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Windows 7 RC Download Page Points To May Release
An anonymous reader writes "Someone over at Redmond flipped the wrong switch, it would seem. Ars Technica spotted that the Windows 7 download page on TechNet had switched to say Release Candidate instead of Beta. It's now back to Beta, but not before Ars got all the details off the page: 'The public RC will apparently be coming in May 2009, and not in April as previously rumored. The RC testing program will be available at least through June 2009, and the actual build will expire June 1, 2010. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions will be available in English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish.' A screenshot and all the text on the RC download page, which was set to be published 'May 2009' is saved over at Ars."
A proper release candidate should be something that could be signed off as the official release if testing goes ok, however, it's widely known that there's going to be multiple release candidates.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, exactly. Any open source project of reasonable complexity has at least 2-3 release candidates, usually more for really big releases like when they merge a development branch with the main trunk. The difference between a 'beta' and 'release candidate' seems to be that with a release candidate you are saying that the code is more or less frozen; you're not going to change much unless there are serious showstopper bugs. With a beta there's a little more flexibility.
I would expect that Microsoft's development methods internally aren't all that different.
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I'm still getting drastic slowdowns while copying files across a network on Windows 7 - transferring a 1GB file over G Wifi from either a Windows 2008 fileserver or a Ubuntu Server Samba fileserver gives me a maximum of 1MB/sec, with a typical transfer rate of just 700K/sec. A Mac on the same wifi network can see upward of 3MB/sec for the same file. Not good, not good at all.
Other than that, I'm thoroughly enjoying Windows 7 as my main desktop.
Since you have to buy two licenses, I'm guessing you are going to have to buy two upgrades...
See here for example.
Also, the breadcrumb bar, time and time again I've tried to hassle people for an OPTION to disable the ghastly thing, I don't mind if new users prefer it, good for you! I work on machines to get things done, I need it quick and efficient and the breacrumb bar frankly frustrates me. I don't know about you guys but I 'think in' paths, directories and drives, even if Microsoft doesn't want me to think that way anymore, it's likely how I will ALWAYS think of things on a machine, I translate things back in to paths when using the breadcrumb bar, so it's just slowing me down and... again I'm not 'getting the data' to my brain quick enough.
In all that, you don't actually manage to say _what_ is wrong with the breadcrumb bar. Ie: *why* is it not "quick and efficient" ? The "breadcrumb bar" offers a superset of the functionality in earlier Windows versions (as is typical with Windows UI changes). What's the problem ?
The control alt delete menu (the grey box under XP with 6 buttons) previously you could just hit space to lock the machine or t for the task manager - now you have to hold down alt. (I admit this is a small problem)
Win+L will also lock the screen. Much quicker.
He's absoloutely right, but the problem is WHY, WHY! and WHY did they introduce a 'requirement' to hold down alt before using the shortcut keys on the control alt delete menu? The problem isn't the issue itself the problem is WHY did they do this when it simply changes something which didn't needed to be changed and adds a layer of complexity.
Because that's how it's _supposed_ to work, as per the Windows UI guidelines (Alt+accelerator key to access UI elements). Quite arguably, they've fixed a long-running UI bug.
Ctrl+Shift+Esc for Task Manager is quicker and has been around a _lot_ longer (at least NT 4.0, most likely NT 3.1). It was derived from Ctrl+Esc to get the running task list in Windows 3.x and OS/2.
Remember? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/17/1452228
> ... will be available in English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish...
Different install media for different languages ?...
They never said it was a different download per language. You chose the language at install time.
"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
... over Vista?
First is speed, I have tried Windows 7 beta and I didn't see any speed improvement over Vista at all. (I have turned off unnecessary services and features that I don't use). Windows 7 is more secure than Vista? Vista can be pretty secure itself if the user doesn't do anything stupid + proper setting + updating regularly.
So the only thing that Win 7 seems to be better than Vista is eye candy, UI features like 'bat light' or thumbnail on the taskbar. But I think they are overated, I prefer using multi workspace as in Linux, so I can organize the windows myself, and don't have to worry about cluttering. I even removed the windows list widget on the panel and replaced it with icons box instead (only show the icon of the running programs). I'm even thinking about removing panel completely and switching to tiling WM like Xmonad so I can throw away my mouse, but until I got a 2nd monitor, that doesn't seem like a good idea.
(Yes, I have a fetish for keyboard, but hey, we have ten fingers, better use all of them)
7 is drastically faster than Vista for general OS tasks on machines with 1 gig of RAM or less. On a machine with enough RAM, Vista's already plenty fast, certainly faster than XP for these things. Vista and 7 are both slower than XP for transferring large chunks of small files around, though part of the reason for this is that XP says the move is done when the data is read into RAM even though it's still waiting to write to disk, while Vista and 7 tell you the move is done when the data is written to the new location.
Vista is more secure than 7 if you use UAC, because 7's UAC has been sadly neutered. Sure, MS may claim that UAC isn't a security barrier, but every one of the non-techies who used to get their XP boxes pwned every 3 months have now had no malware issues since switching and using UAC. MS may not want us to look closely at UAC as a security barrier, but in practice it's the most effective one I've seen on any system.
The "bat light" was from a list of features that never made it into 7. The thumbnail on the taskbar isn't a big deal, but the "peek" functionality that gives you a full size view of a window of interest is actually very useful.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
For the breadcrumb part, I've used computers long enough that my brain more or less keeps a map of where I am and I want to go 'up' rather than click on the folder I'm looking for. I think in directory structures now and it's hard to change it.
All you need to do is click the higher level directory you want in the breadcrumb trail.
Eg: if you are in "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc", then the breadcrumb trail will look something like "Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows > System32 > drivers > etc".
To get to, say, "C:\Windows\System32", all you need to do is click on the "System32" part and you're there, in one step. So, to simulate the effect of the "Up one directory button", you just need to click on the second last thing in the breadcrumb trail.
Bonus: If you wanted to move to, say, "C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy" (to just pick a directory at random), then you could click on the ">" next to System32 in the breadcrumb trail, get a list of System32 subdirectories, then click on one to move directly to it.
I'd be fine with it if they brought back the up button and/or made the tree in the left panel a bit cleaner/easier.
Another alternative is Alt+Up arrow, which will move you one step up the directory tree.
I used to miss the up arrow toolbar button as well, until I understood how the breadcrumb trail worked. The latter is a _far_ better UI construct.