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Windows 7 in the Next Year?
Microsoft's efforts to get businesses to adopt Vista may come to a screeching halt now that Bill Gates has announced "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version", referring to Windows 7, the next expected version of the company's flagship desktop operating system.With a new version available soon, many organizations may decide to wait and see if they can avoid the pain of a Vista rollout altogether.
They may very well test it a bit longer and delay it a bit in the end just to make sure another vistaesque fiasco doesn't roll out.
Onda Technology Institute
Next year? they haven't even started beta yet have they?
they will release it, but it will just be a repackaged version of xp. They probably want to switch back to it without anyone really knowing. It like the "new coke"
And I'm sure it will be thoroughly tested and not cause anyone any headaches like Vista has.
But I doubt it'll be a whole new OS. I reckon they'll just change Vista enough so that it doesn't suck anymore. That, combined with a slightly different GUI, and they'll hope they have a successful OS on their hands.
They are going to develop a new OS 'from the ground up' like they said yesterday, in a year!?! Good luck!
Vista was released late 2006/early 2007. Windows has had 2-3 year release cycles for most of its life up to Vista (and if you want to count Server 2003, Vista isn't that far off). So end 2009 for the next release is pretty much in line with past releases.
Man, that's kooky!
Slashdot April Fool's post is four days late. Hahahaha. Not as funny as the ponies thing though.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Count me in !! I am doing the Windows 7 funky monkey !!
How about Windows Seven ??
COOL !!
Or
Didn't we just read that they're breaking binary compatibility with Windows XP/Vista in 7? I laud them for doing this, but the idea that a modular, completely-rethought, bloat-free, and binary incompatible Windows is one year away strikes me as nothing short of absurd. The only cases I can see where both of these facts being correct is either that 7 has been in development for at least three years, or the new item is a steaming pile.
The more likely scenario is that we're being mislead (e.g., the inference that he's talking about Windows 7 is wrong, or that the previous article today regarding binary incompatibility is hogwash).
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Bill Gates said A new version in relation to Vista Vista SP2?
With WinXP Prof EOL this year June, what's the alternative to Vista?
At my last customer job, XP was still the set OS, with no Vista supported or even allowed. For the notebooks they buyed in Germany, the supplier still offered XP, but we had inquiries from South America, where the only OS available was Vista. I wonder what they will do, if the only notebooks available will no longer work with XP due to new hardware and no XP-drivers.
We've been studying Vista at work, and our decision for now (which holds through at least Sepember) is to stick with XP. All the new PCs have Vista installed, and we're downgrading them to XP before deployment to customer's desks. Thank goodness for Microsoft's advancements in deploying XP!
The short story - we certainly don't want 1/3rd XP, 1/3rd Vista, and 1/3rd Win7, and that's what it is looking like when we don our future-hats.
So we decided this week that we'll stay with XP for as long as we can, using the principle that it is less expensive to support XP today, and we have no idea where Vista and Win7 will be. And we'll still have plenty of time to upgrade across the board if MS sticks with their current XP sunset plan.
We'll only start deploying Vista when Microsoft gives us clarity on the Win7 timeline, or when we conclude that Vista support will be less expensive than XP to support, or when we feel that we need to start converting to meet Microsoft's XP retirement plans.
approx. in 2011. Peace of cake :)
If you are a windows who^H^H^Huser then this is unlikely to be great news:
1. You've stuck with XP, and windows 7 is just an incremental upgrade of that - you end up paying hundreds for what amounts to a service pack and a polish of the UI
2. You've gone to Vista, and windows 7 is just an incremental upgrade of that. Same as above. Really fucking expensive service pack for an already expensive OS
3. You've gone to Vista, but windows 7 is basically just XP. Thankyou for your generous contribution to the Bill Gates worlds-first-trillionaire fund. Carrying on using the same operating system as you did before.
This is only (partly) good if you stuck with XP, and Windows 7 is based on Vista. Logically this is a strong reason not to buy Vista at all, as if you needed one more.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Well, a guy can hope, can't he?
Binaries incompatible Windows 7 would be a godsend..... but if only IBM/some_other_donor_of_programmer_and_money stuck a major amount of resources into Wine the year before:)
Breaking binary compatibility would make development considerably *easier*, not harder.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This announcement is all about keeping up momentum and stopping people from looking elsewhere.
OF COURSE it won't be released next year, or even the year after. They'll want to "get it 100% right this time".
No sig today...
Dear Zo^H^HBill,
We're trying as fast as we can to reach that Earth planet we were talking about recently, but our board computer we upgraded to Windows Vista, crashed several times, which resulted our ship to be put for few years on Uranus orbit, so we won't be able to reach that Earth planet before the what earthlings call year 2011.
Thanks for understanding,
Forever yours,
Windows 7 overlords.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Thanks for woefully misrepresenting the nature of Penn's "wait and see" suggestion regarding Vista SP1. Penn's IT org gives that advice regarding virtually every major OS update published by any vendor. In fact, Mac OS 10.5 is was also "wait and see"'d on first release for the exact same reasons. http://www.upenn.edu/computing/provider/docs/originalmacos105provider.html
People are posting articles on Slashdot, as if nothing has happened. News about a potential new Windows version
But, I guess a science and technology web site doesn't have room for one of the most noted SCI FI shows any more....
Rumors and speculation of a pre-vaporware Windows Release might be something, but really, isn't Galactica cooler?
This is my sig.
I am still waiting for a wave, big enough to wash away microsoft with it's ill ******* and chairthrowing Ballmer. Then we may be free to build a better world with free software.
Yesterday article about binary incompatibility was just a troll and some fellow slashdotter already pointed to this:
http://blog.paulbetts.org/index.php/2008/04/04/dear-dev-corvin/
This is a short answer from MS employee. Can't be more clear, because entire article was complete bullshit.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
It has been said before, but this has cost them dear.
Our company (50 Mill turnover a year) used to be completely Microsoft all the way, including eOpen Office licenses etc and no Linux servers. Now we have rolled out a lot of linux backroom machines. Not because of cost, just because MS is becoming harder and harder to work with. Add to that the fact that i've become a very big supporter of OSS and the ethics of OSS.
