Windows Vista RC1 Impresses Critics 632
bradley fellows writes "Early feedback from testers already using Windows Vista RC1 (Release Candidate 1) report that the OS is more stable than expected, which bodes well for Microsoft's plan to have Vista out according to its current schedule." Mind you, "expected" is relative given how many users regard their frequent crashes as normal operation for a PC.
Re:Interesting spin (Score:4, Interesting)
Will existing hardware support break? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is the driver format the same as before or has it changed again? I wonder how many hardware manufacturers are going to need to port their drivers and how much hardware will break again this new release. Also, while these hardware manufacterers are at it, they might give a thought to setting up a cross-platform codebase for their drivers, which will benefit everyone in the long run.
Come on, editors (Score:5, Interesting)
Submit to: Digg Slashdot Del.icio.us
I clicked on the link to Slashdot, and it creates a template for the exact submission that we are reading. Why not to cut some corners and, instead of requiring an user to click on the link, to subscribe slashdot to the rss feed of that site and automatically post the news here. Mod me down all you want, but accepting a story created by the very own site that posted the article and not even adding anything meaningful to it is way too much laziness, even for slashdot
of course its stable, its brand new (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm just as confused with that statement. I don't know the numbers but I'm assuming the people that would be testing RC1 weren't running Win9x and as such wouldn't be thinking that "frequent crashes" were normal.
Hell, I haven't had XP or 2000 crash in years.
Re:The Emperor's Clothes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting spin (Score:4, Interesting)
Experience Index (Score:5, Interesting)
Nevermind that it handles XGL/Compiz very, very well in Linux, for some reason it's not up to par for the "optimal experience" in displaying windows and playing very basic games.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
The MS bashers hate to admit it, but MS really got it right with Windows 2000. I was hugely skeptical beforehand, but I changed my mind quickly. I never had a reason to buy XP, except for the family computer where compatibility with old games was very important and Windows 98 was an unending source of pain. However, I've bought laptops with XP installed and I don't have a problem with it either.
Having said that though, I think Explorer is horrible. It's the buggiest piece of software MS has ever released and it never gets better. IE6 used to lock up on me on a daily basis, but I haven't used it regularly in 3 years or more, so I couldn't say if it's improved. Outlook 2000 was awful to use. I always liked Outlook Express, but Outlook 2003 was orders of magnitude slower with a large database (and let's not forget the hidden "feature" that mail stores over about 1.5GB get corrupted).
These days, I still use Windows, but I use very little MS software on top of Windows, and I have a system that is very usable, stable and reliable. However, Vista has yet to offer me one compelling reason to upgrade. The new network stack sounds intriguing, but not for $200 plus the huge performance hit because I don't have 2GB of RAM. If I upgrade anything, I'll move to Linux and run Windows 2000 in a VM for those apps I can't live without.
Or maybe I'll buy a Mac.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
My Athlon 64 running Ubuntu would occassionally lock up, but after switching the power supply with a better one it's completeley solid. Even when maxing out the RAM and processor for a few days. With the old power supply it would occassionally end up locking up before the process was done. If anyone's curious, I used the origial power supply for about 4 months and the current one for about 8.
I've encountered this with many $300 computers as well.
Issues with Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, there's a difference between the system not crashing and the system working well. If the system gets infested by malware, but keeps doing what the user wants it to be doing, the user may not notice anything wrong, but it's still a bad system. Microsoft seems to be very serious about improving this in Vista, introducing features like address space layout randomization, which helps a lot against certain types of attack, and WHICH MANY LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS STILL DON'T INCLUDE! (I'm a long time OpenBSD user, and I don't sleep soundly at night without the pro-active security measures that make buffer overruns (one of the most common classes of vulnerability) nearly impossible to carry out).
The main problem that people around me have with Windows these days is usability. The knowledgeable folks complain about the constant stream of patches, virus scanner updates, the need to periodically scan the system for malware, etc. and the fact that they have to do this not only on their own systems, but also on those of their non-knowledgeable friends and family. The non-knowledgeable complain about the difficulty of certain tasks: getting the new printer to work, getting pictures off the digital camera and on a CD-R, not being able to figure out how to tell the machine which of the available connections to use, etc.
What I see when I look at Windows is lots of ugly grey boxes with christmas tree decorations around them, and about the only thing that is consistant among applications is that questions will have [Ok] and [Cancel] for answers, being less than informative about what's actually going to happen when you click either button (and yes, users do get confused by that). And there's no package manager that provides a single point to get all your software updates from, let alone one that automatically tracks dependencies.
I notice this, because on other systems (OS X, GNOME, KDE), these situations are noteworthy; typically, the system has some good looking theme applied, applications are built on a toolkit that handles sensible layout of widgets, and buttons have text on them that tells you what's going to happen when you click that button (thank you, Apple, for your Human Interface Guidelines). Also, my printer and scanner are immediately recognized and usable when I plug them in, and so is my webcam under Linux. Other people have reported similar experiences (the story is different for wireless network cards, but the situation seems to be improving rapidly). Depending on what system you use, all this may or may not be the case (many, many Linux distros suck at usability), you may or may not have a good package manager (OS X doesn't, for example), and there may or may not be a constant flood of updates (Ubuntu Dapper has one, Debian stable doesn't).
