Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Latest Vista Build Making Real Progress

Posted by Zonk on Thu Jul 20, 2006 03:52 PM
from the better-build dept.
Operating Systems Software Windows
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."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Latest Vista Build Making Real Progress 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by elzurawka (671029) on Thursday July 20 2006, @03:58PM (#15752579)
    The sun is HOT!

    Seriously, New Beta is more stable then Old Beta. A company takes the advice from beta testers and fixes issues the everyone complaines about.
    Congratulations M$, you have amazed us all again!

    • The sun is HOT!

      Gee, thanks for reminding me... [wetter.com]

    • Agreed. Right now, the dev team is still working full time on Vista because they can make any change they want and not worry about it breaking a few hundred million installs, because of course, Microsoft would NEVER do that. *cough*WGA*cough* Once Vista is released, development will slow down, new bugs and exploits will be found, and they'll be so overwhelmed that we will return to our regularly scheduled Windows updates.

    • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Surt (22457) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:12PM (#15752694) Homepage Journal
      It's news because when you're dealing with MS software, you can't take forward progress for granted. Compare win98se to winME.

      • ABUSE OF MODERATION (Score:5, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Thursday July 20 2006, @05:24PM (#15753153) Homepage Journal

        How is this a troll? WinME was a horrible crashfest that was actually less reliable than Windows 98, and ran less software. It's pretty hilarious to me that they eliminated the 16 bit system in an effort to make it more reliable, and failed completely, only accomplishing a dramatic reduction of backwards compatibility.

        If you were going to give the parent comment a negative mod, it would be flamebait. The difference between a troll and flamebait is that you believe your flamebait, but trolling by definition means you are expressing a view that you yourself do not believe in order to elicit a desired response. However, I consider it to be a salient point given Microsoft's track record. WinME isn't the only example, either, I can remember a service pack for NT4 and another one for Win2k that both screwed things ALL up.

        • 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 li

    • Seriously, New Beta is more stable then Old Beta. A company takes the advice from beta testers and fixes issues the everyone complaines about. Congratulations M$, you have amazed us all again!

      Jeeze - MS releases their new OS to lots of beta testers and takes their advice and bugs and fixes them - and you are a sarcastic asshole. It's not news that the new beta is better than the old... but do you have to hate on MS just to try to fit in here?

      I'm surprised you didn't compare how easy networking is in L

    • Microsoft can't even stick to their own rules. Some windows you can to paste, some you can't, some will accept as well as or instead of . To search you go , or , or sometimes you have to right-click to get the context sensitive menu which includes the search option.

      The command to create a new folder actually MOVES around the Explorer menu! And this is a GUI! Graphical User Interfaces are intuitive because you can remember the location of things. But not if the bastards move them about, like when the supe

      • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fm6 (162816) on Thursday July 20 2006, @05:07PM (#15753040) Homepage Journal
        Graphical User Interfaces are intuitive because you can remember the location of things.
        GUIs were intuitive, back when they were invented. That's no longer considered important. Now, the purpose of GUIs is to look cool [microsoft.com].

        • Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)

          by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Thursday July 20 2006, @05:31PM (#15753200) Homepage Journal
          Graphical User Interfaces are intuitive because you can remember the location of things.
          1: No, they're not. GUIs are intuitive because the human brain was hard-wired to operate in a universe where there are blocks and shapes and stuff. DOS 5 had a GUI of sorts, that was every bit as intuitive as Windows or Mac could ever be.

          Actually, GUIs aren't intuitive regardless. Sit the average person without any computer experience (an oxymoron today, but anyway) down in front of a computer with or without a GUI and they will be more or less equally confused. The only computers that are even close to intuitive are the turnkey devices like iPods, or the Mailstation e-mail appliance.

          However, one thing we do know (from researching the subject) is that if things move around the GUI they become harder to find, whether we're talking text labels, images, or both, because you can no longer use "muscle memory" to locate them. Muscle memory is a very real phenomenon and is the primary reason why repetitive training of any kind is helpful. The brain likes to follow existing patterns that it already follows, which is also why habits are, well, habit-forming.