Our next decision is not "do we upgrade to Vista +1" but "Which business linux distro best suits our requirements.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
Well this ruins my theory I had running for windows. Orginaly I was saying that every other operating systems was the next advancment.
Bad:
95, ME, Vista
Good:
98, XP, 7
I know I have left out operating systems, but I'm basing on more average home use types. I loved windows 2000, so you can still add comments about that if you want. I always figured it was a dead ploy to get you to overly buy the next one. If I think and compair ME to Vista, both seam overly graphicly inclined, and bloated to me. I look at 95, well unfortently it was a large leap of faith. I don't fault them to much for that one, as it was a completly diffrent idea for MS at the time. 98 streamlined 95, although proved bad because of continued hacking. SE made 98 rejuvinated, but don't consider new OS. XP IMHO has been best advancment for the whole OS line.
Feel free to disagree now.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
Vista is a failure. Gates is shooting it like a lame horse to try and convince people not to switch to Linux.
What is more remarkable than the new version of windows that will be delivered next year is that it will be distributed NOT by boxes of CDs on shop shelves, NOT by pre-installation on hard disks of new machines and NOT EVEN by microsoft update. It will be hand delivered by monkeys flying out of my butt.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I wonder what's wrong with Vista that Microsoft already is already talking about the next version. Shouldn't they try to stick with Vista an improve it so that people in the end like it?
What a great way to make those of us who drank the Vista koolaid feel even better about our purchase: Microsoft MUST be committed to fixing Vista, I mean it's not like they're making noises about Windows 7 already, right?
My laptop came with Vista; I paid the extra for Ultimate. Now I wish I could trade the whole thing for XP; I keep eying the install disk from my older computer hungrily.
...Bill Gates has announced "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version", referring to Windows 7... Will Bill still be part of "we" in the next year of so? Isn't he stepping down? As much as I respect Bill Gates, I do not respect Microsoft, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who doubt's the company's ability to get a product out the door on time.Thank for reading to the sig. You may stop reading now. It is safe. There is no more content. Why are you still reading?
I would like to see that happend. Everything could be lots of better state if Microsoft would forget all old and unsecure and build new OS without anything else what dont belong to OS like webbrowser and mediaplayers. Then keep it very modular and allow customers to buy only a pure OS and then, if needed, as addons for it like web browser and mediaplayer or even 3D desktop etc. This way those who like to have Firefox or Opera, can install that or OEM can install and sell those machines. And if Microsoft would forget 32bit and move to 64bit only, all applications would be ported to that what really are needed. We dont need applications what were made for MS-DOS series (MS-DOS - WinME) or NT series.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Sometimes you just need to flush the whole lot down the crapper and start with a clean sheet.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
*Maybe* they'll pull it off, but this is Microsoft and this is a Microsoft operating system. It's pretty much guaranteed to be late.
I agree with other posters who say this is another marketing ploy to keep businesses interested in Windows despite the Vista fiasco.
For our part we're going to get new computers with XP for as long as possible (so convenient that 30 June is the end of our fiscal year) and maybe re-image with XP after that, as long as there's drivers available.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Windows 2000 = 5.0
Windows XP = 5.1
Windows 2003 = 5.2
Windows Vista= 6.0
Windows 7 = 7.0(?)
:)
Just a stuff to think about it
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
Well, the title of the post alone is not that offtopic.
Looks like we'll celebrate the end of the dark microsoft empire sooner than I expected.
factor 966971: 966971
Okay, I stoppped buying Microsoft products in 1996 at Windows 95.
How does their version count work?
Windows 3.1 = Windows 3.x
Windows 95 = Windows 4.x?
Windows 98 = Windows 4.x? 5.x?
Windows ME = Windows 4.x? 6.x?
Windows NT = Windows 4.x? 7.x?
Did I miss any?
Windows XP = Windows 5.x? 8.x?
Windows Vista = Windows 6.x? 9.x?
Windows 7? = Windows X?
I know Microsoft doesn't want anyone to know they've
been ripping-off Macs for their interface, but "7"?
I think it should be MS-Windows X. Maybe they could
code name it after a snake, instead of a large feline?
Heheheheh.
We don't need binary compatibility anymore. legacy apps can run in virtual machines. you can bet that microsoft will incorporate some kind of basix xp legacy vm into windows 7 to solve any compatibility issue that may arise.
XP is just Windows 2000 with eye candy, some extra bundled components and drivers, and restrictive DRM.
Virtually the same kernel, same libraries, and once you bypass the annoying "wizards" the same applications and utilities. It doesn't even have a real name, "XP" is an emoticon for "ewww, that's nasty". They must have taken both pills, and washed them down with a big dose of clippy.
Do not try to find Windows XP; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no XP. Then you'll see, that it is not the XP that exists, it is only yourself.
The real problem now is that instead of any new ideas,Microsoft has entered entirely into cheap tricks of politics. I don't understand why they just cant make a real quality product,even though they always absorb the best talent from colleges! I hope the organizations(and most of the world) will soon or later realize this and switch over to *nix platforms.
Wow. I guess we can just count Vista as stillborn at this point. Oh sure, there's no way 7 will be out next year (try late 2009, most likely late 2010). But Gates announcing 7 that quickly, it's like he was trying to put a stake through Vista's heart.
Hopefully they had a lot of reusable concepts and code that they can leverage. Otherwise, that's an awful waste of code and effort.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Bill Gates: "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version".
Quoting the parent comment: "Next year? they haven't even started beta yet have they?"
You are forgetting what appears to be a core Microsoft philosophy: "The whole world is our beta tester."
The problem with Vista is that buyers are becoming technically knowledgeable enough that they don't want to be beta testers of a very unfinished product that requires them to buy more powerful hardware. Remember that Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released only 3 years ago. Before that was 3 years during which every Windows XP customer was a beta tester of a very unfinished product that didn't even handle USB very well.
Sometimes it seems to me that Microsoft is not primarily a software company that is abusive, but an abuse company that sells software as a method of delivering abuse.
Remember that a "new version" can be as little as moving the menus around and causing everyone a lot of annoyance, as Microsoft did with IE 7. There should be a song, "50 ways to abuse the customer."
