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Microsoft Windows Operating Systems Software

Getting A Handle On Vista 557

Posted by Zonk from the coming-soon-to-a-pc-near-you dept.
visination.com wrote to mention a news.com article which runs down some of the basics on MS's new Operating System. From the article: "Among the key features of Vista as it currently stands are: security enhancements, a new searching mechanism, lots of new laptop features, parental controls and better home networking. There will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself. On the business side, Microsoft said Vista will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted."
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Getting A Handle On Vista More

Getting A Handle On Vista

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  • Darn! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:48PM (#13172117)
    "... Microsoft said Vista will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted."

    Reboot = Coffee Break

    • Re:Darn! (Score:2, Informative)

      by RailGunner ( 554645 ) *
      There will also be visual changes, thanks to Avalon, ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself.

      In other words, they're giving Windows users the neat eye candy that KDE users have had for years!

      And people say Linux isn't ready for the desktop...

      • Re:Darn! (Score:3, Informative)

        by XchristX ( 839963 )
        Heh! Exactly.

        Looky:

        RTFA'd (Among the key features [com.com] of Vista as it currently stands are:security enhancements:)

        Don't make me laugh!!! Still broadcasting on netbios. Still using ActiveX! Still running Internet Explorer. Still using that ridiculous firewall that Nessus plugins can easily bypass.




        RTFA'd( a new searching mechanism )
        Big deal. Linux has had that for a while now:

        https://infserver.unibz.it/kat/ [unibz.it]


        RTFA's( parental controls and better home networking )

        squid proxy caching and good old i

    • Re:Darn! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nametaken ( 610866 )

      Fewer reboots? That's funny. I haven't rebooted most of my machines in months... and that's usually due to power failures.

      C'mon MS, get your head out of your ass. Its not like you haven't had enough time to work things out.

      Seriously, this list of wicked-cool new features sounds like a layman's description of my little 600mhz kick-around laptop running ubuntu.

      • Re:Darn! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Ignominious Cow Herd ( 540061 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:58PM (#13172207) Journal
        All they really had to do was add a disclaimer to the standard installer message telling you to reboot:

        "Disclaimer: You don't REALLY have to reboot, but we're too lame to tell all the developers to stop putting up this dialog box after their installation script is done. You really haven't HAD to reboot after installing things for years. It's just the damn Developers, Developers, Developers who can't get with the program. Oh, and you're too dumb to figure this out for yourselves."

        • Re:Darn! (Score:3, Informative)

          by MostlyHarmless ( 75501 )
          You're not kidding. Acrobat 7 still asks you to reboot -- I suspect because they're too lazy to detect what version of Windows you're running.

          The other possibility, of course, is that Acrobat actually *does* require a reboot... a fact which I would find scary, indeed.

          • Re:Darn! (Score:4, Informative)

            by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:23PM (#13172393) Homepage Journal
            All Adobe products make you reboot if you have any of the associated libraries with their other products being accessed at the time you install the new software. You cannot have an install program remove a dll that is loaded by the OS without causing a possible kernel panic/BSOD, so either unload other adobe products (you'd be surprised what is running in the background) or reboot. Not to difficult a choice. I turn off my computer every night, guess I just don't see the need for leaving it on all the time.

            • Re:Darn! (Score:5, Informative)

              by Trepalium ( 109107 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @10:06PM (#13172752)
              That's not really true. The problem is that the installer can not replace any files that are in use by any open program. The windows file systems (FAT/NTFS) prohibit removing a file that's in use (although with NTFS, you can rename the file while it's in-use). The only sure-fire way to make sure the file is not in use is to reboot. There's no danger of a BSOD or any other severe system crash, though.

              It's the brain-damaged file system's fault. Contrast this to Linux/UNIX file systems which can typically unlink a file (delete) without freeing the associated inode until the file is actually unloaded by all users of the file. The upside is that the upgrade can take effect without a reboot, the downside is that you may not be fully upgraded unless you restart all applications that use that file you're upgrading. When you upgrade apache, making sure all relavent services are restarted is easy. When you upgrade glibc, it's far from easy.

