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First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1
The other A. N. Other writes "It seems that Microsoft couldn't keep the lid on Windows 7 beta 1 until the new year. By now, several news outlets have their hands on the beta 1 code and have posted screenshots and information about this build. ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 column says: 'This beta is of excellent quality. This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with. Even the pre-betas were solid, but finally this beta feels like it's "done." This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled.' ITWire points out that this copy has landed on various torrent sites, and while it appears to be genuine, there are no guarantees. Neowin has a post confirming that it's the real thing, and saying Microsoft will be announcing the build's official availability at CES in January."
The sound of ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 writers blowing their loads over this is deafening.
Now the fate of 64bit future is being determined...
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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There are no new features in this build. If Microsoft has any new stuff lined up for the RTM then we're going to have to wait to find out.
All this talk about stable beta's seems a bit pointless. If you change the name and theme on the product, you can't real muck it up too bad. What's the point of this other than to try to put the name "Vista" in the grave?
Anyone know what these people are so excited about? Couldn't get much real info from the article. They comment that its snappier than other betas. How about compared to XP? That would be the real comparison I would like to see.
I am a linux person myself - Ubuntu on the computer I am posting from, but I did use Windows on my laptop before wiping it. I am also not opposed to having windows installed if I gain any benefit. That is what I want to hear from people, what are its compelling features (I don't play games).
When all else fails, try.
And we can start quessing which of the mentioned fine features will actually be in the release version of Win7. This has happened so many times before.
Remember when during waiting of win95 many magazines were worried what will happen to McAfee and other virus-scanner companies when the new windows is fully virustolerant?
I don't see why this is surprising. This is just Windows Vista service pack 3 after all. Naturally the beta is going to be more stable than the initial Vista beta.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Everyone seems to have the opinion that Vista was a failure. My wife (a non-techie) hates Vista because her ancient accounting app periodically crashes ever since switching to Vista. I assume many other people had the same sorts of issues with many other apps.
But now three years have gone by, and many of those apps have been patched, become obsolete, or replaced with working alternatives. That means the remaining apps are now in an ideal position to work correctly in Windows 7. Is it possible that Windows 7 could be exactly the same crap as Vista, but because so much time has gone by it doesn't matter as much?
I think we saw the same thing with the transitions from Windows 98 to Windows ME to Windows XP.
John
Are Magazines/Tech review sites/Editorials real anymore or are they just industry backed reviews (aka advertisements)? Is advertisement driven content real journalism?
I remember almost every tech journal I picked up a couple years ago reviewed Vista as the "New Coming". Yet, a year later these journals are bemoaning how Vista "sucks" (which it does btw).
Excuse me for being cynical but I will take this review with a pinch of salt as other reports show that, at least benchmark wise, there is absolutely no difference between Vista and Windows 7.
As for Windows 7 feeling "so much more responsive".. well, depends who is paying you to write that review innit?
"This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled."
Is this person a politician because that is saying nothing.
Too bad 2009 is going to be another year of hearing Microsoft lies and exaggerations regarding yet another Microsoft OS release. BFD, is what I say after 20 something years of the same junk year after year after year. I gave up when Windows 2000 came out and they started shoveling more user level stuff into the kernel and they never fixed the security system. That was in 1999, over 8 years ago and they still are trying to build an operating system worth a hill of beans. Well, it's all about marketing at MS so what you see in print is not what you get and never has.
in 2009, I'll be wading through the MS marketing drivel for what's going on in the embedded, netbook, and MID areas with regards to the ARM Cortex chips and especially the A9 dual core versions. A8 is amazing on the performance front and power front. This should prove very interesting along with what Android, Ubuntu, and others do on these platforms.
So long MSFT, 2009 is probably going to be another tough year of marketing against real solutions. And though you may have smashed the OLPC and dashed their plans of helping millions of children, they kicked off a resurrection of the light weight small form-factor device you just can't compete on. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Rather than wasting our time with a new GUI, I'd like to see Microsoft get the ball rolling on full, proper migration to 64 bit. Perhaps I'm a "power user" but for a sound designer, this 2 gig limit per app/~3.5 max feels more and more like 640 kb all over again.
(Unfortunately, the existence/popularity of 32 bit windows precludes the vendors of software such as Cubase and the likes from actually doing a proper job of putting out 64 bit software).
I record my sleeptalking
The task bar needs quite a bit of work. I bet that is one part of the OS that will change quite a bit from Vista. Looks like it is still a work in progress because right now it looks boxy and ugly.
It also looks like Aero wasn't turned on for these screen shots. Probably a driver thing. Vista without the glass doesn't look nearly as good.
I think like Vista, this version will be a lot of little things that improve the OS not huge ones. Then you'll go back from Windows 7 to Vista and go "jeez... how did I live without this Windows 7 feature" just like when you go back to XP and get pissed how crappy the taskbar is, how "in your face" the windows were, how crappy the file dialogs were, how crappy taskman.exe was, or how generally insecure the default setup was. Vista is a huge improvement over XP but it is hard to describe what improved. Just a lot of little annoyances are gone or smoothed out. Windows 7 will probably be the same.
