Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Admits Vista Has "High Impact Issues"
EggsAndSausage writes "Microsoft has granted, in a roundabout way, that Vista has 'high impact issues.' It has put out an email call for technical users to participate in testing Service Pack 1, due out later this year, which will address 'regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues.' It's hard to know whether to be reassured that Service Pack 1 is coming in the second half of 2007, and thus that there is a timeframe for considering deployment of Vista within businesses, or to be alarmed that Microsoft is unleashing an OS on the world with 'high impact issues' still remaining." In other news, one blogger believes that Vista is the first Microsoft OS since Windows 3.1 to have regressed in usability from its predecessor (he kindly forgives and dismisses Windows ME). And there's a battle raging over the top 10 reasons to get Vista or not to get Vista.
for a long time, unless you just like to pay to be a beta tester.
It is way too expensive to be a business user and wind up "testing" a new OS with no easy way to regress.
Win XP Pro is going to be an option to install on most PCs for a long long time.
Since when does "one blogger"'s view qualify as "news"? I'm sure at least "one blogger" thinks that OSX sucks or at least "one blogger" thinks that Linux sucks. Would that qualify as "news" as well?
The quality of the "news stories" that slashdot carries has gone downhill drastically in recent months.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Ok, announcing SP1 for the second half of 07 is reasonable since all software has bugs. Calling for testers for the first service pack before the turd actually drops from their butts[1] is another thing entirely. If they have known 'high impact issues' they should delay initial release one more time. This is supposed to be a stable commercial product. Fedora would (hell, HAS) hold a release if it had 'high impact issues' and they pitch themselves as more of an early adopter testbed. Vista is going to be forcefed on millions of unsuspecting computer buyers whether they want it or not. Is it really unreasonable to expect the KNOWN bugs to be squished before forcing OEMs to preload it?
[1] No I do not count the corporate edition released in Nov because it was simply a stunt to claim to have shipped in 06. They knew full well no same corporate IT dept would do anything other than begin testing with a version they would consider the 'final beta'.
Democrat delenda est
How many "legacy apps" (IE anything not written specifically for Vista) have you tried to use? The problem won't be with Vista itself, but how Vista reacts with older programs, programs you love, perhaps even programs you can't live without. I have Vista RC2 installed but I have not booted into it in a while for just that reason. It's also probably a big reason why Linux isn't catching on...
Didn't try Vista, but I know one thing: people have short memories. I remember when XP came out, after trying it a bit, I had sworn to stick with Windows 2000 for like ever. And have until WinXP SP1, near the release of SP2. Microsoft has an history of releasing beta products. Always has been that way: Windows NT 4 wasn't stable enough to be seriously used until SP5, and was blue screening like it was Windows ME until SP6 (if I remember well), at which point it was decent for working on.
Just stick with XP until Vista SP one, the same way one should have stuck with 2k (not talking about home users here, though 2k was good even for home use) until XP SP1, etc.
For the OEMs, well...they get Vista for 5$ over the price of the raw hardware, so I guess its consolation. Or just don't buy OEM. For the rest for whom all these options are not possible...well, they're allowed to complain I guess.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Apparently the "Folders" tool on the left is too hard to use. Take a look at his picture, if he just clicked on the "Folders" link on the left he would have a nice, easy to navigate tree right there. Yes, the address bar's drop-down is a sort of history. As for the web sites, mine seem to spawn a web browser (Firefox even) just fine.
Again, the author shows his ignorance. Just click on the breadcrumb of where you want to go, ta-da! you're now there. Granted it's not a button, but it's infinitely more useful. Not only can I go up one level with one click I can go up n levels with one click.
This one I will give him is a wash. The built in search rocks. And personally, I'm used to <Win>+R to open the run dialog. <Win>+R then 'c:' still gets me an explorer window at c:\. Though I tend to use <Win>+E and then using the folder tree to get to the c:\, but to each their own. My major complaint with this is that shutting down has changed for me. I used to use <Win>, U, S, <Enter> to shut down. That's gone now, now I just hit the power button on my laptop.
