Vista RC2: More Refined, But Still Not Perfect

jcatcw writes, "Scot Finnie continues his love — hate relationship with Windows Vista. He installed the latest beta, RC2, on three machines. First problem: drivers — too many of them that should be available just aren't. User Access Control remains annoying and Vista's Software Protection Platform puts antipiracy above user security. Software compatibility is still in need even at this late date. However, previous problems with the Media Center were absent." And turnitover writes to point us to PC Mag's RC2 review. Their bottom line is that they expect an RC2+ or even an RC3 before it goes final. Here is PC Mag's slide show.

Update: 10/09 19:33 GMT by kd : michigano writes: "This late in the game and Microsoft has pulled firewire support from their OS! No one knows if its permanent."

Perfect?

Still Not Perfect

First thing - it's a RC
Second thing - This RC is more like a beta :)
And well, when was anything perfect?
There's always more work to be done for everything, including vista

Re:Perfect?

No kidding. These people expect too much. What do they want? A release candidate that's actually fit for release?

Sheesh.

Re:Perfect?

This goes beyond the beta stage because the RC is feature complete

    Erm... Like support for firewire?

RC v SP

No, no, "fit for release" is the by-line for Service Pack 2. According to the Microsoft Versioning Procedural Handbook:

Beta: Alpha, minus the codename
RC1: Users will QA for us!
RC2: Users who were disgusted by RC1 will QA for us some more if we change the version number
Release: If we wait any longer, our stock will suffer
SP1: In the F/OSS world they call this the "stable" build

RC1 switched me to Ubuntu. Too late for RC2 to change my mind.

Feels Like Street Fighter!

With naming conventions like this, it is starting to get close to Street Fighter levels of awesomenessocity. Next up: "Microsoft Windows Vista: Release Canidate 2 Beta Final Alpha Turbo 4...Professional!"

Drivers...

Drivers are done on a per company basis. Since vista isn't out, there is no reason to expect official support of any kind on a particular device. As far as piracy controls go... There has to be an exchagne of money there somewhere. Microsoft has more than enough money to tell DRM companies to screw off, so they're getting compensation of some kind. Likely exclusive contract extensions from places like Sony, and other perks to ensure certain DRM compliance.

Re:Microsoft and DRM

Considering that they're at a stage where if you rip mp3s with media player you can't easily send them to another PC you use, they're already there.

Stop spreading this goddamn lie that I see coming out of the mouth of every fool who hasn't even bothered to see if it's true in Vista! You don't even have the capability to enable copy protection on MP3 files encoded in Windows Media Player 11! It doesn't even default to using copy protection when you encode to WMA or WMA Pro!

There isn't one end user out there that wants more DRM, so MS isn't doing it for the mass market.

Some people might not want their own personally created and original content redistributed to other machines.

By the way, there's plenty of DRM support making it's way into the Linux world, you obviously don't know where to look if you haven't seen it making it's way.

RC2 is the first "buggy" version for me

I have a bench machine that I've tested with Betas1&2 and RC1&2. All except for Beta2 have been pretty bug free, but RC2 fails at the "testing hardware" dialog during install, and after reboot will not give me the Aeroglass option, unlike all previous versions. I'll do some digging later this week to see how to force a re-test of hardware for compatibility, but this was dissapointing after 3 functional previous releases

More refined guys, in SP1 :)

No time for more refined. Unfortunately that's it.

It's obvious there's lots of patchwork in it. I browse the control panel and display properties and get the same feeling I have when looking at work I did in the last minute with a glue and duct tape.

IE7 still crashes like mad on Google Maps for some reason, and what's with the single tab display properties? What's the point of a tab bar, when you have always one single tab in it? We'll never know.

My Wacom tablet works terribly with Vista newfound tabletPC intelligence, it keep sassuming clicks I never have done, I had to go and basically disable all smart features and it still is funky (I can barely use a combo box with my Wacom in Vista).

It's apparent they'll be shipping it to the factory in few days either way, so I'm just hoping once they're done, they start working on a SP1 to be done for the January release that will fix all this mess.

