Microsoft Leaks Windows 7 RC Date — Before May 5 321
CWmike writes "Microsoft will deliver a release candidate of Windows 7 in about two weeks, the company's Web site revealed Saturday. According to a page posted on Microsoft's partner program site, Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) may be available to paying subscribers to Microsoft's developer and IT services before May 5. Partners will be allowed to download the release candidate on that date, the first Tuesday of the month. 'Partners: If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now,' the page read Saturday afternoon. 'Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.' The link to the download, however, shunted users to the TechNet download page, which did not list Windows 7 RC as one of the available files. This is the second time in just over three weeks that Microsoft's Web site has leaked information about Windows 7 RC. Accidental, or buzz-builder?"
Actually we did explain it. (Score:5, Informative)
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/02/04/2826167.aspx [technet.com]
XP hid the dialog before the copy was really finished. Vista changed this so you wouldn't pull out a USB key before the operation had finished.
Vista RTM had some copy performance issues but SP1 fixed those, and during Win7 there was a significant focus on improving copy / move / delete performance.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Welcome to Redmond, where you have to be a paying member to download a free RC.
Early, or did you miss the 'Otherwise, you can download Windows 7 RC starting May 5, 2009.' in the summary?
Then again - I just tried our MSDN login and, like the article said, there's just the old beta to download.
np: Jared Emerson-Johnson - Attack The Dog (Sam & Max Season One OST (Disc 1))
Re:rsync for Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
Just get Cygwin. Now you have rsync.
Re:rsync for Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:rsync for Windows? (Score:5, Informative)
How the hell do Windows users backup their files?
Well to make this an easy answer...
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1) Windows Backup
- You can choose User Files or a Complete volume image.
Many users do a periodic Complete backup and daily user file backups to complete a total recovery solution.
A side benefit of Windows Backup is that it also works with the Windows 'Previous Versions', which is like Time Machine on OS X, but also includes 'on volume' snapshot/copy on write archived versions of all your documents. It is also more accessible and elegant than Time Machine, as it is integrated into the Shell and even older application that have an Open or Save dialog box get access to 'previous versions' of your documents.
So in Windows Vista or Win7, you can right click on the main volume and hit previous versions and it will list all the archive points on the volume and all the backup points on your external storage device(network share etc.)
Also recovering or viewing a 'previous version' from the volume or a backup is as easily as hitting open and viewing the Folder or Volume as it looked at a particular day or time, being able to browse through the entire volume and even search it as it existed on that date and time.
No Time Machine interface needed, and even your external backups are not needed for the basic functionality as it uses the Volume Shadow features of NTFS every time you modify a file on your computer.
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2) Scripted Backups, with folder syncing, etc. Tools like Copy and XCopy have been replaced in Windows and you have RoboCopy as well as new PowerShell copy features.
RoboCopy is probably what you are looking for, as it is a complete backup and archiving tool, in addition to performing basic file copying. It does folder syncing, mirroring, etc, etc and can create a perfect copy of even the system volume with all attributes, NTFS meta data, and ACLs kept in tact that you can simply use RoboCopy again from the boot DVD in the WinPE environment to restore a volume exactly.
(WinPE is essentially NT with a generic GUI, so unlike XP, it allows NT and even Win32/64 commandline and some GUI utilities to run on what is essentially the 'MinWin' layers of NT. WinPE is also what Vista and Win7 use for setup/upgrades.)
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3) Other utilities.
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If the built in Complete Backup/User Data Backup tools or the RoboCopy utility don't provide the features you want, there are additional 'IT' scale tools in the resource kit that add even more functionality, as well as the PowerShell features.
You can even click 'install SUA' and use or compile any *nix utility you like and use it. NT doesn't care if you are using the BSD subsystem or Win32.
There are also the Win32 ports of the *nix utilities that a lot of *nix users love.
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One PS about Powershell...
PowerShell is more of a CLI for the NT architecture.
Which means it is the first CLI designed around the object based kernel architecture of NT, and unlike a *nix CLI, doesn't deal with just device I/O and text, but uses the 'object' constructs that NT is uses instead.
