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Ballmer Sets Loose Windows 7 Public Beta At CES
CWmike writes "The rumors turned out to be true. Microsoft will release a public beta this week of its next desktop operating system, Windows 7, hoping it will
address the problems that have made Windows Vista perhaps the least popular OS in its history. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will launch the beta during his speech at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Preston Gralla reviewed Windows 7 beta 1, noting 'Fast and stable, Beta 1 of Windows 7 unveils some intriguing user-interface improvements, including the much-anticipated new task bar.' MSDN and Technet subscribers should be able to get the public data tonight. The general public will have to wait until Friday."
If it weren't for his grating voice, they could sell that video as a sleep aid.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...or doesn't it count because no one even tried to take it seriously?
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
Early reports say that no audience members were injured at today's CES, a rare occurrence for a Ballmer speech.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Balmer is a looser.
Hardly. If anything, it's the *most* popular. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean that something is liked, but having a lot of people dislike something as in the case of Vista means it's pretty damn popular. Just not for the reasons you'd like. It's easy to tell which is the least popular Windows ever: Windows 1.0. (It would be Microsoft Bob, except that's not actually "Windows".)
However, even for the "most hated" award, it's a tight race between ME and Vista. I'd say the hatred of ME is more intense, while the hate for Vista is more widespread.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
So the bulk of the article gushes all over the taskbar, with a bit of Aero thrown in...
Are the pundits so brain dead that they don't know the difference between an OS and a UI? A taskbar is not an OS.
The koolaid must be good.....
I want to hear what they did with the DRM. I want to hear what they've done to make the system more stable under load. I want to hear that they now have a package manager, instead of DLL hell. I want to hear that drivers now ship with the OS, and I don't have to install 70 MB of bloatware just to "install" a keyboard.
Oh wait, but look at that icon on the taskbar..... Slurp, slurp, damn that koolaid tastes good.
I, for one, won't sign up until it's given a cool name like 'Moab', 'Durango', or 'Rumplestilskin' and a slick marketing campaign designed to fool me into upgrading.
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
So, Vista failed because they didn't provide a public beta for it?
Did you read two words of the summary to interpret its meaning? They are releasing a public beta AND hoping to address the problems. That's like replying to "Microsoft hired 3 new programmers to work on Windows 7" with "Didn't they hire programmers to work on Vista?"
Whale
Honestly, that title just invokes thoughts of Gandalf sitting there saying "Escaped? Or was set loose?" Followed by a freakly looking Windows 7 Beta slinking around in the shadows.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I love UAC. On XP, I used to have to de-malware my [anonymized family member]'s computer every couple of months. On Vista, I'm watching them use their machine, and UAC pops up with some spyware wanting to install. Box read, permission declined, no infestation I have to clean up.
Again, it works great for me!
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Here is a Computerworld article that states MS may give away free Windows 7 upgrades to those who purchased Vista after July 1st.
http://linksubmit.net/?8e8296
~ Ron Fitzgerald
By the look of it, they have fired their entire R&D team and using betas of kde 4.2 instead.
Actually, they did provide a public beta for Windows Vista. I was pretty excited to get the next version of Windows to "beta test" before it was released. The whole "oooh new and shiny" factor.
But, the nice thing about the "resource intensive" API is that it actually uses your video card. Running Vista on a repurposed workstation at work, Aero without glass performs better than the software-only "classic" mode. (Though, this is anecdotal. The machine has 768 MB of RAM and an older Pentium 4.)
The funny thing is Vista tries to put the hardware you have to use. Have 8 GB of RAM? It'll use the unallocated memory to cache programs. Have a discrete graphics card? It'll be virtualized and time slices doled out to applications. Have System Idle Process running at 99% 'cuz your CPU is bored? It'll index files, or defrag your disk (if your disk is also idle.)
But, using hardware that would otherwise be idle is "resource intensive." It's a matter of perspective.