And can I rant for a second? Look, I know why the ZDnet guys are doing this, but we live in Web version 2.0 these days and they could easily have made it so their gallery didn't require a complete page-load between images. But like I said, I know why they do require a page-load.
Comparing Windows 7 to Vista is useless, at least to someone like me. I love XP, having never had any serious problems with it whatsoever. It's by far the most stable OS I have ever used. Tell (and prove to) me that Windows 7 is better than XP, and I will show great interest in switching. Tell me 7 is better than Vista, and you don't have a chance.
What are the improvements? Have they added in WinFS yet?
All that being the case, why on earth do we care about Windows 7? If Microsoft couldn't get people to migrate off XP with benign economic circumstance and ready availability of credit, why do we think it's going to happen this time?
ian
File name: Windows.7.Beta.1.Build_7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso [MSDN iSO]
Size: 2,618,793,984 bytes (2.44 GB)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2123650
I just had to repair a friend's Vista PC which had 3 Trojan programs running that had taken control of her internet even though Kaspersky antivirus was installed. The Trojan had worked its way onto her computer via a P2P program that her daughter was using to get music, and that stopped Kaspersky from being able to update its definitions, which it was set to do every day. I couldn't even go out to Microsoft's Windows Update site to get Windows updates, and Windows Defender (which was also installed and running) was disabled by one of the Trojan programs. It took me over an hour to clean it all up and get her machine running properly again.
Not even 2 antivirus programs could stop this from happening on the latest Windows PC.
This is what is stopping me from being even the slightest bit excited about Windows 7.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
I think their plan is to mimic the look and feel of Gnome or KDE, you know, to ease the transition for mom and pop when they switch to linux
_-_-_GSLUG_-_-_
I'm no fan of MS, but what exactly do you propose they do? They offer 64-bit variants that can run 64-bit applications of their supported platforms. They provide the platform to allow this specific thing. They provide the tools to develop for this.
What you have is commercial application providers flat-out ignoring 64-bit capability, as it is easier to target the 32-bit subset that works both on Pentium 4 and such and new. You have to make the vendors release 64-bit enabled builds. Linux suffers from this as well, to a lesser extent. In the OSS world, they rebuilt 64-bit readily. However, Acrobat, Flash, Sun JRE all took a long time or are still taking time to completely support 64-bit. The commercial world just has a hard time justifying bothering where there is backwards compatibility and 99.9% of their usage won't exceed the limit per process restrictions.
MS could have not published any 32-bit platform to accelerate ubiquity. Imagine the backlash at not supporting Core and Pentium 4, requiring those users to go to Core2 or Athlon64. Even then, it wouldn't have alleviated the issue as these vendors would still want to sell to XP users. MS could have omitted 32-bit compatibility, completely shooting backwards compatibility in the foot.
So while I'm not crazy about Windows, their x86_64 bit strategy is not any worse than other platforms, it's the commercial third-parties that cause your grief.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Even with amazing projects coming out of the Microsoft labs like SeaDragon and Photosynth, we're offered up the latest generation of Windows with the same, exact model of desktop, start menu, icons, folders, etc. It just looks like next genetic descendent in the Windows line to me -- the only difference is smoother palettes and corners to mimic 'whats hot' in computer UI design these days.
One could say that the 'future' of desktop UIs was paved by Enlightenment which truely started branching away from the Windows and Macintosh genetic lines, but we need something more.
We need the equivalent of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Remote Apple remote for desktop management, not the shape, size or number of buttons -- but the idea that less is more, context is key and that it's about providing the user with enough to get their work done, not providing so much that they get lost.
I don't want eye candy. I want functionality that makes sense because it couldn't be any easier.
Why not compare with 2K ? Also, 2K is better than XP by the same metrics you mentioned. Then why are you running XP?
This space for rent.
Sure, MS may be right about driver and application incompatibilities. But, when I bought a brand new laptop, pre-loaded with Vista, that has the Vista logo on the box, I don't want to hear that it's the fault of the network chipset provider that the wireless network works marginally at best. MS and the hardware vendors need to get their shit together, so that they don't tell me that a computer is "Win 7 Compatible" or comes pre-loaded with Win 7 when it really isn't.
If you're trying to install a new OS on an old machine, that's one thing. You definitely need to do your homework to make sure that the off-brand network card you bought will work with the new OS. However, a new machine pre-loaded with the OS should run. If MS can't make sure that the OEMs have working machines before they slap a "Vista" or "Win 7" sticker on the damn thing, they should stop making software, period.
I can understand somebody wanting the pirated version of a video game, or even a release-version of an OS, but who in their right mind would tie up their Internet connection for a day and risk the legal trouble and possibility of a virus/worm/backdoor to download a beta copy of an operating system that's built on the most reviled version of Windows since WinMe?