The end comes soon, and Microsoft is trying to delay the end. With XP, most users have all the operating system they want. Except for the built-in susceptibility to malware, Windows XP is acceptable. Customers just want to do their work. They don't sit around all day dreaming about new features of an OS.
For most of Microsoft's customers, there is no need for change, especially when they realize that the Chief of Grief, software's Dr. Death, will quickly declare the death of that version, too, as it tried to do with Windows XP.
Another problem at Microsoft is apparently that the good people have left, and the people who remain are not knowledgeable enough to do the work. Microsoft's employees know the end is near, and the creative programmers have already left. Only those who just want a job remain.
will be AWESOME!
This is simply the way MS operates. Windows 7 will be due out next year, for the next 3 years.
It'll be right around the corner, or almost to Beta for at least 2 years, only to have the whole thing scrapped because it's too hard to program anything not NT based.
XP *still* doesn't handle USB that well. Buy a cheap new inkjet printer & plug it in before you run the install CD. See what happens.
Same thing happened not that long ago with a Sony digital camera I was gifted. Thankfully we've got more than one computer.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Most likely this "Windows 7" is a marketing name for what's really planned as a 6.1 release (Vista being 6.0).
That or they're lying; Windows 7 being the next major refresh of Windows in maybe five years but they're wanting you to think about the neat cool stuff while they're actually just talking about a point release next year.
Or, since this is Slashdot, it's sensationalism.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It seems that over the past 5 years, Microsoft has put $$$ over the quailty or productovity of their products. Just look at Vista. They divided it into 6 damn versions, all of which SUCK! If m$ ever wants to succeeded, they had better smarten up and make sure the quality of the OS is first!
And I won't be buying no damn Windows 7!
"Sometimes you just need to flush the whole lot down the crapper and start [new.]"
Normally, yes. The problem is, in Windows' case, there are now people congregated around the individual pieces of shit in the toilet bowl. They rely, quite heavily, on this shits' magical powers in order to get shit done. So, in this case, flushing everything down and restarting clean would also flush down all the people. The toilet would still be there, but its product (the shit), and supporters would be gone.
- Eddie
maybe i've been lucky but i've generally found that even when the manufacturer says install first plug in later you can usually plug in first and install later then just unplug and plug back in the device so it re-enumerates.
I'm sure theese problems do happen but i'm more inclined to blame the device manfuacturer/driver writer than microsoft for theese kinds of problems given the number of devices that don't suffer from them.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
"plug it in before you run the install CD. See what happens."
1. XP Recognizes the printer, finds a suitable driver.
2. XP recognizes its a device, cannot find suitable driver, insert CD, install driver.
Surely it won't take a year to do a recursive
s/Windows 6/Windows 7/g
s/Vista/TurdBlossom/g
on all the source files?
Unless they develop on Vista!
they will release it, but it will just be a repackaged version of xp. They probably want to switch back to it without anyone really knowing. It like the "new coke"
Brilliant actually. Lets see, you buy a PC at Best Buy and can only get Vista on it. So you go to another shop, and buy a copy of XP and install it. So far a double dip.
Now, next year you shell out more cash and will want to upgrade to Win7. The triple dip, Brilliant.
"If there was a company that made a "professional, commercial" Linux-type OS that could run all Windows programs natively..."
"Where would you like your 5 copies of Mac OS X sent?"
You've got to be kidding. This is insightful? Mac OSX is not Linux-like OR able to run Windows app NATIVELY.
Someone with mod points correct this, please.
Put identity in the browser.
You are wrong, Windows Vista is the beta.
Once that comes out, they can expect a lot of sales, if in fact its totally incompatible with what we have today.
Such a scam.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's not that hard to sell `functionality' in a booming economy, especially when the limitations of the existing product are obvious. But abstruse functionality like WFS, which will provide essentially nothing for end-users because only an idiot is going to market applications which only work on the latest version of Windows, is a pretty hard sell when the economy is heading into recession. Microsoft were able to ride the fact that computers went from ``we all want them to be faster'' to ``yes, that's pretty fast'' during a set of economic cycles. But now computers are ``good enough'', it's going to be a hard sell to get people to upgrade in what is close to a recession. Do I make my mortgage payments or do I buy a machine with an operating system which contains a few filesystem that no applications take advantage of? Difficult choice. ian
oy! some of the best games are still DOS-only.
(good job we have DOSBox to run them)
XP gets the wrong driver or goes "la la la"; must do a great deal of Registry scrubbing to get the printer or other device usable on that computer.
Last time I made that mistake with a printer was not long after SP2, IIRC. The Sony camera was maybe a year ago (thinks to self "USB mass storage is USB mass storage, right? HA HA HA).
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
For printers and some other stuff I often try to avoid running the "installer from the CD", because that usually puts tons of useless crap into your computer.
I usually try to look for the Win2K/XP directory where the "real driver" is stored, and then point windows to it.
If XP gets the wrong driver and you want to rerecognize the stuff again, just go to control panel and delete the relevant "?" stuff in device manager (the question mark icon for the device indicates it's not properly installed etc).
Most times it's the manufacturers who mess things up.
That said, NEVER install hardware drivers from Windows Update.
Are people finally admitting that Vista is worse than XP was when it was first launched?
You know you just described Windows CE there :)
Heh, I'm still waiting for the database-based filesystem they bragged so much about when they talked about... Longhorn.
Microsoft is desperate. They can't innovate, they're running out of ideas, and they can't find something so attractive to make users switch.
But here are a few ideas of mine that would make Windows a guaranteed success:
* Revamp the configuration. Slice the configuration for applications into different registries, but add a layer of compatibility. No more corrupted registry blues.
* Virtualize the registry so bad programs can modify hkeylocalmachine but it'll only affect them.
* In fact, virtualize the entire filesystem so a bad program can't screw up your install.
* Instead of babysitting the user with endless "Cancel Allow" dialogs, allow some programs (administrator-defined) to run as administrator (i.e. root) by adding a popup dialog to ask the password. Add the possibility of remembering the password FOR THIS SESSION ONLY.
With the above two measures, users can effectively install any software without worrying about viruses and all that.
* Speaking of filesystems, add native compatibility for ext2,ext3,ext4 (is it out yet?), reiserfs, jfs, xfs, etc. We live in an open world. Add compatibility or die.