          Folders and files, which move, aren't the sort of things they were talking about. Windows has at least three ways to make a command or folder always in the same location -- which is something most folk don't want, so it's not used very often.

          I'm sorry, I don't understand this sentence. Three ways to make a command or folder always in the same location? Are you trying to say that there are three ways to make a command or folder that are always in their customary locations? It's not quite what you said and I only want to clarify, I am not trying to be a smartass (for once.)

          Anyway I haven't had many problems with the muscle training issue on Windows. Where I do see the issue is on the Mac. They went from the very nice, simple, functional Dock on NeXTStep to the stupid, eye-candy, glitz-only Dock on OSX. The primary difference? The new one looks slick, and the old one's elements are always in the same damned place.

            • 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?
              • 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 f

              • "Ease of use" vs. "intuitive"..? An interesting distinction.

                And an important one :).

                "Intuitiveness" is a measure of the "discoverability" of new, similar functionality based on knowledge you already have (eg: discovering how to drag and drop selected text, once you already know how to drag and drop icons). A more verbal description would be "ease of learning".

                "Ease of use" is a measure of efficiency - once you know how to use it, how well does it work. This is a mixture of finer measurements like intu

      • Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

        by grcumb (781340) on Thursday July 20 2006, @05:40PM (#15753251) Homepage Journal
        "[Windows 98 RC1] was stable, it was reliable, and it stayed running for days without problems, instead of crashing every six to twelve hours."

        Man, some days, the jokes just write themselves. 8^)

        For those who haven't had their coffee yet: the statements 'stable', 'reliable' and 'runs for days without problems' are not exactly synonymous.

  • PRINT View (Score:5, Informative)

    by in2mind (988476) on Thursday July 20 2006, @03:59PM (#15752593) Homepage
    Printable view here
    http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9001888 [computerworld.com]

  • Improvements vs. limitations (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alpinerod (970358) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:02PM (#15752624)
    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).
    • 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 ther

      • Re:Improvements vs. limitations (Score:4, Insightful)

        by drsmithy (35869) <drsmithy@@@gmail...com> on Thursday July 20 2006, @09:11PM (#15754201)
        WGA is only a problem for people who've purchased Windows.

        Actually, it's far more of a problem for casual, non-technical pirates than the handful of legitimate customers who have been misidentified.

        I personally know of at least half a dozen people who have subsequently either a) purchased a legitimate copy of Windows, b) downgraded back to their older, legitimate version or c) bought a Mac, because they lack the technical knowledge to keep up with the WGA arms race.

        WGA is certainly going to reduce the level of Windows piracy. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it's going to do so because some people will move away from Windows altogether.

        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.

        Yay for ignorant hyperbole ! Also, don't forget to mention that WGA kills puppies...

        Simple fact is that WGA is utterly transparent and utterly irrelevant to most legitimate users, and even those it isn't, it isn't an issue for very long.

    • Re:Improvements vs. limitations (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RzUpAnmsCwrds (262647) on Thursday July 20 2006, @09:13PM (#15754211)
      Where the hell do comments like yours even come from? There is so much negative PR around Vista that I guess people just ignore the reality of the system.

      Download Beta 2 (you can get it for free), install it, use it for 20 minutes, and you'll see just how stupid a lot of the FUD is. Vista is very, very much like XP in terms of DRM, restrictions, and the like. TPM support is minimal (only used for BitLocker), you can still install unsigned drivers, uTorrent and Azureus still run fine, K-Lite Mega Codec Pack still installs fine and XVID movies still work.

      I guess the most annoying thing about posts like yours is that they are so nondescript. Which DRM features are you referring to? What limitations are you referring to? I see an OS that is no more restricted than XP. The new DRM features don't mean a thing to me because I don't buy WMV-DRM movies.

      Vista is making real progress and is shaping up to be a substantial, albeit not revolutionary, upgrade from XP. Slashdot doesn't like that.

