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Windows 7 To Skip Straight To a Release Candidate
b8fait writes "The head of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows development confirmed that Windows 7 will take the unusual path of moving straight from a single beta, which was launched earlier this month, to a release candidate. Sinofsky fleshed out the plan today and hinted that just as there would be no Beta 2, the company would also not provide a RC2 build. In other words, there may be only one released build of Windows 7 before it ships, possibly much sooner than even some of the most aggressive rumors about Windows 7. How much different can Windows 7 really be with such a shortened beta cycle?"
For what is touted as a major OS release I really can't believe that a single beta can get the job done. Either they are rushing it, or it's really just a minor change to Vista.
... because vista is actually fine
that Microsoft is standing true to their Beta-status software heritage. It's all beta from now on
i hear they're head-hunting some testers from Google, so all should go swimmingly.
SP3.
Ninjas and pirates. How piquant.
Vista was shoved out the door too early without enough time to season. So for their second whack at it, which they've conveniently renamed to disguise the fact that it's a second whack, they're shoving it out the door too early without enough time to season. Consistency is a good thing but not when you're doing it wrong.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Really how much is new? They mostly fixed a lot of problems and restructured some things. Normally it'd be a major service pack release but they need a name change to get ride of the Vista name stigma. Classic marketing ploy if all else fails rename it.
Windows 7 is mostly a marketing play. It should have been Vista SP2 with the usual bunch of very useful cleanups, accelerations and simplifications (i.e. what Vista should have been).
However, the name Vista is now such a disaster that they had to change the name.
I always thought that "Release Candidate" was english, meaning that it is a candidate for release? How can they then know how many such candidates that will fail to be release quality before hand?
If Microsoft skips a decent beta then either they don't put much value on beta testing anymore, or they are so eager to leave the Vista debacle behind that they are willing to put a RTM (Release To Manufacturing) sticker on beta-quality code.
This will make all Microsoft users beta testers, and Win7 SP1 will be the real release version
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Not very different. Face it, Windows 7 is simply Windows Vista SP3. Microsoft just can't call it that because of the bad reputation Vista gained thanks to MS's mishandling and misapprehension of what users actually want. What we're seeing isn't a shortened beta cycle for Windows 7, it's a longer-than-usual testing/beta cycle for a service pack.
I'm using the Windows 7 Beta right now, and previously I've been using Windows Vista.
Is it really that much better? Here are the points I can think of it being better than Vista:
* Faster on Less Hardware - They did make it work better on older slower hardware with less memory.
* Less Annoying User Account Control - It doesn't freak out every time I want to run a program from the desktop. This should be included into Vista with a service pack, imho.
* New Starbar - I like it. Good Job Microsoft. But is it worth the upgrade?
Other than these things... why would anybody upgrade?
Oh... yeah, that's right... Everybody says it's "So much better." Right.
--Pathway
If you knew you weren't going to release RC1, in what sense is it a release candidate?
-Dave
They've had two years to work on it so far, and this operating system does look a heck of a lot better than vista, with lots of new features and improvements. Doesn't seem unreasonable that they can pull out a decent new release in two years time. They really dropped the ball with vista's development, essentially having to start it over from scratch. That was just poor management. With a team as large as microsoft has, I see no reason why they can't get an OS release out in 2-3 years.
Now before someone clicks the link and says "but they don't have that menu anymore in Windows 7, the display settings page has been changed", let me say there are other areas (like the LAN connection status window, among about 5 others) where they still chose this lazy/bad design route.
I'm not one to fuss much about UI design (I'm perfectly happy with the Windows standard theme from way back in '95), but there are still parts of the OS where they simply split apart a window with tabs in it, didn't even bother removing the tabs, and dumped it into it's own window. The result is something
like this.
Ugly. If they would fix that, I would be perfectly happy with 7.
(On an unrelated note, my friend playing WoW, who would get about dips to ~30FPS on XP in Dalaran, gets dips only to ~45 in Windows 7, with the exact same visual settings. Impressive!)
on beta-quality code.
Well...At least it's a step forward for them then.
How much different can Windows 7 really be with such a shortened beta cycle?
Didn't Apple release System7 about two decades ago? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7 So... Microsoft is a bit behind the times, huh?
They're skipping the release candidate and going straight to SP2.
Vista was the beta.
Of course they're trying to rush the release of Windows 7, Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" is right around the corner.
I guess that Apple ad about Microsoft putting all their money into marketing instead of R&D was closer to truth than some people would like to believe.
Microsoft is slowly flushing its OS down the drain. Rushing to put out another Vista? All they need to do now is push up the date to terminate XP support and Piss off the rest of the windows users. Everyone in my circle of friends is switching to Ubuntu in mass.What is the future going to look like for Microsoft if W7 is just another Vista flop?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I seem to recall a similar thing happened with a piece of gaming hardware they put out and it end up costing them a lot of money.
There's been a speculation on the Mini-Microsoft blog about layoffs hitting the Windows team after 7 ships. This could partly explain why only 1400 of the 5000 announced layoffs were said to have been notified immediately.
Someone posted a comment to the effect that, being self-interested, people the Windows dev team should react by dragging out the process as long as possible, hopefully not shipping until the economy starts recovering.
or is this O/S only meant for "ordinary people" who have neither the ability to discern quality product, nor the option of choosing anything else (linux aside, but that's a different topic)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Windows 7 is likely more aimed at XP users and people considering the unreasonably expensive switch to Mac.
I don't think it's really aiming to be the next big upgrade for Vista users, although I believe it will be anyway.
If you want to consider Windows 7 a SP, that's not a bad call, since it's built on Vista's backend directly. It's really an overhauled and re-imagined userland which really does warrant a version change. It doesn't act like prior Windows so it is fair to call it a new system, for user's sake.
I've been using the Beta for a while and it isn't a beta like say... an Ubuntu beta. This is a beta of a quality the open source world cannot obtain. We call this a release in linuxland. For this reason, I don't think there's anything strange about them aiming for a single RC.
Alternatively, this could easily be a case of an upgraded installer/software update tool rendering it unnecessary to separate RC releases. They might just upgrade the RC if they need another one.
I think the marketing angle on this is that Windows 7 is correct by design. Besides, Apple releases new versions of OS X that are basically service packs at full price all the time, and they don't even have large public betas. Consider that Microsoft has a far larger and more effective QA system internally than Apple. They CAN release like this-- they've got an army of internal testers aside from the millions of beta testers out there.
They just polished Vista, which didn't sell, for Windows 7, that won't sell either.
Microsoft era is over, in case it wasn't clear. Don't get me wrong, they will continue to drag and make money for another decade, but their significance as a company able to drive and push new exciting technology has been slowly and painfully fading since around 1998.