* Make Windows non-primary-partition tolerant. Allow it to run in other partitions so it doesn't try to get hold of my entire hard disk.
* Make (or adopt) a decent partitioner that can resize partitions without requiring to buy third party products.
* Give up on the directx "intellectual property" stuff and release the code under a GPL-compatible license.
* Modify the kernel so it can run in Xen without CPU-virtualization extensions.
* Release the specs for developers to be able to make and use their own window managers (i.e.KDE, GNOME, etc) work with Windows.
* Separate the shell from terminals, so users can add their own scripting languages for shells. You know, like bash.
* Add the possibility of having virtual terminals so advanced users can just log in in text-mode.
* The same with hardware drivers.
* Get rid of all that Digital Rights Management crap and allow users to save videos and music in hi-res formats for backups. Windows media player shouldn't allow any copy-protection crap to execute and spy on them.
* Open-source network-based apps and provide official support a-la sourceforge for users to submit bugs and security vulnerabilities.
* Don't sell 7 different versions of the OS. Make the management and administration parts available on the darn CD / DVD.
* Here's an idea: Make (or use) a "/home" partition so users can put their configuration and files in a directory of their own, so advanced users can either boot Windows or Linux and still have their important documents unmodified.
* And please, for the love of everything good in the world, GET RID OF THAT ANTIPIRACY CRAP!!!
Registration, Genuine Advantage, it's driving everyone crazy. It's ironic, I bought a legitimate copy of Windows because I was afraid of Genuine Advantage. But it was the limit on the number of non-phone based activations that pushed me to the limit and made me switch to GNU/Linux. So yes, it's real, you ARE losing users because of the antipiracy measures! (Now that I think about it, can I get a refund on XP? It sucks).
Yes, many of the features I'm asking for are already present in Linux. So is that signing Microsoft's doom? No. Linux is free, so Microsoft doesn't lose anything by letting Linux and Windows coexist on the same machine. The key here is attracting users to KEEP Windows, not forcing them from using any other OS besides Windows.
See the difference?
Start innovating (or at least following the trends) and users will actually WANT to use Windows. Right now users see Windows as a necessary evil: They don't like it but they have to stick with it. Start offering them something MORE.
If Microsoft adopted the above ideas, I'm sure. I would LIKE to buy a copy. "Windows X. Compatible with everything".
Would it be possible for MS to co-opt Linux, like Apple co-opted Unix? Yes, they'd have to start over, but not from scratch. Yes, they'd have to build a compatibility layer, like Apple did for System 9, Yes, a lot of things wouldn't work, but a user could be boot into "Classic" Windows, to run those apps. Yes, it may piss a lot of people off, but Apple did it, and no, I don't buy the argument that the Apple userbase was small. Of course it was small, but the percentages of pissed off customers Apple faced would be about the same that MS would face. THEN MS might finally let go of backwards compatibility, the bane of their current existence, and embrace the future.
With BSD backend, I guess the development could progress that quickly and that would explain breaking the ABI rumor that I've heard.
If you go to the article, you see a picture of Bill Gates with two actual Borg drones in the foreground.
Computershack wrote and included with a post:
I strongly agree with this. Windows would be so much better if they decided not to worry about backwards compatibility and just ensure that the OS worked well. Backwards compatibility could be dealt with by allowing users to "leap" into a virtual machine to run their older apps.
The one problem I can see with this (tossing backwards compatibility) for Microsoft is that it gives users the opportunity to consider its competitors since the user will have to upgrade their apps anyway.
With a new version available soon, many organizations may decide to wait and see if they can avoid the pain of a Vista rollout altogether.
It's more like "With XP serving most of the corporate need for Windows, many organizations may decide to wait and see if they can avoid the pain of a Vista rollout altogether."
For that matter, a lot of our larger corporate customers (outfits with fifteen or twenty thousand seats company wide) are still using Win2K because it does what they need. An upgrade to Vista (not to mention thousands of new computers) wasn't even on the table, still isn't.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yes most releases are every three years, but a cursory (less than 30 sec) shows they released XP a year after ME.
Release date: September 14, 2000 info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_me
Release date: October 25, 2001 info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP
Why would I be stupid enough to care about an OS which is not GPL. Moreover that one which is full of DRM systems and totally locked down???
... then it's official: Vista == ME.
I guess Vista will never see the time of day on my computer.
I think that this announcement is a way for MS to save face. People just aren't flocking to Vista in droves, in fact they aren't using Vista at all unless they are forced into it or are new to the world of computing. By announcing that Windows 7 will be out in a year they can avoid embarrassment by telling everyone that Vista adoption is slow because windows 7 is around the corner.
Just what's going to be in Windows 7?
Vista is still considered pretty new, it was supposed to be "brand new", "started from scratch", blah.. blah... and we all know it's probbly the biggest software failure in history.
Microsoft must have realized this by now - unless they are clinically delusional. The damage to the company reputation is enormous. Microsoft probably did not want to start seriously working on he next Windows for a couple of years, because they needed time to get their money back on Vista. Now they are forced to do it, in a panic, in accelerated speed. If they could not get right Vista under normal conditions, chances are they will screw up Windows 7, as well.
The first question Microsoft would have to ask: why do customers need new version of Windows? Because we need to meet revenue expectations on Wall Street is not the right answer, because customers could not care less about that.
In California they don't tear down the house and build a new one usually - they leave one wall standing and "Remodel" the rest. Something to do with taxes on new construction I think. That's more likely their intent with Vista.
Anyway, this "fresh restart" is what's wrong with Vista and by extension the entire commercial software market. If they had started with a foundation strong enough in the fundamentals like X did in 1984 or BSD did in 1977 the process would be more evolutionary and less revolutionary. The problem with revolutionary development is you have to cross so many unknown frontiers that you have to stumble across many of the same errors with each revolution. You spend so much time and effort building up a stable platform only to tear it down again.
In the mean time the builders that started with a foundation strong in the fundamentals forged in the fire of public scrutiny evolve and expand it bit by bit... A new trunk here, a fork there, forgotten annexes trimmed away. Eventually the construction rises into a fortress that looms over the hastily built McMansions of the revolutionary model builders.