Re:More refined guys, in SP1 :)

Vistas' not done till Google won't run......

Love? Hate?

Who cares about love and hate ?

What matters if it delivers value. What matters if it meets the requirements. What matters if it is usable. What matters is if it delivers on the promise. What matters is support. And so on and so forth...

Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

Our company did last year, city of Vienna did, it should work out very nicely for you too. Our former XP users love KDE.

No need to put yourself through pains when you can improve security, save money and achieve some level of vendor independence all at the same time.

I overlooked it...

One good thing about vista, crackers and wormware writers will start focusing on that and, hopefully, leave my PC alone :o)

Who knew?

Better security = annoyance

Re:Yup

First off, you cannot just 'run Vista with administrative privleges.' That doesn't work around the problem. What you CAN do is turn off UAC, which is done in the most stupid way possible. You turn off the option and then you must (wait for it) REBOOT VISTA. Excuse me? REBOOT? Then why will anyone ever turn UAC back on if they keep having to reboot to use it.

The problem isn't that Microsoft has implemented UAC, it is the horrible way that they did it. You don't enter a password to install new software, you must click on a button that is on a different part of the screen every time it pops up, and it can pop up a lot if you are doing administrative tasks. So most people will simply choose to disable UAC, reboot, and never re-enable it again. That defeats the entire purpose of the feature.

Proper way to do it: When the user needs to perform an administrative task, have them enter a password, then allow ALL administrative tasks performed within the next several minutes without asking. If the time runs out, ask for the password again. This allows people to perform Administrative tasks without constantly having to click on annoying dialog boxes for every step they perform.

For good examples of how to do this properly see Mac OS X or most versions of Linux running a GUI.

Microsoft can't even copy good ideas correctly.

Who was expecting "perfect"?

Let's ignore people's feelings about Microsoft for a second. A hypothetical software developer has made a lot of changes to their operating system, rewriting a lot of internals, and making huge changes to their UI. Who here is expecting that this hypothetical software release will be "perfect" when it goes gold?

At best, even assuming Microsoft is a great software developer, there will be bugs and problems when it goes out the door. I don't believe that should be our question. My questions are, Is it usable? Will it increase my productivity over Windows XP? Does the new UI offer something beyond being "new"? Are there new features that I'll actually want to use?

Or to bang all of those questions into one super question, Are there any reasons why I'll want to upgrade? If I could add a second, it'd be, Are there any reasons why I won't want to upgrade?

But if you tell me that there aren't drivers for everything yet, well of course there aren't because it's not released yet, but there will be drivers for most things soon. If you tell me there's some little bug on your particular machine, that doesn't bother me. Release broadens the diversity of hardware that software is running on, and so even if everything was perfect in the beta stage, there will be some bugs.

Re:Who was expecting "perfect"?

I can answer both of those for you right now:

Are there any reasons why I'll want to upgrade?

Yes.

If I could add a second, it'd be, Are there any reasons why I won't want to upgrade?

Yes.

Of course there are always going to be "features" you'll want to upgrade for and there will be "features" (like DRM) that you will want to avoid. The question is how many people will hold out until the DRM "features" will force them to "upgrade" to the new OS because nothing else will work anymore.

Whats the point in look at RC's

MS could release builds amazing for their quality and /. would still find something to moan about. I have yet to see any major engineering project work perfectly out the door first time, there are always unforseen issues and problems. After the release of the first service pack is when I will start looking at the capabilities or lack thereof with vista.

Is this with or without hacked DRM?

I was just reading on Gripeline that Microsoft is suing a hacker who has already hacked the DRM components of WinVista.

Inquiring minds with sharpies want to know ...

Microsoft should put UAC password prompts back in.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the same guy who first bitched about the UAC always asking for passwords to do anything administrative? (read: mimics SU, only more annoyingly) Didn't Microsoft respond by taking the passwords out?

That was a bad move on both parties' account, IMO. There's a /. post still on the main page that shows why an annoying UAC (with password typing required) would be a Good Thing(tm). Where is it.... where is it.... ah!