+1 rambling for me? I'd settle for a cookie.
DATABASE WOW WOW
From what I understand, Windows 7 is Vista with some GUI improvement, significant performance enhancements, and new features. It's not a rewrite. It doesn't break backward compatibility. It doesn't solve the 32-bit 64-bit dilemma that both Linux and OS X are addressing. It doesn't eliminate the behaviour of configuring user accounts to be admin/root by default. It also doesn't force application developers to break old habits.
It's definitely an improvement over Vista, but Microsoft is bound by backward compatibility requirements to keep shipping OS's that are fundamentally broken and that do not allow for 32-bit apps and drivers to run out of one 64-bit OS.
They missed a golden opportunity to fix these problems to keep their OS relevant in terms of keeping up with OS technology.
This space left intentionally blank.
A few audience members had scorched retinas from the spotlights reflecting off Ballmer's head. Ballmer says a new coat of turtle wax was to blame.
'To protect your MP3 files' - uhm, wtf?!
Microsoft isn't rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Vista is soaring! If anything, Microsoft is rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg!
(With apologies to Stephen Colbert.)
But most everybody using a computer is worried about spyware and viruses. UAC requires user education. You need to train your users (family, friends, etc) that when you see a UAC dialog, they better think. Tell them they should never see that dialog unless they are *installing* a program they bought (or downloaded). Train them to be nervous and worried about UAC dialogs... they should never see one unless they are installing software. It will encourage them to call you when one shows up.
UAC + user training = way better then XP. Your family can install crap easily, and they will call you before they do (so you can talk them out of installing yet another damn toolbar). Win win.
But at least Vista now keeps track of when users install stuff - this has made my life easier several times:
Family member: "My computer is getting pop-ups all the time"
Me: "Did you install anything recently?"
fm: "No."
Me: "It says here you installed on , just before you started complaining about things"
fm: "Well, yes, there was that. But that was supposed to make things better."
me: "...."
Speaking absolute numbers, any software company in the world would be thrilled to sell ~10 million copies of their flagship product every month. So before you call Vista "unpopular" I'd like to ask: "Compared to what?"
Any company except Microsoft. As to your question: compared to XP, obviously, but more importantly to the rate at which the newest Windows replaces the old one. This one's not getting traction.
From a quick look online, it looks like Vista sold less total units than XP in the first 6 months, which is appalling since the total number of installed computers increased a great deal. Additionally, XP is still killing Vista for business sales as of 2008, two years after Vista was launched. And you can't trust MS's numbers, because the XP boxes they're selling now come with Vista licenses and XP pre-loaded, which they do so they can try to inflate their Vista numbers.
Going back to the story, Vista is so good that Microsoft has to run a "Project Mojave" campaign to convince people Vista doesn't suck. It's so good that Microsoft won't even mention it by name and are rushing it's replacement out the door as quickly as possible.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Vista-struggling-to-match-XP-sales/0,130061733,339282002,00.htm
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205210375
http://apcmag.com/xp_still_killing_vista_in_sales_volume_hp.htm
Point taken, but, to be fair, Bob wasn't exactly an operating system. It was an alternate shell for Windows 3.1 and 95.
In all honesty, I find Windows 1.0 to be the least functional of all of Microsoft's operating systems. But the bar wasn't very high back then, so I don't think its really in the running for "least popular." MS-DOS 4.0 (not 4.01) is also definitely in the running for "buggiest software ever released by Microsoft," but that's another story....
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
You want an analogy that isn't a car analogy? You've got your "the OS is just a wrapper around the BIOS. Applications should do whatever they want" folk. These are the tech equivalent of "government is the root of all problems, remove it from everything"... call them Regan republicans or perhaps Ron Paul style republicans.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the "your OS should do pretty much everything, applications aren't able to making proper decisions without OS intervention". Are these guys the far-left who want government to do everything? Are these guys the tech version of socialists? Dunno.