  • Highlights (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:06PM (#15752642)
    The server is pretty sluggish right now, so here are some choice tidbits:

    "... when powering up the hardware required by Vista, we had a brownout affecting neighboring homes -- a massive improvement over the four-city-block blackout resulting from the prior build. This is likely because I was able to pull several pre-release Xeon 5100 boards out of the render farm for Aero ..."

    " ... license verification now involves a latex glove for Microsoft's safety, and astro-glide for customer comfort, a major improvement over ..."

    "While it was annoying to have to confirm my Firefox download 18 times, Microsoft graciously refrained from sending another squad of Khazak mercenaries to 'verify safe uninstall of hacker tools.'"

    "Vist has not yet drowned the remaining kitten."

  • Beta Coverage (Score:5, Funny)

    by bano (410) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:06PM (#15752648) Homepage Journal
    taco needs to create windersvistabeta.slashdot.org for all this shit.
    Seriously why does a friggin beta need so much coverage here.
    • --Seriously why does a friggin beta need so much coverage here.-- Ever hear of Google son ?

    • Re:Beta Coverage (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Pengo (28814) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:29PM (#15752798) Journal
      "Seriously why does a friggin beta need so much coverage here."

      Hmm, lets think about this Einstein. Maybe because the Windows franchise is the most widely used consumer desktop OS on the planet?

      Quit being such a fuck-tart, you don't have to click and read the story if you don't like it. Filter the MS related news if you don't want to read it. Based on the number of responses this story gets, I imagine that a number of people are genuinely interested in what progress is being made on a OS that will be shoved down all our throats over the next 5-10 years.

    • Maybe because it's going to be a big change to an OS that millions of people will be using a year from now? Maybe because some of us actually are interested? Given your low slashdot uid, it's disappointing to see you've not learnt much while you've been here.
    • It's so that Slashdot posters can beta-test their latest anti-Microsoft talking points!

    • Re:Beta Coverage (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tim (686) <timr@u.wash[ ]ton.edu ['ing' in gap]> on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:52PM (#15752952) Homepage
      taco needs to create windersvistabeta.slashdot.org for all this shit.

      Nah...they just need to give it its own icon. A panoramic view of a landfill seems appropriate....

  • wrappers (Score:3, Funny)

    by happyfrogcow (708359) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:09PM (#15752673)
    I wonder if this build was delivered wrapped in hundred dollar bills.

  • Deleting Shortcuts with UAC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ben there... (946946) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:11PM (#15752688) Journal
    FTA:
    One of the most mystifying UAC behaviors in Vista Beta 2 caused a prompt to appear when you tried to delete some desktop program shortcuts. If the program was installed for use by all accounts in Vista, then UAC blocked the deletion of the icon in Beta 2 with a permission prompt. If the program was only installed for the current account, then deletion of the same program shortcut would occur normally. Since there's no way for Windows users to know which way the program was installed, even experienced beta testers were confused. For Build 5472, so long as the running account has administrator privileges, then icons installed "on the public desktop" will be deleted without issue when you drop them into the Recycle Bin.

    That's an odd criticism of UAC. With XP, if you run as a limited-access user, it simply prevents you from deleting the All Users shortcuts at all. Of course Vista's UAC would require a password for that. You don't have permission to modify that folder.

    Apparently the criticism must be coming from people who never ran XP securely. That said, it's probably more convenient now. No right-clicking Windows Explorer and having to hit Run As like you do in XP to delete All Users shortcuts.
      • Almost no one runs XP as an unprivileged users by choice...

        True, but they should. It's incredibly amusing and gratifying having spyware/rootkits ask you for permission to install themselves.

        It works with CD/DVD autoplay too. You can just hit cancel when the CD asks you for your password to install their crap. Sorry Sony. Try again.

      • Re:Deleting Shortcuts with UAC (Score:4, Interesting)

        by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Thursday July 20 2006, @05:36PM (#15753225) Homepage

        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.