Essentially that's Microsoft's problem now. They could scrap the whole thing and start fresh with a perfect design and implement an architecture that is simple and graceful and efficient -- but it would take them ten years and they would have to build it in the looming shadow of Linux. When they were done people would look at the puny structure and say "that's cute Billy. Now go play outside."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I remember when Longhorn was the next Cairo. Now, of course, Vista isn't Longhorn, just like the Segway wasn't really Ginger. (Remember how that worked out? Yeah.) Nobody sane in that company thinks that Windows 7 is due next year. They don't even have a damned marketing name for it yet. This will be at least the third major OS release they've pulled this crap with--Cairo, Longhorn and now "Windows 7"--and nobody's looking at the history. It's enough to make one switch to a different OS.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
1. Find all words "Vista"
2. Replace with "Windows 7"
3. Sell 6 different versions anywhere from $100 to $500 with various features added/removed
4. Profit
This is wonderful news! We all know that Windows 7 will be delayed for, oh, 7 years or so. So businesses will decide to wait out the year, avoid adopting Vista, and jump directly to Windows 7. The delays will slowly creep in, a month here, three months there, etc. Sales of Windows will go through the floor. Or maybe more importantly, consumers wishing to improve upon their old computers will adopt Apple Macs, businesses needing to replace aging systems will adopt Linux systems, and a larger piece of Microsoft's pie will be distributed to its competitors. This will, in turn, force Microsoft to create a higher quality product, and the normal rules of competition will mean that everyone will get a better product, regardless of which OS they will use.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
From what I hear, some features are still in planning. With Windows bureaucracy, it'll take at least 2 years to get from planning to a barely working beta. So unless W7 is just a bugfix release, it won't come out until 2010.
Office 2007 was 6 months late. And that's just for UI overhaul.
I definitely bet on Google.
/.ers higher in the thread). All this switch happened, because computer got commoditised. During the IBM era, you had to go to IBM to buy specific mainframes. At the end of IBM's kingship you could buy a PC from them, but also buy a PC-compatible from any other nameless vendor from around the world. Wherever you bought your hardware from, you could install your OS (...DOS from Microsoft...) on it. The fact that the hardware was from IBM became irrelevant, hardware didnt' matter anymore.
See everytime the previous evil empire falls and a new one emerge, we all see a shift in the paradigms f evil empires. It's not a coincidence that an "Evil" empire has become evil. It's because it has become quite efficient at the kind of abuse that are necessary to secure a position, in the "Evil Corp" world. And it won't be easy for a concurrent to replace it in the exact same position. Usually the concurrent replace them by making them irrelevant.
Usually, Evil Corps die in the way of obsolescence. Take the previous old evil empire : IBM.
IBM has achieved a huge monopoly in the market place based on the hardware they were selling.
And they got replaced by Microsoft, which is basically a software company (or an abuse company occasionally selling software as pointed by some
The current evil empire(tm) is a software empire. And they have built their empire on a ground of software monopoly. You have to buy your OS from them, there are the only one selling Windows. What makes Google the best candidate to be the "Next Evil Empire", is that there a good potential to shift paradigm and make the current software-based busyness model obsolete. Microsoft has a solid ground for a software monopoly, only as long as people need to buy their specific software.
Google isn't a company based around software. It's a company which uses standards instead. What they provide are information services : searches, mails, maps, whatever. And they are bloody good at it because they can leverage a decade long experience in data processing/clustering, a decade worth of data mining, tons of different kind of database that they can cross-reference, etc.
But also, all their application are built around standards : most of their service are web applications built around pretty plain standard-compliant HTML.
Whichever software you have installed on you PC doesn't matter anymore. It could be Windows, it could be Mac OS X, it could be one of the dozen nameless Linux-based distribution. As long as it can display HTML properly, it can work.
The same way Microsoft replaced IBM once the PC became a commodity, the same way Google and similar service providers will replace Microsoft once the OS becomes a commodity.
Also, what make specifically Google a potential Evil Corp among other factor, is that once in place they will be hard to compete against.
IBM secured their position because it was hard at that time for another company to come up with competing hardware.
Microsoft secured its position, because of vendor lock-in, no standard-compliance, being the target of most 3rd party applications, etc. : In the beginning some competitors could pull a competing OS, but it won't see adoption because it wouldn't be compatible with all the applications that the Microsoft users already had.
Google will probably secure its position because of the massive amount of experience and data they can leverage. To be performant as a service providing company, a company will probably need very efficient algorithms to process their data, and massive amount of data to process to provide services from. To take the example of websearches, Google have an important head start, because they have had 10 years to perfect their algos, they had 10 years to collect massive amount of data about all pages available on the web, and more i
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What kind of messed up camera has USB storage that isn't actually USB storage? Any camera that requires you install a driver to use it is completely messed up. Most camera's I've seen are either PTP or USB storage, or selectable between the two. The only time I've had to install a driver for a camera was on Windows 98, because it didn't have a USB storage driver.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
The end comes soon, and Microsoft is trying to delay the end. With XP, most users have all the operating system they want. Except for the built-in susceptibility to malware, Windows XP is acceptable.
You forgot the now-mandatory DRM bits.
Whenever MS says something is coming in "a year or so," the actual time frame usually ends up being the "or so" rather than the year. "Or so" could be 2-3 years, or several decades if we have any luck. Frankly, I don't really care one bit.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
And then just allow a full XP virtual machine to run under Windows 7 for compatibility purposes - the extra cost of which to MS is the low low price of FREE - and they could deliver a real winner that meets everybody's needs on the hardware that will be common in 2009.
Is Microsoft this smart?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Gates says Vista will have a replacement in a year, and everyone assumes that a significant new version of Windows will ship?
.Mac
Remember that last year, Gates promised Surface by the end of the year. It couldn't ship that big ass table on time, and when it did, it turned out to be just what I said it would be: a hobbyist kit with dev tools forcing buyers to write the software end themselves. In other words, MS couldn't ship the software end as promised.
Scratching the Surface of Microsoft's New Table PC
Microsoft Surface: the Fine Clothes of a Naked Empire
Sound familiar? It spent over year just getting Vista SP1 out, and that's largely a package of the security updates already released, not a major feature upgrade. Yet observers are warning people to wait for MS to fix SP1, because there's still lots of problems.
