Windows 7 Hits RTM At Build 7600.16385 341
An anonymous reader links to Ars Technica's report that (quoting) "Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone. The software giant still has a lot of work to do, but the bigger responsibility now falls to OEMs that must get PCs ready, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are testing their new apps, and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) that are preparing their new hardware. The RTM build is 7600, but it is not the same one that leaked less than two weeks ago (7600.16384). We speculated that Microsoft may end up recompiling build 7600 until it is satisfied, but it only took the company one more shot to get it right: 7600.16385 is the final build number. Microsoft refused to share the full build string, but if you trust leaks from a few days ago, it's '6.1.7600.16385.090713-1255,' which indicates that the final build was compiled over a week ago: July 13, 2009, at 12:45pm. This would be in line with the rumored RTM date but it is also the day Microsoft stated that Windows 7 had not yet hit RTM. Although the final build had been compiled, Microsoft still had to put it through testing before christening it as RTM."
Technet on August 6th (Score:5, Informative)
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/21/when-will-you-get-windows-7-rtm.aspx [windowsteamblog.com]
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:4, Informative)
Just like XP was a service pack for 2000 (XP is 5.1), nothing new here, same old Microsoft.
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:4, Informative)
A fair few really stupid installers actually did this:
if (MajorVersion>5) and (MinorVersion>1) then { // compatible with Windows XP or later
}
Which is fine for 5.1 and 6.1, but crapped out in Vista (6.0), and would crap out if Windows 7 was 7.0 - so, 6.1. That's actually why.
And MSDN Too (Score:3, Informative)
For those that don't know and didn't want to RTFL, it will be available to MSDN subscribers on August 6th as well. If your company didn't pony up for one of the subscriptions, but does have Volume Licenses for Windows with a current Software Assurance, it will be available on August 7th.
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:5, Informative)
Because it is a troll; there are changes in the core, many, now there are not as many dependencies and it features a modular design (check the add and remove windows features dialog, you can get rid of everything there and leave only the core os); also UAC was changed, the ribbon is included in the core as an API, performance was enhanced so much that it can run on old Pentium CPUs and netbooks, etc. etc. In fact the thing that less changed was the UI (Still using the same glass Windows).
Do you even know what changed?
Re:Only one week of testing? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Only one week of testing? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Vista (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:4, Informative)
if (MajorVersion>5) and (MinorVersion>1) then { // compatible with Windows XP or later
}
Which is fine for 5.1 and 6.1...
Don't you mean (MajorVersion >= 5) ?
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:2, Informative)
Offloaded GDI (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, they also offloaded most of the GDI rendering to the GPU. In Windows XP and previous, all drawing and compositing was done on the CPU. Vista added GPU compositing, but which is what Vista uses to implement the frosted-glass effect. The problem is that, since drawing was still done by the CPU and the system does compositing on the GPU, it keeps two complete GDI buffers for each window. On laptops where most integrated cards use system memory this was doubling the amount of system memory required for the GDI. Windows 7 changes this so that both compositing and drawing are done on the GPU, eliminating the need for a CPU window buffer. One of the things this does is cut total memory consumption in half, and eliminates CPU memory consumption by the GDI subsystem entirely. The other advantage is power- Vista's use of the GPU for compositing means more recent graphics chips are much better behaved when it comes to power consumption than they used to be. By doing the drawing and compositing on the GPU, Win7 doesn't draw as much power on modern laptops since the GPU can do that for less power than the CPU.
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:3, Informative)
However it is not anything revolutionary. Drag and drop a video? I am sure that WMV will be preferred. As others stated, VLC could do this for a long time now.
The MAJOR thing that pissed me off and made me wipe Win 7 was when I put a DVD (a real one I bought) in to play. The output was just horrible! I thought my monitor was going bad. I fired up VLC and played the same DVD and wow, it looked like it should. I tried it again with Windows Media "player" and a standard resolution DVD looked like crap on my monitor. WTF? Fire up VLC again and it looks great.