2. In a story about Macs, mentioning that you use any form of Windows will take you to karma hell, praising OS X will get you modded up, mentioning Linux will affect your karma based on your luck of draw moderators depending on which kind of fanboy they are. In any case, you will get a ton of long highly modded up replies about how OS X is better
3. In a story about Linux, mentioning that you use any form of Windows will take you to karma hell, praising Linux will get you modded up, mentioning OS X will affect your karma based on your luck of draw moderators depending on which kind of fanboy they are. In any case, you will get a ton of long highly modded up replies about how Linux is better.
4. In any other story, mentioning that you use any form of Windows will take you to karma hell, and praising Linux, OS X, BSD, Plan 9, OS/2, BeOS etc. will take you to karma heaven.
Anyone wanna make a graphical represenation of the above to make it easier to understanding on a glance? So, Vista/Windows 7 stories are the only opportunity for Windows users to come out of the woodwork and not pretend they like other OSes. It's amazing how many of them there are actually are around these parts.
This space for rent.
There is no such thing as Windows 7. This is not a new code base, it is not an overhaul of Windows framework. Windows 7 is Vista Service Pack 2. The Windows 7 bullshit coming out of Microsoft's propaganda machine is a concerted and direct effort to bury the name Vista and all the bad press associated with it. That anyone has bought into this crap is astounding. Vista was several years delayed. Now we have hordes of people believing that MS got a new OS out the door in 18 months? Wake up already.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
Why are we so concerned about eye-candy? How about the actual system underneath?
Is it stable, scalable, administrable? What sort of resources does it need? Ram? CPU?
Sure, 'pretties' are nice ( especially for the end user ), but its a lot like a cake: If the cake is full of holes, lopsided or not fully cooked, does it really matter what flavor the icing is?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Kind of like how AMD came out with the Athlon XP line around the time that Windows XP shipped?
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
It's apparent that Windows 7 represents a radical name change from Vista. A bold new direction in OS branding.
And people say innovation is dead in Redmond.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You can write javascript that enhances a page. One can quickly write an implementation that keeps each image a standard page (good for SEO, good for multi-tab) but can also swap the image and not reload the page. Then you can right-click "Open new tab" or just click on it and not refresh the entire page.
Javascript = good.
Shitty Javascript = bad.
The "Mojave is really Vista" campaign was one of the most embarassing marketing campaigns I've ever seen. Here is a company that willingly admits that the reputation of their OS is so terrible, they have to dupe people into trying it by renaming it something else. And now the same "I'm so embarrassed by my product I won't even mention its name" continues.
What happened to Microsoft's cojones? They should stand up and fight for Vista until its reputation is at least partly restored. Then they could introduce products under new names, without the overhanging cloud of shame.
As for the "review", this part is enough to make me laugh uncontrollably: "Here are some screenshots to whet your appetite:". What is this, a review of a new cellphone skin for teenagers hanging out at a mall? What is happening to ZDNet? Not that it ever was a source of great knowledge, but this?
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista? As someone else pointed out, a name and theme change does not really qualify as substantial change. Ok, so WinFS was never promised for this version. What exactly are they offering this time besides a fix to the taskbar? I have yet to see an article that outlines changes outside the UI. Is this an elaborate prank?
[alk]
A female kind. Probably underage.
Those are hard to get rid off. It usually takes years before you get the ship em off to college or marry em off.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What failed was developer training, not user training. Developers could basically assume a user was running root. That let them take shortcuts like writing shit to "Program Files" or messing around with system files.
You have to understand the history as well. Microsoft grew up as a single-user OS and slowly morphed into a multi-user OS. They didn't grow up with the culture that unix-like systems have where the system was assumed to be multi-user.
Bottom line is we will always need some variant of sudo (aka UAC). UAC is actually the best sudo implementation there is so far, at least in my opinion. Granted, there is still room for improvement, but that mainly lies in "integration". For example, the common dialogs need a way for me to load notepad.exe, edit "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\Hosts", and give me a UAC prompt when I save the file. That way I don't have to remember to load notepad.exe with elevated privileges. Let me write a new file to a protected directory and UAC me then instead loading the app with elevated privileges. That kind of integration will make the new world of "dont run as root" more enjoyable. The goal is to make it so there is no excuse for nerds to disable UAC (thus running as root 24/7).
Microsoft changed the interface of Office 2007 to make it much better all around(atleast for casual and new users). Look at the bad rap that it gave them on here and elsewhere for being unfamiliar to power users and people who are used to toolbars and 'File,Edit,View' menus. Look at what happened to KDE 4.0 And you want MS to radically alter the UI of a OS with 90% market share? Can you imagine the comments here starting with 'My grandma who used Windows since 95 got Windows 7 and.....' ? I bet the ribbonish interface itself in Windows 7 will not be well received by some people.