  • 20% chance of slipping again... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Foofoobar (318279) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:11PM (#15752689)
    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.
    • Man, I really want it to ship. I'm ready to buy a pile of puts on MSFT at the time the press starts to report on how thoroughly mediocre it is after six years of waiting..

      -jcr
        • and yet billions of dollars has not kept them from sucking, getting hacked, getting sued, being fined, stopping users from migrating, etc.

          It's amazing that as Linux desktops, Linux server, Open Office, Firefox and Mac desktops continue to gain on them that their stats continue to rise. Too many cooks spoil the books.

  • Reactions From Linux/OS X Fans (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is kind of bizarre to read the reactions to Vista's progress towards release from Linux and OS X fans.

    It's like there is an underlying bitterness that Vista is coming together that is attempted to be covered up with sarcasm directed at Microsoft.

    I guess it is dawning on people who hoped that Vista would crash and burn and Microsoft customers would come fleeing to their favorite niche OS that that simply won't be happening.

    Regardless, golf clap for Microsoft for taking so fucking long just to get a system

  • This seems crazy, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ndykman (659315) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:27PM (#15752795)
    Am I the only one that is hoping that Microsoft can deliver a better OS? Like it or not (or for most ./ers), it's widely used, it will be in use at some point, and frankly, if it is an improvement, then doesn't that help everybody out. Less windows problems and better windows software seems to mean less headaches for everybody all round. Wouldn't three major (okay, 3.5 Sorry BSD folks 8-) great OS choices be better than two? Personally I don't think XP/2003 is all that bad, I use them everyday.

    I just don't buy the whole Microsoft is hurting Linux/Apple/BSD etc. because all of those systems are growing and getting better all the time. Linux is getting better and better, OS X is super cool, and so on.

    Sure, I think some people would hope that a awful Vista will sink MS. Well, it won't. because if ME didn't, I can't see Vista doing it. So, maybe it's best to hope for a good OS from MS, more secure, less bugs, less @#$@#$@#%%^ spyware/adware infections for us to all fix, etc. etc, and then just focus on using what we like.

    • Re:This seems crazy, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by peragrin (659227) on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:45PM (#15752904)
      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.
    • 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 eve

  • Why the big deal over Vista? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pandrijeczko (588093) on Thursday July 20 2006, @05:03PM (#15753016)
    I'm an avid Linux user but do I care about when the next kernel release is? No, not particularly. If I've chosen my PC hardware sensibly, then I'm probably not waiting for a better device driver, for example...

    Sure, I care about the next release of OpenOffice or Firefox because it's the features in these applications that interest me in my day-to-day usage but the core OS is pretty much transparent to me.

    I also use XP (to a lesser extent). It seems pretty stable and once I got rid of the appalling "nursery school" default GUI and got it looking like Windows 2000 again, I'm pretty content using it. Yep, it's got big security holes but I avoid Outlook and IE, run the occasional virus check/anti-spyware application and avoid installing and uninstalling too much software - as a result, it stays pretty clean and works well. I've got drivers for all my hardware, stick all my important files on a Linux SAMBA share and I can search and index every file I have with Linux command-line tools.

    If you're an application developer, it's pretty important to know what the next version of your OS will have in terms of libraries, APIs, etc. But why do the 99% of *mere desktop users* care about the OS? Isn't it better to stick with an OS that's a few years old, has been patched and service packed to run much better than when it first came out rather than trade it all in for a new OS that will have new bugs and problems?

    I don't use Apple machines and think much about being an Apple user is about image - but to give them their credit, they do seem to care less about the OS and more about the applications they can run on their machines which, to me, is the only thing a normal desktop user should care about.

      • Re:Pagination... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Dear Internet,

        Serve the interests of your users, or DIAF. I don't really care which.

        Sincerely,

        The User

    • Unrealistic expectations (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 20 2006, @04:34PM (#15752829)
      We each have our own metric here. I'd say Vista was making real progress when it could fit in the memory footprint of XP -- or better yet, 2K.

      2K?!? For a modern operating system? The average Atari 2600 game is larger than that!

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.