone in the long run.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I know it's easy and fun to poke fun at Microsoft for past Windows releases, but the day of "constant Windows crashes" and unexplained BSOD's have been gone for a few years now. Notwithstanding the large amounts of virii and security issues that must be dodged, Windows XP has been stable and rock solid for a number of years. Many of the stupid instability issues that Linux users like to poke fun at have been eliminated for a while and honestly, a rag like Slashdot should give them a little more credit sometimes. It would be nice if people would stop leting their elitist attitude about Linux muck up an objective viewpoint about other operating systems.
As a matter of fact, up until SuSE 10.1, Linux and its various programs have been far more unstable than Windows XP. Again, that's not counting viruses and security problems. Almost every Linux distribution I've ever installed ended up going down in flames because of silly bugs, unexplained SIGSEV 11 windows and hardware compatibility issues. Try relying on many of the communities built up around Linux and you're often met with the elitist attitude that quickly turns most people off.
I'm not trying to troll here (although I'm sure I'll be modded that way because I realize many of you just don't want to hear all of this), but the last line in this story provoked me. I'm trying to help the Linux community with this commentary, not flame it. I want to believe in Linux, but the issues on most distros boggles my mind... how can something so buggy earn a reputation of reliability?
Extra points for people who point out that the editor said "PC" and not "Windows" when talking about crashes. We all know what they really meant.
From TFA:
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I clicked on the link to Slashdot, and it creates a template for the exact submission that we are reading. Why not to cut some corners and, instead of requiring an user to click on the link, to subscribe slashdot to the rss feed of that site and automatically post the news here. Mod me down all you want, but accepting a story created by the very own site that posted the article and not even adding anything meaningful to it is way too much laziness, even for slashdot
Let me introduce you to a friend of mine, his name is Windows ME
Having over a decade of IT career behind me, one of the most amazing things I have come to experience in the IT/corporate world is Microsoft infallibility. It is equivalent to dealing with right-wing Christians and their belief of the infallibility of scripture -- no matter how much you point out the flaws.
Or, rather, it is more of a, "Microsoft will get it right in the end." No matter how many times a network goes down due to a minor piece of malware, no matter how many support calls are generated by spyware/adware -- so bad that it has reached the point that techs would rather re-image than try to repair, no matter how many crashes and instability issues, people blindly defend, support and believe in Microsoft. And I'm talking about veteran, senior, experiences IT folks.
Even though they know to keep the big money on a mainframe Unix box, even though they know that it makes more sense to run a hardened Cisco device instead of a Windows-based network node, they are devoted to the Windows workstation and the Windows mid-server solution.
And, if you dare promote open source -- firefox, linux, apache, sendmail -- solutions you are darn near ostracized. It has reached the point now that I follow, in-line, rather than risk the flames.
I'm not sure what to call it exactly, but people tolerate Microsoft like no other company. If any other vendor's products barely hiccups, there is talk, quickly, of replacing it -- and they do, but Windows is as fixed within the corporate world as Everest. Thoughts of removing it being akin to getting rid of desk chairs. It simply will not happen.
It has reached, IMO, a place where every big, corporate business wants to be -- embedded to the point of religion....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Just hand it over from the "reviewer" to a regular user, give them internet access and about 15 minutes, and see how Vista handles those toolbars, spyware, etc. I bet it's slow and irreversably wonky in short order.
stuff |
Windows Vista RC1 has been made available to the general public, with keys available here.
There are various websites that report this build is far more stable than previous versions, but as Microsoft themselves have said "quality will continue to improve. We'll keep plugging away on application compatibility, as well as fit and finish, until RTM"
These builds are set to expire on June 1st 2007
throw new NoSignatureException();
After running beta 2 on my production box for +/- two months now I can say yes it is stable. It even runs Civ4 better than XP. I expect the same from RC1 when I install it later today.
The real issue is has M$ the fixed the things that needed fixing. For instance the "annoy-the-user-to-death" security model and the undocumented symlink thing that even as administrator gives you a unfixable security warning when you try to make changes or follow the link.
"I'm just here to regulate funkyness." - James Gandolfini, as Winston in The Mexican
I expect Windows Vista to be a remarkably stable and reasonably secure operating system - AFTER Service Pack 1.
[Insert pithy quote here]
LeBlanc said Microsoft has made performance and stabilisation tweaks that testers requested after Beta 2.0, and the latest test version of the OS - which could be the final one before Vista is released to manufacturing - is solid enough for regular use.
I'm baffled. Does this mean that the performance and stability issues in earlier builds (and XP) were only there because we forgot to request them to be removed/fixed?
