Windows 7 Hits RTM At Build 7600.16385

An anonymous reader links to Ars Technica's report that (quoting) "Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone. The software giant still has a lot of work to do, but the bigger responsibility now falls to OEMs that must get PCs ready, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are testing their new apps, and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) that are preparing their new hardware. The RTM build is 7600, but it is not the same one that leaked less than two weeks ago (7600.16384). We speculated that Microsoft may end up recompiling build 7600 until it is satisfied, but it only took the company one more shot to get it right: 7600.16385 is the final build number. Microsoft refused to share the full build string, but if you trust leaks from a few days ago, it's '6.1.7600.16385.090713-1255,' which indicates that the final build was compiled over a week ago: July 13, 2009, at 12:45pm. This would be in line with the rumored RTM date but it is also the day Microsoft stated that Windows 7 had not yet hit RTM. Although the final build had been compiled, Microsoft still had to put it through testing before christening it as RTM."

Comments

Re:Really?

[Locke2005]

but it only took the company one more shot to get it good enough to ship to their customers whom they've trained to pay good money for crap

Re:Only one week of testing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt that they did a full regression test that quickly. More likely, they tested the areas which had recently failed tests, and were recently fixed.

That's how we do it at my work. Our product has around 90,000 test points that are tested in each 3 month release cycle. A full regression test takes approx 2 months. As bugs are found, they are fixed, and the fix is tested while the full regression test continues. The last month only fixes are tested.

Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6.

[rolfwind]

I suppose it's true to the idea that 7 is "just a Vista service pack," but still seems odd.

Not at all. Vista has taken the punches, got a fat lip and two black eyes - so Microsoft rebrands it and it loses the bad name of Vista. I just installed Windows 7 RC - and it's nicer. There is new programming under the hood, particularly the UI and feels speedier - although I have to question whether that speed was all a result of improved programming or attribute some to the fact that it was a clean install of Windows erasing a cluttered and used OEM Vista install.

But given the driver model is the same, the lack of noticeable bumps on the alpha, beta, and RC compared to Vista woes - I can only assume it's really a service pack with an UI overhaul. Which is okay; Ubuntu and OS X both operate on the idea of short upgrade cycles that allows them to focus on goals and be a lot more evolutionary in a short time instead of trying to be revolutionary (longhorn) and failing miserably.

I just don't like paying full price as if this were brand new windows. Ubuntu is free and OS X license is relatively cheap, especially family packs. I'll pay $50 for Windows 7 as a 2-3 year upgrade to Vista, but don't forsee $100 as being inherently fair at all.

Re:it's the future

[Noren]

Nah, it just took them 10 minutes to compile.

Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it...

[SixDimensionalArray]

IANAMFB (I am not a Microsoft fan-boy), but I have to admit that so far, it looks like it is at least a bit exciting (especially from the rock-solid RC). Pretty much what Vista should have been.

As a true technologist, I try to stay technology-agnostic because good things often come out of the strangest places. Truthfully, many flavors of Linux are great, Mac OS is great, and Windows 7 looks like it should be great. Considering all these various flavors of greatness, I'd say it's still as good a time as any to be a techie! Maybe I'm just tired of all the negative slant the world puts on everything and am being overly optimistic.

Let's enjoy this new tech, welcome it, evaluate it and let it find its place in our toolbox, like every other tool before.

Discuss freely.

6d

Re:Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it...

[cptdondo]

What "new tech"? So far I haven't seen anything in Vista or 7 that would make me say, "I gotta have that tech!"

To be fair, I haven't seen much in linux lately that would make me say that, either.

let's be honest: OS "tech" has hit maturity for most users. There really isn't anything truly exciting coming out - because there really isn't anything exciting left to be done unless the whole OS/UI undergoes a severe paradigm shift.

Unfortunately that's not going to happen because there's too much invested in the current tech.

I'm going to see how the adoption rates are for 7. I see a rocky road for MS; people are happy with XP, it's stable, and for most of us it's a f*cking desk. No amount of hype is going to convince me that I have to get a shinier pressboard and formica office desk; the one I have works just fine.

Re:Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it...

[lwsimon]

I'd agree with this. I'm somewhat of a Linux fanboy myself, as I use Arch almost exclusively - but I wiped my Vista partition a couple of days ago and put Win7RC on there (build 7100).

I'm impressed. It boots fast, it runs fast, the new taskbar is clean and useful - it seems to be an all around good product. I don't see it pulling me away from Arch - I'm running ScrotWM these for coding, and nothing Windows does let it compete with a tiling WM from a productivity standpoint - but I see myself booting to Windows 7 more often when I just want to surf the web or check email. I never did that with Vista.

Re:Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it...

[Hurricane78]

Hahaha. OS tech has hit maturity?? Far from it!

It has hit a state of complete lack of new ideas, because of laziness.