              And the real kicker out of all of this is that Microsoft is unlikely to ever change this. I would prefer a system that worked more like Linux in this regard, but unfortunately many programs on Windows require this annoying file locking scheme to exist exactly as it does right now. If Microsoft changes this, it will break some software, and people will blame Microsoft for the breakage. Even people within Microsoft understand the problems this exectuable locking causes, which is why .NET programs for IIS use this strange shadow copy (different from W2K3's shadow copy feature!) method to allow you to update your website, despite the fact the executables in the target directory should be in use.

              • Uh, it can work like that (Score:5, Insightful)

                by xswl0931 ( 562013 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @01:07AM (#13173732)
                But you've already indicated how such a system would work on Windows. The installer should rename the old binary and have it marked to delete on reboot and install the new binary. If an app gets restarted, it'll pick up the new lib. If the OS gets rebooted, all the old copies will automatically be deleted on reboot when nothing has an open handle to them.
                • But I also said it only works on NTFS. If you run FAT, you can not do this. Backwards compatibility rears it's ugly head once again.

            • Re:Darn! (Score:3, Insightful)

              by MostlyHarmless ( 75501 )
              Maybe I would be surprised about what is running in the background... but so would Adobe, because this was one of those new-fangled MSI installers that detect what you have open. It pointed an open instance of acroread 6 and refused to proceed until I closed it. So perhaps the reboot request was "we found this obvious usage and killed it, but still, we have no idea whatsoever if these DLLs are in use by some other random process on the system. So you should close three days' worth of workspace and take a 5-

        • Re:Darn! (Score:5, Informative)

          by strider44 ( 650833 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @10:11PM (#13172796)
          Microsoft Office 2003 actually requires a reboot. It simply doesn't work otherwise. I was flabberghasted when I saw the error message and it took literally five minutes to figure out that it didn't work because I was working on something while installing and pressed "no" for "would you like to reboot?". Same with installing most sorts of drivers. Not to mention the seeming need to reboot every single time Windows XP updates... The damn thing keeps bugging me as well.

          • Re:Darn! (Score:4, Informative)

            by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @02:36AM (#13174076)
            The thing is, on Win{16,32,64}, there is no way to delete or replace a file when the file is open by any process. Same applies to executables when any instance of them is running.

            In the Unix world, deleting a file simply unlinks it from the directory it is in. It won't be actually deleted until no process needs it anymore; however, you are free to replace the file with a new version.

            It is something which could be added to Windows without breaking compatibility. It's a kernel-level change that doesn't need any user-space changes at all. Fixing this would make it possible to replace drivers and running programs just fine.

            Of course, you still will be unable to restart certain vital systems without a reboot, the monolithic design of Win32 and the GUI-is-everything principle bog them down.

    • Re:Darn! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Nirvelli ( 851945 )
      Don't worry, less reboots just means each one takes longer, ergo longer coffee breaks. w00t.

    • Re:Darn! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Cutting_Crew ( 708624 )
      if(reboot = true) potty_break(); :)

    • Re:Darn! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by waffffffle ( 740489 )
      I am amused that XP still requires you to reboot in order to join an Active Directory domain. The NT domain system has been around for how many years now and you still need to restart just to join a domain? I am more amused that Mac OS X can join an Active Directory domain without restarting. In fact, a Mac OS X client can join several Active Directory domains simultaneously (plus multiple other LDAP-based directories), without restarting, while Windows clients can still only be part of one directory sys

      • Re:Darn! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by NaDrew ( 561847 )

        I am amused that XP still requires you to reboot in order to join an Active Directory domain. The NT domain system has been around for how many years now and you still need to restart just to join a domain?

        The full implication of this arises when you need to rename a machine on a domain. You can't just rename it, because the domain account is tied to the machine name. So you have to unjoin from the domain (reboot), rename (reboot), and rejoin the domain (reboot). Three friggin' reboots to change a mach

    • Innovation? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smallfries ( 601545 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @04:14AM (#13174384) Homepage
      One complaint that get levelled at open-source software is that there is no innovation. That it's all just clones of commerical software. But seriously, the big innovations in Vista are 'less reboots', 'translucent windows' (= transparent windows perhaps?) and 'icons that are tiny representations of a document itself'. Sounds familiar...