This space for rent.
I can't help but shake the same feeling that I had when the Wall Street was being pushed through Congress... the first time around, EVERYONE hated it (except some of the Dems) but the second time around they "marketed" it better, the media said "oh it's SOOOOO different this time, you'll LOVE it" and then people said "well, I guess it's ok. let's try it" Isn't that basically the same thing that's going on here? MS says "Oh, pox on Vista, you want Windows 7, that's where it's at!" Whoever it was that earlier said they turn off all the UI snazziness on XP -- I totally echo that sentiment -- I use "classic view" and pretty much the only reason I switched to XP was for some of the performance and native-driver issues (and for software compatibility). Having a flashy OS doesn't make me want to buy it, because if it did, I would buy Mac. (Or install Ubuntu again)
Most nerds seem to turn it off assuming it is "flasy useless eye candy". Little do they know they basically turned off hardware accelleration. You do know that Vista, with Aero enabled, will delegate most of the window drawing to the video card. In fact, the more ram on your video card, the better, Vista stores all the window data on that instead of your system RAM.
If you've got a card that does DirectX10 it will even hand the fonts to the video card and let the video card deal with font rendering and caching. Once you turn off Aero, the video card is just an old-school video card. Since a certain set of nerds seem to hate nice looking things, I bet most of them turn off the one thing that makes Vista way more snappy than XP--Aero.
What you ask exists. Vista Virtual Store. Basically, if your crappy app writes to "C:\program files" in vista and you are running as a standard user, Vista will do exactly what you describe... it will redirect the file IO to a place owned by the user, not the system.
Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista?
Features New to Windows 7.
Enjoy!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
No I'm telling you video cards from 10 years back already provide hardware accelerated blitting (even translucent), filling, rectangle drawing, etc. So your desktop _is_ hardware accelarated by the video card without anything Aero, and it has been like this for years.
Of course you don't get all the fancy shader tricks but like I said, not everyone actually appreciates those.
Let's just stop here because you obviously don't know much about how video cards work. You can 'cache' anything you like in video RAM without using the 3D capabilities at all, just like you can DMA stuff around without taxing the CPU, and draw stuff to the screen with just a few FIFO commands, it is not, (I repeat: it is NOT) what makes your system 'slow' unless you want to blur title bars, wiggle windows when you move them or add all kinds of other visual effects just because you can.
The only valid point you make is that with a full-blown GPU-accelerated desktop you can throw in much more eye candy without slowing down the system. My point is, that if you don't need/want/care about this eye-candy, about everything essentially already _is_ GPU-accelerated, even without Aero. Windows Vista doesn't NEED anything besides age-old window drawing, it just offers you the option to throw (in my opinion) useless eye at you that only distracts from the actual GUI.
Also I doubt your claim that Aero actually does TTF rendering on the GPU, do you have any references to back that up?
Ask and ye shall receive:
Source: Optimizing Performance: Taking Advantage of Hardware
Source: Graphics Rendering Tiers.
Source: ClearType Overview
See also: Typography in Windows Presentation Foundation
How the hell did you get a +3 Insightful after spewing such nonsense?
Run as root most of the time? On most Linux distros you have to ignore warnings, some repeated multiple times, about using the root account. Sudo is installed by default for a reason...because running as root on a desktop is just plain absurd. Making excuses to cover your own incompetence at sudo only highlights your utter lack of security focus. How hard is it to open a terminal window (or use a Gnome applet which puts a terminal line on your taskbar) and type "sudo system-config-display" or whatever you need to run as root?
Sudo cannot be like UAC since sudo came first.
Sudo also offers about a bunch of additional features and controls that UAC can't even comprehend. Restricting commands that users can run as root? Check. Grouping commands? Check. Enforcing environment restrictions like requiring a valid tty and dropping non-standard environment variables? Check? Granting commands to groups of users with a single line? Check. Allowing users to edit specific files with sudoedit? Check.
Have you even used sudo?
Windows Vista's performance "problems" have nothing to do with DRM. If you aren't playing back a DRM'd file, then there is no DRM-specific code running, and no penalty of any kind. The idea that Vista had any more DRM code running than Windows XP was a myth propogated mostly buy people who knew it wasn't true, and others who were gullible and believed anything that sounded bad about Vista.
If you don't want DRM, don't buy any DRM'd media. Having support for DRM'd media in the OS (like BluRay / HDCP / etc) has absolutely ZERO impact on people who don't use DRM'd media.
Vista had its issues and they are well understood, there is no reason to make up myths to blame them on.
You are telling me that I should WANT an OS that requires the freaking GPU just to draw the desktop without running like a slug? Really? Let us not forget people: We are talking about an OPERATING SYSTEM here, not the latest bloateware 3D game. I just want the OS to freaking boot and then get the hell out of my way so I can run MY programs. I don't need nor want your "flippin 3D super desktop search live enabled web 3.0" crap in my OS! Just freaking start and move! Is that really so freaking hard?