Oh well, time to move on for the Paper Hat Windows crowd.
This will make all Microsoft users beta testers, and Win7 SP1 will be the real release version
Just like Vista, only Vista had 2 additional test releases first. Sounds like its going to work fine.. :)
...just like KDE reached 4.2 and only now it got into beta status.
I@ be_en wri%tting c0de f$r Micr0s0ft f*r yea))s(send*)
They can basically replace an unpopular product and hope to get some bump in marketshare out of it?
Vista is the "New Coke" to XP's Coca-Cola, and 7 is "Coca-Cola Classic."
Maybe I'm just jaded/cynical, but isn't this a bit too convenient? MS goes from taking 6+ years developing a bloated, buggy, annoying OS to releasing a suspiciously stable, fast and well-supported OS in less than 2?
I've been using Windows 7 on my Thinkpad for the last three weeks or so, and I've got a laundry list of bugs, issues and comments, and ironically one of the things that's broken in the beta release is the fucking "send feedback" feature.
I signed up for Microsoft Connect, and I still don't see any obvious way to submit bug reports. Maybe I have to be using IE or something.
And it's not like I haven't gotten Windows Updates in those three weeks. I think they don't really want any actual feedback. They're getting positive notes from the media, and Windows 7 will undoubtedly be far less reviled than Vista deservedly is, but the public beta has been out for a while; it's not like they could escape the fact that no one can send them bug reports.
I really think the fact that the "Send Feedback" button that's on every single open window in Windows 7 beta does not actually allow feedback to be sent is a deliberate move on the part of Microsoft.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
What a clever way to charge for a service pack to Vista.
1. Sell Crud ... (skip the qa)
2. Create Crud Polish
3.
4. PROFIT
Call me paranoid, though I am concerned, a feeling like I/We are walking or rushing into fog. I cannot shake the feeling that there is something not right with this Windows 7 hype and a rush to release. Has anyone done thorough security tests on Windows 7? I mean yeah Vista is rough around the edges, and enough hater history to keep it in check, but does releasing Windows 7 really put M$ back on track? I have my doubts about all this Windows 7 hype. Like maybe some nasty surprise comes up after everyone jumps on the bandwagon. Something very strange is being built up here. Or maybe its just I'll never leave my WinXP, except for my Linux. Seriously though.
The timing of Windows 7's release being sped up may not help it.
Look at the economy in most countries right now. Many people have either lost their jobs or are fearful for their security. Most firms need maximum productivity with minimum overheads to survive the storm.
Could there be a worse time to launch a new product? Especially when said product is a dubious, at best, improvement on XP. As a home user, and not a gamer, I see no reason whatsoever to switch from XP. For business users, I'm thinking it must be corporate suicide to introduce a new operating system that adds little extra features, and yet has such a different interface that it will require some extra training, and a noticeable decrease in productivity. Never mind the additional cost of licensing and installation.
I simply do not understand how they can possibly think Windows 7 will be successful.
Let's think about this logically (I know, a ridiculous statement at a site where emotions and singular anecdotes trump reason).
Vista was at least 5 years in the making. Windows 7 has been developed since (presumably) 2006. Did you really think that they were going to overhaul everything yet again within that time period? Of course not. 7 is an update to Vista, much in the way that Apple updates OS X every year - a few new features, and more spit-and-polish across the OS. MS probably realized that these massive, long product cycles don't exactly foster accountability in the same way that a more rapid release schedule does. Then again, OSes are not normal applications.
Much to the chagrin of this site, Microsoft's gamble may pay off. Perception is everything in the marketplace. Since Vista's release, more drivers have come out for it, and more software is compatible with it. Consumers won't realize that it is Vista 2.0 - they'll treat it as something new entirely.
Anyway, sorry to intrude with this 'reality' thing.
Windows 7 is mostly a marketing play.
Except you're completely forgetting the whole "hey, we're releasing almost the exact same software, but we're going to charge you for it yet again", play.
Microsoft's taking the bump-the-version-number-and-charge-them-again road, that many of the other big box software companies started taking right before they started to die/get absorbed into other corporate giants.
Of course, by changing a few of the defaults and making Windows 7 the lesser resource hog compared to Vista, it certainly feels different> And by marketing the absolute shit out of it to the tech blogs and writers (that really don't know any better), they get the free pass to sell the same piece of garbage twice.
It's a brilliant business plan. Shame I didn't think of it.
I just read a report that basically all the Windows 7 reviewers were bribed by Microsoft, and their reports are biased. (Yes, included Gizmodo.)
If that is so (and their practices in the past tend to support the idea) then perhaps they have begun to believe their own propaganda.
Meanwhile, XP is still faster. One article suggested this was because Vista and 7 still have all the DRM hooks, which slows down the whole I/O stack massively.
Ubuntu and perhaps ReactOS keep looking better and better...
Let me guess, you're a self-perceived power user? Are you the type that is obsessive about the memory usage of every program you use (how dare those programs use that memory! They think its actually there to be used!) And do you think that task manager actually shows you memory usage?
Anyway, name another OS that you can easily install without any browser or security features. Ubuntu doesn't count, you have to fuss around with apt and start ripping packages out.
Never mind that if Microsoft shipped a version of Windows without IE, the core IE components would still be there, as they are used all across the system for various applications - Help applets, documentation browsing systems (MSDN), and email clients. You cannot impugn this as an architectural flaw without dragging KDE and OS X (I believe) into it as well, because they do the same thing. So, essentially, you're wanting Microsoft to remove iexplore.exe so you can feel like you have a "less bloated" system. The same goes for WMP (which I don't like at all) - the codecs are used all throughout the system, from watching cutscenes in games to viewing videos in web pages. The dream of a fully component-based OS seems like a good idea, but it means that developers can't count on quite as much being installed and available - you'd have to code for the least common denominator or tell users that they need to pull out their OS CD to install a product.
Also, the thought of shipping an OS without a browser is not wise -- how will people download their preferred browser? How will they download ANYTHING? Are you going to get your grandmother on the phone and explain how to use wget? Do you expect ISPs to start shipping out CDs again in this economy?
While I, too, would like a streamlined OS, it isn't going to happen. The whole argument is very much a naively idealistic pout session of why things can't be tailored exactly to your specifications, as if you were the only customer there was. I suppose you can use nLite to cut components out, but have fun diagnosing why some features and products just break silently when you remove components that were never meant to be removed. And Linux suffers from the same thing. You can't even decide what packages you want install when you install Ubuntu now.