      Wow! Gnome has made it onto the windows desktop?

  • I'll believe it when I see it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:50PM (#13172127) Journal
    will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted.

    They have said this with every major release. Are things really getting better?

    • Re:I'll believe it when I see it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BrianKHud ( 115884 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:54PM (#13172172) Homepage
      I think anyone who has used a win95 or win98 box would say that things have gotten *MUCH* better in terms of reboots. The kluged driver model and TCP/IP stack that used to exist forced people to restart their computer to change their IP address and there were no permissions whatsoever (just a fancy-dan do nothing password box which you could get out of by pressing escape).
    • I've had to reboot XP way less than 98. To be honest, I kind of like Windows Update these days. The UI is decent, it lets me download only the updates I want, the updates have always worked for me, and it rarely requires a reboot.

      Or are you in the camp that still claims BSODs are as common now as they were in 98?

    • Re:I'll believe it when I see it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pcmanjon ( 735165 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:08PM (#13172282)
      " ranging from shiny translucent windows to icons that are tiny representations of a document itself"

      Sounds like this was directly ripped off of KDE. KDE will show the contents of a text file within the icon itself transposed on top of the "document" icon. This makes it look like your looking at a document with text from inside the file.

      Chalk another one up for the Microsoft hall of innovation.
      • For me, that's something so obvious that I can't blame anyone for implementing it, nor can I attribute it to copying ideas...

      • Re:I'll believe it when I see it. (Score:5, Informative)

        by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:43PM (#13172551) Homepage Journal
        IIRC MacOS8 or 9 had it, too... I seem to remember working with Photoshop on an old Quadra and having the image file icons be a preview.
      • And gnome. Gnome does it too. I don't know who thought of it first, and it doesn't matter anyway, because here in the free software world, we encourage piggy-backing and innovation!
      • I'm tired of all this bullshit of "microsoft copied this" or "someone copied google". Good ideas are good ideas, and if somebody has done something right, I can't find a reason why other people (including Microsoft) should copy that good idea

        It's the same reason I'm against software patents - good ideas should be copied because that encourages innovation (if someone copies you, you've to create something different to be "the best" again). I'm happy that Microsoft is copying things from mac os x, kde, fir

    • Windows doesn't need to be rebooted as often as it asks to be - developers tend to be lazy. As an example, I've seen apps that install a start-up item ask for a reboot, when they could simply launch the item as the final step of the installer.

      Really, the only things that require a reboot are some driver changes and some OS updates. Of course, now that software is coming with increasingly intrusive copyright protection, some is actually installing new hardware drivers to ensure you're using the original me

  • Reboot? (Score:3, Funny)

    by guaigean ( 867316 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:50PM (#13172131)
    On the business side, Microsoft said Vista will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted. Computers have to be rebooted?

    • Re:Reboot? (Score:4, Funny)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:49PM (#13172604)
      Yes. It's when a Windows computer stops working for no apparent reason, and receives a swift kick from its operator. Then, just out of irritation on the part of said operator, it gets kicked again. This process is known as "rebooting" and must often be repeated several times before the recalcitrant CPU becomes more cooperative.
  • MMMmmmmmm... Microsoft cheese!

    But seriously, this all sounds like pretty smoke and mirrors (how can I possibly pass on platoons of new widgets?) Any solid reasons for my work site, which has several hundred workstations, to deploy this when we just recently stabilized and standardized on WinXP SP2? No?

    • Re:MMMmmmmmm... Microsoft cheese! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:17PM (#13172347) Journal
      You can only answer that question if you first answer why you switched to Windows XP SP2. Was it only to get some software you use to work? Are you having no special security concerns with the access modes in Windows XP? In that case, you're probably OK with XP and I can't see too much going on in Vista yet that'll interest you,

      But if you're interested in a redesigned restricted user mode that allows for a much more "*nix-like" experience in that you'll grant only certain apps elevated rights, while by default working in more of a sandbox (i.e. what *nix users have had for years but Windows never really experienced too well due to incompatible apps etc), and in general staying more in control in what rights you give apps to run with, Vista should definitely interest you. Especially if you for some reason, like compatibility concerns, can't take the step to e.g. Linux.