I ran just about every kind of Vista out there, from beta 1 through SP1. And do you know which one WASN'T a giant resource hogging web 3.0 bloated piggy? A freaking pirated version where they had stripped the living hell out of it so much the entire OS fit onto a CD. I might have stayed with it if the driver support for my hardware didn't suck. Instead I'm using good old ever reliable WinXP Pro. But if Win7 is more of the Vista "We want to be Apple so damned much it hurts!" crap I have a feeling I am going to be running XP for a LONG time. I am just glad I build my own desktops and getting motherboards with 2K/XP drivers is pretty much standard issue.
And if any of the guys from MSFT are reading this: STOP trying to be Apple! If I would have wanted a freaking Apple I would have bought one,okay? You are a business company, NOT a home entertainment company. Make a decent low resource using business OS and stop trying to be "Steve Jobs Jr" because frankly it is embarrassing. Allow me to make a prediction: If you force everyone to get rid of their quicklaunch and taskbar and replace it with a freaking dock(gee, I wonder where you got THAT idea from?) then all you are going to do is severely piss off your customers who will either: Stay with XP,move to a Mac,or go to Linux. And I apologize if this came off a little ranty, but ever since that monkey Ballmer took over it seems like they are going out of their way to destroy themselves trying to be Apple. Vista, Zune,I'm sure others can point out even more Apple envy. They are really turning what was once a solid business OS into a giant media oriented mess. And give up the crazy MPAA DRM already! They are NEVER going to pick you over Apple because EVERYBODY has a freaking iPod!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think you need to read those links again.
Read the description of Redering Tier 2, the highest level of acceleration. The TTF fonts are NOT rendered on the card. Instead, in ClearType mode, the raw pixels are sent to the graphics card in a format representing 3x normal horizontal resolution, and are then edge blended with the existing pixels for a convincing anti-aliased look on LCD displays.
Also note, they're talking only about DX9 there with no mention of DX10, and note the restrictions about what *isn't* accelerated.
Did you perhaps mean to give us a different link with relevant information?
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
How hard is it to open a terminal window (or use a Gnome applet which puts a terminal line on your taskbar) and type "sudo system-config-display" or whatever you need to run as root?
How hard is it to click a button when the UAC UI pops up? Still we have a lot of bitching about it going on. Users, especially non-power users, don't like anything that gets in their way of installing smileys.exe
This space for rent.
Not really, although I'm betting that's your whole point.
IMHO MS just "doesn't get it" and is doing stupid things by design, maybe the problem is too much "design by committee" or something.
The problem with Vista / Win7 / etc. wasn't that they tried to do TOO MUCH, it's that they tried to to TOO LITTLE. They're about 10 years BEHIND the current hardware (the mainstream CPU has been '64 bit' for YEARS even on low end parts). Given Moore's law it'll be even more pathetically inadequate in 2009/2010 when we're supposedly to be using Win7. By then we'll have at least cheap 16GB RAM, 64GB SSDs, 2TB HDDs for a song, 8 core 64 GFLOP CPUs, 2 TFLOP GPUs, better HD screens, 4Mbit/s+ broadband into more and more houses, and still we'll be stuck with .... notepad .... and corrupted registries and driver cleaner / crap cleaner / applications that won't install / uninstall / backup / transfer properly most of which being 32 bit.
Now for netbooks / mobile internet devices, OK, yes, for those, design a lean efficient low bloat OS. That is not the same product as your desktop / laptop offering.
I have relatively little problem with 'bloat' if it gets me major new generations of CAPABILITIES. Wake up, the HARDWARE we use today is LIGHT YEARS ahead of the SOFTWARE's capabilities to even USE it in 99% of the cases. Lack of 64 bit applications and applications that intelligently use RAM is one example -- 8GB of RAM costs as little as $40 today. Every one of my family's desktops has 8GB installed now, and if it wasn't for the stupid limitations of the motherboard / chipset, I'd have put 16GB or 32GB into the heavily used machines for these kinds of (commodity) RAM prices.
My quad core CPU is still something like 90% idle doing most OS / web / desktop stuff even under Vista with all the eye candy on. If I complain about it being *slow* it is probably because it is ALGORITHMICALLY broken in some buggy brain damaged way (like the horrible network throughput when you're playing audio or something) not because it is inherently trying to do something that exceeds the capabilities of my actual hardware given well designed software.
The main problem is that we can't even take good advantage of the multi-gigabytes of RAM, multi-terabytes of disc, multi-cores of CPUs, multi-teraflops of GPUs we have. A typical 'power user' desktop today exceeds the compute / RAM / storage capabilities of a 'supercomputer' in the 1990s, yet we're using a OS design / implementation that is BARELY any better than what we had then -- e.g. NTFS, FAT32, 32 bit OS being the most common, et. al.
