CNET Reviews Windows XP Beta 2 591
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Re:Automatic Update is a feature? (Score:2)
MS has always been and if they stay on track always will place a higher priority on the proliferation of their software over making money on every copy of it.
All actions I've seen MS take to prosecute software pirates have been against people reproducing it and selling it on mass. People who've copied it to learn its features are never going to be persecuted by MS as they are their foot soldiers carrying it into the front lines in the work place.
I think your mistake is that you believe MS is as short sighted as yourself.
The broadening gap. (Score:2)
Microsoft has been busily 'redefining' things and taking all their followers with them. Meanwhile others like me are drifting someplace else. I make no claim as to which group is drifting in the more appropriate direction, just that the distance is increasing. I get the feeling that when the NET applications begin to come around, that this distance will be something that is a pointed aspect of one's chosen OS. Keep in mind I have no intention of saying what is good or what is bad in this case. Just that there is an irreconsilable gap that is growing that will play a part in all of our futures. I think it's safe to say that Microsoft is the cause of this. They are trying to distance themselves from Linux and it's working. It's as if they're demanding a person to choose one camp or the other. I mean, you're either doing NET with microsoft or not doing it at all!
They're gonna split the world right down the middle. Hard to say just exactly what the impact is gonna be but I can't help but think it's gonna happen. They're embracing and extending to whoever listens. How much effort should the linux world devote to trying to stay compatible with Microsoft? Perhaps that depends on the quality of their endeavors. But if it's just some business game they're playing it seems a waste. A waste of their time and everyone elses.
Holy F*CK (Score:3)
Seriously though, is this the 'future' of software? Bloatware? Where will this leave users with yesterdays computers? Oh [debian.org] right.. [redhat.com]
My biggest gripe tho is the 2GB they talk about needed. The biggest, baddest install of Debian I can come up with is smaller then that, and we're talking about enough development tools and libraries to recompile the kernel, the display server, the UI... I don't even want to think how big Visual Studio XP will be. Save me!!!
Re:Regression (Score:2)
and I used to run it on a machine with a 20m hard disk.
I think your table should be:
1 5
2 10
3 40
4 120
5 2000
Which leads to: y=0.71e^1.44x
A bit over a terabyte for version 10.
* Starts saving now *
* Stops saving, disk prices will fall *
I'll probably still be running Win98 just for games anyway
Looks good (Score:2)
Perhaps MS has finally noted the vast lead in usability that competing desktops (BeOS, KDE 2, and OSX being the primary contenders) have taken over the standard Windows interface. More competition means better interfaces for everyone. Does this mean that (finally!) the consumer is starting to count in this industry?
Oh, _that's_ an oversight... (Score:2)
Oh, _that's_ an oversight. I'm sure they'll just rush lickety-split to fix that one and keep their users from being compelled to use MSN for the feature! :P
(BTW, anyone else very weirded out by all the 'now has X feature, like MacOS' talk? When did _that_ start happening?)
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Re:Automatic Update is a feature? (Score:2)
... or what if you're connecting via dialup. It seems to me that's going to be a pain unless you have DSL or cable. Updating via dialup will likely be slow. The machine may dial up when it thinks it's out of date, etc. ET, phone home.
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
If anyone was surprised at how long there were Windows 3.1 systems still in use, just wait. Heck we've never made the move to Win2k. We're still running NT at work.
Does M$ honestly expect people are going to run out and buy a new PC just so they can run this OS? Win2k and WinME have not exactly set the world on fire. Why will WinXP?
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:2)
Others have said it differently, but security is a process. Generally, keeping people from turning off the computer when they are sitting at the computer is false security -- something that's merely obnoxious without providing any security benefit.
I kind of wish Linux was wiser about hardware permissions. Anyone who is logged into the console should have complete access to the sound and any removable drives (floppy, CD, etc), and any other peripherals attached to the computer. Anyone else doesn't really need that access. I don't know how one might do that in Linux...?
Wait a second... (Score:2)
Gosh, where have I been?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
how will the firewall effect P2P? (Score:3)
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Re:IE for Linux (Score:2)
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Re:Proud of your ignorance? (Score:2)
Sherlock Holmes was having a conversation with Watson, who was telling Sherlock about how it was proven that the Earth orbits around the Sun.