      I think any serious IT professional at a company should take a good look at Vista, at least if you intend to continue runing Windows. Of course, it could get child diseases so I'd still wait for a service pack or two, but you may actually do a mistake by just thinking "XP is good enough for us" and shrugging it off with a premature "Any reasons to use this? No?" like you do.

  • Is There Anyone Actually Looking Forward To This? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Even diehard MS fans have to be wondering what the hell is going on up in Redmond.

    I'm no open source freak, but the trend seems clear that the time to migrate to Linux is here for anyone who doesn't have one or more must have apps that still only run on Windows.

    I guess the real question is:

    Do you really still want to be running Windows in 2006?

  • So in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SamMichaels ( 213605 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:52PM (#13172149)
    Longhorn went from something that is safe, secure and stable with lots of new features into a bunch of marketing fluff.

    Windows Millennium anybody?

  • Wow . . . (Score:2, Insightful)

    by crimguy ( 563504 )
    Transparency . . . Icons that preview the docs . . . sounds like KDE circa 2002. Really impressive, MS.

  • Saving costs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.nnamredyps'> on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:53PM (#13172158) Homepage Journal
    and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted.

    How about saving costs by reducing the number of licenses you will have to pay per family?

  • If done well... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Darth Liberus ( 874275 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:53PM (#13172162)
    this alone will be worth the upgrade: Rather than having to remember the single folder where something is stored, users will be able to put documents in any number of virtual folders. They can also establish folders that will automatically update, such as "files edited in the last week" or "documents from Jane." I've always hated the way files are stored on a computer... I understand it, of course, but I hate it. The whole point of a computer is to do the work FOR me, you know?
  • What about the others out there still running windows 2k? Vista is too far off... and too expensive. Linux seems to look better and better with each PR release from Microsoft.

  • Everything that the artical mentions is User Space (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bMuZal ( 526544 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:54PM (#13172169)
    What I wan to know, is what is being changed under the hood. Everything mentiond except parts of "improved security" can run in userspace.
    • There is no "userspace"! There is only MICROSOFTspace! I mean, what are you going to do, run the Win95 GUI layer on a XP kernel? Or vice versa? I don't THEENK so!

      Under-the-hood features I expect to see: "improved" DRM, "improved" ability for IE to displace/take over from Firefox/Opera/etc., "improved" ability to prevent "untrusted" apps (like OpenOffice.org) from working, "improved" draconian license terms, "improved" patent coverage, and so on and so on.
    • Most of these things run in "hype-er-space", and whether they will ever be able to run in "userspace" is yet to be determined.

  • Will my PC run Vista? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Garabito ( 720521 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:54PM (#13172173)
    Microsoft Allchin said in an April interview that he expects Vista will need about 512MB of memory and "today's level" of processor.

    That reminds me when they said Windows '95 would run on a 386DX with 4 MB of RAM.

    • Re:Will my PC run Vista? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bogie ( 31020 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:07PM (#13172281) Journal
      So 3.6GHz and minimum 512MB to make it useable. How much you want to bet that if you disable whatever shitty built-in desktop search program they include and set it to "Classic Windows Look" you'll be able to run it on a 1.0GHz cpu with 256MB.

      You know, there are Microsoft supporters out there that constantly get pissed whenever we point out how bloated, slow, and buggy Windows is. Do they unlike us not expect more from a company that literally has billions and billions to sink into their OS? With that much money at their disposal Longhorn, I mean Vista-(insert-joke-here), should be doing my laundry by now. Speed, security, and ease of use shouldn't even be on the radar screen. Those problems should have been solved years ago.

      Microsoft, clumsily wasting your computer's resources for over 20 years.
      • How much you want to bet that if you disable whatever shitty built-in desktop search program they include and set it to "Classic Windows Look" you'll be able to run it on a 1.0GHz cpu with 256MB.