Remember Windows Home Server? Was supposed to arrive in 2006, but ended up getting reintroduced at CES 2007, still not ready. WHS is a simplified version of Windows Server with a web interface, not a substantial product.
Windows Home Server vs AirPort Extreme
Microsoft couldn't ship Windows Mobile 6 on time, which was supposed to ship alongside Vista; both were delayed, but Vista even more so.
The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile
Do we even need to point out that Longhorn Vista spent 6 years in gestation before being released to snores? New tech, but still swimming in old legacy and limited by decisions MS though would be a good idea until it actually got knee deep and realized it had optimized for the wrong problems. Many features, such as the fabled database file system, couldn't get figured out at all.
Microsoft has never delivered by Bill Gates' promises and timelines. Remember Cairo in 1991? Remember what NT was supposed to deliver? Why will Microsoft suddenly be able to fulfill Gates' announcements after never having been able to previously, even over the last couple years?
1990-1995: Microsoft's Yellow Road to Cairo
Remember that MS has recently failed to stay competitive with Windows Mobile, with Windows Media, with PlaysForSure, with the Zune, with WHS, etc. ad nauseam. Now suddenly after the failure of the Vista launch, why would anyone rush to believe the idea that Microsoft can successfully ship a buzzword-heavy, detail-light operating system update that offers significant reasons to upgrade, is delivered at a reasonable price, runs well on existing hardware, and does not introduce major new problems for existing users with existing software? That's insane.
Why Microsoft's Zune is Still Failing
Microsoft is trying to do damage control after having targeted Windows 7 for arrival sometime in 2011, using the "two years out" promises that the company has always given, but never keeps. Facing real competition for the first time ever, Microsoft is now forced to cut its lie in half and promise something so fantastically egregious that pundits have no choice but to repeat it.
Windows 95 and Vista: Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995
Filling the Unlocked iPhone Gap with
They've been fooling around with Windows 7 since 2003 and Vista has been out the door since 2006 (ala Wikipedia). So they've had a solid year and some change with not much else to do but work on W7. They certainly didn't waste much of that time on SP-1 for Vista. If the new version is as stripped down as they say it is, I can see the basic OS getting here by next year easily. Maybe not all the bells as whistles, which I think for a change will be a good thing.
What is Windows FS?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
"Windows Future Storage)[1] is the code name for a data storage and management system based on relational databases, developed by Microsoft and first demonstrated in 2003 as an advanced storage subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system, being designed for persistence and management of structured, semi-structured as well as unstructured data." -Wikipedia
Can you please tell me what colour socks you wear when you do all this? I've never found the colour that makes it behave...
Or maybe I'm paying off the wrong witchdoctor.
Sorry, did anybody claim that OSX was open source?
Nope. Didn't think so. . If you disapprove of that in principle, fine, run Debian - perfectly valid decision. Meanwhile, like it or lump it, Apple are allowed to sue anybody who distributes their copyrighted code - that doesn't make them Microsoft. Wake me up if/when Apple starts railroading standards through the ISO or mounting FUD campaigns against Linux.
On the other hand, OS X includes huge chunks of BSD, plus Apache, PHP, python, perl Samba, CUPS, the GNU compilers, webkit etc. Presumably, Apple are complying with the open source licenses for these, releasing code and submitting patches where necessary. Even if they're not God's gift to the open source movement and only releasing the minimum they can get away with, they're still giving these packages market- and mind- share.
Plus, being UNIX-based and coming with the GNU compilers and an X11 server, a vast range of open-source packages will compile and run on OS X. So even though OSX as a whole isn't open source, its quite a good platform for running open source apps.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Windows 7 is coming out while Linux remains stuck on version 2.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
... wait, are we speaking about Microsoft releasing a windows version? then is not mist exactly.
Hey mod, how about posting your email address so that I can email you a big fat "I told you so" when the government tells you what time of day you are allowed to run your air conditioner and operate your lights, or tells you how many children you are allowed to have (or attempts to regulate childbirth by taxing you for each child)?
BTW, that does raise a question about Hillary's and Obama's health care plans. Will it be a fair system where people who consume more health care services and who make poor lifestyle choices are taxed more, or will it be more of a socialist system where the misery is distributed equally and the well-off still receive better health care through private supplementary insurance as they do in Canada?
Even Bill has put his "or so" doubt in his speech.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
I am now convinced, that this year Linux is making the breakthrou on anybodys desktop. Why?
Because the best OS ever (Vista) was such a success, that it's price dropped to 50 $ and Mr. Gates makes wild announcements about a successor of Vista just one year after it's release to the market. This is a desperate attempt to prevent his customers to think about other solutions like Linux.
Read my lips: "2008 is the year of the Linux desktop."
Windows 3.0, 95, ME, and Vista were terrible for users at first.
.DLLs, and trying to have a 32 bit codec process data over the 4GB mark would be a disaster. (This would also be why device drivers are locked down on 64 bit Vista; they would be easy to test on a 64 bit CPU with only 2-4 gigs of RAM, but would epic-fail after the 4GB mark, causing random crashes and corruption.
Windows 3.1, 98, XP, and whatever Win7 will be named are much better.
Windows 3.11, 98 OSR2, XP SP2, and Win7 + Whatever it's 2nd service release will be named are/will be good.
95/98 are version 4.XX, ME/XP is the 5.XX series (although ME reports itself as 4.9), Vista is 6.0; and "Win7" will probably effectivly be 6.XX, even if it reports as 7.0
Each new series introduces new APIs for Driver and Application developers; the later releases depricate old API's, while refining the newer ones, so the earlier releases of a series have buggy new APIs mixed with obsolete APIs.