This one I'll give him. Changing IP addresses is now buried yet another layer deeper. You had to dig enough in XP. This "Network and Sharing Center" is a bit annoying. Though one thing it does have going for it is that you can quickly tell whether you are sharing folders or not, and control it from there. Overall, more of a "meh" than a problem.
And, we're back to stupidity. There is a little box in the upper left hand corner of the Explorer window, oddly labeled "search", it's even visible in some of his screenshots. Type a string of letters in, and Presto! Vista goes and finds any file with the applicable search string (it even checks inside Word, Excel and text documents.)
This is another one I'll give him, copying and the associated network issues are a problem MS needs to fix. For the entire OS to seize up because a network location is unreachable is just stupid.
Overall the author of the article manages to just show that he's only touched Vista long enough to be annoyed with the changes, and not get used to them. I've been running Vista since RC1, and excepting driver support which sucked in the release candidate, but that's to be expected, I've generally liked Vista. Most of the complaints I have heard are either ill-informed or just downright wrong. That's not to say that there aren't still issues with Vista. Driver support still sucks, the network hang-ups should really be fixed (or at least give me a cancel button for when I know I mistyped), changing security and network settings are now buried one layer deeper in almost all cases, and getting used to the security pop-up takes some doing. Though, in defense of the last one, this is something that people have been asking for; just running everything as a local administrator is insane, you wouldn't run Linux as root all the time would you? One thing that Vista does lack in this regard is a non-admin way of viewing settings that should require admin level rights to change. I'd like to be able to view the Computer Management snap-in without running it as admin.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
mabe this is a stupid question, but why microsoft is already working on SP1 for vista? I mean, don't they have a QA department, don't they have people to test the thing? Shouldn't an OS be somewhat working and already have dealt with security issues before they launch it on the public. what makes this so onerous is that you can't get computers with XP, or if you can now, you won't be able to in the near future. they might criticize OSS, but at least a .9 release is a .9. what the hell, I run OS X.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Viruses hide in alternate streams.
Viruses hide in files too. If there was better support for them, they could be as visible there as they are in files. Part of the question I'm asking is why isn't that support there.
Backup software forgets alternate streams. Web servers and browsers forget alternate streams. FTP servers and clients forget alternate streams.
Again, lack of tool support, not a problem with the concept. (In the case of FTP servers, you almost HAVE to forget about the alternate streams (or serialize them) because most other filesystems don't support them.
Apparently the "Folders" tool on the left is too hard to use. Take a look at his picture, if he just clicked on the "Folders" link on the left he would have a nice, easy to navigate tree right there. Yes, the address bar's drop-down is a sort of history. As for the web sites, mine seem to spawn a web browser (Firefox even) just fine.
At the same time, there is still a valid criticism here. First, why change a perfectly working UI by not only moving the previous functionality to somewhere completely different and unconnected to the old location, but then using the old location for something else instead of removing it?
Secondly, why is there a web history in the open/save dialog at all? Can anyone think of a remotely plausable use case where this would be helpful?
_______
I'll give you 5 (statement of fact) and 6 (I agree) but the rest of this is wrong, unrealistic or just plain trolling (and pretty badly given your low UID)
1: Wrong. It does have new features. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Wind
2: Unrealistic. Retraining costs, software, utter nigthmare to get it to work on some laptops (I've tried personally). Not possible for gamers. I love linux and have used several distros, and Ubuntu is very, very good but I can't send Mark Shuttleworth the bill for the time I spent fixing things or hunting for solutions in forums. I don't really mind the time and can actually get things to work the way I wan't but a lot of people cannot. I do have a Windows XP desktop and I have had significantly fewer problems with it than my debian box in lab or my zenwalk laptop.