Regardless of how perfect or not Windows 7 is, at this point, ANY migration away from XP will be painful... companies often have 6 years~ of invested work in it. The company I work for has a custom "build" of it, with many core DLLs recoded from scratch to change base behavior (with the blessing of MS), our own Linux-like package management system, our own set of registry tweaks, and all around, deep, and often unsupported modifications.
Needless to say, a lot of that stuff will ONLY ever work on Windows XP...it made sense at the time, since XP lived for so long, and we skip every other Windows releases no matter what, but now, thats a LOT of stuff to migrate. We have, even in this time of harsh economic environment, the ressources to do it, and we will. There are plans to switch to Windows 7 already.
But the average company? Thats gonna hurt.
until then, Ninnle is just a nice tech demo.
...no pre-alpha testing this time?
It's not necessarily aimed at XP users. XP is just good enough for a whole lot of people and one reason people people don't want vista is because it was no better in any tangible way to vista (according to the masses). Xp users also realized how they can stay on xp so don't expect current xp users to upgrade.
Perhaps hey should be working I. Vistas back end because vista is a hog compared to xp. Making flashy I objects that DON'T work is not going to help MS much.
Release candidates under windows never made sense to me. Service packs and critical patches.
Screw the marketing. Does it work or not? Apple makes shiny gadgets that work. Ms makes less shiny gadgets that don't work. And how do you measure "effectiveness?". Maybe apple only has to test on proprietary hardware but from a QA standpoint that's a win. I argue that apple's qa is far more effective because re is no question apples products are more stable than MS products. That's my definition of effective.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Ironic: Feedback form works for me. I submitted one for "No text shown in help window during 64-bit install" which is, according to above, what someone said shows "Installing Windows Vista".
Define better: Too subjective. Less UAC prompts = better. Better taskbar = better. Faster on older hardware than Vista = better.
From end-user perspective it is better. Most don't care about behind the scenes. As an IT guy, I can see it's failings and only time can tell if the support I have to provide to my users determines if I think it's "better than Vista". But since I put them on Vista, it's been "better than XP" so YMMV.
I rewrote uname to say I'm running 'Debian Z-XLT-SS-9000'.
Windows 7 is just vista but without a lot of the DRM controls they had hided that makes it painfully slow and make it a marketing failure.
Thats because Windows 7 == Vista with some bloat removed.
UAT's a breeze when your codebase is shrinking.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Why are they skipping so much testing ? Windows 7 is just a service pack to Vista. Its the same shit with some minor tweaks. Thats it, not much more.
Minimal effort only requires minimal testing.
Vista SP2 (or 3): Everyone already using Vista expects it for free
Windows 7: Can charge $249 for this brand spanking new OS
Never mind the additional cost of licensing and installation. I simply do not understand how they can possibly think Windows 7 will be successful.
I recommend to everyone I know not to buy Vista -- and I'll likely do the same for Windows 7. This is not because Vista is bad, or too different, or hard to use. Apple's commercials are manipulative (albeit effective) and Microsoft's inept responses (Seinfeld and Gates, I'm A PC with posterchild for Uncool, Steve Ballmer, screaming like an enraged ape) are embarrassing. But Vista is an adequate improvement in appearance and seems stable enough, despite needing just as much critical patching every week as Windows XP.
My objection to Vista -- and to Windows 7 -- is the licensing strategy.
With MS Windows XP and all preceding versions of Windows, I have been able to install the OS on each new computer that I purchased as I upgraded my hardware. I always purchase and register my commercial software.
When I buy OS X, I can install it on my Apple computer and ever future Apple computer that I will buy. I don't even need a key. I can upgrade my hardware without having to pay Apple again, or to call them and advise them that I am upgrading my computer. This makes my life easy.
One can of course install a Linux distribution anywhere, anytime. OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and others are very easy to install and to use.
But when you buy Vista, you buy a registration key only. This key cannot be re-used more than twice. (OEM Vista cannot be re-used at all, I understand.) I am not going to pay for MS Windows Vista every time I upgrade my computer. I'm not going to telephone Mr Ballmer and asking for permission to put his product on my computer. And since I do not intend to use Vista or Windows 7 illegally, I will simply have to stop using it.
Fortunately, for me, there are better alternatives to MS Windows today. I feel sorry for the users who are locked into the Microsoft Cycle Of Misery and can't -- or won't -- escape.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Windows 7 is to Windows Vista as Windows 98 SE is to Windows 98.
Microsoft is good at selling a repaired version of the original software at full price. I don't know any other business that can successfully release a broken product and then charge their customers full price for what essentially amounts to a product upgrade. Only lawyers get more money for less.
Oh Mojave! Oh Mojave! Common sing it peoples!
It just can't be. It not possible to fix Vista defects in this short time. Writing a new OS would take lesser time and that's what they have done. Seriously.
Eclipse PDE and Me
As you note, the perception in the marketplace is that "Vista sucks."
Microsoft marketing can leverage this by focusing their effort on Microsoft Internal and messaging key topics such as:
This should help the marketing department achieve its goals.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I think that's just about all I have to say about that. :)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Windows 7 is mostly a marketing play. It should have been Vista SP2 with the usual bunch of very useful cleanups, accelerations and simplifications (i.e. what Vista should have been).
However, the name Vista is now such a disaster that they had to change the name.
I thought they did change the name.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
No one installs and uses "Linux," they install an operating system that happens to use the Linux kernel's functionality
You have officially won the "semantics of the year" award!!
I'm a big tall mofo.
It seems Microsoft desperately needs a new Windows release, to get past all the negative press of Vista, and to get the business market to consider upgrading from XP.
Some people say that Windows 7 is really more like a service pack for Vista. However, that won't sell as well as a "new version of Windows" might, and as we have seen, most people are not choosing Vista directly. It is being forced on them for most of the current sales of new computers, since XP is still good enough for most people and businesses that use it.
Will this move from Microsoft work? In the long run, probably, but I think it will still be 1-2 years before any significant number of buyers choose it.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
Why is parent modded +2 insightful rather than -1 troll?
(I was going to write more, but then I would just be feeding the troll.)
If you're going to the hassle and expense of recoding basic DLLs of XP for an internal version, why not just go Linux? It especially makes sense when you guys are going to migrate to Win7.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
MSFT claims that the reason it's 6.1 is because applications broke:
Which is entirely the point of version numbers.
In a major re-architecture like Vista was it would be better to rev the major number so that apps have to explicitly choose to run under it. (Or app developers can simply choose to punt and not bother checking them at all.)
W7 is supposed to be (?) only a minor tweaking, so a change in the minor number may be all that is appropriate.
Are they that confident or that desperate?