        Sorry, "Classic" look only goes back one generation... so "Classic" in Vista will be like the default theme from XP. Aggh! *scoops out eyeballs with rusty spoon*
      • That comment by Allchin confused me. While 3.6Ghz is today's top level CPU I would consider anything 1.6Ghz or so and greater a current CPU. My laptop is a 2.4Ghz P4 and my work box is a 2.6Ghz P4 and I consider them both completely adequate for my needs. My guess is that for full on eye candy in Vista you'll need a pretty decent video card, but aside from that... And as far as resource useage goes in my experiences with Linux distros they were just as resource intensive as Windows, granted you could pare i
    • Notice no mention about gfx cards. I assume all those transparent window borders will take a bit of power.

      Nice, new desktop computers will blow fuses when they boot into Windows Vista!
  • It appears from here [microsoft.com] that how Monad is going to be released (i.e. with Longhorn, with IIS, .net, or something) is not known yet. Personally, I am unfamiliar with VMS (I am only familiar with ksh, bash) but nonetheless, I plan to familiarize myself with Monad. Maybe later on a ksh-like shell could run atop MSH? I hope MSH will be ready in time for Windows Vista release.

  • Bwahahahahah!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:56PM (#13172195) Homepage
    "will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted."

    I'm so excited! All these wonderful enhancement for Visa (once again, folks, the "t" is missing for a reason!) have got me drooling.

    I just had a new machine installed at work. The tech let me copy my old machine stuff up to a network server, and back down on the new machine. Then he set me up for the Windows domain.

    Can't log on - "Cannot connect to the domain. The domain may be down or unavailable, or the account might be wrong. Try again later." After several tries including Sysprep'ing the machine again, etc.

    So we're trying tomorrow morning, because apparently the freakin' AD servers don't replicate often enough, nor do they replicate from the closest server to my subnet, but from the main one located thirty blocks away. So it will be, oh, two or three months probably before the freakin' AD server my machine logs onto is notified that I exist.

    Brilliant.

    Rest of the day I spent installing my stuff that had to be uninstalled because it was on the other drive I no longer have. So my Winamp, Firefox, Thunderbird, jEdit, SQLTools all work.

    It's just Windows networking that doesn't work.

    I JUST CAN'T WAIT for a Windows which won't have to be rebooted as often.

    This will really justify buying that new 3GHz CPU with 1GB RAM and 100GB of hard disk necessary to run the OS ALONE.

    I'm SO stoked.

    • Re:Bwahahahahah!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by multiplexo ( 27356 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:06PM (#13172273) Journal
      This isn't a problem with Windows, it's a problem with your AD servers and by extension with your AD administrators who have fucked up the domain so that users have to deal with shit like this.

      I'm a UNIX guy who works in a largely Windows shop and I've been working with some really sharp Windows guys who know their stuff and know how to use the goodies that Microsoft is putting into the operating system and as a result I'm getting a new respect for a lot of MS stuff.

      • Re:Bwahahahahah!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:15PM (#13172329) Homepage

        That is undoubtedly true - but it's also a problem with Windows because half the Windows sys admins in the industry apparently can't figure how to configure AD or anything else on a Windows server so it works reliably.

        I took the Windows 2003 Server course last semester at City College, and after that experience I'm not surprised. Besides having a mountain of Management Consoles, menus and dialogs to wade through to do practically ANYTHING, the computer LAB system - with students running canned exercises out of a textbook - managed to fail enough times to make me extremely wary of using this crap in a production environment. The teacher - who is an outside contractor who does Windows consulting including servers, etc. and knows Windows servers well - had plenty of trouble keeping the DHCP server running - freakin' DHCP!

        Even the lab exercises wouldn't necessarily work the same way for every student and the teacher couldn't figure out why - just too many possibilities between server setups, permissions, domains, and the various components we were exercising.

        The tech who set me up today is very sharp and hooks people up all the time here at City College. He's baffled and had to call the main IT office who had nothing brilliant to suggest but try joining the domain tomorrow. Try suggesting that in a real corporate production environment.

