CWmike writes "Microsoft confirmed today that it will hand out 'pre-beta' release copies of Windows 7 on Oct. 28, at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Mike Swanson, a Microsoft technology evangelist, has said attendees will receive a 160GB external USB hard drive that will presumably include the Windows 7 alpha. Mike Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, was cautiously optimistic that today's announcement meant Microsoft was on track with Windows 7. 'If they didn't do this, you would have to wonder if they could make the schedule,' Cherry said."
It's a bit bigger than that. Multi-touch capabilities, vastly improved BitLocker, new networking capabilities that simplify sending/sharing files, a couple substantial changes to UAC (in some cases simply changing simple config options to make it less "annoying", in other cases adding new capabilities such as automatic elevation for MS-signed binaries). Bootup and hibernation are being parallelized and should run faster on multi-core machines now. Many apps, including the calculator, notepad, and Paint have undergone significant UI and/or feature upgrades. The general UI has been updated somewhat as well.
The kernel sounds remarkably similar, though. More like 6.1 or 6.2 than 7.0.
Emphasis on the bit. Of course they're just claiming that it's going to have multi-touch throughout anyway. Most likely it will be half assed and even if it isn't that would still make Windows 7 a far cry from the features that were promised to be in Vista/Longhorn years ago. So yes, basically it's Windows ME all over again.
The Vista codeline is what Windows 2008 is built on (it is Vista SP1 with additional server-orientated stuff). The Windows 7 codebase is built on top of this.
Also, from what I understand, MS aren't doing anything too drastic in the kernel.
With Vista as the foundation (which they rewrote a lot of, IIRC) they can make incremental, evolutionary improvements.
Take Firefox as an example: Mozilla didn't rewrite it when they were developing FF3; they cleaned up bits, for sure, and added new features, but it was a l
With the number of developers Microsoft has, they can do a lot of development work, so have the potential to add a lot to the Vista/2008 codebase.
The only thing that makes that statement true is the word "potential" - which we learned from all the scaled back and incomplete features in Vista, truly translates into "the most infinitesimally small potential to..."
The Vista codeline is what Windows 2008 is built on (it is Vista SP1 with additional server-orientated stuff). The Windows 7 codebase is built on top of this.
And though I wont look it up, the fact that Vista needed a patch for a 3.1 bug with image handling tells me that they have actually never changed anything. And so you pay good money for 1990's technology.
I make my kip as a.NET programmer, but I would never pay for the pain that is Vista or 7, and my organization is sticking with XP come hell or h
Wow... maybe you were going for a +1 Funny? I can see why you posted that one anonymously.
Vista took almost a decade.
Vista was supposed to be the culmination of numerous projects, some of which started in the mid-late 1990's.
At the last minute, many of those features were dropped - but the work on Vista started much longer ago than your indicated 2.5 year timeframe (including realizing that after nearly 10 years, numerous features still didnt work properly).
If they require an external HD to hand this thing out it better contain a boatload of documentation or developer tools. I've never seen one of these, so can someone tell us what MS usually hands out in a pre-beta for developers that takes up so many bits?
If they require an external HD to hand this thing out it better contain a boatload of documentation or developer tools. I've never seen one of these...
"Plus... we're announcing the very special gift that all PDC attendees will receive: a 160GB external USB2 hard drive with all of the bits! Could 'The Goods' get any cooler? They just did!"
I didn't say the disk was full. I just didn't understand why it would require an external HD for distribution. But thanks for so politely explaining it's a "gift".
The last thing I ever got and installed from MS was Visual Studio.NET 2003, which came on 16 CDs. So I wouldn't be surprised at any level of bloat they hand out to developers.
Please accept my apologies. I think I'm trying too hard to keep up with the level of sarcasm and backlash against linux fanboys on this forum. I'm really not that immature I swear!
Actually, they just said the size of the flash drive will be 160GB.
Remember, it's an alpha release, so all code modules include debug code and other information that a release candidate won't have. This assists in stepping through the debugging and allowing you to dump the status of objects and variables, including statics, at the time of a crash or problem.
But, admittedly, code bloat is a problem at Microsoft.
I hope the final version won't autoload all the libraries and all the possible apps that you migh
Actually, they just said the size of the flash drive will be 160GB.
Remember, it's an alpha release, so all code modules include debug code and other information that a release candidate won't have. This assists in stepping through the debugging and allowing you to dump the status of objects and variables, including statics, at the time of a crash or problem.
But, admittedly, code bloat is a problem at Microsoft.
I hope the final version won't autoload all the libraries and all the possible apps that you might ever need or want - this is one of the reasons why WinVista is such a dog of an OS - on startup it loads a lot of chrome most people don't want and don't need - and this is why they can trick you into "choosing" a stripped down WinVista with all these optional chrome apps and libraries not there on load as "better" than WinXP.