So Powershell can request and interact with devices and I/O on an object level as well as pass and work with objects from the NT and Win32 Subsystem that would be basic devices and textual on *nix.
i.e. It can work directly with an object and its properties at the CLI level from the NT kernel and not just textual parameters and understands NT objects in the kernel from things like the token based security of NT to even the Win32 subsystem WMI objects that create the GUI, other interfaces all the way through process and services that work with NT in object form. (This is one area NT was designed to be more advanced than UNIX, as the basic device and textual nature of the UNIX model was considered to be outdated when NT was created, and using a real 'object' model that exposed information, functions, and properties for I/O was seen as the more robust system.
Some think PowerShell is
Re:Windows 7 synopsis (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know of any company on the planet that would define Windows 7 as anything but a full point upgrade.
Windows 98SE was insignificant compared to Vista -> 7.
You're putting Microsoft under unreasonable expectations for an upgrade.
As to it being the "best ever" I would agree with that sentiment. It's funny that so many people keep complaining that 7 is just a "service pack" when Vista actually is still getting service packs. Let's compare the two shall we? Take a look at Vista's SP1 and SP2. Now compare that to the changelog for Winodws 7. You might see a different focus where Service Packs SERVICE THE APPLICATION and windows 7 ADDs new features... almost like it's a new product or something. Weird huh.
Since when have service packs been expected too add hundreds of new features and not just fix bugs? By that definition no company should ever release a new product and every new version is just a service pack.
Download (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a subscription to MSDN or TechNet, you can download Windows 7 RC now
If you have a "ThePirateBay" subscription, you can download Windows 7 RC now.
Re:Windows 7 synopsis (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:rsync for Windows? (Score:5, Informative)
rsync for Windows?
Robocopy [wikipedia.org] is a free command-line tool similar to rsync that comes with Vista and is a free download for previous versions of Windows. The syntax is a little clumsy, but it works pretty well for simple backups (that is, directory replication). A free 3rd party tool that's pretty good is Cobian Backup [cobiansoft.com]. However there are probably hundreds of different "backup" utilities for Windows so you might want to just try a couple and see how they work for you.
PowerShell is pretty nice, certainly it's leaps and bounds better than CMD or WSH. Object-oriented and allows full access to the .NET framework which is pretty nice. Easily extensible as well by writing your own "cmdlets" (a .NET program invoked like a built-in command).
Re:Smell the desperation (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, Microsoft is really trying to run away from Vista as quickly as possible. Could they rush this this to market any more quickly? How long has Vista been ou
Vista has been released in January, 2007. Given that May release date is for RC, and assuming that final build of 7 comes sometime this summer, this makes it 2.5 years.
and has there been a major new version of Windows ever released in such a short time frame?
Yes, absolutely. For example, NT 4 was released slightly over a year after NT 3.51, and was a very major update. WinXP took slightly less than 2 years from Win2K. In fact, so far, over 5 years it took for Vista is the longest it ever was, and ~2.5 years would be quite average.
I think in their desperate rush, they are likely to make the same mistakes again. Will MS ever take the effort to rebuild the system properly?
Most Vista problems were bugs and performance - which do not require a major rewrite to fix; and hardware/software compatibility, which is a problem that solves itself over time. In any case, Win7 beta is publicly available today, so you can always install it and see for yourself.
Re:Any word on free legal upgrade for Vista owners (Score:3, Informative)
OSX 10.0 would freeze up sometimes if you plugged in a USB mouse. Vista has its niggling problems, but nothing like that.
Re:buzz builder? (Score:3, Informative)
While I would agree that overwriting GRUB/LiLo/Your Bootloader Here is annoying, the average user is orders of magnitude more likely to have an issue with a corrupted, windows-written bootloader than a conflict with an intentionally installed one.
Well, I'm not the average user, and if Microsoft can't accept it, I won't pay them.
Even at that, Windows would have to be added to the list. To my knowledge, that would have to be done manually by the user.
"[ ] Don't install bootloader (WARNING: say yes only if you know why!)" There. Was it so difficult? And those who know why, know how.
Wrong again. (Score:5, Informative)
Vista never had any DRM of any kind built-in, other than the DRM support in WMP that was in XP.