Windows imitates Macs, Linux imitates Windows (I love my Linux systems, but unfortunately this is the truth), and Apple no reason to innovate MacOS X, because they are already better. At least this is what they think. ^^

In reality though, Linux (or the Linux desktop environments) could shine more than anything else. Because its openness allows for things that just arent possible with commercial applications.
What I mean is how Linux works on the shell: You can combine and recombine all your small tools, using the file system, and small scripts, piping data, etc.
Now imagine this for the desktop. Imagine that all the functions you can reach trough all the apps of your GUI desktop, were not one application, but small, fast, little widgets and tools. Then add a set of view and control apps to it. In a way it would be like the extensions of firefox combined with a photohshop without the main window.
You could endlessly recombine the tools from one package with that from another one, and use a document viewer/controller from a third package. (Where "package" would be, what we call apps today.)

Imagine taking the brush from photoshop, and the formula renderer from your calculator, and paint the formula into an arbitrary document. Things like that.
Interoperability would work trough standardized data structures (think xml or ebml chunks/streams with mime type headers).

And this is only one idea.
You see, GUIs still have a long way to go, to get even close to optimal efficiency (where "efficiency" is power multiplied with simplicity). :)

And as you also see, shiny but pointless 3D desktops are more likely the opposite of this efficiency.

Re:Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it...

[CannonballHead]

Meh, there's a few things in Win 7 that IS actually pretty cool and not just eye candy. The home group thing looked interesting, for example. I find some of the UI differences very intuitive and a lot easier to work with than (dare I say it) my Ubuntu 9.04 install on my laptop.

I'm not one of the MS Windows 7 software engineers so I don't know what, if anything, really changed under the hood, but it's the above-the-surface stuff that typically will make applications work well (or just *feel* like they work well) or not. Example that's very ready on my mind: GnuCash. I'm looking for a home finance program (just to keep track of budget vs. expenses, pretty much). GnuCash does everything but has, IMO, an awful and very user-unfriendly UI. It'd be a great program if the UI was less confusing and less cluttered.

If nothing else, Win 7 has done a good job with that part of user-friendliness, which isn't just for John Doe at home. Even a programmer/software tester/whatever like me enjoys using an easy-to-use OS when I don't need a unix style shell but just need a text editor, a word processor, or want to play a game.

Re:Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it...

[julesh]

Built-in transparent full-volume encryption is pretty cool, especially when you can encrypt a flashdrive (on Win7) then still access the contents (with passphrase or other key source) on an older computer running XP or similar.

As this feature was trivially available with free third-party software, I don't see it being a huge improvement.

Strong two-way firewall with good configurability means no more spending time and possibly money on third-party firewalls. That saves system resources too. Vista had this too, and I've seen no sign of it being vulnerable to penetration.

Outbound filtering on firewalls is almost useless, especially as they become more common and attackers more frequently use the workarounds that they cannot protect against. The XP firewall is adequate for almost all users.

UAC makes running as a standard user a lot easier to deal with (it's a bloody pain on XP, and frankly running as Administrator is just bloody idiotic). Win7 has added more configurability to UAC and made it less in-your-face by default.

I've been running as a standard user on W2K and XP since 2001 and have never found any real issue. Runas is a simple-to-use service that provides similar benefits to UAC without the problems of it trying to guess what you're trying to do (and frequently getting it wrong).

Automatic driver installations and updates. WinXP's plug-and-play driver collection is horrifically outdated (it's an 8-year-old OS) and a lot of modern hardware requires manually installing drivers. On Win7, those drivers are already present on the system and get installed immediately, or Windows will check online, find your drivers, and download/install them for you (signed and certified binaries only, of course). Win7 will also check for updates to existing drivers, and allow you to download the updates with a single click.

Three points: 1 -- most users do not install new hardware, but just use what was installed on the machine to start with; 2 -- installing the manufactrer-provided driver is hardly a huge hassle; 3 -- this benefit will only last for about 6 months anyway, as a new generation of hardware that needs new drivers will be released pretty soon. And XP is already capable of online search for drivers and updating existing ones... it doesn't work because most manufacturers don't put their drivers into the scheme.

These are very much things that "most users" will find superior to XP. The hardware requirements are undeniably higher, but you can get computers for under $400 that are quite capable of running Win7, and mid-to-high-end new machines have more RAM than a 32-bit OS can utilize anyhow.

I run a 32-bit OS here that can use up to 64GB of memory. Are you sure about that last statement?

Re:Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it...

[Civil_Disobedient]

Built-in transparent full-volume encryption is pretty cool

Except it's Microsoft's typically half-assed implementation. Anyone needing real volume encryption these days uses TrueCrypt. Except, hey look! Microsoft done broke TC full-disk encryption with Windows 7. Surprise, surprise.

Strong two-way firewall with good configurability means no more spending time and possibly money on third-party firewalls.

Already found in XP.

I simply can't stand to use XP for any length of time due to the simple fact that it lacks this incredibly convenient feature (which every other major OS has as well).

Windows Key + "F"

This, I probably don't have to mention, has been available in Windows since... well, a looong time.

WinXP's plug-and-play driver collection is horrifically outdated

How's that, again? What's the great big awesome advantage of Win7's driver model? Drivers available on the net? Sorry, you can do this already in XP. Signed drivers? XP. But how about compatibility? Will older XP drivers work in Windows 7? Naturally not! So, throw all your old hardware out the window unless there's built-in support, because lord knows there's no way your hardware vendor will update drivers for older hardware you've already bought.