Well, I've been using every build since 6801 as my main OS, and the only major bug that I've found was the mp3 corruption bug. When a product is this stable going into the first beta, I don't see a point for a second beta. Also, the fact that there are millions of people using Windows 7 right now means that any "showstopper" bugs will be found and fixed by the first RC. Nice job by Microsoft.
We use Linux -too- (dozens of thousands of Linux boxes, and not just servers, desktops too). But it doesn't do everything, no matter how many senior *nix engineers you put on it, no matter how much money (well, realistically...) you drop on the open source community.
Because of that, the vast majority of our desktops are Win XP (and trust me, Linux is everywhere where its realistic to make it work for us), our back end is mostly *nix (various flavors, not just Linux), we have our own custom Linux "distribution", but even there, we have a lot of Windows Server for stuff where *nix is just not the best at (and there's more than you may think).
Take Office for example. We don't even use it for the file format (we have enough influence to tell our partners to eat whatever format we pick, so we could switch to OpenOffice quite easily). We extend it though, because its by far the easiest office suite to develop for, interop with, and extend/tweak/plugin. Once you go far enough in developing very specialized stuff for it, Wine will choke on it, so thats not an option, and it goes downhill from there. The licensing cost is insignificant (Microsoft has "infinite" license deals, and its not as expensive as one would think), so its just cost effective like that.
Best tool for the job. We even have stuff thats Firefox-only! But no, Linux doesn't do everything...not every close, even if you throw a few hundred people at the code.
At year's end, Vista, had 21% of the desktop, the MacIntel 7% and Linux 0.85%. Operating System Market Share.
In Top Operating System Share Trends, Linux is now lumped in with "Others."
They've been saying this since Windows 7 was publicly announced. Sinofsky's team didn't do a Beta for Office 12 (or Office 2007 if you prefer) either.
Insert Sig Here
Very obvious that you are not a mac tech, also very obvious you have never used a mac before.
...of being just are-branded? It isn't a secret that it is just Vista server. MS isn't trying pull a fast one here, pay attention to their business model.
XP -> Home version. Win2k3 -> XP server. Vista -> Home version. Win7 -> Vista server.
Why is it being released so quickly? Because they have be doing internal testing on the server components of the OS since before Vista was released. Also, they are supposedly stripping down a lot of the unneeded crap in Vista to make it run faster and smoother. How much additional testing do you need if you remove 30% of the code base?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I understand the plight of users not knowing what features they're going to want, but I still feel like more OS bloat is the last thing I need. Especially when the features are ones that expect that I am stupid and are based upon the OS knowing what I want to do before I do it (like loading frequently used programs into memory). I kind of just prefer that the computer do what I tell it to instead of try to Ouija board me. I especially don't want visual features. One of my first tasks on any Windows computer is usually to set everything to "no animations, Win95 mode." In general, actually, I prefer to do many things from the command line, although I do like drag-and-drop for file organization. In this aspect Mac OS X seems reasonable and desirable to me.
Q. "How much different can Windows 7 really be with such a shortened beta cycle?"
A. "Well, I think you know the answer to that."
Because microsoft has never had problems shipping a product prematurely before it has major kinks ironed out. Except Office, Windows, Xbox console, etc.
http://despair.com/consistency.html
How many of those bitching about Microsoft's "Release Candidate that'll never be released" policy but still defend KDE's "Nobody tests anything but releases" policy? Betas are open-ended, it's more stable than alphas but functionality can be missing or changed or whatever. As far as I know there's no accepted term for "this is pretty much how we're going to release it, bugfixes only but we know there's open issues so it'll never be this release that ships". RC is probably the least abuse possible, unless you want to make some really arbitrary "early beta/late beta" separation that's completely arbitrary. Call it Windows 7 "Near-Release Validation" version if it makes you happier. Especially since Windows has not, and never will have a true end-user RC right before release.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
More proof that this is just Vista with a new taskbar and some other modifications. Clearly this is just Vista. They are trying to do an end-around by releasing it with some minor modifications and then re-releasing it in an effort to rid themselves of the stigma of the Vista name.
Only it will cost consumers 2x as much now (original vista purchase and then the vista upgrade). Their anytime upgrade didn't work well so this is sort of a forced upgrade with a renumbering of editions.
There was a similar problem with Windows Vista, but the issue could be fixed by editing a setting in the Security Policy MMC snap-in. This does not fix the issue in Windows 7.
I noticed this problem when I first installed Windows 7, and a quick Google search revealed I was not alone.
Microsoft actually responded to the bug, which was posted to the Samba mailing list(Link to the post), saying:
Jim Pinkerton asked me to post this message from Microsoft:
Sincere apologies, but wanted to confirm that there is an issue with NT Domain support in Windows 7. We're trying to expeditiously track down exactly the issue(s), but the short of it is I wouldn't spend time trying to get this functionality to work. We'll get some sort of official notice out shortly (and I do mean shortly).
Jim Pinkerton
Microsoft
There still hasn't been a fix.
My guess: Microsoft made the process of joining a domain more LDAP based and reliant on Active Directory. Still, I just hope this "bug" is fixed.
Actually, MS has been working on Win 7 all along (though not under that name). Then they said "crap, look at how far OS X has come, we need to get something out the door now" so they took what was finished with Win 7 and shoved it out the door as Vista. Then they kept working on Win 7 and took public response into consideration and made changes to Win 7 as necessary to make it better than Vista. Also, the smartest thing they did with Win 7 (and one of the things leading to such a quick release) is that all drivers that work on Vista will work on Win 7. That means that hardware companies that already have Vista drivers, they don't have to do anything other than a quick check to make sure everything works just fine and do an update if there are some bugs.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I agree with your comments and want to add the following Win7 debilitation:
I stopped using the Windows 7 beta, even though for the most part it is less offensive than Vista, due to it's inability to join a samba nt4 style domain. See here for MS confirming this as an issue with utmost importance: http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2009-January/062827.html
If this gets fixed, I would be happy to move away from the steaming pile of Vista, to the merely warm pile of 7, but given MS' track record with compatibility, I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not too happy with this ambitious release schedule unless they dump Vista. Simply put, Microsoft will have to continue to support multiple operating systems for YEARS. By the time Win7 is released, Microsoft will be supporting Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7--both 32 and 64-bit versions. That's 8 operating systems. (W2K will continue to receive security fixes through June, 2010 and yes, there was a very rare 64-bit OEM version of W2K).