IE7 Toolbar Mayhem [slashdot.org]

Who do they expect to buy this?

Besides bundled with new systems, who would actually buy Vista? I expect that we will see a slow adoption rate since most users are perfectly content with XP.

Re:Who do they expect to buy this?

Well, given that something like a half-billion PCs are sold each year, that's a bit like asking, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

They'll also sell a lot of Vista licenses to offices whose IT shops want to maintain only a single platform. Once they start having to buy new PCs with Vista, they'll want to upgrade the entire shop. The larger the ratio of users to IT, the more they're going to standardize their systems. It's a convenience for them, like replacing the lightbulbs all at once rather than waiting for them to burn out.

Individual users will continue to use their XP installations for perhaps 3-5 years. Over time bits of hardware fail and it's easier for many to replace the entire thing, especially when that elderly PC starts to feel pokey in comparison to the new computers; the new software will find ways to use the extra CPU power. And with a Windows installation, it may not be an illusion of contrast: between registry/DLL bloat in legal software, and the many users who will be infected with malware, it may actually be slower. Cleaning the OS and replacing components gradually becomes less efficient than just buying a shiny new one.

Small gripe

I read the Computerworld article linked in the summary. The writer takes issue with how Windows Vista handles a perceived pirated copy (it starts disabling services). I eventually hit this sentence:

Hello! Is anyone in Redmond actually paying attention to what it's doing?

"Hello?" Have we reached the point where journalists mimic the stock, teenage cry of indignation?
Sorry, but I am really tired of that phrase. Its use restricts author credibility.

P.S. Get off my lawn.

Hate to love, love to hate

It seems that Vista divides testers in two categories, those who find - to their suprise - they like it, and others who get yet another confirmation of how bad Windows is.

Random thoughts

Photo Gallery needs sharpen! Somewhere there is a funny picture of how inconsistent the interface still can be with button and arrows moving around per application, Wish I could find that link again. Are the minimize, maximize, and close buttons still all screwed up in RC2? http://adacosta.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E8E5CC039 D51E3DB!6931.entry [live.com]

Do translucent windows add anything to the use experience?
User: "Oh look, at the top of my window through a .25" space I can see part of the text of an icon on my desktop! How very useful!"

But I will say it's coming bugs and all so you all might as well get used to it. Just think of how much money you'll make installing and fixing Vista? Just think of how little I'll be paying for Vista thanks to having MSDN via work...Big kisses to MS now!

Wow

That looks sweet! MAN! Thats gonna kick as- Microsoft made it? Eh, its gonna suck. Fuck gates! HES A MONERY GRUBBING THIEF!!! BASTARD!

Damned RAID

I'd love to try it, as I have it on DVD and I got a key, but my Silicon Image 3112 Raid Controller isn't supported!

I went to the vista install fair in mtn view

here's what I wrote about it (I wrote on photog forum since that was my main interest - photo processing stuff):

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?for um=1004&thread=20378448 [dpreview.com]

in short, these things didn't work for me:

- avira antivir (threat to MS on their own 'defender' ?)
- monaco optix xr pro (screen calibrator 'puck'; aka 'colorimeter'. pro photog guys NEED this)
- oem nero6 (I need that for lightscribe work. MS doesn't do LS, I don't think, and sadly neither does unix)
- cisco vpn (I use that to login to work remotely. this is a must-have for me.)

it also didn't like my epson scanner (1640su). a very standard and high quality flatbed scanner - not on the supported list.

it took 4 hours to do an upgrade (at the MS building, on sunday, yesterday) on an amd64 x2 3800 dualcore system. sigh.

its good that I cloned my disk before I brought my box over to them. that disk will get scrubbed and put back on the shelf and I'm back to using XP for pshop/cs2 work - where ALL my hardware and sw continues to work.

zero reason to upgrade to vista. zero. in fact, it brings me backwards and forces me to re-buy perfectly good hardware. that color puck was $300. I will NOT be re-buying THAT again - it works fine in xp and does what its supposed to.

vista is very close to shipping. and there are MAJOR failings. this does not bode well.

