Since we haven’t posted anything about the new Windows Vista beta release lately… Stardock’s Brad Wardell writes “I’ve put together a first look at the first beta of Windows Vista. In the coming days I hope to delve deep into the guts of Microsoft’s new OS but I’ve tried to put together a decent overview of what Windows Vista is all about.”
Windows Vista Pre-Beta First look
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Adam Scheinberg
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The ability for malicious programs to patch system files and the such is being curtailed. Moreover, Microsoft is trying to migrate users away from setting users up as administrators. Instead, users set up with normal access can be prompted to enter the admin password when they need to do something that can affect system integrity. Hence, even if something does get through Vista’s security, it won’t be able to go crazy if the user isn’t logged on as an admin.
Finally Windows will have the security feature that all GNU/Linux and OS X users enjoy. Great to see this finally be implemented in the right way. Prompt the user for a password, do not just give them an access denied error.
>Finally Windows will have the security feature that all GNU/Linux and OS X users enjoy.
No’ so fast. There is a small mountain range of third-party code that isn’t likely to work well with these changes. For example, all of your hardware drivers.
Improved OS implementation does not automatically a happy user create.
Quite likely, vendors will (reasonably) spend their time on getting their new stuff to work well, and only grudgingly consider updating older drivers. Stand by for what might feel like a mugging.
I am not saying that the transistion to this type of model will be pain free, especially since Windows developers have long enjoyed an open security model and didn’t have to worry to much about write permissions but this is something that is a long time comming and it is good to see that Windows Vista is finally going to implement the feature. It is LATE coming but it is here none the less. Also, sorry if I offended anyone by not including the BSD’s (Free, Net, Open) in the group of OS’s with this model alongside GNU/Linux and OSX
Well, the fact is, those who stick to the ‘good programming principles of Windows 2000’ shouldn’t have any problems; those who will have problems are those who use nasty, undocumented hacks or simply write half baked, hacked together applications and leaving design considerations to the last minute.
“Worms, Spyware, Malware, and the like have become household names. People yell at Microsoft for the lack of security in Windows without realizing that the insecurity of Windows wasn’t born out of technical insufficiency but rather an excessively optimistic view of human beings.”
I don’t believe this. For example, viruses were known long before Windows NT. Security products and security services just mean business. Have a look at current security technologies, like anti-virus/spyware products, (N)IDS, … Most of them don’t solve security problems at their roots, because they just react instead of preventing them.
In the end, it isn’t all about security. It’s about making money and keeping this industry profitable.
” Finally Windows will have the security feature that all GNU/Linux and OS X users enjoy. ”
M$ is doing some cloning of its own.
Since we haven’t posted anything about the new Windows Vista beta release lately…
I can see how
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11371 you can
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11368 say that
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11359 nothing
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11351 has been
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11339 posted in http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11326 a while
about Vista.
That would be sarcasm, dude.
But this is normal. When there is a Fedora or Linspire or Ubuntu release, there are several articles and reviews about it. The same is true for Windows.
well, maybe, but where’s that windows release? They’re still talking about beta. Did somebody notice any daily article on Fedora/Ubuntu/Whatever pre-beta-non-functional-but-lets-make-some-hype “releases”?
I have no issue with seeing multiple reviews on software as long as it’s either the original author making a correction or another author covering details missed by the first author. Though I believe OSNews should work better at allowing articles to posted that are of benefit to the site and readers. Posting articles that pretend to be a review but are really just a post about screenshots is a waste of news space.
“the insecurity of Windows wasn’t born out of technical insufficiency but rather an excessively optimistic view of human beings.”
What a Microsoft shill.
To make the assumption that no one will try and “attack” something is somewhat understandable, at least from a code monkey perspective. I mean, look at all the vulnerabilities that just came out in the USB specification? They didn’t expect people to try and exploit it, so they maybe didn’t put enough research into security.
>They didn’t expect people to try and exploit it, so they maybe didn’t put enough research into security.
It might be fair to say that the market doesn’t reward (yet) research into security, and thus vendors have focused on giving users what they wanted, not what they needed.
Sure, but it has already been pointed out that the Windows and earlier MS-DOS platforms were susceptible to virii. Malware is probably an evolution of the virus. It is something which became practical when operating systems became sufficiently complex that hiding and entangling large pieces of software became practical, while the online world made it much easier to distribute. The only major change that I can see is that malware now has a strong profit motive behind it, rather just malice or curiousity.
I’d say that ‘optimism’ isn’t understandable; maybe I’m a cynic, but software and hardware companies should always look at the worst side of humans; if it can be exploited, hacked or cracked in some way, its almost a certaintity that it will.
NEVER assume the best; when you do, its almost a certaintity that you’ll be disappointed – give people and inch, and they’ll take a mile.
All I see is “me too” all over the place. And, is it just me or is Windows starting to look like Linux? Meaning, the unification of design and function and the organization and clarity of controls and labels is suffering more than ever before.
