Let me be clear, I don't use MS software because it is not designed for a computer professional like myself. To be honest, I don't know who its designed for, or if its even designed at all.
The first time I heard Windows was having this UAC thing, I knew that it would suck as only Microsoft could make it suck. I knew it would annoy the hell out of the user so bad that it would do one of two things. 1) annoy them to the point that they just turn it off (I understand this is allowed in Vista) 2) annoy the user and they don't turn it off, they just bend over and take it, and the 1 out of a million clicks when your supposed to say No, you click Yes because that is what you ALWAYS HAVE TO DO TO GET ANYTHING DONE.
You said you don't use MS software. Then how exactly are you judging UAC? Is this first-hand experience or just repetition of repetition of someone's comments on UAC in a pre-release version of Vista?
I've used Vista since November last year and don't recall ever being annoyed by it. I develop software for a living, and even coding and debugging work without elevation. At home I regularly use Vista without any elevation prompts. At work I have at most one or two prompts per day, and that's because some software I use requires elevation, so I just elevate a command prompt and run it from there. If it gets to the point where it annoys the hell out of you, turn it off. At least it's still there to bug other Windows developers so that future apps will be written with non-admin privileges in mind.
...it'd be great if they also indexed your offline media too?
That's actually an interesting idea. I have numerous DVD backups of my computer, and while I wouldn't want to see search hits from those backups by default, it'd be great if I could check a "search CD/DVD" box and see all media containing a particular backed-up file. One problem I see is identifying the media: You'd have to give meaningful labels to your CDs or input the labels manually.
In other words, if there is a new Windows coming in 2009 then it should already have been designed by now. The spec should already be final, and a bunch of highly paid world-class designers at Microsoft ought to be taking each other out for martinis right now celebrating how good the Vienna spec turned out.
Or are they skipping the design step again? Hasn't hurt them in the past, right?
You're implying that they either have a separate design team, or they're skipping design. How about another possibility: the same team also does design work. Specs can range from high level to the coding level, and especially in the latter it does not make sense to exclude devs, the one who will be implementing the detailed spec, from the design process.
I just don't understand why they are announcing this new version so soon after the release of Vista.
What do you expect the developers to do in the meantime? Just sit around and wait until customers start demanding a new version before working on it? Whether they announce it or not, they're going to work on the next version. It'd be silly to just sit still.
how is that possible? Vista hasn't even really hit the market yet... outside of some large businesses and anone who bought a computer recently, no one has it...
Vista RTM'd back in November 2006, and was available to TechNet subscribers and businesses later that month. After finishing coding it's not like the devs are tasked with running Vista marketing, getting the CDs pressed, and scurrying out into the world like little ants to spread Vista. No, they instead do developer work, like planning and coding for their next project. (And if you're wondering who does patches and service packs, it's a different team.)
I always wonder why Microsoft cannot afford to (or just will not) put more manpower on the job. A company like this should be able to look at security in XP and develop Vista in different teams at the same time, shouldn't it?
They do. After Windows is finished, the dev team proceeds to work on the next version, while a team called Windows Sustained Engineering takes over the released version. From the link:
Security fixes are not WSE's only concern. In fact, once a version of Windows is released to manufacturing--or declared "golden"--the product team that developed it transfers the source code to the group. WSE then has primary responsibility for any further work over the next seven years (the supported life of the product), including hotfixes, security patches, updates (critical and noncritical), security rollups, feature packs, and service packs.
Let's not fight over our personal perceptions of what is suitable OS load - I think I should be able to run a game, have multiple office aps open in the background, and do an automatic file transfer in the background while I'm streaming a full video in a small window on my OS - without disk thrashing.
Vista on my 2003 machine runs smoothly with:
Two instances of IE7, 6 tabs open among them
Live Messenger
Visual Studio 2005 with a project and 6 source files open.
Paint.NET
Explorer window with folder in thumbnail view
Control Panel
WMP playing 640x480x29 fps video from hard drive (slower than streaming over the network due to the disk activity involved)
Guild Wars running at 30+ FPS
Downloading Ubuntu.iso at 200+ KB/s
All running with full Aero (3d-accelerated UI) at 1920x1200
Again, what poor performance did you experience with Vista, and what hardware did you have to upgrade? Have you even tried yourself? Or are you simply repeating a claim that others have likely repeated themselves?
