Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Early Testers Say Vista RC1 Not Ready 457

digihome writes "A number of partners and analysts who have downloaded Vista RC1 say the code is solid but they are not convinced it will be ready for release this fall. A Directions on Microsoft analyst said, 'I would call this at best a Beta Three and not a Release Candidate One.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Early Testers Say Vista RC1 Not Ready

Comments Filter:
  • not ready? (Score:3, Funny)

    by vp0ng ( 751157 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @04:58PM (#16047559)
    how can it be not ready? they're always keeping a tight schedule that never falls behind. Duke Nukem anyone?
  • RC1? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Star_Gazer ( 25473 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:02PM (#16047600)
    I never understood this MS terminology. From my point of view a Release Candidate is in a shape that I could just recompile the software without the debugging symbols if no major bugs are reported. No one considers this to be even a remote possibility in case of Vista RC1. My guess is that they will also need a RC2, RC3 and maybe even RC4 and than a RRC1 (real Release Candidate) before shipping.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SteveXE ( 641833 )
      Interesting because I havent noticed any real problems other then it wont boot if SLI is enabled and from what I understand thats nvidias fault. I also find it runs quicker then XP contrary to what this article says. Of course my PC is just about brand new and top of the line which is exactly what Vista is designed for.

      I also did page loading benchmarks using FireFox in XP and IE7 in Vista. I found IE7 rendered pages at least twice as fast in most cases.

      I agree its probably not ready for retail but they

      • I havn't had much problems with it either, other than the driver signing crap. There are little quirks here and there but those should all be fixed pretty quickly considering how much people they've got working there.

        I also did page loading benchmarks using FireFox in XP and IE7 in Vista. I found IE7 rendered pages at least twice as fast in most cases.

        That is hardly a benchmark of Vista - Firefox (on Windows at least) has always been *much* slower at rendering compared to IE.

    • I know they had at LEAST an RC2 for XP. The reason they put a number after "RC" is so they can increment it.
    • Re:RC1? (Score:5, Funny)

      by xming ( 133344 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:16PM (#16047735) Homepage
      MS calls them SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4, ...
    • I never understood this MS terminology. From my point of view a Release Candidate is in a shape that I could just recompile the software without the debugging symbols if no major bugs are reported.

      You are not desperately trying to get a laughingly late and buggy product out the door more than three years after it was due to ship.

    • Normally (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )
      RC means just what it says: A candidate ready for release. In fact a couple times RC1 and final have been the same thing, because no problems were found in RC1.

      This time they are just lying. It's Beta 3 but they don't want to call it that since people are so discontent with how behind schedule they are.
  • Seriously, is this really news? We all know Vista is going to be a mess until SP1.

    All in all, this looks a lot like OS X's role-out. People really didn't start mass migrating to that OS until 2 years after it's release.
  • by varunnangia ( 999363 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:05PM (#16047625) Homepage
    My experience with RC1 has been mixed. Do I think it's light years ahead of the disaster that was Beta2? Yes, absolutely. It's stable enough to use as an everyday operating system. Is it ready for showtime? Eh. Perhaps. Is it what we have waited six years for? Heck, no. Where are all the interesting bits gone?

    The more interesting question is that of nomenclature. I agree that this is Beta3 - but more because an RC everywhere else is something that is ready to go, it just needs spit and polish to get it ready, fix a couple of bugs. Then again, this is what Microsoft is telling people to test their applications against to check for breakages, so yes, I suppose you could call it a "Certification Beta" or what have you. But call it what you may, I think it's the Ultimate version, with all the games, and goodies, that needs more time. Enterprise-wise, it looks stable enough for use - networking is better than XP (even though it's a new stack), group policy has been better fine tuned, UAC is usable enough, and hardware detection is light-years ahead of XP. All of those basic things are ready and if thats what enterprise customers are expected to get, then I think it's good to go, after they fix the occaisonal dialog box with three different fonts.

    I just wish there was something truly innovative to encourage an upgrade. Halo 2 doesn't count, especially for business!
    • Enterprise-wise, it looks stable enough for use - networking is better than XP (even though it's a new stack), group policy has been better fine tuned, UAC is usable enough, and hardware detection is light-years ahead of XP. All of those basic things are ready and if thats what enterprise customers are expected to get, then I think it's good to go, after they fix the occaisonal dialog box with three different fonts.

      This is what bothers me, though. I look at everything you listed there and think, "bug fix

    • by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @06:05PM (#16048131) Journal
      I think the 2:3 rule comes into play.

      In this case; Stable, Easy to Use, and Cheap; pick any two.

      If you want Stable and Cheap, Linux/BSD - and a steep learning curve.
      If you want Stable and Easy, Macintosh - and a lighter wallet.
      If you want Cheap and Easy...
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        I dunno, I've used Macs (though rarely in the last few years), Windows PCs, Linux boxes and others; I think many Linuxes are as easy to use as Windows or MacOS, but lack in similarly easy to use application software for a lot of what desktop users want to do, though.
        • by Greyfox ( 87712 )
          Ok look folks... I've been using Microsoft products since DOS 3.3. I did OS/2 technical support in the early 90's. I've been using Linux since 1995 and that's what I'm using for my big box at home. I bought an Apple laptop earlier this year because I was curious about OSX and if I didn't like it I could install Linux. I've been around the OS block.