Holmes then rebuked Watson for filling his brain with useless trivial information - space that should be devoted to valuable information about the science of criminal investigation, which was the sole topic in which Holmes was interested. Mind you, that one topic led him to amass an enormous quantity of bizarre trivia (manufacturers of shoes by tread, paper by quality determined from microscopic analysis, poisons and drugs, bicycle tires, cigar wrappers, etc.) Such basic facts about our life and universe were of no use to Holmes, the crime fighting genius.
If your life is well served by intimately detailed knowledge of the Unix kernel, then why allow Microsoft's marketeers to occupy any of your mindshare? There's no point to it. Even if the human brain had infinite storage capabilities, it's only alive and aware for a finite time. 16 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, in 80 years with luck or even less. There's not a lot of time we really want to spend reading useless Microsoft propaganda, especially when they're likely to change the name of the DDE/OLE/COM/ActiveX/DCOM/DNA/NET thingie at their whim.
Re:skins (Score:2)
I don't need a frickin maximize widget, I don't think I've EVER used one in the 10 years or so I've been using windows. I prefer CLOSE to be on the left side of the title bar, and minimize could be whereever. The way MS does it is just plain stupid, and has been so since Win 1.0. I was hoping LiteStep would change that , but it didn't.
It didn't get rid of the most annoying (to me) feature of WIndows, and it seems there is no way to do that.
And then you load KDE up in Linux, and you get the same garbage as in Win95. Fuck that.
Re:The broadening gap. (Score:2)
Your going to be in for a culture shock when Windows XP comes out. NT turned a lot of Win95 assumptions for a loop, and it's taken several years for most developers and admins to really get a grasp of that.
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:2)
It's so rare to see real information on
Re:Chessboard anecdote (Score:2)
I'm asking this in all seriousness. Does anyone use Zip disks for backing up more than some personal data? I used to use Zips, but I decided that $0.10 per meg was a bit too pricy, especially since modern hard drives can be had for less than $0.004 per meg.
Yes, I realize that not everyone can afford a backup tape drive. I was fortunate that I had decided on a particular drive just before my student loan check came through (<grin>). Still, when you can buy a 24GB DDS-3 tape for $20 that will allow you to do an unattented backup of your entire system, those $10 ZIP disks start to look very expensive.
Re:MacOS-ish Interface...Uh-huh (Score:2)
Oh, and Steve didn't design it - he's not a designer. (IIRC Keith Ohlfs was at the heart of the NeXTStep UI, as well as WebTV's) In fact, Steve generally does really terrible things when he tries to micromanage. e.g. telling engineers that the chips on the Mac 128k's logic board were too close together to look good, and only relenting when they showed that it wouldn't work how he wanted because he knew nothing about board design. There are tons of anecdotes about Steve's horrible, arbitrary management practices and their effects. Any good history of Apple or NeXT is likely to have some. I suggest "Infinite Loop" and "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing" for starters.
Re:how will the firewall effect P2P? (Score:2)
0) ICS and ICF are OPTIONAL. Just in case you missed it: OPTIONAL. So is IPv6, but no one here is whinging about that yet, are they?
1) scriptability; use Windows Scripting Host (easy) or Group Policy (a custom ADM / inf file pair will be needed, but do-able) to change the settings of the personal firewall.
2) The way in which the personal firewall work is very similiar to a number of other personal firewalls, and also the old IP filters present since at least NT 3.51 days. Since that was a hoary ol' chestnut needing much hair on the chest to make work, this is too, and is no worse than using Checkpoint's Fw-1 (which admittedly has a range of protocols and services already pre-defined). There is an effort on to improve things here. If you are a beta 2 user, and you don't like what you see, report it to the .security newsgroup for fixing. My personal beef: no pre-done settings in group policy. It would be easy to make happen. So I've logged the bug, and hopefully it'll get fixed.
Now line up, according to the NDA I have to kill you.
Re:Holy F*CK (Score:2)
On my dual PPro with 128 MB of RAM and gobs of disk space eaten away from a full SuSE 6.4 install (2.5 GB gone), I find that Nautilus + Netscape + KDE + a few xterms makes Mr Swap nervous, particularly if I don't restart Netscape from time to time.
On my single PIII/800 with 128 MB of RAM, out of the box, 2446 uses 41 MB of RAM. Then I installed Office. On my laptop with 256 MB of RAM as I type this, I'm using 129 MB of RAM, and I have 26 things open, including media player, Outlook, 8 IE windows, and Citrix. The windows directory is using just over 1 GB on disk (about 970 MB in file sizes). The 2 GB gives it some head room to install in and a pagefile. And in case you're wondering, I haven't had a blue screen yet. It even plays my DVDs and gets me over 4 hours of battery life on my new Dell.