I am sorry, but I don't want MS telling me I cannot watch a DVD I freaking bought and forcing me to watch it in crap-quality mode because I don't have a certain connection type to my monitor.
I will stick with Ununtu for everything and use my KVM switch to my WinXP box when I have to do C# stuff from home. The great thing is, is that MS cannot force you to dump WinXP. Just keep using it as long as you can. The admins at the fortune 500 I work for hated Vista and would not upgrade. I Guess a Win7 upgrade may come in a year or so. But as long as VS 2008 works on WinXP I am golden for another few years.
Re:Technet on August 6th (Score:5, Informative)
Compare this to the retail cost of Windows 7 Ultimate ($319) and Office 2007 Professional ($499) and it's quite a deal, especially since retail Windows 7 won't be available until October 22nd, whereas TechNet Plus subscribers get it August 6th.
Why would ANYONE pay retail for Windows or Office when TechNet is available?
Re:Technet on August 6th (Score:3, Informative)
Re:2008 R2 + Windows 7 = Direct Access (Score:3, Informative)
Of course it does.. once you have a tunnel there is no client and server, you just route whatever you need over it.
Depending on the layer of the tunnel you may be limited to IPv4/6 or you may be able to get more imaginative.. I prefer GRE tunnels for that reason.. you can send dynamic routing over the links and get quite sophisticated with it.
Some things I like about Win 7 but not everything (Score:4, Informative)
I can't say that I'm overly impressed with Windows 7 (yet...time will tell). It seems to run on par with XP performance wise, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. It does so with more security at least. I don't really care about the UI changes as they mostly seem cosmetic in nature. A few things moved around or a tad easier to navigate to or around, but nothing I'm finding is a must-have. The RC I've been using has been flakey in regards to bluetooth support, but generally the OS has been stable overall. I'm sure the bluetooth will be solid by release. I'm taking the same approach as I'm sure many folks who were burned with Vista are doing.. Wait and see. That said, the price seems very steep for a more secure XP with some window dressing. Make no mistake that although the feature set may be extensive for the techie crowd (depending on what articles you read), for the typical Joe User who only knows what he can see and feel, it's a more stable 'Vista'. Again that is not necessarily a bad thing (think Windows 2000/XP).
Arguably, with the right software and hardware, XP could be secured for typical use of browsing and e-mail leaving only the GUI changes lacking for Joe User on XP. It just seems extremely costly for all of these changes that the basic home user probably won't care about.
Typical Joe Users just wants to check their e-mail and get to their online poker game going with their buddies or what not. My only decision going forward will be if I want to continue to invest in Microsoft at home (work is a given at this point), or switch the last of my Windows machines to Mac. The pilot Mac I bought for my family has actually done rather well and the adjustment wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. It makes me want to take a harder swag at Linux as well given the easy transition I've had with Leopard. If Vista accomplished anything, it was to make people more aware of alternatives which is never a bad thing.
Re:it's the future (Score:3, Informative)
Nah, it just took them 10 minutes to compile.
The build timestamp is the timestamp in the source control system used to sync all the files to. When compiling, one chooses a time slightly before when you started the process, or a time slightly in the future. Then the automated build process starts up, waits for the time to arrive, then syncs to the given timestamp, then runs the build process.
However, trust me, Windows takes well more time than even Gentoo to compile...
Re:Technet on August 6th (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about TechNet, but for MSDN subscriptions, the license to the software does NOT expire when the subscription does. In other words, even if you don't renew, any software you downloaded during the subscription period will still work, and the product keys will still be valid.
Besides, I have two computers (my main machine and a lightweight tablet for classes or meetings) that I need to keep up-to-date. If I didn't have an MSDN subscription (interns get some pretty sweet stuff) the TechNet subscription would be a pretty awesome deal.
Re:Ok, I'm just going to come out and say it... (Score:4, Informative)
Built-in transparent full-volume encryption is pretty cool, especially when you can encrypt a flashdrive (on Win7) then still access the contents (with passphrase or other key source) on an older computer running XP or similar.