3: Trolling a) So? b) Vista copies several features in OS X c) I can't buy it off the shelf d) Limited games and software - also see 4)
4: Wrong - I agree the DRM is principally to ensure a monopoly in the longterm (I argued this yesterday - see comment history) but it is still exactly as invasive as the content provider requires. OS X will require the same content controls, as will any Linux player to play commercial HD content. Several Linux distros support the TPM yet I don't hear anyone yelling about it.
5: Statement of fact. A lot of things do. Like I said I cannot send Mark Shuttleworth a bill for my time. Linux is free as in speech and maybe avaialble free as in beer but the cost of drinking that beer isn't being fully factored in here.
6: I cannot disagree. C'est la vie. We can all point fingers and you can yell at people to change to OS X/some linux but they aren't going to. I prefer helping them get their windows boxes more secure.
7: I don't see how your point 7 relates to 2 at all. Are you arguing that the retraining costs are offset by the free OS? See 5.
8: Trolling. Most people are getting Vista with a new computer and are junking old systems irrespective. Also you don't have to junk it at all just because you choose to upgrade. I've a 7 year old Thinkpad that happily runs vector.
___
Given 1 there are quite a few reasons to upgrade to vista (and I don't carea bout anything on the top of that page. ASLR and UAC, however annoying it is, itself make it worth it. PatchGuard, irrespective of how the antivirii companies feel is also a great idea. Should these have been there ages ago. Sure. Is linux more secure anyway. Sure. Are people going to change. Nope. Too much depends on Windows and migrating to another OS is not an option for several buisness/gamers and just plain old users. However you feel about that and how MS got their monopoly, it is simply the current situation and is not going to change.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Microsoft swore up and down that they would have a new service pack for Windows XP after Vista.
Who cares if Vista is broken? Most computer users will not see it on their systems for years. Windows XP is still "good enough" for most everybody, except... The hours of patching and updating after a SP2 install.
Microsoft: Are you listening? This user wants a consolidation of all the XP fixes into one service pack.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
It's funny how CD/DVD burning software is the one that doesn't work. I remember when I upgraded to Windows 2000 (it might have been xp), and none of the CD Burning programs I had worked anymore. Do they have to change the way CD burning works with every new version? Is there a reasonable explanation why CD burning programs always end up broken?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I believe the grandparent's point was that users expect their software to work on Vista like it did on XP, if Vista is being presented as an upgrade. If users expect their software to migrate seamlessly and it doesn't, then Vista won't meet their expectations, and thus is not an upgrade. Whether or not the non-migration is better for security isn't relevant if the user needs that particular software, since in the eyes of the purchaser, the purpose of an OS is to enable the needed software. If the software doesn't work on the new OS, the OS does not meet the requirements.
I could be wrong, though. Others opinions may vary.
I'm not a strong believer in the "Microsoft has no real choice" hypothesis. I don't think MS need the RI/MPAA members of the world as much as they need MS. First of all, MS are a part of, and presumably very active, member of the AACS licensing agency. I know this because it says so in the specifications. Maybe the other members could block them from implementing it, but I consider that unlikely (and why would they want too?).
Secondly, and the real point, MS rule basically every desktop in the world already. Do you believe that computes to leverage FOR or AGAINST Microsoft when negotiation with the MPAAs? Truly, the MPAAs would be at the mercy of MS. "Here's the DRM we're willing of giving you in Vista, be glad you're getting as much!".
I'm more a follower of the "Microsoft is doing this for their own, lock-in based, reasons". The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.
Maybe MS really want the RIAAs and MPAAs on their side in the fight against the iPod? Maybe if MS give the RIAAs and the MPAAs what they want. One back scratched for another... If I didn't despise the MPAAs of the world, I'd raise a warning about MS long documented betrayalish ways, but I do.
BTW. Do you know what company I didn't see stamped on the first page of the AACS specifications?
Apple.