But, given their past behavior, I wouldn't bet on them releasing a lean OS, even for business users.
My jaw literally dropped and I couldn't close it for around 20 second. A 160GB harddrive for a bloody Operating System!? Are they bloody nuts? Assume that you need more than a DL-DVD. That's more than 9GB of compressed information. That is absolutely humongous. I feel like an old fart remembering the time that we had a 4 GB harddrive. And now a MS created monster called Windows 7 takes up more than 9GB of information? Even with extra testing/developing info that's simply unbelievable. I am not putting this
I feel like an old fart remembering the time that we had a 4 GB harddrive.
I'm only 28 and remember loading programs from a cassette tape on our VIC-20. I also remember when we got our first 100MB hard drive for our Packard Bell, and immediately partitioned it into 5 20MB partitions.
I'm 26 and remember our 43 MB HD, which was large at the time, which had to be partitioned into 33 MB and 10 MB partitions. I think DOS 5.0 had a limitation? Or maybe it was 4.0 and we didn't repartition when upgrading.
Perhaps if you had spent some of those 20 seconds reading the article, you might have run across this sentence:
Mike Swanson, a Microsoft technology evangelist working on the PDC, said earlier this week that attendees will receive a 160GB external USB hard drive that will contain all the developer bits from the conference. The USB drive will presumably include the pre-beta version of Windows 7.
So, this includes all the bits from the conference... this means a lot of video presentations, power-point presentations and images, along with (I'd presume) a number of SDKs, what have you...
The 160GB hard drive is in no way indicative of the final size of the Windows 7.
No no no. You didn't read the full article. Windows 7 only takes up 2 gigs. The rest of the space on the hard drives they're handing out is full of porn and stolen credit card numbers.
vista isn't going to get adopted by businesses so windows 7 is important. so for right now they need to pretend like vista is all happy fun stuff for consumers, and eventually windows 7 will fix stuff.
Until Microsoft ends support for XP and a new version of Windows is required to ever get anything patched (still years away, but businesses must prepare).
they were still pushing and selling it to people ? ads and whatnot, with shaking butts etc ?
It looks like they're attacking this from two angles. There's the "Vista isn't as bad as you think it is" side, and the "Let's get something else out the door without a prejudiced bad reputation" side. Right now vista evokes the mental image of a steaming pile of bloat, so unless the marketing campaign can give the vista brand a positive image in the mind of consumers, there's no hurt in talking about the next big thing (that isn't vista). At the very worst, it will start out with 0 brand recognition, a
If it is in Alpha then it is still 2 years out I'd imagine. Then you consider Vista has been out since Novemberish 2006. Just because they took way too long to go from XP to Vista (letting people get too comfortable), doesn't mean they wont move back to an every few years thing like prior to XP (which sucked when new, imagine that).
By the way, USB flash drives, by their nature, are inherently insecure.
It's an external hard drive, but at any rate it's not insecure if you use encryption. If anyone gets my USB drive they'll get the hardware, the decryption program, and a bunch of noise. At any rate, why would security even be an issue? It's not like they can prevent anyone from copying the data after the conference.
If the encryption is done using a program rather than hardware in the drive, cyphertext would be going to/from the port and it would be decrypted by the computer, not the drive itself. (If they have enough access to your machine to install a port listening device of some kind, however, you're hosed anyway.)
You use to spread this stuff with just the boot sector of a floppy, I know over they years malware grew in size to the point where the last major version came on dvds. But really 160GB hard dive does this mean we will all need to have blueray players to install the latest viruses?
I imagine that this is akin to video game reviewers getting DSes and PSPs with the video game to review: it's just swag. And bribery. And you don't have to wipe a good machine to try it out.
I have trouble believing that Microsoft would deliberately submit themselves to a joke so transparent that half of the Slashdot comments are about it. They worry about that sort of thing. Why, I bet Ballmer is reading this thread and throwing chairs around right now!
Vista/Mohave Remix (Score:3, Funny)
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Did you mean Vista RC1?
Re:Vista/Mohave Remix (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a bit bigger than that. Multi-touch capabilities, vastly improved BitLocker, new networking capabilities that simplify sending/sharing files, a couple substantial changes to UAC (in some cases simply changing simple config options to make it less "annoying", in other cases adding new capabilities such as automatic elevation for MS-signed binaries). Bootup and hibernation are being parallelized and should run faster on multi-core machines now. Many apps, including the calculator, notepad, and Paint have undergone significant UI and/or feature upgrades. The general UI has been updated somewhat as well.