Seriously, they must be joking

Browsing the slideshow, I found this beauty [pcmag.com].

Please, somebody pinch me. IE is clogging up 1 GB of memory in the final build of Vista before launch?! Well, it explains the insane sys reqs though.

900 megabytes of RAM for IE?

Why does IE use up 900+ megabytes of RAM? http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=&s= 1489&a=190803&po=14,00.asp [pcmag.com]

Black box testing won't find most bugs

I used to run a "Software Quality Assurance Workshop" at Tektronix - I was an SQA engineer at the time, so I know a little bit about the topic. In researching this subject and also over time since then, I learned some interesting facts, which should be enough to scare the Vista SQA team.

1. There are strong mathematical reasons why it is near-to-impossible to find more than about 20% of the bugs in a system (of any significant size) using black box testing.

I don't recall the proof. As I recall the most important factor is algorithmic complexity - every additional two-way branch doubles the number of possible paths through the control flow. For perspective, a program with just ten branches requires 1024 different tests, for EACH grouping of input data.

Data issues provide more complexity. Heuristics may help discover as many of the pathological cases as possible. For example, every input data element (variable) must be checked at the 'fenceposts' (ends of the range), inside the range, and outside the range. Inside the range, there may be regions or single values that can affect the usage of other variables (e.g., angles might be defined in [0,2Pi] but tan (pi/2) is pathological), so those are another kind of fenceposts that must be discovered and tested for.

(There are many resources online. Wikipedia/Software Quality [wikipedia.org] is a reasonable place to start.

2. Given a 'good quality' development system using techniques such as structured programming, code walkthroughs, manual and automated code analysis, and some other things, about 80% of the bugs will be in the original design document. (Another justification for Extreme Programming? [extremeprogramming.org])

Interestingly, something like 50% of these may be arguments regarding usage. "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" is often a valid argument - a 'screwed up menu' for one user may be just perfect for another. Of course, providing options to the user as X11 does, is often itself considered a 'misfeature' for the general public, if not an outright bug.

3. Given the same system, only about 20% of the total resources (time, budget) will be spent in the development phase. As I recall, about 20% -> planning and design phases, 20% to development, 40% during SQA, and the last 20% after release.

4. Again with the same system, the designed, QA'd, tested, and released code will have approximately 1 bug every 200 lines of code (while there are arguments about using Source Lines of Code [wikipedia.org] as a programmer performance metric, it can be more easily justified for this purpose, as we can assume that most languages will have about the same level of ambiguity regarding what is a line of code.) This ratio has been empirically shown to run true across all types of programming, from assembler to 4G database code. I recall reading a couple of years ago that Microsoft admitted a rate of one bug per 80 lines of code, but I don't have a citation, so I can't say for sure.

All modern OS have about the same number of lines (according to the above), using the same metrics - about 30 million. This is apparently true for XP and for various recent distributions of Linux - Redhat, Debian, and others, including the applications that came with the distributions. Therefore, every OS ships to the customer containing something on the order of 150,000 bugs. I once listened to a presentation by the then-head of IBM's OS software support group - I think for OS/360, but it might have been a later product. They released a new version every three months, and customers found another 2000 bugs every time.

A probable advantage of Unix-like systems is the relative independence of different applications and components. Each application presumes less about its environment, and so can be less susceptible to problems caused by interactions within the environment. This helps to break the algori

As I Recall...

Windows XP wasn't a perfect gem when it came out either. Infact, I remember installing XP on my machine in the first month it came out, and it didn't work very well with my hardware. There were no drivers for my Voodoo3 graphics card, and it took a few months before some users hacked up some working Xp drivers for it(there never was any official support for it from 3dfx)

I kept using Windows98 until maybe 5 or 6 months down the road when XP became usable for the masses.. by this time all the major software companies had versions that worked in XP and all the major hardware companies had drivers that worked in XP..