You can make all the performance claims you want about Mac OS X because you've used it. But stop saying that Vista needs a hardware upgrade or will run poorly without providing evidence.
Does Vista represent a wholesale breakage of backwards compatibility or have too many companies (Apple) jsut become lazy in not heeding the warning that the API's really were being deprecated? Or am I completely off base here?
The APIs in Vista are largely backwards-compatible. I have games over 10 years old that still run on Vista (Civilization 1 for Windows 3.1, SimTower). The biggest change on Vista that can break apps is likely UAC: Whereas on XP users ran as Administrators, even the admin account on Vista starts off with regular user privileges. On XP apps could freely write to Program Files and modify HKLM--not so on Vista. There are other possibilities for compat breaking, such as bug fixes in the Win32 API (yes, this happens; see Raymond Chen's blog for stories), other security changes (such as moving services to a separate window desktop), and just plain changes that affect an app because it uses an API in an odd way.
"upgraded" OS that requires you to replace all your hardware just to get what you could get in the Mac OS two years ago.
My desktop machine running Vista was built in summer of 2003 for $1300: AMD Athlon 2700+, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 20 GB partition (yes, it fits with Visual Studio, Office, Baldur's Gate 2, and a bunch of other junk). I didn't have to upgrade a single piece of hardware to run Vista, and performance is great. So what hardware did you have to replace, or are you simply repeating what others say?
Re:Studios should object to Apple DRM
on
Vista - iPod Killer?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Apple still managed to sneak in the work-around that you could burn your own DRM-free CD's. Has any other DRM provider done that?
You can burn CDs of DRMed music with the Zune software.
Re:DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run?
on
Vista - iPod Killer?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Considering it worked well enough in XP, I'm wondering exactly what they managed to screw up with USB handling...
I doubt it's USB handling; it's likely UAC and how everyone is a restricted user by default (even Administrators until they elevate). I got into this weird situation in XP where I was able to play and purchase music in iTunes under a restricted account until I mistakenly ran it under an administrator account one day. I was never able to purchase music again without logging on as administrator (it would fail to download the song).
Furthermore, I can't imagine them intentionally crippling iTunes. Apple has ~70-80% of the market of music devices. It would be suicide for Vista to intentionally block the software of the most popular music device out there. Regular users would blame Vista regardless of the underlying technical reasons.
1) Ask no questions except to put in the install key upfront. Run everything else with basic assumptions. Run the config AFTER installation.
Uhh, have you actually installed Vista, or are you making things up? Installation consists of: 1) choosing your language, 2) entering the product key, 3) selecting the partition, 4) entering a username, 5) entering a computer name, 6) selecting Windows Update settings, and 7) changing the time. I agree that it could be simpler, but I can breeze through all those questions in less than a minute. And the questions are only asked in two blocks: before copying files, and after copying files and setting up hardware.
2) Allow for the easy and well documented input of a param file to create an install script on the fly.
Get the Windows Automated Installation Kit, which fully documents the XML install script format. Windows installation has been automatable for generations now.
Furthermore, you need to have Administrator access (or use Administrator to give yourself the priviledge) to create a symlink, "because not all applications may handle symbolic links correctly". Doesn't this seem broken to anyone? Or at the very least, worrysome?
It's ultimately an application compatibility problem. You don't want some pre-Vista app to blow away the user's stuff because the app recursively deleted a folder that contained a user-created symbolic link. It's fine on Unix OSs because they've had symlinks forever and applications likely expect them. The vast majority of Windows apps are unaware, and therefore it's dangerous.
As others have pointed, users can still create shell links (the.lnk files). Exposing both shell and symbolic links to users would also be confusing in the GUI. So this and compatibility reasons are likely why symbolic links can only be created from an elevated command-line.
Ever consider that it might be a driver issue? I can play both DRMed and non-DRMed videos fullscreen without problems on my Radeon 9800 Pro, including those that I've created myself. It sounds like you're blaming the most obvious target without providing much justification.
