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."

Comments

The longer the better

[linuxci]

At least it looks like they're happy to delay the 'release candidate' presumably to allow some more time for bugfixes, etc. Although calling it a release candidate is really innacurate. 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.

Re:The longer the better

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

Re:The longer the better

[xenolion]

I hope Microsoft does do more than one release candidate. I remember 2000 pro and server had two or three Release Candidates, and look how well that one went over. More time into a RC will help crush any other bugs and errors that are there. Vista seemed to be rushed now that we have sp1 for vista which made it usable but still needs a lot of work just dump vista along with its fellow friend ME.

Re:The longer the better

[drsmithy]

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.

Re:The longer the better

[Kaboom13]

Lower memory usage, in exchange for a worse ui (unless you like low res icons), no security features (say goodbye to NX bit and other hardening features) and generally at this point worse in every way. Now when XP first came out, it was reasonable to keep using 2k for quite awhile, but now that 4 gb of ram is like $50, saving the 128 mb of ram you get from running 2k over xp definitely isn't worth it. Considering with some tweaking you can make the xp ui look and act almost identical to the 2k ui, the only thing 2k has going for it is nostalgia. If you actually try to use it (I run into machines still running 2k every now and then in my work) you will realize it's a piece of crap.

Re:The longer the better

[totally bogus dude]

Any project of sufficient complexity will likely have multiple release candidates, just because once all the release critical bugs are found and fixed... more will be found.

That doesn't mean a release candidate isn't actually a candidate for release, or at least is supposed to be. An RC is supposed to be, "we think we're done, unless you can show us there's major bugs remaining this is exactly what we're going to release". The final release should be nothing more than the last release candidate with the version strings to say it's a final release rather than an RC.

Vista had one RC, and when it was made available Microsoft made it absolutely clear that the RC was not actually a candidate for release; it did not include a bunch of changes and fixes that were going to be in the actual release. They abuse the term: Microsoft's "release candidates" are actually more like "late betas".

The term "release candidate" is actually entirely self-explanatory and leaves less wiggle room for misrepresenting the status of a project than "alpha" or "beta". The final release should be identical to the last RC. In practice there's often some small changes made or diagnostic/debugging code removed; but any actual changes in functionality or any non-trivial fix should cause another RC to be made. It is a bit of a balancing act between cost/time and thoroughness though.

However, calling something a "release candidate" when you have absolutely no intention that it will actually be the released version is disingenuous. If is not a candidate for release, then it is not a release candidate.

Re:The longer the better

[drsmithy]

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.

Re:I for one am excited about this.

[AlterRNow]

[quote]Windows 7 will have the advantage of supporting countless items of consumer hardware, as well as the tremendous decades-long back-catalog of games and productivity software.[/quote]
Don't forget the countless items of hardware, games, and software that won't work :)

Vista is that bad for general and non gamer users?

[Ilgaz]

I recently "fixed" a Sony Vaio (from .kr) which has "designed for Windows Vista" mark and serial number of Vista at its bottom. What was its problem? Someone thinking he is making a favour downgraded it to XP guaranteeing endless problems.

The machine was clearly "designed for Vista" as even the Intel disk controller was nightmare to get supported on XP. Machine's owner is a girl who only cares about office, MSN, Skype and other general stuff, not games.

When I gave up struggling to fix XP and got Vista DVD, guess what happened? It downloaded all the drivers, everything started to work fine and guess what? Damn fast. It is not a high end Vaio, it has only 1 Gig of RAM with low end hard disk (not 7200 or anything). It even has the scandal Intel i965 integrated gfx.

It seems her mistake was getting help from a Korean die hard gamer. As I had to browse Korean Sony site (don't ask how), I can understand the "XP Downgrade" is still a big deal for them so Sony was forced to pack XP "if it compiles, ship it" type drivers and offer them.

This is the second time I try to fix a virused XP (as Mac user) on a PC which was "Designed for Vista" and every problem goes away and machine runs really fast right after Vista is restored and updated. Stop this "XP downgrade" madness, at least on non gamer machines. You aren't doing a favour, you are putting the non technical types in huge risk along with the old OS you are installing. Another thing is, they paid for Vista, somehow.

Re:32 bit AND 64 bit

[Killjoy_NL]

I think I got marked redundant because some people are so overzealous in their damnation of anything MS that somebody with a more open mind who gives them a fair chance is dangerous/annoying in their eyes.

I got the karma to spare though, don't really care about it.

Anyway, I have 2 licenses for Vista Ultimate. 32 and 64 bit for my 2 pc's. I did read a while back that people who had Vista Ultimate or Vista (Enterprise I think, I'm not sure) could upgrade to Win7 $Corresponding_edition for free.

I looked up the link, here's the skinny
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-7-vista-free-upgrade,7018.html

Too bad I won't be eligible then, but I get the license for next to nothing anyway, so it's all good :)

P.S. For the mods, if you disagree with me, don't mod me down, mod me sideways :P

Re:Wait... WHAT ?

[Valtor]

> ... 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.

Re:Is windows 7 that good?

[Colonel Korn]

... 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.