So how is Vista going to be? I can tell you now.. It will suck completely for anyone who relies on a specific piece of software for work for at least 5 months, and it will suck 85% for everyone who does not buy a new PC with Vista pre-installed (read: a PC with 100% hardware compatability in mind and tested)

6 Months after the release, I'll give it a shot.

Questions...

* Is it possible now to rename, move or delete a document when it's in use by an application?
* Is disk-defragmentation history?
* Does Vista provide a software manager connected to massive software-libraries on the internet, so we can install and update applications en masse?
* Does Vista have multiple desktops?
* Can we choose between different desktop environments?

Firewire is NOT gone

Right now I'm running RC2 and the firewire controller on my Asus A8N-VM is right there in the device manager. However, Microsoft has removed the firewire networking that nobody used.

Maybe they don't include drivers on purpose...

Call me crazy, but perhaps MS doesn't include * drivers by default as an incentive for the masses to use the final build instead of Beta2. You kind of have to keep SOMETHING back... otherwise why would anyone buy it at all? They could all just use the free Beta2 copies...

x64 support is less then stellar

Basically I installed the x64 version, and I'd say compared to the XP x64 version the experience was worse. My challenge is that I want to do testing of 64 bit apps such as Exchange 2007 (using VMWare of course.) This makes me wish I had bought the Linux version of VMWare a few years back instead of Windows, as VMWare won't let you switch versions.

UI kept on crashing, Office 2003 install took so long I decided to give up and move back to XP on x86. Thinking about trying Vista x86, but at this point I needed a stable machine.

Another day, another RC

I must admit I get a chuckle out of a lot of the posts here that bitch about the bugs in Vista RC2.

The funny thing is I have yet to see a Linux distribution release come out bug-free either. In fact, in the 12 years I've been playing with Linux, I've seen at least a handful of releases that, a month later, had hundreds of megs of "bug fixes". And I remember at least one distribution that, upon its final release, destroyed certain CD recorders. I won't even bring up the fact that I have PCs that Ubuntu won't even install on, much less run correctly on, but both XP and Vista install and run on all the machines without a hitch.

But I guess that's okay, since its Linux and we love Linux even when it fucks up.

Firewire

I'm running this box on RC1, and Firewire support is alive and well here. It installed automatically during setup without any hiccups. Transfer rates seem significantly better than XP/SP2 too.

Antipiract above security? Give me a break.

FTA...

"If validation code, written by Microsoft, decides that your installation of Windows Vista has been pirated, it turns off the Aero interface and a minor performance technology called ReadyBoost. I'm okay with that. But I am absolutely not okay with the third punitive measure: The disabling of Windows Defender, Microsoft's new onboard anti-spyware utility. Other punitive measures according to published reports include the disabling of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player."

You know this is a load of BS. I know I know its bad when spyware can infest a PC but lets be honest here people, Windows shouldnt run to its fullest potential if someone is pirating it. The one piece of software you should NEVER under any circumstances pirate is your Operating System. If some moron is getting blasted with spam and popups then thats the price he should pay for stealing.

There are always other anti spyware apps that they could use anyways and chances are anyone who is going to pirate will know that. Defender wont block virus's so this is a moot point if someone brings that issue up, and does anyone care if they cant use IE7?

I really dont understand how they are placing anti piracy above security. If your a valid user and you have an issue a quick phone call will fix it, MS has always been understanding in that regard as I've dealt with them before. They solved the problem quickly with no hassle. Also chances are unless you change your Mobo you will never run into that problem anyways. Of course If you pirated then I have no pity on you.

What?

No firewire support?

My firewire external drives won't like that very much.

How much more complicated can firewire be, than USB 2.0? I mean, the code already exists and works for XP, they're supporting USB removable drives, how many monkeys does it take to port a few extra routines?

Anti 'piracy'

At this point, does it really matter?

hardcore 'Pirates' will get around it
large corporates dont care
average home users will have to upgrade anyway and most of the pcs they buy will already have the microosft tax.