OK I've clearly not been keeping up-to-date here after playing with the Vista release candidates, but does LUA really prevent you from even running an executable file you downloaded without an admin username and password? Surely LUA is there to stop the executable from doing "bad things" rather than the user from running it, like in pretty much every other multiuser OS.
Generally no. There are certain types of executables where it'll require an admin username/password if you're not an administrator, or a confirmation dialog if you're an admin, but these are restricted to programs like installers and programs that explicitly request full admin privileges. IE will stamp executables so that they'll pop up a "this was downloaded from the web; are you sure you want to run? yes/no" dialog, but you can always check "no, don't remind me again".
So, if it works on Linux under a limited user account... why isn't it possible on Windows? Perhaps they need to start up some kind of emulation project... they would call it Beer since Cider and Wine are taken;)
Have you tried games on Vista? If not, then stop making up stuff. I hate to repaste, but from another post I wrote:
I've tried Quake 2 through 4, Civilization 1, 2, and 4, SimCity 2000, SimCity 4, SimTower, Age of Empires 1, 2, and 3, Warcraft 3, Rise of Nations, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights, American McGee's Alice, Diablo 1 and 2, Guild Wars, Soldat, some OSS games off of SourceForge, too many Flash games to be healthy, and probably others that I'm forgetting.
Out of all those games, I had one graphics issue, and zero limited user account issues. Quake 2, 3, and Alice normally save their games in Program Files. Vista's virtualized Program Files feature redirected it to my user folder. Copy protection worked fine (Civ4, Warcraft 3, etc. detected their inserted game CDs). Not once did I have to even click a "Continue" button to run a game.
So what problems did you have? Or are repeating stuff others wrote, and not bothering to confirm these mysterious limited account issues yourself?
The Games Explorer is basically a dynamic folder that lists installed games and is linked from the Start menu. That's it. Games on there have a 'recommended rating' and 'required rating' that refers to the computer's performance rating, and they have links directly to the developer's web site. A game can exist in Games Explorer and/or the Start menu without problems.
Regarding compatibility, I've been using Vista for a while now, and one of the first things I did was made sure my games ran. I've tried Quake 2 through 4, Civilization 1, 2, and 4, SimCity 2000, SimCity 4, SimTower, Age of Empires 1, 2, and 3, Warcraft 3, Rise of Nations, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights, American McGee's Alice, Diablo 1 and 2, Guild Wars, Soldat, some OSS games off of SourceForge, too many Flash games to be healthy, and probably others that I'm forgetting.
The worst compatibility issue: Alice has massive texture flickers on my ATI Radeon 9800 with drivers from October; I'm hoping this'll be fixed with a driver update. Second worst issue: Civ4 displays a compatibility warning dialog, with a continue button and a checkbox to never show the warning again. And that's it. I haven't had any UAC/LUA issues with games (directory/registry virtualization has helped my games run without admin privileges), no crashes, and performance is fine. Most of the games even show up in Games Explorer complete with box art; I was surprised to see SimTower's 10+ year old box on there. All of the games also show up in the Start menu.
So what's the issue? Hell if I know. If you've experienced actual problems, then great, post them and inform others. If not, stop freaking out and speculating. (Not directed towards parent poster, but to all those ranting about Vista's game support without any direct evidence.)
"1. Vista runs extremely well on any modern PC."
Buhahahahahahahahaa!!!
I don't know about other people's experiences with Vista's performance, but mine has been decent. Not amazing, not horrible, but decent. I built my machine 2-3 years ago: Athlon XP 2700+, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 MB RAM. Vista is installed on a 20 GB partition (I have XP on the other 180 GB partition), and currently there's 2.5 GB free after installing Civilization 4, Visual Studio 2005 Pro, and Office 2007. I'm running at 1920x1200 with full Aero.
Due to dual booting I've been able to subjectively compare game performance between both XP and Vista, and honestly, there isn't a noticeable difference. Civ4 starts out fast and slows down near endgame under both OSs. Quake 2 through 4, Unreal Tournament 2004, Age of Empires 3, WarCraft 3 were all performant at high resolutions (except Quake 4 which ran well at 800x600 under both OSs). Compatibility is also quite good: I tried a bunch of non-recent games altogether (20+ in all) and the only one with issues is massive texture flickering in Alice. Hell, even SimTower ran perfectly, and that game is over a decade old.