The kernel sounds remarkably similar, though. More like 6.1 or 6.2 than 7.0.
Parent
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The Vista codeline is what Windows 2008 is built on (it is Vista SP1 with additional server-orientated stuff). The Windows 7 codebase is built on top of this.
Also, from what I understand, MS aren't doing anything too drastic in the kernel.
With Vista as the foundation (which they rewrote a lot of, IIRC) they can make incremental, evolutionary improvements.
Take Firefox as an example: Mozilla didn't rewrite it when they were developing FF3; they cleaned up bits, for sure, and added new features, but it was a l
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With the number of developers Microsoft has, they can do a lot of development work, so have the potential to add a lot to the Vista/2008 codebase.
The only thing that makes that statement true is the word "potential" - which we learned from all the scaled back and incomplete features in Vista, truly translates into "the most infinitesimally small potential to..."
Just sayin...
;-)
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And though I wont look it up, the fact that Vista needed a patch for a 3.1 bug with image handling tells me that they have actually never changed anything. And so you pay good money for 1990's technology. I make my kip as a .NET programmer, but I would never pay for the pain that is Vista or 7, and my organization is sticking with XP come hell or h
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I think you meant Vista/Mohave Redux.
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True,
And if EAX/DirectSound and DirectSound3D don't work, this thing is headed for the same DRM/Securepath infested garbage bin Vista is in.
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Vista in contrast, took only 2 1/2 Years.
Wow... maybe you were going for a +1 Funny? I can see why you posted that one anonymously.
Vista took almost a decade.
Vista was supposed to be the culmination of numerous projects, some of which started in the mid-late 1990's.
At the last minute, many of those features were dropped - but the work on Vista started much longer ago than your indicated 2.5 year timeframe (including realizing that after nearly 10 years, numerous features still didnt work properly).
Now, perhaps you are discussing one of their n
External HD? (Score:2)
If they require an external HD to hand this thing out it better contain a boatload of documentation or developer tools. I've never seen one of these, so can someone tell us what MS usually hands out in a pre-beta for developers that takes up so many bits?
Re:External HD? (Score:5, Funny)
Here you go [wikipedia.org].
Parent
160GB hard drive is a GIFT to attendees (Score:2)
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Countdown-to-PDC-2008-This-is-the-Software--Services-PDC-Plus-a-Hard-Drive-Chock-Full-oBits-is-a-PDC/ [msdn.com]
If you honestly think the the drive is completely filled with Windows OS+tools, you're quite naive.
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I didn't say the disk was full. I just didn't understand why it would require an external HD for distribution. But thanks for so politely explaining it's a "gift".
The last thing I ever got and installed from MS was Visual Studio .NET 2003, which came on 16 CDs. So I wouldn't be surprised at any level of bloat they hand out to developers.
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zomg! run! (Score:1)
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develoeprs... developers... developers... developers.
Re:zomg! run! or why is code so big (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, they just said the size of the flash drive will be 160GB.
Remember, it's an alpha release, so all code modules include debug code and other information that a release candidate won't have. This assists in stepping through the debugging and allowing you to dump the status of objects and variables, including statics, at the time of a crash or problem.
But, admittedly, code bloat is a problem at Microsoft.
I hope the final version won't autoload all the libraries and all the possible apps that you migh
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Actually, they just said the size of the flash drive will be 160GB.
Remember, it's an alpha release, so all code modules include debug code and other information that a release candidate won't have. This assists in stepping through the debugging and allowing you to dump the status of objects and variables, including statics, at the time of a crash or problem.
But, admittedly, code bloat is a problem at Microsoft.
I hope the final version won't autoload all the libraries and all the possible apps that you might ever need or want - this is one of the reasons why WinVista is such a dog of an OS - on startup it loads a lot of chrome most people don't want and don't need - and this is why they can trick you into "choosing" a stripped down WinVista with all these optional chrome apps and libraries not there on load as "better" than WinXP.
But, given their past behavior, I wouldn't bet on them releasing a lean OS, even for business users.
parent is clueless
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My jaw literally dropped and I couldn't close it for around 20 second. A 160GB harddrive for a bloody Operating System!? Are they bloody nuts? Assume that you need more than a DL-DVD. That's more than 9GB of compressed information. That is absolutely humongous. I feel like an old fart remembering the time that we had a 4 GB harddrive. And now a MS created monster called Windows 7 takes up more than 9GB of information? Even with extra testing/developing info that's simply unbelievable. I am not putting this
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I feel like an old fart remembering the time that we had a 4 GB harddrive.
I'm only 28 and remember loading programs from a cassette tape on our VIC-20. I also remember when we got our first 100MB hard drive for our Packard Bell, and immediately partitioned it into 5 20MB partitions.