I wouldn't care too much if they wrote vast portions of the whole OS in something uber bloated / slow like VB or JAVA as long as the performance critical bits were fast and the overall thing was well designed for reliability, stability, and easy extensibility to take full advantage of the system.
There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like filesystems (say start with ZFS then migrate MOST EVERYTHING to use a full featured relational database model on top of that with MAJOR emphasis on metadata, schema use, RDF, et. al.). There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like BACKUP. Ever had a 1.44 MB floppy or CD go bad on you and lose valuable data? Didn't that suck? The average joe in 2009 will be having 1TB drives! Can you imagine losing a LIFETIME of data in one catastrophic event -- ALL your family pictures / movies from maybe 3 generations of family, ALL your documents, ALL your personal files, et. al.? That's going to be a common occurrence due to viruses, hardware failure, or whatever, and the OSs like VISTA are just PATHETICALLY mis-designed to help people manage their storage / data / metadata, do backups, do searches, synchronize, transfer, etc. -- basically they're beyond uselessly bad at giving storage management resources. Heck not a day goes by that I am not even limited by the silly 128 character 'path length' 'limits' even in the latest VISTA 64.
No, Windows Home Server is not a solution. Forget backwa
--Instead I'm using good old ever reliable WinXP Pro--
I can't believe I'm reading that. I was in the tech support industry when XP came out. It was a *NIGHTMARE*. It seems that MSFT's way of business is to have a product in beta for 3/4 of it's "service life" then when they FINALLY work out all the bugs in the damn thing THEY DON'T SUPPORT IT ANYMORE.
I agree with you on most of your points though. I still miss the days when winblows was exactly what it should be now : AN APPLICATION. Leave the OS to do what it's supposed to be doing...BEING AN OS instead of a one-click bloated pos.
A.A.M
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
Can it copy files from one place to another in a reasonable amount of time now? Without tweaking?
Does the interface still hang for no apparent reason when browsing for files?
Are they still using hard links for the user profile directories?
I've tried Vista several times and as of a few weeks ago, with the latest beta SP, it's still crap at some of most basic things an operating should be good at.... navigation and pushing data around.
"It is called "sudo" and if your theoretical linux games would need root access to install mods as well. Or do you run your linux box as root all the time?"
No, no it's not. It's nothing at all like sudo.
Sure, it pops up a box once in a while asking for extra permissions. That bit is like sudo, or graphical sudo, but that's not all that UAC does, nor is it the annoying bit.
UAC blocks you from running programs at system startup on your own computer. It helpfully says that your administrator has set up a system policy to disallow it (lies). And I'm buggered if I can find a way to allow things to run that windows hasn't decided *on its own* that I'm not supposed to.
Add to that the pissing annoying virtual store technology that silently redirects activity aimed at files under Program Files to a directory under the user's private data area, without telling/warning/stopping anyone and screwing up multi-user uses of the machine (other users see a different version of the file). It doesn't ask for root, it just makes a total fucking mess. If they wanted to have restricted areas maybe they should investigate some goddamn file permissions. There is no dialog. It's a SILENT process that screws a lot of stuff up.
UAC sucks balls and is NOT like sudo.
As for the rest, if you couldn't function as a normal user in linux until graphical sudo came along, well, you were doing it wrong. Consider it a test, if you can't figure out how to go to a prompt and type sudo then perhaps you shouldn't be allowed near a computer.
UAC pops up asking you to elevate to delete a shortcut on the desktop, and then annoys you a SECOND time, asking if you're really sure you want to delete it. In Linux, you don't need root to delete a shortcut from your desktop.
You misunderstand why the UAC dialog pops up. It's not the act of deleting the icon from your desktop. That doesn't require admin privs. What you fail to realize is that is a side effect of a feature of Windows called a "common desktop". Icons in the common desktop are shared with all accounts, they are meged with the icons in the users profile to create a single view.
If you delete an icon from only your set of icons, no elevation is required. If you delete an icon from the shared desktop elevation is required because it affects multiple user accounts. The same feature exists for the start menu, in which you can have "shared" and "non-shared" shortcuts. You can delete the non-shared ones without elevation, but you can't delete the shared ones.
I find the majority of people are like you. They simply don't understand why the UAC prompt is coming up. Perhaps that's a failure of Microsoft's, but one user should not be able to affect other users without elevating privilegs. It's working the way it's supposed to.
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You are telling me that there is no performance improvement in having a *graphics card* handle *graphics* instead of a CPU?
When the CPU runs at 3+ Ghz and the graphic in question is a 2 Mpx, simple 2D image? fuck no, there isn't. The difference in performance only starts when you add the idiotic extra 'flash', but no modern (or even not-so-modern) computer should have any trouble displaying a Win2K-like interface regardless of the GPU.
We have powerful video cards these days and only a fool wouldn't exploit them to speed up the windowing system. Me thinks some are too blinded by hate and narrow imagination to appreciate cool things.