Re:how will the firewall effect P2P? (Score:2)
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:5)
Both Pro and Per allow other users to take control of your desktop using Remote Desktop Connection. This uses RDP, just as TermSrv does
Both Pro and Per use the TermSrv's multiple winstations to have multiple users logged on at once. I've installed software as administrator in one session and read e-mail and surfed the web in another.
The hotkey to go between users and the replacement for SAS is very nice too: Win-L. This allows me to go to the toilet in safety with many fewer keystrokes than before, and even beats the good ol' xlock for non-rodent use.
In addition, NT has always had impersonation. This allows software to run as something else. This is like a more granular version of seteuid(), but nicer and more granular. Most people didn't know about it because it's mainly for programmers. For example, the Server process impersonates you when you connect through ipc$ so that when it tries to do something, it does it with your credentials, not the System's. And unlike Unix, a single process can impersonate many different security principals simulataneously.
For the more Unix like approach to su, such as sudo or priv, in Win2K they gave us some UI and a service to make it easier: runas. Hold down the shift key on a program and use Runas to run as another security principal. This comes through for Pro, but they're busy hiding it in the mom-n-pop Per.
And ever since NT 3.1, services have been running as different users to what you might log in as.
In NT 4.0 reskit, there's a little utility to log in remotely to a command console. This is brought forward in the Win2K reskit. This logs you in without a UI on the remote host, and you can run all your favorite command line tools. Which in NT 4.0 is useless but in Win2K is useful as you can do nearly everything via the cli (the number of cli .exe's jumped from ~80 to over 400). But why you'd want to when you can use MMC on your local box to do ~everything and install the RDP admin service for (1.0 - ~everything), it remains astonishing to me that people would subject themselves to such torture.
All this multi-user stuff works and is very smooth. Now line up, according to the NDA, I have to kill you.
Re:Man.. that was way harsh. (Score:2)
If the software installed can hang the system that *is* an issue with Windows 2K. Civilized operating systems don't allow user processes to bring down the OS. Buggy Linux software causes core dumps, not system crashes.
Re:Man.. that was way harsh. (Score:2)
You are reasoning circularly. Obviously, the software was unacceptable because it crashed the system.
All of the software I use with Windows 2000 has been tested with Windows 2000
Most people simply don't have the option of throwing out their software whenever MS makes a little patch. It isn't reasonable to expect this, particularly when many upgrades aren't free in the Windows world.
You wouldn't expect games written in glib0.4 to run in glib2.1 would you?
No, but they certainly don't crash the system -- they complain about missing symbols. And I certainly don't have to buy new copies to run. The few programs that aren't open source have free updates.
I've had more than a few old Linux apps crash not only the ap but the system itself.
You should put up the binaries for others to test and verify, as this is a truly unusual event if true
Re:Man.. that was way harsh. (Score:2)
If this crashes the UNIX systems you use, you have horribly incompetent sysadmins. One can (and should) limit the number of processes that any one user can have simultaneously.
Re:Simple thing to add (Score:2)
saving sessions completely
For shell programs, use screen. For GUI programs, run multiple X servers and lock screen, switch between users with Ctrl-Alt-F7/8/9/etc.
and listing each user with their currently running programs
Login and type ps aux or use a GUI equivalent such as kpm. No need for non logged in users to see all that.
and whether or not they have email
I'm sure scripts exist which examin /var/spool/mail, this will be harder with ~/Maildir systems though.
all in one place.
Why does everything have to be in one place all of the time. Is your house organized like that, having everything in one room?
Re:It'll suck worse than X-Windows (Score:2)
Hmmm... X looks fine to me when I install a True-Type font server like xfstt. I would post a screenshot but I'm at work :P
Re:Chessboard anecdote (Score:2)
Really? There's less than 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 atoms in the universe?
Who counted them and when did we find the end of the universe? Man, out of touch for a few days and everything changes...
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:2)
Check out /etc/login.defs ... in Slackware at least.
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:2)
That's an acceptable amount of information leakage for me. After all, in Linux I can use 'ps aux' to see everyone's (including root's) processes... with the arguments they were launched with, how much CPU they are using, etc.