Certainly nothing at all that affects copy operations in the shell. That notion is absurd (I'm a shell developer, I would know).
It's just a ridiculous myth that gets repeated on Slashdot and nowhere else.
Re:Actually we did explain it. (Score:5, Informative)
e.g.: Flooding memory with queued writes and making the OS page as a result.
Or queued writes causing your copy operation to be "complete" on the UI before the writing actually finishes. (XP suffers from this quite badly, a copy can be going for a good 5-10 seconds after the window closes)
Or the opposite, when copying lots of small files, insisting on fully closing the previous file before opening the next to avoid the previous bug, causing an additional ~5ms read seek (depending on media) between each copy. (Pre-SP1 Vista's problem IIUC*).
*IIUC: If I Understand/Understood Correctly.
Re:rsync for Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
Thank you for this post.
I just started into a more detailed explanation with less 'generic' terms to explain my earlier post that I can now scrap.
I thought I was saving the non-technical readers by using more generic terms, but instead it created more of reaction like Frankenstein to fire. "Object based I/O" for example.
You summarized the point more effectively, without even having to explain the NT Object Manager, nature of the NT Kernel's handling of APIs with agnostic objects to upper level NT layers and even how the 'object' nature of the NT API set deals with OS subsystems.
The real world technical examples of why dealing with objects is a good thing was a nice touch and something I would have skipped.
So thank you...
It is strange that with all the 'geeks' here, it is like 1 out of a 1000 that could even define what a UNIX model OS is let alone have any understanding of NT's architecture and why it is very much not like UNIX for valid reasons.
Re:Wrong again. (Score:5, Informative)
> Vista never had any DRM of any kind built-in, other than
> the DRM support in WMP that was in XP.
Actually, it does.
It is otherwise known as Intel's "High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection", and implemented by Microsoft as "Protected Video" and
Protected Audio" Paths.
The following links may be of some use to you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection [wikipedia.org]
http://www.digital-cp.com/ [digital-cp.com]
Enjoy.
Re:buzz builder? (Score:3, Informative)
If you had to use Microsoft products all day you too would have lost your sense of humor long long ago.
Re:Any word on free legal upgrade for Vista owners (Score:3, Informative)
As a user of both, I assure you: no it didn't.
Yes it did. At release, you simply could not buy hardware that could run OS X 10.0 well. Indeed, this quite arguably remained true all the way through to 10.2.
For all the complaints about Vista's performance, you could still buy a PC more than beefy enough to run it quickly for under a grand US$ even on the day it was released. It took Apple a couple of *years* to a) release hardware fast enough, and b) optimise OS X sufficiently, that it could be considered "fast".
Re:Wrong again. (Score:3, Informative)
Except unless it was there you wouldn't be able to play any media that required it, and unless it's needed it will never affect you if you play media that doesn't require it, so it's not really a big issue anyway.
Re:buzz builder? (Score:2, Informative)
I bave Windows 7 a try. The installation not only overwrote grub, it also wiped my Linux boot partition out of the partition table. Those had fairly simple work arounds, (use fdisk to recreate the partition table, reinstall grub) but this is not nice behaviour :).
Given the performance issues, I will stay with XP for the three or four Windows apps I cannot do without.
Still incorrect. (Score:3, Informative)
Protected Media Path is NOT DRM. And it was included in Windows XP under a different name.
It is a platform service which enables application developers to meet the requirements imposed by certain content protection standards. It is in of itself completely unaware of any DRM schemes or media types.
It is also completely inactive and irrelevant until somebody's code calls the necessary APIs. Enabling PMP features doesn't impact performance, and the PMP code is ONLY run while an application is actively making use of it.
Windows Explorer makes no use of these features. Hell, its features (securing the audio / visual outputs and running decoders in a protected process) are completely inapplicable to the file browser. The only applications included in Windows which make use of it are Media Player and Media Center. And as I already said, even if you are running one of those applications (with media like BluRay which enables these features), there is no perceivable performance impact on your system.
If you really don't like the Protected Media Path services, nothing stops you from using a media player which doesn't make use of the PMP APIs. And the assertion that the presence of this platform service somehow affects file copy performance is proposterous.