It also looks to be a resource hog for no good reason other than trying to play catch-up, visually. (why don’t they update all the “old components” such as calculator, time and date, wordpad, etc, instead of candy coating the shell?) Lastly, how hard will it be to wrangle THIS version into letting me work the way I want to?
I don’t think that early previews are going to do Microsoft any good with public opinion (or mine, at least) because it is starting to feel like the times when we critical BeOS users were being hard on yellowTAB’s promotion and demonstration of Zeta. A “beta” is supposed to be “functionally complete” and for bug catching only – “the real meat” shouldn’t be waiting for beta 2. This tells me that they are struggling to make something new and compelling, realizing they are losing attention and interest, and trying despirately to get the Spotlight (both figuratively and literally) on the product.
Don’t understand what he is saying about security not being an issue. The NT kernel has pretty good security mechanisms, so obviously the engineers that built it thought that security was a big deal.
It’s just that everybody else chose not to use them, and chose to assume that everybody was running as Administrator (which is understandable as that was the default setting).
There is a big difference between “an excessively optimistic view of human beings”, and realising that security is a problem but not one your going to do anything about as it is a hard problem and doing it right would take money out of the bottom line.
I’m not sure I’d call that an overview so much as an advertisement. He basically said that it’s not microsoft’s fault that their security sucks and then went on to list the features that we’ve already seen ms marketing push. He said nothing about them except that they are ‘obviously’ going to be great but didn’t say why.
I’d rather see a user review that has at least some semblance of objectivity.
why oh why must Microsoft introduce even more crap into their interface.
Windows Mediaplayer is bad enough, now it seems that the next version of windows will be inspired på KDE (with a bad theme).
Has anybody noticed the horrible usage of transparency on windows borders? Personally I find the search interface confusing.
”
Back when Windows NT was originally developed (early 90s), there was a sense that we were all one big happy family. NT’s main competitor, OS/2, was even less secure in many respects. IBM’s vision at the time included users sharing parts of programs together seamlessly via OpenDoc. OS/2 included a powerful batch language called REXX that could have been used to create things that would make today’s Worms look like child’s play. Back then, developers imagined users working together in harmony. Kumbaya should have been the code-name of Windows NT.”
Ohhhh, so woindows NT poor security is the result of a bunch of guy that thought that we live in the wonderful world of Alice, right?
Come on, how can someone give such explanation, that’s ridiculous, every big compagny knew at that time that security was a big deal, and anyway they were planing to sell their product to big institutions where security necessarily matters, so what the point here?
WinNT fails in security because the security was not a praiority to microsoft and they did not take this problem seriously. And not because they thought that everything and everyone was secure or that insecurity did not exist.
Don’t even mention Vista to me. After testing Vista Beta 1 I am so disappointed and frustrated with the zillions of bugs it has that my swearing and cussing could be heard all the way to Redmond. The user interface is ugly and non-intuitive, the service and device management cumbersome, etc. Many of the features don’t work and the ones that do are a step backwards. I was hoping Vista could be the light at the end of the tunnel of all the XP pains but this disappointment helped me at least make the decision to dump Windows alltogether and move on to a better operating system.
dude! IT’S A FREAKIN BETA!!!!! Not everything is implemented yet, and of course there are problems that need to be fixed. Get over yourself and report the problems to Microsoft so that they can fix them before the Release Candidates.
Get over yourself and report the problems to Microsoft so that they can fix them before the Release Candidates.
Can we also report what we want in it or does it have to take another 5 years to implement them?
The wincustomize link doesn’t work
buddy, you better don’t say the “L” word here in this forum but, yeah, i can hear ya. i feel exactly the same. praise the Lord that there is Ubuntu, the Gnome desktop, KDE, and all those great free open-source apps.
Microsoft is clever to let all us MSDN testers do the work rather than paying a dozen more full-time developers. Even for a Beta version it is so horrible that they should compensate us for wasting out time and making us suffer. They even put me in the difficult situation of deciding between buying a Mac or just installing a Linux distro on my existing PC…
Of what I’ve seen so far Vista is not much more than XP with some eyecandy on top but thousand times more slow, buggy, and unstable. I already had enough of XP and all the patching and security holes. Many people are at the point where they are fed up with any version of Windows and ironically Microsoft couldn’t find any better name than Vista which is often used short for the famous “hasta la vista” to describe it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I, as well as many other power Windows users are not the target customers for Vista. I’ve seen countless posts about how pretty OS X is or how secure Linux so what does Microsoft do? They go and implement the features everyone has been asking for and all everyone can do is whine that they are late or the features not needed. I myself don’t care for eye candy and have never had a problem with viruses or other exploits on Windows. Windows Vista is meant for the many individuals that are silly enough to double-click on files with .scr extensions or that like staring at pretty desktops.
I’ve seen 2 false dichotomies presented these last few days. The first is that users that don’t upgrade to Vista will switch to Linux/OSX. There’s a 3rd option which is to just stick with the current Windows version one may currently be using. Speaking for myself I will probably keep using XP until the successor to Vista arrives on the market.