Alright, this is long enough. I'm not going to talk about anything else.
Re:Vista Impressed someone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Typical Jobs like statement (Score:2, Interesting)
I have had no problems with the stability of Linux at all. BUT, if I were a Linux beginner, and just considered X as part of Linux, I would think there were stability problems, as X has locked up a couple of times.(my distros may also be a bit too leading edge)
Now if we talk servers... At work here, we "recycle" the Windows servers once a week to keep them up and stable. It just works MUCH better that way. I really do not know if it is the fault of Windows, or the drivers or whatever.
On the other hand, our Linux and AIX servers go much longer.
The crown goes to our DEC/HP VMS boxes. We have left some of them up for years (a decade or more for some I bet) without rebooting.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I use Windows 2000, XP and 2003 versions and various Linux systems in about equal measure, but never fail to be impressed by how stable and tolerant of external factors (e.g. power failures) ext3 is in comparison to NTFS. The "drive full / fragmented" slowdown affect with NTFS / FAT32 is also much more obvious than on ext3.
Part of the "general slowness" is no doubt due to using an on-access virus checker on Windows but not Linux, but the "drive full" thing certainly isn't.
That said, I don't think that "regular crashes" under normal use have been a feature of computer systems this century. It's about time that myth was recgnised for what it is.
RC1 build 5600 on my hardware.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been running great for me. I installed it onto a separate IDE drive, thinking I would be right back over to XP after a couple days like I was with Beta 2, but thus far I am quite impressed with what I am seeing.
Note: I did disable the user access control. I don't have to see the annoying popups flashing my screen like I did before, also I am running on modern hardware. (Athlon 4400+ X2, 2 gigs ram, ATI 1600XT). I downloaded the ATI Vista RC1 drivers and they seem to work fine.
The performance doesn't feel degraded like Beta 2 felt, from XP. I have all the graphics options cranked up and it feels snappy and responsive.
Programs that I use frequently work great. I spend a lot of time doing Java dev on Linux server, so I have Putty open w/20 browser windows. My email client is GMail and I use IM clients from most of the networks. Office 03 runs fine, haven't had a glitch yet with that. On my free time I do play World of Warcraft, and once I disabled the UAC and installed the ATI drivers, it works great. I can tab out without any problems, and I have fewer problems tabbing in and out of the game than before. I don't know if it's my imagination , but the game actually feels faster and I have less stutters when tabbing in from another program. (I think the process affinity would attach to the second core.. not sure what exactly was causing it in XP, but I haven't yet run into that problem).
I disabled the Sleep functionality over time, the monitor will turn off after an hour.. but when I leave the 'sleep after x-time' , it has a problem waking up. It's likely drivers or something on my hardware that's causing problems.
I know this post will probably get modded down, as it's not a 'I hate Microsoft Ubuntu4tehwin!!11' , but I would go so far to say that I will likely just keep using RC1 until Vista ships, and I don't think I will have a problem going out and buying the OS once it hits the shelves. (OEM of course!)
If I can give one word of advice, is to disable the UAC until programs your running frequently have had time to test their own QC against running in a more protected environment.
BTW, I grabbed a copy of RC1 off a Torrent and installed it with my Beta2 key without any problems.
Re:How often does your Windows PC crash, REALLY? (Score:2, Interesting)
I run Windows Server 2003 on my desktop, and XP Professional on my laptop, and I can't remember the last time either of them had a crash so bad I'd have to reboot - it's usually a problematic program like Paint Shop Pro that crashes on its own - then I just restart it, or start something else! The days when that kind of thing destabilized the whole system ended when they moved on from WinME and decided to only use the NT memory management model.
I guess complaining about things that were eliminated several years ago is the best they have next to the very real security issues that still crop up. Other than that, it's now stable, fast, easy to use, and universally-supported. At the risk of starting a flamewar... these comments must be cropping up either from jealousy or ignorance of how Windows works now.
Release Candidate should be stable! (Score:3, Interesting)
Alpha means: "We're still working on it, but it kind of works, so go play with it."
Beta means: "Nothing major's going to change, but we want you to test it and help us shake out the bugs."
Release candidate means: "None of our Beta testers or developers can break it anymore."
If bugs are found in rc1, you fix them and put out rc2. You keep doing this until an rc -- no matter how late, could be rc15 -- survives for a fixed amount of time (usually measured in months) without any bugs reported at all. At that point, that particular rc is released, exactly as it was.
There is some fuzziness about what's pre-alpha, alpha, or beta. It's my opinion that MS betas are alpha quality, compared to the rest of the industry. But putting out a "release candidate" with known bugs is pure marketing bullshit, to keep them from getting crucified for further delays. When they "release" software, that's more marketing bullshit -- XP was certainly a release candidate before SP1, and arguably before SP2. Would you please stop defending their marketing bullshit?
Re:Why is hardware never faulty under Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
From the documentation [memtest86.com]
Faulty RAM can have lots of fun effects on an executing program or OS.