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I used to literally flip switches to load programs, and when we got a cassette drive I was thrilled.
Then again, I made my own S-100 bus computer back in the day, so having skills with a soldering iron was useful too.
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I recently programmed a 2 kbit flash rom with nothing but a battery, two resistors and two toggle switches. Does that count?
-nB
(did it to prove a point FWIW)
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I'm 26 and remember our 43 MB HD, which was large at the time, which had to be partitioned into 33 MB and 10 MB partitions. I think DOS 5.0 had a limitation? Or maybe it was 4.0 and we didn't repartition when upgrading.
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Perhaps if you had spent some of those 20 seconds reading the article, you might have run across this sentence:
Mike Swanson, a Microsoft technology evangelist working on the PDC, said earlier this week that attendees will receive a 160GB external USB hard drive that will contain all the developer bits from the conference. The USB drive will presumably include the pre-beta version of Windows 7.
So, this includes all the bits from the conference... this means a lot of video presentations, power-point presentations and images, along with (I'd presume) a number of SDKs, what have you...
The 160GB hard drive is in no way indicative of the final size of the Windows 7.
Oh, and my first harddrive was 20MB. :)
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Have you looked at what vista and OSX 10.5 use when installed? Both are 20+GB. Granted OSX has more stuff to use then the base os.
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No no no. You didn't read the full article. Windows 7 only takes up 2 gigs. The rest of the space on the hard drives they're handing out is full of porn and stolen credit card numbers.
What happens to windows vista now ? (Score:2)
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or doing the robot.
vista isn't going to get adopted by businesses so windows 7 is important. so for right now they need to pretend like vista is all happy fun stuff for consumers, and eventually windows 7 will fix stuff.
but (Score:2)
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Until Microsoft ends support for XP and a new version of Windows is required to ever get anything patched (still years away, but businesses must prepare).
It's evangelism! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, vista's not dead...
Mike Swanson, a Microsoft technology evangelist
Here's the text from his upcoming speech:
"And, beeHOLD, Ah say to YOO-uh, Windows 7 comes NOT to ABOLISH Vista but to FULFILL it! Ay-men!"
Don't stick around for the faith healings, you might get smacked upside the head with an external 160 Gig HDD.
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Don't stick around for the faith healings, you might get smacked upside the head with an external 160 Gig HDD.
why external ?
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they were still pushing and selling it to people ? ads and whatnot, with shaking butts etc ?
It looks like they're attacking this from two angles. There's the "Vista isn't as bad as you think it is" side, and the "Let's get something else out the door without a prejudiced bad reputation" side. Right now vista evokes the mental image of a steaming pile of bloat, so unless the marketing campaign can give the vista brand a positive image in the mind of consumers, there's no hurt in talking about the next big thing (that isn't vista). At the very worst, it will start out with 0 brand recognition, a
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So, if we get pre-beta on Oct 28 (Score:1)
So, if we get pre-beta on Oct 28, does that mean the hotfix for major holes in the OS gets released in SP1 or SP2 next year?
By the way, USB flash drives, by their nature, are inherently insecure.
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By the way, USB flash drives, by their nature, are inherently insecure.
It's an external hard drive, but at any rate it's not insecure if you use encryption. If anyone gets my USB drive they'll get the hardware, the decryption program, and a bunch of noise. At any rate, why would security even be an issue? It's not like they can prevent anyone from copying the data after the conference.
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Open the pod bay doors, Hal!
2010 ...
Personally, I hope they just go to Windows 9 and skip the code bloat of both 7 and 8.
And seeing there is something called the Internet (Score:1)
Windows 7 (Score:2, Insightful)
(Damn! Vista Is A Major Embarrassment We'd Better Slam Out Something That Looks Different FAST!)
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/me tried to pronounce it... :P
Windows DvIamEwBsOstLDf ?
Was that intentional ?
Will it have the same reliability ?
Windows 7, leaner than ever! (Score:2)
Spreading malware (Score:1)
You use to spread this stuff with just the boot sector of a floppy, I know over they years malware grew in size to the point where the last major version came on dvds. But really 160GB hard dive does this mean we will all need to have blueray players to install the latest viruses?
Ah well..... that's progress for you.
On the volume of the drive... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have trouble believing that Microsoft would deliberately submit themselves to a joke so transparent that half of the Slashdot comments are about it. They worry about that sort of thing. Why, I bet Ballmer is reading this thread and throwing chairs around right now!
October 8th is the private beta (Score:4, Funny)
October 9th is the public beta. I hear they will be using Bittorrent for distribution.
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Whoosh!