Looks like it's time to make a Christmas list of other things that MS should have done in Vista already, that I guess we all forgot to request! ;-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
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[XP is] still no where near Linux for server stability
If you want to run Windows on a server, choose a version with Server in the name. XP (both flavours) is a desktop OS.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"more stable than expected".
Doesn't necessarily say a lot.
Now I don't use any MS Software any more but it'd be nice if rather than hype, speculation and derision there was some constructive discussion out there in the main stream media so that people could decide what to do when Vista is released, maybe not yet but just before or even after the release.. Oh except it will arrive on 90% of PC's pre installed so it will gain a dominant market share in 2-5 years regardless of reviews, hype, bugs, features, security or anything else..
What's the point. I use Linux, some use BSD, Windows, Mac OS or whatever (please add your own preference here). Regardless of how easy it is to install an OS, most people never will, so most people will stick to what their PC comes with, so all this talk will have a tiny effect on the general populate.
So at the end of the day its not important how stable, secure, feature packed, or "cool" this piece of kit is, is it?
The question is how do you change that?
Bah
While the gaming claim speaks to the programs existing for Linux, it doesn't really speak to the quality or stability of Linux therein. If a really popular but crappy OS has tons of programs made for it, you have just that; A crap OS with tons of programs. As for the drivers, I've been using the nVidia drivers for some time, and I don't see any difference between them and their Windows counterpart.
That settles it! Come on Vista, my credit-card is ready!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I must be ancient, but wasn't there a time when people objected to the soul stealing product activation in Windows XP? I mean it may be rock solid stable no reboot for months on end, but has the activation changed? I can't believe how many people on Slashdot are now willing to submit to such privacy invasion and hardware monitoring. While paying them to do it. What happened here???
I bet that Vista would just reboot silently - just like 2k/XP does by default. I managed to "reboot" 2k/XP that way three times in first hour after installation - only later I have found that error screen is simply disabled.
Windows gathered pretty much of bad publicity with its BSODs - so by default they do not show them anymore. And from earlier betas I have seen now it is "RSOD" - "red screen of death" - since error background now is red.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
1. The user interface concerning wireless/wired networking was cumbersome. I go between work and home and church (all 3 are wrlss hotspots) and Vista had trouble remembering the network keys as well as refused to connect automatically.
2. Internet Explorer gave me some issues; mainly being that it asked me to install an extra plug-in immediately after installing, and afterwards, the only way to get IE to open without crashing was to "Open with plug-ins disabled" that obviously did not allow me to view flash objects and other things.
That being said, there are things that Microsoft did in Vista RC1 that I loved. For example, the start menu has been reorganized. When you open it, it looks pretty much just like the start menu in XP, however, when you click "All Programs", the quick access menu on the left is replaced by a scroll down list with all the programs listed - rather than having menus expand across your screen. It is simply more organized. I love the gadgets bar on the right side of the screen as you can customize it to have a clock, the recycle bin, calculator, and my personal favorite, dials that track memory usage and percentage of processor clock time being used.
All in all, there are good things, but I chose to roll back to XP for the issues I mentioned. I hope that Microsoft takes its time and does this one right... wouldn't that be a shocker?
Sniper's Motto: One shot, One kill- If you run, you'll only die tired.
Oh wait, there's hearts and spider too! Never mind.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
M$ is teh \/\/0r$7! Only losers use any software from Money$oft! They bluescreen constantly d00d! M$ sucks!
Everyone I know who uses M$ products has to reboot at least 5 times an hour. 5 times an hour! My main system is a 386 with 8 meg ram running Gentoo, which I use to tell time. It has NEVER crashed or bluescreened on me.
BTW, you have totally l337 uptime!
Can you say defrag? and I've had more ntfs filesystems eat themselves then even ext2.
Can ntfs both journal metadata and data?
"think of it as evolution in action"
I'm just glad that my 2 year-old laptop (P4, 2.66GHz, 512MB, 32 MB NVidia 5100) barely meets the minimum requirements for minesweeper and solitaire (I get an "Experience Index" of 1.0)... it's too bad it doesn't meet the recommended requirements for it, though. It definitely won't run fancy Aero-Glass.
Nevermind that it handles XGL/Compiz very, very well in Linux, for some reason it's not up to par for the "optimal experience" in displaying windows and playing very basic games.
Agreed: BSoD's are pretty rare now. It's the *other* problems that suck, like Windows allowing 3rd party programs to grab 99% of CPU by default and slow the machine to a crawl, and the fact that Windows installs older than 6 months are often slow as molasses until you remove all of the malware, defrag, and figure out what else is slowing them down.
