Latest Vista Build Making Real Progress

feminazi writes "Computerworld's Scot Finnie has reviewed the newest Vista build and found some significant improvements over Beta 2, which he had previously criticized in pretty strong terms. There's improved performance, greatly reduced installation time, four network control panels and some wizards have all been combined into one nicely organized Network and Sharing Center. Microsoft is also reducing the number of annoying User Access Control (UAC) prompts. There are some minor improvements in the way Media Center handles windows, but it's still buggy."

Improvements vs. limitations

[alpinerod]

I wonder how much time is really spent on fixing bugs and improving the system overall, as opposed to putting in various limitations and DRM compliance. Maybe I'm going on a limb out here, but I've lost trust in Windows platform ever since the WGA hit the news. Most likely XP is going to be the last MS-based _personal_ use OS I will ever use (hopefully).

20% chance of slipping again...

[Foofoobar]

I find it interesting that Bill Gates at a recent symposium told Microsoft affiliates that there is a 20% chance that Vista would slip again. Since I live in Seattle, I have friends who are developers over there who swear it will never make the January deadline.

I love it when they are already talking about the new release slipping when they have already made promises through their teeth for the last 3 years.

Re:This seems crazy, but...

[peragrin]

i personally had high hopes for vista. Back when they were talking about how the entire thing was rewritten from the ground up. How features like IE were removed from the Kernel, and turned into ordinary apps. I was looking forward to the fact that MSFT would finally fore users and developers to deal with multiple users per computer in a proper way. That the mess that was win32 would be tossed completely in favor of ONLY Aero's .NET setup. I was hoping beyond hope that MSFT's purchase of VPC was a sign that they were going to do a VPC version of win32 inside of Vista so that Vista code ould be stab le and yet still maintain backward compatibility(ala wine, or Classic mode for OS X)

Then when in Jan. after the first beta was released and the WMF flaw was found not only in XP but Vista as well, and MSFt's excuse was that they hadn't yet checked that dll I knew MSFt was going down hill. Win32 code is still present and merely thrown on top. no separate layer just direct cross calling. no sand boxing old apps properly just an ugly hack to keep everything working. Then with Beta 2 MSFT has to "fine Tune" UAC means that the system doesn't work right. That security will be to complicated for the average users and weak admins which make up 75% of MSFT's install base. MSFT never learned the KISS principal creates a stronger security layer, and then you add on more complicated layers for fine grained control ala selinux, and the other systems designed for hardening a computer, but aren't needed by say my mother.

UAC can be tightened up well, and MSFT and real admins will do so for Servers and other important machines. But the home user will only get frustrated at it's complexity and find ways to disable it like they have already begun to do in the betas.

While I had High hopes for Vista, the above combined with the outrageous hardware requirements to deliver the same features found in OS X running on literally a 1/3 of the hardware has found my hope for vista gone. i have converted my brother to OS X If I can get my mother then all will be good. My brother could switch to linux if he desired, and my mother isn't a tech person.

Re:This seems crazy, but...

[killjoe]

MS is bad the IT industry because it stifles innovation, buys companies just to kill them, hires people just to put them out to pasture, and destroys standards by wilfully disobeying them. MS is the foremost proponent of software patents and DRM. Finally it actively lobbies congress and other countries to try and make open source sofware either illegal or difficult.

If vista is bad then MS will make a little less money. Maybe that will decrease their influence a little. If that happens then it's good for everybody. If their influence is decreased at lot and their monopoly gets undermined then the price of windows and office will drop drastically and that would be even better for everybody.

Basically it all depends on whether you think MS is good for the IT industry or not. I don't think they are, I view them as a plague on the industry.