Re:Dvorak Keyboard (Score:2)
Why what are you doing with your other hand? >:^D
Re:this is great for Linux (Score:2)
You idiot, it is no secret that Western and Caucasian-majority countries have higher standards of living and personal incomes than most other parts of the world. He didn't place any value judgments on their race or culture. He merely picked appropriate names to contrast third-world and first-world countries.
Take your knee-jerk political correctness to some forum where people can't think for themselves and you'll get a much more positive reaction. Or, you could grow up and stop seeing the world in black and white.
Re:One, Two, Three, Infinity (Score:2)
Still after 64 iterations the total is a hell of a large number.
Yeah, that is a whole lot of rice. :)
Re:Simple thing to add (Score:2)
Gee, that's nice. Gnome and Window Maker both can save session as well, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about leaving your processes running when you log out, not just remembering what was running and starting it up again.
Re:everything new is.. new again? (Score:2)
but it beats anything that Linux has to offer by a long shot.
I don't think so, it's a matter of personal preference isn't it? There are lot of things I like about X (once I get the True-Type font server installed, of course :), especially the way I can integrate my own scripts easily with the UI and not have to use abominations like DOS "batch files" or VBScript. Yeah, I know I can get shell or perl for Windows but it's just not the same, the architecture of Windows distorts my normal scripting flow. I can't live without virtual desktops anymore (and every virtual desktop program for Windows is awful). The network transparency is also nice.
And I think the Start menu sucks ass, by the way. Nothing worse than multiple nested menus.
Windows has good points too, like consistent (for the most part) look and keyboard bindings. But there's just something about Windows that has always turned my stomach... to quote Steve Jobs, "They just have no taste." If I ever really need a state-of-the-art GUI I'll get a Mac (with OS X, of course :).
Sounds like Mandrake's version of KDM (Score:2)
Re:Mac OS-ish (Score:2)
(Note: Aqua may be a word meaning water, but it's still a trademark of Apple Computer Corp. Hell, so is "Apple" for that matter.)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
The 286 was obsolete by the end of the 1980s - the most common hardware in 1995 was probably either the 486 or Pentium. I had a 486 laptop in 95, and the desktops around me were Pentia.
Security... (Score:2)
Re:Man.. that was way harsh. (Score:2)
My girlfriend and I both have Dell Inspiron 5000's. Both came pre-equipped with W2k. I nuked it and loaded up Mandrake 7.2.
Once, while playing Hoyle's Card Games, she bumped the CDROM eject button. It ejected. The game hung. The OS hung. She had to reboot (hold down the power button, etc).
Once, while hurriedly opening and closing Word documents, her mouse pointer disappeared. Gone. Poof! OK, fine; "Hit alt-f4, honey, and close Word down." No dice. Hmmm. "Hit the Windows key, honey, see if it comes up." Came up blank. Hmm. "Ctrl-alt-delete?" Now she was pissed at *me*, like I was causing all this. We eventually got it to reboot.
Another time she suspended, and it woke up, started to come back to life, and then just froze.
Mine runs like a dream. I note that XFree86 4.0.2 seems to really detest suspend mode, but that's no real bother for me most of time.
W2k is more stable than NT4, but its not perfect. In fact, its just starting to get usable, and I fear that all this new crap will hurt more than help.
IE for Linux (Score:2)
Re:how will the firewall effect P2P? (Score:3)
Don't you know how firewalls work? Just because every one YOU have used gave you the ability to give ports pass-through capability doesn't mean THIS one will be customizeable at all.
-Jer
Much better review out there, see link below (Score:5)
Check out Paul Thurrott's review at his WinSuperSite page: www.winsupersite.com [winsupersite.com]. Whether or not you share his enthusiasm for WinXP Beta 2, at least he presents an enormous amount of information about it (I haven't even read it all yet). From some of the misinformed posts based on the c|net review (which apparently, from their screenshots was based on an older build) to questions I'm seeing asked which I remember seeing answered by Paul, I'd say that he did a more thorough job of it.
(Note that Paul's isn't technically the latest build either. His was based on build 2462, but MS made a last minute change and released build 2462a as Beta 2.)
Cheers,
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:2)
Poke around in the PAM configuration. I believe the pam_console module can do this, but I can't check it right now. Otherwise you could use the pam_group module to add users who login to the console to the "console" group which has rw access to the various devices (audio, video, cdrom, etc.). I do wish this was taken care of in a more elegant manner by the distro makers though, it is a pain to implement this after the fact. I usually create seperate groups and add myself to them, one group for each device that I need access to.