Strong two-way firewall with good configurability means no more spending time and possibly money on third-party firewalls. That saves system resources too. Vista had this too, and I've seen no sign of it being vulnerable to penetration.
UAC makes running as a standard user a lot easier to deal with (it's a bloody pain on XP, and frankly running as Administrator is just bloody idiotic). Win7 has added more configurability to UAC and made it less in-your-face by default.
Integrated instant search. I simply can't stand to use XP for any length of time due to the simple fact that it lacks this incredibly convenient feature (which every other major OS has as well).
Gadgets. Yep, I use them. Very handy for a lot of things, like Pandora, a simple calculator, or at-a-glance traffic info. Several substantial improvements here compared to Vista.
Automatic driver installations and updates. WinXP's plug-and-play driver collection is horrifically outdated (it's an 8-year-old OS) and a lot of modern hardware requires manually installing drivers. On Win7, those drivers are already present on the system and get installed immediately, or Windows will check online, find your drivers, and download/install them for you (signed and certified binaries only, of course). Win7 will also check for updates to existing drivers, and allow you to download the updates with a single click.
These are very much things that "most users" will find superior to XP. The hardware requirements are undeniably higher, but you can get computers for under $400 that are quite capable of running Win7, and mid-to-high-end new machines have more RAM than a 32-bit OS can utilize anyhow.
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A VPN by any other name ... IS STILL A VPN. (Score:4, Informative)
Windows xp went RTM August 24, 2001 so not exactly ten years ago but with XP IPSec VPNs have been supported from the beginning. I hate to sound like a prick but when coming up against such sheer ignorance its hard not to.
1. IPsec requires a ton of ports being available and open which just isn't the case as often anymore when going to a hotel. Hence why a lot of corporations are looking at things like SSL-VPNS. Direct access overcomes this limitation by tunneling all their IPv6 traffic in standard HTTPS packets which is pretty universally allowed.
2. You can configure your vpn to connect to automatically but what if i have a public web server that I want to connect to and split DNS (or DNS client views) so the internal and external zones are the same. I don't want my stupid VPN client trying to connect every time I go to www.slashdot.org with direct access you specify internal zones or internal servers that it should connect for while allowing it to route all other traffic normally.
3. Microsoft's best practices on direct access say to use Network Access Protection to isolate the clients and force security scans just like most modern VPN clients except now its completely transparent to the user which saves time and money.
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:3, Informative)
what about live streaming your home videos to your work PC
wow, i didn't realise microsoft have started bundling vlc in their core build these days... nice.
Score 5, Insightful... really? Perhaps it's time to meta-moderate some more... *sigh*.
The included MS Media Player is the best one yet, and works flawlessly and plays most formats. It doesn't play .mkv files though, so I can also report that vlc v.1 runs beautifully! The improvements are especially visible if you have multiple monitors.
Internally, we plan to upgrade all Vista laptops to Win7 as soon as we get an official version (all of our users hate Vista, but we haven't had the stomach to downgrade them to winxp). Windows XP machines will be phased out as users require new machines (or upgraded to Win7 if the specs can run Vista).
Normally we would wait until SP1 on any MS product, however Win7 seems unusually stable for a first release and WinXP is hopelessly outdated -- especially noticeable when you try to install it on modern hardware.
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like you had an issue with interlacing and/or the anamorphic video... VLC configures that stuff automatically when you watch a DVD - just compare, say, untweaked Media Player Classic and VLC, playing the same DVD. Media Player Classic has the wrong aspect ratio and shows a bunch of scanlines, whereas VLC is crystal clear.
Re:It's Windows 7, and yet, the build number is 6. (Score:2, Informative)
Either your rips are poorly encoded or you're trying to play the DVD directly by opening the first VOB file, which could be the reason why the aspect ratio is wrong. The IFO file (usually VTS_01_0.IFO or something like that) tells the player all the technical details about the video contained in the VOBs (like AR, sound codec etc.). If you don't use the "Open DVD" option, MPC won't automagically check the IFO file, which I suspect VLC does.