Tiring

[theredmenace]

It never ceases to amaze me the predictablility of Slashdot replies to any article about Vista. Much of the comments are either people complaining about slips, complaining about having to read Microsoft articles, or making generalizations about the bugginess of MS. You don't have to read these, you choose to read it, so don't complain. It's news because it is going to be the dominant OS in the world when it's released, like it or not. Yes, it's slipped a lot and will in all likelihood slip again. So what? Nobody I've heard or read that talked about the slips did it because they were disappointed and wanted to get on the Vista train, it's always point out that it somehow makes Microsoft stupid. I for one would rather they take their time and come out with a polished end product. And yes, as it has been pointed out umpteen-million times, Linux is more stable/more secure/humanities hope for the future, but point that out to people who mostly all agree with you is pointless. I sometimes think that if MS disbanded and donated all their money and technology to open source developers, the comments to the slashdot report would read like a bad eBay seller. "OMG TOOK FOREVER F--!"

Re:Deleting Shortcuts with UAC

[nine-times]

That was my thought exactly. Beta testers revealed that the OS behavior was stupid, and sure enough, Microsoft changed the behavior-- to a different stupid behavior.

Seriously, there's just something a little wrong with the way Microsoft handles the "All users" profile. It's a pretty good idea-- to have a place where if you change the settings, it changes for all users. However, it's more complicated of a situation than Microsoft's handling of it implies.

There are your criticisms, and others besides, of Microsofts methods, but I think their solution should entail at least 3 features:

• Administrators should be able to create an "All users" profile as default settings.
• Individual users should be able to override these settings without changing the "All users" profile
• Administrators should be able to block non-admin users from overriding invdividual settings in the profile.

Creating the administrator interface for this behavior might be a bit complicated, but that's how it should work.

Re:In other news...

[JonathanBoyd]

That's the least important thing you need to learn for an iPod. In fact, they're designed to run without being manually switched off as they go to sleep after not being used for a while. Why not critique the actual using of the device, such as finding, selecting, playing, pausing, fast-forwarding trakcs, etc - the important functions that determine if it's intuitive? Would it be because these functions actually are intuitive?

Re:In other news...

[Achromatic1978]

See, that's the thing. You don't /intuitively/ know that, either. So you finish using it, and you go to switch it off, like 95% of consumer electronic devices. Doesn't matter that it's designed to sleep automatically - you'd still waste time.

As for the other functions? Most of them are only "intuitive" because they're how most walkmans/discmans/audio systems have worked for the last 20+ years (ie holding the 'next' button to fast forward) - I'd still argue that they're fairly learned behaviours, they just feel intuitive because they're second nature.

Re:ABUSE OF MODERATION

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

trolling by definition means you are expressing a view that you yourself do not believe in order to elicit a desired response.

More or less, but I'd say that your personal beliefs are irrelevant to the difference between a troll and flamebait. What is important is intent.

Every few months, somebody posts to debian-legal asking whether the GPL violates the Debian Free Software Guidelines. This has been discussed before, and the concensus is that it does not, for various reasons. If the Debian mailing lists had a Slashdot moderation system, it would be correct to moderate these posts as "flamebait", because the person who are posting them are typically interested in getting a legitimate answer. On the other hand, if the same person came back, and posted the same type question every month, merely to elicit a flamewar, then those posts would be considered "trolls". Note that, in this case, the person may honestly believe that the GPL violates the DFSG, but it is nevertheless considered trolling if your intent is to cause a flame war, rather than to actually resolve a particular issue.

Put in another way, if you post a bunch of "BSD is dying" trolls, it's not a defence to claim that you really believe that BSD is dying.

... which it is. (I'll probably be modded down for this, but...)

Re:Improvements vs. limitations

[obeythefist]

WGA is only a problem for people who've purchased Windows. If you're a decent copyright infringer (the poster of this statement does not recommend or endorse circumvention of copyright blah blah blah) you'll infringe a non-activation VLE of Windows and use Autopatcher or similar to keep it up to date, and probably firewall off www.microsoft.com so you don't have to worry about it hassling you ever again, and use a decent firewall and A/V scanner to keep your system virus free (I'm going to assume that there are things you can't do with Linux or OS X so you need to keep Windows around). A quiet, happy end user experience, Microsoft excluded.

Now if you have a legitimate activation required license of Windows, that is when you have to deal with WGA spying on your every keypress and sending the data off to Redmond with your credit card number.