Lesser members perhaps. Now who is in control?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
"This sounds exciting... I've always wanted a filesystem that would act like CVS with each save. I don't know if this is doing quite that, but it's intriguing at least."
Yes, I once thought this way, granted 10 MB hard-drives were better than sex back then.
Of course the FBI/CIA/NSA/DHS all feel the same way, that the typical user OS should never, ever forget something completely.
There's nothing like the look on an end-user's face when you show them a 2 year history of everything on and off their hard-drive; maybe not the complete files, but enough to incriminate them.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I think you are missing the point. If I need to use specific software, and it runs easier on XP than on Vista, or runs on XP and not on Vista, then Vista is not an upgrade for my purposes, and there is no reason to purchase Vista. Whether or not Vista is an overall superior OS compared to XP doesn't matter for my purposes if Vista is inferior for my specific software needs.
I could be wrong, though. Others may disagree.
I guess the issue for MS is, that you and I (computer guru's) have picked up and embraced the XP paradigm but people like my wife never get it no matter how many times it is explained to her. So MS tried to move to another paradigm (am I using this properly?) to help more non-technical people understand how to find "basic" information.
The "most people" assumption seems to ignore the corporations and government entities running XP/2000 right now, who *will* have to budget a lot of money, plus the deployment, to meet the hardware requirements of Vista. True, the average home user will just get it bundled with their next PC purchase, but that's not all of the demographic, nor, I'm guessing, the money.
The large scale users will simply wait until they upgrade hardware in a few years. That may give those organizations the time to test all their own apps and custom stuff for usability in Vista. That would be another hidden cost; paying to have those apps redone in whatever way to work with Vista.
XP for another five years+, in that case. It seems like a lot of money to spend on a multimedia machine that office workers don't need.
Windows Search Is Broken - Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it.
And, we're back to stupidity. There is a little box in the upper left hand corner of the Explorer window, oddly labeled "search", it's even visible in some of his screenshots. Type a string of letters in, and Presto! Vista goes and finds any file with the applicable search string (it even checks inside Word, Excel and text documents.)
How is it stupidity to expect the "Search" box in the Start menu to function as a...ummm... search? While I appreciate the tip on where to find the functional search function, it's hardly stupidity to expect something labeled search to actually work as a search.
I've been doing testing with the release version of Vista, and I concur with the opinion of waiting until at least SP1 before adopting.But still, how is someone supposed to know what the 'search' field does? It's not intuitive that the search string will actually search the contents of a file. Plus, having a look at his screenshot of the search dialog, it's bad interface design having the search field separated from the rest of the search criteria. There's very little visual indication that they're all related.
He also raises a very good point about the broken search feature in XP SP2. Once, I tried finding a string in a directory tree of php files. The search function found nothing, so I assumed that there were no files that contained the string. I was wrong. The string was in one of the files, but the windows search feature did not bother looking inside php files. That cost me many hours of time, until I finally came back and searched files by hand. I was extremely pissed at Microsoft, and was wishing wholeheartedly that I had easy access to 'grep'.
The blog author seems to indicate that this is still broken in Vista. If it is, then there is legitimate concern here.
Vista is so delayed, would it hurt to delay it a little more, to fix those high impact issues?? I mean, wouldn't it be great to get a Microsoft OS that works from release, and not having to wait to SPxxx for it to work right? Its been delayed a million and one times already.. whats the friggin difference anymore...
WinXP works well in its current stage, for what I need it to - work stuff, and play at home. Haven't tried any of them on the RCs of Vista because I couldn't install it in the frist place. Seems like Vista did not like my SATA HDD. Talk about lack of hardware drivers.. it was RC and all.. but if XP works on it, shouldn't its successor work too?
actually it can...