  • Perhaps not more than expected? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:58PM (#13172210) Homepage Journal

    Of course when touting a 'forthcoming' product, the pitch is going to be focused on the improvements its going to bring. Due to the length of time it's taking to get Vista out the door, the improvements and new features Microsoft are publicising now had better be impressive, otherwise they're going to be old news by the time the product actually ships. A new release of Windows is always going to be a 'big deal' to the computer-using masses sheerly because of its market penetration, but competitors like OS X have stolen the thunder on GPU-accelerated interfaces and improved filesystem metadata. At the end of the day, it wont be that these features are cutting edge, it'll be that they're available to the masses in something with high market penetration.

    As for the new deployment features, I can't help but wonder how many organizations by the launch date will be considering deploying alternate operating systems instead, as Windows new foundations are compared directly with the latest and greatest Linux distrubutions have to offer...

  • Fewer reboots...we've heard that before (Score:4, Funny)

    by chevybowtie ( 96127 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @08:59PM (#13172219)
    Windows 2000 was advertised before it's release as only having 7 events that would necessitate a reboot.

  • Nothing really new! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by UMhydrogen ( 761047 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:01PM (#13172232) Homepage
    So far I really don't see Microsoft introducing anything new. Windows XP introduces a little bit of the flashy new UI - the start menu fades in for example. I could really care less about fewer reboots - I only reboot my windows xp machine once every month anyways, so I could care less. In terms of installing windows, a reboot on my 3ghz machine takes no time at all, so once again, I can care less. I have a desktop PC so all of the laptop features are useless to me (although they'd be interesting on my Mac laptop. It'd be cool to watch a dvd without turning on my laptop).

    So lets see what else new they've added. A new UI? I could really care less. Indigo doesn't really add anything different to the OS experience. There have been programs to add transparency out for windows for a while and if I really wanted transparency I could have done it. I really could care less about it. Icon previews? Are they really that important? 90% of the time you know what file you want and you don't need a little preview icon to show you its contents. The same goes for searching. I'd rather have my files in an organized manner and not in some random "virtual directory structure." Sure I could use the search tool to find the file for me, but what if I've completely forgotten the file name or a a few words in the file, but I do know that it's a file from my history class that I took junior year. Sure I could search by date but it'd be much easier if I had organized all my files in terms of "My Documents -> School work -> Junior Year -> History 101 -> some_file.doc." (which I currently do).

    The only thing I see MS doing with this release is trying to creep up on the updates that Mac OS X or some of the linux versions have added. All the new great improvements like WinFS got scraped.

    I really don't see any point in upgrading.

    • Nitpickery (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      Windows XP introduces a little bit of the flashy new UI - the start menu fades in for example.

      Alpha blending (or "layered windows", as Microsoft calls it) was introduced in Win2k, along with all of the fancy effects (fading menus, tooltips, etc). XP's biggest "lickable" contribution was the built-in theming engine (that was neutered out of the box by only allowing Microsoft-signed themes, but was quickly hacked when XP was still only in beta).

      I could really care less about fewer reboots - I only re

  • "Device authentication is explicitly intended to break virtual soundcards and is projected to break emulators" [eff.org]

    other lovely "security features" include Protected Media Path, Component Revocation, Windows Driver Lockdown [eff.org]

    This machine will be even MORE locked down than what was proposed under Hollings' "fritz chips" bill...

    Designed to be "fully compliant" with hollywood's AACS media lockdown technology, It will be useless to anyone wanting to use a PC for more than an overpriced DVD player.

  • Do they figure that into the TCO now? How many times you need to reboot?

  • "...a new searching mechanism..."

    Finally, the searching dog will bark for us. Maybe it will follow the cursor. That's something we can all appreciate.

  • Reduce the number of reboots? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kisielk ( 467327 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:18PM (#13172350)
    MS claims they'll be able to reduce costs by reducing the number of times the system will have to be rebooted.. Hmm.. I could swear I heard this before.. where was that.... oh yes, now I remember

    They said the EXACT same thing when Windows XP was on the horizon. They wanted to eliminate reboots after application installs and the like, and guess what... I don't think it really worked. I swear pretty much every time I install some app or another, it asks me to reboot the system, ESPECIALLY MS apps such as their own AntiSpyware, Visual Studio, etc. and every time they release some security update (on a nearly weekly basis) I *still* need to reboot. Drives me nuts, especially since I tend to have a many-windowed workspace open for many days at a time (or would, if it wasn't for their damn reboots!).