-b.
20% - Windows Bug updates
20% - Media DRM
20% - Virus Scanner
10% - WGA verfification
10% - MS Paperclip
20% - Other
This post has been updated with new security enhancements. It is recommended that you reboot.
Yes - Reboot Now
No - Reboot Later
It seems people saying that "Windows never crashes these days" are getting a lot of mod points in this thread. It's absolutely true that Windows has gotten a _lot_ better in this regard. However, of all people I know, the ones who use Windows are the only ones I hear complaining about the stability of their systems. I know Windows has mysteriously rebooted my system a few times. My mom has a computer that often doesn't get to the login screen before it BSODs, but it will run fine for days under Ubuntu. Windows crashes are not gone yet, despite what your individual experiences may be. Also, even if they had been completely eliminated in one or two versions of Windows, Microsoft's reputation for making unstable operating systems would still have been deserved - because of all the others.
Secondly, there's a difference between the system not crashing and the system working well. If the system gets infested by malware, but keeps doing what the user wants it to be doing, the user may not notice anything wrong, but it's still a bad system. Microsoft seems to be very serious about improving this in Vista, introducing features like address space layout randomization, which helps a lot against certain types of attack, and WHICH MANY LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS STILL DON'T INCLUDE! (I'm a long time OpenBSD user, and I don't sleep soundly at night without the pro-active security measures that make buffer overruns (one of the most common classes of vulnerability) nearly impossible to carry out).
The main problem that people around me have with Windows these days is usability. The knowledgeable folks complain about the constant stream of patches, virus scanner updates, the need to periodically scan the system for malware, etc. and the fact that they have to do this not only on their own systems, but also on those of their non-knowledgeable friends and family. The non-knowledgeable complain about the difficulty of certain tasks: getting the new printer to work, getting pictures off the digital camera and on a CD-R, not being able to figure out how to tell the machine which of the available connections to use, etc.
What I see when I look at Windows is lots of ugly grey boxes with christmas tree decorations around them, and about the only thing that is consistant among applications is that questions will have [Ok] and [Cancel] for answers, being less than informative about what's actually going to happen when you click either button (and yes, users do get confused by that). And there's no package manager that provides a single point to get all your software updates from, let alone one that automatically tracks dependencies.
I notice this, because on other systems (OS X, GNOME, KDE), these situations are noteworthy; typically, the system has some good looking theme applied, applications are built on a toolkit that handles sensible layout of widgets, and buttons have text on them that tells you what's going to happen when you click that button (thank you, Apple, for your Human Interface Guidelines). Also, my printer and scanner are immediately recognized and usable when I plug them in, and so is my webcam under Linux. Other people have reported similar experiences (the story is different for wireless network cards, but the situation seems to be improving rapidly). Depending on what system you use, all this may or may not be the case (many, many Linux distros suck at usability), you may or may not have a good package manager (OS X doesn't, for example), and there may or may not be a constant flood of updates (Ubuntu Dapper has one, Debian stable doesn't).
Alright, this is long enough. I'm not going to talk about anything else.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It not hard to build a solid system, just keep away from buggy drivers and software.
Think about that for a moment. Consider exactly how software should ever be capable of crashing the operating system, the very platform on which it is running. If poorly-written (or malicious) applications can crash the entire operating system, the operating system is quite simply not doing its job.
But recently we got an industrial control system from an outside supplier that runs in XP. The manufacturer has given very strict instructions on how to operate that system, such as definitely no connections to outside networks, defragment the drive regularly, and reboot at least once every week. I asked them why the reboots and they answered Because. Or Else. The only official answer I got was that XP needs regular defrags and a reboot at least once a week to work reliably.
Why? Why reboot? Why defrag? Why doesn't Linux need defrags? As a matter of fact, I don't even know how to defrag a Linux drive. I don't know how to defrag a VAX/VMS drive. What have I been missing?
You are right.
I have had no problems with the stability of Linux at all. BUT, if I were a Linux beginner, and just considered X as part of Linux, I would think there were stability problems, as X has locked up a couple of times.(my distros may also be a bit too leading edge)
Now if we talk servers... At work here, we "recycle" the Windows servers once a week to keep them up and stable. It just works MUCH better that way. I really do not know if it is the fault of Windows, or the drivers or whatever.
On the other hand, our Linux and AIX servers go much longer.
The crown goes to our DEC/HP VMS boxes. We have left some of them up for years (a decade or more for some I bet) without rebooting.
Things are getting better on the "install == reboot" assumption front.