What I want to know is why the file browser doesn't have this capability on its own? Finder in OSX does burning well enough. Gnome is actually the easiest -- just right click on an iso and choose "burn", or drag a bunch of files to the CD icon and burn those. You would think that MS could afford to have cd/dvd burner built right in. The CD/DVD is today's equivalent to the floppy you know, seems a major oversight to leave out the ability to write data to removable discs.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Is anyone else having deja-vus left right and center? It feels like last week we were arguing why people should stick with 2k and not adopt XP. How XP was just eye candy over 2k and how it didn't improve anything of importance and it happened before 2k, etc etc. Once again, here we are, arguing that the new version of Windows is nothing more than an empty upgrade forced upon the masses to continue increasing MS's bank. What has changed since the last iteration of brown matter MS flicked at us? Is this really the best Windows version ever? Will people finally wake up and smell the poop MS packages? Will the masses give Linux/OSX a "serious" try? Will we be here x number years from now arguing about how people should stick with Vista instead of upgrading to MS's new Windows 2k10?
[alk]
Normal APIs don't support extra streams. Getting fopen() to work with streams is a hack, to put it mildly.
The notation used on Windows is... interesting. If you are in D:\ with a file called C, does C:foo refer to a stream on D:\C or to a file called foo in the current directory of the C drive?
On a Linux or MacOS system, all characters except '/' and '\0' are valid in filenames, so we have nothing to spare. No, you can't steal the ':'.
Today I can copy a file with the dd command. I can copy a file using the cat command and shell redirection. Multi-forked files would lose data.
It looks like you need a directory... why not use one? This is how MacOS X apps work.
There are fundamental difficulties with on-disk data structures related to fragmentation and bloat. You add complexity for little gain.
Do these extra streams get permission bits? Can you solidly justify your choice?
Can a stream have a stream? If not, why the limitation?
Can I move a stream from one file to another? Can I move a stream to be just a regular file? Can I move a file into another file, to become an extra stream?
Why should everything become more complex (buggy, slow, insecure, confusing, etc.) for this barely-useful feature?
Vista doesn't have issues. It *IS* an issue to anyone who cares about secure, reliable, affordable computing. I've been telling clients to avoid it like the plague that it is. The main problem with the plague known as MS Vista is that it is spread by the carriers known as computer manufacturers.
:-) That would be another great requirement of any settlement the US and EU might reach with M$: if a new system is shipped with an M$ OS as the default, it ought to include a full set of generic Windows install discs, with a license transferable to any other machine the consumer decides to put it on. Making that part of the agreement retroactive, so that current users of Win98, WinME, WinNT, and WinXP could easily obtain installation discs for their old OSes when they decide to upgrade their hardware would annoy MS but impose no significant burden upon it, as long as it could charge a nominal fee to people who want physical install discs instead of DLing ISO images and burning and burning their own. I think a fair price for a set of Winblows install discs could be pegged at what it costs to have a set of install discs for a quality OS such as Ubuntu delivred to one's door. :-)
One way the plague might be stopped is for the US and EU to re-open their anti-trust cases against Micro$oft with a minimum goal of having any system where an MS OS comes pre-infec^H^H^Hstalled boot up the first time to a screen that gives the customer a choice of alternative non-MS (FOSS) operating systems. Since none of the major vendors, Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo, etc. provide much in the way of technical support unless a customer pays them outrageous prices, they really wouldn't have anything to lose by pre-installing one or more flavors of Linux or Unix on the new boxes they distribute via the major chain stores.
My point is that the typical PC buyer has little choice but to pay for and try to figure out how to deal with the Microsoft crapware that comes on almost all new systems. I suspect that many computer vendors would welcome an opportunity to stop wasting money on lame MS products and distribute FOSS equivalents. The neat thing is that MS has already implemented a system whereby it can charge only those customers who actually decide to use its buggy bloatware instead of one or more of the other OSes and office suites that manufacturers decide to allow the consumer to select from when she first boots a new computer.