We all know the general consensus is that most present XP users will stick with XP and a LOT of Vista folks won't want to shell out $$$ for "Vista SP3." So, here's what I propose... First, Microsoft could save-face by offering all users of Vista, including OEM ones, free upgrades to Win7. That might even be enough to kill off some of the Vista lawsuits. An existing Vista license key can be used to install the equivalent edition of Win7. Second, there would be no such thing as Win7 "Home Basic", just Win7 "Home". Microsoft could make a new low-end Win7 "Netbook Edition", which has already been implied. To help entice people to switch, Vista Home Basic license keys install Win7 "Home" (Premium)--so those users get a step up. With that program, Microsoft puts the nails in Vista's coffin--they announce they would cease making bugfixes for Vista when Win7-SP1 is released and security fixes for Vista cease 6 months later.
This has a few benefits. First, very few companies would scream since Vista deployment is rare. Second, Microsoft can now say "yes, Windows 7 is a smaller release". Finally, while it's a financial hit up front from all the Vista upgrades, Microsoft can focus on fixing bugs in Win7 only and providing security hotfixes for XP and Win7.
But such a plan would make too much sense...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Surely Windows 2000 is FAR more advanced than 7...?
It's 1993 versions more newer n stuff.
Yes, different developers use "beta" and "RC" in different ways. With Microsoft, these terms have always been defined by marketdroids, not by engineers.
If Microsoft is only planning one beta and one RC, the most likely reason is that the company feels a need to rush this product to market with barely any of the pre-release hype that was done from Win95 and WinNT onward, through the multiple reviews of betas and RCs that Microsoft so lovingly nurtured in those halcyon days when it could dictate a schedule to its markets.
Those days are over. Their image is being battered by the Vista fiasco. Linux, especially the *buntus, are beginning to upstage them on the desktop. Several alternatives to MS Office have now become viable and are already stealing some niche markets. And Exchange Server is beginning to look a little shaky: there are other alternatives now.
With Obama billions to be pumped into the economy in a very short time, there are a lot of businesses that will be looking at renovating their IT infrastructure in the next 12 -24 months, and if Microsoft has no viable products at the beginning of this period... Well, it would not be the first company that had a meteoric rise, and ballistic crash.
Microsoft marketing needs to have Win7 in place, ready for purchase, in probably less than 3 months. It would be nice if Win7 actually worked, but that is secondary. Microsoft has enough ready cash on hand to smother any noise about performance concerns. It just needs to get the thing out there.
Apple makes a big deal (and charges more than $100) of each of their dot releases. OS 10.0, 10.1, etc. have been built on the same code base and have had minor (and some more-than minor) enhancements and tweaks. A couple of the OS X releases were really just service packs (or bug fixes) that shouldn't be called a new release or OS.
Here's what I want to see:
"New option: disable ribbon. When this is selected programs that use the "Ribbon" API (including Microsoft Office and Internet explorer) revert to the well tested, well understood, easily navigable and discoverable menus"
Not that I will, but DAMN I hate and despise that ribbon.
Mac - Hi PC. Work out any of the Vista problems?
PC - Oh that, that's behind me now I'm running Windows 7 (holds up Vista CD case with masking tape label which reads Windows 7 written with a sharpie).
"I'm guessing that the Windows 7 kernel has also been solidly finished for quite some time"
Yes its been finished for some time, because its a rebranding of effectively Vista+. The "+" is just any extra bolt on style work done since Vista's release. Its still Vista at its core.
The most significant work done on Windows 7 is in marketing, not in programming. Vista has built up such a bad PR reputation for itself, that its become a tough sell. So from a marketing point of view, the goal is to give Vista a rebranding and relaunch. Since its been some time since the original launch of Vista, then they can take the opportunity to include any work done since the original Vista launch. But the core goal of Windows 7 still remains, the marketing effort to effectively rebrand and relaunch the product, as Microsoft wants (and needs) to finally earn some serious money from Vista.
For goodness sake. The Windows 7 beta WAS the second beta release. The first was Vista, except you had to pay for it. --They might have sold enough copies to pay for the brilliant faux-failure Seinfeld campaign which garnered sympathy for Microsoft and has resulted in media praise for this latest OS. (Psyche! 101, that is.)
I remember when Vista first came out, when if you posted anything critical about it, the MS astroturfer goons, (and don't kid yourselves; Slashdot is one of the key fields for that kind of activity), blasted out of the woodwork with nullifications-aplenty. Didn't work very well, but they certainly tried. I remember the bristling you saw when you said, "Vista is a catastrophic failure and MS knows it" before general public opinion had caught up with that notion. The P.R. people don't like you doing that sort of thing while they're still gently voodooing critical mass of whatever mythology they're trying to lock in place.
One of the main reasons MS is shoving Windows 7 out the pipes so quickly, (I suspect), has to do with the fact that the U.S. dollar is on the verge of a total collapse and Bill isn't ready yet to trade in his greenbacks for the "Amero" or whatever they're going to call it. (I wonder how much gold he has stashed away to buy up the new (world order) currency with.) --Whatever the case, the market is dissolving as we speak. Plenty of downtown shop fronts are dark after the failure of Father Christmas to save the day. Gotta sell as many copies as you can of whatever you're selling before people realize that food might possibly be a more important commodity than the latest over-powered notebook surprise.
Everybody has been wishing and hoping to see Microsoft die a miserable, painful death. And now we're going to see it! Too bad we'll have to go hungry in order to have this dear wish fulfilled. But hey, no pain, no. . , well.
The funny part is that even when MS downsizes into a six man operation running out of Gate's garage and offers no customer support, the world will be addled with Russian wormy goodness and nothing to patch up the holes with. What great excuse to shut down the internet so that nobody knows when the Mongol hoards break down the gates of the rotting empire. (Or was it some Germanic barbarians. I can't remember. Those, poor, drunk, lead-poisoned Romans. Not so different today. Have you done a detox recently?)
But that's the bleak view. Perhaps it won't be so bad. Mr. Shuttleworth might just be the right man for the times. I wonder if Adobe will scramble to support Ubuntu. I wonder if gentleman Obama will be able to step up to the plate. He's not all bad. --Despite his Pakistan stance and the whole wire-tap thing, he's got some cool policies brewing. The first president to acknowledge that the U.S. isn't entirely a Christian nation. He gave a tip of the hat to atheists! Holy cow! That's a pretty neat first. So the future is really fuzzy and unpredictable now. How exciting!
But Microsoft is manning the life-rafts. I can't tell if I'm gleeful or not.
-FL
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts used to disrupt discussions and dishonestly promote his own comments on Slashdot.
No kidding. Apple's hardware starting tanking a few years ago, when they responded to the "Macs are too expensive" hype by bringing down prices as much as possible. Surprise, surprise, quality came down as well.
I'm a Mac user myself, and I'm two power supplies and three or four hard drives into my iMac G5 at work.