The other one is that IE7 only works with XP and Vista so all other Windows users will now start using Firefox. Again there’s other options. There’s Maxthon, Crazy Browser, Avant, NetCaptor, etc.
I hope it will get better cause I’m bound to Windows as a musician who has to use apps that are Windows only.
But it’s too early to judge Vista anyways, they got plenty of time to iron the bugs out and optimize the code (and hopefully they’ll do so).
Has anyone noticed the screenshot of the start menu? Where the fsck is “Programs”?
FTA:
“Worms, Spyware, Malware, and the like have become household names. People yell at Microsoft for the lack of security in Windows without realizing that the insecurity of Windows wasn’t born out of technical insufficiency but rather an excessively optimistic view of human beings.”
Sorry but the about statement rings of being naive.
“Few people back then could have predicted the impact that over-wedgified 17 year olds spreading their angst across the net in the form of Spyware, Worms, DDOS attacks, and so forth.”
Kids don’t write spyware, its done by big business. Now Worms, DDOS are another story.
“Microsoft is trying to migrate users away from setting users up as administrators. Instead, users set up with normal access can be prompted to enter the admin password when they need to do something that can affect system integrity. ”
All, I can say is: Finally!!! Good job.
Now, as for:
1) Better User Experience: Aero.
2) Information Organization: WinFS
As long as the above 2 can be disabled, I am good.
3) Windows Communications Foundation (WCF): “Code-named Indigo, Windows Vista is designed to make it far far easier for developers to create programs that can talk to each other over the Internet securely and easily. Developers (particularly game developers) can tell you the pain it is to write things that can easily talk to each other over the net through routers, fire-walls, etc. Opening ports and such is not an ideal solution. Indigo, amongst other things, aims to solve these kinds of problems.”
As for number 3, it raises some questions about security. AKA the ability to bypass firewalls, in an application. Yes, I am aware that certain applications can have their port assingments changed to a port that isn’t restricted.
O’well, some good and some bad. Just gripping today.
Yours or mine?
beta 1 doesn’t deserve its name . there is still the memory leak , its slow ( not snappy as some say ) , full of nasty bugs and ie 7 freezes like hell .
what a desaster after four years of development !
Will I be able to have my Classic theme without transparency, Cleartype and other crap?
They should separate core from services like WinFX, WinFS and whatever WinXX they have from shell. I might want new core, new dev tools or better networking. But I want my classic snappy desktop from NT4.0 / Win95 (no integrated MSIE, which flickers all over the way on a slower video card).
I am using Win2K and all in all it is the best Windows ever made. If MS won’t backport WinFX to Win2K, I will run Java apps instead of WinFX apps, whatever.
Yes, this is a beta, as many posters insist on pointing out. But on this site we talk about many other beta software releases, and these are the standards we hold them to:
1) They are (at least) a feature-complete showcase of the upcoming release, if not completely stable or reliable.
2) They represent a level of incremental improvement appropriate for the length of the development cycle.
This release has neither. I wonder where all the money and man-hours go, since this appears to be no more than 18 months worth of improvement from XP (if that). It has been almost 4 years since XP, and it seems like Microsoft is stuck in the mud with an OS that would have been impressive in 2003.
It is refreshing, though, that MS has finally figured out what this OS is going to be. No Hailstorm subscription services, no core commitment to the .NET framework, no “sidebar,” no next-gen filesystem. Just reduced user privileges, some metadata searching, transparent titlebars, and some closed development APIs that might see some adoption by 2008.
This is the definition of too little, too late. This is also a tragedy for businesses and consumers everywhere who have investing heavily in MS technology. If Apple and the OSS community thought it was easy to compete (technologically) with Windows XP, it’s going to be even easier to compete with Windows Vista. Everyone who’s bound to MS by their investments will see everyone else pass them by.
It’s a resource hog because it’s a BETA. I would bet my 66mustange right now that it has a TON of debugging code turned on that is slowing the system down.
5 years too late and only works on niche x86 systems. What a piece of shit. Boycott the proprietary Microseft Windows system!
The new Windows look and feel is a mix of GNOME, KDE and OSX. Such an improvement that is.. 😉
Which one did they get the frosted glass look from? And the back/forward buttons? taskbar? control panel?
Did I say everything is stolen? Look to the “new” GUI and compare it with KDE, GNOME, OSX and Sun’s Looking Glass. And even much of the GUI of XP is stolen.
Further more.. Did you ever wondered why Microsoft has an anti-Linux campagne [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/default.mspx] while they say Linux is no treat at all, and why they never talk about the BSD’s? Look what my script found in $WINNT/system32:
midgard# /home/dnns/find_bsd_copyright.sh
finger.exe: @(#) Copyright (c) 1980 The Regents of the University of California.rcp.exe: @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
rsh.exe: @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
http://FTP.EXE: @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
NSLOOKUP.EXE: @(#) Copyright (c) 1985,1989 Regents of the University of California.