I truly wish new systems came bare by default, with consumers getting to choose which operating system(s) and office suite(s) they want to put on them. I fondly recall when systems came with complete sets of installation disks (not discs
Basically, in order to end the Microsoft monopoly and stop the spread of Microsoft Buggy Bloatware(tm), the anti-trust regulators need to force the supply chain to change so that costly MS operating system and office suite software is no longer the default. As much as I dislike MS these days, I have little doubt it could deliver a very high-quality OS (far superior to the flashy junkware known as Vista) if it had to compete on an even playing field. This would be especially true if big companies such as Google or Sun could put their own (new) OSes on new systems as options, right alongside the MS product, since all existing contracts MS has with hardware vendors that pre-install its OSes would be nullified as part of any reasonable anti-trust settlement.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
Hollywood is only partly responsible for the DRM and TPM fiasco. DRM and TPM are promoted by Microsoft to further lock out free software and competition. (It makes hardware and software more reliant on Microsoft approved and sanctioned solutions.)
Further, once Microsoft's DRM system has been beta-tested on HD content like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, it will be used to lock down software sales to prevent piracy and eventually make us all rent our software.
If you think the RIAA is big into the subscription model, how many software developers do you think would JUMP at the chance to charge rent for their software?
"Gnome is actually the easiest -- just right click on an iso and choose "burn", or drag a bunch of files to the CD icon and burn those."
Thats exactly how it works in the Finder too. One of the few things it does well.
I believe that burning software breaks for two reasons.
They cheat and access low level routines and hardware
They want you to pay for a real copy and not keep using the OEM version that came with your drive so there is no real reason to try to guess what might work in the future
Just my thoughts I could be wrong
Doesn't make a lot of sense.
/net/www.slashdot.org ? What if I eject /net/www.microsoft.com?
Multi-session is always going to be awkward. If you discard the capability, then surely the eject command should fixate.
PS what does it mean when I rm
The "everything is a file" works well in many cases. It doesn't ALWAYS work, though...
I think they just do it to piss us off. At least in XP you can switch back to 'classic view'. I hope they have that ability in future as well. Who wants to relearn the location of their system settings and basic menus every time the OS is upgraded? FFS..
which is totally what she said
Do you routinely use all these boxes as development boxes, installing and uninstalling one or more different applications each day?
nope, cos if you did you would know that Windows does indeed pick up "cruft"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruft
Very, very, very, very few windows applications install nicely and uninstall 100% leaving a system exactly as it was before, registry bloat ensues.
If your point of view were true, there would not be several commercial applications designed specifically to ensure that windows does not pick up cruft, very expensive commercial applications that are fairly widely used in anger in commercial enviornments.
Microsoft's own knowledgebase is replete with pages detailing how to uninstall Miscrosoft software that does not uninstall properly
powershell is an example of this, an MS product that MS Vista cannot upgrade over, and cannot uninstall or simply ignore. Not a Symantec product, or a Macromedia product, or a creative product, that MS cannot uninstall, but a MS product.
The motoring analogy to your comment is "I would not employ you as a motor mechanic if you are rebuilding your car every six months." Amongst others, you would exclude all the top mechanics the world over who are constantly tuning and tweaking their vehicles, and to whom your bog standard sedan would be a piece of cake.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I guess the issue for MS is, that you and I (computer guru's) have picked up and embraced the XP paradigm but people like my wife never get it no matter how many times it is explained to her. So MS tried to move to another paradigm (am I using this properly?) to help more non-technical people understand how to find "basic" information.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you're wrong. I don't think changing these names and rearranging things is more usable to people with a different overall viewpoint of using Windows. I think they are changes that happened because some middle manager wanted to make their mark. Both these examples are steps backward in usability based upon existing best practices. It is remotely possible that MS did extensive and well performed usability tests and concluded that this is beneficial to some subset of users, but I think it highly unlikely. From talking to ex-MS employees and simply looking at their changes and lack of changes over time I suspect MS has a number of good UI experts who work for them, and whose work is constantly undermined by marketing and management that insists on changing or not changing things that the UI people recommend.