--saint
Just an excuse to drop support for XP since it will now be two generations old. This remind anyone of ME?
Microsoft isn't hitting its numbers on the corporate desktop. Businesses are refusing to "upgrade" to Vista, and Microsoft needs to get something out the door ASAP that will help them get back on track, and continue with their "Software Assurance" scam. (For those that didn't get the memo, the "Software Assurance" scam was that your company would pay an annual fee and get new releases thrown in - but there weren't any new releases except Vista, which was released early to business so as to allow Microsoft to say that they actually provided something of "value" with the SA program.) SA contracts aren't being renewed this time around.
Too bad for them that people are cottoning onto the astroturfing surrounding Windows 7 being "a complete rewrite" as opposed to "Vista ME SP2".
I know this will be flagged as flame-bait but I'm going to post it anyway. The aggressive release schedule could make for quite a different windows if they strip out all the bloat and DRM. It's easier to strip things out than build them in.
It doesn't seem the least bit humorous that MS is announcing this, seeing as how they've actually been doing it forever?
They have always been passing beta level software off as release candidates. And then passing RC's off as finished product.
At least it's nice to see them admit it this time.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Anyone else struck with the thought they've finally gotten the memo from Torvalds?
Release early, release often.
Dude, the Fritzl's had more of a life in that fucking dungeon than you do right now.
I bit the bullet and bought a new PC complete with Vista. The first thing I noticed was that they refused to allow me to install my already existing software. A little box popped up telling me I wasn't allowed to do that. MusicMatch Jukebox being the first, Pinnacle Studio another ...
So, I tried to mount my drive (foreign dynamic NTFS) from my Win2K box. Nope! That feature is disabled except for Vista Ultimate. OK, I placed the drive into a cheap backup box and copied the files over the network instead. That was done just for spite!
OK, the FAX. Nope again. Only business and ultimate support software send/receive of FAX. Thank you again MS!
So, I junked vista, put Win2K on the new hardware, added some drivers from the net and I'm happy as can be.
So, if Windoze 7 will allow me to do what I want or need to do, I'll gladly consider it but, if MS pulls the same crap they did with Vista, I'll be upgrading to a Mac.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Msoft had to find a way to sell Vista. All they had to do was cut all the broken crap (most of it) And build a new desktop ui and poof.. we introduce win 7.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Switching to Mac could only be more expensive than switching from XP to Vista in some alternate universe where your time could be worth negative dollars. In that universe, Vista gets cheaper every day, then becomes free, and eventually pays you to use it, as you spend more and more time waiting on Vista, clicking on insipid "security" pop-ups to make really extra sure you want to install this virus, cleaning up after said virus, etc.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
They don't need to proceed any further. for they have mastered the service pack. Coming soon Win 7 SP1. I would need to research which product it was but I seem to remember they actually had some product that they announced was available, and the SP1 version started shipping before the actual version ever came out. (I guess the original was considered beta internally.) So given their track record, I can see them throwing out a beat, a bunch of people get it, make their statements, then M$ goes live and use the revenue to the SP development.
[citation needed]
As is said: "Put your money where your mouth is."
I am far from a MS fanboy, but I have to call FUD! on your inane rant.
Obligatory meme: "Twitter, is that you?"
*disclaimer:*
"Ubuntu and perhaps ReactOS keep looking better and better..."
This I can agree with, in part.
Happily using *buntu since 5.04, exclusively since Kubuntu 6.04 (I now stick with Kubuntu-I prefer KDE to other desktops)
My last experience with ReactOS (admittedly about 2-3 years ago...) lead me to react to the OS as :'interesting, I'll have to check on this in a few years'...
I guess I should check up on it.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I took the plunge the day before yesterday and it is indeed different. I put it on two machines, one a low end 32bit and one a higher end 64bit machine. I've been using Vista for about a year and Server 2008 for about the same period of time.
Windows 7 looks and feels like Vista with a mildly snazzed up taskbar, but without most of the annoyances of Vista. Aside from the taskbar and a toned down UAC, it feels exactly like what I would expect a slimmed down version of 2008 to feel like. Everything I like about Windows 7 could have been done with Vista and the taskbar improvements.
Still, I do think they are at least as different as Windows 95 and Windows 98 were. I can't get the LAN to work on the 64bit install, though I can assign an IP to the adapter. I can't get our primary software package (and the reason I'm testing) to work on either one. The system locks occasionally on both, probably due to the same testing. IE8 is kludgy and, where I've been able to test it, doesn't perform as well as either IE7 or Firefox 3. My yardstick of major differences is based on how many things are broken, and if the beta is a fair representation, then I'd say it does indeed deserve to be classified as a new version of Windows.
I think most of the testers are using software and hardware recommended and better tested by Microsoft than our typical system, but I cannot believe how different my experience has been from the typical media publications. I believe it is precisely because most of the reviews are Microsoft friendly rather than workplace critical.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
We're not a corporation, we're a not-for-profit financial institution, so my anecdotal evidence doesn't even directly contradict your statement. We still use XP rather than Vista except on a couple of IT machines. Our target workstation purchases are to be mid-line systems replaced every three years. It is becoming more and more difficult to plan around XP, and our hope is to skip Vista entirely and move directly to Windows 7. (Whether this will be feasible is not yet confirmed in testing.)
I think our company is typical of quite a few SMBs. We decided against moving to Vista, and as soon as we can move to Windows 7 it will seem very fast due to the backlog of machines that should have been upgraded by normal schedules, but were delayed.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Go directly to SP2. Do not pass 'Go', do not collect $200.
Have gnu, will travel.
This will?
This will?
Dude, seriously... when has Microsoft NOT treated their customers as paying beta testers? How is it any different this time than any other?
No kidding. Apple's hardware starting tanking a few years ago, when they responded to the "Macs are too expensive" hype by bringing down prices as much as possible. Surprise, surprise, quality came down as well.
Yeah, I started drinking the mac koolaid a while ago and tried out a couple of second hand iBook's... man did I come to regret that. I learned the hard way the difference between a powerbook and an ibook. On a more pleasant note I have a Powerbook Pismo that's lasted just about forever. I am actually using it now.
There was a point where Sony Vaio's were beating Macbooks in terms of what hardware you were getting at what price. I would take much more interest in the mac platform if they could pricematch PC's on the low end-- the "mac tax" is even more serious than the "windows tax".
I think the biggest difference between mac and windows comes down to development culture. Windows puts more power into the hands of the developers and OEM's... and they simply abuse it. Every bit of control they give somehow turns around to damage the overall PC experience. I love vanilla Windows systems but I can't stand anything Compaq or Dell, etc. It's unbelievable.
