Windows 7 To Skip Straight To a Release Candidate 856
b8fait writes "The head of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows development confirmed that Windows 7 will take the unusual path of moving straight from a single beta, which was launched earlier this month, to a release candidate. Sinofsky fleshed out the plan today and hinted that just as there would be no Beta 2, the company would also not provide a RC2 build. In other words, there may be only one released build of Windows 7 before it ships, possibly much sooner than even some of the most aggressive rumors about Windows 7. How much different can Windows 7 really be with such a shortened beta cycle?"
Windows 7... Is it really that much better? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm using the Windows 7 Beta right now, and previously I've been using Windows Vista.
Is it really that much better? Here are the points I can think of it being better than Vista:
* Faster on Less Hardware - They did make it work better on older slower hardware with less memory.
* Less Annoying User Account Control - It doesn't freak out every time I want to run a program from the desktop. This should be included into Vista with a service pack, imho.
* New Starbar - I like it. Good Job Microsoft. But is it worth the upgrade?
Other than these things... why would anybody upgrade?
Oh... yeah, that's right... Everybody says it's "So much better." Right.
--Pathway
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you smell that??? That is the smell of desperation...
I think this action is actually quite smart considering how bad vista go abused in the marketplace. I guess we now know, however, that Windows 7 will also be known more as a Vista SP3.
staffing reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
There's been a speculation on the Mini-Microsoft blog [blogspot.com] about layoffs hitting the Windows team after 7 ships. This could partly explain why only 1400 of the 5000 announced layoffs were said to have been notified immediately.
Someone posted a comment to the effect that, being self-interested, people the Windows dev team should react by dragging out the process as long as possible, hopefully not shipping until the economy starts recovering.
perceived lack of testing affects corporate users? (Score:3, Interesting)
or is this O/S only meant for "ordinary people" who have neither the ability to discern quality product, nor the option of choosing anything else (linux aside, but that's a different topic)
Is it a coke classic move? (Score:4, Interesting)
They can basically replace an unpopular product and hope to get some bump in marketshare out of it?
Strange Vibes... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:3, Interesting)
How many betas does a service pack need?
If anyone has any doubt that Windows 7 is just Vista rebranded, read here:
http://dotancohen.com/eng/windows_7_vista.html [dotancohen.com]
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:2, Interesting)
Funny you should mention "desperation"; it was the first word which sprang to my mind when I saw the headline too.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:5, Interesting)
MSFT claims [windowsteamblog.com] that the reason it's 6.1 is because applications broke:
Re:Strange Vibes... (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course Microsoft is doing security testing. I personally know half of the team that is doing the security testing right now. Don't get me wrong, they can't tell me their findings ... so, although I don't know what they have found I can tell you they are a damn good group of pen testers.
The problem isn't the security testing, its what Microsoft does with the results. As someone who has done real pen testing on site at Microsoft. I watched project managers shrug off major problems we had found by saying they will try to get it on the road map in a few months. What was even worse was that we found a flaw in another Microsoft product in the process. We sat down and met with the other group, we fought long and hard for them to realize the seriousness of the problem. After a few meetings, they said they flat out said they don't have plans of fixing it but would keep it in mind if the problem was exposed.
Microsoft isn't the only ones, even the medium sized company I am in present pulls the same shit. They just don't take security seriously. Security fixes are treated less serious then minor UI bugs.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:2, Interesting)
Everyone who I've talked to who has used Windows 7 has found it to be comparable in speed to Windows XP. That alone is a reason it's not a re-branded Vista.
I'm using the full Areo theme on a netbook right now. Let's see Vista do THAT.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:3, Interesting)
Coming up with an entirely new OS name is disingenuous.
To me there was a significant step in going from Windows 95 to Windows 2000. Then another big step from 2000 to XP and another big step from XP to Vista. I consider going to Windows 7 the same as upgrading Windows 98 to Windows Millennium Edition, catchy but insignificant except maybe for marketing. Corporations with very limited IT budgets are not going to move to Windows 7 any time soon.
Yet I think they should have done better.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:3, Interesting)
Well I've used XP XP/SP2/Sp3 XP64 Vista32 Vista64 SP1 and I'm currently running Vista64 SP2-Beta alongside a Win7-64 version and can state they appear the same. So based on your statement
Windows 7 is NOT Vista SP2
is in correct based on my experience using both of them.
Re:Rebranding and relaunch (Score:2, Interesting)
You've CLEARLY not tried the Beta. In fact, anyone claiming that "Windows 7 is just Vista with a slightly new lick of paint" has definitely not tried either 7 or Vista or both.
Either Vista was better than you believe it to be, or 7 really is a huge step forward from Vista, because there's no way even the almighty Microsoft could fool such a large amount of the public into thinking that an OS was as good as Windows 7 is claiming to be, especially after Vista.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:3, Interesting)
'The problem with Vista -now- really is primarily PR.'