          Apple obviously puts a lot of thought into how stuff fits together on their desktop, and their laptop just freaking works with everything. Wireless? No problem!

  • by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:06PM (#16047639) Journal
    If MS hadn't been promising it for so long, it wouldn't be such a disappointment. IE7 is finally out, put it on a client's laptop, and it doesn't look that bad. I haven't seen it do anything terrible yet, but now that I've been using FF, I'm not really excited about the look and feel of it at all. I'll probably have the same 'oh, it looks a bit crayola-ish' reaction to Vista too. Oh well, as long as MS is trying to keep up with the rest of the world, all can't be bad.

    Seriously though, all the people that are trying to predict this or that, call it good, or denounce it already.. well, all I have to say to that is wait for Vista SP2 before you make up your mind. That's when all the bugs will be worked out, and by then, two or more Linux distros will be better than Vista. By then, many more people will have figured out that the OpenOffice apps are good enough for what they want, and the little lightbulb in their heads will turn on and they will realize that a computer doesn't need MS products to be useful or relevant.
  • Work well done (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mkosmo ( 768069 ) *
    True enough, but then again, people will claim the final release not to be sufficiently tested, either. Not that I will be using Vista nor am I a Vista fan (I run Linux exclusively for my own reasons), but people should realize that almost no software released today is free of bugs and exploits. For a codebase that large, I think Microsoft deserves some credit for keeping it as well as they have... while still maintaining legacy compatibility! Not that I am saying they are right for letting it grow so bi
  • As we all know, Vista will have many key upgrades since there are
    many important features that will be added after the launch as time passes. (such as Monad)
      With only part of the 'features available' at launch, vista is far from 'complete'.
    Let's see if it is ready after the final release AND when most of the stuff is complete and has been
    properly integrated into Vista.
      I would like to see how that new OS works then.
  • Solid crap? or solid gold?
  • by eebra82 ( 907996 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:14PM (#16047721) Homepage
    It's safe to say that this is the most disputed release of any operating system made by Microsoft. The software giant has not had huge delays prior to this release and therefore it had not yet stressed out a pre-Vista product like it is doing it now.

    Microsoft loses whatever they do from now on. If they delay the product even further, share holders will complain and people will lose faith in them. If they release it too soon (i.e. as currently planned), it is likely going to require significant upgrades and probably also a super fast SP1 upgrade. That too will make people upset and techies will have to upgrade computers over and over again.

    I am a Windows XP user and I must say that I am satisfied with this product as it is right now. I am not going to upgrade to Vista before we see the first, second and third wave of reactions.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Thinking about all the pain you describe just makes me want to put on a black turtleneck, grab people by the shoulders, and tell them "For God's sake, life is too short! Get a Mac!"
  • Vista (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DesertWolf0132 ( 718296 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:16PM (#16047742) Homepage
    Based on my experience with Microsoft products (which dates to the early days of DOS) they are never quite ready for the production environment until SP1. To judge based on an RC1 is just silly. At home I have already upgraded to a Linux environment and will not need to throw money at Vista. In the office I will be holding off until SP1 before I even start testing our production software on Vista. It is not worth my time or money to go through the hassle of making a Release Candidate my primary OS (which is what is truly needed to shake the bugs out). I don't forsee even considering a switch until January '08, and that is if they release close to schedule.
    • Huh. In my experience it's usually at least SP2, which if history is a guideline won't be out until spring / summer 08.
  • by DragonWriter ( 970822 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:17PM (#16047745)
    ...I mean, heck, with an MS operating system, "ready" is something like SP2. (joking. mostly.)
  • MS has the luxury of pushing this one out the door on their time schedule unless their is some huge penalty for not doing so. Which I don't see. Investors are happy, PHB's are happy.

    Any organization fool enough to buy into their free upgrade license scheme will simply blame it on IT underlings as a bad decision -if- the issue ever came up.

    PC manufacturers won't have a great year, but since when does that bother a monopoly?

    With that said, I think the more practical solution is to flush another couple milli
  • Technically on the previous build [wincustomize.com], but the problems remained in the following one. ATI did finally release drivers to fix the worst of it. In their press release [ati.com] they say "ATI's latest drivers . . . improve on the leading stability and performance found in previous versions". Now, I will admit they perform better than NVIDIA's, but I don't count failure to resume from suspend as very stable. :-)
  • by Solr_Flare ( 844465 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:27PM (#16047851)
    The performance is closer to Windows XP if you factor out the still awful sidebar. In some areas it equals XP's performance, in other areas it still lags a bit behind. Compatability isn't much of an issue either at this point. Honestly, compatability wise, considering the changes under the hood, the changeover to Vista should be a lot smoother than when everyone started transitioning over to Windows 2000 several years back.