Re:Mac OS-ish (Score:2)
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Re:how will the firewall effect P2P? (Score:2)
Er, you do realise that firewalls can block outgoing ports too, don't you?
Not to mention that some clients require the server to make a connection back to them on another port - ftp springs to mind; I've had lots of fun with misconfigured firewalls letting the command connection through, but not the data one...
I don't think MS will use this for anything objectionable, but it certainly puts them in a position where they could do so, if they wished, and it wouldn't be the first time...
Cheers,
Tim
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:2)
Besides the obvious reponse that others have given (if they sit at the machine, they can pull the plug), W2k has a security option to require a user to login before being able to shut it down. I think your making too much out of a few *BETA* screenshots.
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Most of you youngin's don't remember the early days of computing. Rest assured that it's not much different from today. You went and bought a brand new IBM PC with 48K RAM. Then you rudely discovered that all the programs needed 64K. So you upgraded and discovered that programs needed 256K, so you upgraded again. And again. To 640K, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. A mere six years ago 4MB to 8MB was sufficient for DOS/Win3.1. OS/2 was considered a memory hog because it wanted 16MB. Then you had to upgrade yet again, to 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, and 128MB. Six years and the memory considered "barely adequate" has doubled five times. At this rate you will need Four Gigabytes of RAM in the year 2008!
The developers (and their tool manufacturers) are at fault for ignoring the user. When they want to know what the minimum requirements should be, they don't find out what the users actually have. Instead they go to Circuit City and Best Buy and see what the less-than-two-day-old systems are shipping with.
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
I don't know what the current figures are. But on the date that Windows 95 was released, the most common type of non-server computer hardware in businesses was... the 80286!
The entry of *new* customers into the market has been driving the Microsoft profits since 1981. Well, the market it levelling out, and in not too long of a time, this year or next, the majority of computer users will not be newbies. That's going to kick Microsoft right in the teeth. For once they're going to have to market to the second and third time owner of Windows instead of relying on preinstalls for the majority of their sales.
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Non sequitur. If the speed limit increases does technology demand more horsepower for the automobile? Of course not!
The technology doesn't drive software requirements, marketing does.
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Unlike you, businesses don't throw away $1000 to $5000 investments just because Bill Gates says so. The CEO's Assistant may get the newest box at Office Depot, but his/her old box is still being used somewhere in the company. The old boxes only get replaced when they break. And remember, businesses include more than the Fortune 500. It includes the everything from IBM to the corner liquor store and the family farm.
I'm sorry, but I don't have the figures. It's been six years, so I doubt I can find that Business Week, as the trashman has long since come and gone. I know, I should keep all my old magazines for times such as these...
Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:3)
(1) The number of running apps that some users have open, including the Administrator.
(2) A button to shut the machine down.
Does this mean that non root^H^H^H^HAdministrator users can shut down higher privaleged (sp) programs? And services? All this time after the original release of NT (1994?) do Microsoft still not understand multi user OS's?
Dave
skins, all I ask... (Score:2)
Ding-Dong the DOS is Dead! (Score:3)
The one basic change that I've noticed that many people have overlooked is that Win XP is using the Win NT/2000 kernel and finally retiring the MS-DOS/Win 3.1 codebase. Say "So long" to all the MS-DOS drivers that mucked things up. Kiss goodbye to hidden pieces of 16-bit code lurking inside of Windows' innards. I won't miss having to put up with an OS that swiched to cooperative multitasking and froze everything while one misbehaved program refused to relinquish control. Good riddance to holes in the memory protection architecture that allowed misbehaved programs to scribble on the kernel.
It only took fifteen years after Intel released the 80386 (first x86 CPU with 32-bit addressing & registers, virtual memory, a usable protected mode (though Protected mode and virtual memory date back to the 286) for Microsoft to remove all the 16-bit code from its OSes and move to a more worthy architecture.
First Truly Irrelevant Windows (Score:2)
Well, about 12 months ago, I realized it had been a year since I'd booted Windows at all, and I wanted a few gigs of disk space back. So I reformatted the partition to ext2 and that's that. I have neither the reason nor the means to boot Windows, period. (Well, I'm sure the Win98 CD is lying around somewhere, but why the hell would I go through the hassle to install it?)