Apple has been taking more and more control over their environment to the point that they command all the user experience from the hardware to every piece of software on a new mac. Third party developers take the HIG very seriously, leading to lots of pretty applications. If Windows developers paid attention to the HIG and wrote more uniform applications like on mac or even in gnome in linux/unix, I think Windows would be a serious contender with mac human interface-wise.
Microsoft needs to do more to feed the open source community, like Apple did, if they want more pleasant and integrated applications to appear on their system.
Sure.
MS's first act when releasing a Beta was to include a bug that sliced off parts of mp3 files.
I think they're moving it up as the place holder opposite Snow Leopard for Mac, and *then* they'll hunker down again and get back to what they were supposed to be developing.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm not so sure anymore. What about the hordes of folks here who don't even attempt to read TFA?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Not at all different. It will be as bug-ridden and messed up as every other point 0 release of just about every software ever written.
Especially Microsoft software.
Meanwhile the Windows shills will be telling us how SO NEW AND IMPROVED it will be, borrowing the Bill Gates playbook from the early '80's.
My advice: as usual, wait for Service Pack 1 - if not Service Pack 2.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Apple is releasing the next version of OS X soon called "Snow Leopard". The update centers around tweaks and performance improvements on the existing "Leopard" operating system.
Windows 7 appears to be a similar improvement to the existing Vista product, therefore, I propose that Microsoft should name the product "Vista Cruiser". Oldsmobile is no longer, so Microsoft could get the name for a song. They might even consider putting some fake wood grain on the sides of the box to enhance its marketing potential.
Hopefully Microsoft's next OS will be better than the car...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Vista_Cruiser
-ted
(Ed Gruberman)
Sir? Sir?
Uh... I don't mean no disrespect or nothin ... but *why* do you have Vista? We learned in class that roughly every third-ish OS Microsoft puts out is the one to get. (You experts can correct the version number here). I think it was like this:
DOS 5: Get
DOS 6 and Win 2.0: Skip
Win 3.11: Get
Win 95 and Win98 1st: Skip
Win 98 SE: Get
Win ME: Skip
Win2000: Get
Win XP through SP1: Skip
WinXP with SP2: Get
Vista: Skip
So Sir? I wanna know if I should go from XP to Win7? Or do I skip that and wait for Windows 8?
(/Ed Gruberman)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Sorry, in your analogy the OS is not the stero. It's the engine block and maybe surrounding crankshafts etc.
If you rip the OS out of a comp you get s lifeless hulk. Swapping an OS *does* take skills, and while I'm pretty good on the app side, I never really learned the chops of the OS. Swapping out an engine can also be done ... with skills. I wouldn't DARE try that.
Your stereo bit is like a monitor choice.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Let's do a search.
Gen23 ... BooMansion, Deviantart, XKCD forums
Gen22 ... Cockrockdisco, Futurama forums
Gen21 ... Allspark.com, aetolia.com, mathlinks.ro
Gen20 ... Bodymod.org, Newgrounds
Gen19 ... hardforum.com, giantitp.com, bzpower.com
Gen18 ... giantitp and xkcd again
Gen17 ... warseer.com, myth-weavers.com
Gen16 ... mtgsalvation.com, gleemax
Gen15 ... giantitp
Gen14 ... intpcentral.com
Gen13 ... scorehero.com
Gen12 ... plusnetwork.it, pitsofevil.com, realmsofevil.org, 67.15.245.21
Or such.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As has been said before this is really just Vista with the service packs added. Microsoft has given me the option to turn off a few of the annoying "features" of Vista, but they won't let me keep the things I liked in XP. I will be going back to XP 64 in an other week or 2. There is no reason for me to switch. There are no features I really need and too much bloatware involved in Windows 7. Better than Vista was at release is not a selling point for me.
What is this whole hang up with the term Service Pack? A true "Service Pack" is little more than a collection of all the hotfixes etc into one big bundle. The practice dates back before Windows Update, when the only way to get the patches was to call PSS or wait for the service pack.
Windows XPSP2 is the exception, not the rule. It was the first service pack to add features that an end-user would actually notice.
According to the date listed on Wikipedia, the whole world has been beta testing it for 2 years already. Seems plenty long to me.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
It looks, feel, and operates almost exactly LIKE Vista, in nearly every way. Yes, there are some changes, some of them even approach fundamental, but even those only affect one specific bit of OS behavior. By and large, it feels EXACTLY like a service pack for Vista.
(disclaimer: I don't work for Microsoft, I have used Windows 7 exclusively since the day it went public beta)
If that's what you're going to judge it on, then you've put Microsoft in a catch-22. On one hand, they could keep the UI and programming APIs the same so that end users don't require yet *another* training session and software and driver developers don't have to rewrite all their code. Nearly everything their customers have will be compatible, and several incrementally new features will benefit the customers to convince them to roll it out. On the other hand, they could make radical changes, get accused of making "change for the sake of change", while "offering no financial incentive for businesses to switch over because their hardware & software works on XP/Vista but will break on 7."
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but it seems much more worthwhile for them to make smaller changes than foundationally bigger ones. They did that with the driver stack with Vista, and all hell broke loose. Now they're keeping the driver stack largely the same so that virtually every Vista compliant device will work properly with Win7 (all the hardware on my laptop works flawlessly using Vista drivers), and they haven't made enough changes to warrant a full release?
which is it?
It will be wildly successful, too. XP was the first really "consumer" OS from Microsoft after Windows Me debacle. Win 7 is the first consumer OS after Vista debacle. I've been using it on all my machines since it came out, and it's a vast improvement over Vista. It starts faster, feels more lightweight, replaces a lot of the botched UI introduced in Vista with versions that make sense. There's more polish in this beta than Vista ever had.
IMO, this is the closest attempt at Apple levels of polish Microsoft has ever been able to pull off.
Here:http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090130/uac-security-flaw-windows-7-beta-proof/
that Win7 is a hybrid of Vista and XP SP3, with some minor upgrades, and some tweaking thrown in. Now, don't get me wrong - I am learning to LIKE Win7! As a hybrid, it has the best of XP, it has what little good there was in Vista, and it really is tweaked to run nicely. While I don't recognize it as a "new" operating system, I do see it as more than a minor update. It actually WORKS, on machines that Vista refused to work on. All of that said, it is just as obvious that Microsoft is going to charge about triple Win7's real value, or more. Basic should sell for about 25 bucks, and Ultimate should sell for about 50, no more than 75 bucks. We shall wait and see how much the suckers end up paying. Personally, I'll pirate the final release to run in a VM inside of Linux, LMAOA
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
the hate vista has in the market is probably the most any windows version ever saw. gotta rember most of there user base isn't tech heavy enough to relies this awesome new os is just vista fixed and renamed. credit to m$ is the fact windows 7 has corrected alot of the issues vista had. the nag windows are all but gone and can even be disabled easy. but you never see them anyways unless you are changing something system wide like how it should have been and is. the bot times are reduced alot it now uses all the pressers you have by default to start the os vista only used 1. the control panel ui was redone for the better. the task bar was redefined and people seem to like it. it even has a wallpaper tweak where it can cycle threw them in a sideshow mode something before you needed a 3rd party app to do. yes its still vista at hart but its more like what vista should have been from launch. the rename is just a attempt to get rid of all the bad press that is vista.