    The reason why Vista is definitely *not* ready for release though, is the overall design of the OS itself. Vista has no unified feel to its design, and certain key changes from Windows xp feel more cumbersome(or at the very least awkward to get adjusted to).

    Vista really does highlight the differences in design philosophy that went into it versus Mac OS X. While technology implementation wise the two OS's are rather similar in what they can offer the user, OS X goes to great pains to offer a unified and relatively easy to use design. Vista, on the other hand, feels exactly the way it was designed: done in pieces by various different groups then pieced together.

    The short of it is the core of Vista, baring a few more bug fixes and performance improvements, is certainly there. But, Vista right now is like that unassembled bike you got as a kid for Christmas. All the parts are there but you can't quite get it fitted together right.

    In my honest opinion Vista needs about 3 more months and one more major release to get the final kinks out of the system performance and bug wise, but then it needs another 6 months of heavy and pure public beta use and feedback to get the interface and design unified into a user friendly operating system. As it stands right now, I think performance and bug wise Vista should be pretty much ok by the time the consumer release hits in January, but it is going to be far more cumbersome and even less intuitive to use than Windows XP is on release.
  • What is ready? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Twillerror ( 536681 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @05:43PM (#16047958) Homepage Journal
    Has a Red Hat, Suse, Debian build ever come out bug free. Hard to say since so many of the packages that you can install via apt or whatever are not really associated. If apache has a bug it's apache's fault, not Windows.

    This is a major disadvantage, but also a major advantage that both Windows and Mac to some extent share.

    With any software you have to get it out the door. It'll never be perfect, and no matter how long they wait there will be an SP1 fairly soon.

    To me what RC1 means is that nothing big and fancy is going to get ADDED. What you see if pretty much what you get. If a major flaw is found they might rearrange a piece of functionality, but most things are going to be bug fixes.

    While in Beta they might completely take something out. In RC you probably are not going to get away with it, although you migth "delay" something to SP1 like Microsoft did with database mirroring in SQL 2005 in order to get it out the door.

    As much as I hate patching, I'd rather get it out in the field and get some use out of it. Early adopters will get hit the hardest, but that is what they expect. Dell and the other manufactors will be the ones finding most of the bugs from now on anyways.

  • Look at what... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @06:00PM (#16048087)
    Look at what Apple has been able to accomplish by mixing the code and culture of thir own system with that of NeXT and with that of the FOSS community. Eighty-six million lines of code from all of these sources comprise their marvelous operating system, a great success that continues improving across the board.

    When will Microsoft, with all its economic power and marketing prowess, realize that they need to take the plunge and go open source? When will they realize that by mixing all of their software with lots of stuff from the FOSS community, they can grow the functionality of their software by orders of magnitude while increasing its stability?
  • by texaport ( 600120 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @06:09PM (#16048147)
    Vista is not a trivial XP SP3, but it surely isn't NT 6.0 either.

    Aug 1996 NT4
    Dec 1999 NT5.0
    Oct 2001 NT5.1
    Dec 2006 NT5.5

  • by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt.gmail@com> on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @06:11PM (#16048161) Homepage
    Well good thing it's shipping in January [betanews.com] then! That gives them 2-3 more months to work on it!
  • by e40 ( 448424 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @06:50PM (#16048386) Journal
    Date/Time Posted
    2006-08-30 18:24:43 (UTC)
    File
    en_vista_beta2_August2006EDW_build5536_x86_dvd.iso ISO-9660 DVD Image
  • by TheNetAvenger ( 624455 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2006 @07:31PM (#16048629)
    'I would call this at best a Beta Three and not a Release Candidate One

    Ok, why is this a RC and not a Beta? Well in the MS world since about 1992 that I can personally 'testify' to, a product makes the RC milestone when it is feature complete from a DEVELOPER standpoint.

    This means that the product is feature complete and 99% of the OS bits and all the APIs are how they will be in the final release.

    Why was Beta2-Pre-RC1 NOT a RC. Simple, from a developer's standpoint the OS was not feature complete.

    RC1 is the FIRST release that that .NET 3.0 and other new API systems are finalized for syntax, so developers can start testing new products against the OS and not have to worry about API changes.

    Sure things will be optimized, and this will be polished, but this IS A RC solely based on the definition that MS has used FOR YEARS. It is feature complete for developers...

    (So aside from all the Joke at MS and other FUD, this is technically a RC, and even though it is not a 'finished' polished product, it is the first feature complete versions, especially from the API standpoint.)

    This is NO different than they did with Win2k RC1 which was actually less stable than Vista RC1, but AGAIN it was API feature complete for developers, hence why it was called a RC and not a Beta, just as this release.

    As for proof of this, look at the Win2k Beta history, or even lookt that Vista Beta History, the .NET 3.0 APIs were changing on a monthy basis up until July, as you will notice that there were .NET3.0/WinFX releases each month, with the APIs for the developers changing. And that is just ONE new API subsystem of Vista.

    So once again repeat,"This is a RC, this is a RC because it is API and Developer complete."

    PERIOD.

What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things? -- J.M. Barrie

Working...