As for normal usage, I do sense a bit of UI sluggishness compared to XP, although it seems to affect everything so it might be immature graphics drivers. But the system is still very usable, and the sluggishness is only apparent when using XP directly after Vista, which is something I haven't done in weeks.
An unpublished study according to the link you provide. Really, I'd love to see that study, but all you've provided is an article in National Geographic. Of course, we can all remember National Geographic led the global cooling craze in 1975. But now, I suppose, they are an authoritative source. Much moreso than a peer reviewed scientific journal...
Using time-variable gravity measurements from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, we estimate ice mass changes over Greenland during the period April 2002 to November 2005. After correcting for effects of spatial filtering and limited resolution of GRACE data, estimated total ice melting rate over Greenland is -239 ± 23 cubic kilometers per year, mostly from East Greenland. This estimate agrees remarkably well with a recent assessment of -224 ± 41 cubic kilometers per year, based on satellite radar interferometry data. GRACE estimates in southeast Greenland suggest accelerated melting since the summer of 2004, consistent with the latest remote sensing measurements.
Now if only the ice were getting thinner in Greenland, we'd have something to worry about. Unfortunately for you global warming scaremongers, that isn't the case. It seems the ice has been getting thicker in Greenland over the past decade or so.
Your link mentions a thickness increase in the interior only; there's a decrease on the margins. NASA says:
Greenland's low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, while the high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall.
Another study and that NASA report points to an overall decrease in ice.
First, these patents describe specific ways to improve the RSS end-user and developer experience (which we believe are valuable and innovative contributions) -- they do not constitute a claim that Microsoft invented RSS.
Except that in a separate covenant they agreed not to sue anyone using the Office XML spec.
More information here. Basically it's an irrevocable agreement to not sue you over patents, provided that you do not sue them over any patents as well. This actually applies to a variety of web services specifications, the VHD format (Virtual PC's hard drive format), as well as Office 2003's XML format and Office 2007's formats. Also note that Office 2007 file formats have been submitted for Ecma standardization. You can read a final draft here.
I'm not talking about what happens when you let it sit idle. I'm talking about how many different options there are in the "Shutdown" menu and what happens when you either click on the "sleep" option or close the cover of a laptop. Users, in general, should not be presented with two very similar (and therefore confusing) options like "sleep" and "hibernate."
The power button on the main Start menu (not the submenu with 7 items) performs a hybrid sleep that's a combination of hibernate and sleep, so users by default are not exposed to the two confusing options. If the computer loses power, it's not an issue as RAM content has been saved. But the computer slept, so resuming is a lot quicker than resuming from hibernate.
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You said you don't use MS software. Then how exactly are you judging UAC? Is this first-hand experience or just repetition of repetition of someone's comments on UAC in a pre-release version of Vista?
I've used Vista since November last year and don't recall ever being annoyed by it. I develop software for a living, and even coding and debugging work without elevation. At home I regularly use Vista without any elevation prompts. At work I have at most one or two prompts per day, and that's because some software I use requires elevation, so I just elevate a command prompt and run it from there. If it gets to the point where it annoys the hell out of you, turn it off. At least it's still there to bug other Windows developers so that future apps will be written with non-admin privileges in mind.
That's actually an interesting idea. I have numerous DVD backups of my computer, and while I wouldn't want to see search hits from those backups by default, it'd be great if I could check a "search CD/DVD" box and see all media containing a particular backed-up file. One problem I see is identifying the media: You'd have to give meaningful labels to your CDs or input the labels manually.
You're implying that they either have a separate design team, or they're skipping design. How about another possibility: the same team also does design work. Specs can range from high level to the coding level, and especially in the latter it does not make sense to exclude devs, the one who will be implementing the detailed spec, from the design process.
As I've written in another post, another team does the fixing and maintaining.
What do you expect the developers to do in the meantime? Just sit around and wait until customers start demanding a new version before working on it? Whether they announce it or not, they're going to work on the next version. It'd be silly to just sit still.