Windows 98 : Windows 98SE :: Vista : "Seven" :: Awful : Tolerable
History repeats.
This will make all Microsoft users beta testers, and Win7 SP1 will be the real release version
This is how it is usually. In this case SP2 is the real release.
Is the Linux kernel re-written for every release?
No?
Then why don't you shut the fuck up?
Windows 7 Beta 1 is better known as Vista.
Beta 2 is Vista SP2
RC1 is officially called Beta 1
RC2 is officially called RC1.
Windows 7, basically, looks like Vista done right.
I think it sucks because it fights you for everything. sucks more hardware, argue that its newer sure, but the features that it brings are more of the pain in the ass flavor than improvement. Fights me to change NIC ip's. Fights me to view my start menu (I hate scrolling i didnt work in 1999, why force us now, WINDOWS ME SUCKED) ! so what we end up with is something that takes longer to use and hits my machine harder than XP. For more money. I have two vista machines and hate both of them and have XP Pro on order. Just the time it takes me to accomplish a task by clicks has trippled for vista. They made simple tasks like changing screen resolution for say, laptops, HELL. Wireless networks need manual settings? HELL TO CHANGE. ETC. Its a sad story.
Every time I see a program say that its not compatable with this operating system I get a sick feeling. I've seen this error since Windows 95 and on every windows since. Esp on NT and NT server platforms (windows nt 4, 5, 6...)
Its the most pathetic way to judge an operating systems capability, and most cant figure that hey, a newer version of windows will come out and someone someday will use it - why not add a line of code to do "x version AND ABOVE" or just ignore it and assume win32 is win32?
I never understand why people get so hung up about the semantics. Windows XP was, for all intents and purposes, a "large service pack" for Windows 2000. Kernel 5.1 to 2000's 5.0, plus some "tweaks". But most people will agree that XP, in terms of performance and usability, was well worth the upgrade.
...any more evidence that Windows 7 is just, at best, a code cleaned and better driver supported version of Vista? The evidence is right in front of everyone. Please stop clinging to the fiction (as many sites and lots of posters are) that Windows 7 is a brand new Microsoft OS.
I think the previous poster means that he would have excused Vista's poor performance had it not been the OEM-installed OS.
Specifically, had he bought the computer with (for example) Windows XP installed, and then installed Vista and found it unusable, perhaps the hardware was unsuited for the task. However, since the OEM that build said hardware shipped it with Vista pre-installed, there is no excuse for the poor performance; if the computer was not appropriate to run Vista, the OEM should have selected a more suitable OS.
The proposed kernel for W7 is called minwin, and it hasn't rolled out yet. The beta has a system marked 6.1, which MSDN says they did for tagging reasons. Otherwise, the kernel is identical to Vista SP1 and 2008R1. Supposedly, 2008R2 and W7 will use the minwin kernel, and probably be marked as 7.0 which leaves the ugly hanging on point of Vista SP2, which last I bothered to look, still was marked as a 6.0 kernel. I'd say there's plenty to fear if they are still serious about rolling out a new kernel. If not, then jumping to a single RC isn't quite as scary.
"Hello mass users! Time for you guys to beta-testing our newest and finest operating system, and we call it Windows 7!"
That's how their OS is developed, and unforunately you have to pay for it.
Windows 7 is as different from Vista as Windows XP from Windows 2000.
You mean it saves home users from having to endure WinME ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I am in full agreement that Vista upgrades should cost $49 tops - that's half of what an XP Home upgrade or Vista Basic upgrade costs retail. I also agree that there is alot of push in Microsoft to get Win7 out the door in an attempt to clean up the Vista mess. But let's take a look at case study to see where the line has been drawn before.
Windows XP brought the NT Kernel home and ended the 9x base that had been ubiquitous in homes for about five years. I think that we can all agree that that was a pretty hefty upgrade. XP didn't have a whole lot of earth-shattering new features on the UI side, but under the hood was a different story. XP Service Pack 2 rewrote alot of the operating system, and while it introduced a handful of new features (a WLAN manager that doesn't suck, bi-directional firewall, security center), this was insufficient to be considered a full release (though that idea was brought to the table).
Mac OSX is another interesting case study. I can only speak in generalizations here because I don't use OSX and thus do not know specifically which features were added and which ones were not. I do remember perusing the 10.6 feature list, though. There were a handful of really nice "That's def useful" and/or "that's def cool" features, but the vast majority of them were minor tweaks. Collectively i'm sure that they add up to a more fluid UI, but individually they were all minor. Still, Apple sold this as a full release. Was that acceptable? If so, how many features did it take for it to gain said acceptance? Do you feel that the list for Win7 isn't comparable? How wide is the gap between them? Do you believe that Leopard should have been given away for free to owners of the prior iteration of OSX? Reduced cost?
(Note: not trying to be flamebait, just trying to get a feel for the parent poster's beliefs on the topic at hand)
Stop with the car analogies! They don't fit! Try starting your car without an alternator. Or gasoline. Or oil. The engine is still there, but wait! It still won't start!
Anpheus is right. If you are a Linux guy, judging from your sig, you should know how easy it is to install an Ubuntu, Fedora, or Opensuse on a computer now. If you build your own(about as hard as putting together a set of legos), you will have to fresh-install an OS. Ever fresh-install MS? Compared to a linux install, it takes forever.
Swapping an OS doesn't take skills, just time.
Then I logout and sign back in under *my* account--because root *is* my account.
Well I know someone who's gonna have his machine throughly trashed by the first Linux oriented virus/trojan that he sees.
For those few times when you really do need more than a single root command at a time, 'sudo bash' works really well. It gives you most of the advantages of a real root user while avoiding the ability of any arbitrary command remote exploit being able to root your entire machine by default.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
you were close. Windows Vista feels alot like ME did. Minor improvements over a stable, long-running OS. with more bugs than any new feature was worth. Windows 7 actually feels new like Windows XP did, not that it necessarily warrants a new OS version, but it feels like it does.