More and more ISVs are realizing that, unless they're installing drivers for hardware that isn't hot-pluggable, or specifically replacing existing files in %WINDIR%\system32, a reboot isn't necessary. Some of that is Microsoft's fault, because the sick, twisted coupling of Explorer.exe and Internet Explorer forces a reboot to detect plugins that may be installed. Mostly, though, it's been on the ISVs, because the people responsible for the installer packages were too sloppy, lazy, or apathetic to care about what truly required a reboot. But they're getting better.
Vista itself is switching to an image-based installer for the OS. One boot from the DVD to start the installation process and write the system image to the hard drive, then one reboot to start from the hard drive, detect all hardware (instead of only the critical systems used to write the image), and set the initial driver state for the rest of the system.
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Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's been running great for me. I installed it onto a separate IDE drive, thinking I would be right back over to XP after a couple days like I was with Beta 2, but thus far I am quite impressed with what I am seeing.
Note: I did disable the user access control. I don't have to see the annoying popups flashing my screen like I did before, also I am running on modern hardware. (Athlon 4400+ X2, 2 gigs ram, ATI 1600XT). I downloaded the ATI Vista RC1 drivers and they seem to work fine.
The performance doesn't feel degraded like Beta 2 felt, from XP. I have all the graphics options cranked up and it feels snappy and responsive.
Programs that I use frequently work great. I spend a lot of time doing Java dev on Linux server, so I have Putty open w/20 browser windows. My email client is GMail and I use IM clients from most of the networks. Office 03 runs fine, haven't had a glitch yet with that. On my free time I do play World of Warcraft, and once I disabled the UAC and installed the ATI drivers, it works great. I can tab out without any problems, and I have fewer problems tabbing in and out of the game than before. I don't know if it's my imagination , but the game actually feels faster and I have less stutters when tabbing in from another program. (I think the process affinity would attach to the second core.. not sure what exactly was causing it in XP, but I haven't yet run into that problem).
I disabled the Sleep functionality over time, the monitor will turn off after an hour.. but when I leave the 'sleep after x-time' , it has a problem waking up. It's likely drivers or something on my hardware that's causing problems.
I know this post will probably get modded down, as it's not a 'I hate Microsoft Ubuntu4tehwin!!11' , but I would go so far to say that I will likely just keep using RC1 until Vista ships, and I don't think I will have a problem going out and buying the OS once it hits the shelves. (OEM of course!)
If I can give one word of advice, is to disable the UAC until programs your running frequently have had time to test their own QC against running in a more protected environment.
BTW, I grabbed a copy of RC1 off a Torrent and installed it with my Beta2 key without any problems.
I see. Then let me ask another question: why is the software running in any Microsoft OS always so "buggy", if the OS is not to blame? How is it that I can download and install random applications from Sourceforge and run it in Linux without problem, yet XP seems to have so many problems in running applications from one of the leading aerospace companies in the world, which is the case in my company?
In VAX/VMS I ran open source applications that weren't always so kosher, at first they came from DECUS (Digital Equipment Co. User Society) and later from other sources in the internet. Never had any problem. In our Linux server, the users run every sort of applications they download from who knows where. Our policy is to let them do it, we never had any problem with that. But XP must be kept locked into a strictly maintained configuration. Why didn't our VMS software vendors ever warn us against installing third party software in our machines?
From all these discussions, one conclusion is obvious: either developers who write applications for Linux and VMS are incredibly superior, or XP is an inferior OS. In any case, I have deep misgivings about this use of XP in mission critical applications. I have warned my managers, in writing, about this. The fact is, it doesn't matter if it's the applications or the underlying OS which is at fault, from the experience I have had so far, XP is inferior to either Linux or VMS when one needs reliability.
Get it through your head!
Alpha means: "We're still working on it, but it kind of works, so go play with it."
Beta means: "Nothing major's going to change, but we want you to test it and help us shake out the bugs."
Release candidate means: "None of our Beta testers or developers can break it anymore."
If bugs are found in rc1, you fix them and put out rc2. You keep doing this until an rc -- no matter how late, could be rc15 -- survives for a fixed amount of time (usually measured in months) without any bugs reported at all. At that point, that particular rc is released, exactly as it was.
There is some fuzziness about what's pre-alpha, alpha, or beta. It's my opinion that MS betas are alpha quality, compared to the rest of the industry. But putting out a "release candidate" with known bugs is pure marketing bullshit, to keep them from getting crucified for further delays. When they "release" software, that's more marketing bullshit -- XP was certainly a release candidate before SP1, and arguably before SP2. Would you please stop defending their marketing bullshit?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
From the documentation
Faulty RAM can have lots of fun effects on an executing program or OS.