As an example, Windows Media Player is still 32 bit on Vista 64 bit; I would guess that is because Codecs are in-process
Windows 7 will be released after application and driver developers have had time to get used to 64 bitness, along with IPv6, DirectX 10 (Which allows GPU preemtive multitasking.), etc. etc. it will be a lot more stable, and can reduce support for older APIs (from the 16 bit era, just as ME/XP dropped a lot of support for DOS applications); but I suspect a lot of unexpected things will be dropped to improve security (for example, in Vista, you can't drag-n-drop into a Command Prompt window, I read this was to prevent security issues)
So, Vista SP1 should fix the 'critical' problems with Vista; Win7 will correct some design flaws, and be more consistant, Win7 +Service packs will have both design fixes and then the critical fixes to those design changes... then everyone will absolutly hate Windows 8.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Vista drivers. Really, I think the only XP driver I've seen on Windows Update that didn't break things was the virtual sound board driver for use in VMWare, and some HP LaserJet driver (for the love of God, never install an XP NIC driver from WU).
In the last year of using Vista, I've seen driver updates for my Intel graphics at least three times, onboard sound and modem at least once, and even the Synaptics touchpad driver for my laptop.
According to articles I've seen, 7 is supposed to be more modular and be sold in a subscription format.
My guess is they're taking bits and pieces from XP and Vista, reworking them as modular sections. Basically, "Windows 7" is going to be Windows XP Service Pack 4 with backports of some of the Vista stuff that wasn't a total disaster.
That's the only way Microsoft can get a new OS out the door in another year or so. A complete rewrite would take them another five years like it did Vista. I'm not even expecting 7 to be out before end of 2010.
I'm telling my clients to forget Vista, unless it comes on a certified new machine, and make sure they have enough XP licenses on hand for new OEM machines to last until 7 comes out.
Most businesses, especially small business, really have utterly no use for Vista - XP is fine for most of them, despite the pathetic quality of the OS. As long as they do image backups of fresh installs, so they can quickly recover from XP downtime, they could use XP for several more years easily. Hell, I've got a client still running Windows 95 on a couple machines because of software they don't want to change (finally, they've decided to do so over the next little while.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
MS decided to break binary compatibility with all previous Windows software. They decided to start from scratch with a new architecture.
But... they also said that they could deliver a new FS ever since Cairo and it still isn't there.
I guess MS will deliver shit, once again, and we will all be complaining about how bad it is. Then, when SP2 arrives for Win7, the Windows Vista users, who said they would never switch from XP to Vista, will all use Win7. Then MS delivers that with Win8 everything will be perfect... again, and again, and-... Ubuntu will be our overlord.
Here be signatures
Me neither, it would be interesting to know if this works for anyone?
While it may make the \. community feel a shared warm fuzzy of schadenfreude, the comparison of Windows Vista to Windows ME is completely lacking in any technical basis or comparison. Windows ME was a end-of-life release, the final gasp the death throes of MS-DOS-based versions of Windows. It was created for basically the same reasons that Windows 95 OSR2 was made: to address some important hardware support requests from PC hardware OEMs ahead of the release of the next major Windows release. The many shortcomings of Windows ME were well-known at the time the project was underway, and were to be addressed in the consumer release of Windows 2000 (aka Windows XP). The two main lessons of the project are: (a) giving OEMs too much opportunity to customize the desktop results in a poor consumer experience and (b) OEMs, like most of Corporate America, will fight against major change with their last breath even if it improves their product.
What Windows Vista and Windows ME do have in common is an immense amount of press and developer negative perception, but the basis of the negative perception is entirely different. Windows ME's bad experience came in large part because it was usually deployed via OEMS in a "customized" form that was basically crippled. Most developers and tech savvy people never used it because Windows 2000 was far superior being an NT-based product and not MS-DOS.
Windows Vista is burdened by the FUD around "Project Longhorn" which was really shot in the head back in 2004 in the "Longhorn restart". There were the much discussed project management problems in the Windows division, the immense impact of the security push effort, the efforts for x64 support, and failures managing extremely deep dependency chains between various component groups most famously seen in WinFS and Avalon. The "5+ years for this?" FUD completely ignores that Windows Vista took just over 2 years from start to finish. During "Project Longhorn", the security push resulted in Windows component teams doing almost nothing but fixing a backlog of security bugs for 2 years. Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 / Windows XP Pro x64 Edition were major development efforts from teh same component teams.
From a purely technical point of view, Windows Vista is perfectly fine as it is with the usual caveats of bugs endemic to all large software projects. It is, however, an extremely disruptive release: a complete rewrite of the graphics stack integrating the GPU into the OS scheduling; a new desktop shell; a new audio stack; major changes in the security model for applications, services, and drivers; and the first mainstream release of x64 for consumer systems. That's an immense amount of change for the PC industry to absorb. Many companies are happy to keep their head in the sand about these changes, and all the anti-Vista FUD continues to give them cover in this behavior. "Windows 7" (which is a codename more than anything else) will likely be much more the 95 => 98 or 2000 => XP releases, which were far less disruptive and coincide with stronger 3rd party support and expertise to back up the consumer experience. As for the theory that Windows Vista is being "thrown out in favor of XP", I invite you to look at the debugging symbols packages for Windows Vista SP1. They are identical to Windows Server 2008 RTM for a reason. The investment in the Windows Codebase made for Windows Vista set up the next decade of development, and unifies the codebases in a rationale, scalable way.
As for the "DRM in Vista is the devil" folks, all I can say is head down to Barnes & Noble and while buying yet another copy of Catcher in the Rye, browse through the latest edition of Windows Internals. The "DRM facilities" in the kernel are basically non-existent and the Protected Media Path is just leveraging some already existing security facilities like Authenticode signing and a non-debugging process type. That's it. The "Heart of DRM" is still in Hollywood, so if you don't like it: complain to the content producers who force DRM support in their licensing terms, and stop buying their protected content.
And they say Steve Jobs has a reality distortion field! MS has been promising to release a secure and powerful OS since day one.
We'll wait for Windows 7. That'll be the one. they won't pull the football^W^W^W push crap out the door again!
I can hear it already: AUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGH.....WHUMP!
Over the years MS has used just this tactic against other companies. Have they started looking down the wrong end of the gun lately?
Well that and the whole expiry of XP thing just cements my opinion that Windows is just a gaming platform for me. I prefer to do my serious stuff on Linux. Maybe I just buy a console or something and avoid all this craptacular pain.
Bitter and proud of it.
Actually it is more than possible if they use the proven model of MorphOS.