Windows 7 is a hammer in a desperate, almost manic search of a nail.

The hardware requirements are undeniably higher

Hahahaha... I love this part!

2008 R2 + Windows 7 = Direct Access

[LibertineR]

No more freakin VPN's, bitches!

Check it out: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/dd420463.aspx

Re:Vista

[CannonballHead]

I had Vista x64 for a while and now the RC1, too. Quad core, 8gb ram... I did notice a performance increase between Vista x64 and 7x64. Not a whole lot, but boot times and program startup times definitely improved, if nothing else.

Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6.

[SilverEyes]

...the time it took to lock/unlock is what seems to have caused past responsiveness issues.

Acquiring a lock or releasing a lock is a single, atomic operation that runs very fast (otherwise there would be ... so... many problems). The problem is that another process has the lock, and then you can't get it until that process is scheduled again, renders, and then releases the lock.

I realize you probably know this, but it's getting late in the day and I'm feeling pedantic.

Windows 7 is a pretty damned good Windows

[Tumbleweed]

I've been using the public beta since it came out, and the RC1 since the public beta expired, and all in all, it's pretty good. Takes forever for me to figure out how to do anything anymore, since I'm so used to XP (stripped down to non-flashy mode; more like W2K in use), but that's no biggie.

The big question in my life as a web developer is: When is IE gonna be a good browser? How many versions is it gonna TAKE?

I take solace in the fact that anyone upgrading to Wndows 7 is going to be forced to go with IE8 or some non-MS browser. No more IE 6 or 7. *whew* Hopefully the critical update and the enterprise migration tool thingy for IE8 coming soon will get rid of a large percentage of the remaining IE 6 users that aren't on something older than Windows XP. Win2K/ME/98/95 users, well, tough luck. Time to for you or your administrator to either upgrade to a netbook or install Firefox/Opera/whatever. Way PAST time, really. But if someone in your company was stupid enough to develop something requiring ActiveX, I guess IE8 is it for you. If you want the Gecko renderer from Firefox, but your system can't handle the overhead of a XUL browser, try K-Meleon.

Even real life highways have minimum speeds, you know. Get your Model T off the information superhighway, you're dangerous.

Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6.

[SleepingWaterBear]

The last thing I want to do when I get home is trick my own damn computer into working.

But spending hours hand editing .conf files and unnecessarily recompiling packages means that your an uber 1337 open sores fag!

I know you're just trolling, but in case anyone thinks there's truth to this, it's worth pointing out that editing conf files and compiling packages hasn't been necessary in Linux for a few years now. I haven't compiled a package or hand edited a conf file once on my 2 month old laptop, and don't expect ever to have to. Also, installing XP (It came with Vista, which I didn't want) and making it work properly with all the necessary drivers took about 3 times as long as installing Ubuntu, and was much more difficult and stressful.

The idea that Linux is harder to use than Windows is really pretty ridiculous.

Xerox story...

[meburke]

Back in the days of PARC, they had a device that you could manipulate the input on screen using your fingers. It was called a "Capacitance-Activated Tablet" or "CAT" for short. A few months later, someone developed a device that used a rolling ball and sensors on an X-Y axis to move the cursor, and pressing a button to initiate the action. Because of it's looks, and since they already had a CAT, they called it a MOUSE.

Unless the mechanism of the patent in question is different from the capacitance array, or unless this company bought the patents from Xerox, it seems that Xerox holds a patent on prior art. I'd like to see the working model they submitted with their patent...

Touch-screen technology at the time required little lamps around the bezel of the screen, and the location was done using the interference of the X-Y coordinates of the intersecting beams of light. Light-pens gave feedback to the actual pixel grid on the (phosphor based) screen.

Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6.

[m0rph3us0]

It's funny that whenever linux or FreeBSD removes a Giant lock it's hailed as major news here, like the transition from 2.4 to 2.6 because they are actually huge leaps forward. However, when MS does it it is just regarded as a bug fix. Essentially, all code is just a bug fix then, as it's all written one line at a time and relies on the the years of work to the code base that preceded it.

There are huge improvements on Windows 7, like multitouch support, etc. It's a really nice OS akin to XP. The problem with the zealots is that they create a list of complaints about MS and then when they fix it, you guys complain even more. MS actually pays their devs salary so they have to charge for their OS. Suck it up, if you don't want to buy it don't.

IMHO, the RC is more stable than Vista. I've been using it as my primary dev platform since a few weeks after it was released, and have had no BSODs yet even running mostly Vista drivers with it. It's rock solid and FAST and the new features are definite improvements.

But the commitment to quality that is present in Win7 and was sorely lacking in Vista should be applauded by all.

If anyone in the dev community has seen further, it is because we stood on the shoulders of giants.

Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6.

[Archtech]

SMP may have been rare when the original Windows was designed. But the crew from DEC (led by David Cutler) that Gates hired to write Windows NT knew SMP back to front. During the 1980s DEC software engineering learned more and more about SMP and how to nurse the best performance out of SMP servers and even desktop clients.

So Microsoft has had the know-how to fix this type of problem for over 15 years.