Vista RTM'd back in November 2006, and was available to TechNet subscribers and businesses later that month. After finishing coding it's not like the devs are tasked with running Vista marketing, getting the CDs pressed, and scurrying out into the world like little ants to spread Vista. No, they instead do developer work, like planning and coding for their next project. (And if you're wondering who does patches and service packs, it's a different team.)
They do. After Windows is finished, the dev team proceeds to work on the next version, while a team called Windows Sustained Engineering takes over the released version. From the link:
Vista on my 2003 machine runs smoothly with:
Again, what poor performance did you experience with Vista, and what hardware did you have to upgrade? Have you even tried yourself? Or are you simply repeating a claim that others have likely repeated themselves?
You can make all the performance claims you want about Mac OS X because you've used it. But stop saying that Vista needs a hardware upgrade or will run poorly without providing evidence.
The APIs in Vista are largely backwards-compatible. I have games over 10 years old that still run on Vista (Civilization 1 for Windows 3.1, SimTower). The biggest change on Vista that can break apps is likely UAC: Whereas on XP users ran as Administrators, even the admin account on Vista starts off with regular user privileges. On XP apps could freely write to Program Files and modify HKLM--not so on Vista. There are other possibilities for compat breaking, such as bug fixes in the Win32 API (yes, this happens; see Raymond Chen's blog for stories), other security changes (such as moving services to a separate window desktop), and just plain changes that affect an app because it uses an API in an odd way.
My desktop machine running Vista was built in summer of 2003 for $1300: AMD Athlon 2700+, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 20 GB partition (yes, it fits with Visual Studio, Office, Baldur's Gate 2, and a bunch of other junk). I didn't have to upgrade a single piece of hardware to run Vista, and performance is great. So what hardware did you have to replace, or are you simply repeating what others say?
You can burn CDs of DRMed music with the Zune software.
I doubt it's USB handling; it's likely UAC and how everyone is a restricted user by default (even Administrators until they elevate). I got into this weird situation in XP where I was able to play and purchase music in iTunes under a restricted account until I mistakenly ran it under an administrator account one day. I was never able to purchase music again without logging on as administrator (it would fail to download the song).
Furthermore, I can't imagine them intentionally crippling iTunes. Apple has ~70-80% of the market of music devices. It would be suicide for Vista to intentionally block the software of the most popular music device out there. Regular users would blame Vista regardless of the underlying technical reasons.
It does. They released an update supporting Vista back in December 2006.
Uhh, have you actually installed Vista, or are you making things up? Installation consists of: 1) choosing your language, 2) entering the product key, 3) selecting the partition, 4) entering a username, 5) entering a computer name, 6) selecting Windows Update settings, and 7) changing the time. I agree that it could be simpler, but I can breeze through all those questions in less than a minute. And the questions are only asked in two blocks: before copying files, and after copying files and setting up hardware.
Get the Windows Automated Installation Kit, which fully documents the XML install script format. Windows installation has been automatable for generations now.
It's ultimately an application compatibility problem. You don't want some pre-Vista app to blow away the user's stuff because the app recursively deleted a folder that contained a user-created symbolic link. It's fine on Unix OSs because they've had symlinks forever and applications likely expect them. The vast majority of Windows apps are unaware, and therefore it's dangerous.
As others have pointed, users can still create shell links (the .lnk files). Exposing both shell and symbolic links to users would also be confusing in the GUI. So this and compatibility reasons are likely why symbolic links can only be created from an elevated command-line.
Ever consider that it might be a driver issue? I can play both DRMed and non-DRMed videos fullscreen without problems on my Radeon 9800 Pro, including those that I've created myself. It sounds like you're blaming the most obvious target without providing much justification.
Generally no. There are certain types of executables where it'll require an admin username/password if you're not an administrator, or a confirmation dialog if you're an admin, but these are restricted to programs like installers and programs that explicitly request full admin privileges. IE will stamp executables so that they'll pop up a "this was downloaded from the web; are you sure you want to run? yes/no" dialog, but you can always check "no, don't remind me again".