That and the buggy security model, incompatible major software issues, numerous issues with network printing, and the fact that even on 'suitable hardware' it is outperformed by its predecessor in almost all areas. And lets not forget the marketing screwup of releasing it in 200 flavors when two confused the userbase.
Vista still remains a downgrade from XP with no clear advantages (except video previews on the taskbar... ooo... ahhh...) and plenty of shortcomings.
'The only major obstacle in the face of Microsoft really is public perception that "Vista sucks"; and most of the people who think it sucks haven't even tried it, and won't.'
The public doesn't know. The public won't even know after having Vista on their computer for a few years. Their techs know, and the techs have tried vista and have found it lacking compared with XP. The service pack didn't even fix much of anything, it actually just added a new array of problems.
I'm speaking as a technician who has been running vista for the past few months just in case I didn't give it enough of a chance the first time I loaded it. The first time I ran the system for about a week before declaring it to be of alpha quality. That is bad, MS usually releases with beta quality.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:3, Interesting)
Here bloody fucking here. Vista has codepaths in it which can be traced back to the Windows NT Alpha implementation. I found that out the hard way when I tried to get Windows to behave timewise on a multi-booting system.
After dicking around with a registry setting and encountering all kinds of weird timewarps I finally found this little gem [cam.ac.uk]:
And this semi-implemented known bad behaviour has persisted through win2k (nt 5), winxp (nt 5.1) and vista (nt 6). Wanna bet Winblows 7 will still have the same flakey code path, the same semi-implemented flag?
And people wonder why I don't trust Microsoftware.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:1, Interesting)
I still can't believe that we're even debating if it's just a Vista rebrand/service pack.
M$ astroturfers. M$ is trying very hard to make people believe it's new, even when it isn't, for the obvious reasons.
The "debate" is simply marketing zealots trying to ram their propaganda down people's throats.
---
Adopt an astroturfer [wikipedia.org]. Make their life hell.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, I remember that time. Way back in the days of 'What? It installed perfectly the first time? Take it out and try again, something went wrong and you just missed it.'. Ah, those were the days, back when a real geek could chant the ones and zeros at about the same speed the modem sent them. Linux and even Windows has come a long way since then. Honestly, my true biggest complaint about windows is that MS keeps trying to lock the user/owner out of the system. More and more you use it only at their sufferance and if you don't like it, too bad. MS could serve the masses and the geeks, but they chooses only to serve the masses and put quite a bit of effort into locking the geeks out. You can do more with a Vista system from the computer next to it then you can at it's keyboard. The local user is the one they want to control and limit, while the remote user is unbothered by much of the security. Yes, this is because the remote user hacked in to the backdoors MS has left for them selves and the police, but still, many of the attacks can only be used remotely and fail if used locally. That seems rather odd to me. It reminds me of an other bit of humor from back in the day 'Root is a security risk, we need to remove that account'. Seems MS is working on it.
Microsoft could fool such (Score:5, Interesting)
I took the plunge the day before yesterday and it is indeed different. I put it on two machines, one a low end 32bit and one a higher end 64bit machine. I've been using Vista for about a year and Server 2008 for about the same period of time.
Windows 7 looks and feels like Vista with a mildly snazzed up taskbar, but without most of the annoyances of Vista. Aside from the taskbar and a toned down UAC, it feels exactly like what I would expect a slimmed down version of 2008 to feel like. Everything I like about Windows 7 could have been done with Vista and the taskbar improvements.
Still, I do think they are at least as different as Windows 95 and Windows 98 were. I can't get the LAN to work on the 64bit install, though I can assign an IP to the adapter. I can't get our primary software package (and the reason I'm testing) to work on either one. The system locks occasionally on both, probably due to the same testing. IE8 is kludgy and, where I've been able to test it, doesn't perform as well as either IE7 or Firefox 3. My yardstick of major differences is based on how many things are broken, and if the beta is a fair representation, then I'd say it does indeed deserve to be classified as a new version of Windows.
I think most of the testers are using software and hardware recommended and better tested by Microsoft than our typical system, but I cannot believe how different my experience has been from the typical media publications. I believe it is precisely because most of the reviews are Microsoft friendly rather than workplace critical.
Re:This seems abrupt (Score:5, Interesting)
M$ astroturfers.
Right, because /. is FULL of those. As made apparent by the overwhelming bias of opinion in Microsoft's favour.
Re:Congratulations - you win! (Score:3, Interesting)
There are good car analogies?
Re:That's what I thought. (Score:1, Interesting)
Is the Linux kernel re-written for every release?
No?
Then why don't you shut the fuck up?