  • You know what I would really like to see? (Score:5, Funny)

    by PocketPick ( 798123 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:20PM (#13172362)
    A Windows OS that terminates an application when I tell it to do so. Why should I have to press 'End Process' 5 times and click on 2 dozen 'End Task' dialogs in order for the app to shutdown (if it even does). Is Windows second guessing me?

    Only after the 27th time Windows XP does finally say 'You know... I think you might like me to close that process for you. Here you go peasant. No, you don't have to thank me! :)".
    • That's easily the biggest feature I'd like to see.

      If I've gone to the trouble of cntrl-alt-del to load up the task manager, lick on a process and tell it to end, I'm not saying "Yes, I would like Windows to send a command to the software to ask it to terminate." (which, as far as I can tell what it always tries to do first). I'm saying "I want this process to terminate. NOW". No dialogues. I don't want to know if the program is not responding (gosh, I just wanted to end the program but now that Windows

  • Those are some steep system requirements. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Captain Scurvy ( 818996 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @09:20PM (#13172367)
    "Microsoft Allchin said in an April interview that he expects Vista will need about 512MB of memory and "today's level" of processor."

    It is possible that they are overstating the RAM requirements, but holy cow, that seems like a whole crapload of memory to run... what, exactly? 128 MB is suggested [microsoft.com] for XP Pro, but I know that's more or less BS, because I run Pro, and tend to use ~300 MB on average, and I rarely have anything extra running besides Firefox, gaim, and AVG. So, does that mean they're actually understating the RAM requirements?

    Anyway, just from reading the article, I am not inclined to spend the money on upgrading. As of now, none of the new features seem very impressive.

    • MacOS X likes 512M of RAM to be run happily from what I'm told - that's why the latest Mac Mini upgrade is/was so popular. Yes it will run with 256M, it may even run with 128M for all I know - but people seem to be claiming that 512M is what is needed for decent performance. That would mean Windows Vista would simply be on par with MacOS X for memory requirements, which seems reasonable enough. If you want something that goes light on memory it's time to start looking at options with Linux or *BSD which

  • Icon's previewing docs? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slashname3 ( 739398 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @10:46PM (#13173021)
    So now that icons can preview my documents does this mean a whole new class of icon viruses?

    And how much of the document does it preview? Could this present a HIPPA violation by having patients files exposed on the desktops at the doctors office?

    Just what we need, the OS actually accessing the contents of your documents to generate pretty pictures just smacks of potential exploits and security holes.

  • Looks like it's not for me (Score:3, Funny)

    by mrjb ( 547783 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @03:49AM (#13174323)
    I'm truely happy to see that seemingly I'm already fine with the way my things are setup. YMWV.

    security enhancements
    Haven't had any virus or spyware in years. Nor has my pc ever been hacked (that I know of).

    a new searching mechanism
    This is nice but by itself not enough reason to switch, I usually can find back my stuff

    lots of new laptop features
    I only have a desktop

    parental controls
    I'm not a parent, grown up and vaccinated thank you. I'll check back in a few years.

    and better home networking.
    in other words "Samba team, are you listening?"

    shiny translucent windows I'm a very boring person. Eye candy is nice but personally I always switch to zippy and functional.

    icons that are tiny representations of a document itself.
    Already have it.

    On the business side, Microsoft said Vista will be easier for businesses to deploy on multiple PCs
    One word- Xclients. Otherwise, SSH and shell scripts are your friend.

    and will also save costs by reducing the number of times computers will have to be rebooted.
    09:37:20 up 203 days, 18:38

  • But will businesses switch to Vista? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @05:58AM (#13174659)
    The change from Win98 to Win2K is a tremendous leap forward in stability, networkability and functionality...so it made good sense for a company to invest in new hardware that can run Win2K (I am writing this on Win2K, which is the development machine). But what new stuff of Vista is really necessary for businesses? none, from what I can tell. Even the virtual folders/search facilities (a poor attempt at organizing information) are covered by using document indexing systems for companies that really need to do so. No business will justify paying money for new hardware when the job is getting done as it should.

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