The only losers are small businesses caught in the middle. And these days they have more options open to them, and can 'just say no' if they want.

My experience w/RC2

I should have known better but my curiousity got the better of me.

I Installed RC2 on a Athlon 64 system with a Nforce 4 chipset & Geforce 6800 graphics just a few days ago and here's what happened....

Install went smooth at first... my system had a 160GB SATA primary drive/volume and a second volume made up of dual ATA drives in a RAID 0 config. Setup appeared (at first glance) to see the RAID volume and that's where I told it to install.

Unfortunately... it turns out that while it detected an Nvidia RAID controller and saw a single volume, it actually only saw ONE of the drives. It installed itself on this drive, totally hosing the RAID 0 set (well... actually I did recover a some of the data) and of course crapped out after the first re-boot.

Damn.... good thing nothing important was on the RAID volume. Oh well... I decided it was sort of my fault for not noticing that setup showed that size of the volume = the size of a single drive rather than two and realizing something was wrong at that point in the install.

Try #2... This time I resized my SATA drive partition to free up space for a second partition and re-installed there. This time the installation completed successfully and I had a working Vista install with the full Aero desktop. (Btw, it turns out you need a frickin Windows key to do the fancy 3D task switching. You know, the stupid and previous useless key that some MS marketing guy got keyboard makers to add to all their PC keyboards? I always pull mine off as it interferes with my FPS control setup. Nothing like having the start menu pop up when you're in a firefight. Anyway, this really put me off... but you can still sample the effect from one of the quick launch items)

Looking good... but wait! There's no sound and it sees my RAID set as two separate drives. I'm somewhat disturbed that RC2 doesn't support common Nvidia hardware that's a year or two old, but what the heck... Nvidia's been releasing Vista drivers, I'll just go download them.

All I can find on Nvidia's site are RC1 drivers and sure enough, they won't install. Even worse, here's what happened while trying....

The Nvidia drivers came zipped up and after downloading it, I browsed to the .zip in explorer and attempted to extract the files. Extraction starts then hangs. Then every other explorer related process hangs... and then, network connectivity ceases.

I can still launch apps and a command prompt (via task manager) , but there's no network and no explorer. Attempts to logout, shutdown, and reboot all fail. I try to kill explorer with task manager but it won't die. After about 10 minutes I finally have to press reset.

I repeat this about 3 times and then I give up in disgust. This is WAY worse than when explorer hangs in XP. Just kill it and and it usually restarts. With Vista RC2, it looks like you have to wait 30 minutes (maybe, I wasn't patient enough) or hit reset.

So.. I installed winrar instead, unzipped the drivers, and failed to install them as they were the wrong version.

And that's about all the time I was willing to waste... I'll take another look when Nvidia releases RC2 drivers but I'm not impressed at this point.

A few other annoyances during all of this:

I was repeatedly told that the computer need my permission to do something that I just directed it to. It was incredibly annoying. Just about everything I did triggered the request and if I said yes once, it would still ask the next time I tried.

Most of the management/system config stuff that I'm used to in XP have been hidden, moved, or obfucscated in Vista... though to be fair, I'd probably get used to this once I'm more familiar with the OS. No incentive to do that at present though.

No IP over Firewire

No IP over Firewire support either

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/bus/1394/IP_1 394.mspx [microsoft.com]

Re:So which is it?

It's a beta.

Re:So which is it?

All RCs are betas.

Not all betas are RCs.

Re:Poo

Hey, nothing wrong with being proud with what you're best at.

So do it already

What's holding you back? It's time to quit talking about switching to Linux and actually do it.

Re:So which is it?

>Is it a beta release, or is it a release candidate?

With recent Microsoft products, evidence suggests it should be considered a Beta up to the release of SP2.

Re:My cold dead hands...

You will get my Windows2k Pro when you pry it from my cold dead hands (or when I switch to Linux, and that time is getting closer by the day)

Want a free kubuntu disk ? Just ask..

Re:First problem: drivers

Unless MS has plans to let me download Windows for free indefinitely, I should hope the driver support is better.