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Windows 7 Hits Build 7600 (Possible RTM)
An anonymous reader writes "One Microsoft Way is reporting that Microsoft has significantly incremented the build number of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: 'Reports across the Web are pointing to a build 7600 for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This is significant because the bump in the build number would suggest that Microsoft has christened this build as the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build. The RTM is expected to be given out to Microsoft partners sometime later this month and launched on October 22, 2009, the day of General Availability (GA). The build string is "7600.16384.090710-1945," which indicates that it was compiled just a few days ago: July 10, 2009, at 7:45pm. Microsoft only increments the build number when it reaches a significant goal, and the only one left is the RTM milestone. The last builds that were leaking were all 72xx builds, so such a large bump is suspicious but at the same time it is something Microsoft would do to signify that this is the final build.'"
I have a question I've been trying to figure out. What exactly is going to be the effect of Windows 7? I think there are a few issues, but I haven't been able to come to a clear conclusion. There are a few issues:
* Windows 7 is like Vista, except without as many obvious bad things.
* If Microsoft writes it, people will put it on their systems. OK, Vista showed that's not entirely true, but it didn't cause a switch away from Windows, only down to XP. So, will people begin to switch away from Microsoft, or move on to Windows 7? All it has to do is be no more annoying than XP.
* Netbooks: hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper. WIll this cause people to switch to Linux (it's a $50 - $100 savings on a $200 computer)?
* Apple: OSX keeps getting better and better. Will they make enough improvement that people want to switch away from Microsoft?
I don't really know the answers to these issues, but I've been trying to figure out.
Qxe4
This does indicate it may be the RTM build, but not because it has a new build number... but because it has a build number ending in 00.
Larry Osterman's post Thinking about Windows Build numbers goes into this in more depth.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
"As Microsoft strives to migrate their core technologies from the desktop onto the Web, so too is their propaganda machine migrating from the established press to the informal social web. Microsoft shills are invading social web sites everywhere - in forums, discussion groups, comments to news items, edits to Wikipedia, manipulation of search engines, comments to blogs - posing as innocent participants to promote their agenda and counter wide spread complaints about their shady marketing practises. Even in the comments section of blogs by Microsoft employees on their own corporate site they employ sock puppets to say the things the author felt inappropriate to say directly. They race to place their shill postings at the top spot in the comments section of news and blogs, or perhaps they are given advance notice enabling them to do this where they are a sponsor. The evidence is here on Slashdot for all to see, without embellishments from me. What I say here is amounts to only a digest of hundreds of postings by others. A careful investigator can see for himself the evolution of discussions on Microsoft related issues, especially those accusing them of their usual hard ball tactics. As one reads from Slashdot's historical record on through to recent times, the evolution of Microsoft's efforts to pervert Slashdot's discussions becomes readily apparent. Microsoft's ambition is to twist internet discussions around a full 180 degrees until these discussions become a platform for propaganda from Microsoft's "Ministry of Truth". A study of the comments of the shills posted here can be cross-correlated with postings on other sites. Their pattern of saturating a discussion with shill postings, and the repeating of mindless memes becomes obvious. Their harassment, ridicule, and suppression of criticisms is designed to intimidated those who would speak out against them. They seek to establish and enforce a discipline of giving Microsoft "fair treatment" and their propaganda the same consideration and respect a real person would deserve. In the process they are destroying Web 2 as we know it. This insidious attack on the infrastructure we rely upon to form our opinions in a complex world has both a direct and an inhibitory effect on free speech as a side effect. We must stop this while it is in its infancy. Once it fully established, it will become much more difficult to root out, and other ruthless corporations, organizations, and even governments will want to emulate the success of Microsoft's campaign. This is the nightmare vision of the end of the social internet as we know it."
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1284651&cid=28502473
A lot of builds for 7 go on internally that aren't released to the public as Betas or RCs. Most of them have been leaked to BitTorrent. I can promise you that there's a newer build number available after 7100.
It is so funny, When XP was released I couldn't wait, and loved it, but a lot people said, that they were going to stick with win98, Then vista (which I liked) comes out and everyone says "i'm gonna stick with XP". Just accept it and move on.....
Does that justify a multi-hundred euros upgrade?
Wow, something that it's being done in linux since... 2003? And what timing. Who burns CDs anymore? Microsoft releases that functionality exactly when people are starting to use memory cards, USB flash drives and external HDs instead of CDs (measly 700MB of data) and even DVDs.
So what exactly does windows 7 have that is either exciting or even worth a hundred euros?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
The main change is that Microsoft goes back to marketing a product people actually want. From what I can see, pushing Vista damaged their credibility pretty strongly, but with 7 they'll likely regain much of that trust, and in fact already have with the open beta/RC.
Let's fix that - a product people might actually want. It's well established that Vista is a product that people don't want. Whether or not Vista 7 is a product people actually want will depend on what's in the RTM version: whether it's more useful than XP, if it's not more painful to use, if it supports enough hardware and software, if it includes enough new functionality to replace the utility of the inevitable incompatibilities, if it's secure enough to get through the first six months without a major worm.
Since we don't have it yet, we don't know yet how it weighs in the balance.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Citation needed.
Citation needed.