So, a new Windows finally comes along. Who cares? Who cares if the interface is new and improved? When I want a new interface, I download something interesting from e.themes.org [themes.org] -- and can get a new theme every day, if that's what I want. Thanks to TurboTax Online [turbotax.com], the one reason I thought I'd have for using Windows this year disappeared. Games? Yeah, there are a few Windows-only games I'd like to play, on the other hand, Nethack [nethack.de] is my favorite game and all it needs is 80x24, baby :-)
So there's a new Windows. Who cares? I'm a non-smoker. The new Windows is as relevant to me as a new flavor of Marlboro.
It's not bloatware, take moore's law into account. (Score:2)
Re:Mac OS-ish (Score:2)
Re:Question... (Score:2)
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You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Re:Mac OS-ish (Score:2)
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You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
Re:Defragged swapfile in Windows (Score:2)
You can also boot into dos mode and delete the swap file, and when it recreates, it should be contiguous...
The other (and nicer) option is to create another partition for the swap file, and never worry about it again... of course, you can't take a full memory dump on a blue screen if the swap isn't on the boot partition, but hey... that's a lot of time to waste for something that you are almost guaranteed never to use...
The 3x physical ram can be a problem too (especially for those of us with 768MB of physical)
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You can't steal free software (Score:3)
Well then what else are they supposed to steal? Stuff they have paid for? Whoops, I forgot that with Windows EULAs, that's exectly what MS would like to have us believe they're doing, especially if they're doing so much as (gasp) buying Windows from a friend who got (read: bought) it with his PC but never once used it.
See, that's the great thing about free software: There's no paranoia over making sure you're "legal," because there's no way to steal it. Unless, of course, someone's trying to swipe my FreeBSD CDRs, in which case all their bruise are belong to my fist.
< tofuhead >
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Re:Mac OS-ish (Score:2)
Typical MS tactic. (Score:2)
Re:First Truly Irrelevant Windows (Score:2)
Lucky for us they don't hand out at slashdot either. Except for a few paid astro turfers anyways.
Re:this is great for Linux (Score:2)
I can strip down to icewm and run Opera. Can a WinXP user strip down to a non-bloaty interface and not run IE6?
-grendel drago
Re:skins (Score:2)
There must be some reason they don't include a customizable UI. I know it's not a hard thing to do. I'm the author of the Open Source GUI PicoGUI [sourceforge.net] and it must have taken about 1000 lines of C to write a fast theme interpreter. Maybe they just don't like giving people choices? Or maybe they want Windows to have a distinct look so they can target their advertising to it and make people upgrade to make their desktop pretty.
Oh well. I like enlightenment :)
Re:skins (Score:2)
Re:skins (Score:2)
Sure you can still skin windows but with XP MS is apparently moving towards requiring the explorer.exe shell in order to do so.. thus leaving the user without a choice again. Well, a choice dependent on the terms and whims of MS. And explorer.exe is notoriously bloated and slow, especially in comparison to the Litestep shell (which is a shell based upon module loading in essence)
I don't see this as a good thing.
I would highly recommend to those who still use Windows at all to investigate some of the various shell replacements [desktopian.org] out there. I avoided Windows like the plague after becoming used to how *nix will allow me to setup a shell to work the way I want to work and not the other way around. Litestep in particular is the only reason I have MS on one of my boxes, it's that sweet.
Plus I still get a kick out of people asking me how I managed to get Office working in Linux. :)
Oh yeah...Activation.... (Score:3)
Also, there is a difference between activation and registration. Registration is optional...that's where you fill out the form and send them info about you and your system. If you do not activate the system it will start warning you in a week. If time runs out the system won't be useable until you do activate it.
Dumbing it down.... (Score:5)
Games have been working fine.... IE6 is nice (I'd kill for IE under Linux).... The install was easy.... And the stability is there.
Man.. that was way harsh. (Score:3)
I'm getting really tired of people just blindly assuming that Microsoft is going to turn out a poor piece of software. Have you even RUN Windows 2000? It is the most stable operating system I have ever seen, and yes, I've run Linux as well.
This isn't flame bait, or a troll, or anything else -- it is simply my opinion.
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CitizenC
Re:Shutting down - foulup central. (Score:2)
One good thing (Score:2)
No longer will we have to, after writing our apps under the stable-by-comparison Win2K, have to test, debug and tune under the P.O.S. 95/98/ME OS.