And if you want my opinion, the OS is more then a shim around the bios. Operating systems (like the government) had to evolve to meet the needs of a growing, more complex set of applications and requirements (ditto with our governments). Going back to a "pure" operating system that just wraps the Bios and presents a green console just wouldn't work, same with going back to a razor thin US federal government. The OS needs to enforce rules and needs to dictate what applications (citizens) can and cannot do or else the whole thing will fail.
On the other hand, if you let the operating system do too much, you will piss off your developers and worse, probably piss off various governments (think anti-trust). Let your government get too big, you'll piss off the citizens and worse, risk bankruptcy.
I'll let somebody else flesh this out.
New Task Bar? Do the words "Titanic" and "rearranging the deckchairs" come to mind here?
I think the phrase "rearranging the deckchairs" comes to mind ANY time Balmer is involved.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4632931/Microsoft.Windows.7.Beta.1.Build.7000.x64.DVD-WinBeta
You'd think so, but it's actually not true. I find it amazing myself, but UAC actually works. I work at a PC phone support center, and we get tons of calls about computers infected with Antivirus 2009/Antivirus Pro/etc. Out of the dozens (if not hundreds) of these calls I've taken over the last few months, I got exactly one call about a Vista machine that was infected. A good 99%+ of those calls we get are for infected XP machines, and I can guarantee you XP does not have 99x the marketshare of Vista, by any measurement. I also had another call where the caller had gotten a popup that would have infected her computer, and she believed the popup and pressed "scan". Only problem for the malware was, the next screen she got was a "continue or cancel" screen from UAC, and that apparently scared her more than the panic popup had, and she clicked cancel.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Seriously, Microsoft is right about one thing: if you set people down in front of Vista and dont' tell them it's Vista, they love it. Tell them it's Vista, and they hate it.
People are PRIMED to hate the OS based on the name and based on really over-blown and inaccurate Apple ads, and really bad experiences SOME users had in the first year (due to the "Vista Capable" debacle mostly).
Since SP1, Vista has been very usable. I've been using it almost since it came out, and it's a perfectly decent OS. In fact, I sorta hate going back to XP now... I miss too many good things about Vista, like the instant search features, new Start menu, and just some of the look and feel.
Nobody seems to remember how much people HATED the old "XP" when it first came out. It didn't really become popular until SP2 was released.
Most of the anti-Vista sentiment is simply irrational and baseless.
Are there some things not to like? Sure. I turn off UAC immediately. There are a few quirks in the new Windows Explorer that I don't like (and which seem to be unchanged in Windows 7). But really, beyond that? It's much more stable, and full featured than XP, and it looks a hell of a lot better. Yeah, it's a memory pig, but I run with plenty of memory for my needs, and have no problems. And after 2 years of use, it's "slowed down" far less than comparable XP machines have (the old "Windows Decay" problem).
Am I looking forward to Windows 7? Definitely. It seems to fix the memory-pig and performance issues that Vista admittedly does have (a bigger issue on laptops than my desktop), but the fact will remain that it's little more than Vista with some spit and polish... and everyone will love it because it's "not Vista".
Vista-hate is getting to be tedious and facile, and it really is more psychological than real.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
No operating system requires defrag. The OS is not what you defrag. All filesystems fragment over time. NTFS more than others. It is a popular myth that you never need to defrag a linux box. It's just that the fragmentation is slower. Much slower. Sure, when it comes to when-you-need-to-defrag, Linux is usually better than Windows, but this doesn't mean a Windows PC is the only one that ever needs defrag.
Yeah, that's what I thought too. Who gives a flying crap (other than Preston Gralla obviously) about a taskbar?
I do, actually. It seems at first like a huge rip-off of Mac OS X's dock, and Microsoft is nothing if not consistent about trying to rip-off Apple.