Not all of us *have* powerful video cards, and despite your own blind hate and narrow imagination, plenty of us prefer simpler interfaces rather than the garish piece of shit that's Vista's default theme.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Ha! Shows just how little you understand the Linux ecosystem. If Linux based desktop technologies were proprietary; produced and promoted by a single company then MS would have every chance of killing them off: but they aren't. The desktop environments that front the Linux base (Gnome and KDE) are Open Source. Nothing can kill them bar lack of developer interest, and the two main candidates are alive, healthy and kicking. They will keep plodding on, growing, improving and snapping at MS's heals year after year after year. They are relentless and will not stop: not EVER. And this is a GOOD thing. It will keep MS (and Apple for that matter) on their toes and will force them to push their boundaries. Because if they stop for too long then they'll get caught and overtaken. Conversely, the more MS (and Apple) innovate, the more it inspires the likes of Gnome and KDE. All this means is that year on year, the choices you and I have as users get better and more interesting. We are the ones who ultimately benefit from all this. So all hail the Desktop wars, and long may they continue!
EXACTLY! I tried Server 2K8 and I was like "Why? Why in the hell can't you just add a basic GUI on top of this and sell it to business users for the desktop? Why?" It is low resource,doesn't have tons of bloated multimedia junk that has NO business being in a business OS, and runs solid as a rock. So why can't those of use who just want to get our work done buy this on a machine without shelling out insane money for a server license? Why?
And as for the one who marked me troll, accept it: Vista is a flop. It is a giant festering turd of fail that the general public can't get away from fast enough. Why do you think EVERY single ad we see and every blog is either "I'm a PC" or Win7? Because MSFT knows that wasting more money on Vista is pointless because the public has spoken and they don't want it. For those of you that have gotten Vista to work or like it,congratulations! You are in the minority! I have sold more machines in this past year and a half and built more custom PCs than I have in the 15 years I have been in PC repair. Why? Because folks are happy to shell out extra money to me so they DON'T have to take Vista. I have been working with MSFT products since the days of Win3.1 and I have NEVER seen folks go so far out of their way to avoid a MSFT OS, even during the horror that was WinME.
Sadly from what I have seen of Win7 instead of learning from their mistakes and going back to their roots and making a solid, backwards compatible, low resource business OS they are instead going to pile even MORE bling bling on top and then really insult the customers by getting rid of quicklaunch and replacing it with an Apple Dock which they will probably screw up on the implementation anyway. I swear if I didn't know any better I would think Ballmer was trying to burn the company down on purpose. I just don't get who exactly they are trying to please. The home users HATE change, the gamers want an OS that sucks as little CPU and GPU as possible to give them better FPS and the business owners want low resource usage so they don't need expensive hardware along with backwards compatibility with all their old business apps. So who exactly are they pleasing with this desire to copy all things Apple? Because from the way my customers are happy to shell out for even older off lease business machines just so they can have XP over Vista it sure ain't them.
The one nice thing about all this is we may finally see real competition brought back into the OS market like we had in the 80's. Because I have the sinking feeling that Win7 is going to make MSFT customers run away even worse than Vista did. Oh, and before someone points out the Vista sales numbers please note that ALL Vista downgrades are counted NOT as an XP purchase but as a Vista sale. And you know it is popular when even Tigerdirect is using "Includes XP Downgrade rights!!" in giant letters as a selling point.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now that's offtopic for saying the parent was on topic, and the parent is fixed by labeling him a troll.
Yep, the mod system is here for your amusement.
Settle down, man. This is just another "Mojave" commercial.
Uuuh.....did you actually bother to READ my other post? I said Server 2K8 was a GREAT OS and that they should have put a WinNT style GUI on top of THAT and sold it as a business desktop instead of the nightmare of a home OS that is Vista. Now can you HONESTLY tell me that you think Vista was built with the business user in mind? Up until now they took a rock solid business OS and then stripped out a few business centric add ons and you had the home version(like XP Pro and Home) or they took a great server OS like Win2K server and simply stripped it down to make a rock solid basic desktop like Win2K Pro. This is the first time we have seen them try to shovel a HOME operating system onto the business user. Is there anyone who can look at Vista and think it was built for anything OTHER than multimedia? Hell the thing has bling bling coming out its butt!
And I haven't actually bought a retail machine in ages BTW. All my operating systems are retail or OEM and I build the hardware myself. If I need a laptop it boots long enough to see that the hardware works and get imaged in case I need to return it then it is wiped-no exceptions. And believe me I know about having to tweak a MSFT OS, it comes with the turf. Hell I still have the DOS commands for Win9x to copy the CD and install from HDD memorized. And while the machine I used for Vista wasn't anything top of the line, it should have been MORE than enough to handle it. let us not forget we are talking about an OS, not an application. I shut down UAC, I turned off indexing, I downloaded and ran every Vista tweaking utility I could find as well as editing the reg with suggestions from every Vista tweaks site I could find. What did I get on this 3.6GHz P4 with 2Gb of RAM and a 6200 followed by a 7600 graphics card?