Re:The Jelly Brain Crusade? (Score:2)
> Great copyright control. Won't the RIAA be happy now.
i love the part with "When you enter a folder with mp3 files it presents a option to Upload to the Web" or smth. Who needs napster? We have WXP
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Re:Dumbing it down.... (Score:2)
Now the whole, XP thing is likely to be interesting, since this is the, what 7th Windows operating system (98, 98SE, NT 3.1, NT 3.51, NT 4, Win2k, ME) that is trying to match the stability of Unix. I wonder if they've made it this time.
Not
DB
Re:Windowsmedia.com Link (Score:2)
DB
Re:more fun! (Score:2)
DB
Re:Mac OS-ish (Score:2)
The rubber ducky is someone's own self selected (I assume) ICON, much like the log-in screens of many multi-user desktop environments. It's not just a mirror image of the one used by Apple, as one might immediately think. Close examination will reveal that.
As for the O/I power icon. As far as I know a 1 inside of a 0 has been a universally accepted power-button indicator since Ugh first chisled his first power button out of stone and showed it to the rest of the tribe.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
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Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
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Re:Holy F*CK (Score:2)
have you actually tried OS X? first of all, it most definitely will install with less than 128MB of RAM: that's only the recommended amount. furthermore, OS X only requires 128MB of RAM when you're running classic, which basically loads OS 9.1 inside of OS X!
without classic you can get by with only 64MB of RAM easily, and 128 is plenty. classic is a memory hog though, but it's not really possible to do much about that as OS 9 is OS 9.
with any luck, most major apps will be carbonized by the end of the year, and classic will be something that MacOS X users only have to use on occasion.
- j
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Apple of all people to ship brand-new, just-announced computers with the ability to run their own OS, but that isn't happening.
that's true, but this release of MacOS X (March 24th) is meant to get the OS in as many developer's hands as possible. Mac users like a complete system, with all the bells and whistles (why else would the major complaint be a lack of a DVD movie player?) the only way to do this is to ensure that all developers have enough time to use the final APIs and development environment before the "real" release at Macworld New York this summer. this is also why OS X comes with a separate "developer tools" CD.
when it comes down to it, this was the best way Apple could do it. it pleases the developers and gets a great OS into the hands of the early adopters without forcing the average Mac user to put up with a "just the OS" (and no fancy apps) on their new Mac. (of course almost all old apps can run through classic, but native apps are much nicer).
but don't worry, apple will get around to bundling OS X on all their new shiny boxes this summer! ;)
- j
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
That's not true. Developers have had access to OS X for a couple of months now, this is so they can have enough time to build the much needed application base.
actually yes it is true. i'm a developer, and i never had a copy before now. why's that? because only some of the top-dollar ADC members got copies, and it wasn't even all of them! this release gets it in the hands of, as i said, as many developer's hands as possible, which includes people like me, who don't work at Adobe.
- j
Re:Dvorak Keyboard (Score:2)
Re:Bloatware extreme (Score:2)
Better Administration Potential (Score:2)
Take Performance Monitor.. In NT/2000 it cant do to much, sure it can save a set of stats to a csv or binary file, you can look at a machine live, but thats about it.
One of the best parts of XP is it's PerfMon.. It can write counter values to a SQL server, monitor 2 machines side by side..
I'm actually starting to enjoy monitoring and administrating Windows systems now.. And when you have over 2000, thats an amazing thing to say. Hell, the admin portion of Windows just keeps getting better and better. I love it.
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Re:As easy to install as Linux (Score:2)
I spent a week installing Win98 on an old P200 w/ no existing OS.
Re:As easy to install as Linux (Score:2)
I absolutely agree with you. Most users install Linux an an old machine to try it out, and then complain that the installation of Linux is a nightmare.
It's not, it's just a warped view. Linux typically gets installed on old equipment starting with another OS installed, while Windows comes pre-installed or upgraded on a machine already running Windows.
I can install Linux quickly on x86 machines that would never install Windows (for example, my laptop has neither a floppy drive nor a CD -- but I was able to install Linux).
I've got a machine (currently catching dust) that my brother-in-law wants to give to his brother once I install Windows on it -- but I can't find a DOS based CDROM driver for this old machine so I can start the installation. I could have this thing running as an xterminal in my house in under five minutes.
But, my point is, Linux gets a bad rap that's not justifiable -- Windows is harder to install, and, as the article points out, is getting worse.