However, after now having seen some videos of it, I've gone from fear and loathing to interest and appreciation. It looks like MS somehow learned from all the horrible mistakes of Mac OS X's dock and made their new taskbar act like the dock should have. Icons stay in place and don't dance around requiring you to hunt for things. Separation between different apps is easily visible, and the use of color makes it easy to tell what you're hovering over without having to look directly at it. Multiple windows from the same app are grouped together instead of creating clutter. There is clear separation between active apps (in the bar) and the list of apps you'd like to run (in the Start menu).
It brings tears to my eyes. I've hated Mac OS X's dock from the first day I had to use it. As a Classic Mac OS user, I missed my pop-up folders, my segregated menus, and having all my stuff stay in place so that I could click it without looking or even really thinking about it. I bemoaned how with Mac OS X and its "lickable" Aqua interface, Apple was putting flash over functionality when better UI was the whole reason I was a Mac user in the first place.
This jaded old Mac user who has moved to using the command prompt to do everything out of hatred for the new Finder and dock feels something akin to warmth for an MS product for the first time. *sniff*
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In all honesty, I find Windows 1.0 to be the least functional of all of Microsoft's operating systems. But the bar wasn't very high back then
I wouldn't say that. Us Amiga owners were using preemptive multitasking and virtual desktops that year, and Mac guys had a pretty nice system of their own.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
They've...taken Vista, polished it up and threw in some nice UI tweaks...It's much snappier, and I really like the facelift given to apps like Paint and Wordpad
Well, we couldn't ask for a more compelling review than that! I don't care what people say about 64 bits, UAC, DRM, or corrupted mp3's. Paint and Wordpad have always been there for me!~
Sudo is a different beast then UAC to some degree. It lets the admin control what programs can get elevated (/etc/sudoers). Ubuntu doesn't tap into all the crap you can do with sudo. It just does what UAC does... pop up a dialog to confirm privilege escalation, then run said program under the requested privileges. Well, only kinda.
Windows (.NET anyway) lets the program specify what privileges it needs to run under and which privileges are merely a luxury. .NET will run the program under only the privileges the application has asked for. I've yet to actually need this kind of stuff so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but it is my understanding the application has to request UAC, Vista doesn't just monitor the programs interaction and go "hey, this guy wants to write to a protected file, lets pop up a UAC and ask". Any program that doesn't request a UAC dialog and tries to write to a protected file will get a permission error.
What is my point? You are incorrect saying "not because I visited a website, or because I connected a photo frame to my PC. It also doesn't happen every time that I need those privileges". Vista will not pop up a UAC dialog in any of those cases (have you used it?). If it does, some software you have installed is trying to pull some seriously fucked up shit and obviously you should "cancel".
... Microsoft is bound by backward compatibility requirements to keep shipping OS's that are fundamentally broken and that do not allow for 32-bit apps and drivers to run out of one 64-bit OS.
Here's a run-down on Windows and Apple's 64-bit support on the desktop:
As you can see, Microsoft has been clearly in front of Apple regarding 64-bit application support. The fact that Apple did not support graphical 64-bit applications until October 2007 is frankly embarrassing, considering that 64-bit Windows has had this support since the first 64-bit OS in 2001.
It should also be noted that Microsoft was really important in bringing AMD64 (x64) to market. Intel was dragging its feet with Itanium, issuing press releases downplaying Itanium on the desktop, stating that 64-bit computing only made sense for servers. Microsoft's David Cutler reportedly went to Intel, asking them to introduce a set of 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set. Intel refused. So Dave started working with AMD, and in 2004 the AMD64 Hammer CPU was born. Intel was basically forced to come out with an AMD64 clone they dubbed "EMT64", about 6 months later. It is unlikely that Intel would have supported x64 unless Microsoft had agreed to support the new AMD CPU. Dave Cutler reportedly had Server 2003 running on the Hammer prototype a few hours after receiving it.
You can still see a remnant of the close AMD relationship on 64-bit Windows by opening a shell and typing "echo %processor_architecture%". Hint: it doesn't say X64.