Irrelevant. Unless of course you want to prove that WINE is faster than / as fast as native execution. AND that Wine is compatible with everything. Why don't you go work on those three things? Then perhaps the scorn you are receiving from almost everyone here will fade.
I enjoy a pro-Linux article as much as anyone else. Usually I'll give them my vote, but what turns me off on a Linux article is when the author tries to promote Linux by throwing negativity at Microsoft. If we ever want Linux to be an actual threat to Microsoft, it has to stand on its own, and not just be an alternative to Windows. Whining about your position in the market will do nothing to improve it.
Now - that being said. Eventually I found answers for those issues, and I'm pretty pleased with Win 7. There are a couple of quirks, but I'm fairly hopeful that the final build will have them fixed. However... discrediting every pro-Win7 poster as "shill" sounds a bit ridiculous. So with that in mind, where's your evidence that this is the case? You say it's "clearly visible" -- where is your "clear proof" that GP was a shill? Am I a "shill" now because after my initial issues I have had a relatively good experience (and holy shit, a TON better than Vista - even under SP1/SP2). How do you tell the difference between real people who like Win7 and shills?
Amusingly, your post - a copy-paste of someone other AC's unsubstantiated rant actually got modded "interesting", while mine will likely get modded down.
Wow. Helluva rundown. Almost over my head, too. Now I have to do some reading, to see how well I can really understand all that. Oh, don't worry, I got the "in a nutshell" idea of it. Firewall is a layered defense, and Microsoft took away the layers. Which just begs the question: do 3rd party firewalls provide the layers of defense, or do they just rely on Window's API's? And, if 3rd party firewalls provide a good layered defense, which ones do so?
I'm glad I have a good gateway machine, lol. I just didn't realize how important it might be!!
And, I understood the HOSTS thing just fine.
Thanks for the info, and I'm off to find more. :-)
"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
I'm not so sure that they are just clueless fanboys instead of paid shills. For example, there was one clueless fanboy here the other week that was convinced that RMS had written linux and that linux needed a "runas" feature despite the fact that it had been in linux since 1991 and other forms of *nix long before then ("su" and more recently "sudo"). A paid shill would know more. It's just like the cult of Apple cheering for the technological underdog this time.
Despite the hype MS Windows will get better, and hopefully by the time MS Windows 7 is released it will actually recognise my IDE DVD drive and actually install from it (yes I know it is a beta).
I'll bite, you troll.
Have you actually looked at the PCs in those office buildings full of thousands upon thousands of cubicles. The current hardware refresh is 1GB XP (or 2GB Vista) entry level core 2 duos.
Most big IT shops supporting thousands of users wants standardized PCs that they can swap the monitor out when it dies without having to touch the pc. And if the hard drive goes they want something they can open, plug a new one in, image it, and send it back. ditto the power supply and optical drive. And if the motherboard fails they just replace the PC.
So the imac and mac mini are both out of the running.
The problem isn't that the mac pro isn't good value for what's in the box. The problem is that almost nobody needs what's in that box. And Apple doesn't sell a box with the stuff business needs the way business wants it. They want imac specs in an easily maintained box, separate from the screen.
Apple refuses to make one, and simply puts themselves out of the running in this market.
The AC is a retard.
NTFS reads blocks. If your hosts file is smaller than 1 block, it doesn't make a disk I/O difference HOW BIG each address is.
String parsing is fast. Perhaps it would be a reduction of a couple dozen CPU cycles to read a "0" rather than "127.0.0.1", but that actually might be offset if the code to look for 0 caused a page fault due to code bloat to support special cases. Under the covers Windows would still have to alloc a SOCKADDR so we're only talking about a difference in parsing complexity.
Plus, the AC poster obviously isn't familiar with Windows DNSClient service. It is not actually necessary to parse LMHOSTS every time a network connection is made by name; the file is only parsed when it changes.
Hello girls,
I am sorry for interrupting your discussion:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/620/xp_small_free_way_to_use_and_mount_images_iso_files_without_burning_them/
This app is provided by microsoft (without warranty and support, as with most microsoft products). It lets you mount your warez^H^H^H^H^H personal backups and Linux ISOs.
Any company that employs a public relations company has had the opportunity to pay for astroturfing for years. In fact, I sort of wish we could recognize and reward the companies that don't do it. In Microsoft's case, there are documents from the Iowa case which basically lays out the tactics, like astroturfing, they use to influence the public perception of their technical merits.
Now, over at ZDNet, all the Windows 7 articles are accompanied by legions of talk backs wherein the writer relates how flawlessly the beta and RC of Win7 have operated. Then, the weekend that the Wall Street Journal reports Jobs' liver transplant, Dan "Fake Steve Jobs" Lyons makes a blog post wherein he describes his frustration in trying to write an article in Word on Win7 beta while it kept crashing. He had to go to his Plan B, write it on his Mac, and he excoriated Microsoft for the quality of its software. His commenters took issue with him critiquing a company for beta software, which is a fair point. But, in one place, dozens of testimonials that they are testing it and there's never a cough in the carload and it's ready to ship now, and at another place, for an arbitrary user, it fails when he needs it to get his job done. It's possible that that's just the way it broke. I think it's more probable that some of the "flawless" posts are pr product.