Windows Vista - Not So Bad? 378
Shantyman writes "ZDNet has a counterpoint to the negative impressions of Vista's Beta 2 going around. Entitled Vista Beta 2, up close and personal, Ed Bott writes: 'I've spent the last three months running beta versions of Windows Vista on the PCs I use for everyday work. February and March were exasperating. April's release was noticeably better, and the Beta 2 preview - Build 5381, released to testers in early May - has been running flawlessly on my notebook for nearly three weeks.'"
Java is broke (Score:2, Informative)
Can't necessarily blame MS for Java though. Although I can blame them for trying to change the spec and the whole Sun-MS lawsuit fiasco.
Yep (Score:5, Informative)
There are two aspects of this. The first is that, if you truly are running as a low-priv user, you need to get elevation prompts at the correct times to be able to live life. This works pretty well, although I keep a cmd.exe window running as local admin sitting around sometimes.
The other aspect of this, however, is that in the real world, a lot of people just dont run as admin, and a lot of apps just can't. So a bunch of work has gone into making admins "virtual admins", so to speak, where operations that actually require priviledge use still involve user interaction/confirmation.
In that sense, people running "as admin" are getting the customer experience - and internally, the way the "did you really want to do this, Mr. Admin?" stuff works is passionately debated
My opinion is that people are complaining about the wrong problem - as we continue to eliminate things that require priviledge use, the amount that we have to care about putting up with a just-in-time priviledge escalation model goes down.
Microsoft IS Eating Their Own Dogfood (Score:5, Informative)
However, running as admin opens them up to all the nasty exploits and viruses (especially if they're using IE), those being probably the biggest blunder on Microsoft's part. As a limited user, a virus can delete your MP3s and porn. As admin, a virus can reformat your entire hard drive, install a rootkit, etc. If that isn't eating your own dog food, I don't know what is.
Sorry this post is a bit scatterbrained. I'm in a pretty big hurry
Re:I think the real news would be.... (Score:3, Informative)
The Vista hardware evaluation wizard thingy they had posted to
The hardware requirements to run Vista, even Aero, I think are vastly overplayed.
Re:Microsoft eating their own dogfood? (Score:4, Informative)
I really don't want to debate this, and I think this is kind of trivial.
With that said, what you are referring to about allowing employees to have 'admin' rights on their systems is not a big issue up until this point, as the UAP system in Vista wasn't even close to a final stage until a month or two ago, and is still being tweaked to accomodate applications that were written by 3rd parties with the Win9x mindset.
What MS has been doing currently is NOT running their employees at Admin level in the sense I think you are refering to either. They have been running the computers in the new Vista Admin mode, which is like a 'default' user on OSX. Understand?
It is not the Root Admin level like previous versions of Windows. Even the actual administrator account on Vista doesn't get the conceptual 'root' access level.
What the other article was talking about was forcing MS users to not even get the 'admin' rights to make changes to their systems, which would include installing software, etc. This would be more like a hybrid between a User and Power User in the old Windows Security Groups.
Microsoft is turning down their employee 'admin' rights to ensure older applications that try to run with user credentials that never cared about NT security before still run properly in the restricted level of access.
There is no big story on this, nor a big story on lack of security. Vista is bring the abstraction between administrator and root security, to a point that even exceeds most *nix environments, while still not making it too tough on users. Think of it like a combination of the way *nixes do security with a combination of having NO Root account whatsoever to ensure people will NEVER be running with higher priveledges than they should.
Re:Runs flawlessly (Score:5, Informative)
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?page_id=65&page=19
indicates a system crash on 5/21.
.. says the Microsoft employee (Score:3, Informative)
We?
following the link to your webpage, and sure enough - MattEvans, MS employee.
hmm. Is that a sales pitch I hear?
Re:I'm running it to post this! :) (Score:4, Informative)
Not especially fast, but no screen paint issues. None of the three windows (source, target, or copy window) are showing any issues with updates. No lurches.
This is on 10.4.6 on an Intel Macbook Pro 15". I'm attached to the network via switched 100bT. I have OO.o with 5 documents (via X11) running, TextMate with two large Perl scripts, Lotus Notes, CotVNC, FireFox, Safari, iTunes, and two screens running. Also listening to music currently.
Now to be fair, I'm on pretty current hardware, but come on. That was a total troll... I want Vista to be awesome as much as the next guy (maybe more - this is slashdot) but still - that was a random unsubstantiated complaint there.
I also tried doing this copying a 4 GB DMG to my local disk - same results.
-WS
Re:I'm running it to post this! :) (Score:3, Informative)
Tell me about it. BITD I downloaded the 2.11 CSD on my 14.4k modem to update my 2.1 install on my 8mb 486.
I loved OS/2 until I realized that I was never going to find decent modem / bbs software for it, and thus, all of my modem usage would be running under a virtual dos box. As you surely recall, DOS mode serial port usage _crushed_ OS/2.
Once I realized that there were no apps for OS/2 anyway, but that I didn't really miss them, and that virtualized apps sucked if they dealt with the serial port, I figured i'd look at Linux more seriously. Once I saw that linux was just like OS/2 - fast, nerdy, no apps - but that accessing the serial port with usable tools didn't simply crush the box - i was hooked.
IMO, MS did not ship any acceptable operating systems between DOS 5.0 and Windows 2000.
My aim here on slashdot is not to be a Microsoft fanboy - that's certainly not what I do at work. But - when we do something well (even well compared to how we used to do it, which may ultimately mean we're still doing it badly, but just less so
Windows Vista - Not So Good either (Score:4, Informative)
It seems to do some thing well. Dual booting with XP works great. maybe better than with win2k and XP. All the visual effects run fine, even on my integrated graphics (GeForce 6150, admittedly higher end for integraded graphics). Normal operation is a little sluggish, and sometimes it gets really bad. I've had it lock up completely at least 3 times, doing completely different things. One time it was just trying to open Freecell (which, by the way, they have updated).
I saw a post from a guy who works for microsoft, who said he's been running Vista for a few months, and doing all his work on it. From what i've seen of the build i'm running, I don't see myself being as productive on it as I am with my current XP setup, just becuase of some of these problems. on the other hand, it looks like once they get these things straightened out, it should be fine.
Re: Gross Distortion of Reality (Score:4, Informative)
I'll see your 250 computers with no domain and raise you 10,000+ 2000 SP4 and XP Pro SP2 machines on a domain with non-admin users running Office 2000 and 2003 with no issues related to the lack of admin rights.
GGP is correct - MS is *very* good at making sure their modern apps follow the guidelines for working for non-admins. Almost every other "enterprise" software company is not.
Yeah big surprise... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not saying Vista beta 2 is as bad as the other story said, just that we shouldn't be trusting this particular source when they said it isn't.