That is, MorphOS is a new OS system, with a compatibility layer running on top of it (in this case for Amiga applications). By using this virtualization on the kernel level, one can build a new API and system while retaining the legacy safely locked away in a sandbox. That's how OSX handles OS9 apps, for the most part. The advantage Microsoft has here is that they could then make an "XBox" module for games, which is where most of the legacy support issue is anyways, which would feed into their own systems.
By doing it this way product to shelf time is far less, as you just run the legacy OS in the sandbox as the main system immediately, and slowly expand the lower base as you go along. A gentle curve for us, the end user, and a much stronger product in the end.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Under Windows 2000, Windows update offered me the same ancient, busted nVidia driver for years, regardless of my running a driver several scores of version numbers newer. It think it may have had to do with using a PCI video card for the 3rd monitor.
Done.
To secure peace is to prepare for war
Shouldn't this be tagged "Whatcouldpossiblygowrong" with M$ history of rushing software to market and making predictions about their releases.
The point of linking the Wikipedia article was that you probably shouldn't expect people to understand exactly what you mean when you say "restrictive DRM"
Yes, I got that point, I already made that point myself when I said I needed to just link the term DRM to a page explaining it. That's why I explained it. Let me try explaining it again: I was not making a statement about the desirability of DRM, I was making a statement about the presence of DRM in XP as a distinction between Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
So even though it is broadly similar, there are apparently people who believe there is a distinction.
They are the same technologies, they are covered by the same laws, they have the same purpose. The fact that people think they need to be treated as different categories carries as much weight as the fact that people believe in Creationism and Scientology. You don't have to convince me that I need to use a different term to refer to them (see previous paragraph), but you also don't have to convince me to actually treat them that way. At least I hope you don't.
I think it is at least possible to cast the DRM you are talking about as...
I understand the attraction of DRM. I don't know why you think using it to partition the market and create a niche for a lower priced product hasn't been tried, either... it's the whole point to subscription music services. They're not my cup of tea, but a lot of people like them. My wife, for example.
Anyway, you still seem to be trying to argue against a position I didn't take in the first place. Seriously.
It's a kinda scary thought too (aside from the photo used in the story makes it look like bill is being guarded by a borg silhouette), but change at Microsoft is inevitable, if they are lucky they will survive it. It's happened before with large IT'$ with a stranglehold on market share. Open Source Software has provided a reliable answers to operational issues which management 'Just want fixed', programmers have used OSS as a framework for delivering those answers. Business needs what it needs, and the IT industry is what it is - MS is not bigger than both and has shown a consistent inability to deliver their product on time with the promised features. This has been demonstrated with the 'delivery' of Vi$ta and the reaction to it, so with the attitude M$ has, why would business react any differently to Window$ 7, after all 'You can't fool all of the people all of the time'.
Open Source Software presents a unique opportunity for M$ to finally deliver something on time, with a reasonable expectation of delivering on features, and if windoze is going to change anyway, which it has to, why would the market care if it was based on linux? Apple$ market don't care that it's based on BSD, Apple didn't see BSD they saw B$D, maybe M$ could see O$$.
In the distance you could hear them sing - "Koom By-Yah, my lord"
Personally I think M$ is too arrogant to let go and in time their relevance will fade. Make no mistake, business may tolerate failure for a little while - but they're certainly not going to pay for it.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I was wishing MS would create a truly new, binary incompatible OS since 15 years ago. But now, it doesn't matter to me. ;-)
--
The early bird catches the worm. The worm that sleeps late lives to see another day.
I've had this work for me a few times on Windows XP for some modems and sound cards. I have to say when it does work, it's quite good, it's just a shame it could work more often.
RegardselFarto
It actually does "update" drivers when you use it, so it's not a "NIL" thing.
There are all sorts of drivers provided - NIC, video, sound card drivers etc.
And >=90% of the time you will regret the aftermath of "updating". For example you might get an nvidia driver for your vid card that dates to 2001 when nvidia last bothered to send a driver to MS for "certification". Same thing for NIC drivers.
The theory is nice, but in practice, don't use it.
Ah, no wonder - it's not the socks. You have to be a virgin and subject yourself to the whims and fancies of Microsoft.
;).
Naturally I qualify for the virgin part, and since my parent's house does not have a basement, I have resorted to living in the ground floor room.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Duke Nukem Forever will only run on Windows 7.
It's obvious when you think about it - explains everything.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
How long does it take modern media to see through the scam? I mean, really, we laugh about people who fall for the Nigeria spam and yet our very own mainstream media falls for the same bait, reliably and consistently.
We've heard this line before. Many times. Where are the "I'll believe it when I see it" headlines?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I got a (I think it was Kodak) new camera for Christmas. Plugged it in, Ubuntu recognised it as a camera (didn't need drivers), but could only copy photos off, it refused to act as a mass storage device. Also, if you took the SD card out, and put it in a reader, it was ... weird (I forget exactly how).
So I returned it and replaced it with one that worked properly. Didn't want to piss about with dodgy setups!
Microsoft looks like they are finally back on their three year lifecycle for OSes. Vista is just over a year old. By the end of next year, it will be almost three years old. And they introduce Windows 7. By the time it gets all patched, and they release Service Pack 1 for it, we will be awaiting Windows 8. There comes a time when you have to bite the bullet and say its time to upgrade, otherwise we would all still be running Windows NT 3.5 for Workstations on our desktops, and Mac OS 7.5. I mean, Apple releases a new OS every 18 months it seems.
Microsoft's philosophy needs to change from "shock and awe" to "less is more". Revolutionary operating systems shouldn't have to take up 15 gigabytes of hard disk space. At least not in 2008. Especially since so much is being done with less than 100MB by people with a lot less technical and financial prowess. I really never saw the point in Vista to start with. There isn't anything I can do in Vista that I can't already do in XP. Moving from Windows 3.1 to 95 made sense. Moving from 95 to 2000 made sense. Moving from XP to Vista makes no sense unless your whole motivation is to boot up a screen that says Vista on it instead of XP. The Aero interface is 100% complete hype and is a waste of resources and money upgrading to this feature.
In my opinion, I think Microsoft is realizing greater financial potential in creating new versions of their systems rather than just improving on existing ones. Which is a shame because all the effort of Vista should have went into XP Service Pack 3. This would have made more technical sense. Of course the sales people would have nothing to promote.