Have you tried games on Vista? If not, then stop making up stuff. I hate to repaste, but from another post I wrote:
Out of all those games, I had one graphics issue, and zero limited user account issues. Quake 2, 3, and Alice normally save their games in Program Files. Vista's virtualized Program Files feature redirected it to my user folder. Copy protection worked fine (Civ4, Warcraft 3, etc. detected their inserted game CDs). Not once did I have to even click a "Continue" button to run a game.
So what problems did you have? Or are repeating stuff others wrote, and not bothering to confirm these mysterious limited account issues yourself?
The Games Explorer is basically a dynamic folder that lists installed games and is linked from the Start menu. That's it. Games on there have a 'recommended rating' and 'required rating' that refers to the computer's performance rating, and they have links directly to the developer's web site. A game can exist in Games Explorer and/or the Start menu without problems.
Regarding compatibility, I've been using Vista for a while now, and one of the first things I did was made sure my games ran. I've tried Quake 2 through 4, Civilization 1, 2, and 4, SimCity 2000, SimCity 4, SimTower, Age of Empires 1, 2, and 3, Warcraft 3, Rise of Nations, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights, American McGee's Alice, Diablo 1 and 2, Guild Wars, Soldat, some OSS games off of SourceForge, too many Flash games to be healthy, and probably others that I'm forgetting.
The worst compatibility issue: Alice has massive texture flickers on my ATI Radeon 9800 with drivers from October; I'm hoping this'll be fixed with a driver update. Second worst issue: Civ4 displays a compatibility warning dialog, with a continue button and a checkbox to never show the warning again. And that's it. I haven't had any UAC/LUA issues with games (directory/registry virtualization has helped my games run without admin privileges), no crashes, and performance is fine. Most of the games even show up in Games Explorer complete with box art; I was surprised to see SimTower's 10+ year old box on there. All of the games also show up in the Start menu.
So what's the issue? Hell if I know. If you've experienced actual problems, then great, post them and inform others. If not, stop freaking out and speculating. (Not directed towards parent poster, but to all those ranting about Vista's game support without any direct evidence.)
I don't know about other people's experiences with Vista's performance, but mine has been decent. Not amazing, not horrible, but decent. I built my machine 2-3 years ago: Athlon XP 2700+, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 MB RAM. Vista is installed on a 20 GB partition (I have XP on the other 180 GB partition), and currently there's 2.5 GB free after installing Civilization 4, Visual Studio 2005 Pro, and Office 2007. I'm running at 1920x1200 with full Aero.
Due to dual booting I've been able to subjectively compare game performance between both XP and Vista, and honestly, there isn't a noticeable difference. Civ4 starts out fast and slows down near endgame under both OSs. Quake 2 through 4, Unreal Tournament 2004, Age of Empires 3, WarCraft 3 were all performant at high resolutions (except Quake 4 which ran well at 800x600 under both OSs). Compatibility is also quite good: I tried a bunch of non-recent games altogether (20+ in all) and the only one with issues is massive texture flickering in Alice. Hell, even SimTower ran perfectly, and that game is over a decade old.
As for normal usage, I do sense a bit of UI sluggishness compared to XP, although it seems to affect everything so it might be immature graphics drivers. But the system is still very usable, and the sluggishness is only apparent when using XP directly after Vista, which is something I haven't done in weeks.
You can read the paper here. It was published in Science on August 10, 2006. Abstract:
Your link mentions a thickness increase in the interior only; there's a decrease on the margins. NASA says:
Another study and that NASA report points to an overall decrease in ice.
Microsoft PM Sean Lyndersay posted a response:
More information here. Basically it's an irrevocable agreement to not sue you over patents, provided that you do not sue them over any patents as well. This actually applies to a variety of web services specifications, the VHD format (Virtual PC's hard drive format), as well as Office 2003's XML format and Office 2007's formats. Also note that Office 2007 file formats have been submitted for Ecma standardization. You can read a final draft here.
The power button on the main Start menu (not the submenu with 7 items) performs a hybrid sleep that's a combination of hibernate and sleep, so users by default are not exposed to the two confusing options. If the computer loses power, it's not an issue as RAM content has been saved. But the computer slept, so resuming is a lot quicker than resuming from hibernate.