Re:Automatic Update is a feature? (Score:2)
It sucks, but that's what they are up to. The goal, I suppose, is to stop people from casually warez-ing their operating system. I fully expect Office 10 to be this way, as well as any further major MS software releases.
Er, don't touch that. (Score:5)
Fill up your desktop with unused icons, and Windows XP asks you whether you want to keep them, then sweeps them into one tidy folder.
Hey! I wanted to keep those *there*.
"No David, I think you want to keep them *here*."
Re:Automatic Update is a feature? (Score:3)
Regression (Score:5)
1.00 50
2.00 120
3.00 320
4.00 650
5.00 2000
where the first column is Windows generation, and the second column is minimum installation size requirements, produces the following exponential equation:
y = 19.865 * e ^ (0.9067x)
R^2 = 0.9964
Skip to genation 10 to shit your pants. I know this data isn't anything conclusive, but it's fun nonetheless.
Re:You can't steal free software (Score:3)
Actually, [slashdot.org] you [slashdot.org] don't [slashdot.org] need [slashdot.org] to [slashdot.org] worry [slashdot.org] if [slashdot.org] you're [slashdot.org] "legal" [slashdot.org] because [slashdot.org] Slashheads [slashdot.org] will [slashdot.org] worry [slashdot.org] for [slashdot.org] you [slashdot.org].
Mac OS-ish (Score:5)
-m-
Re:IE for Linux (Score:3)
I really can't over-state how great it is..
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Bloatware extreme (Score:5)
As requested (Score:3)
(I had to add a space after each slash to get by
WINDOWS EXPLORER:
Use windows classic folders (not web view)
Unhide all files
Show extensions
Reverse most other settings in "Folder Options"
Remove spam from 'Favorites' menu
Add to favorites: / prj / volatile "/ Program Files"
Set "Explore" as default for folders
Add 'attributes' column to explorer view
DON'T remember each folder's view settings
Set up a folder, select options/ view/ LikeCurrentFolder
Move address & toolbar to menubar, remove most toolbar buttons
Add "Command prompt here" to 'Folder' file type: / Cmd.exe / k cd %1
DISPLAY:
Set screen resolution to 1240x1024
Turn on anti-aliased fonts
Set font size to large
Turn off "Hide keyboard navigation" (Actually, I don't turn this off anymore)
Change color scheme: Brick
Window bkg: 240 240 220 (Pale tan)
DESKTOP:
Delete all icons except MyComputer, NetworkNbhd, IE5, RecycleBin
Taskbar and startmenu properties:
Display admin tools, display logoff, turn off customized menus
Add buttons to task bar:
IE, Outlook (Express), CMD, Explorer, Calc, TextPad,
DevStudio, MSDN, TaskMan
DIRECTORIES:
Label each drive with its letter
Create / prj Directory
set "HKCU/ Software/ Microsoft/ Windows/ CurrentVersion/
Explorer/ Shell Folders/ Personal" to / prj
Create / apps/ bin and / prj/ bin and add to path
Install DELETE VOLATILE batch file task to run on login
(This does "rmdir / s / q d:/ Volatile" to emulate an
old DOS RAMDRIVE for scratchpad files. I put most temp work
and downloads here until I know I want to keep them.)
IE5:
Set homepage to my own Links HTML file.
Move address and toolbar to menubar, remove most toolbar buttons,
show toolbar icons only (no labels)
Set text size to "large"
Set max temp file size to 20MB (saves lots of time on "find / blah")
Disable stored cookies
Set shortcut to Alt+Ctl+I
INSTALL:
TextPad
Set TextPad as default for all files
(or TXT, CPP, H, JAVA, C, HTML, XML, PL, PY, PM
Copy files from / USER to new installation
Copy textpad reg branch to new installation
Set shortcut to Alt+Ctl+T
LUTRS14 font (From an old terminal emulator -
the best monospace font in the world)
WinZip
Adobe Acrobat
MS Office
JDK
ActivePerl
CygWin32
Anti-Virus
Real Player
Quicktime
Zone Alarm Pro
COMMAND PROMPT:
Set MSDOS shortcut with Alt+Ctl+P key
Set to a good font
Set window size to 500 lines
Set color BG: (200, 200, 170) Text: black
IMPORTANT: Set completion key to TAB
(HKCU/ SW/ MS/ Command Processor/ CompletionChar = 9)
MISC:
Change calculator to scientific view
Change task manager applet to not "always on top"
Set "net use / persistent:no"