Slow as a slug, hell it reminded me of the days when folks would put Win95 on a 286, it was that painful. A HDD that thrashed all the time and finally gave out from the strain, a network that would die if you looked at it funny, file transfers that were awful(and this was after SP1, before SP1 I would burn a DVD to move a file 3 feet because the network was too damned slow), freezes for 10-25 seconds for no damned reason whatsoever,2 or 3 times a week it would either BSOD or just vaporlock,hell I could probably go on all day. And from talking with my customers and checking forums I know that I am FAR from alone. Compare that to the SAME hardware on XP SP3-under 45 second boot from cold, extremely responsive, fast network transfers, not a single loss of connectivity or a single BSOD, no freezes, no thrashing, just a well functioning stable OS.
I have owned, ran, sold, and fixed every MSFT OS since Win3.1. And i REALLY wanted to like Vista, I really really did. This isn't some Linux or Apple zealot trying to spread FUD here. I even ran the beta hoping that I could help fix the bugs and make it a better OS. But they didn't build an OS for me. They didn't build an OS for the business users, or the gamers, or even the home users, because they HATE change. No, they built an OS for those inside MSFT that want to take over Apple's turf, and frankly it shows. Vista is an OS that IMHO just screams "I can be as cool as an Apple Mac! No really I can!". The problems with that are MSFT customers didn't want an Apple, they just wanted a new Windows, Apple knows how to have pretty without dragging down the OS and MSFT don't, MSFT owes a LOT to business customers who they frankly burned real bad with the lousy backwards compatibility and high hardware requirements of Vista, and finally that the home users absolutely HATE change and Vista is frankly change for change sake.
I truly hope they change for Win7, I really do. I hope they put out a low resource, rock solid stable business OS instead of seeing posts all over the place on how to turn Server 2K8 into a desktop just so you can have a MSFT business OS. But from what I have seen of the beta it screams "But I REALLY can be a Mac this time! I Promise!", and if they are going to force me to run a Mac clone anyway then why the hell shouldn't I just get a Mac?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Get Vista running on a DX9 capable machine.
Open up a reasonable number of apps, with windows scattered around the screen. For extra credit, have them being actually animating something (video playback, whatever)
Open up Task Manager and look at the CPU utilization bars.
Turn off Aero Glass
Grab a big foreground window and shake it like crazy over your other windows.
Turn Aero Glass back on
Repeat shake
Note that without Aero Glass you get a huge CPU spike due to all the rendering that doesn't get offloaded to the CPU, while with Aero Glass you won't see a similar spike in CPU activity.
My video compression blog
The OS does no checking on files you work with. Windows Media Player will of course check media files you play to see if they are DRM'd, just as every media player does. This is part of the process by which it determines the media format type, i.e. is it an MP3? A WMA? A DRM'd WMA? This works exactly the same on Vista as on XP, and is the same sort of check iTunes and other apps do. There is no overhead here beyond that required to determine the difference between an MP3 and a WMA, and it only occurs at the time a file is loaded.
What Vista provides above and beyond XP is something called Protected Media Path. This is similar to Windows XP's Certified Output Protection Protocol, but more sophisticated.
Protected Media Path allows for a great many possible restrictions on both audio and video output, including those defined by HDCP. And since it is a protected process, it allows decoders to be run in a context that prevents them from being manipulated or attacked (i.e. having their memory scanned for secret keys and such). Whether there is any overhead for using PMP to host your decoder is debateable, if there is any it should be negligible at worst. It's the same code running, whether it runs in your app's process or in mfpmp.exe instead. Yes there's IPC overhead, but lots of media player do out-of-proc hosting anyway so that a bad decoder won't crash the media player and to dodge certain security issues like heap spraying attacks.
What's important, though, is that this is an API that applications *CAN* use, not something that is imposed on applications or users. The Protected Media Path code will only get loaded and used if an application specifically calls MFCreatePMPMediaSession. It will cause the application-provided code to be hosted inside the protected process (mfpmp.exe). You won't see mfpmp.exe running unless an application has specifically invoked it via that API call - which would most likely happen because you are playing a BluRay disc with a player that has decided to make use of PMP.
Windows Media Player on Vista does use PMP for all media decoding, and suffers no ill effects from it. However, you do have a problem with it, just use Winamp or some other player that doesn't invoke PMP.
Like I said, having the support for DRM or output protections like HDCP won't affect you at all if you don't use media (or applications) that request or require that support. It just allows developers to run their code in a protected space and place what restrictions they want on their content. It make no determination about whether such restrictions are necessary, wise, or just. It's just an API. APIs can be used for good or for evil, if you have a problem with how a BluRay app uses the PMP API, then complain to Sony or the app developer =)